Ann Moir-Bussy“The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Have you ever realised how easy it is for parts of ourselves to get lost, to lose the path to our inner peace, our true self? The “to do “list seems to never end, and endless responsibilities and noise take over without us even realising it has happened until we become aware of how tire we are and that we have given away too much of ourselves.
What does it mean to come back home and find the capacity to sense, to see, and to know what’s best for us? How can we recover the deep inner wisdom and intuition that reminds us how important it is to become intimate with one’s soul again.
The Selkie Myth
There is a beautiful northern European myth that illustrates for us what happens if we ignore the yearning and longing of the soul. The Selkie was a mythological creature from Celtic and Norse folklore that was known for its ability to transform between seal and human form. They had a deep-sea connection and could remove their seal skin to walk on land as a human and then put it on again to return to the sea.
In this story the Selkie was dancing on the rocks with her friends. She didn’t choose to remain on land but was tricked into it in a cruel way when a fisherman offered her love and safety after stealing her skin. She compromises her freedom to marry him for a limited time.
She is consumed by the expectations and responsibilities he puts on her, gives birth to a son and is caught in their net of demands as they depend on her for their comfort and perhaps identity. Slowly she becomes a shadow of herself and as her skin dries out and she becomes parched for the sea, she can barely survive. Exhausted and pale in a world that is not hers, she knows it is time to claim what belonged to her – her sealskin – and return home.
Come home to yourself
Have you ever seen the selkie within you, are you dried out, is your heart aching for something more?
What are you truly longing for?
How long have you been postponing something that is very important to you? What is the price your soul is paying as you continue to give away too much of yourself?
Like the Selkie we can lose our skin so easily, forget our soul or have it stolen from us or we unknowingly sacrifice it. We offer time, our resources or our creative energy in the service of others, only to discover that we have lost something vital and essential to our being.
As we recognise it, we will experience a sense of loss and a sense of feeling whole again. As in many of the stories we share, there is a coexistence.
Reclaim your Soul
To reclaim that sacred space within we need to leave this frazzled world we have taken on and dive back into the deep waters that give us life. Just like the selkie we need to put our skin on again – and as many women from ancient times did, find a place of solitude. This doesn’t necessarily mean being alone – rather, all one, wholly one. Marion Woodman tells women that this is “being one in herself”, – not pulled every this way and that.
We must take the time to assess if we on our proper course in both spirit and soul. When we hear the call to come home to ourselves, we must heed it, or risk drying up and losing our creative powers. Read again Clarissa Pinkola Estes words at the beginning of this article – and note there are many doors to the journey of our reclaiming our soul
If you would like to dive deeper into the teachings of the Selkie, then sign up for the series of Transformative Fairy Tales, which will begin in August on our new website.
Christine Sanson Maudy
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