One of our three-year-old family mystics teetered precariously on the top step of the stairs, clutching his stuffed “Bun-Buns,” and peering over the abyss. “There’s something down there,” he whispered, eyes wide with primal terror and simultaneous wonderment. VERY still, riveted with one toe over the edge, he listened with all ears, eyes and nose alert. What was it? Something scary and mysterious? Breathing? Waiting? Ready to pounce? Perhaps it was his older brother, playing a trick, or a mischievous uncle, initiating him into the wilderness territory of the pack’s domain. He hesitated, eyes wide and heart pounding. “Ssshhhh!” he said to me solemnly, like Odysseus preparing for his epic journey.
I gently took his hand and smiled. “Ready?” Together we went, step by step, down into the subterranean cellar …
“There’s something down there.” Isn’t it a great metaphor for deepening the spiritual life? Going further beneath what lies on the surface, going deeper, into the mysterious “underland,” where anything might be hiding or not hiding … just waiting to be discovered. In his epic exploration of Earth’s underworlds, Robert Macfarlane’s Underland, A Deep Time Journey, reminds us that the extraordinary journey into the dark abyss of the psyche (from the Greek word ψυχή, meaning soul) is where wisdom resides, where time is irrelevant and where the soul meets its unbridled potential. Cultivating his own sense of mystery and wonder, and sometimes experiencing a primordial terror in the process, Macfarlane explores psychic canyons of “deep time,” from the birth of the universe to a post-human future, with forays into mythological underworlds, prehistoric sea caves and Bronze Age funeral chambers to the well-storied labyrinthian catacombs beneath Paris. The mycorrhizal fungal networks of tree roots are especially alluring for him. “I find myself in a grove of pollard beeches atop a prehistoric earthwork. Under one of them, children have built a den of sticks and boughs, resting them against a low branch to form a crooked timber tent that is long enough for me to sleep in. It is an invitation I cannot refuse, so I creep inside the den and lie down, looking up through its slats at branches, stars, satellites. I feel myself suddenly—strongly—surrounded by beings whose ways of relating to one another are dimly but powerfully perceptible, as if seen through thick gauze. The sensation is at once comforting and lonely-making. Owl hoot. Dog bark. Back in the clearing the fire dims, song falls silent. The canopy of the pollards spreads above me, whispering in the night breeze. There’s something you need to hear ... Seeking sleep, my mind follows leaf to branch, branch to trunk, trunk to root and from there down along the hyphae that web the earth below” (p. 116).
When we want to go deeper, descending via the well-constructed stairway of our egoic identity into the darkness, where we are not sure of ourselves, of who “WE” are, where we don’t know what comes next or where we might land, where we can’t see clearly, and where we may be afraid to discover what lies below, it is good to have a hand to hold, or a familiar compatriot for comfort. Perhaps a spiritual companion will walk with us through the journey. While we hesitate, trembling on the brink, we are drawn inexorably to the deeper mysteries burrowing in the sanctuary of our heart. “There’s something down there.”
Yes, of course there’s something down there! Everything’s down there: old memorabilia, crammed full of images and symbolic artifacts, metaphors and loves and losses of days gone by, mementos of achievements and creative growth spurts, youthful idealism and impossible dreams, irrational fears and scars from wounds unhealed, haunting melodies and childhood mythologies, favorite games and half-finished projects and old journals, outgrown toys and clothing, jars full of whatnots, and who knows what else? Yes, possibly also spiders, maybe turtles and snakes—maybe assailants waiting to pounce … Maybe also, pure delight! Maybe it’s an invitation to grow and to explore and discover what we keep shoving down there all our waking moments because we are too busy to pay attention, or it seems too overwhelming, or it’s just too scary to take the plunge. So we wait. We hesitate. Maybe we muster our courage. Maybe we need more time.
Whatever’s down there will bubble up to meet us, either in vivid and possibly disturbingly outrageous dreams, in emotional melt-downs, moments of existential Angst, in flights of fancy or moments of profound choosing. Maybe whatever’s down there will come up to find us! If we do not descend the stairs, bolstered with our metaphorical Linus-blankie or a stuffed bunny, and a treasured and trusted companion or two, we may waste a precious opportunity to take the next step, to go deeper, to learn, to grow, to become more fully the creature of light who can spread her wings and fly—preferring to remain swaddled in a cocoon that promises safety or security than emerge as a luminous, transfigured butterfly. We might miss the breath-taking vision of beauty, the moment of ecstatic discovery or sheer loveliness when we emerge from the darkness into an ever-widening pool of joy.
“There’s something down there.” What is it? Let’s go see. It might be scary AND fantastic, and it’s waiting just for you. If you need a safe place to explore your depths, a hand to hold, a listening soul-companion, or a comforting cocoon to aid your descent into Mystery, come to Prairiewoods and we’ll help you take that first, fierce step. Go deeper.
Go Deeper
by Chris McCombsGo deeper
Past thought
Into silence
Past silence
Into stillnessDeeper still
Past stillness
Into the HeartNow
Let the Love
Consume
Whatever is left of you
—Laura Weber, Prairiewoods associate director and retreats coordinator