Enter the Pathless Woods

Hello from the Wildwood,

Dear Friend,

Four years ago, I was in a Temazcal(sweatlodge) ceremony in Teopisca, Mexico and I had a vision about my future. I closed my eyes and saw myself walking down Highway 93 South, a beautiful B.C. mountain highway that I travelled as a child and as an adult. As I walked south down the highway, the highway behind me churned up into an impassable rumble. It was a clear sign that there was no going back to where I had come from. I kept walking and entered a pathless woods. With each step I took, I created my trail. Raven flew above, and I was given the message that the path would be created with each creative endeavor that I embarked on. 

Since then, I moved back to Canada and have spent the last three years figuratively and literally walking the pathless woods, creating my own trail. At times, I find that it leads to a bounty of wild berries and other times to a hungry belly. I have found other kin within the forest, both physical and mystical and have shared in meaningful stories and teachings. There have been night missions where I have been eclipsed by my own darkness and sunrises that have enlivened every cell of my body in sacred ecstasy. There also have been occasions where my path connects to another trail or road and I have taken solace in the ease of travel for a time. However, I always find that I miss the smell of the earth, and I enter the woods once again. Through each heartache and misstep, I have become more resilient and intuitive. With each fear faced, I have felt a truer connection and deeper love towards myself and others.

There have been times when I have felt tired from creating my own path because it requires listening and acting upon the voice that comes from within, and this can feel terrifying. There is no more blaming others when things don’t work out, and now needing to take full accountability for every decision I make. I don’t know about you, but for decades, I felt like I couldn’t trust this voice or myself, so I outsourced my decision-making to other people. In some ways, I just felt that I shuffled myself into the traffic and kept going. As I went along, I felt like everyone else received the driving manual on how to “do life” and thought I somehow missed it. It was this feeling that people came equipped with these instructions of what to do and I didn’t know how to fit into the systems and use the machines that existed. However, I realise now that many of us feel this way and have for generations.

When I think about our journeys in this human experience, I think about how we have been told that there are roads and paths that we should travel on. These routes are often well-travelled and paved in asphalt, so we take them as legitimate. Someone, probably some man at some point, built these roads and said, “THIS SHALL BE THE ROAD FORWARD, AND WE SHALL TRAVEL IT”! And so we did for generations. These roads often came equipped with lanes that are specifically made for some, whilst others are not able to travel them. 

To bring this concept from the metaphorical into the literal, these roads that we are encouraged to travel lead us to university or college, to find a stable job, partner and possibly start a family. The majority of us have travelled these roads, and they have served us to varying degrees at different points in our lives. There is nothing wrong with these roads unless deep in your heart you know you are no longer meant to be travelling on them permanently. 

It is so terrifying to step off these roads because we have inherited beliefs from the collective unconscious that it is too risky, not safe and even selfish to do so. The father who hates his job and has a dream feels like it is “too risky and selfish” as he is the breadwinner and needs to support his family. The singer-songwriter who dreams of recording her soul music doesn’t because she is told it is “too out there and not the safe route!” The woman who wants to take up pottery classes doesn’t because “they probably aren’t going to lead to anything productive”. We tell ourselves and are told a thousand reasons why we should not enter the pathless woods. What we have to offer is too different, or to the contrary has already been done before. We tell ourselves that it is a waste of time, not productive or silly. We say the market shows that it’s not a good time to start a business or buy a home. We refrain because we simply DON’T KNOW what will happen when we enter the pathless woods.

I can tell you what happens when we collectively don’t. We dim our light and become bitter, depressed and envious. Our unhappiness ripples out to our families, and we continue creating superhighways. The future for our children is not one made of our dreams and our own crafting but one that feels imposed upon us by inequitable and powerful sources and systems. Each time I have denied my dreams and settled for the seemingly easier option, doors have closed, both within my heart and in the outside world. I hold onto this idea that other souls are longing to experience what we long to create. When we take the brave steps, a sacred dance happens where the universe pairs our souls up in a sacred partnership. We are waiting for the father to follow his dream! The audience is waiting to hear the singer-songwriter’s soul music to heal something within them! The pottery teacher is waiting for the souls to come to experience her unique classes!

I feel like I am beginning to remember something that I have long forgotten. This knowing doesn’t come from a manual but from a deep remembering that lives within the cells of my body and is being awakened from my time in the woods. I am remembering that it is through acting upon our dreams that we can live in balance with the rest of the life on this planet. When we follow the beat of our hearts and the pulse of our longing, we create something that not only nourishes our souls but the souls of our families and communities as well. When we step into the pathless woods, we become braver, envlivened and more optomistic. We ignite the life force within us and inspire each other to do the same.

Do you see? We need each other to act upon our dreams so that we can live the world we collectively once dreamed of!

The pathless woods is not a guaranteed safe place and we are not guaranteed immediate success by entering. What we are guaranteed is walking and living our own unique sacred path. The joy in walking the pathless woods is that it is a journey of our dreaming and crafting. When we do so, we create a tapestry of sacred trails for others to follow and adventure upon for a time. We enter back into a relationship with the earth and learn to listen to her rhythms and our own. We learn to trust our intuition and the unseen forces that are guiding us. The best part is that we become who we were always meant to be and find the ones we were always meant to journey with.  In short, we find belonging within and without.

We are never meant to travel alone in pathless woods for too long, but it is us and only us that can heed the call to enter in the first place.

For your soul and the soul of the world, put one foot in and then the other into the pathless woods.

I Love You and Your Dreams,
Laurel
(Translator of the Earth)