There are many ceremonies across time, space and culture that invite a deep self reflective engagement with the reality of our mortality as sentient beings. The Burial Ceremony is one such initiation. It is as much an initiation into life as it is a deep conversation with death. It is as much a deepening into the wild embrace of Mother Earth as it is a surrender to the inevitability of our mortal demise. It is as much the opening of a portal to love and ecstasy as it is an opportunity to fully feel and express our embodied grief and human suffering.
It is an opportunity for recapitulation, a chance to revisit and clean up your personal history. Essentially, recapitulation is the process of reclaiming energy that is locked up in past events and interactions; to find peace, acceptance, forgiveness; to take responsibility and offer apology, gratitude and prayers for all beings everywhere. Ultimately it is an invitation to fully say YES to this one precious life and an invocation of Death specifically as an ally, a benevolent friend.
As with all Awakening The Wild practices, processes and ceremonies we work with The Arc of Integrity - preparation, process and integration.
Preparation
Preparation begins as soon as you decide to embark on this soul journey. It has many layers. Including:
Physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual resourcing.
Individually we will contemplate, reflect, write, spend time in nature and explore what we need to be able to fully step though this initiation portal. As a group we will utilise the ReSourcing practices of Movement Medicine to discover and strengthen the tools of embodiment, intention and prayerful presence.
We will engage in many exercises individually, in dyads/triads and as a circle to deepen our self enquiry, to clarify our intentions, to explore the questions ‘What is asking to be felt? What is asking to be expressed? What is asking to die? What is asking to be born?’ We will write our own eulogies and dream into what is most important to us in this life. What are our priorities?
Practical and logistical. We will come to the immersion prepared; with all the tools and materials we need to prepare our grave temples
Process / Ceremony
The ceremonial journey deepens through the process of ‘digging your grave as a meditation on mortality’
Attend our own funerals
Enter the grave to dream and pray in conversation with Death as a Benevolent Friend, recapitulate and surrender into the embrace of Mother Earth.
Integration
We will have plenty of space and time to reflect alone in nature and to share in a circle. And we will dance the medicine into our skin, muscles and bones.
We spend time to vision the next steps on our YES TO LIFE path
We will commune with the womb-tomb of the the Cabana Sweat Lodge to cleanse and purify and open our pores and portals of possibility; rebirthing into life
