Crucible of Crisis

“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

― Joseph Campbell

The world feels different. Being alive feels different to me these days. It’s different from how it felt even a year ago and massively different from five years ago.

Suddenly we appear to have reached a tipping point, a collective waking up to the possibility that we humans are facing a self-terminating crisis which is demanding colossal change from all of us.  Change is hard. With it comes instability and uncertainty. Suddenly we don’t have ground beneath us.

It’s also different because this crisis involves every single one of us on the planet. That has never happened before.

Crisis mostly comes to us because we have resisted nudges to evolve and change. I know this all too well because I went through a personal crisis exactly because I ignored the many prods and invitations to change. Back then I couldn’t look at my life. It was a mess. My drug of distraction was busyness. 

I couldn’t be with the pain of living out of alignment with my soul. Busyness and fixing everyone around me kept me from feeling my own pain. And I was a thousand kilometers from the path of my soul; I was living the dream that our culture insists will guarantee happiness…. big house, big job, red carpets. You know. 

In the face of my denial the gentle nudges to change became demands as i witnessed my ‘’perfect pn the outside” life be deconstructed bit by bit by a force that seemed way beyond my control. 

Once I started to put the pieces back together I also got curious about change and crisis. 

Crisis is a state of threat and chaos. It elicits different reactions from us.

Some of us get paralysed by the fear, feeling too small in the face of the threat. Some of us go into deeper denial in the hope we will re-establish the status quo and the stability, as we cling to the old ways. And then there are some of us who are willing to see it as an opportunity for something new to be born; willing to be in the excruciating discomfort, to listen to what the crisis is demanding and to change in response.   

In the face of the current world crisis, my sense is that most of us are experiencing all of the above to varying degrees. Like everything else, nothing feels stable. Deep inside we are all fragile vulnerable humans looking for stability and some piece of solid ground beneath us.

One of the most transformative teachings of the Celtic Wheel has been learning that there is an elegant way to work with change and crisis.

As we journey through the year we are invited to inhabit the full spectrum of energies that come with seasonal change.

The four cross quarter days which are the seasonal gateways of Samhain (Winter), Imbolc(Spring), Bealtaine(Summer ) and Lughnasa( Autumn) usher in a new enery to the one before. The solstice and equinoxes which come in between the cross quarter days the enegies are heightened.

At Samhain, we learn to work with the energy of death and darkness of Winter. At the Winter Solstice we explore the darkest night and the seeming emptiness of death. Imbolc  brings the energy of emerging possibilities as we move into new beginnings of Spring.

If we get stuck in one season it will often take a crisis to force us into change. Take for example the Autumn Equinox, many of us resist the move from the warm expansive energies of summer into the cold long dark days of winter.

The Wheel teaches us that it’s not possible to stay in the exponential growth of summer. That would inevitably lead to drought and a scorched harvest. Exponential growth does not exist in nature but yet our dominant culture insists on bigger, brighter, faster, better at any cost. That’s a one dimensional linear way to live. It’s at odds with the natural rhythm.

That’s why the Celtic Wheel, like so many ancient wisdom teachings, is medicine for our time.

When I experienced that personal crisis many years ago the Celtic Wheel helped me to orient around the loss and change I was facing. It was a map that made sense of what was happening to me. It helped me turn my life around and take responsibility for how I was showing up.

I got back in touch with my soul and started living from a deeper place. I saw I had alway lived between Spring and Summer.  Through Celtic wisdom, I learned to welcome the darkness and my life became richer. 

The Celtic mind aligns with the earth, honours polarity and change, the circulinear nature of our world and the interconnected of all things. One of the reasons we find ourselves in this current crisis is that we have forgotten the wisdom of our ancestors.

We are all wisdom keepers. It’s time to remember; to revisit and reignite the innate indigenous wisdom that lies within us and weave it into our contemporary lives. It will surely resource us to navigate the change these days are demanding.