Confessions of a Hedge Witch

I wrote yesterday about the Faery Seed and while everything I said is true, that the essence of this lineage can be found within that seed, most of us need help accessing it. I also mentioned one of the possible obscuring layers that can hamper our embodied knowing or realization of the seed. We don’t remember who we are.  Note the verb tense. We “are.”  Not will be or hope to become.  We are, everything is, I am, all things are, divine.  Right now.  But this forgetting piece is deep and often requires assistance and years of practice to unfold.

I’ve talked elsewhere in this blog about the importance of examining cultural and familial beliefs, impressions and world view.  Part of that examination may uncover layers of trauma, pain or energetic adhesions.  This is where a teacher comes in handy.   A teacher can suggest tools or exercises to free up adhesions, and they can see blind spots where we unconsciously hang onto culturally shaped and familially ingrained patterns.  But we don’t all have a teacher.

One of the things we can do on our own is to cultivate the ability to notice our internal landscape.  When I started training in this lineage one of my teachers was a big proponent of sitting meditation for this purpose.  While this is an excellent practice, those of us who have experienced trauma may have a difficult time, especially with mindfulness practice.  One of the tools this teacher used for herself was something called God Soul Listening.  In this exercise you imagine awareness rising up into the god soul above your head and fanning out, like a cobra.  I engaged this practice like an expert, or so I thought.  What I was actually doing was dissociating.  Not only that, but I didn’t have hours per day to sit in front of my altar.  I was the mother of four pre and early teenage children.  I needed a practice that kept me in my body and didn’t take additional time.

This is when Cora Anderson became my hero. Cora was a powerful, insightful practitioner yet she was practical, informal, and above all – engaged in the everyday business of life.   What some traditions call a “householder.”  Her concerns were a clean kitchen, food on the table, and children that were tended to.  So began my journey into myself.

I started to engage with my breath while washing dishes.  This was immensely satisfying because the view from the kitchen window was of the green back garden. I grounded myself as I stood, paying attention to the feel of the water on my hands, the smell of the lavendar scented soap, and the visual field of green trees and plants. I would breathe down the cooling starry energy from above, follow it into my pelvic bowl, and then breathe up the warming energy from the fire in the earth all the way to the outer edge of my energy body.  By incorporating the embodied practice which was practical (washing dishes), with the intention in my breath work,  I began to unfold layers.

There were many other day-to-day activities I eventually stirred my tools into, such as cooking, sweeping, riding my bike to work, and brushing my teeth, to name only a few.  I increased the complexity of the breathing practice adding pauses and patterns, I added other tools for self inquiry into the mix and eventually incorporated what I would consider more advanced energy work – all while doing daily, embodied activity.   The main take-away for me was that all parts of me, no matter what I was thinking, feeling or doing were part of the Star Goddess – there was no part of my Self that needed changing or fixing (a notion I had come into meditation practice with) – and that deep spiritual work, and personal growth, could be integrated into my nuts and bolts life. As I went about my day, internally working my tradition’s tools, I began to feel myself as part of the divine weave of the world.

I did have specific trauma work still to do, in order to calm my central nervous system, as well as other work targeted at the release of energetic adhesions, but this practice took me far. In fact, I still do it.  As I sit here at work I am intentionally running my breath down and up, pause and notice, down and up, pause and notice, grab the phone, pause and notice, down and up, look up that award, pause and notice, grab the budget, down and up.