Near the lake there are blue damselflies and behind a white arum lily plant there emerge 12 ducklings walking in a line. There is a lime hawk moth waiting there on an angelica plant. Walking through the woodland, two tawny owls are sitting in the branches of trees, another flies overhead, the sunlight coruscates through pine trees. The land lives in my pulse and heart and blood, in my sinews and muscles. A lacewing fly takes off from a branch and is prismatically illuminated in the sun. Its antennae languidly rotating and tiny wings vibrating.

What is this country called England? The Greeks called it ‘Hyperborea’ which means the ‘place beyond the North winds.’ England is part of the vast Boreal forest which extends all around the Northern part of the world. There are just a few remnants of the Boreal forest in the ancient forests of England and more in Wales and Scotland. William Blake thought we should build a new Jersusalem here with the power of our liberated desire and imagination, he said ‘bring me my arrows of desire’and spoke of the legend of Joseph of Arimithea who was said to have brought the holy grail here. Many people are moved by his poem and feel it should be the national anthem. But right now both Jerusalem and England suffer under the yoke of oppression. Both serve as battlegrounds between the oppressor and the oppressed. Where is the way out of the battlefield? Where is the way out of the nightmare of history? How can we wield our sword, engage in ‘mental fight’ as Blake suggests, but not become an oppressor ourselves but rather become a warrior who supports both sides in a conflict, who supports all of humanity?

All my life I’ve had re-occurring dreams where I go to look into a pond in my garden and it has turned into a lake filled with immense fish. Sometimes I’m standing on a cliff and Iooking down into the waters and see sun fish swimming accompanied by right whales and basking sharks. Then I see swimming beneath them even larger prehistoric fish. And then there are enormous whales miles long, vaster than any living thing in the world, numinous and frightening but also exhilarating in their immensity. I’m looking down into a place where my deep unconscious connects with the superconscious, the collective embodied mind of the earth and the cosmos. These impossible whales are immense and ancient Gods, their intelligence, age and dreaming capacity vaster by many orders of magnitude than human age or intelligence. Down there in the bottomless deep, speaking a sonorous azure language, in the sea of souls, the numinous Gods swim through the waters of the collective dreaming

Stepping down from perfectionism to just being ‘good enough’ may mean entering the world of community, intimacy and abundance. Stepping down from looking for approval, from aloneness and perfectionism may mean entering a world of belonging, solidarity, mutual empowerment, sharing resources and synergizing with others. Steeping down from spiritual aloofness may mean entering a world of sensory grounded embodiment.

In this place of imperfection and being good enough, we don’t have to obsessively focus over tiny details, but can look at the big picture. In this place of imperfection conflict and trouble is possible and it is welcome, not to be feared. In this place of imperfection vulnerability and love are possible.

Stepping down from false transcendence to a place of imperfection we can be with the earth, we can be with the body. We can be vulnerable, we can feel our own and others emotions, our sensations, our energies and tenderly hold what we feel. Here in the embodied imperfection world we can vulnerably and courageously ask for what we need.

Here in the embodiment imperfection world play is possible, shameless, wild and caring sexual expression, soaring joy, magic, adventure, and the celebration body can be present. Genuine grief, anger, frustration and regret are welcome here. You don’t have to fix yourself or fix the world in the imperfection world, you just need to sense deeply and listen. Instead of thinking there’s something wrong with you, listen to what you need to feed in yourself, in community, in life and in the earth that feeds you and your community.

Here, in the embodied world we are blessedly limited, blessedly fragile, blessedly vulnerable and are thus free to embody and live now our unlimited dreams. Here, instead of a desperate struggle for others approval, we can experience our deep community belonging and intersubjective connection with all life. Here we let go of the small control based self and allow a larger force of nature to move through us, to dance through us.

That thing that sets your heart on fire, that thing which seems like to be around it would be so heart opening that you don’t know if you could even survive it, do that thing first. Don’t delay, its not too late. Do that thing, be with those people, learn that learning, listen to those words, be that being. Don’t wait twenty years. Do it now. Don’t stay in abstract eternity, choose intimacy with your greatest loves instead. That teaching which you feel you would have to die, be annihilated and be a different greater person if you were to be around it, be around that, listen to that. Die and be annihilated by it. That gift that you burn to give, let it come through you, give it to the world, offer it, let it pour through your heart into the people with a uproarious generosity. Those words which enflame you with the feeling of the greatest homecoming and return and soaring adventure with no safety net into the unknown, listen to them now and speak them, as if you are God or Goddess speaking the universe into existence. Those people that touch your heart with joy, with immensity, that remind you your grief and love are one, that make peace and passion one, that make your bodyspirit soar and your spiritbody shake, be with those people.

Do you really want to overcome your fears and problems? Do we really need to overcome everything? Another approach is finding the medicine, powers, unusual opportunities, and even ecstasy hidden within the problems and fears. Within the deep sense feeling, embodied emotions, movements, postures and relationships patterns associated with fears and problems can be found enormous powers, potentialities and ways to freedom.

Do we really want to completely overcome the possibility of failure? We are courageous when we totally face the realistic prospect of failure and that things can be lost. We become courageous because of our vulnerability and our ability to hold and feel in an embodied way both our everyday fears and the deeper alchemical energies behind our fear.

Do we really want to get away from making mistakes completely? It is partly through our mistakes and regrets, when we really hold and process them, that we really learn who we are; through our mistakes we learn the contours of our deepest being, the shape of our embodied soul, the way to our calling.

Do we really want to get rid of our grief? Our grief connects us with life. It is a necessary honouring of who we are and of life. When we fully feel it, and let ourselves be ravished by it, however painful it is, it won’t kill us, but it reminds us of what is of value, of who and what we love. Through the gap of grief a river of our love and our beautiful offerings can come into the world

Do we really want to be perfectly beautiful? Perhaps it is your strangeness, your unique diversity which generates your beauty and allows you to give your particular magnificent gifts. Your imperfection is perhaps a essential part of your wild beauty.

Do we really want to be perfect? It is our vulnerability and our imperfection which allows us to connect, which brings us together, which creates solidarity and sometimes creates intimacy. What would it be to give up perfection and choose intimacy and community instead?

Do we really want to get rid of decay and the inevitable falling apart of everything? When we deny decay and death as a culture, we come to fear it excessively and build enormous fortresses, vast psychological defence systems, colonial apparatus, even entire military systems to defend ourselves against it.

I’m told that in many traditional cultures, and I’ve also seen in modern ecovillages, it is the fact that your roof is made of straw or wood and falling apart which brings the village together to rebuild it. It is the decay and inevitable falling apart of everything which allows this deep sharing and community to appear. We come together as communities because we are fragile and imperfect.

Perhaps we don’t become whole, we are always whole, we are born whole and never lose it. Perhaps we are both always whole and also always incomplete. We don’t ever ‘become complete.’ In a way the journey of life is not to move from incompleteness to completeness but to learn to keep the gap of incompleteness open.

Our incompleteness is also our connection, our openness to life. Only a incomplete being can be open and be capable of love. Incompleteness is in some way higher, more holy, than completeness. Perhaps imperfection is in some mysterious way higher, more holy, than perfection.

What is the nature of addiction? Addiction happens when we substitute a superficial low grade or low quality incomplete unsatisfying experience for a higher quality or deeper, more profound and satisfying experience. Although addiction almost always has some kind of harmful effect on our lives the addiction is in its essence an attempt to reach a deeper experience which, however, always falls short of its goal. Addiction is a partially experienced experience. This is why we feel compelled to continuously repeat the superficial experience. In a sense our addiction is a message for us, it is trying to draw our attention to some disavowed part of our personality that we need to pay attention too.

We need some new earth based language to free our tongues and allow us to give voice to mountains, to Oak trees, to rivers and to the dead. How can we speak of this magic that touches our heart wordlessly, that grips our entire being like gravity, that is our being? The earth is a living organism, constantly changing, you have to be quick to catch it. Language has to become wild and play like flames in a fire to speak of it

It would be hubristic to try to capture the entire tapestry with language. It can’t be pinned down and attempts to break it into pieces are futile. But words can court and guard the flame ignited by tiny fleeting radiant moments of life which are part of a larger story and a larger dreaming.

Our human language was originally influenced by the language of birds and other animals according to David Abram. For Indigenous people every animal and every plant were intimately connected to the human community by a vast network of myths and stories which ran like an unbroken thread through the human culture, through the forests and rivers, through the dreamworld and into the cosmos.

The earth is not insulted by human language, it is only frightened of human language when it has become overly disembodied and dissociated and depends too much on analysis and separation. The earth wants to hear our magnificent poetry. The earth enjoys hearing itself reflected and magnified by human beings. When humans begin to give voice to the Goshawk or the Elder tree it is a sign that they are beginning to remember that their destiny is intimately entwined with these other beings. Every time a human being gives voice to mountains and rivers the machine momentarily grinds to a halt and the foundations of the empire crumble a little bit more. The earth is relieved to hear our poetry because poetry is a negentropic force, a force against destruction and the earth is aware of that.

What is the relationship between the manipulator or controller and the trickster? In a sense they are opposites. The trickster’s cunning, wildness and creativity ultimately liberate us whilst the manipulator’ controlling nature curses, limits or coerces us. The manipulator or oppressor sees things from one narrow perspective, whilst the trickster sees things from multiple perspectives, and may even help us to step momentarily into the opposite of our usual perspective. The manipulator sets a series of impossible extrinsic superegoic standards for us to live up to, whilst the trickster shows us the way to break free from these standards and to find our own values and power.