Reflections on Heron: Turning Inward

One of the main aspects of Heron's medicines is self-reflection. It's about going beyond the surface, beyond appearances, to realize your true nature, your true state of being.

When Heron inspires us to dip our head into the water, water isn’t just a metaphor for emotions, nor is it limited to our subconscious. Many people fear that that’s as far as they’ll get, stuck in a swirling eddy of every uncomfortable emotion they’ve ever had, but that’s the ego’s, the mind’s preoccupation. Below all is your true nature.

Water's surface is like a mirror for the many reflections of ourselves, but when we look at the surface of who we imagine ourselves to be, it's not necessarily our individual, authentic Selves we're perceiving. We pick up things from other people (and spirits). Taking just your formative years in this life, for example; how many habits do you think (/ or feel) you've picked up from the people around you? What of other people’s perspectives have you adopted?

It begs the question: Is it yours? Is it You?

If you can see that you might have adopted behaviours, what about opinions? judgements? 'ways of being in the world'? beliefs? For further mysteries in that regard, consider that you've also carried reflections over from past lives.

In the Grand Divine Design of it all, everyone that comes into our experience is ultimately a part of ourselves, and part of our journey is to work through what karma we've accrued with them, on our path to realizing ourselves as essential Light.

If you’re reading this, you’re ready to move in a new direction, to discover things about yourself and your lifedream, what’s hidden below the surface of what the perceptions you’ve adopted have presented to you. Take the opportunity to see through the veil. If you feel you need help with it, connect with a healer or seer. It doesn’t have to be me; just go with whoever presents and resonates with you (and don’t worry; there is no wrong choice – as Spirit would have it, we always receive the exact medicine we need). You’ll experience a renewal in your relationships with others, yes, but most importantly, in your relationship with your Self.

Big Medicine Love to You

Black Feather

Abundance, Miracles: ‘Living the Dream’

As regards manifestation, what’s a miracle, anyway? And why doesn’t it appear that synchronicities and the like happen every single moment?

I mean, I have no doubt that miracles exist. Whenever I do a psychic portrait for someone I’ve never met, for instance, and something shows up in it like a clearly recognizable visage of the subject’s husband, or an image of a tattoo a guy has that others don’t normally get to see, I can’t help but appreciate it as such. Minute textures that were created when the paper itself was being formed, subtle variations in the pressure exerted by pencil on paper as I prepared the background, even a rare occurrence like a cat ‘accidentally’ walking across the drawing’s surface; these are just some of an unimaginable number of influences that come together to cause the images to appear in what I can only describe as a phenomenal way.

With faith in this kind of ‘magic’ well in hand, I’ve been pondering it in connection to the issue of knowing yourself as an infinite being (intimately connected to all the other ‘starstuff ‘ in the Überverse), yet feeling repeatedly frustrated over attempts at manifestation.

It’s not as if I haven’t put in enough effort, faith, resonant emotion, what-have-you, etc, etc. I don’t believe anyone on the planet could tell me much about the how-to’s of manifestation that I don’t already know. And I’m aware enough not to accept any misplaced self-blame by saying ‘I’m doing it wrong’. Yet in the area of monetary means in particular, I’ve continually found my lifedream coming up short.

It’s not that I don’t manifest at all, or that I’m getting things in a form that I’m just not recognizing (or, or, or… ). It’s more that it seemed I was in a pattern of manifesting just a trickle of what would help, and always after a (deadline) had passed and I’d broken down in a heap. The ‘heap’ part is past tense (well, let’s say 99% past tense, anyway), as I’ve gotten quite adept at accepting whatever happens, especially once I’d gotten started thinking that perhaps rather than getting what we desire, we receive what our guides and Higher Selves deem most beneficial to our soul’s growth.

A psychic once told me that the theme of my life this time around would be ‘disappointment’. While I don’t doubt that I’ve accrued some past-life karma that required balancing, I don’t believe that can’t be amended in any given moment.

A bit overdramatic, perhaps (after all, it’s not as though I’m living in a concentration camp or anything, this time around), but in my mind, I got to describing this particular aspect of my lifedream as I would a nightmare. And I’d gotten well tired of it. I’m only interested in seeing living it as ‘entertainment’ for so long. While I believe in appreciating your life and its challenges /fears /dramas as you would other things you’d take in (and even pay money for) as entertainment, I came to the simple realisation that this wasn’t entertainment I’d pay to see! So I started changing it.

Our waking life is as our dream life, as it also is the Dreamtime; it’s just that this physical experience takes place in another vibrational dimension, with another level of awareness. Your life is a dream, and ‘miracles’ can happen in it just as they /things happen in your sleeping dreams, spontaneously, unprompted, unexpectedly. Miracles seem to defy conventional wisdom during our waking hours, but in our dreams, they’re accepted as the norm.

What to do when you don’t ‘like’ something about the Dream you’re living, when it feels more like a nightmare, when you feel as though no matter what you try in regards to that significant /bothersome aspect, you’re doomed to a life of inexorable disappointment?

Firstly, I told my guides, angels, my self, my Higher Self and whom /whatever else might need informing that this was just. not. acceptable.

I got to considering what happens in a lucid dream when I turn around to confront something that’s chasing or frightening me. I’ll either direct an “I love you” to it, or at least say “thank you” (…for being there, for the potential of the knowledge /insight it’s providing me, for the ‘thrill’ it’s giving me, whatever). Whenever I have the wherewithal to do that, the thing inevitably diminishes or otherwise changes into something unimposing.

Also, a saying that’s been (stuck) in my mind for a while now is: ‘Love your life, and life will love you’. I started directing “I love you’s” and “thank you’s” to the ‘nightmare’ in my life (out loud or otherwise), and it did begin to diminish.

And then I happened to actually do something…

I’d been thinking for a while now that I’d rather not be subject to Yahoo mail’s version of ‘news’. Again, it’s not ‘entertainment’ that I’d pay to have in my life (not that I’ve been dishing out monies for the service, but I well believe it’s been costing my mind, body and spirit, every time I’m subjected to it), so I took action to change my email host [by the way, if you haven’t had cause to use it yet, my new email address is: blackfeathermedicine(at)gmail.com].

Already, I can say (short of getting into specifics) that my message to the Überverse seems to be working.

And, hey, if you can apply something similar and it works for you, there’s another desire of mine manifested.

All said and done, if you manage to get through the trials of your lifedream – even with the self-blame we seem to inevitably subject ourselves to – and manage to love yourself nonetheless, well, perhaps that’s the best of abundant miracles, right there.

Big Medicine Love to You

~Black Feather

post?script: when you have a dream, and you feel that the dream was just your mind’s reaction to something that came into your life the day before, consider for a moment that you Dreamed that (person, place, thing, whatever) into your waking reality before your dream because your dream required it (to move you into your next level of development, for instance). In that light, things manifest before you need them; Miracles do happen every single moment.

How will I get along (without it)?

How will I get along without (choosing to) worry about the future? What if the worry isn’t necessary? Having lived this way, will I feel foolish?

Realising that I wouldn’t now do some of the things that I look back in regret over, what will my world be like as a result of my choice to no longer berate myself for those things /actions /beliefs?

Will I be able to accept blissfulness without the drama that is my mind’s tendency?

How will I get along, if I accept what appears to be happening at any given moment as being what my soul desires of /for me?

How to get along and appreciate the moment without experiencing as boredom those times of ‘nothing magical (or otherwise exciting) seems to be happening right now’?

Will I begin celebrating even adversity in my life the way I do other things that come into my experience that seem at a (safe) distance from me, some of which I’ve been labelling ‘entertainment’? Would I even know what to do with that; how to live that way?

What if my sense of awareness seems to tell me that I’m not separate, that I’m intimately connected to nature and all the rest of physical existence? What if it opens me up to love, energy and awareness of Self that I’ve never experienced before?

What if I can relax into the nature of my own being, just as I see that Nature does, and rest in the realisation that I am constant, amidst all catharses, times of stillness, changes and incarnations, centred, at ease, cool and calm?

How will I exist, having let go of expectations of myself and others, and welcoming in acceptance and appreciation of the miracle of what Is in the moment; to recognize that regardless of apparent circumstances, I am Home, wherever – and just as – I Am?

How will I understand myself, appreciating my relationships for how they’re supporting my soul’s journey to become whole? …when I give and receive love freely, without basing my sharing of it on expectation or need?

Rather than fretting over how to get along with or without a certain material thing /experience, what if I consider how it is that I might get along with or without my attachment to said thing? That’s not a world that my mind has suggested I believe is ‘real’ or ‘possible’, even, to this point.

What if I ask similar questions of every other dissatisfaction, discomfort, dis-ease, or displeasure (etc.) that I’m otherwise inclined to feel?

And in the practice of that, how will I get along without the stress of asking myself all these questions?

Much Big Love,

Black Feather

A Cowboy in The Big Reveal

While this portrait contained a pre-emptive warning to the subject about a person who was about to show up in her life (represented here as the cowboy), it also included a lot of information that you might at first glance think was superfluous, as concerns what was motivating him to act the way that he would (/did), for instance. For the most part, this was shown in the form of representations of people who’d passed over and were active in spirit around him, significant relationships /associations that were affecting him (the priest, for example), as well as references to incidents of emasculation in his early life and how they’d shaped his behaviour. While he did, indeed, come into the subject’s life shortly after we’d consulted over her portrait (and by his actions caused considerable mayhem), Spirit suggested the inclusion of these details as a means of eliciting compassion, for the subject towards ‘Cowboy’, as well as towards herself. Other details were there to show her the intentions behind the soul /life lessons she’d encounter(ed) as a result of his presence. Being able to recognize our innate tendency towards compassion – regardless of how circumstances might appear on the surface – brings us closer to our natural state of (blissful) being and connects us, whereas allowing our minds to lead us towards a perspective that’s contrary to compassion and induces suffering elicits greater egoic separation.

We don’t come into our earthly incarnations for ‘easy’. Inevitably, our experiences include highs and lows, both. Why not make the most of them? Contact me to illustrate your own intuitive portrait, to help you benefit from information relevant to your soul’s journey as presented in your present and past life experiences. I’d be delighted to help you with insights into who you’ve been, who you’re becoming, what soul agreements the other spirits and people in your life are fulfilling, as well as help you to release yourself from what karma you might be accruing – transmute what your perception suggests to you are burdens into experiences worth celebrating.

blackfeathermedicine@gmail.com

Spreading Your Wings: the innocence of fully living

I’ve made a commitment to myself (at least to try) to not allow my mind to cause me suffering in its perception of things, regardless of what comes into my experience. Experience is all in the mind, after all, suffering included. As difficult as it can be for our waking minds to grasp that it's purely due to our minds that we accept as ‘reality’ things like our egoic separation from others, the apparent solidity of objects, the taste of ice cream, etc, our dreams hold clues to the contrary. For instance, how is it that we can experience an orgasm through dreaming, in the absence of actual physical stimulation, if not for the fact that sex itself is a mentally constructed experience?

A vision I was provided while writing this post was of a white light – like a sun – with lots of individual figures of white light coming off of it. They became more differentiated, the further your view moved from the source. Considering them as individuals though, the figures that were further away were still of the same intensity as the light from the (core).

You are the Light of source, one and the same. The further you are from source, the more darkness you have surrounding you, the more your perception of yourself becomes one of ‘individual’ /separate, the more different from you things around you look, and the more difficult it is to recognize yourself. It isn’t that you’re any less ‘holy’, any less worthwhile, any less loveable (or Loved). You use the darkness (of non-awareness, for instance) as a way – conversely – to be aware of yourself; you might even say that the darkness ‘supports’ you in that awareness. As a Loving act of creation, aspects of you will journey yet further into darkness to spread more of Yourself, to know yourself as Divine Light, through whatever incarnation you realise yourself in.

It matters not whether you’re presently living in darkness or living in light, on the side of the rock that’s in shadow, or the side in direct sunlight (ironically perhaps, as Light, you’re in essence creating and casting shadows Yourself). Difficulties that you’ve experienced in this or past lives have been tools for helping you to become aware of your innate nature, and you can do that regardless of which side of the rock (/’physicality’) you’re standing on. All that matters is something that you do naturally, without thinking, regardless of circumstances, which is to exercise your tendency to reach towards the light. Try to see your shadow and all that occurs – the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ – as a projection to facilitate this practice.

Included in this darkness are things like conditioning. You can choose to stick with others’ definitions of you, in the way of limitations as to who and what you are, who and what you’re not, and what is or is not possible. If you experience a tantric connection (sexual or non-) to other (spirit) beings, for instance, do you stay in the realm of ‘that’s not possible /real’, or do you move into an understanding and courageous acceptance and ownership of ‘this is another aspect of what I am’?

It’s a choice, not to allow your mind to seduce you into believing in separation. It’s also a choice to realise that once you’ve had a difficult experience or relationship that’s provided you with beliefs of ‘limitation’, it’s provided you with the possibility of changing how and what you perceive as your reality, also, and the possibility of standing in your truth, even amidst harsh resistance.

On the journey of recognizing and honouring your own medicines, you’re not the same person – as others have defined you – that you were a year ago, a minute ago, a previous incarnation ago, a few paragraphs ago, or who’ll you’ll be moments from Now, for that matter. Shed the parts of you that have got you to this moment of self-realisation. Leave those (other) aspects of Creation (expectations that others have placed upon you, for instance, or expectations that you’ve had for other people) to their own medicines. Release them as an element of shadow that’s helped you to realise yourself, and as a means of lightening your burden. Open yourself to the playful adventure of discovering more of what you Are (‘even’ in your everyday life). If the mind tells you any different, appreciate it in the same way, too (or don’t; either way, you’re still shining with the same undiminishable intensity).

I was guided to a second vision…

…a segmented blue (~’clarity’ blue) ball above a hand,

the hand of a large (God-like) figure of light, throwing the ball up /playing? with it

~ all these potentials for awareness, from all your incarnations (the joys and the traumas), creating a full circle, and You, being the God/dess being, enjoying your creation as Play. And from that point of observation, where do you take the vision from there? Where do you take your Creation from there? The possibilities are limitless.

Big Medicine Love to You

Black Feather

Liberating Yourself, or ‘how to thank a dead buffalo’

A lot of attention gets paid to Gratitude, especially as it concerns attracting more of what you (should?) want to yourself. For some of us, it can get impressed on us to such an extent that if we’re not actively entertaining positive, abundant thoughts at every given moment, we might mentally beat ourselves up for it, due to a feeling that we’re doing ourselves (and the machine that is the Law of Attraction movement) a grievous disservice. Even with years and years of devoted meditative training or other mental conditioning, our minds can get the better of the best of us.

 
What to do?

Start giving gratitude to what you do have an abundance of: thank every one of your mind’s mental machinations. As an example, say “thank you” to every thought that arises where you tell yourself that you’re ‘less than’ or otherwise not clever, good, funny, or attractive enough. Say thank you to feelings of dissatisfaction with your life or relationships, to any situation that typically sets you to gnashing your teeth. Give attention to every adverse emotion, regardless of whether it seems mentally justifiable or not.

Rather than think your way through this practice with preconceived expectations or demands, ask Buffalo to help you in your offerings of gratitude, and be open to and enjoy every experience, and every moment. even – or perhaps, ‘especially’ – those that would typically get you ‘fired up’! Imagine for a moment that every negative thought or impulse you have has a negative entity associated with it, influencing it, and thank them, too!

If need be at first, all in good fun, say it sarcastically. For instance, offer a jolly “thank you” to the self-abusive emotion that gets aroused, should you berate yourself for not getting out of bed and to your ‘obligations’ quickly enough. Say thank you to the entity stirring up feelings of you not being superhuman enough to get everything you want done in the world done.

Don’t worry that this act of giving what sounds like gratitude to something you’d want less of might actually bring more of it to you, that you’ll be inundated with more of the particular experience that seemed to cause the negative emotion your thoughts had connected to in the first place. Don’t worry either that you’re putting responsibility for your emotions outside of yourself. As interconnected and expansive as you actually are, these other entities have been a part of your extended being, and a necessary part of your soul’s evolution (not to mention how you’ve been necessary for theirs). 

What’ll happen is – for one thing – you’ll start to realize the extent of the negative crap influencing and limiting you. Secondly (and better than that), though, you’ll introduce a different – ‘for the fun of it’ – attitude to those emotions and energies, and thus transform them; by not giving them the same old power, they’ll have none. And thirdly and so on, well, I don’t want to spoil the plot, so you let me know what happens for you from there.

While the constraints of collective conditioning might be insisting that your thoughts aren’t affecting anything outside of your own cranial space, in truth, you’re playing an actual, active and essential role in uplifting the planet.

If you feel unsettled through this process, I can certainly relate. On a soul level, what’s happening is pretty much commonplace for you, and on an earthplane level, well, I can in all faith assure you that you’ll be adjusted to your ‘new normal’ very soon.

Blessings and Love,

~Black Feather

(incidentally, the Bison in the photo isn’t dead; it’s just having a good roll in the dirt)

What's Going to Happen...

The journey you’re experiencing now, as you’re experiencing it, is the only one that matters. It offers the only wisdom that matters: Yours.

Consider some of the predictions that individuals who’d posited themselves as ‘experts’ had espoused about what might happen at the end of the Mayan calendar. I’m not saying that a Shift didn’t or isn’t occurring, but I’m glad I wasn’t one of the people motivated to queue up for some profiteer to benefit from their investing in an apocalypse shelter. I’ll admit that I was kind of thrilled at the thought of three days of darkness where our physical senses wouldn’t function normally, but for the fact that that didn’t come to pass, I can console myself with the thought that billions of people didn’t have to experience what might have been their worst nightmare, either.

No one else has experienced your life before, and for that reason, no one else can extrapolate on how you choose to experience what is your own personal reality. Neither has anyone else lived the lives you’ve lived previously. No one in existence has accrued the karma that you have (good and/or bad). In the interest of clearing it, no one else has needed to manifest the life you have – as you need yours to be – now.

No one else can tell you, for instance, how your intuitive abilities might manifest; how or what you’ll hear, what you’ll see or feel, what or whom you’ll connect with, or what form that will take.

This is undoubtedly a time of revelation and transformation for you/us, a time of movement from one way of being to another. In whatever way your reality presents for you, I’ll proffer that there will be adventure, and there will definitely be growth.

It’s a time in which we’re (rapidly) fulfilling soul agreements. While we might not feel that we’re being provided with all we ‘want’ in life, we are living the experience that best fosters our soul’s growth. As an example, I asked for guidance as to why I’d been having issues with my vision lately, and a past life was brought to my awareness in which I’d been partly responsible for someone being blinded. As frustrating as the obscuration of my vision has been, I can accept it as something necessary for my soul’s growth at this time, as a gift, even.

While I won’t assume to tell you how your unique journey will manifest, it’s likely that you are or will become aware of things while in a conscious state that you wouldn’t otherwise be aware of. Other beings may start appearing to you through the Veil. Now that I’ve mentioned it, though, ‘the Veil’ is perhaps not the best term to use. More than not, it implies something visual, whereas awareness of other realities, people, beings and dimensions may manifest for you as more ‘sensual’ experiences. You might be inclined to describe them as tantric, even, in the sense that it’s an extrasensory meeting of souls and hearts.

For the fact that we’re built to be wary of novelty, I will offer some advice (and the offer of personalised help, if you need it)…

Drop what you think you know about yourself or what’s possible, all that which has been imposed on you from others’ opinions of whom and what you are and what reality is ‘supposed’ to be like.

Expect, accept, be open to and embrace the new. ‘Magic’ may be the only way to describe some of the things that happen.

Ask (and then trust) your guides to allow into your field only entities/energies that are operating from a loving intention.

BE from a state of loving innocence, childlike, but not childish. Allow yourself a child’s wonder and playfulness, but with awareness of the responsibility you carry as an incredibly powerful energetic being.

Own what you experience. What’s ‘right and wrong’ may get a little confusing, but as a guideline, (please) try to be mindful about what karma you might accrue. What you choose to experience non-physically has repercussions – be that directly, or indirectly – in the physical realms, to physical beings (yourself included!).

(Angelic beings are watching you, assisting you with guidance, but not making choices or living your experience for you.)

Sometimes you’ll choose what you’ll allow or manifest. At other times, you’ll allow yourself to be surprised on every level. You’re creating, your self, your experience, your world.

It’s a playground, and it’s much, much Bigger than it looks. You are much Bigger than you perceive yourself to be. Allow yourself to know it, in whatever way that happens.

Big Medicine Love to You
~ Black Feather