The Great Round: From emptiness to re-memberment

Chihuly Garden and Glass, Seattle

This week I’ve come back to the question: why The Great Round? I write on the front page that “The Great Round is the quiet space that calls to us, the emptiness from which all things flow.” 

It is. And it’s so much more.

It’s the feminine, the dark, the nothing that births the everything, the creative source. It’s home. It’s where we go in meditation, in sleep, in death. It’s where we start and where we return. It’s the formless energy that births form and receives us back again when form falls away. It’s the mystery.

---

When I begun studying shamanism, I had no idea my worldview would be turned upside down so many times. All my ideas and beliefs about how I thought the world worked were totally off and I found myself coming back to one ‘truth’ alone: I don’t know. Anything.

A very humbling place to be, stripped of ideas, beliefs and identities that once made up my world. Sitting in the emptiness, I watched what felt so tangible and real wash away like sand by a wave. Impermanence.

Sometimes in order to re-member who we are, we are dis-membered of who/what we are not. Dis-memberment, emptiness, re-memberment – so the cycle goes.

A few of my lessons in the last year:

• Dismemberment/rememberment is not a single event or a linear process; it is a spiral of dismembering, remembering, then dismembering some more so the next expression of re-membering can happen. 
  
• Self-compassion, surrender and trust are key. Being dis-membered is uncomfortable. Resisting it is much more uncomfortable. I learned this the (much more) uncomfortable way. 
  
• Find comfort in the emptiness, in the not-knowing, in the mystery. We can easily rush through the emptiness and in doing so we lose a wonderful opportunity. The emptiness is pregnant with possibility and where all the juice is. It is from here that re-membering wants to happen. 
  
• Finally, call forth the re-membering, when ready. Set your intention to re-member yourself. This step can be forgotten, especially when the dis-memberment was not consciously requested and we find ourselves swimming in the dismemberment. Re-membering is an integral part of the process. 
  

I envision The Great Round as a fluid container for all of this, a place to come home to ourselves, wherever we are in the process. A place of healing, respite and infinite potential. 

May we all find our way home to the quiet space in our heart.