When I was studying the indigenous teachings a few years ago, I heard a great description of what happens to us as we grow up: we get domesticated. In learning to adapt to our family, our culture and our community, we align ourselves with something that is not really alive, a way of being that has been tamed, controlled and managed.
Of course we need to adapt, and learn the ways of our culture. But most of us lose something quite precious in this process. The good news is that our untamed being is not really lost. It can’t ever be really lost-we’ve just forgotten about it.
This untamed you, this natural wildness and vitality is still here. And we can learn to recognize it, open our hearts and minds to it. Sometimes I call this aspect of who we are the soul, or essence. It doesn’t matter what we call it. What matters is learning to value it, care for it, and reawaken it. What matters is opening to the truth of what cannot ever really be tamed.
Once we turn our attention in this direction, life can reveal, in such a direct and immediate way, this stream of vitality, of natural freedom, of unbound creativity.
It’s a time, in our world, when we are being called back home to this aliveness. Our machines, our highways, our whole way of life will bury us, if we don’t really respond to this possibility from the core of our being.
When was the last time you felt the energy in your belly? When you really took a full breath? When you connected with the earth? When you felt, in your body, a living connection to something mysterious, indefinable, and much larger than yourself?
What did you want
To be? You’ll remember soon. You feel like tinder
Under a burning glass,
A luminous point of change.
David Wagoner
I’d love to hear from you, dear readers. Do you long for this untamed part of your being? Does it speak to you, call you? How do you awaken it, connect with it?
with love,
Shayla
3 Comments
Join the conversation and post a comment.
Leave a Comment
Stay Connected
Thank you Shayla. Perfect timing on this letter as usual. I’ve found myself drifting away from spirit, from the wildness in the last couple of days and decided to get out for a hike yesterday. Followed a trail to a favorite look-out but never really felt like I touched back in witb the untamed me. Spent some time soaking in the sun and views and then headed back. Decided to get off the trail and take my own line towards the truck and so grateful I did. It forced me to slow down, notice my footing, my surroundings… and I felt that instant connection back with my wildness. Lesson learned… at least for now. Even a cleared trail provides that sense of control, domestication, a pattern to follow that shuts off the senses. At least for me at that time. Grateful to have your letter come in this morning and help me notice this.
amazing how I want to be seen as normal and struggle to express my ””wild”’ side. My view of self is out of ‘accordance’ with family background expectations YET my yearning to belong keeps me in a web of God=knows-what!! I have been revealed upon …. thank you. An inner dissident voice just lost power and now feel strengthen to live well my own soul calling.
Charon
About twenty years ago I remember asking my friend, what’s the difference between mental and emotional? She was surprised that I didn’t know that. Now I am wondering, what’s the difference between soul and spirit? Curiosity pulls me toward this learning.