owl messengers – The Light Behind the Story

The owl appeared as the resurrected phoenix during my last, formal meditation as a student of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness. At some point, the seeker becomes the seen as the threshold to the mysteries are opened. The wisdom that always lies in wait within is always just a conscious breath away, but humans can be shallow breathers. In my young adult novel The Labyrinth, which is due to be released in a month or so, the voice of an owl cuts through the darkness as teens search for what they cannot find.

“Whoooo Loooooks for Yooooou?” The owl calls out to them.

Ultimately, are we not all looking for our own selves? The truth of the soul that is often only allowed to exist fully in the false protection of the shadows. The eyes, therefore, must turn inward and grow accustomed to the dark, where eventually they learn to see the light held within. We are all seekers of wisdom, but sometimes it is worth asking what is the wisdom we truly seek?

The crow was waiting at the top of the building when I stepped outside the door of my final day of yoga teacher training. She cawed loud and strong, least I miss her presence, looking down at me as her eyes followed me to my car. Don’t forget who brought you here, she seemed to be saying, along with, you know this is only a beginning.

I have learned, over the course of these last three years in particular, how much endings are really just beginnings. Once we have crossed that threshold that marks the completion of a road along our journey, another road awaits us. The road is often unmarked or vaguely marked at best. if we knew what was waiting, would we walk with the open heart that requires trust and surrender?

And so I find myself walking across the threshold with eyes that have learned to see in the dark. Fear has become a friend that sometimes takes my hand to remind me of courage and I have grown comfortable with what is waiting to be known. I have learned that within each moment I can find the presence of teachers surrounding me. They are the trees outside my window and the birds that pass by. They are the people I encounter on the streets, and the dogs who share the couch as I write. My computer is my teacher, with all its quirks and challenges. And there is always, that ever-guiding light within.

I have become also, a friend of wait. Patience provides a soft hand that is worth holding for as long as it is offered. Magic is, after all, held in the present moment and if one pushes against the ever-flowing current of time it is lost.

Naturally, now, I wish I had pulled through the fog of sleep when I first woke, and wrote the scene of events when they were still painted in vivid hues. Here, though, is what I remember:

There was a dress, a brilliant red frilly affair, not unlike the Red Riding hood flock my daughter wore for Halloween, the color of blood when first spilled and trimmed in lace. I had it on backwards, at first. There was conflict, the replay of the past in different form. People I love, but have caused heartache, still lingering in the shadows of the mind. They had come out of the shadows last night, in the eve of the new moon, to remind me of what I still must shed.

It didn’t take long for me to notice the dress I was wearing was backwards, so I righted it without taking it off. I wore if for awhile, through that play of scenes, before I traded it in for another. But let me tell you what else occurred last night, as I try to put the disperate pieces together.

There was another scene, entirely new from the other, and seemingly unrelated as dreams have that way of changing course suddenly. But, one knows really that nothing is unrelated.

I stood in water under a bridge. To my right, the river went upstream, to my left, down. The bridge above providing the option of two more directions, one a path into the past and the option of returning to the scene I had just left.

The water was a beautiful blue, full and strong, and I stood solid in the middle of the crossroads. To my right I watched with longing the tempting play of laughter as boaters paddled the current together. The sun shone high above. The only darkness was over the bridge, hidden through the tunnel of trees.

Here the dream became lucid in form. I knew the bird was coming before it appeared, quick and sure, from an unknown location. I knew I needed to remember her, as she was a messenger from Spirit. She was white, with the hint of brown and gray edging her feathers. A tiny (snowy) owl still in the early stages of her life where energy abounds but wisdom has yet to truly ripen.

My silent messenger of magic stopped her rapid flight in mid-air to balance at the point of my third eye. Our eyes locked, and she lingered long enough for me to remember. I had a choice, which path would I take?

Now, let me take you back out of the water, to that woman in the red dress. Through the course of those night travels she shed that red dress. She took it off, even after she righted it, and traded it in for another, and when she did everything shifted. The troubled scene she traveled through earlier became a place of joy as she twirled into her light in a lavender gown, sure, oh so sure, of who she was. Nothing, it seemed, could hold her back from living the true magic of her soul.