♡ Hi Friends ♡
October, so far, has been a time of many highs and lows – the beauty and brutality of fall, bright foliage peaking and dying on the vine. Serial waves of color and the absence of color intimate the ongoing cycle of life-death-life, ad infinitum, that we all inhabit through this mortal journey. The scene: We're up against our own understanding of life, death, and the nature of humanity. The backdrop: The temperature becomes crisp with clarity, yet conundrum hangs in the air.
So many of us right now are wrestling with important paradoxes – in our own lives, and within humanity at large. And while difficult questions often breed discomfort, in truth the human mind loves a paradox. It gives us something tangible to roll over and over, a stone tossed relentlessly by the ocean of our consciousness. Too often the jagged edges become smooth over time but we fail to notice because we’ve become too attached, or too invested, in the process of mulling it over, agonizing, wrestling, tumbling and seeking a singular glowing glorious truth. Our rough stone has transformed, our paradox somehow softened, yet in our relentless wrestling with the ghosts of its jagged edges we miss the other waves rolling in around us. We miss the moments of calm. The moments of storm surge. We miss the other jagged stones asking for our attention, the sun rising and setting over the horizon with incandescent certainty. We miss the sound of the blue whale, largest animal ever to roam this earth, who right now lives suspended as if flying, as if floating in all its enormity in the depths of the ocean, singing into a vast darkness.
So I propose a question: What would happen if we put the stone down? If we laid the paradox on the sand – not denying its existence, but not trying to solve it either – and paid heed to the whale’s song?
What would it tell us if we were truly brave enough to listen?
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This Sunday, 10/22, I’ll be teaching a one-hour workshop called Translating the Subtle Body. It happens on Zoom via Four Queens, the virtual platform conceived of and curated by writers Selah Saterstrom & Kristen Nelson as a communal space where “the oracular and creativity meet.” In my workshop, we’ll be courting paradox – specifically, the paradox between identity-as-body and identity-as-mind.
Too often in our creative practices, our work, our relationships, and in our daily lives we inhabit the realm of the mind almost exclusively. This is where we experience “information,” solve problems, and work through the issues that crop up in our field of vision. It’s where we endlessly toss the paradox, and where we locate our identity.
When we write or speak, words seem to flow from the mind – the realm of rational systems. But paradox defies this. We are our minds, yes, but we are also animals with animal bodies. We possess survival instincts that transcend logic. The extraordinary activities of our cells – the building blocks that comprise our very existence – are wildly intelligent and yet unknown to us, a mystery. In truth, our animal bodies hold as much or more information as our minds, if we dare to listen.
In Translating the Subtle Body we'll leaving the realm of the rational mind on the shelf for a moment so that we might freely and openly dive into the realm of the animal body. I'll guide participants through a process of connecting to our bodies – and our subtle bodies, or energy centers – using practices of meditation and creative translation, collectively holding the intention that we are receiving what we need to know, when we need to know it.
I hope you’ll join us ~ it's a chance to tend to whatever paradox you've been wrestling with, and to allow new space and perspective to open up within your own process of unfolding understanding.
+ find the cost of freedom, dance inside your overwhelm + you no longer need to be good, to question who sits at the helm + fear will not own us here
+ fear will not own us here
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In this online workshop – TRANSLATING THE SUBTLE BODY – I lead participants on a one-hour journey into the etheric realm and back again, gently guiding the group with a shared intention of uncovering what we need to know, when we need to know it. Via group meditation, notation, drawing and writing, participants will leave this workshop with new threads teased onto the page through your own subtle bodies, and a more clear connection to the information that serves you and your work in this moment. $10. ♡♡♡
I hope you enjoy this month's tunes as you ponder the jagged and smooth edges you encounter along the way. And I hope to see you in workshop! – but if not, wishing for you all, in your own ways, to tend to your paradoxes, acknowledge your soft animal bodies, and sing your own deep songs out into the vast darkness.
Sending love, Caitlin