Stratas of Self and Soul | Catherine Viel

By Catherine Viel, January 7, 2024

(Golden Age of Gaia)

January 6, 2024

There was an earthquake
At Where-The-Pine-Tree-Stands.
The rocks fell;
The people had fear.
~Katherine Kennedy, The Earthquake



There are times when something enormous rearranges itself within my psyche / emotional self, and I can only observe with a detached kind of awe. That’s a new thought! There’s a different way to approach that “problem.” I wonder where this gently rumbling internal earthquake shall take me?

When I was at Chico State in the mid-1970s, I took Geology 101 for my required science class. On chilly autumn mornings, we took field trips in a rickety, jouncing yellow school bus to nearby Paradise and other areas of geographical note.

Cliffs stratified with red and golden rock, canted at unlikely angles, told the story of solid rock passing through eons of shifting tectonic plates and continuous, incremental upheaval. We on the surface feel the massive jolts when earthquakes separate the plates of the earth, but rarely notice the ongoing minutia of earth change.

I notice a similar process with my psychic self. World-changing events, or a brilliant internal epiphany, jolt as importunately as a 7.0 temblor from the San Andreas Fault. Meanwhile, meandering alongside these spectacular events, my soul and my human self amble toward an unimaginable internal-external rapprochement.

*****



I can sense the difference between my mind producing solutions-to-problems and an organically offered notion from self–soul cooperation. My dear mind, alas, fastens upon the most fearful possibility and orders me to get small, cower in a mental or literal corner, and erect barriers to keep out that which is feared.

Self dancing with soul presents likely scenarios of seamless ease to address the same situation.

I marvel at the clarity with which I’m starting to discern the mind’s fear offerings from the soul’s carefree engagement with that-which-is. It’s all a dance, and I needn’t be a wallflower when the All That Is beckons me onto that polished, well-sprung floor.

I dream of tango dancing at the Carrillo ballroom in Santa Barbara, fear an already forgotten aspect of my past, only lightness of body and spirit waiting for me in the wings.