Amulets and Charms

I dwelled in the jungle. For a long time I dwelled in the jungle. I had forgotten how I got there, or where I had come from. There were many dangers in the jungle but I had learned to live there. I had set up snares and traps to protect myself from the creatures of the day and creatures of the night, and from the ghosts of the jungle. I had charms and amulets, to ward off the many evil and mischievous spirits. I was in the jungle and the jungle was in me. I knew nothing else. It was intense to dwell in the jungle. There was no time to remember, because in the jungle all your time is spent surviving. 

One day I found a stream

I was worried about predators at the stream, so it was only tentatively that I returned, watching from behind the tangles of vines and trees. There was something compelling about the stream. It looked and felt so different to the jungle, and it contained spirits of its own. 

One day, I began to follow the stream, but then was afraid I had gone too far, and afraid that I wouldn't be able to find my way back to the jungle, the dark jungle where I dwelled, the place that I knew, the spirits that I knew, the encantations that I knew by heart to keep me safe. 

I returned to the jungle. It felt even more dangerous and terrifying than it had before, and I grasped even more firmly to my charms, amulets and incantations. But, the spirits of the stream kept calling to me.

I would return to the stream several times, but I would return to my jungle. But one day the spirits of the stream called to me, and I followed the stream, until the trees changed, and the jungle became a forest. There was more light in the forest. There were still dangers in the forest, but it felt less oppressive, and less intense. I set up camp in the forest for a while, but I felt lost. The jungle had become such a part of me, and my way of living and surviving. I returned to the jungle, but it felt so terrifying, that I soon returned to the forest, by way of the stream. I started to follow the stream regularly, seeing where it led, and when I had followed it far enough, the stream became a river, with other streams converging and merging with it. There was a great power in the river. 

One day, I packed a small, light bag of belongings along with my amulets and charms, and followed the river, and the further that I followed it's course, the more and more light I could see as the trees thinned, and I could hear the birds of the forests all around me. Then, there was something else, a new smell. The air in the jungle was so humid, and the smells were heavy, damp and dense, but now, a different kind of smell came to me that was fresh, almost joyful, and the trees opened up onto a meadow full of wildflowers, and I walked to the end of the meadow, and at it's edge was a beach which bordered a great ocean. I sat on the beach by the ocean, remembering the jungle, remembering the forest, remembering the stream that became a river, that had led me here. The ocean called to me, and told me, that I was the jungle. The great ocean told me that I was also the stream, and I was also the powerful river that led me home, to the great ocean that was myself: my unfettered, uncurtailed, unhemmed in, undiminished, unadulterated, unshamed self. 

The ocean called to me again with crashing waves, and I threw my amulets and charms into it, and they were swallowed up in it, carried into its depths. The depths that were me, that were in me; from where the pebbles had come, that I had used to make them, to keep me safe from harm. It was me all along that had been keeping me safe from harm, in the terrifying jungles of my self. 

I sat with my self by the great ocean, and gave thanks to my self, knowing that I had loved my self all along.