Reflections, art & photography by Eileen Hall
When I first began exploring jungles and caves in Ecuador in 2008, the blinding beauty of the wildlife and plant life that inhabited these forests awoke in me a heightened sense of enchantment and awe.
Every colourful detail and texture opened an eternal well of wonder through which I could bathe in the waters of the divine imagination that brought this world into being.
This is when I began to pay more attention to the vibrational and sensory dialogues that I was having with the non-human world, an interchange between me and the spirit of the place. In this dance between the beauty and enchantment of my experience I was able to cleanse my vision from the flatness of the modern tech focused world I had been in, and adopt a prismatic lens through which I could enjoy a multidimensional world of sensing and being.
From a young age I had began conversing with the non-human world in the art making process. I would spend, and continue to spend, many hours talking to colours of paints and pastels, pens and pencils. I have felt into the spirit of a canvas and piece of paper to guide me towards a vision of what wanted to create and express.
These conversations then expanded while studying and working in architecture. I learnt how to talk to the spirit of a place - its genius loci or context/ecology - in order to establish the best ways to design a dwelling. I also found myself spending many hours in communion with the various building materials that made up the projects I worked on. Each one with its own strengths and weaknesses, texture, colour, application and reaction to one another.
This multidimensional grounding in the world of form and matter continued to deepen and expand when I started exploring jungles and cloud forests soon after my father’s death in 2008 and when I became interested in consciousness and healing practices.
As I trekked for days in some of the most bio diverse regions in the world, I found myself blown away by the variety and beauty of the animal and plant life found in these forests. I could not help but entertain my imagination through subtle dialogues with everything I came into contact with. From birds, to snakes, to spiders and many insects, the overflowing abundance of patterns and colour became a real sanctuary for my then parched soul.
The beauty and grace of nature seemed to know no bounds.
Finally, when I decided to embark on my shamanic studies, I spent a whole year learning to talk to nature and its elements. I would spend hours in stillness listening to the whispers, sensations and vibrations of the non-human world. By keeping an open mind and staying curious to alternative ways of communicating, I was able to access wisdom and insights not readily available through a purely human lens.
This combination of practices and dialogues with place and the non-human world have enriched my life in so many ways and it’s why I am excited to share some of these practices with you in this recording.
Through these dialogues of diversity you can begin to blur the boundaries between your inner and outer worlds in a way where they can open you up to feel the living and pulsating poetry of each moment, using presence and intimacy with the non human world as a container for re-enchantment.
This recording is 14 mins long
Explore more on the topic of Diversity:
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life in one square metre
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