Tag: following the path of light

Optimistic #optimism #lookingup

On By Alethea KehasIn Reflections16 Comments
Double rainbow near Newgrange in Ireland taken during my recent visit

Yesterday, while driving into town to get groceries, a car pulled up beside me at the stoplight. The license plate on it read “Optimistk.”

I opened my email this morning to discover one of the Good News feeds I follow was featuring an article about optimism. Hmmm…maybe a shift was in order.

I like to call myself a realist. But I’m also a dreamer. Sometimes my dreams are dark, and sometimes they are filled with light. I can be a chronic worrier. It’s something I need to constantly keep I’m check. I can fall easily into “what ifs” and dwell upon the gloomier state of the world and my own individual circumstances. Sometimes, it takes active work for me to shift my downward focus up.

Yesterday, and this morning, I was reminded of what brings me joy and allows me to expand instead of constrict the light within. My practical mind can hold onto tangibility and lack in a way that serves only the gremlin who feeds on the shadows inside of me. We are of little service to the world when we hold onto impossibility.

I have a vision that feels so expansive sometimes, I cannot find its edges. Each time I let it arise, I feel the bubbles of Joy percolate out of density. It is an exquisite dream, and even though I cannot yet label all of the paths to its center. I believe it is expressible. This is my test of optimism. And it’s a big one for the science-minded, practical Virgo that resides within. But I am not wiling to let it slip into the shadows of impossibility. Instead, I am going to keep feeding it with the light of expansion and (actively) watch it unfold into being.

Are you holding onto a dream that seeks to be lifted up? Is optimism calling to you to, asking to be expressed? If so, perhaps it is time to allow the unfolding.

Take these broken wings

On By Alethea KehasIn Animal Messengers, Dreams, Reflections2 Comments

The red-winged blackbirds started appearing in my neighborhood about a week ago. In the eleven years I have lived here I have never seen red-winged blackbirds near my home. Now they seem to follow me everywhere. The pair flies across the crossroads of intersections and alights from trees at the edge of the forest. The female looks ordinary and unassuming. She wears the colors of camouflage, like a cloak of decaying earth.

It was the male who appeared in my dream many months ago. Opening his wing of night to reveal the power of red blended with yellow, which he formed into a ball of flame and threw for me to catch.

And now he is here again, with me in physical form. Over the last two days, he has left me three broken wings. Not his own, but those of moths. Night butterflies. Remnants of a feast left behind.

The first wing appeared in the field where I will soon be teaching summer yoga classes. The hindwing of a Cecropia Silk Moth.  I heard the song in my head written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney before I saw the blackbird.

 

IMG_3509
The fire-rimmed eye of the hindwing of a Cecropia Silk Moth

 

Yesterday, a wing from the same moth appeared. A forewing banged up perhaps from traveling the fifty yards or so from the location where I found the hindwing. A little distance away, a nearly invisible white wing of what may have been a Fall Webworm lay like a fairy’s wing on the pavement.

 

IMG_3512
The Three Broken Wings of Moths

Last night was a fitful night of sleep. The left side of my head was congested as though all the turmoiled thoughts in my mind had settled there to block rest.

“Blackbird fly into the light of the dark, dark night.” (lyrics from “Blackbird” by Lennon/McCartney) 

We all have our broken wings. Life has a way of breaking them, and the breaks can deepen through past-life wounds we may not even remember. Wings that were, perhaps, meant to be broken so that we may find the true, free soul. The light in the dark, dark night.

I have realized, these last few days, that I have let myself stray from the path of the true self. I have allowed myself to be disempowered and voiceless at the expense of another’s ambitions that do not feel in alignment with my true self. The blackbird has appeared as a reminder of the strength of the soul aligned with Truth. He has left me the wings to fly into the Light.

 

 

Woodland #writephoto

On By Alethea KehasIn Uncategorized22 Comments

Forest path
Photo Credit: Sue Vincent

 

The forest whispered, “follow me,” and laid down a path of gold.

“Oh, I dare not,” replied the voice of doubt, “for I fear what may be lurking in the shadows.”

“Oh, you are a silly lass,” the forest replied. “Can’t you see that I have given you the way through the darkness?”

“But I am alone. A mere child in an unknown wilderness where fierce beasts may lurk, waiting to attack,” doubt replied.

“Yes, yes, that is true. What you seek is also seeking you.”

“Oh, but you are wrong. I do not seek the beasts. They seek me.”

“Aw,” the forest replied with a clatter of branches. “Who do you think the beasts belong to?”

“You.”

“Oh no, they are not mine, they are yours.”

“I don’t want them, so how can they be mine?”

“Because you reject them. Come now, child, walk with me into the land of your heart. I have laid before you a golden path.”

“Oh, but I am scared.”

“It is good to be scared sometimes.”

“But how will I get through the dark places?”

“Oh, that is easy,” the forest replied. “Follow the path of light.”

My contribution to Sue Vincent’s weekly #writephoto prompt challenge. To participate, please click here. 

writephoto