Word of the Week - 82

Word of the Week:  LISTEN

If you have become estranged from your intuition, all is not lost.  The first step is to grow and remain quiet, still.  The second is to listen.  The third is to trust the information you receive no matter how unlikely, or even unreliable it seems.  Knowledge greater than ours takes us in directions we would never have chosen.

The prompts are likely subtle.  In my experience, intuition doesn't shriek.  Notions of what to do next may arrive sounding similar to an overheard conversation, or may be the result of simply knowing something unknown a second before.  Among my examples is the suggestion, several years ago as I began my morning at the computer, to "find more writers."  Just that, not how, not where, not why.  So I did.  From that directive, I discovered poets, their blogs, their work, and ways my own writer's voice could become stronger, winnowing down the choice of words I needed for what I had to say.   Those found writers became friends, models, teachers, even an angel who walked me through the poetry she'd studied her whole life.  In one morning, based upon a flash of what I can only call intuition, my world expanded like a new universe being born.

Intuition, I believe, is the Panama Canal, moving us from one level of existence to another.  We are lifted and transferred from ordinary to expanded.  Intuition is not epiphany, not the explosive realization of discovery but something much softer, yet quietly insistent.  It may lead us to epiphanies. to shouts of "eureka" and such.  For me, its gifts, for they certainly are that, are neither noisy nor big, at least in the moment.  In the aftermath of taking the recommended action, I may be aware that it was, in fact, a big deal.  At which point, my normal response is to sit, subdued and at the same time dazed, grateful almost beyond measure.  A sacred gift, indeed.  Thank you.

 

Psssssst, this is your intuition

When intuition speaks - or elbows, points, jabs, shrieks or shoves - we are wise to listen.

This morning It/She was talking to me or more like dropping one envelope on my desk at a time, not a stack of mail to be gotten through.  A message to be digested, followed by another.  I made peace long ago with being or appearing to be a fool and as such would rather act on what I trust is intuition or some form of higher wisdom and be wrong than ignore it and be really wrong.

I am not entirely delusional and I don't think the moon talks to me but that is the image that sometimes presents itself to my often visual mind.  Perhaps it is an illustration I will one day create.  I assume it is about what the moon represents in this and other cultures, in fiction and fantasy, in our imaginations.  Withdrawn in shadow or filling our sight when it seems so close, our nearest celestial body, our satellite, our once-urgent destination, I can suspend disbelief and picture it with secrets to be whispered.  Assignments, suggestions, grainy moonseeds of possibility. 

Intuition speaks in a never-identified voice but once heard is known ever after.  Benevolent - not feigning well-meant intentions like friends and family members who tell us things "for our own good" - honest, clear though not always fathomable or matching anything we've known before that moment, reliable and putting its trust, the trust of, say, the cosmos, in us to listen and act without dithering and asking pointless questions that would not, in any event, be answered.

In California, recently arrived invitee at the Powerball Lottery party, the betting types are, according to news reports, hitching their hopes to a portion of approximately 600 million dollars.  For no money whatsoever, we can sit still for as long as it takes, quiet our minds, learn to recognize intuition when it summons us, accept that its guidance may not make sense - it IS much wiser than we - and take the indicated step.  It might even suggest buying a Powerball ticket.  If it does, whew.  Some guys have all the luck.

"...taking black spray paint to your third eye."

This will be the song of the day,  the choice possibly inspired by bleed-throughs from other states of consciousness, other knowing.

“I believe in intuitions and inspirations...I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am.”
― Albert Einstein

One day, one moment, is not like another.  Each arrives with an agenda and secrets.  If we are caught up in drama, the whisperings are too soft for us to hear.  Keeping to the bright side of the road takes fancy stepping, a choreography that I wasn't taught or, if I was, I unlearned.

I have, however, learned to notice the moments, the instants when there is a shift.  I think of Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man," turning in his sleep, the images on his skin coming to life, telling their stories.  It feels to me that we are being led further and further from nuance, subtleties, the oblique, and that our own turnings go unnoticed.  Their power to direct the flow of our lives is diminished by the bludgeoning effects of what passes for information.  Comedian Bill Hicks said, "Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye."

I mention this because last night I went to bed in a state of deep fatigue.  When I am that tired, I have trouble remembering it isn't always like this, the good times are not all gone.  This morning, weariness decreased,  I was able to feel the stirrings almost too faint to be identified.  We never know when the wind will change.  All we are asked to do is know that it will. 

Keep coming back.

Attributes of the moth

"Moths of Orange County, CA," photographed by Peter J. Bryant

A pair of comet moths, photo by Johan Nijenhuis

By now, which means after more than three years of blog writing,  some of my secrets have been pulled from under the couch cushions and put on the table.  Among these are the revelation that I find life to be teeming,  jumping with symbolism, that I willingly allow a representative portion of something to stand in for the still-to-come whole, that metaphor is my native language and very little is only what it seems.

In a short, perhaps five-minute segment of a recent podcast, there was a meditative exercise in which  listeners were directed to find a spirit guide.  The practitioner spoke of eagles, for the ability to fly would be required of the guide.  Mine arrived.  It was a moth.

It may be my most basic belief that we are here - wherever we are geographically, emotionally, physically in this moment - to be of assistance to each other.  Assistance, in this case, can mean anything.  Without rushing to Google, I thought of the moth, an extreme example of transformation, starting life as one form and becoming a different creature.  I am not who I used to be. Teachers, awareness and opportunities continue to find me, carrying me out of dimness, discouragement, into a brighter land.  Mulling and pondering - and daydreaming - are natural states, taking the measure of a situation, mostly by intuition, interpreting, perceiving, feeling.  Feeling my way toward knowledge, insight, information.

When I looked into what moth brings as a totem  I found: the ability to perceive with clarity, strong healing abilities, protection for traveling between darkness and the light, finding light in darkness, metamorphosis and, in common with the phoenix, rising from the ashes, in moth's case of the flames to which it is drawn.  What better sidekick?

The title above is one of those, "Quick, write this down," flashes that fill the scraps I mentioned in the previous post.  Attributes of the moth.  Forgive me, please, if I repeat myself.  Life as I have come to know it is fraught with meaning; likely it always was, but I had no skills.  These, too, are days of myth and fable, truths revealed in waking, walking dreams.  No wonder fiction explores parallel universes, wormholes, wrinkles in time.  How else to explain being conscious of treading the ordinary path of oil changes, bill paying, medical procedures, clothes that need washing or detecting an unpleasant odor in the refrigerator and, in the same moments, seeing the story within the story, the plan behind the random event, the bigger picture. 

For some of you, this will be like my talking in tongues.  That may be a fair comparison.  The best we can hope for is to know our own truths and to allow others to know theirs.  If we share common ground, there is much to discuss.  If not, I may be found in a somewhat unkempt state wearing soft clothes that feel like pajamas, pencil-callused fingers turning the pages in The Great Big Book of Moths.