Circle of Life / November 2010
Translated from Russian Read the original →
“Circle of Life” took place in Crimea at the end of November 2010.
It was powerful and deep, bold for many, and fruitful for everyone – both participants and leaders.
18.11.2010. Some, not all, set off over the threshold of adventure…
They changed their names to more relevant ones – real ones, for the immersion into the mystery…
A place of power – Cape Eski-Kermen, a cave city, a Crimean necropolis.
Radical practices – death and rebirth in the four elements and in people, “4+1”. We died and were born in fire, earth, air, water and … human bodies.
It is like the path of a fairy-tale hero, who takes up his weapons: decision, courage, knowledge of his path. And sets off – to meet his shadow: resistance, fear, the abyss. And he must pass through Fire, Water and Brass Trumpets – and certainly no less.
Especially imprinted on many, as bright points of no return:
• Crossing a bridge of burning coals into the other world
• A leap into the abyss: 20 metres of free soaring
• Birth in human bodies…
The fire blazed up, willingly and brightly. It called us to jump over it… It taught us to rise up in thoughts, feelings and movement.
The sounds of people and the drum woke the body – freed it, and took the forest, the mountains, the sky and the river as allies. And when the emptiness came, the heroes walked over the coals as if along the Milky Way, into a circle of silence, to learn from the stillness and return renewed…
The cave city surprised us with its silence and warmth. The absence of wind and of temperature swings was like a metaphor: as within, so without. A cosy evening sky under a blanket of soft clouds created the effect of a hall and stage scenery on the theme of the cave cities of White Crimea. Crimea loves us. A milky mist came in the morning, mingled with streaming sunbeams, and brought with it the neophytes, each in their own hour, reborn by the earth, with the faces of enlightened masters. If only we could keep this state… Whole, silent and strong. Truly people.
The sky as support.
The sky as support?
It is trust that is the support. Trust in your worldview – in the world, in life, in people and in “the great rightness of the events of your life”
Two caves took upon themselves the responsibility of stopping the fall. There had probably never been such a rapid change of emotions on the participants’ faces :) Here, without a doubt, a person’s whole life rushed past. All their values and all that mattered to them. And people let go, let go, let go…
They let go in different ways, some with triumph, with words, with a shout, and some in silence…
And they jumped into their new future, the one that calls, for the sake of which dying is no pity…
Fresh icy water greeted us at “the Lake of Youth”, where the water birth took place. Two pools joined by a narrow strait, the “birth canal”. All the attributes of birth happened here: the funnel, the umbilical cord, the carrying current and the accompanying archetypes: Charon, Isis and Zhiva…
A sauna in the mountains.
Beautiful in their nakedness. Ready to die and be born, open to the new, looking boldly into their future,
We were delighted by the rarest natural phenomenon, a lunar halo; nobody in the group had seen one before – something new in life is a good sign. A good sign at the birth of anyone or anything is a very good sign!
So nature celebrated with the people the fifth birth in people that closed the seminar…
Free, self-sufficient, whole people – people of the new time – that is what this journey into White Crimea was about.
Participants’ reviews:
Yatskha:
This was the most self-directed training. In a whole series of practices, people built their own process by themselves. They listened to their intuition, listened to their impulses, created their own rituals. That makes me very grown-up and responsible. Not even a month has passed, and a completely different life is beginning for me, a different job, a different circle. Something I left behind there, over the line. A heavy piece fell away and I feel free. I am interested, I want to go on living.
