IT’S BOTH

By Lian Brook-Tyler

I first noticed myself disappear in a coaching session 9 years ago.

I was sitting with a client and realised I hadn’t been there for most of the session - which of course means I’d come back to be able to notice the absence.

I’d been there but not really in the way I’d always known it, it was without a constant chatter of…

“What shall I say next?”

“I wonder what I’ll make for dinner.”

“Can I look at the time without him knowing?”

And yet, I’d been listening and responding all the time anyway.

That disappearance became more and more my usual experience until one day, maybe five years ago, I was standing in my kitchen and realised I was about to “flip over”, to let go of thought, or at least self referential thought, altogether. To be in stillness.

I can’t tell you how I knew that, it’s a language beyond words but I knew.

This is the Holy Grail of ascension spirituality.

And quickly and easily, I said NO.

I wanted to stay here with my feet on the ground.

I wanted to remain a wife and mother and somehow I knew that required a NO.

Then I found myself travelling in a completely different direction, I’ve descended into matter and I’ve fallen in love with shadow.

A friend called me Queen of the Underground (from Dead Flowers by The Rolling Stones) this week and he was accurate. Death holds no fear for me, the dark is my friend and my most profound shamanic initiation has been into the Below, to be held by Mother Earth. I knew I was home.

And yet, also this week several students separately spoke about how they experienced me as ascended, floating above, one compared me to a past teacher who was enlightened.

It was a surprise, almost an insult, and yet… I realise finally, it’s not.

If the Oak, the Rose, the Bee and the Mushroom have shown me anything it’s… both.

The Divine and the human.

I still disappear… in circle, when sitting with someone listening, in ritual and in ceremony.

And I’m still fully in the matter… in the emotions, the mud, the blood, the sweat and the tears. So many tears..

My medicine, my gift, my deepest devotion is Union.

Of course it’s both.

 
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