Emptying Our Baskets
by Jesse Wolf Hardin
Kokopelli! Kokopelli! His is a most melodious name. It rolls off the tip of the tongue like a child exiting a slide, its consonants forming notes that rise and fall as the laughter of rivers. He is said to herald from the South, the direction of intimacy and trust, and among the many gifts he offers is a lesson especially useful for us.
Yes, his is the figure of the ≥hunch-backed flute player≤ carved on the pink and purple cliffs of southwestern mesa and canyon land, from Casa Grandes in Mexico to the San Juan basin, from the California desert to the pueblos of the Rio Grande. Petroglyphs of Kokopelli date back before 200 A.D., recording his influence on far-flung cultures over a long period of time.
He's most often portrayed with what appears to be either antlers or ant-like antennae, and a hump on his back and a flute in hand, knees in the air as if dancing. That hump is no deformity, but rather, it is his burden basket.
The concept of the burden-borne is one shared by a wide range of primal cultures, a useful metaphor for the psychological and emotional load we inevitably carry ... for what we commit to, or hold ourselves responsible for. For what we accumulate in our lives, from belongings to ideas. But to the wise, the carved or painted figure also speaks to the vital importance of our periodically or ritually cleaning the basket out.
While I write this, a woman quester sits in a shallow cave above our river of mirrors. Instead of merely "figuring out" what to do with her life—as she had at first expected—she is instead undergoing the difficult but essential process of emptying ... to be followed by sensing, discerning, choosing what to organize and retain, and what to toss out.
Having survived a childhood of hardship and injustice due to her strength alone, she has a harder time than most admitting to the weariness in her heart and the stiffness in her shoulders resulting from the accumulative weight. She's been largely defined by her "stuff," and even her tragedies are hard for her to detach from. And like many, she fears that there might not be anything left of her once her baggage is wholly shed. Still, she slides off the straps that bound it to her, feeling simultaneously sad from perceived loss and giddy with hope. Picture her if you will, making a motion with her empty hands as though turning her basket—and thus her world—upside down.
Dumped at her feet for inspection may be the constant need to feel certain and in control, and the image of herself as tough and always okay no matter how many setbacks or heartbreaks. A clamor of well utilized illusions, and distractions that spared her from melancholy on certain long nights. Out onto the ground, a tumbling of broken coping techniques. The ambivalence that pulled her in opposite directions, preventing her from truly settling down. The quandaries she clung to, in order to explain away her indecision, as well as the fears she had tried hard to let go of. Tinkling like broken glass, the guilt and shame she never really bought into, as well as the feelings of self-doubt she wanted to deny, that had always seemed to lurk in the shadows nearby.
But pouring forth too, would be not just the dark and no longer useful, but also the important connections to what serves and emboldens, such as the lifeline to authentic being that keeps her from getting out of her body during rough times, and what feels to her like a life giving umbilical cord between her and the living, giving earth. Healthy bonds with special people, and commitments to important causes. The contract she made with herself to one day live her dreams. A wonderful dependency on beauty, and the deepest levels of what love means.
Indeed, making up the load we each carry is all that we feel attached, obligated or committed to ... both the healthy and the unhealthy, the beneficial and the harmful, the spirit honoring as well as soul deadening. Glad and worthy commitments, as well as undesired obligations. Most of the time we can work on removing one or two undesirable attachments at a time, like rummaging through a pantry in the dark. But then there are those self evident moments, pivotal points in our existence when the only way to deal with it is to take our baskets off and empty out the good with the bad ... to empty not partially and preferentially but totally, so that anything in there when we put our basket back on will be a relationship, pattern or promise that we have consciously and willingly chosen to bear.
In spring cleaning, storage rooms are completely stripped, with a choice being made about every item, determining what is precious, meaningful and useful, then washing them, sorting them, and reorganizing them as they are one by one put back. And deciding, as well, what no longer belongs there. And similarly we strip away—if only for a pivotal period—all that weighs on us, bringing it out of the shadows and into the light ... then carefully pick up what is essential and empowering, prioritize it, and place it an ordered way in our pack.
Just as there is an option to hang on to everything no matter how much it presses us down, there is also the option when repacking to keep it "light," in order to avoid further involvements. But for the willing load bearer, every movement becomes an opportunity for a dance vested with the weight of significance, intention and result, and one made more animate by the delights and desires of our chosen paths.
I conclude my writing, just as the woman quester prepares for the coming dusk. She is likely striking a match about now, to set ablaze the small pile of wood arranged in front of her cave. The winter winds feel especially electric tonight, a night of power, and she will do well to remain vigilant for the arrival of new experience, new revelation, and new depths of understanding that she can pack alongside whatever other things she has mindfully chosen to shoulder and carry.
It's often off to the side, just out of reach of the fire's circle of light, where one first begins to sense the approach of something that can't be readily identified. Somehow, even from a place of concealment it is able to excite our engagement, to make all the more intense our purposeful quests. It is, perhaps, Kokopelli, providing us with a magical metaphor for what we choose to carry ... for what we need to come home to, and thus what we need to leave behind.
Jesse Wolf Hardin is an acclaimed teacher of Anim· earth-centered practice and the author of five books including Gaia Eros (New Page 2004). He and his partners offer online Anim· correspondence courses, as well as host students and guests for wilderness retreats, counsel, vision quests, internships and powerful group events in their river canyon and ancient place of power. For a complimentary copy of the colorful Anim· Journal, go to www.animacenter.org/journal2007.html. The Anim· Wilderness Retreat Center & Women's Sanctuary, Box 688, Reserve, NM 87830, www.animacenter.org.