Have you ever noticed that there is a strange satisfaction in doing a mundane job, and doing it well? For example, I cleaned the living room and my altar/sitting area yesterday, and today I am taking immense pleasure just sitting and enjoying the peacefulness I feel here now. In this space, there is no cleaning or rearranging that still needs to be done. It's clean and arranged in a way that pleases me. And somehow that translates into being able to connect to my divine self. To take a moment and turn it into ritual – to take a break from life and spend some time reconnecting to myself as sacred and not just the busy everyday person that I also am.
Other things help me reconnect too. When I go to a Spira ritual I find that part of myself ready and waiting to connect. Other times, it seems more difficult here in the city. Put me on the side of a mountain, or deep in the trees, or out on the ocean and I connect easily. Put me in the middle of a city, concrete beneath my shoes, and the wind through the trees seems much less magical to me. The energy of the natural world feels muted somehow when I am here – although I wonder if it's my own reaction to the city and so many other people that does that. Maybe it's not that the land feels muted here, maybe it's that I cover my ears to block out the city sounds, and as a result can no longer hear the land as well.
I've begun to think lately that it's not that I can't connect to nature here. It's that I'm scared to. Spring still pulls at my soul, and the full moon rising large on the horizon fills me with mystery. It's not that I can't connect, but that I'm afraid that if I start connecting here then my spirit will become muted and chained the way the land feels muted and chained by concrete and car exhaust. I've always envisioned what is in my soul as wilder and more free than what nature exists in the city.
It's not that I never have moments at all. There are some places where I feel the wind in my hair, and the moon (or sun) in the sky and my heart sings with the joy of the moment. And there are moments watching the snow in the trees, or feeling the rain pour down so hard I feel the urge to run through it as I am soaked - just for fun, or standing on the edge of a ravine by a friend's house, walking a circle on the gravel by the edge of fish creek, where I feel it still. Where the feel of the land around sweeps through me, exhilarating and strong. But then I get back on the train to go home and the wonder of it starts to fade. And soon it's gone as I meld back into my normal life. Gone, but never forgotten. And I have to admit, there is a part of me that craves the ease of connection I once had, living amongst the trees, where the night isn't lit by thousands of street lights, and I can step out my door and stand on the earth – not the soft grass of a lawn, but truly earth, hard packed and smooth, alive beneath my feet.
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