Lessons from a finch

This morning while in my bathroom, attempting to comb down my well-slept upon hair, I heard a strange fluttery sound. I thought at first it was my husband, choosing his shirt from our tiny closet on the other side of the wall. This idea was negated when he walked past the bathroom and the sound continued.

I looked out the bathroom window to see what the commotion was. We have a large group of finches who spend the majority of their morning in our maple tree out in the back yard, and their cacaphony seemed louder than ever.

Imagine my surprise when I found one of the finches, apparently stuck to the window screen. The fluttery sound was the little guy attempting to fly away, with his feet firmly clamped around the mesh of the screen. Every few seconds, a couple of his flock-mates would come swooping near him, chirping and fluttering around him in encouragement, but the small bird didn’t budge.

Cooing words of encouragement to him, I gently touched his claws on my side of the screen, trying to determine where he was stuck. He responded by hopping along sideways. Hmm, I thought. He obviously isn’t stuck. By this time my daughter and husband had come into the bathroom to see what was going on. The finch hopped on the screen again, up a little higher but still apparently unable to fly away. He’d flutter his wings, but held tight to the screen. His friends continued their periodic swoop-and-chirp campaign, attempting to help him let go of the screen, but to no avail.

Birds are hard creatures to read. They have no facial expression to show how they feel, and I am completely unfamiliar with avian body language. However, I felt that this little guy was really and truly scared. After all, he could let go the screen, but he just didn’t. Even with the encouragement of his flock, he still held on there for dear life.

I put on some gloves and went outside to the back yard, leaving my family in the bathroom. I approached the little guy gently, touching his back in what I hoped was a soothing motion, all the while sending him a gentle swoosh of Reiki energy, to help him with his innate fear of all things human. Gently I wrapped my hand around his soft and tiny body and lifted him from the screen. In a flurry of feathers, he was away from me, chirping to his friends who had settled in my neighbor’s yard when they’d heard me come outside.

Just like that he was free. He could fly, his feet were not stuck in the screen. There was no physical reason that he couldn’t have let go the screen. Even with the encouragement of his peers, the little bird was scared to let go. Being perched vertically on the screen, I can only surmise that he was frightened to let go because of the strange angle and perhaps a fear of falling.

Drinking my coffee later on, and listening to the cacophony that is finches in the morning, I realized that we all need a little help and encouragement now and then. It’s so easy to hold on, to stay with what feels secure and familiar–even if it is slightly scary–because the unknown is always scarier than the known. We need to listen to our flockmates, take the plunge and find out that scared or not, we can soar after all.

The Blue Eyed Crow

One day a number of years ago, my daughter and I were taking a walk down the street. About three houses from the end of the street, we noticed that some of the neighborhood kids had set up some of those miniature orange traffic cones in a circle on the side of the road.

As we approached, my daughter and I realized that the kids had encircled what appeared to be an injured crow.

Now, we have several small groups of crows in our neighborhood and I have always loved to see them. They are spiritually credited for bringing people from darkness to light, and I have observed them closely. I have noticed that the crows tend to flock to houses where someone soon dies. I see this as a method of helping the person, although I know that there are many who see things different–that the crows bring Death itself. I have never believed that.

Anyway, back to the story:

My daughter and I approached the small group of boys who were staring avidly at the crow. We looked as well.

The crow appeared fine. His wings were held appropriately, he was hopping around in a circle. There were no obvious marks on him, his feathers were smooth. He just wouldn’t take flight. This was no baby crow either, he was full grown.

I asked the boys what had happened and they said that they just found him in the road like that, and that no matter what they did, he wouldn’t fly away. They’d put the cones around him to keep him from being hit by a car.

I was fascinated. I’ve always loved crows and I bend closer to see him better. He did not show fear, but turned and looked me straight in the eye.

His eyes were a vivid blue.

Blue? I was surprised. To my knowledge, crows do not have blue eyes. Their eyes are instead a dark black/brown. I looked at my daughter and asked her if she saw his eyes. She, too, saw they were blue.

Not knowing what else to do, we wished the boys and the crow well and continued on our walk, wondering what was wrong with the crow.

The next day, tragedy struck.

A friend and her husband lived at the very end of the street. That morning, my friend awoke to find her husband…only in his late 30’s…dead of a sudden, massive, fatal heart attack during the night.

Our neighborhood mourned. It was sudden and tragic, but mercifully quick. My friend has never been the same. The funeral was heartbreaking.

Later, after the dust had settled, I was out walking again and saw the same group of boys. I stopped to ask them what had happened to the crow they’d protected. The boys told me that the next morning, they’d gone out to check him and found him dead–just before the ambulances came down the street to my friend’s house.

I was sad for the loss of the blue-eyed crow. I’d done some research and had been unable to find any information on how that crow could have gotten blue eyes. It just didn’t happen. But it struck me in that moment, that the crow was there for a reason. He had come to guide my friend’s husband on his journey, and had left in his spirit-self to complete the task, just as my friend’s husband did.

I felt blessed that I’d been given the gift of seeing the blue eyed crow, and felt better about the loss of life. He did not die alone. Neither one of them did.

From that time on, I’ve accepted crow as one of my animal guides. I feel comforted by their presence, and I welcome them near me. And I know when the time comes, I can expect my own blue-eyed crow to guide me Home.

imaginary friends

When I was a little girl, I had an imaginary friend named Gogo. Gogo came with me everywhere and was my playmate. Gogo disappeared around the time I realized that she was imaginary.
My daughter had an imaginary friend as well. This friend was always around. The problem that he was not a nice friend. Being that she was only 3, my daughter could not verbalize what he was doing, only that he scared her. A lot.
I got to the point where I had to lock this ‘friend’ in the closet in the playroom and tell him he was unwelcome. (He scared me too).
All taken care of right?

My daughter’s next imaginary friend was Shadow and Shadow was okay. Shadow came everywhere we went and played with my daughter until she realized that Shadow was imaginary. Shadow went the way of Gogo.

When my daughter was around 5 or 6, we switched the rooms around in our house and the old playroom became my daughter’s bedroom.

That’s when the nightmares started.

She was used to being in her own room, but this room gave her so much trouble.
I tried ‘monster spray” (food coloring in water to spray away monsters under the bed) I swept the monsters out with a broom.
Nothing helped.

Around this time my older child began to have nightmares and strange experiences. The worst was that he was lying in bed and something somehow grabbed his ankles and pulled him down the bed. I never saw him scared like that before or since. He slept in the living room for a while after that.

I remembered the old imaginary friend we’d locked away and I began to get scared again.
I started reading and doing some research.

I salted the corners of all the rooms in the house.
I don’t like the smell of sage, so I walked thru the house with sandalwood incense.
I helped my daughter make a dreamcatcher and we hung it over the bed.
I changed the angle of the bed to correct the feng shui and I hung a windchime near her door (another thing I learned somewhere for feng shui).
I asked the archangels to post guardians in our house and to watch over the kids special.

And finally, finally, the dreams stopped.

Things have been fine here since then, and that was almost 10 years ago.

My boys

I alluded to my boys recently and figured its time to explain them.
They are nameless but give me names to help me tell them apart. Josh and Alex, to be exact.
They are two spirit guides that have been with me for so long I am not sure when they WEREN’T there. They played with me a child and have always just been around me in some shape or form. I was pretty clueless for a long time though. Once the imaginary friends get packed away its hard to remember that they were there at all. I would dream of nameless/faceless people now and then. I know now that was them.

Several years ago, when I started to work seriously on my psychic and spiritual development, my boys came back to me in a way that I can actually feel and interact with them. First it was only Alex that I could manage to interact with, but there was a feeling that there was another with him, I just couldn’t get a good connection. I also had my primary guide with me, who comes to me as female and has no name. I have in fact often wondered if she is my guardian angel because she was also my guide thru my past life regressions.

Around the time I noticed Alex, I went to a psychic fair and managed to get myself a reading with one of our local top psychics. She told me, without me prompting, that there were two male energies around me and a woman as well. That was my verification.

Lately, since I have been open to them, the two have been hanging out with me now and again and I can sometimes feel their presence. I feel them standing just behind my left shoulder. (My female guide is often behind my right shoulder). They laugh a lot and that is part of their message. I often can tell when they are close by because I get an odd kind of warm chill–very hard to explain! The best way that I can get their messages is to use automatic writing, and I find some very interesting messages that way!

These guys are not angels. They are spirits that for whatever reason I have contracted with to be together this way. They are there to help me get thru this jungle of life.

So that is the explanation of the references to my boys. I think that we three have been together in many past lives in different situations and in fact, they tell me that I can access more past connections thru them. That is the next phase of my journey I suppose.
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If you have read this far, you are likely wondering how to meet your own spirit guide. There are different ways; what worked best for me was meditation. I also found that getting together with a few other like-minded friends could build enough energy that it was easy to connect. Also, you can ask for dreams and start writing them down. Look for connections that way.
I will look around and post some general means in an upcoming post. Just remember that you are a child of God/Goddess and that you must put your white light around you. Keeps the baser trickster spirits away..
Psychic ability runs in my family, so its possible that I had an easier time meeting my boys than others. I don’t know for sure about that because I am the only one of my generation (that I know of) who actually has some ability. My daughter holds the ability, but is not ready to explore it. Her imaginary friends were very interesting and in fact, she had a negative spirit attach to her….(yep one of those baser spirits) it was interesting getting thru that phase…
I guess that’s a subject for a future post!
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