WONDERMENT
ˈwʌn.də.mənt
This piece is a collaboration with one of my oldest friends, Lucy McCarthy. A meditation on wonderment through two lenses – Yoga Nidra for Lucy, visual art for me.
The drawing, a portion of which gradually comes into view through the guided journey, is a drawing of how it felt, for me, to fall in love. The wonder inherent in love, in two souls connecting and, through this, remembering themselves to be, in truth, One.
My relationship to wonder has transformed in the past few years, in parallel to the transformation of my identity through gender transition. Having spent decades distanced from reality by layers of untruth, wonder was something that was mostly unavailable to me.
Through my transition, my experience has been of being reborn, time and again, to stumble to my feet, unskinned, unprotected, and raw to the world. Whilst there is great vulnerability and often pain in this, the gift of it has been a new-forged relationship with wonder. As I open, and continue to open, to my truth, I also open to a raw and immediate relationship with the sublimity of existence.
And, at the heart of this opening, is wonder.
In my physical body, I experience the sensation of wonder in my chest, my heart-space. Like a deep inhale, it is a taking-in, an absorption, a fuel.
The experience of ‘life’ is extraordinary. To be a spark of consciousness embedded in matter, existing within all that has blossomed through the cosmic aeons, of which we are an intrinsic part.I believe the state of wonder, a reverence for all it really is, is the core of what it is to be in relationship with existence in a way that truly sees it. And that this seeing is essential in underpinning the deep and transformative change we must seek in our relationship with all beings and the natural world.
That, ultimately, deep change begins in a heightening of consciousness
There are many ways in which to engage in wonder: spirituality, art, science, human connection, immersion in the natural world. And, also, simply to quieten and turn into ourselves. To stop for long enough that we can pan out and really see the mystery and beauty of it all. To make it a practice to pause regularly, to return, again and again, to the state of wonder which is both our birth-state and our birth-right.
I hope this Yoga Nidra, created with and from love, will help.
Jackson M Phoenix
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