Family and Pets, Ancestors and Spirit Animals, the Personal Gods, and Home
The first layer beyond the body and its adornments
During the whole of the Plunge process, we aim to hold clear with a specific orientation:
How are we supported by this alive and loving cosmos? What are the ways we are being supported that we perhaps hadn’t ever paid attention to – the support of heart, gut, skin?
As we extend beyond the body, we stay with this enquiry of how are we being supported?
This is important – first, to develop an unshakable gratitude practice, a mode of upwelling reverence – without this, the world will not open fully to us. And second – this is, in and of itself, a protection practice. Because it’s true that the animate realms may include less friendly aspects, so in calling in the loving and loyal aspects, we are tending these imaginal relationships, and in doing so we strengthen ourselves. Love, which is the same thing as the energetic field of the heart, can be exercised and made ever more radiant.
And right here, I just have to say that my formerly agnostic self is somewhat cringing at how fluffy this sounds. But it’s the embodied truth, as far as I know it, so I’m pushing through my cringe and returning to the felt sense – body knows this is real. The heart really does generate a field of protection, particularly when combined with solid groundedness – a sure sense of gravity – which is the Earth’s signal to us that she’s got our back.
This next layer – home, and animate forces close by – can bring up vulnerabilities. We live in a less than perfect world, we may not feel as safe or supported as we need to in our homes. So we will be calling up the imaginal forces who want safety and care for us, and we will shelter within their vast lovingness. In doing this, perhaps we can also help shift our external circumstances – all that is real begins in the imaginal, which is helpful to remember. We will be doing ceremony – spell casting – to call in the good, to call in the protectors.
The Imaginal
In co-becoming, we are engaging with the real world but in a different and very specific way. We are engaging with the world Imaginally.
To engage Imaginally means to come close to the world as it lives within us. Aspects of the world, and awareness (‘our’ awareness, the presence or the witness that manifests within us) experience each other and become something more, together.
To talk about it, to try and get our ‘head’ around this, will fail every time. That’s ok — think of all these words as place-holders for the ritual, which is the time when we are co-becoming, and the knowing of co-becoming.
Back to what we do in the ritual. We bring to presence the being we seek to meet. It matters not at all whether this person is alive or passed, this animal is our specific and hairy companion or a ‘totem animal’ (the sense we might have of a more-than-human presence whose intelligence seeks to engage with our own). The Imaginal realm is a realm where space, time and intelligence are different. There is a sense of timelessness and permanence here, yet also dynamism and aliveness. We aim to bring our softness, our aliveness, our sensitivity and our trust to this place, and listen carefully for what it might say.