Reflection and Druidry

(Nimue)

There aren’t many things I’m dogmatic about, but the importance of reflection and contemplation for anyone on the Druid path is definitely one of those things. There are a great many ways of approaching this,however, so it’s not very prescriptive in practice.

Reflection is key to understanding. If life is going to be more than a series of random things that happen to us, then we need to take the time to reflect on our experiences and how those experiences impact on us. Making considered and deliberate choices depends on this.

It’s all too easy to be a consumer – we can consume nature, landscape, spiritual experience, spiritual merch… To be a Druid you have to go deeper, invest more, feel more, think more – you can’t just skim the surface of life. Time spent contemplating things takes us further into them. We can approach our experiences in a contemplative way, slowing down to really invest in them, and we can contemplate after the event, internalising what we’ve learned.

For anyone on the bard path, reflection is essential. The process of taking what you know, and what you’ve experienced and developing that into something creative requires some time spent looking inwards. To put something out into the world you have to first go inside yourself to work out what to make and how to make it, and to turn the spark of inspiration into something coherent.

When we make quiet time to sit – in meditation, in reflection or in prayer, it creates space for magic. Time spent quietly inside yourself exploring your own thoughts does not cut you off from everything else, and can have the opposite effects. In the quiet, introspective moments we are most likely to get flashes of inspiration, and connection with that which goes beyond our everyday thinking. If you have a notion of ‘higher self’ or of the voice of spirit within you, this is when such parts of yourself are most likely to be visible to you. For those who seek communion with deity, or spirit, the process of turning inwards is the process that invites the divine. 

When you turn inwards to reflect on the world, and your experience of it, you become more able to fully engage with the world. We need both, and we need to explore these things as a shifting dance, and interchange. We bring the world into ourselves, and we bring ourselves into the world and at each stage, reflection gives us the means to do so. 

Asking what’s most important

(Nimue)

One of the small daily practices I’ve been exploring in the last month or so, is to ask what’s most important. I do this at the start of each day. Making the time for the question rather than just getting up and getting on with things is part of a larger shift. I used to be very much an up-and-at-it sort of person whenever my health allowed. These days I often stay in bed for a little while after I’ve woken up, and approach the day at a gentler pace.

What will be most important today? The odds are I already have some plans or intentions in place. I may revisit those, but my priority is to just be open to what seems most important intuitively. I watch out for the more unexpected responses. Whatever comes, I try to sit with it for a few minutes and just get a sense of how it works or how to follow through on it.

What’s most important right now? That can vary a lot. I give myself permission to think about what I might need from the day as well as what others might need from me. I check any plans I’ve already made and see how these look in light of any new thoughts.

It’s not something I invest a huge amount of time in, but I’m finding it beneficial. Sometimes unexpected priorities emerge, and I like where that’s taking me. I’m finding more room for what I need for myself rather than what’s needed from me. It’s informing how I pace things.

This is also a practice that allows inspiration to enter in. Sometimes what comes in response to that question is an idea, or an answer to something that needed dealing with. That might be inspiration for practical problems, for projects I’m working on or for things I’d not previously considered even needed attention. It opens up space for possibility.

It also creates space to explore any tensions between what’s supposed to be happening and what I actually want. Some days I just have to get up and do the things – whatever they are. I might not like them, or want to do them but some things just have to be tackled. Acknowledging how I feel tends to help me deal with the things I’m not keen on and to handle that more effectively. Recognising when I’m uncomfortable means I’ll do a better job of offsetting such challenges and keeping myself in a more functional state overall.

There are all kinds of things a person can make deliberate time for in a day, and I can certainly recommend this as something to explore if you’re looking at small, everyday activities either to enhance your everyday life or to open up space for intuition and/or inspiration.

Midwinter Meditations

(Nimue)

Midwinter is a good time to pause and take stock, if you can. It’s a good opportunity to look back at the year and think about what went well, and what you want to build on. It may be necessary to invest time in making sense of things, and making decisions about what is and isn’t serving you. Sitting in a meditative way can be really helpful, especially if you don’t get the chance to do this regularly.

A lot of meditation focuses on directing the mind in specific ways. However, it’s good to take time to gently unpack your thoughts and to make room for thinking about what’s going on in your life. Living an authentic and considered life depends on making time to reflect in this way. It’s important to know how you feel about things, and to know what you want.

Looking back, we can ask what can be learned from the year. What would you do again? What do you want more of? Less of? What can you change to enrich your life and take you in the directions you want to go in? Gazing into the past is the starting point for looking towards the future. Once we know where we are, it’s easier to think effectively about where we might be going.

Even when the options seem limited, considering them can open up room for choice. Sometimes we don’t get much say in what we have to do, but it’s always worth looking for what options there are, and to consider what it would take to do something well, or in the best way, or the least damaging way. It’s also important to remember that you can’t make good choices when you don’t have any good options, and to cut yourself slack around situations where you have little or no power.

All too often, New Year’s Resolutions are just a way to internalise different kinds of cultural oppression. You don’t need to be a whole new person, or to have some kind of personal revolution. You do not need to beat yourself up inline with other people’s expectations. Set down anything that feels like blame, or shame or misery and ask instead what would serve you. What good things can you bring into your life? What would make you more joyful?

It’s a good time of year to set intentions around things you want for yourself and want to be doing. Pick things that will nourish and uplift you. It’s good to reflect on what you want from life, and what you most need. Ask what would help you grow, or enable you to flourish. Ask what your heart longs for, or your soul hungers for. Give yourself permission to dream wildly and on your own terms.

The lives we live are shaped by everyday choices. The big, dramatic decisions we make can have surprisingly small impacts compared to what we do with our time day by day. If you want to make radical changes it’s more effective to think about the everyday changes you would need to make in order for that to happen.

Contemplative drawing

(Nimue)

I’m exploring the potential of drawing as a way of contemplating. I’m interested in the way in which trying to draw something leads to intense concentration on it for some length of time. This works especially well when applied to things that might otherwise be overlooked. I recently had a go at a half used bulb of garlic as well. Radishes aren’t the kinds of things I normally spend a lot of time looking at, so paying this kind of focused attention proved interesting.

There are many ways of drawing things, and all of them involve compromises. You get to think about shape, colour, light, shadow, and texture. When you’re working with a single pencil, you can’t catch everything, and I often find there’s a really interesting tension between trying to describe the shape of something and trying to describe its texture.

I spend a lot of time online looking at the work of other artists and seeing how they draw. In recent months I’ve been particularly looking at the work Jason Eckhardt does – his pencil sketches of trees and landscapes have made me want to get outside and have a go, although I’ve yet to do that. I’m also learning a lot from art by Martin Hayward-Harris, whose pencil studies of birds and other wildlife are stunning.

Whether I’m looking at things to try and draw them, or booking at drawings to try and understand the techniques involved, it all takes me into places of deep contemplation. What it brings up are thoughts about what makes something recognisibly itself. What is the essence of whatever I’m trying to capture? What makes a specific example of it individually itself? Each of the radishes I drew was distinctly different from all of the others. Spending time exploring that difference and getting to know the radishes was a peaceful process and a rewarding one.

The great thing about this is that it really doesn’t matter how good your drawing skills are. There’s no end goal here beyond the experience. It’s about taking the time, immersing in something and seeking to understand it. The focus of pencil on paper can be a real aid to contemplation, and whatever comes out of that is fine.

It’s also a good way of digging into the magic of the everyday. Taking small, familiar things and studying them can reveal their beauty and value. Making the ordinary into a subject worthy of your study and your drawing is rather lovely. And of course if you do a lot of drawing, you get better at it. Like anything else, time spent on creating gets more done than any innate talent you might have.

Meditating on your body

(Nimue)

There are a lot of meditations that will take you into your own body to some degree. It’s very normal to start with a focus on your breathing as you settle and relax your body. I’ve put quite a few meditations in Druidry and Meditation that help a person experience their own body, relax and experience themselves in a spiritual way. I particularly like meditations that involve relating to the elements as they manifest in the body.

One of the things I’ve been trying recently, is meditating on my body as an ecosystem. We are composite beings, and a great deal of what’s in us isn’t human at all. We depend on friendly bacteria, especially in our guts. Wild yeast lives on us – and as I’m working with wild yeast for sourdough this has been particularly on my mind. Microscopic things live on our skin and in our hair. I haven’t done a deep dive on the science side yet, but I think that would be a good way to add depth to this work.

I’m taking these meditations as a mix of contemplation and conversation. I settle, and I contemplate how much of me isn’t biologically speaking me at all. I reflect on how I depend on my friendly bacteria, and I take time for gratitude. I’ve also started speaking to these beings who are within me and who are not me – in particular asking my gut residents what they would like, and what would make them happy.

I’ve always had a somewhat wonky digestive system. Some of that relates to the hypermobility and of course it’s all been made worse by stress in the past. I also have a lot of ancestral issues around body shape, food, hunger and appetite – things that the women in my family have passed down through generations. Which is hardly unusual. Working on what lives in my gut is a way of exploring different relationships with my body and my ancestors.

I’m enjoying the process of contemplating my body in this way and trying to build my sense that my physical form is a community. I’m finding it a restful thing to investigate, and I’m also finding it joyful. It supports self-care and feeling comfortable in my own skin, along with all the tiny beings who are also (hopefully) comfortable in my skin.

Meditations and miracles

(Nimue)

Back at the start of covid, I lost most of the feeling in my feet. Given the state of everything, I didn’t get it checked out – it didn’t seem that urgent compared to the need to isolate. Then it became normal. I think it was a combination of how stressed I was and how much I was disassociating. It’s easier to damage a system than it is to fix it. I’ve had a lot of time where I barely registered my own skin, and it’s enabled me to tune out a lot of pain. It also makes it hard to feel real, or present, and it’s been an expensive way of dealing with some really challenging things.

I’ve not been actively disassociating for months now – I’ve not needed to do it. It’s a costly protective system, but for a long time it was the best option I could find. Disassociation is something that can happen spontaneously in response to distress but you can also do it deliberately with enough practice. A body used to trauma can numb out very quickly. I’ve had all of that going on. 

Associating again is much harder work. I did a little bit of going barefoot outside back in July and August, and  there were hints of sensation. Before then I hadn’t been able to reliably tell without looking whether I had socks on, or whether my feet were in the duvet or not. As the loss of feeling in my feet was not a deliberate choice I wasn’t sure if I could find a way out of it.

I dug in with the meditation. I’ve made a point of spending time every day thinking about my feet and trying to feel them. My theory was that the issue might be more with my brain and nervous system than anything physical. It wasn’t the kind of numbness that goes with loss of circulation, the blood mostly goes round enough. It was more that my brain didn’t register my feet properly so I had no information from my body about where the ground is, and things like that. It’s possible I’d had similar things with other parts of me, but feet are so much more noticeable when you can’t feel them.

Neural pathways are rather interesting things and we can build them by trying to build them. This is a massive consideration around stroke recovery. So, I tried to rebuild the relationship between my brain and my feet, and I invested time in that every day, trying to feel my feet. It’s been the primary focus of my meditating for about two months now.

Then I woke up one morning and I had feet again. I could feel my own skin, and how dry it was! The impact on my balance has been instant and massive. This will make me safer and makes it easier to walk. The implications for dancing are huge. It’s been tricky figuring out ways to dance without being able to move my feet much. 

Some of this healing is a consequence of no longer disassociating all the time. Some of it I am certain is the result of using my meditation skills to repair the damage done to how my brain was relating to the rest of my body. Brains are startlingly flexible things, but it is easier to get them to shut down than it is to rebuild a system. Dissociation is something that can just happen to us in response to things that are unbearable. Spend too much time doing it, and coming back from there is hard. Possible, but hard. Getting feeling back into my body and my brain back in touch with my feet feels like a miracle.

Unable to visualise

Regular commenter Richard Finney asked for advice about what to do if you have a hard time visualising. As I’m one of those people, too, this is something I can speak to. I generally struggle to hold visual images in my head, or to work with them which has huge implications for a lot of meditation and pathworking activities.

One option is to use a similar approach to whatever you do when reading. I can hold the information in my head in a way that allows me to feel a sense of an environment without trying to see it. If you have a strategy for dealing with visual content in fiction, I recommend trying to do similar things with visual content in meditations.

Some people find it works for them to focus on other senses – that’s something to experiment with. 

Sometimes I use existing visual material. Either I’ll have a visual prompt in front of me (oracle cards are ideal) or I’ll work with visual content I can remember. So, I might draw on my visual memory of a place I know well,or something from a creative source. Ilike using Miyazaki settings for meditations, for example. I don’t have a great visual memory, but if I focus on visual content I can build up a memory of it.

I think there is one significant advantage to not being able to visualise easily, and that’s what happens when things become visual. One of the questions around this kind of spiritual work is how you tell the difference between your ego creating things, and an actual spiritual experience. Just occasionally, I find that my meditation work will suddenly shift into something much more visual and intense as an experience. This is a strong indicator that I’ve moved beyond my own ability to imagine and into something more substantial. It’s really obvious when this happens as a direct result of my inability to visualise.

Meditations tend to be presented in visually-focused ways, but that’s not the only way to do things. You can create material that relates to your own strengths and needs. One of my favourite meditations for relaxing is to imagine that I am floating in warm water. There’s no visual aspect to it. 

If you are able to visualise, there’s a lot to be said for opening up your meditations to the rest of your senses, and exploring other parts of yourself. 

(Thank you Richard for the prompt, I’m always up for this kind of thing if people have questions on topics I’m equal to.)

Questioning Everything

I’m very much an advocate for doing deliberate check ins. For me, reflection and self awareness are important parts of what it means to be a Druid. Usually checking in can be a brief thing – taking the time to just pay some attention to how you’re feeling, how things are going, where you are with the Druid path, what’s good, what’s working, what isn’t. A little while in contemplation around all of this gets a lot done.

It’s worth taking this further every now and then. Sometimes life pressures will make it inevitable. There’s a lot to be said for being open to radical life re-thinks without having to be in crisis first. All too often we only take deep dives into our own lives and choices when we absolutely have to. Humans are creatures of habit, and it is all too easy to get into habits that don’t really serve us and to stay with them because change feels more threatening than whatever is familiar.

Being able to change is sometimes a question of privilege. You can’t make good choices if you don’t have good options. However, it’s always worth looking for the options you do have, because any small margin of improvement is worth having.

It’s worth taking the time every now and then to consider your life as a whole. What’s driving you? What are you passionate about? What do you need? What’s important right now? Are you doing what you intended to do? What’s limiting you? What’s helping you? Question everything. Dismantle your life in a contemplative way and see which bits of it matter to you and what you want to keep. Even if you can’t make radical changes right now, it’s worth knowing what you would change if you could – this means that when opportunities arise, you’ll be ready for them.

Who am I and what do I want? What do I need and where do I want to head with my life? What’s needed from me? What do I do that works? What’s good? I’ve been asking myself this a lot. These are not questions with quick and simple answers – which of itself is indicative. These are things I should know and that I need to take the time to establish. There’s a touch of the existential crisis to it, and it’s hardly the first time I’ve been around one of those. However, from experience, making time for small ones at regular intervals means keeping on top of things. It’s when we don’t look at these things that we can end up living lives that make no sense to us and do not answer our needs.

We’re not fixed things. Life changes, and changes us. We can’t expect to figure ourselves out once and then just live that understanding forever. Existing is a work in progress and needs treating like one. We all need room to grow, learn and change, to discard previous ways of being and to experiment with new possibilities. Change can be terrifying when it feels beyond your control, and is a lot easier when you actively engage with it. The changes we embrace will be adventurous, and may nourish us and help us flourish. Question everything, choose deliberately, live intentionally and craft a life.

Contemplating dandelions and joy

This week, the dandelions bloomed in earnest. There’s a buzz of insect life in the air, and where other plants are in flower there’s been a cheering amount of activity. With the year turning towards summer here in the UK, it’s finally been warm enough for some sitting out.

I very much like sitting out as a contemplative practice. Simply being in a space and paying attention to it is an effective way of connecting with the land. I don’t try and direct my thoughts while I’m doing this, I just try to stay present to what’s around me and let whatever emerges happen.

It struck me that the combination of warm sunlight and a cool breeze is profoundly lovely. It had been a while since I’d encountered such perfect conditions, and I took the time simply to relish it. Taking time to rest in the sun is something that really works for me – when the conditions allow that. Breathing slowly and relaxing into the gentleness of the day allowed me to contemplate my situation.

Dandelions are such incredibly joyful things. The plants themselves are tremendously resilient – something my writing partner David Bridger has been talking about a lot this week, which is why I was paying attention to them. At this point in the year, with the trees only just re-greening, the colour intensity of dandelion flowers is really something to behold. They are so easily dismissed as weeds, or overlooked. I took the time to appreciate them, to love their vibrant, sunny yellow and their role in feeding bees and other insects.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how and why I burn out, and what I need to change to avoid that. I’m fairly sure that I can pour from myself in a sustained way if it feels like I’m getting things done. Aside from the number of hours I can be active in a day, there aren’t many limits on my ability to give if the giving is meaningful. What’s worn me down over the years are too many situations where giving everything didn’t seem to change anything. I’ve been reviewing those experiences.

There is considerable joy for me in being able to make a difference. That joy is key to everything. Where I’ve got into trouble, it’s because I’ve waded in for people who were crying out for help, but who in practice simply wanted the attention and had no intention of being helped. I’m very much up for paying attention to people when that helps them, but people who want attention while they double down on their own misery are soul destroying for me. My own mental health suffers too much if nothing I do is meaningful or can make a difference.

I can be more resilient if I make time for joy. I have more to give if I spend time on things that nourish me. Sometimes that can be as simple as sitting in the sun, appreciating the cool breeze and delighting in the flowers. I need birdsong, and the flow of the stream. I can do a great deal with small and peaceful joys so long as I make a point of seeking them out. That means having time in the day, and not being so overwhelmed by everything else that I don’t feel able to make time for my own needs.

I’m thinking a lot at the moment about how to bring more joy into my life, and who might be likely co-conspirators for the kinds of shenanigans that delight me. I’m wondering how much good I can do simply by creating more space for happiness.

Meditation and emotional processing

If you’re the sort of person who is willing to rethink things in response to new information, then changing your mind can be a fairly rapid process. Sometimes it’s possible to shift emotional states quickly in response to new and different input, but it isn’t so reliable. Emotions are slow, often. The bigger and more impactful something is, the more time it can take to integrate it and make peace with it.

This is just as true of happy, welcome feelings as it is of gloomier ones. A big, positive change can take a lot of getting to grips with and can also be disorientating. We can be more neglectful when it comes to happy feelings because we tend to just accept them as good without any kind of scrutiny, where pain is more likely to have us paying attention to our own inner lives. Having intense good experiences, or a lot of them can also be something that needs processing.

This is something we can approach in a meditative way, taking the time to reflect on what’s happened and exploring how we feel about it. Deliberately reflecting on experiences and feelings helps us consolidate those experiences and make sense of them. It’s also a good way of being in more control with what’s happening. If our emotional experiences are things that just happen to us, we won’t have the means to seek more of what we like, or be able to deal with what we don’t like.

For me, the idea of the life lived deliberately has become a central tenet in my understanding of what it is to be a Druid. I’m not alone in this – the practice of reflection and being deliberate is there in the OBOD course.

Meditating on your experiences can work in any way that you want it to. I’m particularly focused on needing to understand things. My brain likes to sift information for patterns. I like to reflect on what, exactly made me happy and to revisit those things in a deliberate way. Around uncomfortable experiences, I need to understand exactly what I’m uncomfortable about. Sometimes the process of examining an experience will make me realise things about how I’ve been impacted by previous experiences. Your needs may well be different.

We won’t always consciously know what’s going on. We may not always have the room – emotionally or in our lives – to deal with our feelings. Things can get backed up, previous experiences can distort how we’re seeing the present. Sometimes a recent event can unlock feelings we didn’t make space for when they happened. That can be unsettling. Emotions can just bubble up sometimes, especially unprocessed ones, and that can feel a lot like being ambushed.

Making time for it is a good choice. Holding some quiet, safe, personal space where no one will judge you or make anything of it, is a good idea. Calm and gentle reflection on life – the happy bits and the difficult bits alike – means we at least have some idea what’s going on. Without reflection, we may not understand our own responses or needs. Taking the time to contemplate how we feel about things gives us a lot of information about who we are, what we need and what’s significant. It’s good insight to have, and spending time on yourself in this way has much to recommend it.