I’m in Tasmania on a gift discovery retreat with my sister, Filippa. Each day we walk with another nature element, using a booklet from our mentor, Bruce Anderson, to reflect on how it relates to our core gifts. Today, walking at Cradle Mountain, my element was spirit.
My core gift is helping others shine golden in the tapestry of being.
I do this by looking deeply to see who is truly there, remembering our inviolable equality and walking into the unknown with an open heart, so possibility can sing.
What I most love about spirit is that it is threaded through everything. Beneath, between, above, below, inside, outside. We can’t escape it. We are it and it is us.
It is what makes us indivisible. It is what holds us fast and brings us home. It is there at the beginning and the end. It never leaves, and we never leave it, yet momentarily we seem to, or feel we have.
I love knowing that spirit has always been here, holding me through it all, never letting me go. I feel this interconnectedness through my body, which is itself woven of nature and spirit: all the elements in one.
What emerged along my walk today was a sense of how often spirit has also been a great troublemaker in my life, throwing me into the deep end where the only way out was through. A series of initiations that have unearthed my gifts, and especially my core gift, forcing me to delve deeply to find the inner light that can guide me.
“The tapestry of being” points towards spirit, towards the birthright of each of us to be loved, to belong, to be precious and golden in the eyes of Life. It is also connected to looking deeply to see who is truly there. Looking beyond surface appearances to the being inside, to the one beyond any stories or behaviours, to the spirit that connects us all.
And yet any one of us can only glimpse, access, remember, see spirit through the lens of our own experience. It is easy to become arrogant and opinionated about how we share our glimpses of spirit with others, or to think we know better, or know the truth of things.
My core gift has taught me there are always multiple perspectives. Holding one more strongly doesn’t mean it is more true than another’s way of understanding the mystery that connects and transcends us all.
The dangers with my gift and this element are thinking that I know how others need to be woven into the tapestry of being. Thinking I can see them clearly and know who they are and what they need.
Again and again I’ve been proven wrong.
All of life wants us to remember who we truly are. To stop and stand still, to bow before the majesty of nature and the ineffable beauty that is here.
I am spirit.
One who knows and does not know. One who is and is not. One who holds and lets go. One who leads you into darkness and is also the light that guides you through.