Each one of us is seeded with a unique signature of a gift that is at the heart of our soul. It is intimately intertwined with our tenderest core wound which is the mirror image of what we can offer to our people.
To trail the gift of one’s soul is a tumultuous task — not for the faint of heart. As we are all quarantined, we are becoming familiar with our shadows which may be why some of our addictive behaviors may be flaring up. It is an appropriate response to an intensive with our shadows — the mysterious and powerful parts of ourselves we have abandoned to keep safe.
The biggest guide we have to the image of our soul’s gift is our more-than-human kin as well as the taproot of our ancestors. You will need to risk everything during this Underworld journey and abandon who you think you are and the comforts of behaviors that has kept you safe but small. As you trail this unwavering fierce part of you, you may catch a glimpse of the feral eyes of your own soul. This is a beacon and a promise you will walk with — a covenant with your soul within a network of covenants with the worlds. An ecology of souls.
Where your soul’s gift and your positionality (dynamic social location of power + privilege) meet is your ecological niche for a hungry world.
When we return to our People and need to reincorporate our gift into the world, this must include looking at the position of power + privilege we have to fully reincorporate and translate our gift into an ever dynamic world. Without the alchemy of both our soul’s gift and positionality — we cannot meet the world’s thirst and the world be thirsty.
When we do synergize, we become dangerously strategic. When we have faced our own shadows, we can face nearly anything and anyone. We become Guerrilla Mystics — a tactical force of awe and humility moving towards the Beloved.
Take your vows spoken in tongues of bird songs, slithers and rustles. Once you step into who you wholly are — your ecological niche — and are witnessed by your wild kin, the insurgence of the Guerrilla Mystics will begin. This will be your chthonic birth that the ancestors have been conspiring for.
words and photo by Pınar Sinopoulos-Lloyd