It stormed last night. This morning I worked the softened soil around the garden plants to remove weeds, built a fire in the back yard pit to burn broken limbs from heavy winds. As the fire crackles, I sit on my back porch with Willow, our German Shepherd, enjoying a slight breeze, barely enough to intone a single, deep meditative OM sound on the windchime.
Willow’s ears perk up, perfect triangle receivers, alert to some far-off presence only she can detect. This is stillness, peaceful and quiet in the way only nature can be. Yet, there is a choir of birdsong so concordant that even the app on my phone can’t keep up with who’s saying what. All creatures of earth and sky are moving, changing, chanting, feeding, creating, evolving. They are making space for me. I am listening, learning, wondering, appreciating, allowing, accepting, making space for them. All elements are present. This is prayer. This is church.
I know that I have to stop the chatter in my own head (my ego), in order to open the door to the other side. What’s on the other side? Imagination, creativity, answers, ideas, words, spirit, connection, intuition, love, faith. In another word, GOD.
Once the door is open, I am aware that it will close all too soon. These “gasps of joy” are fleeting because of my own human frailty, but joyous. They can be a moment of calm or peace that overcomes my well-placed obstacles to connect me mind, body and spirit. It can be an idea or word or a turn of phrase that inspires me to get lost in my writing. Sometimes the words that come inside my head, are in a different voice, I think to remind me that they are a gift and not of my own doing. I muse that maybe that’s what Willow is hearing when she perks up her ears. Maybe she talks to angels. She is certainly in touch with all the nature spirits, my sentinel. I wish it was that easy. Just perk up my ears and hear Spirit talking to me. Oh yeah, it is! It’s called intuition. It takes practice though, and patience and desire and confidence and trust. I’m still working on it. It’s been my lifelong journey.
The spiritual connections that are most prevalent for me come at night, when I’m dreaming. My dreams are often vivid metaphors that enlighten me to truths I have denied. A “knowing” that is buried. A message from the other side. Whether we are aware of our surroundings or not, our brains and our physical bodies are constantly absorbing pieces of information. Body language of the people we speak to, sounds of nature alerting us to weather changes, the dynamics of close relationships, unspoken facts, the things our loved ones won’t admit. If you are empathic, like me, you also feel in your body the energies that surround you, good and bad. What lives in the subconscious gets processed while sleeping, like placing files in a file cabinet in case you need it later. I know there are a lot of people who believe they don’t dream. Scientifically, it has been proven that everybody dreams.
Whether you remember your dreams or not, your body and brain are still processing your experiences and helping them make sense to you. All that knowing lives inside you whether you ever expose it or not. This is part of your intuition. What a deal! Everybody has access to it. Those who call themselves intuitives are only those people who have become still enough, often enough to hone their skills of listening and they’ve learned to trust their hunches and they’ve been right enough times to build confidence. But we’re all intuitive if we choose to pay attention. For me, enjoying this kind of awareness is being in conversation with God. The guidance is there if we get out of our own way. Whether you call it God, Goddess, Holy Spirit, a close personal relationship with Jesus, support from the Universe, Intuition, Synchronicity, talking to Angels, knowing… it’s all part of the same energy. I believe my dog Willow knows this already, that all things are connected. Sitting on my porch, I am one with my surroundings.
There is a quote I like to repeat often, by French Jesuit Priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “You are not a human being having a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being having a human experience.” This puts everything in my life into perspective. It is a very human trait to want to name everything according to our own comfort levels and judge others for not agreeing with us. That is ego, the most human experience there is. If we are in our authentic truth, connected to that which is spiritual, we have less time for pointing fingers, condemning and judging others. We will see plenty within ourselves that could use lifting up to a higher vibration of being. We have lots of work to do. I know I do.
I heard someone say that prayer is talking to God and meditation is listening. I like that explanation. Talking less and listening more, in any situation, is how we learn. I believe God uses any and all means to help us stay connected. Source wants to be in communication with us. It brings joy. Sometimes, the answer to a prayer comes in the form of words spoken by a happenchance interaction with a friend or stranger. How cool is that? Sometimes our connection to Spirit comes when dreaming. If we’re still enough, and in our bodies fully enough, we can know God’s presence by what we feel, hear or see. Intuition is nothing more than that. It doesn’t come from us. We are not “the power” because when given the chance, our ego will always guide us in the wrong direction. But God lines up the truth all around us and we have access to it through intentional awareness. I believe intuition is communication with God’s power living within us but we have to set aside the ego to hear it. Not an easy task.
Instead of convincing others to come to “our church” to listen to “our way of being” we could teach people how to be still and listen to what God says to them, whether it be in church or on the back porch listening to birdsong and the crackling of wood in the firepit, the wind in the leaves of trees or the gong of a windchime. Earth, Fire, Water, Air. The elements of God are all around us. I am grateful for the Holy Mystery.
Old Soul Medicine Crow 