Rooted in the Underworld
To be grounded.
To have purchase under our feet.
Steadied. Stable.
To do any of the above, one must learn to become rooted in one's underworld.
But what does this mean?
It means to become familiar with things that go bump in the night. More specifically: things that go bump in the dark corners of our psyche.
I grew up on an apple orchard.
As a child, I would play outside all day long. The sun, the earth, the sky became my friends. I watched the orchard flower in spring and bury my face into boughs of blossoms, taking in the voluptuous scent as bees hovered, my feet muddied. Fruiting time meant small musket balls too sour to eat, then watching them weigh down branches as they gained weight and sweetness. Fall was crisping leaves, browning fruit, dropping into the muck of earth and inviting circles of spinning insects. Winter. Cold. White. Ice. Trees that appeared dead. No leaves, no blossoms, no fruit. Just lanky limbs the color of pewter.
All along, the earth was sustaining the trees, nourishing them. I understood that the life force remained, because it was fed from below.
It took me decades to understand that this also applied to humans.
Where do we go when everything appears dead? Where do we get nourishment, find safety? When we find ourselves in a barren place, no hope or inspiration, we often panic. We have run dry. Where will we find the means to feel secure, to create again? We feel lost, sapped. But we have a source.
Jung said: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."
As the earth feeds the orchard, the underworld of our psyche feeds our soul. You never know what you will find as you dig down into the earth: sometimes decay, sometimes diamonds. Same with the psyche, there are many things down there, some of them have been stored since childhood. When life throws us into a crisis, it is possible to stumble into this seemingly dark canyon by accident. But can we actually choose to descend? It feels scary, intimidating. What if we were to imagine it as a womb? A cave? A cauldron that protects and nurtures all of life's processes, of birth, of death and of regeneration? Could we then become less afraid and more familiar with it?
Whatever we decide, the underworld, like the soil of the earth, will continue to incubate all things. Can we become curious enough to look at what is stored there in the shadows? In our search for rootedness, will we find the thing that seemed threatening is actually treasure in disguise?
Can we develop the ability to see in the dark?
