thoughts were eclipsed by the moon and the rocks reflected light
You walk to remember
to bring back hope and also sorrow
which must rise through the bracken to be freed
Long buried in forgetting
the hold of fear was strong
it held fast the magic of the land
that longs to breathe love
Beneath the hills, the bear sleeps to awaken the raven
a reunion of Earth and sky
while the river carries hope
in its struggle to move past time
Breathe with me
the fey wait at the edge of the circle
their white bodies move with the grass
Join your hands with theirs, again
and open the womb to life
The rainbow crystal is but a seed…
To read more about the story behind this poem, please visit: Keeping a Promise by Sue Vincent and The Raven Crystal , an earlier post of mine written after a visit to Hordron in the Peak District of England.
Two nights ago, I dreamed about disappearing. I was focused only upon point eight on a triangle, and each time I stepped on it, I would disappear. Over and over again, I stepped and disappeared, as the night progressed. Where I went, I cannot tell you, only that it was not of this world. Of this I was sure. Point eight was a portal. A seemingly impossible point on a three-sided triangle that opened the gateway to another realm. It was only when I woke, and the rational mind took over, that I questioned my journey.
A triangle has three points, and not eight.
Or is that the point? Can it be a coincidence that I was sure I was on point eight each time I woke? That each time I was pulled back, the number of infinity lingered inside of my mind, as well as the brilliant white light of the point on the triangle?
Image courtesy of Pixabay
Last night, or rather this morning, I dreamt of waves. I stood before an ocean of water, which grew with each pulse. I stood with fear.
Come and get me, I told it. I am not afraid of you.
Over and over again the water threatened to over-take me.
Go ahead, I told it, I am not afraid.
The final surge of blue loomed above me and lingered as though daring me to observe its power. Asking me to look at the full force of what I had dared the water to bring to me. So I looked. With my eyes I travel the mountain of liquid blue until it crested into a wave several feet above my head. Here I looked into the center, which swirled into an eye. There’s the portal, I realized. Go ahead, take me inside.
During the Silent Eye’s annual workshop this April, we engaged in a discussion about fear. There was, I believe, a general agreement that the ultimate fear most people, if not all, harbor is the loss of the individual as a separate entity. We fear the obliteration of the self as we know it, because we learn to believe that there is a self separate from the Source that is all things. How can the self be separate, but whole? Or is the self that is separate really whole? The illusion of separation allows us to feel special and different from other living beings. It feeds the ego’s ideal of superiority, or at least a sense of uniqueness.
The other day, while walking in the woods back in New Hampshire, I thought about how what we fear the most is also what we most long for. It is ironic in some ways, but it also makes perfect sense at its essence. The example of the loss of self in the form of a part of the body came to my mind. I thought about the phenomenon of the phantom limb, which is felt by the body it once belonged to, and still does, in essence. For the reverse is also true, as seen with organ transplants. Patients who receive foreign hearts, for example, often experience personality characteristics of the donor after the transplant. The cell always carries the memory of its home.
A home that extends, ultimately back to its source. Our bodies, made from the elements of Earth, carry the memories in our cells of their origins. Our souls, in turn, have a memory of the Source of All. We carry within us the memories of both as home, and all the “homes” and “mothers” that we experienced throughout our lifetimes. Which leads to the longing of the self to return to that union, even though we become somewhat used to the idea, or illusion, of separation. Confusing that longing with something else.
By nature, birth leads to a physical separation from the “mother,” until death brings us back to the source from which we came. Usually, but not always, the parent experiences death first. The body returns to Earth. The soul returns to the Divine Source. Then the death of the child follows, and so on, in this continual cycle of life and death. We really don’t know, with certainty, what unity after death is like, which was also discussed during the workshop. The experience is, at least by most of us upon our birth, largely forgotten. If we remembered it fully, would we really want to be here to experience separation? Even with the knowing that everything, ultimately, returns to its source?
And why are we so often disturbed by this cycle of life? One only needs to look to Nature to see how life is recycled over and over again. Before the workshop, I had a discussion with Sue, one of the directors, regarding this concept. In a series of vivid and troubling dreams about fears, I had dreamt of being in a laboratory filled with women who were taking human bodies, including their own children, and digesting them in a vat of juices where they were broken down and then injected by tubes into their own bodies. As Sue reminded me in my journal, this is not unlike Mother Earth, who recycles, or re-ingests, her children in a continual process of life and death. It can be a disturbing concept, but we are all a part of this cycle. In order to “live,” we must consume life. When we die as individuals, our bodies will be returned to the earth, eventually, even if we delude ourself by placing the dead in sealed coffins. The parts, once again, broken down by their source to be rebirthed into new life.
Everything always returns to its source. And, everything, I believe, longs to return. We carry with us, even if we do not fully remember it, the memory of “home.” Yet why do so many of us strive for separation, as though it were an ideal? It is an empty endeavor, which never leads to fulfillment. A fact that is so glaringly apparent right now in our world rife with war and discrimination of the “other.” Energy spent toward division, rather than union, takes much effort and is always premised upon fear.
How easily we allow ourselves to forget, and fight against even, what we truly are. There is no need to be a twin to know unity beyond the self, or have a “soul-mate” in the form of a lover, even though some of us harbor a belief that there are connections between living beings that are deeper than others. Connections that speak of a one-self instead of a separate self. Perhaps we are not here to learn what it feels like to be separate, but what it feels like to be separate and still whole. To see the self in the other in recognition, even if the other appears vastly different from who the self thinks she is.
I didn’t know why I felt compelled to bring it, but I had a feeling I would never wear it again. There had been the sense for some time that it was no longer meant for me. Perhaps it never was. For more than a year I had worn it often around my neck, and felt the comfort of its presence against my heart. Last year at the Silent Eye’s annual workshop, The Leaf and Flame, where I played the role of Queen Guinevere, the rainbow crystal wrapped in wire rested against my velvet gown. It gave me the sense of strength and protection as I experienced my first journey with ritual drama.
This year, the crystal stayed tucked into the folds of my bag, until I brought it out when we ventured into the land of the Feathered Seer. At the Raven’s Nest, where I had felt the longing to re-enchant a land that had been defiled by mankind, I thought about the small pile of stones I had with me from the workshop. Stones now energized with the collective love and light from our group, which would be seeded back into the earth from which they came. These stones have now traveled to places in the states, and have even made their way back to the United Kingdom. They will be planted by people with the loving intent of repairing the Web-of-Light in Earth.
For the next day, after I left the Nest, I thought about the small round obsidian stone I had with me, and berated myself on not leaving it where I had found the remains of a dark offering. Yet, it didn’t feel quite right.
Before we left for Barbrook to visit the final home of the Feathered Seer, I impulsively grabbed the rainbow crystal I had brought with me from the States, and tucked it into my pocket. It stayed there, almost forgotten, until after I had visited the waters that divide the moors into the lands of the living and the lands of the dead. Before we left, I visited the stone circle, and took my turn sitting first toward the outer-world, where the living dwells, and then the inner-world, where the unseen speaks through the veil.
By the time I rose from the Seer’s stone, I knew my answer. Removing the gloves that guarded against the cold from my hands, I dug into my pocket to retrieve the crystal I had brought with me. I had already removed the chain, but wire still wrapped its body. My hands, driving my intent, uncoiled the strands that bound it, until the crystal lay freed upon my palm. I held it up to the light for one last look, and saw the face of a raven in its form. I now knew why I had brought it to England, and why I had not chosen to leave the black obsidian at the Nest. A sense of comfort began to replace the unease that I had felt since my visit to the Nest. I imagined the rainbow light of the crystal nestled into the bracken under the rocks. It’s light coursing through the broken veins of Earth. Re-weaving. Re-enchanting. Bringing hope and love back to the land.
A couple of years ago, I had a dream about the stones of Earth, which are mined for beauty and adornment, as well as for healing intentions. In the dream, I saw a stream of water, not unlike the brook at Barbrook. I had a stone in my hand, and felt the loss of its connection to the land from which it came. The stones need to be returned to the land, I was told by a guide inside of my dream. Many others, including the companions of the Silent Eye School, have been hearing the same message. Do you have a rock or crystal that calls for a return to the land? Have you infused a special stone with your love, which is now ready to spread its light into the body of Earth? I like to imagine the threads spreading like the silk of a spider’s web, deceptively strong and clear, and holding the wavelengths of the full spectrum of the rainbow, as they grow and weave. Threading the Light back until the Web becomes a circle, connecting all life, once again.
I woke from a strange dream this morning, just at the point where I could have let go of the notion that I needed to go “back” home, and surrender into the vast unknowing. I woke with a feeling of constriction. I felt it in the chest tight with held breath. I felt it in my throat clogged with mucus. And, I felt it in my lower abdomen waiting to release the waters processed during the night.
In the dream I had been driving a cat. Of course this might actually have been possible if it had been a wild cat such as a tiger or a lion, and I allowed myself to imagine that glorious possibility for awhile after I woke. In the dream, though, my domesticated cat looked a lot like the one that lives in my physical house, only I had a ridiculous reign around its shoulders, as though I actually believed it would be capable of taking me where I thought I needed to go, which was back to my childhood home. When I woke, my wildcat, a tiger, had no yoke of any form, instead I rode her back and surrendered to where she wanted to go.
The cat, in both instances, represents the energy of the 2nd chakra, where our creative life-force energy is birthed into being through our intuition. In the dream, I thought I was letting the cat lead the way, but of course she was too small and too domesticated to carry my weight. It was a rather pitiful scene of restraint. Before I woke, I was digging futility in a backpack with many pockets, stuffed with everything, it seemed, but the GPS I was looking for. I was convinced I needed it to find my way back home. “Back” home, that is, instead of home. I was going backwards into the past, instead of forwards into the unknown filled with that fiery energy of possibility.
The cat that wants to be a tiger
I shouldn’t have been surprised by this, and really, I wasn’t. Frustrated, yes, as we all are when we don’t allow that full expression of the 2nd chakra to channel into life. You see I had also been tempted by this possibility, in the form of a mysterious lover, who held me close and kissed me, before I made the choice to look for my “car. Yet there was the hint of promise in his words,”You will come back. Next time…”
Why, you might ask, am I telling you about this dream? Why should you care? Because, I realized, upon waking that my struggle against restraint is a universal struggle, which is so poignantly at the surface right now it cannot be denied. You need only to look around you, and within you, to see it. As the inner always mirrors the outer and vice-versa. It is also timeless, but I believe at this point in our collective evolution, the letting go of restraint is poignantly calling for our attention.
How many of us grew up with restraints and constraints? Most of us, I think it’s safe to say. I know that in the rare moments when I dared utter my will, which went against my parents’, a verbal or physical restraint would quickly reach out to hold me back. Of course it’s no wonder I am still struggling with the ties that bind, but oh is it frustrating.
Yesterday, I read a post of Facebook shared by a friend about a young man in Boston who had faced the darkness of uncontrolled restraint in the form of fear surfacing from the energy around this turbulent election process. I believe we all want to be free. Yet, when we act out from the place of fear, we cause harm. When we choose to disempower another, instead of empowering ourselves, we cause oppression and hurt. We are seeing examples of this all around us right now as we are being called to walk with a faith that calls for a surrendering to the light which is love, which is grace, and which is also the vast unknown, and as yet undecided. This, then, requires a breaking down of fear and all its restraints.
The young man from Boston was not caucasian, and this threatened the foundation of “home” of the man who raged at him, as he was holding fast to old fears. Fears perpetuated by the rhetoric of Trump and his supporters, and hence fear that were not wholly his own (as all fears are really, in essence, everyones’). To hold onto his crumbing foundation, this older, white man, raged against the young non-caucasian, telling him to get off the bus he was riding, telling him to go “back home.” In essence, though, he was trying to find his own way home. His lack of restraint, in this case, had become a constraint. He was holding himself back from evolving, while also trying to hold the young man back who trigged this fear within him.
It’s curious how much we fear the unknown, but it’s also deeply troubling when you see all the damage it has, and continues to cause, in our world. A world that is trying, constantly, to evolve and grow, yet we try, in turn, to hold it back by holding ourselves back, and by trying to hold each other back. We cling to the past. We cling to what we are used to, because we think it is the safest way to live. But is it? Look around you and within you. What has this created besides war and suffering?
Constrained energy causes disease. It causes illness. It causes dis-ease. Ultimately it causes death, because the vital life force energy that wants to flow through us is shut of or diminished by restraint.
Last night, before I went to bed, I watched the move “Miracles from Heaven.” In the movie, if you have not seen it, a 10 year-old-girl is diagnosed with a potentially deadly disease of the digestive system. She is literally unable to digest and process the nutrients her body requires for life. The relevance of that, in light of what this post is about, does not escape your observation, I am sure, but there is more.
In the movie, which is based on a true story, the girl comes back home to live out, it is thought, her last remaining days. Instead, her older sister, following what I believe to be a spark of intuitive guidance, urges her to let go of the restraints that bind her and climb a large, old tree in their yard. When the two girls are on a branch together, it starts to crack from their weight, and they scramble toward the trunk so they will not fall. But, the dying girl falls (through a hole inside of the trunk), and in that fall, she finds new life.
A miracle occurs in that moment. In the pit of darkness at the base of the old tree, in which she has fallen, the young girl loses consciousness, freeing her spirit from her body. She meets “God,” and is given a new chance at life. When she wakes, she is cured of her disease and all of its restraints.
As her mother later says during a church service, “miracles are all around us, we just need to open our eyes to them.” And, let go of restraint in the form of fear. The young man on the subway is an example of this. In the face of hatred, he surrendered his own fear to grace instead of caving into fear in the form of hate. In the story of the event, he admits to being filled with an impulse to react by punching the man. To return hatred with hatred. To fight the battle he is being called to fight, but instead, he surrenders to grace. Letting go of his own fears, he opens the gate to life. To a new reality. In doing so, the man entrenched in fear responds in kind, to this new, stronger, energy he is presented with. The anger in his face gradually melts as the fortress dissolves. Tears of release fill his eyes, and he extends his hand to the young man he has just assaulted verbally. And in that moment, a new world is born, at least for him.
We all share these fears, just perhaps in slightly different forms. We all fear, to different degrees, the new. We fear what we do not know, and what we could become. But should we? Restraint, held in the reign of fear, only stops us from birthing the new world within and without. Now, more than ever, we cannot afford to stop the light that is life from flowing into the infinite possibilities of who we are and are desiring to become. A genius, whether in the form of a painting, a poem, a symphony or a breakthrough in science, causes us to look at the world in a new way. We are filled with awe as we gaze upon the manifestation of greatness, but we forget that it lies, waiting to be birthed, in all of us.
I have found grace, again. You could say I just went through another “Dark Night of the Soul.” One of many, but this one was particularly acute. This one began on my birthday, if you are interested in reading that story you can find it in my post The Return of the Goddess. It came to a head one month later, when I entered one of my darkest nights and found myself doubting whether I was going to find the light again. “You’re not a quitter,” my good friend told me as I sobbed over the phone 3,000 miles away from her.
She was right. I have never given up, even in my darkest moments when the light seemed to flicker in a shroud of darkness inside of me, gasping for air, and I had no real intention of giving up then. Yet, grace seemed illusive, a state so far from where I was, that I could not imaging reaching it again.
I have found grace, again. The light, burning inside has erupted through the shroud of shadows and pronounced victory. Grace, I have found, is subtle. It is gentle, yet profoundly beautiful as it works its way through the pain to find the heart of life and beat it gently back into rhythm. Let me give you some of the story so you will better understand the cycle as it came through me.
On my 43rd birthday, my pain-body, or shadow-self, called out to be seen. I saw that inner-child and the goddess-woman still hiding in the shadows wanting to be healed and brought back into the light. Through the course of the ensuing month, I was faced with many tests that brought me ever-deeper into the darkness that needed to be explored and healed. As all spiritual tests are that ask us to evolve, these were not easy, and after one full month of them with little respite, I felt brought to the point of collapse, yet in an almost sadistic way, I was also saying to the Universe, “bring it on, let’s do this.”
And so the adage, “be careful what you ask for, you just might get it,” could be applied, yet I also believe that we are never given what we cannot, in theory, handle. So, I worked though the horrific dreams at night and the daily, sometimes, horrific, ordeals of waking time. I started going to tai chi classes on Fridays, a few hours after my regular yoga class. As a friend so eloquently stated during lunch today, when yoga is practiced as intended “it is like inviting God into your body.” Or, it could be said, it is like letting the God force that is within you, but only simmering, stir back into life. Yoga, tai chi and other activities that work with the life fore energy, can be incredibly intense, leaving you feeling like you have literally had a battle of light against darkness.
In the midst of this, I decided to get myself an energy healing that focused on releasing ancestral trauma and abuse, going deep through the lineages to release stored memories of trauma, including those passed down (which, by the way, was on a Friday, right in the middle of yoga and tai chi). Foolishly, I had hoped to be done with the worse part of what I had been experiencing after the session. As my friend 3,000 miles away reminded me, “You know better than that, Alethea. You’ve told me about how this works before,” adding an anecdote just in case I needed proof.
So, the wave of darkness came crashing down in full force this past week. One of the most dramatic incidences that occurred involved witnessing my daughter’s terror at being exposed to a horrific story at school by a police officer teaching drug education. The aftermath of this being almost as unpleasant as the episode itself, showcasing the shadow-side of many involved, along with my own.
In the midst of all of this, I began reading M. Scott Peck’s, M.D. book People of the Lie: The Hope of Healing Human Evil. Having just finished The Road Last Traveled by Peck, something nudged me to go further into this place of darkness inside to explore. And there was that moment, yes, that moment, where I had to ask myself, are you dancing with the “devil?” Now let me clarify, by “devil,” I adhere to Peck’s then 8-yr-old son who defined the devil to be the opposite of “live,” or “lived,” which is the word spelled in reverse. That state of non”life” where we can succumb completely to the darkness that resides inside. I knew I was agreeing to push myself to the brink of fear, and as my spiritual mentor pointed out to me after my lasted journal for the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, “You are really going through some dark things at present… but always remember that the ball cannot bounce until it hits the ground…and the harder it falls, the higher it will soar.” It’s worth also mentioning that this dark night was occurring during the 6th month of my second year with the school. The half-way point. One could also say, the turning point.
Those words were written by my mentor a week ago, and as I’ve just said, it got worse before it got better.
I realized the light of grace was returning to me last night, in my dreams, where I often learn a lot about myself. I found myself riding in airplanes (the symbolism of which you can look up) to faraway destinations I had never been to, by myself, without the baggage I was accustomed to taking with me. The planes dived and flipped in mid-air, I found myself without my seat-belt on, I was in a strange place with strange people, yet I was okay.
I woke feeling lighter, much lighter that I have for many days. The tests that could trigger me during the morning, did not. At 11:15 I got into my blue Volt, and started driving north to meet my friend for lunch. I felt exhilarated, like I had new life coursing inside me. A large crow flew from the forest beside the road and straight over me, as though guiding me north, for some time. I smiled. The crow had returned. The messenger that reminds me of rebirth out of darkness. And it never left. Through the entire ride there and back home, the crow appeared often. At the beginning of the ride home, going south, it emerged from the forest with a red apple in its mouth, and flew over the car once again, turning south to guide me. I found myself filled with gratitude. In the parking lot there had been a car parked beside me with 444 on its plate, during the ride home, 555 (for more information on number meanings I recommend Doreen Virtue’s resources or Joanne Sacred Scribe’s website. I felt incredibly blessed and guided, and I knew the light inside had won, again. I knew that I had just turned another corner in this journey of life.
As I continued to drive, with crows appearing in trees and in flight beside me, I listened to the end of a story on NPR about a writer who had suffered brain damage from an accident, and had not only survived, but thrived from her ordeal. She had transformed her darkness into light. After the story was over, I hit the buttons on my touchscreen to find music, and found John Legend’s song “All of Me” playing. Impulsively I started singing, surprising myself with the harmony of our voices. I sang loud and with passion. I sang to myself, “all of me loves all of you,” and I meant it. And I cried, again. Not from a place of despair, but from the state of gratitude, surrender, and grace. I felt filled with light and life.
Mourning dove feather I found on my path: “Light emerges out of darkness”
Sometimes all it takes is a trigger to make your remember, again. I was getting my hair cut and highlighted, and while the color was setting, my friend, the stylist, was proudly showing me photographs of the beautiful fairy house she made with her 10-yr. old “little sister.” I was impressed by the intricate details and the obvious care and love that had gone into its creation, but the images faded into the background as we talked about other things. An hour later I walked out the door and continued on with my day. The little fairy house, already forgotten, lurked somewhere hidden inside my mind.
A “fairy house” beside my home
Sometimes it takes a trigger, and also a release of the old to give way to the forgotten inner. After leaving the salon, I made my way to my tai chi class, where I stayed for the next hour. As I was preparing to leave, I over-heard a woman remark to her companion, “It’s like having reiki.” She’s absolutely right, I stopped in pause.
Or a double dose in my case. You see before I went to the salon, I had my Friday morning yoga class. Both yoga and tai chi work with the energy centers in the body where we hold our “chi,” and allow it to stir back into life where it has become stagnant. We also release stuck energy that’s ready to leave, to allow the true life force energy that resides in all of us to flow as it wants to. In tai chi class, we literally draw into our bodies the energy of Earth and the Universe to rejuvenate our bodies as we shake out the old that we no longer want to carry.
I was exhausted by the time I got home, and I uncharacteristically found my way to the hammock under the oaks and hemlocks and stayed there for so long I could hear the whisper of the arbiter inside me reminding me, “You should be making dinner now.” But, a stronger voice said, “Stay awhile longer. Forget about time as you have grown to follow it.”
So I stayed and took in the contrast of the green canopy of leaves filtering the brilliant illusion of a blue ceiling, allowing myself to just be. I watched and listened to the squirrels in the oak, carrying on their conversations as they clung impossibly to their vertical home. I fell into that hazy sleep of daytime, only to wake and wonder where I had temporarily gone.
The blue of the sky
The day gave way to evening, and I ventured back into town to get take-out for my family. No one complained that I did not cook. The sky turned from the color of a blue jay’s wing to the color of the crows who had circled the skies like an omen when I had walked the dogs before I ventured to the hammock. I grew increasingly tired after dinner, sleep calling louder with each hour that passed until I finally made my way to bed.
Night’s messenger
I can’t tell you where I traveled while I slept for most of the night, but I can tell you about the scene from which I woke this morning. I am still smiling with the memory of coming home, even though I couldn’t find the tea on the internet after I woke. But that’s really irrelevant.
Home, to my recollection, was mostly the scene of a summer forest. I woke, in the dream, that is, alone and outside. I had been sleeping in some sort of tent and my family was already gone for the day. I rolled my blankets and ventured out into my surroundings, which were lush and green, the color of the oak leaves before they turn in fall. There was some sort of wire enclosure, to keep animals in or out, I was not sure, but I rolled it away none-the-less. I searched the area for signs of life and found myself suddenly in winter, drawn up a hill beside an old mansion. There were neighbors working on their own house. I left them alone and walked through the snow toward a large hedgerow shaped into an archway. It was covered in ice, but there was a narrow opening in the middle, so I squeezed my way through. I was back to summer.
I shed my heavy coat, for there was no longer need of it, and found I was hungry. I ventured inside a hobbit-like house that felt like home, and there inside was a child. A girl who seemed to know me, and I her. She, I discovered, was also hungry. “I think they went to get more food,” she told me, and we saw the remnants of a meal. Animals appeared around our feet. A couple of young cats, and two small white dogs. The blind one lingered around my legs. Daisy appeared, but not my dog companions who are still in physical form.
Daisy, who always reminded me when the elementals had something to say
Soon we discovered the food. It was a full buffet, laid out, partially hidden, in a depression in the kitchen counter. For a moment we indulged our appetites, then began the search for tea. “I think it’s over there, I told the girl.” We culled through drawers filled with tea, but could not find the kind we were looking for. Above the counter were cabinets, and I opened one, only to discover what I had been looking for. My eager hands held the boxes filled with the green of spring. I read the labels, “Fairy Tea,” and felt the inner stirrings of joy. “I used to drink this as a child,” I told her. But, of course, she already knew that.
With my friend Deb at Samhain. That spark of light on my left arm just might be a fairy
It rained all day yesterday, and the dogs and I decided to stay near home. Today, though, is beautiful. It feels like April instead of March, the air soft and warm.
Where I was stopped.
Last night I dreamt of a hummingbird. I was sitting outside, on a warm sunny day, and the hummingbird, larger than life, flew into my field of vision and hovered before me. It wore the colors of the forest. The colors of the heart. A rich green cloak over a gold breast, reminding me that the heart beats for life, but also for joy.
A living embodiment of resilience, and a reminder that joy is the nectar of life.
This time I was stopped at the edge, where the yellow caution tape three days ago embraced a forest filled with life. I thought of the beautiful struggle of a seed, smaller than my fingernail, quietly, valiantly, growing into the full breadth of a pine whose trunk once spanned the embrace of my arms three times over. What did it take to grow to those great heights? Perhaps 50 years.
There once was a forest.
It took less than 3 days to lay waste to the forest. Each time my breath catches in my throat with loss, my heart beats towards life. The last bird I heard singing inside the forest was a cardinal. Today, the 3 crows that have been by my side faithfully, flew to the edge where I stood and bore witness with me. Two nights ago I dreamt of an eagle.
I didn’t intend to write a blog post this morning among the list of things I wanted to accomplish, but sometimes what plan to do is not what we were meant to do.
When I walked out of the door this morning, Crow greeted me as she often does these days, from somewhere hidden among the tall trees in my yard. She continued to call each time I brought more boxes to the end of the drive for donation, and I thought of her, later, when I stepped into the woods with my two canine companions. I’m almost certain a third was with me, in spirit. Tomorrow will mark the year of her passing, but I did not weep for this loss.
In truth, I had not been thinking about Daisy, but about the life that lives in the woods down the road from my house, where I have long enjoyed walking with my dogs and family. Once, my daughter and I saw a pack of coyotes running through the trees. Today, I noted the tracks of deer and wild rabbit marking paths home through the fresh snow.
The morning was quiet, aside from the incessant hum of traffic that always filters through the trees, and the soft tread of my feet, accompanied by the dogs runny ahead of me. Rosy and Zelda were filled with joy, as they always are when they step inside these woods.
About a month ago I had a dream. I was sitting on the hillside below the forest, where children sled in winter, and families gather in the summer to listen to music. I was looking at the vast sky above where dragonflies dance, when the message came through, “Don’t let them bulldoze this sacred ground.”
Now, weeks later, long ropes of tape mark off the boundaries around several acres of trees. Wooden stakes in the ground label potential gravel dumps and irrigation ditches. There is even one that says “pond” where there is no water. I almost laughed at the irony, but instead I cried. Standing among the sentient beings of the forest who speak in a language most have forgotten, I wept for this sacred ground that so many call home. When did we forget? I wondered. We are of the Earth.
Perhaps we need to forget in order to remember. I know that each time I have forget my sacred connection to my Truth, and the much wider Truth of Life, my body/mind/spirit becomes out of alignment until I have no choice but to remember.
We are of the Earth, but we do not own the Earth. She, in fact, owns our bodies, where are made from her nutrients. Long before we walked her surface, she was here, flourishing with life. She will be here long after we leave, broken perhaps, but she will heal. We depend upon her, she does not depend upon us.
At some point, the collective consciousness of humanity chose to forget. There are times when I think it is almost a burden to feel everything, but this is one of those mornings when I am so very grateful that I have chosen to reside in a vessel that remembers how to feel this sacred connection to all life. I believe we all have this ability to feel, this innate knowing, but many of us have chose to forget.
We value our homes. We love the beauty we create, and the money we make is invested into making our homes as beautiful as we can, yet what about this larger home we all share, that we all depend upon? When did we forget that we walk upon sacred ground? When did we forget to that the air we breathe comes from the lungs of Earth we call trees?
Clean air and water have become a universal gift of a long forgotten past, because of us. I walk the woods to remember Home. I walk the woods to feel whole again. When there is a rip in the web, we are all affected.
It has sadly become an abnormality. An uncool condition. A label of scorn…to remember connection. To remember Home. To remember that all life is sacred, and that the “I” cannot exist without the “We.”
It was a one of those nights when sleep arrives slowly and is interrupted mid-dream, ensuring that you will recall the scenes upon waking. One of my children was worried about ghosts in the bedroom. “You clear them, don’t you?” I was asked. The room felt unoccupied to me, but some protective measures where taken none-the-less. Turns out a scary YouTube video that was supposed to be comedic had been watched.
As a result, the lights went on several times during the night, and each time I woke from a new dream that seemed unrelated from the one to follow it until I rewinded the night during daylight.
My dreams began in that popular place where magic is contrived. I was eating lunch with my mother at one of the park’s restaurants. She had ordered the double hotdog special because it also came with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for later. I munched the fries, uninterested in eating the hotdog, while we sat at a booth. Then, suddenly, I found myself asleep, and when I woke my mother was gone. It had all been a ruse, a trick, a way to leave her child behind. Still groggy from the drug that had been placed in my drink, I searched the streets, knowing she would not be found.
The next flick of the light found me on a park bench, reaching out to hold an infant that belonged to someone else. The child was a harmony of light and dark, with symbols covering his or her head (there was, fittingly, no sense of gender). The mother generously allowed me to enfold her baby in my arms. They followed me home, and while the child’s mother and I sat on the quilt I had made long ago with my own mother, she told me that the bedroom closet was too small for what it held inside.
“I’m a builder,” she assured me, and I watched as she threw open the doors and let loose that which was contained. Shoes and clothes piled out. “There is too much stuff in here,” She told me. “And the location is all wrong. Suddenly my closet was being lifted in her strong arms until it found a new home. A complete reconstruction and expansion was in order.
As I moved outside of the bedroom to watch, I discovered a house under construction. Some rooms were finished, others held the frame of potential. My home, though, was vast. Limitless rooms unfolded before me as I traveled (actually I believe I was flying through) the upstairs hallways.
Once again, a light went on, and I found myself inside of another dream. This time, I thought I was someone else who was not me. A beautiful boy who wanted to be a girl (this is significant on many levels, one being that in this life, I as expected to be born a boy by my parents, but was born a girl instead). Here I was, inside this child, being told that my father wanted me outside by the pond with him. I felt resistance build within me, and the struggle to be free erupt into wings.
I was the child of Pan, running gloriously wild, racing up the trunks of enormous trees and into a house held within the boughs. I was weightless with wings. There was nothing to stop me from being pure joy, except my own fears. Before I woke, I found myself in one of those upper rooms, looking outside at nebula exploding into being. Suddenly, I tasted fear. Could I, I wondered, leave it all behind? The Universe was calling…was I ready to follow that birthing of light?
The Light Behind the Story 