In this collection, land is integral to each essence. A mineral essence contains a story; sometimes it’s mythic, it weaves place and time, it accesses the universe, it reminds us of the microcosm within the macrocosm, the above as is below, like the lines of Blake’s poetry.
Minerals are integral to the material world and society. They give us stability, structure and balance. They can also create rifts in our relationships, feelings of superiority and unhappiness. Awareness and understanding of our relationship with the material world can lead to cooperation without the need to renounce or discard. I often think that what balances all that power and strength of the material force is tenderness.
Rock is universal. It is the stuff of the universe, a fundamental element of life, star dust. Merging with a mineral or rock through meditation is to experience a great dropping away of what we identify with in the world. Paradoxically, the mineral and the material world is what we create from to express our identity. None of these remedies can be remade, for time, season, land and story are innately woven into each of them.
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
William Blake from Auguries of Innocence, 1803
Into the World by Leila Lees
A beautiful introduction to mystical and shamanic practice, this book covers the main concepts of year one of the Certificate training.
“I wrote Into the World because I am passionate about human consciousness. As we begin to experience our own integral self and find our moral compass in our hearts, I see that we may create space for each other to exist. We do this within a dynamic community that is conscious of its interconnection with an even greater, more diverse ecosystem.”
