One of the most enchanting aspects of my consultations with clients is seeing ancient stories clothing themselves with modern motifs and geography and moving vibrantly through all of us. The story of journeying to the teacher is as old as time and told in all the traditions, and is happening right now.
Once upon a time a villager burns with longing in his heart and meets, seemingly by chance, a passer-by from a neighbouring village who suggests he joins the area’s meditation group. Nowadays more often than not, we explore and find our group, sangha or community on Google or Facebook, or at a film exhibition or market.
Attending to a daily practice and group diligently the light grows in the villager’s heart and soon an impulse arises to journey to the teacher’s home, ashram, temple or retreat centre to formally request to become a student. In the stories a deputy of the teacher always visits the villages and chooses who will be allowed to make the journey. In our time this qualifying process is often the lottery system of registering for a retreat with limited places or an online labyrinth of questionnaires and essays that you are asked to complete, in the process laying bare your heart’s desire.
The villager prepares for the journey which will be long and hazardous, forging wide rivers filled with large crocodiles, and wild terrain prowled by gruesome tigers. We too have to overcome our crocodile, coach potato tendencies of inertia and act to earn the money, book the flights for the journey, and jump through the modern hurdles of visas, airport security and transport systems in strange countries. We also must conquer our inner tiger, that fierce feminine energy that is convinced that no-one can look after our job, our children, our husband, our wife, or even the dog quite like us, so perhaps we should just stay at home after all. The tiger is also our ego that is frightened of all that the teacher represents and so will create all sorts of stories as to why life is perfect just the way it is and no journey is required after all.
Finally the villager arrives at the outer gate of the ashram and is asked by the hierophant or deputy to build his hut and plant his seeds which he has brought with him. Only once that is done will the next step be taken. We too must pay for our keep upfront, by means of admission fees, accommodation and food fees whilst at the retreat, hence grounding the journey and recognising the bodily realm. The building and planting also symbolically mirrors the reality of the length of time any true inner journey to the truth will take, our villager after all, is not yet in the monastery, has not yet met the teacher or been given any practices.
to be continued ……….
Join me in witnessing your journey with an AstroTarot consultation, a soul companion session or a compassionate listening session – email or inbox me for an appointment and fee schedule.
A Submersion into Deep Time
In a recent conversation a friend said she felt the traditional liturgies have been lost, and musing on this I realised how we, as a culture, have so little connection to deep time. The church liturgy with its procession of feast days throughout the year, rich with colours and symbolism, has been replaced by the liturgy of the mall, commercialism now marking a frantic, tinny time with a marketed whizz of Xmas, Easter, Mothering Sunday, aisles often displaying the tawdry remnants of Xmas alongside the new Easter products, sometimes months before the actual celebration of the Easter weekend.
We no longer respectfully greet each season with its accompanying rituals of food and community, but complain if it rains or is cold as we demand constant perfect warm weather whilst eating seasonal foods all year around, all this with the accompanying loss of connection to the great weather cycle. Our loss of deep time is worsened by our addiction to light, so we now no longer see the stars at night, the starry band of the Milky Way, no longer humbled by the great clock of the Cosmos wheeling above us.
When we stop, whether to spend time exploring the great symbolic languages of archetypes, astrology, tarot, mysticism, or to set aside a time to pray, mediate, be mindful of every breath, or by stepping outside to experience the earth just as she is today with whales breeching through the rough wintry seas, it is to to fall in love and wonder at the miracles of creation. When we stop, slow down, we disengage with the accelerated, flat, superficial time of our culture, and reconnect to deep time, heart time, soul time.
Join me in a submersion in deep time with either an AstroTarot consultation, a touch-in tarot reading or a nurturing soul companion session. Email me at sschuurmans@gmail.com for an appointment and fee schedule.
Book review of Mirabai Starr new book Caravan of No Despair
I treasure the translations by Mirabai Starr of my favourite spiritual classics ‘’Dark Night of the Soul by John of the Cross’’ and ‘’The Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila’’, and dip regularly into her ‘’God of Love’’, an interspirtual classic. So it was with great excitement that I opened her soon to be released new book ‘’Caravan of No Despair; A Memoir of Loss and Transformation’’. In this raw, moving memoir Starr weaves the strands of her life into a compelling narrative. Her younger daughter’s death on the day her author’s copy of her book Dark Night of the Soul was delivered to her home. Her own unusual and difficult hippy childhood in spiritual communities in New Mexico which included a relationship with an inauthentic spiritual teacher began at fifteen, who she marries at twenty-three and divorces eight years later, having adopted two daughters during the marriage. The later chapters describe how her grief, her eclectic spiritual practices from the Judaic, Hindu and Sufi traditions and her closeness to the spiritual classics she translates have deepened and matured her understanding of spiritual life. I was grabbed by this book from the opening pages, its honest narrative tone made me feel that Mirabai was in the room with me sharing her tumultuous journey of being brought to spiritual maturity through the painful, terrible but sacred journey of grief.
Pub Date Nov 1. 2016
Sounds True Publishing
Pelicans, Tarot and Midyear Birthday Special
Reflecting water, majestic pelicans and misty orange pink sunsets accompanied us through our recent Tarot weekend on the Berg River. So apt for the watery suite of Cups we were studying! Pelicans are linked symbolically with the philosopher's stone of transformation and in particular digesting knowledge of oneself. Creatures of both water and land they represent a beautiful balance of emotions and thought.
My birthday is on the cusp of Gemini and Cancer and I am sharing my celebration by offering a 15% discount special to all fellow June and July birthday celebrants! Please contact me for particulars at sschuurmans@gmail.com
Please welcome my new baby to the world!
With great joy I announce the launch of my website www.transformational-guidance-with-susan-schuurmans.com/
This website gathers together all my offerings - astrological tarot, soul companioning, compassionate listening and circle gatherings - under one banner and will include my blog posts too. And of course it displays my lifelong love of butterflies! Their exquisite beauty and shimmering flutterings have always filled me with delight. The wonder of the symbolism butterflies represent in the transformation from a common, hairy, fat caterpillar through the cocooning to the birth of a brightly coloured butterfly has a deeply personal meaning to me. My favourite poet Mary Oliver captures the wonder of the first flight of a newly born butterfly in her poem below.
Don't bother me.
I've just
been born.
The butterfly's loping flight
carries it through the country of the leaves
delicately, and well enough to get it
where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping
here and there to fuzzle the damp throats
of flowers and the black mud; up
and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes
for long delicious moments it is perfectly
lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk
of some ordinary flower.
Mary Oliver
