Can 2 weeks in the forest be life-changing? I believe it can

The wilderness of Sweden's forest lakes and trees of oak, pine, fir and birch and alder, mossy boulders and rocks, meadows of fern, perikon and yarrow might not DO anything to us - but they are PRESENT with us.

After some days, while the busy western world slowly fades within the sanctuary of the forest, while our restless mind is losing its dominion - slowly but surely the present moment gets back its magic.

Where the past is not defining our actions, where the future is not written - moments we might not have had since childhood.

Offerings

For sure, we all brought our bundle of darkness, pain and grief - of trauma, drama, and the painful judgement of it all. We all brought the trauma of our generation, of Man and Woman / Mind and Nature not in union - of great confusion and a deep loneliness buried under all the distraction the western world has to offer.

But here, in the sanctuary of the forest, we place it on the Altar - together with our hopes and wishes, our promises for these two weeks, of fast and prayer, meditation and ceremony - handing ourselves over to the rules of the plant's monastery.

Challenges

Every year Mother Nature comes up with a new challenge for us:

This time the land receives us dry and thirsty.

The well had fallen dry and the lake was the lowest we have ever seen it. What has always been part of our way, the abundance of water, we now have to pray for - and abandon the transformative warmth of fire with it.

The forest is about to catch fire by itself!

But ceremony works and our prayers are heard, so rain appears and brings it back towards balance - just enough to get us out of the danger zone - by far not enough for any well to rise, for soil to be moistened, nor for fire to be made.

Insights

Isn't that a sign of how the state of the world is right now? About to catch fire by itself?

The overuse of fire in all its forms, the burning power of will, the “Marsian” masculinity of conquering, dominating and overpowering - of faster, higher, more and more - has reached a place where we now experience how far it has gotten out of balance - lost its contact to the feminine.

It has become clear to me that we cannot presumptuously take more from this world, our mother - we have to grow into adults by ourselves and take care of her. There is no elderly home we can place her in and continue our childish games.

In the absence of Water we learn to become like the sacred water, nourishing life without draining it.
In the absence of Fire we learn the ways of the sacred fire, transformative, without becoming predatory.

Sacred Union

I searched long for the elders, the wise ones and the true masters.
What I found are great humans who reached balance and peace - teachers, not leaders.

I turned to the plants in the hope of salvation, became a bit like them - eating sunlight only.
Oh, how much I fell in love with them, found more teachers, allies, guides and bridges to places I couldn't even dream of.

In all my quests and searches, cries for visions and 1001 ceremonies - with incredible help from humans and plants - I’ve been granted pathways through misery and pain, to glimpses of what is beyond it all:

One

Union of Masculine and Feminine.
Union of God and Goddess.
Union of Light and Dark.
Union of Spirit and Matter.

Beyond all concepts.

Of good and bad.
Of happiness and misery.
Of us and them.

Finding my highest sky and my deepest earth united within myself, where all polarities are joined - where there is love in union.

The pathway of sacred union

Acceptance of Polarity

Polarity exists as an integral part of the world.
It is needed to create, sustain and transform life.

A spark is born between two differently charged poles.

What we maybe have forgotten since we recognized ourselves as individuals, in different types of bodies, with different preferences - is that we've been made from the same substance.

We are like individual waves on the ocean of life, but we always are a part of that same ocean.

Acceptance of Separation

Separation is a truth of our mind, an important evolutionary step. It is a child of free will and helps us to differentiate, to learn and to adapt - it has become a foundation of the way we are living.
Separation is needed to clean and cleanse what has become confused, letting go of what no longer serves us.

But separation isn't the final destination.
Differentiation is not disconnection.

Like seeing only individual trees and somehow having forgotten that we are in a forest.

The movement

I can look in every direction, into every elemental concept I know, into the smallest, the highest, the lowest - to find the same movement:

Separation → differentiation / polarities → union on another level.

Like the trunk of the tree, where all the branches and roots that have gone out in different directions remain connected to the same living body.

To find union on another level

It is to allow the branches to become branches, the roots to become roots, the masculine to become masculine, the feminine to become feminine - without making one greater than the other.

Healing the relationship between all parts.

This is what these two weeks in the forest are really about.

Becoming

A space for something to end, and for something new to begin.

An initiation

We notice the deep changes in our participants and inside of ourselves.
Something has shifted deep down and also above - a fundamental reconnection, in places no one could imagine.

For all of us, for the sacred land we have been on, for all our relationships.

No one comes home after two weeks entirely changed, but

Something has ended.
Something new has begun.
Something has been planted deep below the surface.

Change can't be forced.

It doesn't need another heroic act of will.
It can simply grow - and over time, the change appears as a natural development of who we are becoming.

Can two weeks in the forest make a change?

I would say yes.

Enough for a beginning.

An initiation.