There's a Thread You Follow

Cultivating Playful Intuition and Meaning in Tangled World of Distraction

Oh weary traveler

As the sands of time shift under each of your steps, it feels as if you walk backwards. How can life seem so empty and so fully tangled all at once?

Here in the desert, embrace the extremes of light and dark, here in the desert embrace the discomfort! And yet here on the vast plain of your heart, is the tangled pile… Grabbing for a network of distractions, can you recall a moment when you felt fully alive? Within the details of that memory, is the thread singing and clear, a clairvoyant vision, waiting for you.

Your whole body responds to its tug, though your footsteps sink into the dry hot sand… Weary traveler, a vein in your body is struck like a single cord, and meaning pumps through your bloodstream.

You are not alone. You have more supplies than you know. Water is near.

Here on the hills of sand you walk, both away from Love, escaping it and towards Love, rediscovering it. Hasn’t it always been that way? The beginning before the beginning. Even the desert has a mother. The womb is everywhere.

No matter how lost here on the slipping sands beneath your feet, among the hot shadows, you might rest in the sacred intelligence of the singing cord that connects you…

Rest, and Receive Vision.

You might imagine for a start, that you are loved … It might crack you open.

~ ~ ~

These words are compiled mostly from Kim Krans’ writing in her Wild Unknown Archetypal oracle cards which I used in a spread and inner tracking process I designed. 3 cards were pulled:

The first one, Now ~ The situation you are in, the question.

The second one, The Ground ~ What lead to this situation, caused it or is blocking it.

The third, What is Coming ~ The goal, result or next steps. My question was What to do with all the tangle of distraction, so many projects, lack of focus, need to cut things out?

The cards I drew for #1 was The dessert, for #2 The Thread, and for #3 The Womb. I won’t share the whole process I went through here, but it speaks to my love and fascination with symbol tracking and co creation.

Creativity is an interesting dance, one that I think about a lot.

Where do our ideas come from? From nature, or dreams, something called the active imagination, the emergent mind, or the morphic field?

I know that creativity moves through me when I too am moving through life, when my body or hands, my senses are actively engaged.

Sometimes it’s as simple as flipping two oracle cards over, and sliding them beside each other. Suddenly, they have meaning, like the images in a collage, like words put together in a poem, they tell us about something greater than the sum of their parts.

We explore a similar process in the Story Councils I host, where the trouble each person brings somehow saddles up beside a moment of the story. In this way, the council of a very old tale applies itself medicinally to something present in our lives. Again, in this process, we are moving loose parts around in front of us, sliding them up beside each other.

In another way, when we create with our hands using the natural supplies offered from the earth: natural pigments, animal hides, wool, Willow for weaving for example, or even more manufactured materials, acrylic paints, steal, electric drums, we are co creating, our hands, bodies, senses are sliding up against these materials and tools. Perhaps, unseen forces, memories, ancestors, the vibe of the surroundings are joining in too. Together, a third thing is created that is more than the sum of the parts.

I have been wondering how this process of engaging in the co creative shifts when we no longer use our hands, when we no longer use materials we find in nature, when our band of perception is narrowed down to just digital audio, or imagery? How does this change when we actually remove ourselves from the collaborative process, and simply add in a few commands, keywords, believing that an artificial intelligence is somehow interpreting OUR vision, is somehow helping US create? Is this the ‘mani’-festing of our hands, our bodies, our doing? ‘Mani’ means hands, ‘festing’ means to strike, to touch.

In any case, I digress. I did not mean this post to launch into a debate I am enjoying about our role in the great dance of creation.  I meant only to show you how I am playing with these beautiful Wild Unknown oracle cards created by Kim Krans, how I have enjoyed the powerful beckoning into liminal spaces, dancing with archetypes and elements, co creating with the dream mind.

The piece above is written mostly using phrases taken from Kim Krans’ writings about each card. It was a slow process of reading each description, and noticing which words or phrases jumped out at me, how they met my particular question, and allowing these to gather on the page, moving them around, until they fit somehow together. Then, adding some of my own working, I mixed this ‘spell’ for myself. Perhaps you know that the spoken word has an evocative power! So I made a kind of mantra to read and reread out loud, to call fourth.

I want to express my deep gratitude to the research and beauty of Kim Krans’ work. Both her artwork, and how she pulls threads of research in archetypal, Jungian psychology, music, film, poetry, myth and so much more together is playful, dreamy, and collage-like ~ sliding the many loose parts, threads around and beside each other.

I’ve developed a number of different ways of using Kim Krans’ Wild Unknown Archetype, Alchemy, Animal Spirit and Tarot decks that I very much enjoy. I urge you to check our these stunning and evocative decks. If this exploration into the liminal is something you would like to explore with me, let me know. I am available to book in person and online Wild Unknown readings and offer a sliding scale.

~ ~ ~

There is a thread you follow ~

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

The Way It Is by William Stafford

And to wrap up this wee bundle, one of the many threads, perhaps the strongest one, is The Twining Trail: a weaving way of pulling the strand of deep, solo, inner tracking and grief work, and binding it with the strands of community building, council, circling. A weaving too, of the dreaming mind with the hands-on, earth arts, a co-creative process: pulling Psyche and Eros back together again… and making from all of these a strong cord!

This is the thread that arises always out of the tangle of distraction, this is my vision in the dessert. Are you curious about symbol tracking, deep imagination, cultivating intuition? There are many ways to cultivate these seeing and creative ways that I would love to share with you. Follow me on Eventbrite and Instagram to stay updated.

Let’s connect.