Origin Tide
هر کسی کو دور ماند از اصل خویش
باز جوید روزگار وصل خویش
“Whoever is left far from the Origin
longs to return to the time of Union.”
~ Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī
The intention of the centre is to embark upon a healing journey toward the Origin — however this may be envisaged. We may think of our Origin as the person we were before a certain illness or accident impaired us — the person we really know ourselves to be. We may understand it as the true self lying under the layers of conditioning, masks and trauma we have worn for years; perhaps it is the vitality, creativity and health active beneath the inertia and impacts of life. Or maybe, our Origin is the truth of being human, living embedded in the cosmos and the Earth. Or, deeper still, it could point toward our spirit, the sacred, the transcendent Principle many of us have forgotten, but that nevertheless calls to us and with which we deep down long for union.
The journey to the Origin may seem to be a “return” — and yet it is not a regression. We are not concerned with leaving the world behind to regress to an infantile paradise, but to reconnect, remember and restore the original wholeness of our being: the Truth, Beauty, and Goodness that lies within our hearts and indeed within the hearts of all things. In this way, we become empowered to continue on the often difficult Path we are walking; in this way, we find regeneration and renewal.
The word “origin” is derived from the Latin oriri, “to rise”: from which we get “the Orient”, “to orient”, and “orientation”.
The Orient, the East, is the symbolic land of new birth, for it is here the light arises as the sun is born anew each day.
Amidst the struggles and pressures of the world, we easily lose our way, and wander aimlessly with no orientation. The act of remembering the truth of who we are brings with it the revivifying vision of where we are and where we are going.
May each session bring a healing which acts as a new birth, and clarifies our orientation: bringing clearer vision of who we are, where we are, and where wanders the winding Path ahead.
Perhaps this return to Origins is not as difficult as it may seem. Perhaps there are forces, intelligences, within and around us, that will carry us back, like a receding tide, if only we let go and allow ourselves to be supported. “Trust the Tide” is a common saying in craniosacral work, referring to subtle fluid and energetic motions. Indeed, may we trust the Tide, that which returns us back to our Origin!
All around us in the world is chaos, stress, consumerism, competition: we moderns live in a vast and largely meaningless world without a Centre. Traditional peoples since time immemorial have entered sacred spaces to reconnect with the transcendent Centre to find renewal and reorientation. Where are these spaces now?
Origin Tide is humbly dedicated to providing a space for beings to remember their true Centre; to find stillness amidst the storm outside; to reorient from pain, suffering and traumas toward health, goodness, and liberation; and to experience their very being move toward a deeper acknowledgement and lasting reconnection with their Origin: to ultimately live more peacefully, creatively, and fully on this planet we call our home.
Read more about the healing philosophy of Origin Tide:
Quotations on the Origin:
“The whole existence of the peoples of antiquity, and of traditional peoples in general, is dominated by two presiding ideas, the idea of Center and the idea of Origin. In the spatial world we live in, every value is related back in one way or another to a sacred Center… similarly for the Origin… To conform to tradition is to keep faith with the Origin… Everything in the behavior of ancient and traditional peoples can be explained, directly or indirectly, by reference to these two ideas, which are like landmarks in the measureless and perilous world of forms and of change.” — Frithjof Schuon
“The fallen soul loves to do anything except pay attention to the “one thing necessary,” to remember its own Origin and End.” — Seyyed Hossein Nasr
“Traditional man lives in a world which has both an Origin and a Center. He lives in full awareness of the Origin which contains his own perfection and whose primordial purity and wholeness he seeks to emulate, recapture, and transmit.” — Seyyed Hossein Nasr
“Real time is not the time of clocks and calendars, but the time of origins.” — Writer David Lapidat on the ideas of Mircea Eliade
“What is involved is, in short, a return to the original time, the therapeutic purpose of which is to begin life once again, a symbolic rebirth.” — Mircea Eliade
“Religious man periodically finds his way into mythical and sacred time, re-enters the time of origin, the time that “floweth not” because it does not participate in profane temporal duration, because it is composed of an eternal present, which is indefinitely recoverable.” — Mircea Eliade
“We have the intelligence of the embryo available to return to… the fluidity of our origins flows again.” — Franklyn Sills