For the last three summers, Colleen and I have had the opportunity to guide with Emerald North, an elder guide with the School of Lost Borders. In so many ways, it has been her open depth and unshaken belief in belonging that have both brought us into this work and into our own personal healing.

Over the past decade, Colleen and I have attended multiple mirroring trainings. At the very start of that journey, we also created Alchemy of Prana as a way to enact and bring to life this burgeoning vision of wilderness rites of passage---mirroring being a critical component. Along the way, while I never stopped being a student of the ceremony, we began offering mirroring trainings as well.

Nevertheless, every time I get a chance to sit with Emerald as a co-guide, I lean in and listen even closer, attempting to grok just a little more her essential understanding of this supremely simple yet utterly confounding process of tending to another's (heart)story.

Last summer, sitting below Sargent's Mesa at the start of another ceremony, I heard Emerald articulate something so clearly that it has been recontextualizing my understanding of mirroring, the Four Shields, and moving beyond duality.

The core of what she mentioned was rather simple, but unpacking it asks for an internal paradigm shift. What I heard her say is this: the beauty and power of aligning aspects of our psyche to the four seasons of Earth, four times of day, and associated four directions, innately moves our psychology past duality constructs and into a relational and ongoing field of existence.

What is the issue with duality, you might ask?

Binary constructs are a core aspect of elemental nature and thus our orientation to the physical world (e.g., hot/cold, dark/light, now/then, and so on). Totton (2021) offers a compelling list of these paired oppositions which are reinforced by cultural and social conditioning. Essentially, these binary structures organize our thinking in a very deep way.

If we internalize these binaries as moral and ethical principles, which it is very hard not to do, then we may begin to create caustic internal patterns of judgment of what is and is not allowable, acceptable, right, and so on. As this happens again and again within our social dynamics, we begin to identify with these patterns, and such judgements of Truth become how we navigate our life. Elastic, flexible, in-the-moment felt-sense experiences can begin to become less important to structures of internalized culture.

This shows up in different ways for all of us. For me, it has led to a severe repression of (unallowed) emotions which morphed into a terrible inner bullying. Thankfully, loving people and profound ceremonial work has helped me see my patterns and begin the life-long process of disidentifying with them and healing.

Yet it is not enough to swear off dualities, and for many of us, the nuance of the Buddha dharmic middle way does not quite expound practicality toward healing. Halifax (2019) offered some practical understanding in her work on edge states, which she defined as bivalent qualities (five) that permeate our lives and, if tended, offer deep insight and growth. As she wrote, "The Edge States are altruism, empathy, integrity, respect, and engagement, assets of a mind and heart that exemplify caring, connection, virtue, and strength. Yet we can also lose our firm footing on the high edge of any of these qualities and slide into a mire of suffering where we find ourselves caught in the toxic and chaotic waters of the harmful aspects of an Edge State" (p. 3). What is key in unwrapping/healing these aspects of our Selves is safety and belonging.

Entering into a ceremony, in whatever seat (i.e., participant, guide, witness) or with any kind of hidden agenda, can compromise the emergent intelligence that is the ceremony. Further, if we listen to others from a place of judgment, of presumed duality constructs, we may then be guilty of projecting our ideas of reality, morality, ethics, etc. onto them.

For some reason, I have found a particular propensity to fall into duality constructs, especially during times of stress. Perhaps this is an aspect of my innate propensity toward bipolar; in fact, much of the last two decades of personal healing has been to let such feelings arise within me and gifting my open, loving awareness for those emotions to unfold, without condemning myself in the process, and without projecting such emotions outward. This work is ongoing.

To me, returning to a nondual view offered by the fractal patterns represented in the Four Shields teaching facilitates this awareness and renews my lifeforce. In this, what I really felt/heard/saw/experienced from Emerald's sharing of her forty-year relationship with this Four Shield's teaching pointed to…

an expansive cyclical intelligence which immediately shifts the conversation

from two to four, and in doing so

moves the psych into archetypes

and grants differentiation

that is unavailable in the human animal propensity

for binary logic

undoes an invisible struggle to be

ON THE RIGHT SIDE

 of any paired opposite

day and night, the leveling of sunrise and sunset

becomes a lived metaphor for the true in in-betweenness of most of existence

So the next time you listen to a friend, or feel overwhelmed with heavy emotion, you might see if you can shift your listening from the headspace and into the heart space, look outside and see what time of day it is, consider the depth of the seasonality you are within, and feel into what is there…

Is it flowing or moving like water?

Is it heavy, solid, or still(ed) like earth?

Is it open, expansive, or omnipresent like sky?

Is it warming, illuminating, or paradoxical like fire?

Who knows, holding open space for yourself and others might just be the nonjudgmental, non-agenda-ed medicine that liberates. To be sure, practicing listening beyond duality is a practice, because we human animals, we and sociocultural beings, swim in a world of dualistic confusion every day.

In kindness and humility,

Tbird

References

Halifax, J. (2019). Standing at the edge: Finding freedom where fear and courage meet. Flatiron Books.

Totton, N. (2021). Wild therapy: Rewilding our inner and outer worlds (2nd ed.). PCCS Books.

References