Hidden Things

Autumn is early in New England. Morning glories alongside trees starting their seasonal splash-out of golds and reds, preparing to shed. And I’ve been shedding too.

In my unintended but extended absence
I bumped into bits on their way out
they made a fuss before departing
like a drunken ‘last-call’ barroom guest

Transformation is not straight forward and most of it happens in hidden ways. We feel it, intuit partial understanding, get occasional insights, but there is no cognitive road-map or step by step - this is what’s happening to you - process.

The part(s) of us used to being in control reliably get in the way.

Deeply buried lies in the world are being undone and while we may cheer that clearing out, can easily miss that we too are being undone. They go together. What’s happening out there is also happening in here.

It can feel existential to our sense of identity and it is - hence the difficulties of ‘experts’ coming to terms with being wrong. But even non-experts are feeling the discombobulation that accompanies deep transformational change.

It’s okay. We can trust it, even when it’s uncomfortable.

The process doesn’t lend itself easily to words; the ‘I’ is elusive enough, the ‘I’ in transformation, more so.

Despite the shared similarities of change, it’s very much an individual process. How we engage with the larger Universe, the Natural world, ourselves and each other are incredibly varied. Such is the human tapestry.

No matter, transforming we are, the Universe is demanding it.

The last three or so weeks has been uncomfortable for me. An inner pressure was building and finding relief felt impossible. No clear source of the discomfort could be identified - except of course for everything happening in our world.

I was waking in the middle of the night and finding myself in the yard looking up, or in my office, opening and closing books.

One night - as if some part of me knew what I needed - I picked up an old bag of runes I hadn’t used for years. In case you are not familiar with them, runes - in this case Viking runes - are considered a means of accessing one’s subconscious and higher self - it’s part of an ancient Self-Oracle tradition. I got mine along with The Book of Runes by Ralph Blum back in the early 90’s.

I dug-out an old art journal where I had drawn out a rune spread called the Destiny Profile. There are many possible rune casts. Always the intention is to know oneself better; to unearth issues, bring to light what is hidden, and gain clarity.

The Destiny Profile (DP) is a rune cast intended to be done only once in your life. I did mine a dozen or so years ago. Now revisiting it and reading through the meaning of each rune, I was amazed at how much sense it made.

Each rune pulled for the Destiny Profile correspond to the following questions:

1. What is my nature?

2. Why was I born?

3. What is my vocation?

4. What is my destiny?

5. What is my cross?

6. What is my unified Self?

You can probably see by the nature of the questions, why it’s considered a once-in-a-lifetime cast.

Below are images of the 25 runes. (They can be made of stone or bone or wood or crystal.) Each has its own meaning, and Blum’s book offers in-depth descriptions.

When I did my DP, I pulled a rune - literally out of a velvet satchel that holds them - for each question, and then returned it to the bag before drawing for the next question, so each pull came from a complete set. I wrote down each one as I proceeded. At the time I felt a lot of resistance to what the spread indicated. I still had lots of ideas about who I was and what my life was about, and my DP didn’t match up with those ideas. (I can laugh at that now; for some things time really is the only remedy.)

Recently, after a week or so of getting re-acquainted with the runes, I was out walking in the woods. I heard that little voice (I’ve learned to listen to) tell me I would do another Destiny Profile rune spread. This surprised. But that’s a once in a lifetime thing, I countered.

Not anymore. When I was ready, when I had fully understood and cleaned up any lingering bits of the earlier spread, I would do another, as I was preparing myself to start a new life, in this life. The old cast would no longer be appropriate.

Naturally my mind threw up doubts, though un-persuasive. I could feel it was true.

Now I think, yes of course. An old world is going, and our old selves going with it. We’re in new terrain and despite the comfort of our previous lives and our previous selves, they’ll have no place. Ready or not - like it or not - we are each stepping into an unknown, new life.

I won’t get into all the details of the last three weeks but simply note there were heartening synchronicities and signs (shooting star!) throughout. I continue to be humbled and surprised by the many ways Universe communes with us, especially when something is breaking free and the usual patterns that hold us in place are shifting.

In the throes of this process I needed an intermission.

The fabricated world currently fraying was designed to keep us in a frequency of fear and smallness where we are easily controlled. We know that now. Staying above that, insisting on love and life and fearlessly saying no when needed, grows us bigger and remains our best way forward.

We’ve all been in an accelerated space and pace of undoing. As old sources and references once relied on fall away, we will seek out new - and perhaps ancient - means for navigating.

Nature and the larger Universe stand ready to reassure, ground and remind us we are part of something much larger that can be trusted. We can trust ourselves too. Always, on the other side of the turbulence, lies more freedom and greater clarity.

What a time. A truly challenging, messed up, crazy time. All in service to something bigger and better emerging.

(That’s you. That’s me. That’s us.)

So much to be grateful for.

Thanks for reading. ❤️

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