Here is your Belonging
You Are Not Alone: Cultivating Your Belonging with the True World
This work is real.
When you visited the Village of Life and Refuge and chose a house there, you were doing something very big and important: you were acknowledging and claiming your life in a bigger and very real world.
For what we see around us with our ordinary eyes, is not all there is. As much as the Wasteland society we live in would like us to believe that materialism is all there is, we know that this is not true. We know, through becoming acquainted with the Otherworld, that this rubs up against our everyday world, and that indeed, truly we live within it.
Along with many others. For all has spirit. All is alive.
There is a you, a more knowing you, who lives within this deeper reality all the time. By claiming your house in the Village, you have openly given space for this deeper-knowing-you to exist in all aspects of your life. And this has happened whether you travelled in a shamanic trance to the village, whether you relaxed and imagined the journey, or even if you just read about it and made space inside you for it to be.
What I’m saying, is that it’s real. This deeper-knowing-you is real. They exist. Some would call it your ‘higher self’. This is the part of you that has never forgotten who and what you are. Who can separate wisdom from emotion and trauma. Who is constantly, always and forever, your true nature - that of a soul who can perform what we in a materialist society would call miracles.
And what we have done in this first Station of the Heart is step into a landscape where we make room for and acknowledge that this part of you exists, and we’ve given ourselves a mythopoetic landscape in which to easily access them.
What happens there happens here.
Some time ago, a friendship here in the ordinary world didn’t work out. I had held high hopes that this relationship would be nourishing and enjoyable, but those hopes didn’t come to fruition and one morning when I drew my cards seeking wisdom from my spirit kin, I knew the third card I drew had to do with this situation. It was from the Wildwood tarot, the Seven of Vessels: Mourning.
‘Whatever the loss, whoever the wake is being held for, let them go with love.’
This addressed the situation perfectly and was obviously related to it, and offered the only realistic solution. I recognised this instantly.
Intellectually, at least.
But how to actually make/let this happen?
This is where working in this other, mythic self of mine (and remember, when I say these aspects of ourselves are mythic, I mean deeper, older, a more complete us: the us who walks worlds and lives, the us who lives in the Village of Life and Refuge).
Without effort on my part (because I’ve been doing this so long) I saw her in my mind’s eye and she stood in a familiar Otherworld landscape, tall and strong, but attached to her elbows and wrists were several golden cords.
As I watched, she lifted her arms and the cords fell away and we both stood a moment together in the peace of having let go the burden.
You could say that the actions of the ‘other me’ are symbolic, and you would be right, but they are also real. In fact, this sort of otherworldly action by this bigger and smarter part of myself is more real and effective - and more quickly effective that anything I could consciously do here. She acts in a world where thoughts, gesture, and magic truly change the psyche and world around us.
I let go my push and pull regarding the friendship with a gentleness that came from ‘seeing’ my deeper self lettting the burden fall. I could, if I tried (why would I want to?) pick up those shackles again by thinking and brooding upon the situation. Which would be foolish. Now, when the friendship passes through my mind, I simple remember the golden cords falling away, and send the friendship that wasn’t to be, thoughts of love and grace.
Miracles can also happen.
At the beginning of this year (2026) I had a flare up of my Crohn’s disease - an inflammatory bowel disease, which was the worst possible timing for it, as I had so much to set up and do at the time (although there’s no good time to be ill, is there?).
I turned one morning to my deeper-self and asked her to help me, for healing, if it was possible. Perhaps she could eat or drink something in that mythic landscape that would bring me some relief?
I turned my inner eye to her and stood with her, asking if there was something I could take, or eat, or drink that would help.
Instead of giving me some sort of magic brew - which was what I had been thinking would happen, if anything was to - she came and stood in front of me and placed her hands on my belly and golden light spilled forth from her hands, suffusing me in this healing brightness.
My pain reduced significantly that day, and I ended up having around four days of improved health before things started sliding again. My healing efforts on this deeper level had worked, even if their effects were not permanent.
This flare-up was over the new year, so I didn’t have access to my usual gastro doctors and was waiting for them to come back to work so I could seek their help.
In the end, I didn’t have to see them or go back on any medication for the flare up. I’ll tell you the rest of the story, not because I want to tell you that healing can always be achieved through this means (it can’t) but because I want you to know that such things can happen, which in turn means that if this can be so, if this is real, then so can a great many more things.
My flare up continued worsening. That healing golden light had worked, but only temporarily. One morning, I dragged myself to my desk, wanting to draw some cards and do a reading. Now, the way I do my card readings is that I use the cards as though they are messages from my spirit kin, and write down what they say to me from this point of view.
From the Druid’s Plant Oracle deck, I drew the card ‘Agrimony’ and these words from my kin spilled from my pen:
‘We will replenish your energy…’
By the next day it was obvious I was going to be well again, and I never did have to make that appointment with my gastro specialist.
It’s really real.
You have, if you have reached this part of our first Station of the Heart, claimed your rightful life as someone who walks the worlds, who lives in the true and deep world, who seeks and finds connection with your spirit kin, and with your own deep-knowing self.
The work we have done together, transversing mythic and otherworld landscapes is real. That’s what I want to tell you most of all.
It’s real. It has mundane-world consequences.
When you planted your acorn in your garden, you were making changes that ripple through all-there-is and plant themselves in your psyche.
When you decided what else you wanted to plant in your garden, you were stepping forward and stepping up, deciding to be the embodied and virtuous soul you already actually are - but which our materialist society has had you forgetting.
Simple - but not easy.
Does this mean things will be easy from now on? No. They will be simpler, as long as you remember to always seek the healing connection you are forging with your spirit and animal kin, and with you own deep-soul self.
But they won’t be easy. We live our daily lives in societies that have forgotten themselves. That have placed materialism and consumerism - and all those other, related things - above lives of true richness, they have forgotten that real wealth can only come from being whole and connected and part of the true deep tapestry of life. And we live in an Age where our bodies and minds are easily wounded, prone to illness. We live in an Age where connection to what is real and deep and true requires so much effort. So much imagination and rebellion.
Thus, this path through the Wildwood is simple to find, but not easy to walk. It does however, lead us to magic, wholeness, and a deep and rewarding richness of spirit that makes everything worth it. This is what our souls cry out for - and we are answering that cry in everything we have been doing here, and will continue to do.
