To Gaze, and Nothing More

Monthly Newsletter | July 2024

The monthly newsletters are an amalgamation of musings and two poems (one by another poet and one by me, as per a practice introduced to my master’s cohort by poet Alice Oswald).

Please scroll down for upcoming online events.

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The Great Escape, Christian Schloe

Listen via audio:

Hello everyone,

It’s dawn and quiet. The birds haven’t quite begun their morning wake up calls yet. And the sky is clear after a week of heavy rain. We’re in the stark middle of winter here in Australia. And after a year, my animal body is beginning to align itself with the seasons of this hemisphere.

But is it the Cailleach here, I wonder? Does she make it quite this far away from my homelands in the mossy green woodlands of Britain and Celtic Iberia?

It seems to me like she has a hold on a sort of secondary orbit. If there were invisible layers to the Imaginal, she would reach to the outer one. But the inner circle is overlooked by something else entirely. And this other thing is still faceless to me.

I have been encountering the gods of this land directly. Other than the odd story and creation myth of particular birds that grace our home, I really don’t know much about aboriginal mythologies yet.

In a way, this is perhaps good because it allows me to form my own relationship with the invisible world here.

But the downside is that it means the gods are nameless.

Every morning I make a cup of tea and shuffle outside. I sit on a little wooden bench my partner made me by our beehive and I watch the sunrise. Sometimes the time difference means I’m awake at 4am to teach or hold my sessions with the lovely people I mentor. And by the time we finish I’ve missed the sun.

But otherwise, it’s become a daily appointment.

A year of going out - or some would say, going in - to the natural world, and listening.

I’ve written about the importance of listening a fair bit in past entries, so I won’t delve into it again here. But I will say that I think the foundation of any attempt at living a wholesome life, one of fullness, truth, responsibility and - ultimately - joy, is listening.

I don’t just mean listening to each other, though that certainly helps rid us of narcissistic self-importance. I mean a quality of listening that ensures our participation with the world.

I don’t remember who said this, but years ago a friend sent me a Ted Talk and the speaker was emphasising how important it is to leave spaces in our lives. Not to fill up the day with scheduled appointments - though that is no doubt sometimes necessary - but to leave some space for wonder, for grace.

Lorca would say that’s when duende arrives. For the Greeks it was the muses, whose arrival was only possible in the absence of our human distractions.

‘There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse’ wrote Sappho.

For Christian Gnostics and Islamic mystics, it was only in this state of silent, active listening that one could hear the angels.

To not leave space in our lives for wonder means we can’t possibly have a relationship with the other-than-human world. Henry Corbin would call this way of living a reckless waste of the imagination.¹

These otherworldly inspirations have no access to us if our imaginations are overcrowded and always occupied.

Mornings of ritualised quiet time give my life space. And sometimes nothing happens. It’s not that every time I sit on my bench I receive a cosmic revelation! But I think it’s precisely that nothingness that cracks us open, again and again, as Rilke would say, ‘to be defeated by greater and greater things.’

What can I say about those clouds, about this sky? To gaze, to gaze, to gaze at them, to gaze at it, and nothing more.

Federico Garcia Lorca

Against the backdrop of the continuing genocide in Palestine, the elections in the UK, and the presidential debate in the US along with their celebrations of independence day, I think it’s important to say that when I highlight the importance of “gazing, and nothing more”, this is not to imply a bypassing of our social responsibilities. But rather, to emphasize that I think it makes us all the more responsable. Anyone interested in some astute thoughts on the current political arena should read Paul Kingsnorth’s latest short essay on his Substack The Abbey of Misrule.

I think a life of harmony that liberates our minds and hearts has to be deliberate. It doesn’t just happen.

It bids us to participate. To be awake to both bird song and politics.

To hear both the cry of a child bombed on the other side of the world, and the Song of the Spheres in the hum of the hive.

This must be what it means to be human, mustn’t it? Not just a person, biologically so, but a human being, earning our title by the non-violent way we hold ourselves in the world.

This ended up being a bit manifesto-y - hah! I was really just going to write a bit about how helpful I’ve found this simple morning ritual in the spirit of sharing it with you all.

If you end up doing it, please let me know how you fare.

With love from my hermitage in the bush,

Gabriela

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UPDATE

I’m entering into the final stage of writing my book, and will be taking the month off my Substack in July to give it my full attention. I will see you all again for the August newsletter. Until then, as usual, here is the monthly poetry offering. I haven’t written my own this month as I haven’t really had the capacity. And you can scroll down for the dates of July’s upcoming online events.

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Poetry Offering

Trillium
Louise Gluck

When I woke up I was in a forest. The dark
seemed natural, the sky through the pine trees
thick with many lights.

I knew nothing; I could do nothing but see. 
And as I watched, all the lights of heaven
faded to make a single thing, a fire
burning through the cool firs.
Then it wasn't possible any longer
to stare at heaven and not be destroyed.

Are there souls that need
death's presence, as I require protection?
I think If I speak long enough 
I will answer that question, I will see
whatever they see, a ladder 
reaching through the firs, whatever
calls them to exchange their lives - 

Think what I understand already.
I woke up ignorant in a forest;
only a moment ago, I didn't know my voice
if one were given me
would be so full of grief, my sentences
like cries strung together.
I didn't even know I felt grief
until that word came, until I felt
rain streaming from me.

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Upcoming Online Events

Firstly, a reminder that the next cohort of the Bee Priestesses program begins in September. Here are the details of the program: The Bee Priestesses

July 28th | Dismemberment Ceremony

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1. Mundus Imaginalis or the Imaginary and the Imaginal, Henry Corbin