It happens, doesn’t it?
The day comes when the world pushes open the door we have closed against the world.
-John Moriarty, What the Curlew Said

It does happen, doesn’t it?

That fateful day of the door crashing in on us, pushed open by the world, different levels of the world, that in one way or the other, we have been avoiding.

The fateful splintering of the door of denial, escapism and addiction. The door shattered by a reality that is larger than we imagined, larger even than we can imagine.

Thus shattered, the floodwaters of Reality come rushing in. A Reality made not of reality that we might know something of, but a Reality that is far beyond anything that even reality knows anything of. A Reality that includes, transcends and integrates. A Reality that has suffered long enough in its exclusion, an impatient Reality, a Reality needing to be on with its work of transformation, its task of becoming, its labor of emerging through us, into us. A Reality that, in actuality, amounts to little more than boundless Potentiality.

A Reality brimming with Potentiality already crashing over the edges of our perception, already straining the hinges of the soul.

This, a Potentiality that allows soul to be Soul, spirit to become Spirit, and god to be God or Goddess, is a terrifying entity, welcoming the universe as it leaps out of itself and into tumultuous becoming. A Potentiality that is alluring and sensuous in its terror. An ocean beckoning us to dive in and become what we may within its coolness, within its fluid and life giving embrace.

No door can be shut against that ocean. Not for long.

The Reality is not terrifying. The Potentiality to become what we must is not terrifying. The opening of the door is. Or rather, the not-closing-of-the-door is terrifying.

Nerve shattering leaving-the-door-open.

But it happens, yes, it happens, doesn’t it? Even if we insist on closing the door. Even if we barricade the door with wardrobes and chests of drawers, it happens.

And when it happens, we are reminded of ourselves. We experience the terror and adrenaline that reminds us of our senses. We experience the agony and the beauty of the washing away of ideas, life-centering beliefs, and over-cherished arms of false security with a heightened awareness borne of our human and our other-than-human senses.

And when it happens, the wave of Potentiality, the new Reality rushes in and forces us to sink or swim in the murky waters of new ideas, far-from-our-center beliefs, with no safety nets, in new, terrifying and strange ways of seeing.

When it happens, we must be rid of our modes of experiencing the world. We must relieve ourselves of our human and our other-than-human senses. This is the terror. This is the moment of truth. Will we cast them away? Will we cling to them and barricade the door with yet another layer of wardrobes and chests-of-drawers?

The peculiar thing is this: once we re-learn how to swim in this terrifying ocean, we will once again have use for these senses.

The peculiar thing is this: they will no longer be human and other-than-human.

There are many doors that must be pushed open by the world. Leaving one door open, and experiencing the washing away, we think we have arrived into a place where there is no not-soul. The most peculiar thing is this: we only stay in that place for a short while. We must explore. We must enter new rooms and leave new doors open. The washing-away is a never ending process. Each time a new un-learning, learning, and re-learning.

Or perhaps it is more like this:

The wildness here is like no other. Even in the wildest range of mountains, there is solid ground for us to put our feet on. Here, there is nothing solid.

No safety.

Only our boat.

Only our small cramped boat that is being tossed about in the wildness of solitude. Even in the sudden calm and doldrums of the sea, there is wildness, a language that we know but cannot speak. In this stillness, we languish, hoping for a wind to take us west, north, south, east. Somewhere. The horizon is everywhere. Distant; smudged and misty. No island. Nothing solid. Only the wild stillness and silence.

When the island appears, it seems as if it does so from nowhere. Perhaps it rose up from the bottom of the sea. Perhaps in our stillness we have moved more than we perceived. The island that called to us long ago, the island that has always called to us, has been reached.

From across the nine waves, we put ashore on the misty and mystical shore.

But even here, even on this island, it is as though we are on the wild sea. The island changes daily. Where yesterday a shimmering lake was to be found, today stands a proud mountain, defying our apprehension. For all of the comfort, friends and celebrations, we have not found safety. Even the wildest of seas is more constant than this island. We begin to wonder if this truly is the island that has called to us.

At this, suddenly, the call of return manifests itself with shocking clarity. We know that the call of return is the call to hear, and to sing, the song of the silver branch. We know, that indeed, it was not the island that has called to us, but the silver branch, whose song can be heard anywhere and everywhere, that had called us long ago.

We must put out to sea again, but this time we know the way. Thoughts of safety and of wildness are no longer important. We know that the music of what happens is in safety, is in wildness. The silver branch either sings or it does not. We begin our journey of return in earnest now. The winds are ever at our backs, guiding us unerringly through the nine waves in the direction of home.

We may have returned home, but we are at the same time on all of the islands of our past. The memories of our journey are vivid. In the home, the memories of safety and of wildness become one. The silver branch sings the same song. It is here, that is both this place and that, both now and then, that we must tend our hearth.

This, then, is our ordeal.