I went for a walk early this morning. Overcast, 'not very promising' is what people might say, but it was good. I find any walk in nature is good, and unique. I walked along lanes slippery with leaves and down into this valley in the woods.
I was looking down between the three trunks of an old tree. (click on photo to enlarge) It's quite a dark photo as I was relying on natural light. I wanted to catch the relative brightness of the leaves. I liked the reflection of the sky in the stream bringing in light.
It's a primeval experience, going into the wild woods. In old stories, such as those collected in Grimm's stories, going into the woods can be symbolic of going into the 'unconscious' or less-known, less explored, parts of oneself. Once one enters the 'wild woods' of one's own nature there is plenty to explore and know. I was carrying with me a whisp of something from the waking edge of sleep and it became clearer to me what that was.
It's a bit hard to describe, but it was a surfacing of something I'd been over-looking in the day-time realm of plans, actions, carrying on with things that I have up-and-running in my life. What happened for me by walking in the woods and then stopping there to take the photo, to eat a breakfast sandwich and to quietly think was that I could bring to consciousness what that whisp was that I remembered from when I was waking up. I allowed myself access to a part of me I'd been overlooking. Gosh this is hard to describe! - but that's the point, something was becoming conscious that I hadn't been aware of before. Nothing dramatic, but the dawning of something.
It got me thinking about this division we make between conscious and unconscious. It's a handy distinction that allows us to recognise there is a great deal happening in the psyche ouside our immediate awareness, but I don't think it's hard and fast. It can be. People can spend their whole lives getting on well in some areas of life and sleepwalking through the rest. With a bit of self development, spiritual development, personal development, call it what you will, we can wake up to what we have been asleep to. For some, and I think that's only true of a very tiny minority of saints and sages, it happens instantaneously at a certain point. For most of humanity it's an ongoing process and we are at best 'work in progress'. We are awake to more than we were and we can keep becoming awake to even more, with effort.
Going into untamed nature, in any kind of weather, can give us access to our own depths and metaphors in an enriching way. We can gain more conscious access to ourselves.
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