What is our potential? What did we come here to do in this life time? What is holding us back?
At this challenging and yet transformational time in the world, these are great questions to be asking ourselves. It’s an important step in reclaiming our power, feeling empowered, and taking action to create what Echart Tolle calls the New Earth.
So to help in answering these important questions, this month we journeyed seventy people in our shamanic drumming circles to go and meet ‘The Egg of their Potential’.
Egg symbology
The egg is an ingrained symbol of our culture. Each year, we start to see symbolic ones on the supermarket shelves normally just after Christmas. We all know instinctively that in a few months time we will be working with the egg in our own small way.
With most people, it will be buying chocolate eggs as gifts, or munching away through ones people have bought us, or maybe even ones we have bought ourselves!
But the symbology of the egg runs much deeper through us. It’s not something we have been willing to let go of for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
I know when I was a child growing up in an Evangelical Christian family, Easter was all about the death and resurrection of Christ. Alongside this, and far more exciting was the frenzy about eggs. I remember being confused as to the link between Jesus, eggs and Easter bunnies, and although I expect my mum, or the vicar tried to explain it, I remained confused.
This recent You Tube video of a three-year-old asking questions sums up the complexities and seeming randomness of it all rather well. As we grow older many people stop questioning. I didn’t. Perhaps it was the seed of me going off on my own path to find out what this other, non-christian symbolism was all about.
Photo credit: Wisconsin Kaaskop
Journeying with Egg
So, this month we decided to run an egg theme through our Shamanic Journey Drum Circles. Although what each person shares is confidential in our circles, I am able to share with you the themes which ran consistently through each of the five groups of people who gathered with us to reflect on the meaning of egg, and journey for insights into their own egg.
As we each held an egg in our hands, we felt the cool hard shell through our fingertips and felt the weight of the magic inside. We noticed the contrast of both strength and fragility within the shell. The completeness of the egg, containing everything needed for life within. A beautiful metaphor for us.
We thought of all the millions of birds that are sitting on their own eggs right now, hiding in hedgerows and tree-tops, marshes and sheer rock faces. Birds waiting patiently, holding what was beneath them in the most perfect conditions despite the weather and threat of predators. In just a few weeks time brand new baby birds would pierce through that steel and venture into the world. A new life. Rebirth. Transformation.
It is pure alchemy, when you really take time to think about it, and it gets me really excited!
Photo credit: Grendel Khan
Lowerworld Insights
When people returned from their shamanic journeys, we had time for a few people to share what they had gleaned from the Lowerworld.
Many people were given messages of their greatness. Thinking of ourselves as magnificent can for many, be really hard to digest, me included. It seems that somehow in our growing up into adults, we forget how great we are, and lose the vision that we can become anything we want to become.
But when you think about it, why not. Why can’t we be great? Why in this lifetime can we not achieve our purpose in life, and be incredible. We already are, having made it this far, and wanting to push through adversities and get the most from the years we have left on our beautiful planet Earth. We hope to have many years left stretching out before us, so what is stopping us stepping into our greatness? Fortunately, on the spiritual path, there are many ways to find this out, heal, and become our full potential.
People also got messages of leadership, and were told to consider themselves as leaders. How many of us can accept those words, and even begin to believe we have qualities of leadership within? In these changing and troubled times, this is precisely what is needed, and we can step into our power and leadership roles if only we gave ourselves permission.
The message of rebirth was really consistent amongst people. This is our chance, right now, to have another try. To draw a line and cross over, using the lessons from the past but not letting them hold us back. Only letting them help us grow into something new, an empowered person stepping out to reach their full potential.
The word stillness came through. How important is it as we go through our transformation to find that stillness. To simply stop. To rest. To listen. This is good medicine for us, and we have to work hard to find it in the noise of our modern Western culture and the busyness of our lives.
The word humility also came to us. To be humble in our work. Not to detract from our greatness, but to recognise that we are part of a much bigger picture. A 13 billion year Universe story which is still unfolding. We have an essential place in this, but we have a lot to learn and a lot to work through. So to walk our path with a dose of humility is no bad thing; to wear our shadow as our cloak, and remember that there is much work to do.
Finally, a huge passion for Jason and me: creativity. In many ways our culture tells us not to embrace our creativity. It is made difficult to do with the long working week, and everyday stresses to make ends meet. But we are here to create, and we will do well not to forget that. It reminds me of the Rumi poem “grapes want to be turned into wine”. It is through our creativity that we can hear our souls voice and find our true meaning in the world.
Photo credit: Karissa Burnett
The Power of the Journey
Quite a round of journeys don’t you think? It always amazes Jason and I when we do group work like this how insightful the collective sharing is. A different group of people on a different night can receive the same diverse collection of insights. It goes way beyond what our conscious minds would come up with. That is the power of journeying to the other realms, where we can bring back precisely the messages we need at this time.
So, through the noise of our cultural celebrations at this time of year – the easter egg hunts, the bank holiday partying, and whatever special TV shows are brought to us in our living rooms, take a little time to reflect on the symbology of egg for you, as you chomp your way through delicious chocolate.
Think about the concept of the egg of your potential. What, with the right conditions, could you flourish into? What steps might you need to take to start inching your way towards this? What can you focus on between now and the summer solstice, when pure alchemy is happening right outside your window, in the woodlands, hedgerows and meadows as spring gets fully under way. What magic would you like to create in your life?
Journey to the Egg of your Potential. I think you may well be surprised.
Photo credit: Jason Smalley