Just Another Magic Monday
The process of giving up television has given the gift of showing just how much it and other mindless past times have separated me from life, from a deeper connection with my Higher Self…the spiritual self…the soul. I have discovered, through this process, that I have used mindless television-watching—even though I didn’t watch that much—to numb myself from life. I used it as a way to cut myself off from a voice within that wanted to come out and sing, speak, play. I had no idea….but then I discovered it wasn’t only television….it was anything that put me on auto-pilot and that included books I had read many times before, favorite movies. As I tracked myself I became more aware of the distractions I used to keep my inner voice quiet.
After culling TV, I recently pulled up a completely mindless book I’ve read several times simply as a pacifier, something to take the edge off, to dampen that inner ‘something’ that wanted to happen. My excuse was, I know there is something calling me but I don’t know what to do. The problem was I was thinking of the solution as being something I had to ‘do’ instead of simply being still and listening.
So this morning the pouring rain and storms kept me off my bicycle. Couldn’t even do front porch yoga due to lightning. What to DO….what to DO!??! That voice within found a way to tap my mind and suggested I dedicate this day to listening and not distracting myself. Why not?
I went upstairs to the gathering room where I meditate, where women’s drum circles are held, and dialed into stillness. I began drumming and an inner journey began.
I saw myself inside a shell…something between an egg and a chrysalis. I have been feeling this shell-like structure around me for several days so wasn’t surprised to see it in the meditation. A crack started at the top and went to the bottom, opening the shell. I saw myself with butterfly wings at first, with brilliant colors, and then I morphed into a Pegasus horse with wings that had a slight rainbow tint.
In the journey, I flew from my home in coastal Alabama to a place near Chimney Rock, North Carolina…a wooded place. It was amazing and perfect for me.
When the journey was complete I offered gratitude and went downstairs for lunch. I began researching Pegasus and found his father was Poseidon, god of the sea—that’s rather appropriate for me—and his mother was Medusa, the goddess that had hair made of snakes…and onlookers turned to stone if they looked at her. Pegasus was born from her blood when her head was cut off.
As I looked at the bottom of the search page it listed my search origin location as Chimney Rock, North Carolina. I had been there in the journey, no doubt, but at that particular moment my body and phone were sitting in my home in Magnolia Springs…Alabama.
Then one of the pages about Pegasus had a rainbow background…reminding me of the rainbow colors of myself as Pegasus. Oh, and let’s not forget the walk I did after lunch with my dog Buddy. As we went under a magnolia tree I saw a cicada shell and the freshly hatched insect known as a translucent cicada… with beautiful wings drying in the air. I had the exact same experience in the journey as my wings dried after ‘I’ hatched from the hard shell.
The Bangles song, Manic Monday, came to mind but with a new title: Just Another Magic Monday.It seemed that taking the step to put aside anything that distracts me from inner experiences wanting to be birthed was worth it. Synchronicities were popping like lighting bolts that filled the sky earlier in the day.
How would our lives change if we put the beautiful, sacred self as a priority and stopped trying to cut off its voice…with television, news, social media, mindless books, arguing about who’s right and who’s wrong? Just one morning of doing this resulted in amazing experiences and clarity and…quite honestly…a big dose of WOW!
One other bit of information came to me about Pegasus. He has always been in service to poets. I reflected back to my recent writing about Freddie Mercury and living your life purpose. When I feel most aligned with the reason I came into this life is when I can take an experience and titrate it down into magical words of poetry. So…welcome Pegasus. I think it’s time we work together.
Patrick Kavanagh, an Irish poet, wrote one of my most favorite poems, Pegasus. Perhaps this poem, more than anything, explains the meaning of seeing myself break free as Pegasus in the journey.
My soul was an old horse
Offered for sale in twenty fairs.
I offered him to the Church—the buyers
Were little men who feared his unusual airs.
One said: ‘Let him remain unbid
In the wind and rain and hunger
Of sin and we will get him—
With the winkers thrown in—for nothing.’
Then the men of State looked at
What I’d brought for sale.
One minister wondering if
Another horse-body would fit the tail
That he’d kept for sentiment-
The relic of his own soul—
Said, ‘I will graze him in lieu of his labour.’
I let him for a week or more
And he came back a hurdle of bones,
Starved, overworked, in despair.
I nursed him on the roadside grass
To shape him for another fair.
I lowered my price. I stood him where
The broken-winded, spavined stand
And crooked shopkeepers said that he
Might do a season on the land—
But not for high-paid work in towns.
He’d do a tinker, possibly.
I begged, “O make some offer now,
A soul is a poor man’s tragedy.
He’ll draw your dungiest cart,’ I said,
‘Show you short cuts to Mass,
Teach weather lore, at night collect
Bad debts from poor men’s grass.’
And they would not.
Where the Tinkers quarrel I went down
With my horse, my soul.
I cried, ‘Who will bid me half a crown?’
From their rowdy bargaining
Not one turned. ‘Soul,’ I prayed,
‘I have hawked you through the world
Of Church and State and meanest trade.
But this evening, halter off,
Never again will it go on.
On the south side of ditches
There is grazing of the sun.
No more haggling with the world…’
As I said these words he grew
Wings upon his back. Now I may ride him
Every land my imagination knew.
“When I know they are listening, when I know I really have them, I couldn’t sing off-key if I tried. I’m exactly the person I was always meant to be. I’m not afraid of anything.” In the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, Freddie Mercury’s character says this to his girlfriend after the band begins to attract large audiences and she asks him what it’s like to perform in front of so many people. This scene in the movie replays in my mind often.
I allow my mind to wander through experiences in life…When have I felt I am exactly the person I am meant to be?
Recently as I explored this question, as if on cue, an email arrived with various teachers sharing their idea of being on purpose. Here’s a bit of what they said:
In the high school football stadium in the 1970’s, Queen’s music inspired a generation. Stomp, stomp, clap…stomp, stomp, clap…stomp, stomp, clap rocked the bleachers as We Will Rock You inspired us. I remember feeling alive with amazing, endless hope for the very essence of life as the entire student section came alive. Carefree, with my spirit open to every possibility, their music was fuel for life. We Are the Champions was even our senior class song…
Odd that now, as I dive deeper into my life and purpose, their story becomes known to me and these decades later Freddie Mercury’s dynamic energy and passion is inspiration…long after he died.
Days ago this bit of writing began to come together but the question kept echoing in my mind and heart…when do I know for sure I am doing what I came here to do? Today, as I cycled at sunrise, the question continued to repeat. And still, as I sit with Buddy dog curled up beside me, the answer isn’t totally clear.
There have been moments….photographing humpback whales while floating motionless in the Atlantic Ocean, a calf a few feet from me…a manatee laying its head in my hand and gazing into my eyes, sharing a transmission from the deepest realms of Nature…a female spotted dolphin healing my headache and swimming with me and her calf…kneeling at a standing stone circle in north England and weeping about the election and ‘hearing’ the outcome would hasten the awakening…standing at a cliff in Ireland and feeling the immense Presence that has been with me ever since…writing about these and many more experiences and sharing them…diving with an octopus that danced with me…hearing the Song of the Sea as I was diving in Bonaire…diving in caves in Mexico that awakened the shaman in me…being present for moments such as these and more but perhaps sharing these experiences with others and watching their faces light up with wonder and awe and feeling their appreciation for deepening with Nature helps me really feel I am doing what I was born to do.
When I write from my heart, I feel that truth. When I facilitate women’s circles I feel it. When I am in the water with humpback whales…or manatees or dolphins…and listen with my heart, photograph them and then communicate the experience by writing or speaking so that others can touch their sacredness…I feel a sort of personal mastery. I come alive when I connect Nature with humans.
The lyrics to Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now have been in my mind all day…“I feel alive and the world I’ll turn it inside out, yeah…and floating around in ecstasy…I’m a shooting star, leaping through the sky like a tiger defying the laws of gravity…I’m burning through the sky, yeah, two hundred degrees. That’s why they call me Mister Fahrenheit. I’m traveling at the speed of light…”
Perhaps the movie is helping me remember and clarify my purpose. Maybe Freddie’s life reminds me to do what I was born to do and drop the fear. Once we fully commit to our purpose and come alive to it, the fear can be burned up in the passion. Sometimes it takes a while to figure that out but if we pay attention to the whispers within and listen when our heart speaks, we will find our way…and we will shine.
What resources do you have in your life? With this question we might begin to list bank account totals, assets that might be used as collateral for a loan or some other material possessions. But imagine instead resources much more vital and significant than those.
Last night a couple friends and I drove to a quiet part of the beach for sunset and a meteor shower. Conditions couldn’t have been more perfect…few clouds, nice breeze, no biting insects, very few people with flashlights…it was, for our busy tourist area, amazing.
As darkness deepened, beauty of the firmament deepened. Space seemed to open before us. First it was the planets that shone brightly and then deep space seemed to reveal itself as light of the day faded. It was as if we were looking into infinity.
When I feel constricted or fearful I can reflect back on how it felt to be with the night sky, to sense the Infinite within and the connection to something so much bigger than ‘me.’ This memory can help me move through moments of unease and it prompted me to be mindful of the many inner resources that arise from connecting deeply with Nature, from moving into Oneness.
What resources do you have to help you expand into a deeper, truer expression of your true self? They are priceless treasures….remember to use them.
“All trees are not good trees,” she said as she leaned over, placed her hand over my arm and smiled with that knowing smile that she was right and I, because I dare to care about all trees, was wrong. It wasn’t the first time I was put in my place because I am sensitive to life.
My first memory of being ‘put down’ for being sensitive was when I was a child. My dad and I were watching a movie on television where an old man had saved, at great hardship, to purchase a piece of glass for the window in his cabin. After he bought it and installed it, his mule kicked a bucket through the window. I cried and my dad laughed at me for crying. That’s my first memory of feeling compassion and being pushed out of the tribe.
Because we receive negative feedback so often about our deepest, truest selves, we have difficulty believing that we are whole and beautiful. If the world mirrors back to us that empaths are silly, flakey, ridiculous then how do we believe the truth about ourselves? How do we learn to trust ourselves? How do we claim our space in the world?
Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, in her series Mother Night, that people who feel, that are sensitives, are pushed to the edge, are outcast…these people who are the artists, the creatives, the healers with their open hearts and minds…they are pushed to the fringes of society. But when this happens, she warns, the culture dies because they are not allowed to do their work, for their work is nourishment for the psyche.
I was having a rough day and asked for guidance. When I arrived home from cycling I put the sound files on my phone on random play and Clarissa’s series was what came to me…as a big answer. Listening to her reminded me that my empathic ability is my gift. My ability to feel deeply is a gift…to the world. How many of us can breathe that statement in? Try it… My ability to feel deeply is a gift to the world.
I would suggest not trying to fit in to a world that tries to consistently push us out. So you want to push us out, okay. I will walk along the fringe…I will dance along the fringe and I will find those who will dance with me. I will connect with my sisters and brothers who also bear the scars of feeling in an unfeeling world. Clarissa calls us Scar Clan of the Tribe of the Sacred Heart. We recognize each other by our ability to feel deeply, love deeply and we have the audacity to care deeply.
And then I would suggest spending time to connect with our feelings of love and compassion and to do so without shame. We were taught to be ashamed of our compassion and kindness so let us un-teach that to ourselves and simply sit in stillness and silence with acceptance for ourselves….our beautiful, bright selves.
