How to Re-enchant our Lives
I read an article today about ‘enchantment’ and asked myself: can I actually remember the last time I was enchanted? Fortunately, I can. I was enchanted by the penguins in Antarctica; in fact I was enchanted by Antarctica – full stop. The sheer delight of being in this vast, white, quiet landscape with its bizarre, unreal formations of different coloured ice, its ever changing light and its charming inhabitants is still as vivid in my memory as if I had experienced it yesterday. The idea of being ‘without a personal history’ took on a new meaning. In fact, the idea of ‘just being’ suddenly became very tangible. With nothing around, except ice and snow, untouched by human activities and structures, one slides into a meditative space, effortlessly and naturally. The sensory perception expands, although there is not much going on - or may be because there isn’t much going on -and a deep sense of being connected to what is around us develops dramatically.
When reflecting upon this subject, I wondered if we are condemned to live in a less and less enchanting world. Have science with its focus on the material and analytical, capitalism with its focus on turning us into mindless consumers of more and more non-essential goods and orthodox religions with their dissociated dogmas all contributed to create a world that has lost its wonders? Have the pressures at work, the daily drivel in our mass media, the huge amount of information we have to digest and the constant bombardments with images, colours, noise and light taken its toll, left us no choice other than to dull our senses.
Overall, the answer to my question was ‘yes’. After searching through my memories and reflecting upon the stories I hear from clients and looking at the experiences of participants in my groups and workshops I came to the conclusion that we need to re-enchant ourselves and the world. Enchantment has something to do with our Souls. It nourishes them. It has something to do with experiencing that sense of wonder, that excitement and ‘connected being’ that eludes us more often than not in daily life.
Here are a few ideas about bringing more enchantment to our daily lives:
- Re-connect with nature as often as possible.
- Retreat from the sensory input of our surrounding on a regular basis and be still.
- Let our bodies vibrate – we need to dance, sing, make music, surf the waves, run along a beach, climb a mountain.
- Creating instead of consuming
- Be surrounded by beauty rather than by ‘stuff’
- Get away from the tv and be with people
- Create ceremonies in our lives
- Connect with ‘the sacred'
© Copyright 2010 - 2011
Christa Mackinnon
Christa Mackinnon
2 comments:
The enchantment is around us but often drowned out by the storm of life. The storm can be important in helping us learn to fly but it is in our minds not in reality. Paulo Cuelho shows how , in his book The Pilgrimage, we can learn to walk for half an hour each day at half the speed we normally walk, and just look at what is going on around us. I once drove my car along a familiar route at 30mph instead of 40+ and what I noticed was written on the roads and bends the words 'SLOW DOWN', a lesson to take on in life as general.
In walking the Camino de Santiago I found Maslows hierarchy of needs ringing true. The important things in life were food, and shelter....., career, posessions, relationships in that case became unimportant, yet spirituality, became closer as these factors faded away. Enchantment, enlightenment are readily accessible.See the flowers and the wildlife around us, dont focus on the road dissapearing into the distance.
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