An Inner Village

If we cannot find healing, guidance, and belonging in the world, we can gather and nurture an inner village to call home. Our ability to survive and serve a broken world may require it.

Enjoy this 8-minute read or click the title to access an audio recording at the top of my webpage!

I suspect I’m not alone in feeling a bit overwhelmed and disoriented at times. There are political and environmental upheavals. And there is an increasing frequency and intensity of personal challenges. Within a couple of weeks earlier this year, I discovered my childhood home burned down in the LA fires, I coordinated an off-site retreat with many unsettling twists and turns, and I assisted with CPR as my neighbor passed away.

All of this was happening as I was growing increasingly skeptical about finding any therapist, doctor, sponsor, spiritual teacher or thought leader who could provide lasting answers, healing or guidance. Each one I’ve encountered has offered a few important insights, tools, or shifts, but none of them met what I came to realize was my driving need: someone to restore and protect me. They were all simply people offering what they had, often still working on themselves just like me. None of them were worthy of unmeditated trust or loyalty. I had to admit that I am the only authority in my life, and that I often feel vastly underqualified for the job.

I imagine a past (and possibly future) when humans live in a village. We don’t need to meet all our needs, because members specialize and serve everyone. I can have a bad day with bad behavior, but that doesn’t affect my belonging. I don’t have to carry grief alone – we work, sing, and pray together. We have laws that curb our appetites so we live in harmony with our environment – and we feel deep humility and respect for all living things. The ancestors and spirits are real and present in our daily lives, so we are not overwhelmed by fear. Guidance is always available, and we comfort one another. The village cares about us finding and nurturing our gifts – and growing into true adulthood – because everyone’s survival depends on it.

I don’t know if this way of life is a truth my bones remember and long for, or a fantasy that pits me against reality and compromises my capacity to accept – and face – what is. I do know this vision validates my loneliness and gives me hope for a future beyond the broken systems so many of us feel trapped within. Yet this vision also invalidates the truth that I am exactly where every human being has ever been – called to survive and live their deeper truth within social and environmental confines.

Having a body isn’t easy. Everything is vying for energy in a finite system and to make space for ourselves, we must ask – even demand – that something else step aside. That may be the lives of the plants and animals we eat, the water we divert from rivers, the attention we ask from others or fail to give them, the goods and services we support (or don’t) with our money, the policies we support with our voices (or silence). Life is a vying for time and space. And if we aren’t clear about what we need and value, or able to act in alignment with that, we begin the process of spiritual and/or physical death. A village makes survival possible.

Regardless of whether this human village I imagine ever did – or will – exist, its presence in my imagination feels like a calling. I used to consider it a calling to find my place and people out in the world, but after years of wandering, I’m ready to admit I’ve either failed or it doesn’t exist. I now consider it a calling to cultivate an inner village I can live within as my true home.

So many psychological tools and spiritual teachings indicate this is not only possible, but necessary for wholeness and functioning. Internal Family Systems works with all the parts within us – from wounded children, to protectors, to wise elders. Spiritual teachings speak of ancestors, spirit guides, and archetypes. 12-step programs invite us to connect with a power greater than ourselves that can guide and nurture us beyond the survival strategies and empty obsessions we’ve come to rely on.

My inner village has been gathering and deepening over the course of years. Through dreams, meditations, medicine journeys, and practices, I have met sources of comfort, healing, and guidance within. Their presence and capacity is infinite and unconditional if I build a relationship with them through time and attention. They cannot meet my human needs for food, shelter, warmth, touch, or right livelihood – but they do show me how to pursue these things in a clean and effective way. They help me feel worthy and courageous. They reassure me that if all things fail or are lost, we can and will begin again. And I know that when my body is done, they will accompany me into a new life, for many of them were there before I began this one.

Far from making me feel like I don’t need anyone or anything, the strength of my inner village enables me to contribute something of value to the tattered villages I belong to out in the world. I can show up for my neighbors, coworkers, recovery community, meet-ups, and dates better able to see and accept them for what they are. There’s less need for denial or control when my most basic needs for acceptance, belonging, and insight are already met. My body still longs for company and affection, but not receiving it when, where, or how I prefer is no longer devastating. I can gift people the space to be as messy and wounded as I am.

At my best, I can bring a bit of light and hope. And when things align, I’m able to come together with others – in our wounded vulnerability – and feel a vast presence holding us all – regenerating and restoring us simply because we are being honest and real together. In these moments, it feels as though my inner village becomes manifest in this plane before receding again across the threshold where I can rejoin them in meditation and revel in all we shared.

I don’t know of any other way to do life right now. If I’m trying to fix all the things I perceive as broken in myself and the world – if I’m trying to inspire or find people who are whole and resonant – I seem doomed to disappointment and bitterness. But if I nurture those inner relationships through art, reading, meditation, nature, prayer, and surrender, I can find adequate relief. I can sense more clearly what is mine to do and what isn’t. I can say “no thank you” to things and people that aren’t mine without feeling wracked with guilt. I know where I’m from, where I belong, and how I fit into the inner village. I let it judge the righteousness of my actions, offer corrections, heal my body, mind, and heart, and send me outward again with blessings.

I believe each and every human being needs this. We are facing dire times without enlightened leaders or initiated elders. But the resources available to us are vast if we know where to look. If we can turn within to our own inner, sacred mythology and rituals, healers and warriors and elders, they can restore us and then live through us for restoring the world. We just need to be willing to believe in them again, to remember how to look and listen, to be humble enough to admit we might be wrong and then try following their lead.

Perhaps every successful village that’s ever existed has actually been founded and sustained through this relationship with the internal worlds as primary foundation and guide. Returning there is going back to the source for whatever we may build in the future.

May you nurture and trust your inner guides. May your longing for those you have not yet met be pure and wide enough for you to hear them. May you trust them first and foremost so you may walk in the world as a life-giver instead of a destroyer. May you receive their healing and guidance, and stand ready to serve in the ways you are called, free from delusion or the obligation to do anything except what is yours. And above of all, may you never forget that when you feel most lost they are your real home and comfort. Then you will be an incorruptible force for good.

Nancy

I offer gratitude to Alder Creek for the vision & words that led to this post.