Falling Into Fascination

Marion Woodman

One of my quirks seems to be that I fall suddenly into fascination with certain authors, both fiction and non-fiction. In the past, it's been with the marvelous and wise Jungian Marion Woodman (born in 1928, published her first book when she was 52) or with the evocative naturalist Terry Tempest Williams; I end up buying every single one of their books to read sequentially, and google articles, essays, and videos on them, just to obtain a more in-depth feeling for these people. It's sort of like falling in love:

"There was I, sitting at one side of a long table, quietly listening to a Geography lesson and doing (as they say) nobody any harm, when suddenly the world was filled with a wonderful and quite unaccountable light and warmth. Trying to make out where this radiance came from, I gradually realized that it centered on Daphne, who was sitting opposite. We beamed at each other."

The above quote was written (about a time when she was a child) by my new love, Mary Midgley, a philosopher born in 1919 (published her first book when she was 59), in her memoir The Owl of Minerva. I "met" Mary while reading a series of books on nature by Stephen Harrod Buhner; he mentioned Mary quite often and with every quote he shared, I fell more in love with her until the momentum carried me into getting as many of her books as I could. I've never ended up meeting any of my author-loves, and maybe I don't need to ... I hear their voices in my heart and head, almost as if they are happy to guide and bless me from afar like distant mentors.

Mary Midgley

As it happens, however, I don't fall in love only with writers, but also with topics or subjects, and when I do, then comes immersion within those as well. When I began to show dogs in my 20s, I read hundreds of books on canid behavior as well as those specific to training and breeding; almost 10 years later, I did the same with felines, and then came the energy medicines (homeopathy and flower essences) followed by Ayurveda in my fourth decade. All of these were built upon the continual scaffold-shifting that is my spiritual Self seeking the Divine. Thus, while my study of topics or subjects (or authors) is intense and immersive, I come up for air to explore my own intuition and imagination to apply these ideas in the context of my own life. 

So, what occasionally appears to be indecisive or waffling behavior is, rather, a whole-life view--the Big Picture--of what this all means to me instead of a reductionist approach in perspective. I dive deep but try not to become mired down, thus allowing my fascination or love to guide me, hopefully, into being a more loving, embodied, and empowered woman who is more at ease with the ebb and flow that is Nature.