This next layer is engaging with the elementals – the vast, eternal, powerful forces of fire, air, earth and water.
The question we will be alive to – how are we always co-becoming with the elementals? – will be different from our earlier body experiences of some of these. I’m thinking particularly of water and air that we worked for in our first and second layers respectively. This time around we are lifting our gaze, broadening our view out from the community/ecosystem layer we’ve just emerged from, and looking to far horizons. We will be seeking to experience the elements in their strength and influence – an expansive aspect of the deity that is water, for instance, and how this force works on and with the whole as cloud, vapour, stream, sea. Our vaster body, perhaps.
And also our vaster mind. We will be looking for the ‘mind’ of water, fire, air, earth – their specific characteristics, and how we are an accretion of these, our psyche, this poetic interiority, built, perhaps, from the outside in, to meet, perfectly and exactly, the way things are.
We are evolved. And we evolved from, and with, these forces. There is a specific felt sense of evolution that we can partake of. It is known to us as the experience of co-becoming.
So there’s no reading for this theme, rather an encouragement to immerse yourself into the world where the elements are beings, are ongoing supportive presences in the form of ground, air, warmth, refreshment, and other aspects that the elementals take. (They are disruptive too, of course, but we are focussing in the plunge on their supportive aspect, to lay a strong basis of gratitude and awareness for how it is we are held.)
Walk through the world with them, addressing them, touching them with care and wonder. Whenever you can, reach out to them, greeting them, meeting them. When you are away from people, see how it feels to speak aloud to the elementals. Watch how they dance with all members of your ecosystem community. Wonder at how you might beautifully join the dance.