I worked a 14 hour day yesterday and got home at 11:00pm, tired, aggravated, and with my mind racing on all the work input from the day. I usually just leave work behind as soon as I get in my car for the ride home at 5:00. Yesterday was too much stimulation. I didn’t manage to show up at home with all of myself present. My wife immediately noticed. It took me some time to show up which tells me I need to revisit some dedicated practices.
What is required to really show up? To be fully present? How can we make the shift?
I have two tools that I use. One is to meditate on rooting into the Earth, finding my mud roots as my teacher Bobcat would say. This is the beginning of being able to craft honourable relationship to the spirits of place. The second it to find my blood roots, finding my connection to my ancestors. The mud roots connect to the place. The blood roots connect us to the moment. This all takes some time. But with practice the time is shortened. And with a lot of practice, it becomes just a way of being.
What is a challenge is when we don’t seem to have the time to stop and find these connections. It is when we are in a perpetual state of being ungrounded that we need to seriously consider making changes in our way of being. I don’t like it when I suddenly wake up and realize just how unconscious a period of time has been. I never fully arrived. I don’t remember much about the day. I may eat a sandwich without really tasting it fully, or honouring the sacrifice that has become my spaghetti. Or when I find myself half-listening to a phone call or someone in my cube talking to me, and then consciousness shifts and I am alarmed by my lack of presence. Whenever life ceases to be utterly remarkable to us, we are in trouble. We have to arrive and show up fully or life will never be fulfilling.
If we aren’t fully present are we behaving in an honourable manner? Are we being respectful to the people and souls around us?
This simple ideal of being fully present is at the very core of the Druidry I practice and teach. Without presence there is no honour.
The Animist Druid 