Landscapes of Consciousness

The story is silent until the words are spoken and witnessed

I sat with a coffee in the sun just outside Bolen Books in Victoria, BC, paging through John O’Donohue’s book, Walking in Wonder, and landed on the first line of the In Memoriam chapter about this immensely beloved man: poet, author, philosopher, priest and scholar all wrapped up in a burly bundle of Celtic wisdom and joy. John’s insight: the story is silent until the words are spoken and witnessed landed on my soul and left my eyes brimming. It was the prompt that I needed to start this story.

I had been searching in the past months trying to pinpoint a creative direction, a purpose that was “bigger than myself.” This wave of emotion told me I was back on the path. I could now tell my story of the panorama and revelations of “Landscapes of Consciousness.” I would start with my Inner Landscapes technique of using images to create a portrait of one’s deeply individual understanding of the world and the intuitive knowingness that comes with being in touch with that self-awareness.

The opening line the story is silent until the words can be spoken and witnessed concludes with until it can be touched, felt and lived. This comes very close to a favourite invitation of my husband, Courtney Milne, to his photography students: Telling your story makes who you are more tangible. This was a loud and clear reminder that the story I had to tell was not only my own, but also the echo of many voices through their Inner Landscapes sessions with me. It also completes the story of Courtney’s part in this work, which he initially envisioned in 1987 and we continued to expand together for more than 20 years, until his death in 2010.

In the years following Courtney’s passing I was drawn to try to continue some of the work we had done together using images, music and story as inspirational presentations. Taking this on became a major way for me to define and understand my own journey through grief and loss, by sharing it with others as I sought ways to reinvent my life. During that time, I was invited to write a chapter in a palliative care textbook for nurses about the vital importance and healing power of sharing our human stories – and how I did that throughout Courtney’s illness. This theme bears repeating here, again reflecting the wisdom of John O’Donohue:

I think the value of this writing is best seen through a phenomenological approach, a sharing of my ‘lived experience.’ It seems to me that phenomenology seeks to portray the unique sense of self and highly personal experiences that perhaps can only be described as the art of living. Stories create a rich visual landscape of a lived life, allowing us to share at a deeper level.

Telling a story has a bigger mythic impact—a more direct revelation of truth, which can never be fully understood through the words of the typical scientific research model. Perhaps there is no way we can truly and fully understand each other’s journeys. The hidden essence must be felt, and the conversation kept open and evolving through personal narrative. Many cultures rely on ancient myths to understand life’s deepest mysteries. The Irish call mythic storytelling “preparation by anecdote.” John O’Donohue, the Celtic philosopher/priest said that our task on this earth is to find our “relentless originality.” He suggests that no one else sees your life, feels your life, or stands on the same ground as you. No one else but you can really understand what that is like ... and our uniqueness is both a privilege, and a burden. So our stories are a way of sharing our essence.

That voice expressing our relentless originality also has another purpose. It is not only for others to hear and understand, but it must also echo in our own hearts, penetrating our facades, making us more tangible and palpable to ourselves. It is only when we hear our own voice and incorporate this fullness of self that we can start to comprehend our unique gifts and the potential for what our soul might want to create in this lifetime.

Our human consciousness is a variegated landscape ~ a dynamic landscape with splashes of experience presented to us through shifting levels of understanding that we awake to and respond to. Like the colors and textures woven into a traditional tapestry, these intimations mimic the threads that appear and disappear, under and over, foreground and background, eventually coalescing into an image recognized by the human mind and heart. How we see the world is similarly wrapped, interwoven with our attitudes, cultural expectations, belief systems and family constellations, as well as our life history and experiences. All of these reinforce our personal notions of the world. As our perceptions mold our seeing, a phenomenological framework of ‘lived experience’ emerges, providing us with our evolving sense of self -- and giving us our stories to tell.

I have always loved words and ideas. As I was writing this Preamble, I found myself pausing to ponder the trajectory of my life, and I remembered that more than forty years ago I was inspired by this commentary by Albert Camus on the transformational power of art: A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened. I had no idea that in this latter stage of my life I would be given the opportunity to wrap my word images with a panorama of physical and metaphysical images. This would never have happened if my life had not become serendipitously intertwined with Courtney’s, and out of that marriage of personal and spiritual endeavour came a gradual emergence of my own evolving sense of that relentless originality.

The journey is ongoing, as I continue to connect with my own voice in the thirteen years since Courtney’s passing. The path has also expanded from Seeing With New Eyes, to my intuitive Inner Landscapes work in Portal One, to weaving in images emerging from the unconscious world of dreams in Portal Two, and to the images from deep inner vision in Portal Three. This is a continuum of experience, building and deepening my seeing, culminating in the creation of Visual Echoes and Walls That Talk found in Grace Notes. Finally, Ripple Effects holds Visitations with the more-than-human, the Palliative Journey, the evolution of The Pool Story, the Inner Landscapes Process, my Gift of Change presentation, and other writings along the path.

This is a poetic journey. The journey requires me to step aside from my ordinary mental consciousness to see beyond the documentary world into the timeless domain of symbol and metaphor, and to open to the revelation of knowing that constantly flows through this physical world, and seeps through the porosity of unseen metaphysical realms. This journey is guided by spirit in the guise of intuition, intention, imagination, curiosity, memory, reverie, serendipity ~ and courage.

Filled in and revealed, in hindsight, with aging and a multitude of life experiences, I feel I am finally glimpsing my own core ‘inner landscape’ - that pared-down sense of self, the essence that is indeed more expanded and variegated than I could ever have anticipated.

This trek through life is really a pilgrimage, the soul-building work that is available to every human being. Over the years I have had the luxury of exploring many stunning places around the world, and have re-lived them through thousands of Courtney’s photographic images. Perhaps this image below, a testament to centuries of flash floods carving the soft sandstone in Antelope Canyon, is also a good expression of that convoluted journey through a human life.

The Navajo called these slot canyons Tse’neh’na’eh’diz’sjaa’, meaning where water paints a picture of itself. For me it is an expression of so many moments of awe resonating with the stillness of my authentic self as my heart opens in the presence of such beauty.

Good journeying ....

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