The Inner Landscape or Soul Home

[User1265455]

It has been referred to as the Soul's Garden, the Soul Home, the Inner Temple, the Inner Landscape, and many other ways. It is, in essence, our internal record of our deepest selves made manifest by imagery.

There are many ways to reach the Inner Landscape, and many layers to the landscape itself. There are also some commonalities among all landscapes.

The usual approach to entering the inner landscape uses a visual access point, such as a cave, tree knot, tunnel, doorway, or other symbolic entrance, with the express intent of entering the Self. In varying terms, this is called Entering the Dreaming Way, Journeying, The Journey to the Underworld, The Journey through the Tree of Life, etc. Always it is referred to with the idea of gateways leading to a myriad of realms, our current state of awareness being only one of an infinite multitude. Your entrance into your inner landscape must be of your own devising, because it is YOUR landscape, so individual to yourself that only you can find your own gateway to it, though if you are used to a journeying process, while the doorway will be unique, the mechanics will be the same. For the sake of those new to the process, journeying is the act of using the mind to travel. It is not a difficult process - as long as you have daydreamed, you have traveled. Controlling how you travel, when, and where you go is the challenging aspect to begin with. Intent must always be the guide.

It is simplest to visualize a doorway - any door image will do, though I personally prefer to make my doorways unique and appealing to my aesthetics - that either symbolizes your travel intentions, or bears symbology upon it. For instance, a door with a window, whose view looks out into the place you wish to travel to; a door with a tarot card upon it that symbolizes the aspects you wish to face; a door with the appropriate symbols for the realm - sephiroth, elemental, runic, etc. The realms and your own grasp of cosmology and symbolism are all you need. The chakras, energy centers throughout the body centered around nerve clusters, have also been used as symbolic gateways, with the two most often used being the heart nadir over the thymus glad, and the mental eye, centered over the pineal gland. A visualization of a spiral staircase, or even an elevator, with floor numbers which represent layers of the self, or layers of reality as understood by the traveler, will also work. The shamanic version is even simpler - any dark opening into the earth such as a cave, into the depths of a tree through a hollow, even a tunnel that you dig for yourself, will do - as long as your intent for where the opening will lead you is clear before you begin your travel.

Once you have your doorway and you have set your destination clearly in your mind, simply enter. You may have to go a distance, or you may simply arrive immediately at your chosen destination. You may need to wait for the door's permission to cross - there are realms that require specific rituals, there are guardians to be appeased, challenges to be met, but for the Inner Landscape, travel and arrival should be fairly simple. If you are unused to journeying, moving beyond this step in the beginning is not recommended.

Your Inner Landscape is a reflection of yourself. It should be instantly recognizable. It is also malleable to an extent. Your psychological and spiritual challenges, perspectives, and behavior will be described through the imagery you find there. For instance, a person who is closed off, highly protective of themselves, may find themselves in a small, defined and confined space, such as a closed cave. The structures do not have to be natural. I met someone who's soul garden began as a metallic half-domed structure, including the floor, which was all of one piece. The internal space (there was no exterior) was completely empty. It took this person a lot of emotional work to change this image into something more open and workable. I have read descriptions of other Inner Landscapes which included barren moons, deserts, English gardens, rainforests, ocean reefs, and even once an exotic nebula.

For most people, the area will also include several structures. The most obvious of these structures will be some form of protective barrier, which keeps the soul's home from being interfered with by others who do not have your best interests in mind. The second will be a meeting space of some kind, where guidance can be sought - no guidance should ever be deliberately brought in - that is, you should never summon a spirit, ancestor, god, guide, or other metaphysical entity into your soul's home. If they have permission to be there, they will be able to arrive at the meeting place set aside for such things. If they do not have permission to be there, there are reasons and unless you are very skilled and very comfortable with your ownership of your garden, you should not invite them. The third aspect will be a place of travel to other realms. This place may not be immediately obvious if you are not yet familiar with other realms or with journeying.

There are several things to be noted about the soul's home aside from its general appearance, which will indicate where you are on your spiritual journey, and what work you should be focused on at this time. Firstly - this is YOUR space. It is absolutely malleable to your will. If ever you find something in your inner landscape that you do not feel comfortable with, you hold absolute control, and can effectively evict such problems. You are absolutely defensible there, simply because your own consciousness holds such sway. Secondly, this is a place for deep reflection and healing. Any changes you feel need to be made, as you make them, will change yourself - likewise, what occurs in your own life will be reflected in your self-image here. If you do find something which you evict, be prepared for the experience in your waking life.

It is important to pay attention to correspondences here. Because the language of the unconscious is so symbolic, anything and EVERYTHING in your Inner Landscape is a message. Animals, plants, stones, metals, constellations, weather - whatever you discover in your Soul's Home, whatever draws your focus, it will have meaning for you. Even size and location have meaning here, so pay close attention and take the time to discover yourself, and your own language. Research what you find draws your attention most, and you will find that it has a unique bearing on your current psychological, emotional, and even practical life.

It is NOT advisable that you begin to make changes when you enter your Inner Landscape for the first time. It is best that you explore and research what you find as much as possible before beginning to make changes, if you feel so moved. Do not be surprised if, as you begin to work with your Soul Image, that drastic emotional shifts occur. Be prepared for them. As you come to recognize your true self, and whatever issues you have that are preventing your growth, as you begin to address these, rapid - sometimes even violent - shifts can occur. Be gentle with yourself when these moments happen. Acknowledge them, process them, and do not resist them. The more you work with your Soul Image, the more it will change, becoming richer as your understanding of yourself and your own language grows, and as you deliberately begin to make changes.

Journeying into your Soul's Home is deeply meaningful, and working within it is extremely enriching to your spiritual and emotional life. The Inner Landscape is a place to meditate and commune with yourself and your deepest needs, desires, and experiences. It is a place for you to come to an understanding of who you are, where you are in your life, and where you are going - and it is a place to heal your deepest hurts from. It is a place of strength and growth, a place to honor yourself and your journey, a place where your true self is expressed and where you can begin to control, eventually, how you interact with both yourself and the wider world, spiritually, emotionally, and literally.

Welcome Home.
-Raven

[User1265455]

THE RISKS -

I'm not sure what you know about Possession. The image that you are exploring in this concept isn't just your imagination. It is literally an image of your soul which you can interact with. Those interactions have consequences. Your Inner Landscape IS YOUR SOUL. If you invite something into your soul that does not already have an invitation, it's possession.

Possession can ONLY occur when you agree to it, BECAUSE it happens to your body and your soul. I know that sounds like blaming the victim, but it really isn't. Just because you're tricked into saying yes, didn't know what you were doing, does not make you less a victim. Also, most beings are not interested in possessions because bodies are freaking messy. When I say that possession requires permission, I mean that absolutely, because this is your body, your soul, your spirit, you... you have complete control over permissions about what happens. You own yourself - no one else does.

Exorcisms, believe it or not, are actually mostly theatrical, to convince the person under the influence that they actually do have control and that they have permission to say NO. The moment the victim says no, the possession ends. Needing to believe that a god is on your side and supporting you saying no is sometimes an essential part of taking back control. The fight over control can be dramatic, because the person possessed isn't just fighting the entity, but also themselves. In the most damaging cases of possession, the victim is almost always a deeply spiritual person who has been convinced by years of training that they are a victim to the spiritual forces in the world, that they do not have control over their souls or their bodies or their fate. These people need theatrics to convince them that they have a power on their side which gives them permission to fight back.

This is also why many exorcisms are unsuccessful. If you already believe you have no power over what happens to you, if you already believe that only external beings have the right to say what happens to you, then it becomes a question of who you believe is stronger. If you do not feel enough support from your faith, the exorcism will fail because you believe that the entity possessing you is stronger than you and your support.

There are sacred experiences of possession - by Loa, gods, etc. These experiences are based on very specific general terms for the practitioner undergoing such possessions, and if you choose to allow something like this, setting healthy boundaries are very important. As a person who has been Morrigan's Horse a time or two without understanding that I needed to set boundaries, I can attest to the fact that if you are not careful to talk with the possessing being, and set those boundaries, the experience is decidedly uncomfortable, as are the results.

As a person who has been possessed by a being that was NOT a deity, I can also say that the experience is uncomfortable for everyone involved. Long term possession ends in the destruction of the body simply because the possessing being wants OUT. It's as much a trap for them as it is for you.


Everyone that enjoys a human experience has a spiritual crew that works with and for them. This crew includes ancestors, guides, and deities. It includes messengers and teachers, both of the temporary and long term varieties. Your crew and your own soul, who both know most about your journey through this lifetime, know what you need most to experience and learn, and what you do not. Access directly into your soul image is strictly limited by both your crew and your soul to keep you safe, and prevent you from being drawn out of your journey. I'm not saying that possession isn't part of the journey for some people, but I am saying that it can be a distraction, and possession by some beings, especially long term possession, can be destructive enough that you end up having to start all over again. Sometimes, that's what people choose - the movie about Emily Rose expresses that quite clearly. She chose to die possessed because she believed that being possessed and losing her life would strengthen the faith of other Catholics. Again, you see CHOICE.


When you are in your Soul Garden and you are interacting with the deepest essence of yourself, with what is really true about you, when you meet a guide there, whatever that guide appears to be, it is something that your soul and your spiritual Crew have decided is safe for you to have in your garden. The invitations are temporary, and job specific. Sometimes, the guides are actually aspects of your own self. Sometimes the experiences and lessons of the guides allowed into your Soul's Home are difficult, even painful, but they will always be absolutely necessary to your growth as a person, and to your healing.

Shamans and healing practitioners can gain access to your Inner Landscape. Again, it's with permission. They cannot enter without it - even if they mean well. This protects you from beings and people that will alter your core self against your purposes. MANIPULATION OF THE SOUL IMAGE CHANGES WHO YOU ARE.

Just think about that for a moment. I'm sure you will understand how dangerous inviting something in that did not already have permission can be. Inviting something into your soul image is literally giving permission for things to change, even corrupt, the essential you.



As to how you remedy the effects of a corrupted soul garden - that's simple, and at the same time, so complicated I'm really not sure how to explain it. The concept of absolute control is difficult for most people to comprehend, but in your Soul Image, you have that. Unequivocally, you own yourself. This means that if the soul image is corrupted, while others who have permission can enter your soul garden and help you fight back, ultimately, it's you that must do the fighting, and you that must clean up your house... and because soul images are so deeply personal, how you do that will also be specific to you.

If someone or something entered my soul garden and the consequences were not acceptable to me, my entire garden would rise up and fight back. The very roots, the weather, my whole being would fight to remain whole and uncorrupted. Whether the source of that corruption would survive to be evicted or not, whether I would survive or not, the very landscape of my soul would fight. But, I'm familiar with my landscape. I know how to make it fight. I've worked with it long enough, it's instinctive. So are my boundaries, my protections.

If your image of your soul is a car, and something breaks, you have to think like a mechanic to fix it. If your image of your soul is a cave and something enters that does not belong, how would that cave, or anything in it, fight to evict that thing? If your image of your soul is that of a planet, would you use the lessons from the movie Avatar to fight? You use what you know.

The issue here is that imagery of the soul, and reactions of the soul, are so terribly personal and based on your experiences and understanding of yourself and your universe. It's YOUR language that you're speaking there.

To explain how personal, I'm going to use an example from a book on dreams I read so long ago I cannot quote the source. The example goes like this:

You have a dream where the color blue is a major figure. Blue, for most people, has a standard meaning of healing or tranquility. However, in your past, you experienced a tragic car accident. The car that destroyed your life at that time was blue. In your dreams now, the color blue always has that attached emotional burden - blue means tragedy and trauma to you. This is how your language forms.

When I say you have to do research, I don't just mean that when you see a bee hive in your soul home that you look up the meaning of bees in dream symbology and what a bee totem symbolizes, what that guidance might suggest to you... I also mean that you should look to yourself. If you're highly allergic to bees, then bee means something different to you than it does to most of rest of the collective unconscious. If you saw someone die, or saw someone seriously hurt because of bees, that meaning will carry over.

In psychology, the term is Media. All words, all images have media attached. I've used this example before, but it fits here, too. When I say Knife, and say Kitchen - immediately the image of knife has a load of media attached which is very specific. Knife on its own can have a multitude of images, feelings, baggage, but the moment you add a secondary media to it, the meaning codifies into something recognizable and solid. When I say Knife and Alley, the meaning changes. When I say Knife and Table, the meaning changes again. When I say Knife and Artist, without a third word, there is a load of possibilities. I could say Knife, Artist, and Wood, and you immediately get meaning from that which is specific again. If I say Knife, Artist, and Movie, then again, another host of possibilities occur.

All of these meanings are attached to the word Knife, to the image of a knife. All these possibilities. Which means that Knife means all these concepts. That's media. And every word, every concept, every symbol - colors, stones, plants, objects, people, deities, EVERYTHING, is laden with its own media. The trick when working with dreams, and with your soul image, is to understand your own personal world of media, and how it is similar to the collective understanding of media, and how it is individual to your own experiences - where it differs.

Once you are able to understand your own personal language, you are capable of doing anything you wish in your Soul Home. If you have a phobia of bees, you know when bees appear that you are confronting that phobia, the roots of it - where the phobia began - you are being confronted with that media, for a very specific reason. The eviction of those bees from your landscape will involve you using your ability to manipulate your inner landscape and the media involved. If you feel the color blue expresses trauma, when you see something in your soul garden that is blue, it is an invitation to work with that trauma. Say your image is that of a sunlit forest, and as you're walking, you come across a swath of blue material caught on the undergrowth. Are there more patches and do you follow that path? Do you unravel it? Do you take it and dye it? What do you do? Why? What does that swath of blue material mean? Why is it there?

You see, now, why defense of the garden is SO individual that I cannot explain it beyond these general terms, I'm sure. However, the more you work within your Soul Home, the easier such things will become.

Every step is the beginning of another journey. Walk brightly and with beauty.
-Raven