The smell of a raven feather changed my life

Dreams involving dark and mysterious forests. Have you had one? Twenty years ago I had a string of potent dreams beckoning me into a bewitching forest. It heralded the beginning of an initiatory stage. When I hear these kind of dreams, I find it often signals the dreamer to tend more closely to their deep inner self, their unconventional wild authenticity. It can symbolise untapped potential, and untamed parts of themselves. 

One such story I’ve been tracking circled back around this week. My friend and co-conspirator on the Nature Based Leadership Training Sieta shared a dream with me a little over a year ago. In the dream she is following a small dirt road away from the village and towards the forest. A raven, a bird she had a connection to already, was flying towards the forest, as if accompanying her. When she got to the edge of the forest, the ravens were waaa-waaaing and then started throwing stones down on her, as if urging her into the forest. She didn’t though. Not in the dream. Caught between the path to the village, and the path into the unfamiliar. 

Image by max roux

The dream shook Sieta up. What was she being asked to leave? And what does entering into the forest look like in her waking life? Sieta is a long term devotee of a mystical Sufi tradition. At the retreat last year she relayed the dream to her teacher and asked that question to which he responded, “Well you can’t get to the forest with your mind, only the heart will take you there.” Sieta was frustrated. She knew that was true intellectually, but how? 

While wandering on wild land on the retreat, Sieta found a raven feather and brought it to her nose. The smell almost made her stumble. It was so evocative, like nothing else she had ever smelled. In that moment she felt the real aliveness of Raven, not as a concept or image but an animate force. With her nose to the feather she felt like raven was at her throat and chest, and the thought was ‘Raven is closer to me than the jugular vein.’ Just like the Sufis say, that ‘God is closer than the jugular vein.’ Raven was appearing in Sieta’s dayworld, close as the vein that is lifeblood, connecting directly to the heart. 

Sieta asked everyone she knew but no-one else had ever smelt a raven feather. With the finding of the feather, the dream symbol had crossed from the imaginal realm into the day world. Sieta felt something shift internally, as her deeply wild nature connection experiences married with her mystical heart based Sufi practice, a distinction she had long grappled with. 

She was deep on the scent trail. 

image by max roux

After the retreat, Sieta had a near miss in a car accident. Death flashed before her. Life entered turbulent waters. On the next annual retreat, Sieta was injured and couldn’t wander like she usually does in wild places, instead wrapping herself up in a nest of a room at the top of the retreat centre, diving deeply into her meditation practice. In a moment of grace while meditating, Sieta had an experience of immense love for herself, and the world, unlike anything she had ever felt. Back home, her daily life was now accompanied by this sense of constant love. 

The search that Raven sent her on, for the heart in the forest, had come to fruition. Her deep love of wild earth, and her heart meditation, were now one. The smell of raven is now part of the texture and landscape of the inner forest that she has entered into and is living within. And now the practice is continuing to walk with awareness in this forest of the heart. 

image by max roux

What is the smell and texture of your inner world at the moment? As we enter into Samhain, the Celtic sabbat that welcomes in the dark, perhaps it is a good time to tend to your own inner forest, the strange and beautiful world inside you.

I have recently set our current Nature Based Leadership Training cohort a challenge that over the next month we spend 3 hours a week in our Sit Areas, in a way, tending to our own inner forest through practices of deep nature connection. Maybe you could join us with a similar commitment?

This might also help: our annual Wild Threshold Crossing: A 48-hour solo fast in November is now open for registrations, for those yearning for solo contemplation time in nature. 

A few places have opened up for our Wild Belonging day workshop, now Saturday May 9th. And another day-long experience in rewilding and nature connection has just been announced for Spring.

Wildly, 

Claire 

P.S Earth Time is now open for bookings for the winter term. These nine-week programs offer consistent practice for those committed to tending to their connection to the natural world. This term we are running two courses:  'The Lost Art of Being Human' and 'Bird Language and Expanded Awareness'. Early Bird closes May 3rd.