What essential aspect of yourself has been buried bone deep?

The other day, out walking, I came across this bone. Most likely it is a femur bone from a hare or a rabbit. It seemed an apt thing to find as we enter the ‘sorting the bones’ phase of our Moving Mountains Journey. In the group, we’ve been discussing ‘bones’ as a metaphor and what constitutes a ‘bone'.

In archetypal symbology, bones represent something essential and indestructible. When we think of how we unearth bones, thousands of years old, from archeological digs and how much we can tell about the person or creature from those bones, we can see how that representation of the indestructible comes about.

In myths and story, bones represent the indestructible spirit. Spirit can be hurt, maimed and broken but never destroyed completely - like bones, the spirit always has the potential for renewal and regeneration.

In the story of La Loba, which we are using as a framework for our explorations, the wolf bones that La Loba collects represent the indestructible aspect of our wild Self, our instinctual nature, the essence of who we are.

The La Loba within us (our wise inner self, the keeper of our spirit) is constantly collecting our spirit bones, sorting them and keeping them safe. Every so often, we need to visit with her and retrieve the bones that we have lost, or buried and forgotten about. Every so often we need to ask ourselves: What essential aspect of myself has been buried bone deep?

To do this work, to gather, retrieve, sort and realign the bones is, I believe, one of the most necessary things we can do. And also the most revolutionary and audacious. After all, isn’t it easier (and less disruptive to all concerned) to stay slightly lop sided, in a world which is, in the words of EE Cummings, “doing it’s best, night and day to make you everybody else”, rather than to realign with the real wild essence of yourself?

In 1926, writer and psychoanalyst, Marion Milner, undertook a seven-year experiment, examining her life and questioning her most fundamental assumptions about what made her happy. She explored both her reason and thoughts, and, most crucially, her senses. She published the results of her work in 1934 in her book A Life of One’s Own.

“As soon as I began to study my own perception, to look at my own experience, I found that there were different ways of perceiving and that the different ways provided me with different facts. There was a narrow focus which meant seeing life as if from blinkers and with the centre of awareness in my head; and there was a wide focus which meant knowing with the whole of my body, a way of looking which quite altered my perception of whatever I saw… It was the wide focus way that made me happy.”

Her study of herself taught her that her day-to day-personal desires were the expression of a deeper underlying need, and if she kept her thoughts still enough and listened beneath them then she would “feel it like a child leaping in the womb”, though she admitted that the feeling could be so slight “that I might easily miss it when over busy with purposes”.

It makes me think that perhaps she was listening to the deeper call of her own indestructible spirit and wild soul. She describes it as an “intuitive sense of how to live.”

“I had begin to guess that me greatest need might be to let go and be free from the drive after achievement - if only I dared. I had also guessed that perhaps when I had let these go, then I might be free to become aware of some other purpose that was more fundamental, not self-imposed private ambitions but some thing that which grew out of the essence of one’s own nature.”

Milner comments that people would say “be yourself at all costs” but it wasn’t easy to know what one’s self was. It was far easier to want what other people seemed to want and then imagine that you had made that choice yourself. A century on not much has changed - if anything it has maybe got worse as we are bombarded with messaging from all directions about what and who we should be, do and have, and which product/programme etc will ensure we achieve it!

Hence my thought that to do the work to realign with the bones of our essential, intuitive, wild, indestructible spirit is the most revolutionary and audacious thing we can do. And the question What essential aspect of myself has been buried bone deep? is ever more pertinent. It’s a question that guides to consider who we are, not what might do or have.

It’s important to recognise that this essential spirit is not always expressed through the work that we do, the business we are in, the ‘following of the heart’ - although it could be. There are many ways we can express our essential self when we are deeply connected to it. It is more about how we live and relate from that bone-deep place.

Let me give you an example. An essential aspect of my Hubby’s spirit is his gentle, romantic, harmonious soul. It expresses itself through music and Aikido, and the way he prefers to relate to me. I’m not always good at ‘receiving’ his gentle romantic soul, (he likes to surprise me, and I’m not good with surprises), but I am working on it - such is the art of relating; it’s a daily practice.

Aikido is not a gentle martial art (there’s lots of throwing and often bruises involved), but at its core it is about channelling and harmonising the spirit of your opponent and of yourself to disarm them without injury. Hub’s music repertoire ranges from swelling film scores to dissonant prog rock that sounds anything but gentle, yet it takes him into the embodiment of himself and connects him to his deep soul. His work is to help clients move through dissonance to harmony, and that is rarely a gentle process. Still, at his very core he is a gentle soul.

For too long his gentle soul was smothered by what others wanted of him, and what he thought he ought to want for himself, but the spirit is always there. Hidden, smothered, maimed maybe, yet still indestructible, still supporting from those bone-deep places.

Have I got you thinking about your own indestructible spirit, your ‘bones’, what kind of soul you are? I invite you to sit with these questions: What essential aspect of myself has been buried bone deep? Where might that aspect of myself find its expression? What might my desire for life look like from that wider perspective?

Until next time… with love from my ‘bones’ to yours.

Need help exploring these questions? Book a call with me here: https://tidycal.com/tinabettison/discovery-call for a complimentary, exploratory ‘chew over the bones’ chat.

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The Bones Tribe is a monthly sacred circle to dig deeper and share thoughts, insights and experiences. We have had some great discussions so far, and we have occasional guests to spice up our conversations. Our next gathering is Monday 19 May.

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