The Four Directions and the Fire
Read slowly, aloud, leaving a breath between lines; twenty to twenty-five minutes. Best guided by a clinician the first time; afterwards it may be recorded in your own voice.
Before you begin. This is a parts practice in medium to deep trance. It contains a fire and an offering; the offering is a crown, a worn-out way of coping, never yourself. Do not use this practice if you are having thoughts of harming yourself or ending your life; speak to a clinician or a crisis line first. If you have a dissociative disorder, or hear or experience parts of yourself as separate people, use it only with your therapist, and skip the dividing into four. Do not practise while driving, operating anything, standing, or in or near water. Sit rather than lie down. Set a gentle timer for twenty-five minutes.
How to return at any moment. Say aloud, "All four, come home with me." Press your feet into the floor, take one full breath, count up from one to five, and open your eyes on five. Nothing in the practice requires you to stay.
Sit down, and let the body settle.
Imagine you have just bathed. The water was cool, poured over your head, and you are clean and quiet. Now you walk into a small temple, and in the middle of it a fire is burning, steady and warm. It is a fire you have trusted for a long time. Sit before it.
Breathe out.
Let yourself look back, the way the old king did. What you have built. What you have kept going. The people who depend on you. Let yourself feel, for a moment, honest pride in it.
And now let yourself admit what presses on it. From the east: one weight. Name it. From the south: another. From the west: another. From the north: one more. You do not have to solve them. Only see them, one on each side. Notice where you feel them in the body.
Breathe out.
On your head there is a crown. It is the way you have held all this together: the effort, the vigilance, the doing it all yourself. It has served you. It is heavy now.
Take it off. Hold it in your hands. Thank it. And lay it in the fire.
Watch the flame take it. Nothing of you is harmed. Only the old way of commanding goes into the fire.
And ask the fire, as the king did: give me four strong forms. One for each direction.
Watch the flames rise and part. From the fire step four figures. Each one is you. The same face, the same heart, of one soul and one mind. Each strong, each clear, each armed with what that direction needs. Greet them.
Send the first east. Watch it go, steady, to meet what waits there.
Send the second south.
Send the third west.
Send the fourth north.
You stay here, by the fire, and you can feel all four at once, the way you feel your two hands and your two feet.
(Pause: half a minute.)
Now follow each, briefly, in turn.
East. How is it there? Is that part moving freely? Or has it stopped somewhere, gone still as stone, rooted like a tree, caught in some other shape?
South. How is it there?
West.
North.
If one of them is stuck, frozen, turned to stone or tree or animal, do not go yourself. Ask another part to go. Let the one who is free walk to the one who is caught and do whatever is needed: a word, a touch, an offering, a hand held out. Watch the stone soften. Watch the shape loosen. Let them help and heal each other, as the members of one body help each other.
Breathe out.
There may be one part that does not want to stop. It keeps searching: for the end of the work, the end of the worry, the edge of the map. You can see it going further and further. Do not follow it. Watch it with kindness from where you sit. And say to it, quietly: there is no edge out there. You can rest. Let it slow. Let it sit down wherever it is.
(Pause: a few breaths.)
Now one of the four is coming home first. Perhaps it has been away a long time and looks different now. Perhaps it looks like a deer, gentle and timid, nibbling at things that are not food. Let it come into the temple.
Let it see the fire. The same fire it has always trusted.
Watch it go toward the flame, and leap.
And watch what steps out: bright, clear, like gold cooling into the shape of a person. It is you. Give it a new name, one word for what it has become. Say the name once, silently.
Sit together, now, beside the fire. Let this part remember everything it has been through, all its shapes and places, as one life. Your life. Let it all be remembered, without needing to tell it.
(Silence: one to two minutes.)
Now every part of you can hear this. The one who came home. The ones still out at the four quarters. Thank each one. Tell each one where the fire is, so they can always find the way back. Let them know they may come home in their own time, through this same fire, and that you will be here.
Now rise from the reverie, as he did.
Let the fire settle to embers. Feel the temple floor, and then the real floor under your feet. Press your feet down.
Feel a hand resting on the top of your head, warm and steady, as the sage raised the prince by touching his head. If you like, place your own hand there now.
I will count from one to five, and on five the eyes open, clear and rested.
One. The breath is full and ordinary.
Two. The feet are on the floor, the hands warm and your own.
Three. The sounds of the room return.
Four. Take one deep breath in and let the shoulders roll.
Five. Eyes open. Here. Now. Fully alert.
Sit a moment before you stand. Say your name aloud, today's date and where you are. Name three things you can see. If you feel at all distant or slow, count again from one to five, stand, walk a few steps, drink some water. Do not drive for ten minutes.
Later, write the new name somewhere you will see it. And write one sentence for each direction: what is waiting there, and which part of you will meet it.
