Burning Your Boats: Sacred Wisdom In Irish Mythology

Sacred story can speak to us of timeless lessons (many of them painfully relevant to us in our present age) and offer us different ways of looking at our innermost being.nn- Frank MacEowen, The Celtic Way of Seeing

The Anamcara invites you into the experience of sacred story. This is story that invites you into wholeness and the holy. Most of the stories of our present time are stories of deep separateness and fear.

Irish mythology is full of sacred stories. These are not just 'quaint' stories of days of old. Irish mythology contains, as all mythology does, maps of the journey of humanity into higher and higher levels of Love in action. The intellect has forgotten that there are ways that the heart has of knowing that the head knows nothing about.

There is the story where the Tuatha de Danaan, the Beautiful People, burn their boats of silver and gold on the shores of the land that will come to be called Erin - Ireland.

When this writer tells this story to children they are in some ways aghast. Some are aghast that the boats burn for three days and three nights and block out all light. Others tell this storyteller that it is silly to burn ones' boats. The real difficulty for some is imagining that anyone would destroy the wealth of gold and silver in the boats themselves. Such has become the materialist mindset of our young.

What is misunderstood by the children (and many adults) is that there is greater treasure to be had. This is a treasure available on a new shore. This new shore is a growth within consciousness that no gold or silver will substitute. It is the growth in the ability to expand your connection to that which is forever creative.

This story indicates what one is required to do in order to venture into this new land of Erin - this land of possibility arising from the unknown. One has to give up what one holds dear and sacrifice it in order to move on. This giving up is an emptying out of the old in order that the new may be birthed.

All wisdom teachings speak about the issue of detachment. Buddhism in particular has much to say about being attached to things including experiences. Our gold and silver boats are our ideas about who we are. Many of us will resist any idea of change.

In this way, we move against life. We make our life situation the way we want it to be rather than the way our soul has invited us to be. We become attached to our roles. We live within this script, which are the bounds that I call 'little me.'

But 'little me' is not the ocean of life in constant creative flux. 'Little me' tends to build a pond away from the flow of the river moving ever forward toward the fathomless ocean of Love. It tends to build an identity that it can cling to and never need to make a real effort to grow in Love.

The soul is the movement of this energy toward higher expressions of Love in form. It will burn all boats of silver and gold because it loves the adventure. The soul is not afraid of new birth. The ego tends to live in fear of the unknown. The soul relishes the unknown. The ego tries to save the life situation of 'little me' and loses its real connection to the life of Love ever expanding.

Burning your boats on another shore might mean you change your job. It might mean that you go and leave living with your parents. It might mean you seek counselling for a form of addiction. The symbol of burning your boats of gold and silver means you claim full responsibility for the way the flow of life moves through you. This is the beginning of maturity. It is the beginning of the call to adventure that is the hero's journey.

Storytelling has been at the heart of most civilisations for millennia. The oral tradition of storytelling has been the primary way of communication for most of this adventure in form we call humanity.

These sacred stories (sacred meaning to make whole) offer us a different way of seeing the world. They invite us to reclaim our true sense of creative power. This is the power of our innermost being. This being understands stories that transcend time and invites paradox, magic and wonder.

These sacred stories are Wonder Tales. These are no tall tales but tales that invite you to connect with a real sense of wonder. With sacred story you are invited to give up your intellect for bewilderment. You are invited to move beyond the sacred to the wildness of the sacred. nnn