The mission, should you wish to take it...

After the River visualisation, shown in the last blog entry, I used the outline given by Clarissa Pinkola Estes in Women Who Run With The Wolves as a guide to the basic tools of the journey, the ways in which we can encourage our wolf spirit to come out and howl. Here are those 10 basic needs for reconnecting with the wild, with a little homegrown adaptation:

1. Receive nurturing: allow yourself to receive compliments and nurturing and use these to send your Harpies back to their own lands;

2. Respond: creativity is the ability to respond to our lived experience, using all means available to us. Practice deepening your response to your own experience, thoughts, feelings and dreams. Keeping a journal is a good way of doing this;

3. Be wild: let ideas, thoughts and consciousness stream uncensored - jump into the full flow of the river. Try the intuitive writing practice daily to get familiar with this kind of listening;

4. Begin: have a go, even if it is scary - if you are afraid of failure, begin now. It is not failure that holds us back, but our reluctance to begin. Take a good look at your fears and your harpies that hold you back - give them a voice and then answer them!

5. Protect your time: Stake a firm claim on your creative time and nail a do not disturb sign to that door - do not banish your creativity to stolen moments. There is no such thing as spare time, so make space for your creation and wild journey a priority;

6. Stay with it: Let your dreams carry you, and refuse to cooperate with the oppression of your spirit. When you see your spirit being abused, polluted or starved, show your claws and fight for your survival;

7. Protect your creative life: practice your creative work every day and connect with the energy of that creative fire, even if it is just for 5 moments a day. Plant the seed and grow it!

8: Craft your real work: protect and nurture your soul and your real journey. Insist on a creative life, one that engages you with your full feeling, your sensuality and passion and inquisitiveness. Enjoy your wild spirit - get to know it and let it help you understand the path you are on, and give you the courage to follow it;

9: Be willing to listen: sometimes on this journey, the creative river turns up something you do not want to hear. Be willing to listen with an honest heart. Even if you are not able to act on what you hear right at that time, be willing to acknowledge its truth and your current active choice in the situation;

10: Nourish your creative life: this basically sums up the other 8 guides - by giving your creative life the basic ingredients it needs to thrive, you will reconnect with the Wild Woman (or man) within you. These are: space and time; understanding and listening; passion and enthusiasm; respect and love.

And remember - dare to dream!