Editor’s Note:

Katherine Collis wrote a three-part feature about Iona and the retreat house Traigh Bhan. These three articles were split across various editions of the Community magazine Network News. This second part, re-created below, is taken from Network News No 16, which was published in July 1998. 

***

“Towards which the conscience of the world is tending, a wind is rising, and the rivers flow.”
Thomas Wolfe

In Part 1 of this trilogy on Iona, I laid a framework for addressing the impact Iona has on the lives of individuals today. Over the years, I have been privileged to hear hundreds of accounts detailing people’s experiences on Iona. It is many of these experiences, as well as my own, which have led me to honour the way spirit plays through the island and speaks to our deeper selves. At the same time it is important to recognise that Iona, while special in her own way, magnifies a spirit which permeates the planet and is accessible everywhere.

In choosing the metaphor of a “curriculum of the soul”, I did so playing on both the common definition of the word, meaning a “course of study taught at a school or University”, and also from the Latin root, referring to a “course, running or current; the act of moving in a particular path from point to point; as a chariot on a race course or cycle of a year.” Interestingly, the root meaning also refers to the “chariot” itself, perhaps implying that the very nature of the vehicle contains the way it must go? For me it is an apt metaphor that conveys the imperative of the unfolding nature of the Human Spirit, a process that is coded in our cells and carried by our souls.

Iona Cross

When I am on Iona, I experience a wonderful sense of being held by the island. It is hard to know where this feeling of support comes from yet it seemingly permeates everything, from the moors to the rocks, from the chapels to the shores. Even the elements themselves seem to participate in this embrace. This quality of holding is one of the island’s gifts, allowing personal journeys of spiritual deepening to be so rich.

In part, this quality stems from the grace of Iona’s spirit but also is connected to her size. I use Sand Play in my counselling practice – the placing of miniature objects in a rectangular box of sand, to create worlds, stories, pictures and scenes. The size of the box should ideally be of a particular dimension that matches the range of movement of the eye. This helps contain the field of focused sight which enables access to corresponding centres within the brain. This balances both hemispheres, while tapping deeper, creative wellsprings in the unconscious, a process similar to the centring effects of working with a mandala.

I like to think Iona is the right dimension for tapping the wellspring of the soul. There is just the appropriate mix of terrain to meet the various parts of ourselves, ancient and civilised, wild and tame, high hill angelic or hidden in caves. One can expand with the elements, surrounded by the heavens and sea, or penetrate depths in candle lit chapels filled with stillness and peace. All of this, with the constant come and go of the ferry, the ebb and flow of seasons and tides, juxtaposed to the rock solid pillar of Iona Abbey, anchor of a wider world conscience, an unmoving centre of faith. Cradled by the arms of the island shores, fears of being alone and of the unknown, fade against the sense of being safe and secure, allowing the interior edges of our self to be explored.

Sacredly held space is key to the calling forth of the soul. The ancient Celts knew this, as the wisdom teachings of all cultures knew, just as a good parent, a healer, or a true educator – one who draws forth – knows. Without appropriate containment we can either lose or diffuse ourselves. To be held by someone or something, with openness and acceptance, with a non-interfering intention, means we can let go into a space open enough, clear enough, empty enough, that we can awaken awareness of what is within and bring it out.

Last year, as I was walking along the single lane road which runs from the village to the north end of the island, I came upon a conservatively dressed woman who was standing along the grassy turf to the side. It appeared she was gazing out over the fields and sea to the distant hills of Mull beyond, yet, as I came closer l could see she was openly crying.

I was deliberating whether to stop to see if she was all right, when she turned to me. “Do you live here?” she asked through her tears. “Can you tell me what the heck is happening to me? I’m from Alabama and part of a month long Highland horticultural tour visiting Scottish gardens. We had an option to take an extended day trip to Mull and Iona which I did. The moment I stepped off the ferry and set foot on this island something came over me and I began to sob. I had to leave the group to try to get a grip and that was hours ago. I still can’t stop crying. I’ve never felt this way before.”

“What is it exactly you feel?” I asked.

Katherine Collis photo Terry Duffy

Katherine Collis. Photo by Terry Duffy.

“Well, the feeling is as if I’ve come home. Don’t get me wrong these are not tears of sadness, these are tears of joy. All I know is that I’ve never felt so moved nor such a feeling of welcome. It’s like I’ve come back to where I belong. But look at this!” she gestured to the island and the sea, still sobbing. “How can it be? Am I crazy? I’m on an island in the middle of nowhere at the seeming ends of the earth, I don’t know anyone and yet – I know I’ve come home.”

The experience of homecoming is a common phenomena to those who visit Iona, not unlike what many feel when they arrive at Findhorn. Again, places that are consecrated, revered and deemed holy often awaken this sense of return, and like the woman from Alabama, fulfil a yearning so deep within, we are often unaware it is there. “Coming home” is one way we stumble into the domain of spirit and enter the house of our souls. Warmed at the hearth of our deeper nature we can let the fierceness of control go, peeling away layers of outer self-­identification and projection. Here we can pause to drink deeply at the well of divine source, restoring our essential selves.

It has been said the experience of the soul is an awakening of direct and authentic knowing, a knowing that moves through every fibre of our being, not out of partial perception, conditioning, or external influence. Through such moments of knowing, we begin to gradually discover, understand and cultivate the unique language of our soul nature. Even when deeply receded in our unconscious, this uniqueness is always speaking, bubbling up through dreams and insights, and communicating through another’s eyes. lt is accessible when we slow and are quiet and still, when we are being fully present at work or play, and whenever we are in the presence of Love.

One of my favourite quotes is from John O’Donohue’s book on Celtic wisdom, Anam Cara. “The art of love discloses the special and sacred identity of the other person. Love is the only light that can truly read the secret signature of the other person’s individuality and soul. Love alone is literate of the world of 0rigin; it can decipher identity and destiny.”

I often ask people what first comes to mind when they think of Iona. The answers are often similar to my husband Roger’s
response: “It is a quality of being loved and loving. Even more it is a sense of being met by a Presence which aligns me to something greater than myself, which then calls me back to what is mine to do, with a renewed love of the world. “

This Presence which invites us to embody “identity” and incarnate “destiny”, is a mysterious thread in Iona’s weave. As I have learned from those who gained clarity of direction, or had visions of their next steps while on the island, knowing destiny does not imply acts of greatness or deeds of fame. lt is rather finding an organic relationship to some larger purpose and pattern, and then living and acting with the pulse of that connection coursing through one’s veins. Whatever name we give this greater Presence; Sophia, Holy Spirit, Divine Source, or God, or whether we use no name at all, the effects are similar within the chemistry of our individual awakening.

This brings me to the metaphor of Iona as an invisible school which offers a “curriculum of soul”. What I have described to this point are some of the deepening qualities of love, trust, holding and clarity which, so to speak, draw us through the doorway and into the classroom. What ensues, is exposure to a course of learning that is both developmental and incarnational, catalysing the next stage of our maturing and growth. This learning is not just about rekindling memory of the past, or reclaiming suppressed parts of ourselves, it is primarily concerned with revealing what is seeking birth within us.

In part 1 of this article, I refer to the dream of Iona being one of the places which holds the “seed imprint” of the destiny of the earth. If we think of the soul as the carrier of our own seed imprint – an overarching intelligence which holds the “field” of not only our essence, but of our totality – then the pattern and possibility of what has been before, what is present now, and what lies in potential, is all within us. Imagine the celebration in the corridors of creation when our potentiality and the potentiality of the World Soul dance in union.

Read more of this three-part feature:

Iona: Summoning the Possible Part 1 

Iona: Summoning the Possible Part 3