Enlightenment.

It seems like an idea that much the world may not think about all that often. And if we do consider it, it might seem so huge and far out of reach that it just becomes a cliche, a cartoon.

Nirvana!

But it is said that there are only two symptoms of enlightenment:

1. You stop worrying

2. You experience more meaningful coincidence or synchronicities.

I don’t know about you, but I’m perfectly okay with leaving my worries behind. I happen to come from a long line of champion worriers so some of that habitual worrying was in my DNA, but I’m happy to let it go. (Sorry, Mom).

And having a life full of synchronicities is awesome beyond words. So yeah, enlightenment, let’s dig it out of the “that won’t ever happen” file and place it front and center on the “let’s get it done” list.

This past week I experienced some very cool synchronicities.  I’m still curious to how they will unfold and I wanted to make a record of them so I thought I’d put it here, for you, and for me – a sort of magical diary entry.

Here is how this  past week played out for me.

I’ve always been attracted to birds. They speak to me in some way, not in english or even in words but just by the way they interact. Just a sort of “knowing” I have, a connection. I’m open to what all of nature has to say, and I’m specifically very fond of birds. They are beautiful. And they can fly! The flying is enough to make me love them in and of itself, but so many times a bird has shown up in a significant moment, I’ve just grown to love them more and more, and to pay attention. I’ve often joked that I want to bring back augury as a valid spiritual practice. The registered name of my coaching business is Songbird Coaching.

So, recently when I began thinking that maybe there was some other “power animal” out there calling to me, it almost felt like I was cheating on the birds. I mean, really, why in the world would I need a new power animal? And what the heck is a power animal anyway? (Seriously, I mean my birds are just my birds. But totem animals aren’t my area of expertise, so why do these thoughts keep nudging me, I’m busy planning a new class! Sheesh, stop it thoughts!)

But in the midst of those thoughts I opened an email from an online magazine that promotes female entrepreneurs, and on the cover was a woman named Emelie, who was a specialist on, yep you guessed it: Totem animals.

So I decided to sign up for information about her class on power animals. And as far as I knew the person teaching this workshop was a regular person with a regular person name, but when Emelie’s confirmation email came it was signed “FOXY” in big red letters.

Now, that in itself wouldn’t have made me take notice – but the very next email I opened in my inbox was from Catbird, the jewelry shop in Brooklyn. The email was for Ruby birthstone rings, and it said this:

Okay, Universe. I’m noticing. And I told a few people, and then I sort of forgot about it all for a few days. I’ve been working on the course content for a Magical Summer, (So I can teach you practical tools so you can have some more magic in your life, too!) so I was busy. I just didn’t have time right now to research foxes and totem animals and all of that.

Well, I might not think I have time, but apparently my inner, higher, wiser self decided to make time. Because then I had a dream that I found a baby black fox in a birdcage on my front door step. (“Really?, my dream self thought, “There are black foxes?”) Thank you, Google, for validating this fact.

In my dream, I brought the birdcage into the house and took out the baby fox. It was black, tiny, cute, and had ginormous ears. I thought maybe it was a stuffed animal because it was just SO cute and little. BUT…it had very sharp, long, shiny claws and it wanted to scratch around, a lot. So I decided to put it back into the cage because I didn’t want to get scratched. I then looked out on the front steps again and there was a HUGE powerful, majestic, beautiful LION.

And this is where the dream ended…but I was aware that someone was threatening to kill the lion, and in my dream I knew that it was just an idle threat.

I couldn’t stop thinking about this dream, and so I did what anyone would do, I posted it on facebook. *grin*

and then 2 seconds later I clicked over to another Facebook group and saw that someone had posted a gorgeous painting…of three foxes. <OMG, seriously?>

(And I just tracked down the artist, Marrus, so you can purchase this gorgeous painting here if you like.)

So I immediately asked one of my close friends, Catherine Adams, who is a terrific coach and is also the absolute Queen of Dream Interpretation to have a conversation with me about it.

Catherine had me embody the dream elements, speak as the dream elements (I am the birdcage, I am small, strong, protective!) to get a really good idea of what my dream was saying to me and then we pieced together the short dream again.

By the end of our call it sounded like this:
I opened myself up [birdcage], and I let out some playfulness, new energy and curiosity [fox]. This curiosity that showed up, it was great at listening [huge ears!]. I wasn’t even sure it was real, it was really cute and sweet…but it was also dark and a bit edgy and it sure liked to dig around a lot! So I decided to put it back inside because I didn’t want it to hurt me. I then looked again and there was a HUGE powerful, majestic, beautiful lion there too. And that strong beautiful lion made sure that I knew it was NOT going anywhere, was not going to die, it was steadfast…no matter how much digging around I did, no matter how edgy I got, no matter how curious I was. And all of those rumors that it was going to die if I opened up were just idle threats.

Right now I’m putting the finishing touches on The Magical Summer course. I’ve questioned if some of the material is too edgy.  This “message from the Universe” came just in time, don’t you think?

Right at this moment, as I’m typing this blog post, I took a little break to get some water and to check on my Facebook group The Love & Magic Salon. I happened to see a friend who makes jewelry taking a random survey asking “what is your ring size?” I quickly posted, 3.5. Then my notifications kept pinging with comments (Holy Hell!! 3.5?) so I commented that my pinky ring size was 1.5 – but then I thought I’d double check, and the only way I knew to do that (since it’s not like I just have a ring sizer laying around over here) was to go over to eBay and see what size the pinky ring was that I bought there a couple of years ago. I opened to “my purchases” and randomly scrolled back to 2012. The first auction I saw was a purchase my son made for Halloween 2012. It said, “Adult Sized Fox Mask”. 🙂

Okay, Universe, I’m paying attention.

Truly, Magic is what happens when your inner world and your outer world collide in Love.  And I’m loving it.

What kind of magic has been going on in your life this week?

Love & Magic,

 

 

Note: After I finished editing this blog post I shut down my computer for the weekend, and left the house to run some errands. I had submitted a list of books to my local library, and a couple of them had come available and were waiting for me to pick up.  One of them was a book called The Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner.  I had forgotten about this one, but there it was and looking very well, um, loved.

You can see by the picture that the cover is pretty much destroyed.  Upon thumbing the edge of the pages I discovered that there was one (and only one) chapter with a dog-eared corner mark.  The chapter title: Power Animals. LOL.  Love the Universe’s sense of humor!  That’s what I call Magic.

Note #2:

Update: July 9th I had awakened from the dream that I mentioned in this post. What I didn’t mention was a second dream – it was very short, and honestly sort of grossed me out. So of course, I let it go and focused on the “cooler” and “prettier” dream. In the shorter dream I had something in my throat, that felt like congestion and so I ran into the bathroom to spit it out in the sink. What I spit out instead was a huge dragonfly.

This morning I started reading The Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner (pictured above). Again, until this morning when I started reading I had little to no experience or knowledge about Shamanism. I didn’t know that “power animals” were part of Shamanism, and I knew zero about any specific Shamanistic practices besides knowing that “Shamans travel into ‘other worlds’ via altered states of consciousness with the intention of healing others.”

So this morning when reading about the Jivaro Shamans I was shocked to read that one of the oldest shamanistic rituals ends with the Shaman spitting an insect out of his mouth. LOL.  I think there may be some shamanic journeying in my future. And as long as I can do it without putting an insect in my mouth I’m cool with it. 😉