The Philosophy of Earthwalking
Personal Practices for Everyday Life
I feel very strongly that one’s daily life should reflect one’s spiritual beliefs and conversely, that one’s spiritual practices should raise mundane ordinary actions to the level of sacred. Many people on their spiritual path become distracted, and focus less on actual real live every-day actions, and instead fall into the trap of semantic debate over authenticity and definitions. On the other hand, many others become so deeply immersed in their busy every-day lives, that thoughts and actions of a more spiritual nature are deemed too time consuming or irrelevant. I seek to demonstrate to you how the two can be successfully and meaningfully brought together.
Of course, knowledge is important. Knowledge and intellect equip us for the mental and higher challenges we are faced with every day and in every generation. At the same time, it should be obvious that a head full of knowledge is no use if one doesn’t actually do something with it. This is how we come to personal practice, but such personal practice goes much further than attending a religious place of worship, saying a morning prayer, tending a personal alter, or ritually celebrating the seasonal festivals. Just like authenticity and definitions, these practices are very important. They help us to consciously align ourselves with the life force within and around us, in whatever form you wish to call it. But it should go deeper too.
By personal practice, I mean putting your person into practice everyday, every moment. How you do that is of course up to you. That’s what makes it so ‘personal’. The whole point of any practice is to start putting your potential into practice everyday, every moment, to consciously create and focus your attention on that which you wish to cultivate in your person and on your path. It means getting your priorities straight, it means walking your talk, and as the Quakers say, ‘letting your life speak’. Otherwise your path will be meaningless. It will simply devolve into tenets of belief or a rigid form of religious rites. But you will never come through it actually knowing yourself any better or really why you are here, and probably will feel just as dissatisfied as ever.
Authentic spiritual practice requires a practical spiritual framework. My wish is to provide you with time, space and encouragement… to see differently, recalibrate one’s perceptions… peel back the layers of 21st century existence. Allow the opportunity to stop and think… to cast light where there is shadow… and enable ‘walkers’ to discard their present chrysalis and step out as the whole, balanced and fully connected people of loving wisdom that they truly are.
I take a very practical hands on approach to do this. Getting involved at grass roots level in nature – literally getting your hands dirty; acquainting yourselves more intimately with the wonders of the elements; delving deep within yourselves to discover your truths and higher soul. Earthwalking is rooted in a deep love of life and that life is seen to permeate everything, animate and inanimate. It offers the profound view of the world as sacred, rooted in hard physical experience, not just conceptualisation. Earthwalking actively encourages and supports, based on fostering an empowered spiritual cosmos within the human being which seeks to support the emergent spiritual reality that frequently lies dormant within each of us.
You will learn to tune into yourself and to the natural world; communicate with plants, animals, the elements and divas of nature. You will be shown how to enhance your sensitivity and access and develop your skills in divination an healing.
You will be introduced to the rudimentary basics of shamanic journeying, both for pleasure, knowledge and healing. You will learn how to formulate your own rituals and practices, and design a medicine wheel to provide a unique ‘life map’ for future progress and understanding.
However no-one is going to interpret or produce this for you! You will have to discover, develop, evolve and deepen your actions and beliefs for yourself
As you move through each stage of Earthwalking, you will be exposed to intimate personal development and the reasons for the particular Life Path that you currently tread. You will discover bottomless depths, endless joy and deathless life here.
The Celtic Connection
Not only do I have Welsh ancestry somewhere in my family’s dim and distant past but I also have ancestors from Ireland and Scotland too. Brought up in England, I never particularly questioned our family practices and beliefs. It was only when I grew into mature adulthood and moved my current home in Wales that I realised just how deeply ingrained my Welsh Celtic background really is, and how gloriously it has coloured my outlook and development throughout my whole life. These are concepts and habits that are deeply ingrained; which are second nature to me, and upon which I have developed my own life philosophy, which has in turn become Earthwalking.
All religions, all spiritual traditions, have sacred orientations… In Celtic spirituality, one of the most important is the Hearth; the heart of the Celtic home. This represents the nurturing, sheltering, material focus of the tribe, group or family, the place where everyone comes to be warmed and fed, and also where food is prepared. The Hearth is also where, certainly in the past people began and ended their day; talked and sang, dreamed around it. It houses the element of fire and its smoke drifting up the chimney provides an ever open doorway to ‘Otherworlds’. The outward trappings of modern life may appear to have altered out of all recognition, but humanity moves far more slowly. How many people meet and chat at the washroom door, or congregate around the office coffee machine or electric kettle? Perhaps with the centrally heated home, a lit candle placed in the centre of the dining table is the closest many get to a hearth – but at least all the family can gather around that table at least once each day!
Another deeply ingrained Celtic character trait reflected in Earthwalking is that of Hospitality. In the Celtic household, the guest, their needs and wishes, reign supreme. In the past, it was a massively unforgivable transgression to break this deeply honoured belief. Taken to its deepest, fullest interpretation, ‘Hospitality to all who travel’ becomes unstinting and unconditional love, for we are all ‘travellers’ along our various Paths and all in need of succour, tolerance and friendship. Further, it encourages us to really listen to the heartbeat of the Divine which we then recognise in both our selves and everyone else.
This brings us to the third point in this spiritual triad, perhaps the most important, which informs and colours the other two so deeply, and which effects the whole fabric of Celtic belief. The primal Celtic way of seeing the world is that the domains of seen and unseen realities are not separated or blocked off from each other. Rather, these domains of energy and information are interrelated and interfused. Furthermore, Divine Life permeates everything about us, animate and inanimate, (living and non-living). Not just humanity, or animals or plants even, but the rocks, the water, each breath of air that we breathe, each molecule of clay that our houses stand upon or are built from… The plastic coating of our various appliances… The pulses of electricity that run through our cables.
Certain places; boulders, trees, hills, streams, have always held special energies for humanity as a whole, not simply the Celtic sector, but the Divine perceived in these areas of spiritual abundance can also be traced to and through everything. As Celtic spirituality is rooted in a deep love of life, that life is seen to emanate from everything. It offers the profound view of the world as sacred, but rooted in hard physical experience.
However at the end of the day, no form of spirituality worth its salt is going to provide you with all the answers neatly packaged up. Others may share their wisdom and experience, but after all the talking is done, you have to go out yourself and learn, experience, come into contact with both your inner self and all the living realities surrounding you. Earthwalking actively encourages and supports this.
The Path lies before you