Man, I hate it when I sit down to begin writing my post for the evening and I struggle to keep my eyes open and my head from slumping into my chest.
Clearly, this will be a short post.
Jaguar
I want to share with you the cool airplane I saw today when mine pulled into its gate. It felt particularly significant as a message, given that I’d not had a chance to pick my Medicine Cards* this morning.
Being confronted by such a direct and obvious image of one of these ‘Big Cats’ encouraged me to be mindful today of acting in a manner that promotes integrity and encourages impeccable behavior.
Walking and Eating
I felt Jaguar was looking me square in the eye and encouraging me to once again re-commit to my walking routine again. I thus resumed with a four mile constitutional late this afternoon. It felt refreshing and invigorating at the time – but I do believe it may be contributing to my falling asleep sitting up this evening.
Another aspect of my life in which I need to apply some integrity and impeccability is my eating habits. It’s time to get back to listening to my body.
Writing
It’s also time to sit quietly with my journal (and laptop) and figure out where all of this – or that – is going. It just feels like time.
Other Applications?
Perhaps this spontaneous pick of Jaguar greeted me this morning so I could examine the myriad ways in which integrity and impeccability can be reintroduced into my world.
Reflecting on where Jaguar wants me to embrace its attributes is a wonderful way for me to spend tomorrow’s end of Mercury retrograde (“Mercury going direct”). It just feels right.
I suspect this is going to be anti-climactic, since I’ve delayed writing about it for two days; nevertheless, here is the short tale of how my “pick” for the day on Sunday started the ball rolling toward this mammoth freaking blogging extravaganza. Commitment.
As I mentioned in my Devotion post, when I asked Karl (my husband), how we could best honor our son, Karl’s, life, the “answer” immediately flashed in my head: “Karl must do art and I must write.” I knew it in an instant, and I knew it to be true.
But of course this seemed obvious to me. Our son was relentlessly creative – and probably more talented than both of his parents combined. So yeah, I understood why each of us engaging in our favored creative outlets would be the best way to “honor” his life. So, even though I knew this “answer” had flashed distinctly into my mind, I wasn’t convinced the answer was pure.
As I read Dolphin, I was acutely aware this day of the irony that Dolphin begins with these words:
“Dolphin speaks to us of the breath of life, the only thing that humans cannot go without for more than a few minutes. We can live without water and food for days, but oxygen is the source of our sustenance. …”
Hmmm, yes. It was oxygen, specifically, that Karl was forced to go without – at his peril.
The next part of the essay on Dolphin that spoke to me was:
“Dolphin was given a new job. He became the carrier of messages of our progress. (…) This can be a time when you are to link with Great Spirit and bring answers to your own questions or to those of others.”
The reversal of Dolphin didn’t make a lot of sense to me vis-à-vis my question, except when I read:
“Pay close attention to your health and your feelings. (…) Another message of contrary Dolphin is that many signals are carried through universal tides or waves, and you may be failing to use your sonar.”
It was at this point that the specific word Devotion first came to mind. It popped into my head and I knew without question that I’d not been paying attention to my feelings. I’ve felt something big approaching, some profound change in the nature or scope of my healing work, or my teaching, or perhaps even my writing (which if I’m honest has languished since publishing Owl Medicine in 2001), but I wasn’t “getting it.” I’ve honestly been wondering what “change” was on the horizon, yearning for it to be revealed.
I wasn’t getting it. Or maybe, I wasn’t doing it.
Yet it wasn’t simply the sense that I’ve been ‘failing to use my sonar’ (or failing to listen to what I should be focusing upon and acting upon it). It was also the fact that Jaguar was “underneath,” coloring and adding nuance to this scenario. Jaguar – an archetype profoundly dear to me, both personally and in my work in the shamanic realm. Jaguar – which represents, for me at least, the qualities of integrity and impeccability; qualities that I aspire to live by and hold as the guiding standards for my behavior; qualities that perhaps I wasn’t applying to the message being sent by Dolphin.
It was then that I realized that, yes, the best way I could be of greatest service to Karl’s memory is to write – to not only engage in my creative outlet but in so doing be a “message carrier” – but that I must do so with the integrity and impeccability I hold so dear: I must engage this writing with DEVOTION.
This was (and is) big for me, as I give my writing the least priority of anything else I do.
Thus, as I read Dolphin and its reversal, and coupled it with the exacting standards of Jaguar underneath, I had the feeling that I am being called to a Devotion; to engage in an Act of Power in Karl’s honor: writing a blog post every single day, no matter how long or short, for at least one year.
