In the birth canal
I’ve been in the birth canal for a long time. I’m committed and there’s no going back. All escape routes have disappeared. I’m working hard to move forward but progress feels slow and laboured. It can feel lonely in here and claustrophobic. I know there will be light at the end of the tunnel but I can’t see it yet. There’s no end in sight.
During the COVID pandemic and lockdown, I created and ran a programme called Sitting with Death and Choosing Life. When I met with my groups we seemed to be trudging through thick sticky mud. Something was dying and we felt uprooted and disoriented. All we could do was wait for the death to run its course. This death was both very personal and yet went beyond any individual’s experience. We sought refuge in our common plight and, by making the effort to find words to share our inner worlds, we kindled fire to keep us warm. When we parted, we each took a burning log from the fire with us, and when we breathed on our log, sparks danced against the dark sky.
Some people say our civilisation is dying, others say we are at the beginning of a new stage of consciousness from which will arise a new era of life on Earth. Some are witnessing the undignified death throes of the patriarchy as a surreal and horrifying drama plays out. Others are being slaughtered or clambering into small boats heavy with desperation and the belief there’s something better somewhere, if only they can find it before they drown.
These are difficult times. There have been harrowing times before. Just look back a little in history and it’s all written there. I read a story last week about people living in France under the occupation of the Nazis. The cruelty and barbarism humans can sink to is balanced only by the courage to love and care and take action in defiance of the danger. Every small act of love counts.
Spiritual emergency
In the 1980’s, when I had barely begun to understand the process of soul awakening I came across a book by Stanislav Grof called Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis. His words sprang off the page, jumped straight into my heart and exploded there in a shower of gratitude. I had been struggling with an inner process I didnt understand, now I felt seen and no longer alone.
I go to my bookshelf now to find that book, it suddenly feels important to hold it again. But I’ve moved house and country so many times I fear it is one of many small losses, a treasure left behind in some other land. Even so, though its impact can never be erased.
From thousands of hours of clinical research using LSD with many hundreds of people, Grof constructed a map of how the psyche evolves slowly over centuries and over a single lifetime, based around the stages of the birthing process.
In the first stage, there is an idyllic state of oneness and expansiveness, where all needs are effortlessly met. This is the state of original bliss, oneness, wholeness. In the second stage, the growing foetus comes up against the limits of the womb. The cervix hasn’t yet opened and there is no way out. This stage is often characterised by the Dark Night of the Soul, an immersion in human suffering and a call to deep healing. In stage three, we move into the birthing process.
Charles Eisenstein describes it thus:
“A fetus grows; the womb is finite. The limits of growth trigger a birth crisis. Unbearable though it is, Stage Two is a necessary part of any birth process. If the status quo did not become intolerable, there would be nothing to impel change—birth into a new state of being—and we would turn away uncomprehending from the light when it finally presented itself. That is what happens in Stage Three—a way out is finally glimpsed… the enormous pressures on the fetus are revealed to have a purpose, a direction as the cervix opens and a light shines through, promising a new world.”
At this stage, we can resist the birthing process and try to climb back into the womb. When new possibilities present we prefer the discomfort of our familiar comfort zone to the risk of steppig into the new and unknown.
“We crawl back in, but the next contraction is even stronger. Some people go back and forth until their status quo becomes truly intolerable… Eventually the womb of the old situation becomes a living hell and it is impossible to go back. Forces beyond our conscious control take over, and we are born into the new world” of stage four.
“Birth is a journey that starts with blissful oneness, proceeds through an increasingly unbearable confinement, climaxes in a heroic struggle, and ends with a return to the one, but at a new level of being.”
The challenge of living through the stages of birth
You may recognise these stages from your own experience. They don’t necessarily come in linear order but live inside us and recycle over and over, appearing and disappearing like dream fragments. Our planetary meta-crisis is a death and a birth, it’s the archetypal myth in which we all exist, part of a bigger cosmic drama. And it’s a truly heroic journey that challenges us to the core and calls out all our strength, resilience, love and genius.
You may relate to the experience of the expansion and contraction of consciousness. For me this has often been a daily swing – one day I’m expanded, inspired and outgoing, the next I’m contracted, withdrawn, introspective. All of this is going on as we go about the business of living – doing our work, taking care of our families, keeping a home, tending the garden.
The question I’ve been asking through my work at Tribe in Transition is how can we support ourselves and each other through this very demanding process? I’ve identified, and put into practice, five forms of support and I’ll share these with you next time.
“The tides of separation and reunion repeat on all levels, individual and collective, and in many dimensions of life, taking us back again and again to wholeness, not as a circling back but as a spiraling, each reunion at a higher level of wisdom, consciousness, complexity, and integration.” Charles Eisenstein.
The quotations from Charles Eisenstein are from his book, The Ascent of Humanity, https://charleseisenstein.org/books/the-ascent-of-humanity/eng/the-perinatal-matrix/
Stan Grof’s book, Spiritual Emergency, When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis, is published by Tarcher-Putnam, 1989.
Rose Diamond, July 16 2024
