Coyote journeyed for a few more days until he arrived at the boundary of his Tribe’s village. He had grown so accustomed to the pain that the blaze on his tail caused that he barely noticed it anymore. So he was surprised for a moment when Sister Cougar greeted him in amazement at the luminous orange flower blossoming from his tail.
“What is this strange thing?” she exclaimed, leaping backwards.
“This is called ‘fire,’” said Coyote, “and it will keep us warm through the winter until the spring returns.”
Hearing the commotion at Coyote’s arrival, Chief Buffalo had stepped out of his lodge to see what was going on. He approached Coyote just in time to hear him answer Sister Cougar’s question.
“What is ‘winter’? What is ‘spring’?” Chief Buffalo asked.
Coyote began to teach Chief Buffalo all of the things that White Buffalo Woman had taught him. As he continued to speak, all the rest of the members of his Tribe gathered ‘round, listening.
As he spoke, Coyote gathered sticks and twigs and placed them in a pile in the center of the village. Chief Buffalo and the rest of the Tribe followed him as he continued to teach them, helping him assemble wood for the fire.
Coyote remembered the giant pile of firewood he had seen at the center of Coyote Woman’s village. Using this memory as a model, he directed his People until they had made a similar pile. Prior to lighting it, Coyote turned and addressed his People.
“Henceforth this will be known as the Fire Circle. The fire here will remain lit at all times so that all of the People may come and light their own torches. They may take their own fire home to keep warm and to be a light in the darkness. This fire shall belong to all, and all may partake of it.”
With that, Coyote stuck his tail in the woodpile and watched the fire leap forth. As the People watched, a shout of joy and amazement rose up from them, and Coyote was well-pleased.
16.0 Master of Two Worlds – Seeker as Teacher
“Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.”
–Carl Jung
Once your basic needs of food, clothing, shelter, healing and love have been satisfied, how much do you truly need? We often confuse our wants with our needs. The Master of Two Worlds has learned to reconcile duality. Such a Master has found a balance between the spiritual world and the material world. This seeker has also found a balance between his Shadow and his Persona; his “light half” and his “dark half.” Such a person has moved beyond seeing the world in black-and-white terms, and can see the gray areas.
Many modern nature-centered spiritual traditions follow the calendar known as the Wheel of the Year. In Western cultures, time is seen as linear; but in nature-centered spiritual paths, time is seen as cyclical. In such paths the cycle of the year is divided up into eight Sabbats, or High Days. These eight High Days consist of the solstices and equinoxes and the midpoints between each solstice and equinox. The summer and winter solstice, combined with the spring and fall equinoxes, are called the “Quarter Days” The midpoints between each are referred to as the “Cross-Quarter Days.”
It is easy to miss the spiritual significance of the Wheel of the Year. We get our food from supermarkets and fast food restaurants, and most of us don’t depend on agriculture and animal husbandry for our wellbeing. In an agrarian society, though, not knowing the proper times to plant and harvest could literally have been a matter of life and death. So it is only natural that our Pagan ancestors gave the Wheel of the Year a central place in their spiritual and religious practices.
For today’s Neopagan followers of nature-centered spirituality, each High Day on the Wheel marks a different phase of spiritual development as well as a holiday. Taken altogether, the holidays of the Wheel of the Year are symbolic of the cycle of birth-death-rebirth found throughout nature, and within an individual’s spiritual and personal grown. The circular nature of the Wheel reminds us that all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again. The teaching of reincarnation is a theme in many of the surviving epics of the Celts, the Hindus, the Buddhists, some Germanic tribes, and many other nature-centered spiritual paths, and the Wheel also serves as a living representation of this concept, as the cycle of death, life and rebirth plays out through the course of a year.
On another level, the Wheel can be taken as a metaphor for life’s journey. The Wheel tracks the Sun as it waxes and wanes throughout the year. With sunrise on the Winter Solstice, the days begin to grow in length, reaching their peak at the Summer Solstice. From there, the days begin to get shorter and shorter until the next Winter Solstice. So the period from Winter Solstice to Vernal Equinox represents youth, the period from the Vernal Equinox to the Summer Solstice represents young adulthood, the period from the Summer Solstice to the Autumnal Equinox represents middle age, and the period from the Autumnal Equinox to the Winter Solstice represents old age.
Further symbolic meaning in the Wheel of the Year can be seen in the balance between light and dark. The brighter months of summer give way to the darker months of winter, and then the cycle begins anew. This can be seen as a metaphorical representation of one’s own life journey. We all have periods of darkness and periods of light. When in a period of darkness, it helps to remember that the light will come again. Also, when in a period of light, it helps to remember that darkness will come again.
So like the Wheel of the Year, human beings have a dark half and a light half.
The Wheel teaches us that we are not separate from nature. As the seasons of nature rise and fall, so do the seasons of our lives. The seasons of the year affect our moods and behavior. Do you find yourself becoming more contemplative and introspective during the winter months? Do you become happier and more outgoing in the summer months? Does a walk in the woods improve your mood? If so, you are not alone.
The Wheel of the Year allows us a tangible symbolic representation of these inner states of our being. Just as the seasons move back and forth between cycles of light and darkness, so our own moods and feelings cycle between lighter and darker times. Celebrating the Wheel of the Year allows us to acknowledge both our lighter and our darker impulses in a sacramental way. By acknowledging them, we restore balance to our lives and to our spiritual journey.
The Wheel of the Year is symbolic of the lighter and darker seasons of the cycle of the year. It can also be used as a metaphor for finding the balance between the lighter and darker aspects of ourselves. It can help us to integrate the Shadow and the Persona.
The Way of the Coyote is the way that acknowledges that we all have these darker impulses. We all have a Shadow side. The Way of the Coyote is the means by which we seek the divine in our own lives, and the Wheel of the Year is the living physical embodiment of that divine inspiration, written upon the sky. So the celebration of the Wheel of the Year is the celebration of our path of seeking divine inspiration by answering the Call of the Coyote. As we walk in the Coyote Way, we learn to balance our lives by integrating the dark and light within us through the Wheel of the Year. As we balance the Shadow and the Persona, we become more fully individuated. We become the Masters of Two Worlds.
16.1 Per Ardua ad Astra
I was born the year after the United States entered the space race. My childhood was spent watching rocket launches and lunar landings. Television and movies of the time were filled with spacemen exploring strange new worlds and seeking out new life and new civilization. More than anything else, I wanted to join them and to be an astronaut when I grew up.
Then I had my first eye exam.
It turns out that I had astigmatism. Astronauts have to have perfect vision, so at the ripe old age of nine years old, when men were walking on the moon for the first time, I was told that I had no chance of being an astronaut.
I was depressed about it for several years, until I decided that there was no use beating myself up over a minor twist of fate. So instead I asked myself what it was about being an astronaut that was attractive to me, and what other careers might offer the same or similar experiences.
The answer I came up with was that it was the adventure of seeing places and things that nobody had ever seen before that made being an astronaut so desirable. So would it be possible to do that here on Earth?
The next step was to think about what sorts of careers might give me the chance to be an explorer. I examined several possibilities before deciding to major in Experimental Psychology. The idea of discovering things about the mind that no one had ever experienced before excited me even more than the idea of walking on the moon!
The final skill of ecospirituality is living in True Self. My experience with having to change career directions very early in life taught me to look behind the mask to find the meaning. I thought that being an astronaut was the only way to live in my own True Self, until that option was no longer available to me. But after a little soul searching I found a career that was even more exciting.
In this session we will discuss what it truly means to live in True Self, and how to find all of the characteristics and traits that make us who we are. We’ll also talk about how to dig a little deeper to find the meaning behind the masks we wear with others and with ourselves.
16.2 Mindful Awareness of the True Self
Ponder this phrase for a moment: “I truly love myself.”
What sort of feelings did that sentence generate? What sort of thoughts? Sometimes we get caught up in the idea that loving ourselves is somehow selfish or egotistical. But let’s think about that for a moment. If you don’t love yourself, is it really fair of you to expect anybody else to love you? Not only that, but if you don’t love yourself, and you’re in a relationship with someone who loves you, eventually you might find yourself thinking along these lines, either consciously or unconsciously:
“I don’t really love myself, yet this person says they love me. If I don’t love myself, yet this person says they love me, then there must be something wrong with him/her! How could a ‘normal’ person love someone like me, when I can’t even love me?”
Of course, the above paragraph is exaggerated just a bit, but there is some truth to it from time to time. If you don’t really love yourself, then you can’t really show others how to love you in the way you’d like to be loved.
16.3 Personal Truths
Think about the image of your True Self that you have been creating since you began this course. Take off all the masks you present to the rest of the world, and ask yourself, “Who am I, really?” Be as honest as possible when answering this question.
The purpose of the exercise in the next section is to discover your personal truths. Personal truths are the unwritten rules we have chosen to live our lives by. Some examples of personal truths would be:
“I am a creative person”
“I care about those around me”
“My relationships end in disaster”
Think about your own personal truths for a moment before going on to the next page. This should be an open and honest “warts and all” assessment that includes all of your thoughts about yourself and your own identity. List both your positive qualities and negative qualities.
It may help to center yourself first by taking a few deep breaths, and to ground yourself by stating a few personal affirmations. If necessary, try a little basic mindful meditation before looking deeply inside of yourself to discover your personal truths. When you feel you are ready, go on to worksheet below and complete the exercise there.
