Taexalia

wild.life

Personal Landscape

Yesterday I mentioned I was musing over the concept of Personal Landscapes and that idea is still exercising my mind today. My work with SoulCollage is one process of mapping my inner selves and my inner landscape. I also work with my inner landscape in dreams, dreamwork, meditation and journeying (although these pursuits are somewhat challenged in my life at this time). But this concept of Personal Landscapes is something more than the inner world, although I think a Personal Landscape is held *inside* in memories, feelings, dreams and emotions, the Personal Landscape is the parts of the world outside that resonate and hold special meaning - whether that is a gorgeous rainswept kiss or the scene of something unpleasant - and it is the places we are connected to, feel drawn to, want to return to or cannot forget.

Each of us sees the world from our own perspective with our own herstory and history, baggage, priorities and individuality. One person's way of seeing a particular place may be very different from the way someone else sees it, although some Places of Power seem to evoke a similar response in different people - which fascinates me.

In the gardens behind where I live there is a patch of untamed garden. Whoever owns it has left it to go wild. Sometimes I see people who live in the same stair tending their gardens around it, cutting back the plants that are trying to extend into their wee patch of ground. I've seen one woman standing with her hands on her hips just gazing at the wild area and I imagine she dreams of taming it, cutting it all away. From her perspective the wild garden is perhaps an ugly nuisance.

I look out into the wild garden and see the turning of the seasons in the colours and height of the plants. I see the wind dance and I see the sparrow colony having a home and many tall stalks for perches. I see bees and wasps and butterflies - our precious pollinators - flitting about and I see deep cover for a hunting, or resting, fox.

So there are at least two very different perspective of the same piece of the landscape, two different ways of experiencing the spirit of the place.

The spirit of the place is an idea I have been experiencing for many years - sitting in a spot and tuning in. Or arriving and opening myself to what a place tells me about itself, and then about myself. Last year I spent a wonderful four days taking part in an experimental workshop exploring ways of tuning into and experiencing the spirit of a place. During that workshop there was a magical sense of the way different people responded to the Place, each bringing their own perspective, interpretation and experience of the landscape - but often it was the land itself, the Spirit of the Place, that seemed to express itself through us.

Out of respect for the creator of the workshop I haven't shared too much of that weekend here as the workshop is her creation. The experience itself, though, added new dimensions to my own connection with the land, the landscape and the idea of a Personal Landscape.

So I'm musing about mapping my personal landscape in SoulCollage and also in drawings. I see this blog as a kind of collage of me and my landscape too. Food for thought and creative fingers...