lettuce and epiphanies

     So good of you to come over today, come in come in!

     Yes, it’s lovely weather outside, but it’s that general unrest out there that I think we want to get out of.  I wonder if it was like this during other turbulent times in history – funny how it either isn’t really focused on in the past documentation of it all, but that if it was like this, it must have been just as overpowering, that general emotional toxicity in the air itself that gets into everything and whispers viciously when we try to make any decisions, nudging us to choose based on anxiety, terror, rage.  It’s awful!

     Good, that’s the door closed between us and all that.  Always clear in here!

     There’s Violets up in the window, dear cat.  She still likes to look out, and see the birds from there.

     Clover is in the book room – he was so kind earlier, when I was lying out on the couch there, trying to get my thoughts together.  He brought me tea, sat down beside me for a bit, listening, even though I didn’t say anything.  It’s something we need to do for each other in the world I think – just let each other know we are there, even if we don’t say anything.

     Well, here’s the kitchen, make yourself comfortable.  Sandwiches today.  Take what you like!

     I’d been thinking a lot about transformation lately – because nothing can ever really be destroyed, much as we would like to destroy certain things.  (Everything goes somewhere, as Beakman used to say, thunderously.)  Even in the old stories, the evil can be driven away, or sealed for a thousand years, or turned to stone, or whatever, but it can never be fully removed from the world. 

     I mean, part of this is so that we never forget about it, which is good; we have to always be able to recognize it when it starts, so that we can take the necessary steps to keep it from causing the harm it wants to.  When we do forget, become complacent, tell ourselves the pretty lies that there is good in everyone and nobody can be that bad, or tell ourselves that the cruel people are just misunderstood and only need love to ‘cure’ them of being evil (when in fact, if you are loving and accepting of someone who actively wants to hurt you, they will still happily hurt you, and you have just made it easier for them), or make ourselves so afraid of being seen as ‘as bad as them’ that we don’t stand up for ourselves, don’t call abuse what it is, don’t set boundaries – when we get like that, that’s when the evil is given what it needs to thrive.  So we do need to remember it – that it is always there, waiting for its moment.

     Lately, it has been more than relishing its moment, I think.

     So now it falls to the rest of us to do what we can to make things better. 

     Focusing on it does seem to make it stronger – I mean, focusing on the awful stuff, and how horrible it is, and how many lives it is ruining and how miserable we all are because of it.  But we are wired to do exactly that – it protected us from lions, long ago – if you kept a hard focus on where the lion was, you could use that focus to get away from the lion, and then you could stop worrying about the lion, for the most part.  But the scary stuff we deal with now, we can’t really get away from in the same way.  We want to keep our focus on it, and not forget about it, and that is natural, but we need to be able to lift that needle off that record so we can regain connection to ourselves, regain connection to our own power and energy and what nourishes us and gives us strength, just so we can even start doing something about the situation.  Otherwise we get hopelessly mired, worn down, feel helpless, lose hope.

     One thing I do that really helps me comes from a suggestion I had from Elen of the Ways, one night when I was floundering in franticness and despair over things I couldn’t really do anything about.  I already made frequent use of what I call ‘purge-writing’ – a form of meditation in which I just write out everything that is currently cluttering my head, for as long as I can.  This always helps, and I always feel clearer afterwards, but sometimes one gets into laying down page after page after page of misery and rage over the same stuff, continuing to return to it, and it gets to the point where focusing on it is only making it worse.

     What Elen suggested was this – OVERWHELM THE VENOM.  While not denying that the stuff that is making you crazy is there and is a problem, take some good solid time (like a whole hour) and spend your ‘purge-writing’ session ONLY ‘purge-writing’ stuff that makes you happy, joyous, grateful, delighted, contented, loving.  Any time you give focus to something, more of that something rushes to join it.  I promise you, give yourself an hour and just start writing down all of the things that you love, that make you happy, that delight you.  After the hour, you will continue to think of things like that, and you will want to keep writing them down.  And do that!  In this way, you overwhelm the toxic stuff by bringing in this great flood of things that you love, and you give your mind a break from worrying all the toxic bones you normally have on rotation in your brain – you overwhelm the venom that has been poisoning you.  You definitely acknowledge that the bad things exist and are there, but you choose to put your thoughts about them temporarily aside, and you actively remind yourself that there is so much MORE than those toxic bones in your life, and giving yourself the power and nourishment you need to re-face those bones – the ones you can do something about anyway – with renewed strength.

     However, this still doesn’t solve the problems – although helping one’s self to have a healthier mindset does help for sure.

     Recently too, I had a visit with one of my guides in which he said that now is NOT the time to ‘adapt’ to what is going on in the world.  Now is the time to make the world adapt to YOU.  Meaning: for those of us who have been quietly working in healing and trying to bring in the light, who have watched in dismay as the humans in charge of things have normalized cruelty and apathy, it is time for us to be fully who we are, and bring through the magic that we are meant to bring through, and start healing the world with it.  And he reminded me that I didn’t even have to do this publicly or out loud – just think of the deer trails.  No one sees the deer make the deer trails, but when you are walking in the woods, you find yourself following them almost without considering them.  Go behind the scenes, secretly create paths and patches of magic in the world, so that people can stumble upon them and feel better afterwards.  No one has to see you do it, but you can make the world healthier, and more magical, one path or patch at a time.

     The question though, still, was HOW.

     Transformation is definitely the way to go, but I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it.  I thought of various gods, goddesses, and guides that might be good to go to for this.  Ceriddwen, for one – she knows all about transformation, and I have worked with her before with great success.  Loki too, though your Loki may vary – for me, I have had some very enlightening teaching from him about learning to dance amidst the chaos, and that we always have ourselves, no matter what craziness is happening around us, so I was comfortable with that aspect of him.  For you, I would recommend that you go to the guides that you have rapport with – and if you feel you must approach someone you haven’t worked with yet, as always, do it with the utmost respect!

     So I was going along, my wondering about how to work on transformation magic simmering away on my mental backburner, and just starting my big holiday time away from the office, mid-September, and on my way home after my last day of work, I stopped in the bakery section of the supermarket, and in a surge of holiday whimsivorousness, bought myself a package of unicorn cookies – soft sugar cookies with blue and pink icing and gold and unicorn-shaped sprinkles on top – just for the giggle of it.

     They were delicious, by the way.

     But then…that night I noticed that a store I like had just released two new releases – unicorn pants and top.  And then, all within the next twelve hours, a friend randomly posted a picture of himself wearing a rubber unicorn mask online (actually, I’m not sure if it was him in the mask, or someone else in the mask – but it was definitely a picture of someone in a unicorn mask).  At this point, I posted that the unicorn theme for this holiday has been solidly established!  Following that, the same friend posted that one of his other friends had also posted a set of Hallowe’en themed unicorn pictures.

     Clearly, the unicorns were calling!

     Now, here’s the thing about my experience with unicorns:

     I know where they are.

     Which is to say, I know where to find them.

     Which is to say, I know where to access them.

     (Your access may vary.)

     Many, many, many, many years ago, when I was much, much, much younger, I thought it would be interesting one night to try to stay conscious, as I was falling asleep, of where my mind was as I fell into sleep and dreams.  So as I watched, I found myself passing through a kind of space that was vast, all colours at once – I called this the Shimmer (yes, I am aware that a horror movie has now used that term to describe a scary place – for the record, mine was first, and is infinitely more fun).

I became aware of a street corner, floating there in the midst of the Shimmer – a street corner with a lamp post.  Standing on the street corner was a man in a trenchcoat, and wearing a broad-brimmed hat. 

     I came down beside him, and noticed that he had no face – his face was made of the same all-colour stuff as the space around us.

     I asked who he was.

     And in my mind, he showed me an image of a five-pointed star.

     So that was his name.  Not ‘Star’, although that’s what I have to call him to describe him, but the IMAGE of the star.

     I would visit Star often over the years.  He communicates by images in my head, when we visit, which took a bit of getting used to, but was not at all unpleasant.  His role out there is one of sentinel – standing at his Outpost, guarding against things that might come through and be dangerous.  I have seen him in difficult times so beaten down that his brother (whose name is the image of the Waxing Moon) had to come and fill in for him while he recovered.  Over the years, I have seen his Outpost grow to include a small café, where we have sat to visit.

     But always above us, the Shimmer, vast and wonderful.

     It would be a few years before I realized that it was made of unicorns.

     Honestly, I forget when I realized it.  This worries me a bit, but for the purposes of this story I suppose it’s not important.

     I eventually figured out that I could appeal to the unicorns of the Shimmer, if I had a friend who was suffering, for example, and almost always they would immediately send a unicorn to that friend. 

     Please know too that these were not the cookie-cutter unicorns one sees on greeting cards either.

     I have seen unicorns that were wiry and green, translucent as jungle vines.  I have seen unicorns heavy and muscled as bulls, unicorns dark and jagged as branches, unicorns made from gemstones, unicorns black and ashy as soot.  I have seen them beautiful, and I have seen them terrifying.  But all come through in the spirit of healing, and all are fierce and powerful.

     And all of them know transformation magic.  They are MADE of it.

     I have seen them move into a space and VIBRATE the negativity clean out of it.

     And I had completely forgotten that I had access to this!

     So, following the barrage of unicorns on the first overnight of my holiday, at my first opportunity the next day I returned to the Outpost, and after a very joyful reunion with Star, I turned my eyes to the Shimmer.

     Now normally, the Shimmer is just this vast space of all-colours-at-once.  Even though I know it is made of unicorns, I tend not to see the unicorns until I ask.

     But that day, the unicorns were VISIBLE.  They were CLAMORING.

     They WANTED to help!

     All along I had access to this – it’s so funny, we forget what power we have, and it’s so simple ultimately, when we remember.  Life makes us forget, we get so caught up.  But we are never powerless.  We always have things like this, every one of us.  Yes, you too!

     So, over the course of the next hour, one by one I appealed to the unicorns of the Shimmer about each of the issues that had been worrying me, and one by one a unicorn (or two, or many) came out of the Shimmer, and flew off to help. 

     A little ways in, a unicorn came nodding out to me, a beautiful female, silver-grey with black nose, horn, mane, hooves, tail, muscled and powerful, but all smooth roundedness and radiating warmth – she had wings too, when she wanted to, silver-grey with black tips, and just as beautifully rounded as the rest of her.  She stayed with me while the others came through and went off to their destinations, often standing protectively while I relayed my more painful worries.

     After I finished going through all my worries, and seeing unicorns flying off to help with them, I decided to go for a walk outside – I needed to get lettuce anyway, but I would get that on my way back – I really wanted to get out to the nearby gardens, and just think about what I’d just experienced.

     And the rounded unicorn came with me.  For want of a better name, I found myself calling her simply Mare, which she did not mind at all. 

     And as we walked, she taught me about transformation magic, the bits I had been missing.

You bring your calm with you.

You need to be bigger than the toxic thing – not superior, but ESTABLISHED.

Warmth is key.

When you encounter energy-toxicity, first, take a deep, slow breath.  What can you use of this?  Breathing is transformative.  So, the energy of the toxicity, breathe it in, use the energy, exhale as earth-nourishing ash.  Your own fire transforms the toxins.  Exhale calm around it.

Yes – your heart-fire.  Good.  All coming together I see!  That’s what it’s there for – one of many reasons – but there, in the middle, working with the lungs…

We are here – with all the trees and all, to transform the toxins, only we’ve forgotten we can do this – we’ve forgotten we’re allowed!

     I would clarify here – the fire she speaks of is the fire of your own life-force.  Everyone has it – it’s there even if you can’t see it.  You can breathe focusing on it, it is there at your heart-centre, and as you breathe into it, you can feel and watch it grow, become stronger.

     So we can use our own life-force fire to burn off the toxins from what we encounter, use the energy left from it, and then exhale the burned-off toxins as earth-nourishing ash, in a warm outbreath of calm. 

     Your own warmth and calm, and the fire of your own life-force, transforming the toxins, and putting the energy back into the world as something better.

     At this point I texted my husband that I was coming home, that my walk had been excellent, had included epiphanies even, and that I would pick up the lettuce on the way home.

     He texted back, “Lettuce and epiphanies”.

     Yes.

     So – I have to say this all isn’t as easy as it sounds, even with a unicorn by one’s side.  It is in fact extremely, extremely difficult.  But I know that it is one of those things that one will become stronger at with practice.  Lots and lots and lots of practice. 

     What I find is, since I’ve known about the above transformative technique, that I have needed to use it most on myself, burning off the near-constant rage I am picking up from the unrest in the world whenever I am out in it.  And I think I’m going to need to keep doing that the most, basically always, whenever I think of it.

     But the great thing is, I no longer have to puzzle over the ‘how’ of it.  And just like doing an ‘overwhelm the venom’ purge-writing session, now that I have two answers, other ideas are flowing in for other ways to do it too.  Other guides and helpers one can call in.  Other ways to bring light through.

     Certainly feel free to try your own as well – we all have access to this stuff, our own unique access to our own unique ways of working our own unique magicks.

     Oh, the disclaimer, of course:

     Your Outpost and Sentinel may vary.

     Well, it IS a lovely Autumn day, and it was wonderful visiting as always.  Please feel free to take some sandwiches for the road.

     Please try to remember that we are not helpless, though the craziness of it all makes us want to feel that way sometimes.  We always have resources.  Again, it’s sometimes just a matter of remembering to remember – and thankfully the things we need to remember sometimes have a tendency of clustering and clamoring until we notice them, when it’s critical.  So keep your eye out for repeating images that catch your eye!

     But you know all that already, of course!

     Pleasant travels!

     See you soon!