In keeping with the theme of relaxed summer gatherings around the pool of Spirit, I invite you to bring your own intention to the journey circle this week.
The mere act of seeking an intention to journey on is to practice seeing your daily life in light of the sacred.
Honey–like soul food–is made, not found. Going out into the fields of life to fill up on the nectar of experience is not sufficient to feed the soul. The stuff of life must be chewed on, refined, and digested to yield the golden sustenance that is capable of feeding our souls through the inevitable difficult days of winter.
Our spiritual elders, the honeybees, teach us that the process of transforming nectar into soul food cannot accomplished by the individual alone.
It takes the effort of at least six honeybees to create a teaspoon of honey. Each forager who sips nectar directly from flowers in the fields begins the process of digestion in her honey stomach, an organ analogous to the soul in humans.
The foraging honeybee returns to the hive and spits the partially-metabolized nectar from her honey stomach into the mouth of another worker bee who then takes it into her honey stomach, works on it, and then passes it along to another, and another, until the nectar is transformed into the medicinal, antimicrobial, and eternally-viable substance we know as honey.
For our species, transforming the nectar of raw experience into food for the soul is also a process of digestion. To feed the soul, of course, we don’t metabolize physical substances so much as engage in sense-making through symbol, story, and creativity.
And like the honeybees, it takes conversation with one other, or circle of others, to facilitate the meaning-making process of soul work.
We transform the nectar of life experience–poison oak and sunflower, alike– into honey through a process that includes attentiveness to the events of our lives (intention), meditation of the heart (journeywork), and conversation with others (guidance sessions/circle).
I hope you can join us this Wednesday from 4-6 pm PDT on zoom for some honey-making, soul nourishing, fun.
Email your interest in joining Gaia Shamanism’s free weekly journey circle to anna “at” gaiashamanism.com. All skill levels welcome.