Fragments of a Cosmovision
It was my intention to write a piece on cosmovision for the blog, something about the cosmovision that guides our practice at After the Rains. However, I found that I was trying to force it and, like a reluctant mule, it refused to be forced. I trust that when the time is right the words will come, but in the meantime I would like to offer one illustration of how we are trying to align our practice with the broader cycles of nature that shape us. The description for our forthcoming Winter Solstice retreat reads as follows:
"Throughout the ages, the Winter Solstice has been a resonant moment in the cycle of the seasons. It is the moment when the Earth's tilt away from the Sun is at its maximum, giving rise to the shortest day and the longest night in the northern hemishpere. It represents the dying back of nature and is naturally associated with stillness, interiority and reflectiveness. However, it also contains a promise and a seed. The promise that the light will return, that everything has its season and that what appears under the guise of death is, in reality, just a moment in a larger cycle. The seed is the intention that we place at this moment, and this is what makes the Winter Solstice such a propitious moment to connect with the mushrooms and create an intention that will resonate over the coming year."
It is difficult to write about cosmovision because we, in the West, are not the inheritors of a coherent or resonant cosmovision. In a fractured world, we find ourselves groping around for fragments of a cosmovision that is resonant for us, that does not exclude others and that is deeply rooted in the reality of the larger cycles of ecology and cosmos from which we arose, which sustain us and to which we will return.
For After the Rains, however, a first step along the path of cultivating a relationship with these larger cycles has been to align our retreats with seasonally significant moments in the year. The intention is to encourage an awareness not simply of our own moods and individual life journeys, but also of climatic, seasonal and astronomical moods and progressions. This, in turn, creates a sense of there being a genuine relationship between the individual and the broader ecology, one that, like any relationship, needs to be nurtured.
So, in the case of the Winter Solstice, where we are on the Earth's journey around the Sun matters. How this affects all life on the planet, ourselves included, is worth recognising and paying attention to. We do this as best we can, learning as we go how to honour these relationships more effectively. We learn from each other, from the natural world and by listening with great attention, sometimes with the assistance of plant medicines, to what is going on inside ourselves.
