I do hope that you have enjoyed reading my Life Journeys and Animal Medicine blogs. These are both chapters from books I have written and are now available, together with my first book Hidden In A Dark Place, from Amazon as paperback, as Kindle and also through Kindle Direct. In the books you will find many more chapters not found in the blog, which hold knowledge and information that could be useful in guiding you through the ups and downs of life.
Over the last few weeks, I have been receiving nudges from my Guides that I need to move in a slightly different way. My life has held much trauma and I have been working hard to understand, accept and to be able to move on. I have learned much about myself and how my various undiagnosed neurodivergent quirks will have played into many of the happenings. Now it time for me to move away from that part of my life, and so it is that with a curious and questioning mind, I am going to start a new thread in this blog. Maybe it too will eventually become a book. Who knows? Life is full of interesting stuff to explore especially in the fields of beliefs, spirituality, the human body, emotions, random thoughts, neuro-diversity, and maybe even the odd recipe!
The vast majority of things I see coming up for contemplation, I may have very little knowledge about – but we learn by questioning. I may have strong opinions about some stuff – and those may differ from your opinions which is great! I want to explore my knowledge and beliefs, and the many facets of life that I have only touched upon or are still waiting to be discovered.
Straight up I need to give the usual disclaimers regarding my not being any form of expert in any field and anything I say here will be my opinions, thoughts, ideas (usually backed up by a quick Google check!) If you want to respond with your opinion – awesome!
As I write this, it is the early days of summer. Where I live that means the temperature is up around 30C and the humidity generally hovers around 80-90% which feels, at times, as if you are breathing underwater! It’s also the time of year when many bitey things decide to stretch their legs (or wings) and get busy making and raising smaller versions of themselves.
That means it can be dangerous out there with swooping birds, snakes under every bush, crocodiles, lizards and a million biting insects warning you not to go where they have chosen to make a nursery – even if it is in the middle of a footpath. And right now the biggest thing that is driving me nuts (other than the grasshoppers eating my veggie garden) is the spiders.
In this country where it is often kill or recognise the high potentiality of being killed, spiders are, for some unknown reason, on my capture and release programme! All around my house are little plastic containers with pieces of cardboard big enough to slide under the container and hold the captured content safe until I can tip it off the balcony. And I do that about 5 or 6 times every day! There is a pathway at the end of my street, which meanders through some muddy melaleuca and mangrove wetlands where, if you are wise, you keep a weather-eye out for crocs. It was also here that I first met a Golden Orb spider web. I was very glad I didn’t meet the spider! You’ve seen movies, usually of the horror variety, where there are massive spider webs bridging the considerable gap between trees? Webs that look strong enough to stop a freight train? Yes. Meet the Golden Orb. That web was amazing. About three metres in diameter, I was really glad that it wasn’t across the path but was hanging between trees just off the path. It was the stuff of fairy tales – or nightmares – as it glittered and sparkled golden in the sun.
A few years later, I met a Golden Orb spider at the place where I worked. We got quite friendly and I gave her a name – Florence. We came to an agreement that provided her web didn’t encroach on where I wanted to be, I’d leave her alone. A couple of times a day, I’d stop and chat with her and I got to realise just how beautiful spiders really are. And how good they are at catching those pesky grasshoppers!
Spiders teach us patience. Can you imagine how much work it takes to plan and build a web that is a couple of meters across and only uses seven distinct types of thread that you actually pull out of your abdomen? Just think about the problems that humans would have if they tried to replicate such a wonderous thing. These girls are pure engineering geniuses.
Spiders are known to bring good fortune, which may seem strange because for many people, when you see a spider, you go into panic mode, especially if you find it in your shoe, or your bed. But they are actually considered to be good luck. Apparently. In fact, the only thing that they don’t bring good luck to is the insects that become dinner and the males that they mate with. 100% of males are killed and eaten after mating. That makes it really weird when you learn that that a number of males actually live on the edge of the Golden Orb’s web waiting for that one chance in their lives to mate and be eaten! That is definitely what you would call ‘living dangerously.’
So what can we learn from Spider? What is her message? It’s time to make creative changes in our lives. That might be taking a look around yourself and the things in your life that might need repairing or restructuring. When her web gets damaged, the Golden Orb doesn’t abandon it. She repairs it. She works out what aspect no longer works for her and then she sets about fixing it. In our human lives, we can understand this as us taking time to review what in our lives or our beliefs (or both) needs reviewing and possibly fixing.
Do you have problems with family, with your home or work? Maybe with finance? Are things not working out as you thought they would? Physically, it’s a good time to look at your health, and see where you can make adjustments to your diet and exercise programmes. In your spiritual and emotional worlds, do you take time out for meditation, for contemplation or prayer, for gratitude for the gifts you already hold, and for helping others? Spider says, you can’t catch dinner in a web that is broken. You need to reweave the threads of your life into a stronger structure that becomes a place of safety and security.
Spider tells us that some things come into our lives and bring with them fun and excitement. Enjoy them. Make the most of them, but don’t hold regrets when these times pass. It’s not possible to maintain that intense feeling forever. Recognise the cycles of life and learn to understand that there will always be times when the web is broken. Know that even in times where it seems that your web of life is broken beyond repair, it is always possible to start over and make a web that is stronger because of lessons learned. This is growth.
Stepping into your personal power can be a difficult journey, mainly because if you are stepping into that power, you must first have managed to lose it somewhere. You may have allowed a particular situation or a person to overwhelm you until you felt helpless; perhaps you didn’t even realise that you do have hidden strengths, until something happens to show you that they are there, just well hidden.
However you discovered that you are not standing in the power that is yours, you will not be able to step fully onto your path until you make the decision that it is time to change. That means, you start to do the work to make necessary changes in your life to gain the strengths that you know are yours. You do this through study, through personal growth both in the spiritual world and in the physical world, and through acknowledging, understanding, and healing from the hard parts of this physical life.
That is the Journey.
On some journeys we will stumble from problem to problem and keep on circling around and around on the path of Samsara. Sometimes that path can come to be a very comfortable place because even when the things you keep coming back to are difficult, you still recognise a level of security in the familiarity.
On some Journeys we appear to move forward in leaps and bounds – everything just falls into place. But most journeys require us to grow in our Self; to understand who we are. And that takes work.
Stepping into Power doesn’t mean becoming well-known, rich, or famous. It doesn’t mean someone who is a Politician or CEO of a company, or someone who has a huge following on social media. I call that ‘noisy’ power and it is often attached to an out-of-control Ego. This kind of egoic power, as I see it, often comes at the price of being able to control others. Which, for some people, is the experience they have chosen for this life, and it works for them.
For me, Stepping into Power is the quiet knowledge that you hold in your body, that despite the hardships that life has thrown at you, you have had the strength to survive. It comes from a deep commitment and surety that the Journey you are travelling is where you need to go right now – even if that changes in the future. Stepping into Power is a quiet confidence that whatever life throws at you, however wobbly the world around you seems to become, you will be able to deal with it and still continue your Journey.
A few weeks before writing this, Willy Wagtail came and told me that he had a message for humanity. He (and his friends) did it in a way that definitely made me sit up and take notice.
I was daydreaming, looking out the window at the glorious scenery around where I live and this cheeky, charismatic little black and white bird flew onto the balcony railing and sang a short song before flying off towards my neighbour’s house on my right. How sweet I thought, but that thought was barely spoken when a second Willy Wagtail landed on the balcony railing in the exact same place. He too sang the same song and then flew off to my right. I’d barely got over the surprise when number three did the same. And he was followed by birds numbered four, five and six!!
Wow! I thought. There really is a message here. I need to get researching, but not just now, I have stuff to do. The next day, I sat at my computer filled with confidence that this would be an easy write – after all, I’d recorded a message from Willy Wagtail a couple of years earlier for the International Koalition of Krones (IKoK). I could take the basic information from there and use it to bring forward this message.
One thing I have learned on my Spiritual journey – especially when you have aphantasia and SDAM – is that you keep records of everything. So I sat at my computer opened the file where all the IKoK scripts were stored and looked for Willy Wagtail. Nothing. It was not there. I did a search. Nada. Over the next few weeks I searched everywhere. Paper records, phone, I even sat through about 20 IKoK videos on You Tube. Nothing.
Willy Wagtail turned up again a few days ago to give me a bit of a reminder nudge and yesterday I gathered all my newly researched information and started to bring his message forward. It seemed unusually soft and gentle and – to be honest – a bit New Age fluffy. I’d not long finished writing about Lion, and that was definitely not fluffy, but I decided to leave it be. Something soothing was good after the roaring of the Big Cats! Article written, I realised I’d not yet saved it, so that’s what I did… and wiped the whole thing right off my computer! It wasn’t even in the trash bin! That is a silly mistake that I have not made in years. Decades even. So I knew that although the message was a good one – it was only surface level. I needed to dig deeper and luckily I still had my handwritten notes.
My spiritual teacher, Essence Ka tha’ras, is great for bouncing ideas off, so I read my notes to her and she immediately saw the problem of why all my previous writings about Willy Wagtail had disappeared. I love those little birds, they’re cute, and I had been suckered right in by his charm and charisma!
Let me tell you an Aboriginal story about two little boys who were real pests in the tribe. They were bullies, tormenting children, and animals, and they were thieves, stealing boomerangs, walking sticks and more. One day they were caught by an Elder as they were stealing his walking stick. He was so angry and disappointed in these pesty boys that he cursed them, turning them into a Willy Wagtail.
Willy Wagtail might be the largest of the Australian Fantail birds, but he is still very small. About the size of a sparrow. He hunts by hopping on the ground and wagging his fantail over the surface to make the moths and insects fly and the grubs to come up to the surface. He’s very appealing because he doesn’t fly away when humans come close as most birds do, and he looks so cute wiggling his bum and hopping about here, there, and everywhere.
You’ve probably heard the phrase about someone being a shit-stirrer? Well. That is what Willy Wagtail is, literally! He stirs up the dirt. He is territorial, aggressive, he bullies other, bigger, birds. He’ll even take on a kookaburra! He brought a huge lesson for me to share here. That Aboriginal story was not just a bit of fun, it holds a deeper meaning for us. The little boys were bullies and thieves. They considered everything in their territory to be fair game for their shenanigans. Other stories talk of Willy Wagtail as the worst kind of gossip, eavesdropping on people and then telling others of that private information. It is said that if someone speaks ill of the dead, Willy Wagtail will tell the spirits all about it! Stirring up dirt.
Many of us will know of someone who is the life and soul of the party. Generous, happy, talkative and can appear to really pay attention to you. There will be many of us who will get suckered in just as I did with Willy Wagtail, because some of these amazing, generous people are very different in public to how they act at home. Think narcissists.
The deeper message that Willy Wagtail brought for us is to enjoy life. To have fun, be with people who are friendly, and cheerful and exciting, but also notice how they act when they think no-one is watching. Does the mask fall? Is it all a play? A game? Can you truly tell your secrets to this person, and know for certain that what you share in trust, is not told to others? Do these people light up your world when you are alone with them, in the same way as when the public eye is on them? Can you be sure that if you grow in a relationship with this person, will their support remain with you – think of the Elder’s walking stick being stolen away.
Willy Wagtail is a gorgeous, beautiful gregarious little bird and I will definitely still find myself with a smile as I walk down the road and he appears to be following me, bobbing that tail, and showing off his prowess at catching dinner. He’s fun. But I am not the target of his territorialism. He is telling us to walk with our eyes open to nuances we may miss simply because we Trust that what we see, is what we get.
It’s taken me a couple of days to write this Journey as it represents a particular aspect of my personal Journey that is not the easiest point to traverse and involves some really deep work on Self. We all have these times in our lives, where we need to step back, take a deep breath, and try to work out how we got to this place and what our journey into our future might look like. This is a time to look within to seek the answers to questions you may not even know you hold.
This quiet time of reflection is where we can pull out all the jigsaw pieces, lay them on the ground in front of us, and start to rebuild the picture of our life. It is a time, in the work on Self, where we can feel vulnerable because those jigsaw pieces are most likely not just the pretty, happy, joyful things we have experienced. They also represent the hard parts; the bits we wish had not happened; the pieces of our Self we hold that are fearful, guilt-ridden, and just plain messy.
We need this time of pulling within, seeking shelter in the deepest parts of our Self, where we can look at our lives with honest eyes and mind, but also know that we are safe and protected from the outside world. This is the time we discover what makes us fearful, and we can seek a way to understand, to stand up to or even remove that source of fear.
By looking deep within Self, we create a place where we can find the answers the questions we may, or may not, know that we need to ask. It is a place of reflection, peace and above all, safety. Our personal Sanctuary.
When Lion came forward as an animal ally there was some confusion and it took me a few days to work out what the problem was. It’s not actually a problem it’s more that there are two sides to some problems and for this reading we are being shown that we need to look at both sides – because, as often happens in our human lives, both have merit.
Honestly, it was like a bickering couple! “Lion” said the voice in my head. “Lioness” came the rebuttal. Seemed they both have a message for the Collective Consciousness of Humanity and neither were about to give way. Today we got the team – Lioness joined Lion for this message to humanity and we now have two messages beautifully entwined from two amazing creatures.
Lion is about masculine Energy – strength, raw power. His role is that of protector, guardian, leader. He is logical, analytical, dominant. His Energy is from the Sun, represented in the physical world by his beautiful, lush, mane.
Lioness is about feminine Energy. She is the true leader of the pride. She is responsible for the continuity and the well-being of the pride. Her Energy is from the Moon – fertility, pregnancy, birth. She is also nurturer, carer, provider, and a fierce protector.
Lion is often a loner. He is seldom seen with other males, whereas Lioness works together with the other female members of the pride. She brings strategy into the hunt, and she knows how to create opportunities that will enhance the pride’s survival.
Lion and Lioness, each with a totally different skill set, can yet work together in a way that is focused on the whole of their community more than on specific individuals. We humans are more than capable of the same, yet too often we fall short. We fail to see where individuals in our community are struggling; and even worse, we often fail to act. We don’t always come together for the wellbeing of all members of our community.
What we have here is a beautiful correlation to what is happening in the human world. In the Lion Pride we have the male – magnificent, impressive. He might have a loud roar, but really, he’s just a figurehead. It’s the females – they are the ones who quietly get on with the job. They do most of the work to sustain the Pride – and just because they don’t roar we should never underestimate them.
We have a similar situation in our Collective. We have those quiet workers; the people who just get on with the job as they see it needs to be done. These are the lionesses. These are the groups that can work together to create opportunity, who can develop a strategy and implement it for the benefit of the whole.
Then, we have those others – the ones filled with a strong sense that their belief, their way is the only way and they will come together and puff up their chests, fill their lungs and let rip with their roar – and often this display will lead to violence – because it’s birthed in violence.
But the thing we must remember – and this is the Message of Lion and Lioness – is that both groups have the same aim. Both groups are being protective in their own way from whatever the threat to the Pride is. Who is to say what that threat looks like? Which action is right, and which is wrong? When the Lion defends his Pride – the result is often destructive. He will fight to the death if need be because he knows that if he looses that fight, his Pride will be destroyed. All the youngsters will be killed by the winner. His destructive fight is about survival of the group.
When Lioness defends her young, it is about survival of the Pride. She too will fight to the death if need be, knowing that if this happens, and the Lion survives, her sisters will raise her young ones. If it’s a choice of living and being able to bring up her young ones herself, even as an outcast – she will do that. She does what is necessary. For Lioness it is all about survival.
And this is where the message of Lion and Lioness is important. Lion and Lioness BOTH work for the survival of the Pride. On the one hand there is the big, magnificent, testosterone-dominated male making a whole lot of noise. He will fight to the death – but he is not the one who will make the decisions and choices about what happens next. In this he is just the figurehead. The lionesses will not join the fight unless their cubs are directly threatened. And then, watch out! By working together, utilising the skills each possess they can be very successful in carving out their future survival.
Have you ever stopped and thought about whether the trees grow in a conscious manner? Does a tree, perhaps in some way that is alien to us humans, think to itself “I’m going to push a new branch out of this place and then make it grow leaves.”
It’s long been thought that these things ‘just happen’ and that there is no consciousness behind it. Do mountains grow by thinking about it? What about the weather? Is there conscious thought behind the storms and the winds? How do we know that nature accomplishes this without conscious thought? It may be that nature is thinking about a whole lot of things, but in a way that we are not able to understand.
At one point humans believed that animals were not conscious beings who communicated and felt pain. We now know that is not true and that even plants talk to each other. We can even buy machines, quite cheaply, that can convert their energy into sound so that we humans can hear it. We know that trees talk to each other, and there are many people who believe that we too can talk to trees. Myself among them. We believe that this planet, our home, Gaia, is sentient. If Gaia is sentient, then so is everything that is part of her.
On the other hand – the toe nail on my left big toe grows quite happily without any conscious thought from me!
It’s a matter of perspective and belief. A wise person will question their beliefs from time to time, and the perspectives by which they are viewed, because both these things – perspective and belief – can (and should) change when more knowledge is gained.
In other words – Believe, but don’t wear your belief like a comfortable jacket. Give it a good airing every now and then, and make sure that it is still a good fit for you.
Beliefs that are held on to without form of questioning is cognitive dissonance at its strongest!!!
It’s not totally surprising really, because everything happens in cycles. We can experience heartache, pain, and despair but we know that if we can just hang on for a while longer, then we will cycle around to joy, and love, and laughter.
Cicada are the personification of these life cycles. They are all about personal change, renewal, rebirth, transformation. They are symbolic of the changes that happen in our lives and the lessons we can learn as we move through our lives.
Unlike moths or butterflies, Cicadas don’t have a pupae stage – they don’t ever go into a cocoon. They emerge as nymphs from eggs which their mother has placed in holes drilled into branches high in a tree, and they are about the size and colour of a grain of rice.
These little nymphs walk to the edge of their branch and then drop off – like a grain of rice falling from the top of a tall tree – and when they hit the ground they have an urge to get themselves underground as fast as possible. They burrow deep under the roots of the tree and build themselves a little chamber – a safe place to spend the next 17 years! 17 years all alone in a hole in the ground.
This period of being alone in a dark place in the ground, away from sunlight, other beings, and life even, is a reminder for me of the times we all experience, when we find ourselves in a hard and difficult place. It might be that we have reached that point in our life cycle where we are experiencing all kinds of hardship. Maybe we have lost our job; our home; our life partner. Perhaps a goal we have been striving towards for years, has failed and we don’t know where to turn to next. It could be that we are facing illness, trauma, it could be that we are carrying the black dog on our backs.
We don’t know how Cicada spends those 17 years in that dark hole in the ground, but I like to think that they use the time constructively. When we are in a dark place we have a choice that the cicada is denied – we can choose to leave. We can choose to poke a stick through the darkness and let in some sunlight. We can recognise that we are not alone, and we can choose to use that time constructively. We can be brave and hold out a hand. Maybe someone will recognise where you are and grab hold of you, help you to emerge. Maybe your reaching hand will grasp hold of someone else who needs support too, and you can help each other.
After 17 years living all alone in the darkness, the cicada nymphs – billions of them – emerge all at the same time and they have one very strong urge – to climb high up the tree and there to shed their nymph shell casing. Then, they have to wait a few days for their new skin to harden before they are able to fly. Many cicadas don’t make it, but there are still billions left who do and, we pretty much all know the mating song of the males! Within three weeks of coming out of the earth, there is a massive mating frenzy, eggs are laid and just six weeks after their first emergence, all the cicadas have all disappeared. Their life work is done.
So what does this mean for humans? Firstly we are being reminded that if things get difficult we have the ability to recognise that we need to make changes in ourselves. We need to look at where we are in our life with open honesty as to our part in how we arrived at where we are, and to do it without pulling any punches. We have the ability to see our way forward – even if it only the first couple of steps. We have the choice to reach out and ask for help and we don’t need to cocoon ourselves away to achieve those changes. We have the ability to make the changes as quickly and effectively as possible.
Cicadas remind us of the cycles of life, and the importance of each stage of life, including the hard times. They are reminding us that each stage of life has its own lessons to learn, its own experiences that will shape us into the individuals we are meant to be. It is a reminder that the important lessons in life are often camouflaged until we are forced to face them.
Spending time alone isn’t ever wasted time. Or rather, it doesn’t have to be. It is a time of opportunity for introspection, of discovery, of growth and of the development of the knowledge and strength needed for the next stage in your life journey. This time alone is symbolic of the Past – of all that has brought us here to this point in linear time. It is a time to clear the past, to effect a transformation that allows us, finally, to emerge and to live our lives in full knowledge of the true purpose of our current lifetime experience.
As Starseeds, Lightworkers, or whatever you prefer to be known as, we step onto our spiritual journey with high expectations. We KNOW we have so much that we can give to the world. We learn how to move energy within our bodies, how to store Qi, and how to direct Source energy towards others to aid in their healing. We see people in need and we do not step past them. We feel as if we are called upon to give of what we can in order to help this beautiful world and all its inhabitants rise to its full promise.
Some of us become key players in the local community. Some move into the world of study and the deepening knowledge that has been passed to us through the eons. Some, eventually, may become Teachers, leaders – and all of us run the risk of forgetting that we cannot be of the best assistance to others that we are capable of being if we have not done the work on Self.
We struggle with work, family, finance, security, safety, equality and so much more. We worry about such things even as we know that our one lonely voice is not going to make a big difference. And we see that however much we talk about Starseeds coming together as One, we don’t seem able – yet – to achieve it. We hang on to the dream that we are separate. We haven’t learned how to travel within to the Place of Stillness where we are all One. We have to go deep within Self to find that place, and that can be difficult journey to take.
We hold in our hearts this dream of helping to bring this world to a state of Nirvana, but it all seems so hard. Nothing seems to change, and I ask, could that be because we are all so fixated on fixing things that are not broken? We need the difficult in order to understand what is easy. We need the darkness, because without it we would never understand light. I personally know how blessed I am only because of the hardship I have experienced.
The sharing of yourself requires balance, agility, knowledge, an understanding of when to step forward and when to step back. It requires that you know when to share yourself and when not to, so that others may have the opportunity to experience their own life lessons. The sharing of yourself requires that you know when your own Ego is in play, and that requires that you have first done the work on Self.
If we can each do that work on Self, there will be, indeed, nothing left to fix.
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