There Is Life Beyond Self-Reflection

Including gardens, mountains, ponds, and music

Hello, Mentatrix readers, wise contemplators of life and human nature! If you’re new here, Mentatrix comes out every other Sunday until the end of August, and we’ve had a great line-up of guest authors so far, refreshing our reflection prompts with new themes.

This Sunday, I’m back to share the greatest gift this summer has made me so far.

The lady of the castle contemplates the valleys stretching out from the towers. She smiles, rejoicing at the view. But then, it strikes her.

Zoe’s picture of Trauttmansdorff Gardens, Merano, Italy, from a vantage point on the terraced hill

I had a mission, mapping out this castle, finding the secret vaults and then their keys, venturing in, digging out the secrets. Putting it all down, processing it, reviewing and connecting. Understanding. Seeing.

All this, to be cleaned, set right, empowered to fulfil my dreams.

The house is now my own, with all its still dark recesses. I’m the mistress of the castle. I have gathered most of the keys, and I know the vaults, the corridors, the wings, and the back tunnels that sometimes connect the rooms.

I used to be an ignorant, hubris-driven maid, now I’m a mistress of my home, my mission done, done learning. Now my dreams can come to fulfilment.

Or so I thought.

I look out the windows and I see a wonderful world; that’s where my dreams are, that’s where they can become real. But now I see, before they do so, it’s me who must go out under the open sky, and get real.

She starts running down the corridor, then another, then another, up the stairs, down the stairs, turn the corners – there’s no way out. She has found all the doors to the vaults, but now she must find the one door that lets her out again.

---

I’m pulled back. The vision’s gone. My daughter, next to me, is busy shooting videos.

It’s a splendid, if murky evening in Merano, South Tyrol, in the middle of a luxuriant botanical garden, facing the mountains, basking in the southern sun. Celtic music and soothing lights are coming from the tiny stage set up in the centre of the pond, ducks waddling about now and then. Mosquitos and moths wildly excited.

My daughter's pictures of Trauttmansdorff Gardens and Castle, Merano, Italy

Is there a perfect setting for such a concert¹? If there is, it must be these gardens in the dusk.

And yet, my mind goes on an endless buzz:

A shame we’ve got no place to sit. My right leg is sticking into the hip. I’ll shift on the left. Better to swing gently to the music? It could help avoid stiffness in the joints. It’s still so hot, I should have put on something lighter. Pins are coming alive on my bare arms, insects landing or even taking a quick bite. The music’s nice. Wish I could enjoy it. Wow, that’s a voice clear like diamond. Didn’t know this singer. And the setting’s so vivid. It should be magic. What a shame it doesn’t feel like that. It ... doesn’t ... feel at all. Everyone else is watching spellbound. Some are sitting on the slabs. I could, too. Should I head over and try it out? What if it’s too hard and I will have lost my spot here? Some are swinging to the music. Is it cool to do that? Should I do it, too? Why does it feel as if I’ve got a stick in my bottom, as if I was a broom wiggling in those funny cartoons?

Try as I might, I can’t get myself to be there. I’m locked in. Where’s the bloody door out?

I take a peek at my daughter, engrossed with the music, waving her body as if that was where the music comes from, and I know: I want to be real. I want my dance to be unintentional, simply driven by the music, I want to feel the magic, I want to climb on the steep terraced hill for a vantage point, or go and lie down on the slabs and close my eyes in reverie.

Summer. Going out and away, then coming back home.

It’s early August, summer’s harvest. A vantage point.

What about me, if I glance back over my shoulder?

It seems to me that I used to be tossed and hurled by the life out there, until I was stranded and left to explore in solitude. I delved in, took the dive deep, awakened, discharged, healed, turned around, healed again, repeated the experience, learned the lessons, consolidated, recycled, until I found a home and drew a map of it.

Now what?

I’ve come to see, this summer, the horizon behind self-reflection.

There’s Life after self-awareness.

With that self-awareness, we need to find the door and get out again in the open, meet the people, meet the experience, allow ourselves the fusion.

What good is a map if you stay locked in? What good is exploring if it goes on and on in loops?

That’s how evangelists, preachers, explainers, theoreticians, ideologists and their likes are born: they get stuck in the knowing.

Self-reflection, much as I write about it here on Mentatrix, should not, I see now, be an end in itself.

Homegoing, and then — coming out again.

Taking a second go at life, no more being tossed and hurled around. That’s what the map’s good for.

Having done the work.

But not getting stuck with the work. Remembering that there’s a higher purpose for the work than just getting it done.

A second coming.

If not now, while it’s still full summer, when?

---

Before you go, just a few more updates.

I guest-posted this week on

Robin Motzer

’s Wildlands. Robin posted on Mentatrix here for you in July, about the mysterious, sacred patterns that can be found in nature.

You can read my guest post below. Those of you who have been with me for a year, might remember it, as it’s an older post.

Celebrate Summer the Black Forest Way

Oh, and don’t get too carried away by summer’s delights: in two weeks’ time, Mentatrix is hosting another very special guest author. Get ready to be bowled over!

1. Loreena McKennitt’s concert in Merano