A few weeks ago I spent a wonderful weekend with the mythologist, storyteller and all-around passionate soul Martin Shaw. He brought the story of Tristan and Isolde alive in the most animated manner. Emerald rings, broken swords, slain giants, blood, black sails and beating hearts pranced about our intimate gathering as he drummed us along the twisting path of love and betrayal illuminating the particular ways trickster announces itself in the human terrain of intimacy. There’s nothing that makes me happier than living inside of a story for days on end – marinating in metaphors, achingly pierced by the arrow of a resonant image that finds its mark within your psyche. It also didn’t hurt that we were out on the coast near Bolinas, Ca, where the forest meets the ocean – a fitting place to invite the imaginal (not imaginary) creatures of the in-between to howl and soar. For me, it was a much needed retreat. The last month I had felt a persistent melancholy; a heavy blanket of forgetfulness I couldn’t shake. And by forgetfulness I don’t mean forgetting where you left your keys – I mean forgetting who you are and where you are on the path.
And let’s be clear about what path I’m referring to. There’s the rule-bound path – the narrow, linear road that one must follow and adhere to. This is not the path I’m talking about. In fact we should all strive to be a little more dis-identified from this singular path. Too many of us live life as-if there is a right, marked path we should follow – we like to pretend life is a paint-by-numbers canvas and that if we “do it right” it will turn out pretty and worthy of showing our friends.
The path I felt disconnected from is the twisting, surprising turns of the deep self – the ever-unfolding passionate soul. This map does not come with a set of rules to follow – it is ink-stained, torn and partly missing. I know when I have stepped off of this path when I feel a lack of meaning and passion, when nothing I’m “doing” makes sense to me. Ironically, we often need to get off the aforementioned linear path and enter into the non-rational in order to sniff out the tracks of this deeper trail. Hence that cliché but true statement: that we need to get lost in order to be found. (more…)