As an energy medicine practitioner, meditation teacher and dream worker, Carly’s craft unfolds within the subtle realms, the numinous places. In navigating the flows and patterns of nature as they move through our bodies, minds and hearts, Carly draws our awareness to the interwoven world – to the warp and weft of the seen and the unseen and their beautiful, mysterious coherence. Her teaching and healing offer a potent remedy for the disconnection and isolation so common in our reductionist, hierarchical society – what Jungian psychologist Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls the “overculture”. In our recent conversation about craftsmanship within this context, Carly spoke of aliveness, transformation, pattern recognition, magic and social movements, and how all of these relate to our willingness to engage in a continual conversation with life – with the soul. Below is an excerpt from our talk, the first instalment in what I hope will be an ongoing dialogue with this brilliant, wise and soulful being.
Carly lives and works in the traditional territory of the Lkwungen-speaking peoples, the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations, on southern Vancouver Island. You can explore her work and upcoming offerings here.
Carly lives and works in the traditional territory of the Lkwungen-speaking peoples, the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations, on southern Vancouver Island. You can explore her work and upcoming offerings here.
Jess: What materials or processes do you work with? What most delights you about this work, and what is most challenging?
Carly: I’ve always had an intuitive sense that what we’re seeing is not actually the totality of our experience, and through dreams and intuitions and personal experiences of what seems like coincidence, I’ve sensed that there’s this mysterious unfolding happening that’s very alive with intelligence and purpose and meaning. I would say that this intelligence is the subtle material or process that I’m always working with, and my practices help me to tap into it in a regular and ritualistic way. What delights me is that this infuses my life with a sense of reverence and richness and aliveness. It helps me to appreciate what I see before me or who’s in my life as being not just an object, but an aspect of creation infused with mystery. This mysterious coming-into-being, this unique essence that I see, relishing in the essence of things – of people, of plants, of all of it – it just delights me.
What’s challenging is that this is not necessarily the way that the dominant culture, the overculture, views reality. This culture reveres the mind in terms of intellectual prowess and critical thinking, which is wonderful, but when out of balance this can foster intolerance or scepticism towards those who are exploring the unseen dimensions through subtle practices, through the dream realm, by listening in to the deeper conversation that’s unfolding with all of life. This way of feeling into reality can easily be diminished, but that’s also prompted me to strengthen my resolve. My hope is that my experience resonates with others who long for something deeper than what has been prescribed by the overculture as the purpose of life, who long for a deep, lived connection with their own depths and with the mystery.
J: What do you find most personally transformative about your craft?
C: I think what’s transformative is that it never ends in a definite answer, it keeps opening up to more and more possibility, and it helps to move away the rigidity of things are just this way, things are just that way. When we’re really in that continuous conversation with mystery, we start to see something of the ever-changing nature of reality, and it just brings so much room for possibility into our life, for the way we can relate to what may at first seem to be a very narrow, optionless path in front of us. The more I connect with the unseen, the more what might appear to be stuck or unworkable is infused with possibility and fluidity and adaptability and regeneration. There’s just this sense that things are so much more mysterious than we could even imagine and within that there’s so much potential, because we’re not landing on anything solid, rigid or unchanging. It’s an ever-unfolding process, and for me that’s transformative.
J: Many healers and craftspeople feel a deep sense of social purpose in their work. Do you see your work linking to a particular social movement or process?
C: To me, something natural arises when I’m in greater connection with the life that is around me, when I’m in conversation with the more-than-human world and when I have practices that root me in my heart. It naturally brings about a longing for everyone to have justice, to have rights, to have a good life. It brings about a clear seeing of the interconnection of all beings, and that there shouldn’t be a hierarchy based on the colour of our skin, our economic class. So many of these things, the system that we’re living in really creates – this divide and this separation that manifests within us and around us.
When I’m rooted in my heart and rooted in the natural world, this longing rises up for everyone to experience simple dignity. And this includes the land. I love what happened in New Zealand, how they gave legal personhood and rights to the water and the land. To me it’s all connected – there’s a basic dignity to life that deserves our reverence and respect. It’s real, it’s not theoretical. It’s an embodied, heart-knowing beyond any type of political affiliation. My hope in sharing heart-based practices with people is that they awaken a deep caring and that they shake us out of complacency. This can actually challenge those of us with different layers of privilege to see the ways we’re benefitting from systems that cause harm to others. It’s confronting and it’s necessary.
These practices also prepare us to lean into the hurt, the shame, the anger, the anxiety that are all part of social transformation. We need pathways within us that can hold the discomfort and we have to be able to grieve. All of these practices actually help us to feel, and to build the inner space and capacity to be with strong feelings and energies without reacting or blaming others – to learn how to regulate ourselves in a very disregulated time. This is a time when a lot of systems are falling, when we’re seeing what late-stage capitalism is doing and how few people are benefitting from it. It’s confronting, and so I think inner practices are incredibly important tools for our time – practices that aren’t about spiritual bypassing. We have to stay connected with what is beautiful, and we also have to stay connected to what is horrific and unjust and needing our attention.
J: What conditions enable you to feel most alive and engaged in your work?
C: For me, having daily rituals that help me to tap into the unseen dimensions is so important. When I’m caught up in the day-to-day, the errands, the status quo – I start to feel more erratic, more reactive, a little dry, and I know that it’s a call to shut the door and spend less time speaking and less time taking in information from the humans. That’s really it. I need to connect with that which isn’t human by working with my dreams, working with my subtle body, being quiet in nature, being away from my phone, away from human voices in solitary, ritual space, which might look alone but doesn’t feel alone. Then I can re-engage with the human realm with more grounding and connection, more generosity, more inner space for what comes up in our collective process.
J: What gift would you give to someone who longs to dedicate themselves to this craft, but feels afraid?
C: If I could, I would give them the gift of trust – trust that there’s a great intelligence guiding their life, that the signals and information being transmitted through coincidences or dreams or nudges or gut instincts or intuitions are worthy of close attention. I would tell them that when they’re living in this way, guided by their essence or soul, it’s not a guarantee that life will be easy, but it will be rich and worthwhile. I would say to trust that there’s a wisdom to the way things are unfolding, even if it looks like a scary, dense, dark wood that they’re being asked to enter. Yes, to trust.
Carly: I’ve always had an intuitive sense that what we’re seeing is not actually the totality of our experience, and through dreams and intuitions and personal experiences of what seems like coincidence, I’ve sensed that there’s this mysterious unfolding happening that’s very alive with intelligence and purpose and meaning. I would say that this intelligence is the subtle material or process that I’m always working with, and my practices help me to tap into it in a regular and ritualistic way. What delights me is that this infuses my life with a sense of reverence and richness and aliveness. It helps me to appreciate what I see before me or who’s in my life as being not just an object, but an aspect of creation infused with mystery. This mysterious coming-into-being, this unique essence that I see, relishing in the essence of things – of people, of plants, of all of it – it just delights me.
What’s challenging is that this is not necessarily the way that the dominant culture, the overculture, views reality. This culture reveres the mind in terms of intellectual prowess and critical thinking, which is wonderful, but when out of balance this can foster intolerance or scepticism towards those who are exploring the unseen dimensions through subtle practices, through the dream realm, by listening in to the deeper conversation that’s unfolding with all of life. This way of feeling into reality can easily be diminished, but that’s also prompted me to strengthen my resolve. My hope is that my experience resonates with others who long for something deeper than what has been prescribed by the overculture as the purpose of life, who long for a deep, lived connection with their own depths and with the mystery.
J: What do you find most personally transformative about your craft?
C: I think what’s transformative is that it never ends in a definite answer, it keeps opening up to more and more possibility, and it helps to move away the rigidity of things are just this way, things are just that way. When we’re really in that continuous conversation with mystery, we start to see something of the ever-changing nature of reality, and it just brings so much room for possibility into our life, for the way we can relate to what may at first seem to be a very narrow, optionless path in front of us. The more I connect with the unseen, the more what might appear to be stuck or unworkable is infused with possibility and fluidity and adaptability and regeneration. There’s just this sense that things are so much more mysterious than we could even imagine and within that there’s so much potential, because we’re not landing on anything solid, rigid or unchanging. It’s an ever-unfolding process, and for me that’s transformative.
J: Many healers and craftspeople feel a deep sense of social purpose in their work. Do you see your work linking to a particular social movement or process?
C: To me, something natural arises when I’m in greater connection with the life that is around me, when I’m in conversation with the more-than-human world and when I have practices that root me in my heart. It naturally brings about a longing for everyone to have justice, to have rights, to have a good life. It brings about a clear seeing of the interconnection of all beings, and that there shouldn’t be a hierarchy based on the colour of our skin, our economic class. So many of these things, the system that we’re living in really creates – this divide and this separation that manifests within us and around us.
When I’m rooted in my heart and rooted in the natural world, this longing rises up for everyone to experience simple dignity. And this includes the land. I love what happened in New Zealand, how they gave legal personhood and rights to the water and the land. To me it’s all connected – there’s a basic dignity to life that deserves our reverence and respect. It’s real, it’s not theoretical. It’s an embodied, heart-knowing beyond any type of political affiliation. My hope in sharing heart-based practices with people is that they awaken a deep caring and that they shake us out of complacency. This can actually challenge those of us with different layers of privilege to see the ways we’re benefitting from systems that cause harm to others. It’s confronting and it’s necessary.
These practices also prepare us to lean into the hurt, the shame, the anger, the anxiety that are all part of social transformation. We need pathways within us that can hold the discomfort and we have to be able to grieve. All of these practices actually help us to feel, and to build the inner space and capacity to be with strong feelings and energies without reacting or blaming others – to learn how to regulate ourselves in a very disregulated time. This is a time when a lot of systems are falling, when we’re seeing what late-stage capitalism is doing and how few people are benefitting from it. It’s confronting, and so I think inner practices are incredibly important tools for our time – practices that aren’t about spiritual bypassing. We have to stay connected with what is beautiful, and we also have to stay connected to what is horrific and unjust and needing our attention.
J: What conditions enable you to feel most alive and engaged in your work?
C: For me, having daily rituals that help me to tap into the unseen dimensions is so important. When I’m caught up in the day-to-day, the errands, the status quo – I start to feel more erratic, more reactive, a little dry, and I know that it’s a call to shut the door and spend less time speaking and less time taking in information from the humans. That’s really it. I need to connect with that which isn’t human by working with my dreams, working with my subtle body, being quiet in nature, being away from my phone, away from human voices in solitary, ritual space, which might look alone but doesn’t feel alone. Then I can re-engage with the human realm with more grounding and connection, more generosity, more inner space for what comes up in our collective process.
J: What gift would you give to someone who longs to dedicate themselves to this craft, but feels afraid?
C: If I could, I would give them the gift of trust – trust that there’s a great intelligence guiding their life, that the signals and information being transmitted through coincidences or dreams or nudges or gut instincts or intuitions are worthy of close attention. I would tell them that when they’re living in this way, guided by their essence or soul, it’s not a guarantee that life will be easy, but it will be rich and worthwhile. I would say to trust that there’s a wisdom to the way things are unfolding, even if it looks like a scary, dense, dark wood that they’re being asked to enter. Yes, to trust.
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