Waking the Wild One — An Essential and Unpredictable Journey
Uprooting the story of separation through reconnecting with the Wild One is essential if we want to restore the planet and heal ourselves.
An Ancient Force
The force known as the Wild Self that has had many names throughout human history with a rich portfolio across many mythologies. It may be known as The Green Man, Witch, Herne the Hunter, The Horned God, Cernunnos, Sheelanagig, Cailleach, Medicine Keeper, La Loba, Artemis, Pan, — they are all incarnations of this instinctual place that exists both within and around us.
We might describe this force as an archetype — “a primitive mental image inherited from the earliest human ancestors, and supposed to be present in the collective unconscious” — a part of our deep psyche that moves and influences us.
However, the archetypes of Wildness have been shunned and exiled on this land for longer than we can remember.
This archetype lived in the heartbeat of the tribal people who were indigenous to Britain before Roman colonisation, it lived in there reverence and love for the natural world. And it died when they were cut off from their life ways.
It lived in the deep knowledge of the medicine women, midwives and healers that carried generations of plant wisdom, and it was destroyed alongside the systematic murder of these women — deemed witches as the patriarchy took power over the medical systems.
It lived in the people who were connected deeply to the land, could survive from it and live freely, and were cut off from it by the elite ruling classes as they enacted laws of enclosure, criminalising those who lived in these ways.
It lived in anyone who was able to understand their own interdependence with the natural world.
And yet all the ways in which we have tried to domesticate the unruly wild self — it still refuses to be quiet.
Our Visceral Connection
Bill Plotkin describes the Wild Indigenous One in his book Wild Mind as:
‘one who know’s the sensuous, emotive, erotic, playful, and instinctual dimension of ourselves that loves being embodied as a human animal, celebrates the experience of all emotions, is fully at home in the more-than-human world, and enjoys a visceral and deep-rooted kinship with all other creatures and with the diverse ecosystems we inhabit — the rivers, mountains, deserts, plains, and forests of our local bioregions.’
If you’ve ever experienced the autumnal phenomena of your body slowing down when it inhales the scent of decaying leaves; If you’ve ever gazed at the setting sun and felt dumfounded by the palette of colours painted across the sky; the pull to climb some hill or mountain so that you can gaze out from the top and feel some strange belonging with the world.
If you’ve felt the piercing icy rain on your face so that your cheeks flush red; If you’ve looked up at the dark sky at a night filled with stars and felt a sense of peace; If you’ve cried deep earth shattering sobs until you’ve felt empty; If you’ve ever felt the purr of joy and contentment within you.
These are all moments where we touch the wisdom of the Wild Self.
The Story of Separation
For so long the Wild Self has been deemed too unruly, dirty, unpredictable, cunning and beautiful for us to bare. We cut ourselves off from it and relegate it to the shadows to survive, then we often spend the rest of our lives walking the long winding road of reclamation, seeking to reclaim what we lost.
This psychological severance happens because we have long perpetuated the story that human’s are separate from the natural world.
When we stopped seeing the animate world around us as alive, breathing, diverse, creative, intelligent, a world of many moods, seasons, characters and feelings, and ourselves as part of it. We stopped seeing ourselves as a reflection of this living landscape.
That we might also create echoes like thunder, or that we can hold steady like a lake under morning mist.
This story has enacted much harm. It has allowed us to destroy, extract, decimate, rip apart and has resulted in the harrowing loss of ecosystems, species, habitats and landscapes.
The Caged Self
We are surrounded by reasons to hide this wild self, this story teaches us to ignore our instinctual nature and creative life force. Our society asks us to keep this part of us caged, because we might not be welcomed, we may be ostracised for saying the difficult things and we might be jailed and outlawed for enacting our values. We must follow what make sense with our intellect not the guttural pull towards what our heart yearns for. There are many ways listening to this part of us might make our existence in modern society difficult.
So instead we sit behind laptop and phone screens, in front of TV’s, we disconnect from the outside world and we sink further into the caged self as a coping mechanism.
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
Being able to traverse our varied emotional landscape is a vital part of our health, yet we numb ourselves through a vast array of addictions perpetuated by consumerism. We consume to anaesthetise the deep yearning of the Wild.
These things that we cage and cut ourselves off from, are actually vital aspects that we need to function as a whole eco-centric human. Yet we have come to pathologise emotions and mental health, when they are a very healthy response to the dis-ease unfolding around us.
There is no mystery in the rise of suffering to our mental health when so much is out of balance.
A bleak future
I could go into much detail to explain the compounding political, social, cultural, economic and ecological crises that we will face over the coming years and make the case for an ecological approach to psychology that address the causes (not just the symptoms) of how we have ended up in this mess, and what will continue if we do not address the absence of an eco-centric heartbeat in each of us.
As our world continues to be destroyed by greed and capitalism, we can only imagine how our psychological landscapes will become a reflection of this loss.
Reconnection
However, what I am here to suggest is a possibility, that if we each courted our connection with the inner realms of our wild one; If we were to awake to our true belonging with the earth. If we truly felt the intelligence of our emotional landscapes, the intuitive, creative and instinctive forces within us, we would hear an unforgettable voice calling for us to relinquish all that harms ourselves and the planet.
That if we really welcomed this exiled one home that they might help us understand what is truly important for us to live meaningful ecologically soulful lives. Clean air, water, green spaces, trees and plants, food, rain, river, birdsong, friends, family, community, beloved, beauty, connection, love, care, laughter… The list is long.
When we begin to understand our interdependance with the world through this lens, we start to see the deep impact and consequences of our choices. How the micro-plastics and chemicals that we flush down the drain pollute our rivers and seas, the toxic rubbish that we bury into the earth— that it all comes back to us.
Perhaps we might begin to see that the wild one as a guide beyond the confines of a consumerist capitalist culture. That if we refuse to collude with those things that seek to cage us and began living our lives from the wide eyed bushy tailed one within us, then what generative mischief might unfold? What towers might crumble? What landmarks of power might dissipate? What new possible stories might we create? What communities of interdependance and care might emerge?
It is only a possibility. But it is one that sees us turning towards our devotion to the earth, to the care of each other and the fulfilment of our lives beyond productivity and a capitalist colonial version of success.
“The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.” — Clarissa Pinkola Estés
A tidal wave of ecological awakening.
I believe that the unleashing the wild guide contained within each of us is what might lead us towards these possibilities. Towards a new ancient story of wholeness, an ecological awakening in our hearts, minds and souls founded in our belonging with the earth.
Lets unleash wonder and awe. Marvel at mycelium, be astonished by the magnificence of mountains, the gentleness of hedgerow. Praise the dawn chorus of birdsong, rest amongst the trees and follow the path that leads us home.
Unleash the the one who holds multitudes, who is both tender and ferocious, kind and cruel, silent and loud and everything in between.
Let’s begin to recognise that all the wild beauty out there is somehow also within us.
If there is one way we might live through and beyond all the wreckage of our story of separateness — it is to fall madly, deeply in love with the more-than-human world and learn to love your wild caged parts so that you might find the gifts in them. Let the love for both of those places be your map in moments when you are lost.
Listen to Remember
Weaving a new ancient story of belonging to the earth means calling upon the ancient reverence and wild abandon of our exiled parts, and welcoming them home too.
The blood of the Wild One runs deep, it has dripped through clay, shingle and sand. It is in the heartbeat of every stone, the echo of every ancient tree torn down. It is the lifeblood of this land and many lands, and it will not be silent. It is calling for us to remember. It asks us to listen, to keep listening until we can hear it.
Until we can hear our own heartbeats embracing plant, tree, fox, deer, wolf and bird as kin. Till we can feel the aliveness in the land echoed underneath our skin. Ourselves reflections of the power and beauty contained within the natural world.
If you feel the call then you are invited to join us as we explore the welcoming home of the Wild Self in our upcoming retreat Waking the Wild Ones. A weekend of community on Dartmoor working with embodiment, connection, creativity and ritual. Find out more here.
