Association of Nature and Forest Therapy (ANFT)

Letters to an Unknown Guide – Letter 3: The Hollow Bone

“I readily admit that I have such a great respect for what happens in the human soul that I would be afraid of disturbing and distorting the silent operation of nature by clumsy interference.” 

Carl Jung 

 

Dear Unknown Guide: 

In a cave in Slovenia, near the village of Cerkno, was discovered the earliest known human made instrument. It is a section of hollow bone from the femur of a Cave Bear. About 5 inches long, this flute is 43,000 years old, and was used by the Neanderthal people. The bone is curiously notched at each end. There are two holes in one side, with evidence of a third (and possibly fourth) hole where the bone was broken or worn away.  

As with all flutes, the passage of breath produces the sound. These sounds can be formed into notes. Sequences of notes become melodic phrases. Phrases form the elements of song. Perhaps the creator of this inspired invention played along to the beat of a drum, or struck sticks against stone.  Or rattles were in the mix. Almost certainly voices were added. These melodies bound together families, maybe small tribes who found in the ceremony of music making some relief from the challenges of the long days and longer winter nights. Eventually, perhaps over centuries or even millennia, music evolved from flutes such as this. Evolved as breath was poured through the hollow bones crafted by many peoples. 

Dear Unknown Guide, I invite you to consider the hollow bone as a symbol of your way. Guiding is a ceremony through which each pilgrim may discover the music of their heart. There are an Infinity of songs to be lived. As a guide, it is not your business to compare or to express the songs of pilgrims. But if you are a hollow bone, the ceremony of guiding invites each to send their breath into the ceremony. Through the ceremony the music of each may, note by note, be discovered. 

Breath is a sacred thing. We breathe in. We breathe out. The atmosphere of our singularly beautiful planet enters us. We reciprocate as we exhale the products of our body’s livingness. Ceremony is itself a kind of breathing. It is contained. It is cyclical, it receives, it gives. In so doing, it affirms and supports life. It supports the sacred art of living. And living is a process of becoming, continually changing, up to and even beyond the threshold of death. 

This becoming is what drives me and other pilgrims on our unending journeys. We instinctively know that we are born into this world with a purpose. It may be a dream of the earth that has brought us into being. It may be a Commission from heaven. It may be both. What we seek is discovery of our purpose, knowing that when we embody it, our lives will be medicine, healing influences with powers to uphold the ongoing becoming of humanity and of the Earth itself. Thus, our brief lives find meaning in the long, inconceivably long evolution of the earth and all its beings, which together are a manifestation and a revelation of the Source, of the creator, of God. 

Dear guide, my pilgrimage aims at embodiment of my life as a spark of the fire of creation. It is my unique spark which I bring. Unlike anyone else’s, is it is my medicine, my spark, given me and me only as a divine commission and as a dreaming of the earth. And if many pilgrims can achieve the goal of bringing forth their own spark, every medicine that is needed now for our immediate time in history and for the continued becoming of our planet and all its species will be present. 

My unknown friend, you are needed now. You are needed in the fullness of your medicine. The special task of guides Is a particular form of education, one unfettered by standardized, preconceived outcomes. For none of us knows the aim of the becoming of another. As a guide you can support the process of becoming of others and of the World. You can bear witness to the early awakenings, the tender seedlings and in doing so, you can bestow the precious gift of “yes.” 

May your “yes” be unconstrained by politics, of psychological theories, by religious dogma or spiritual posturing. May it be simply a note from the hollow bone, a part of the song of the community of becoming.

A Pilgrim 

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