The Unseen

Beyond the energies we see and touch and can activate in our “real” world there is always an ever more subtle and powerful shakti ... the more subtle, the more powerful. Human bodies are a tool for learning whereas the other life forms are for resting in the pure nature of being--more “evolved” in their simplicity and perfect alignment with life.

Little blue trillium jumpers cover the tiny bodies of the unseen as they leave the forest and reveal themselves one by one, only for a moment skipping in yellow ladyslippers among the madly waving bear grass that is taller than the tallest small being. Out in the grass in the circle in the forest, there is a small clearing where sunlight shines. Now is the gathering of love, the harvest. 

The nearly black depths of glistening green forest, a primordial expanse that is narrow in path and wide in canopy, releases a sigh of joy to witness the celebration. The trunks lean closer to the center of the circle, arching their spines so slightly that one can only feel the lean rather than see it, and their leaves or needles shuffle noisily as a zephyr soars through. Dew falls onto stems and moss, drip-drip-drop, in a rhythm older than the songs of the flowering indian paintbrush nodding and bobbing, glinting their inner essence among the tall grasses imitating the pin points of light in an ebony sky still hours away. 

Going home, I am nestled into a tiny plot of verdant forest so rich that my eyes are soothed in an instant of gazing outward. Clouds drift by one after the other so that the sky would seem covered if one wasn’t watching for the perfect gaps of blue and pale yellow light peeking through branches as if to check on all we do and wink at us quickly before the clouds close their eyelids for long blissful pauses that are the full presence of existence. There, the pause is the sunlight; here, the pause is the shade.

Walking along the narrow rainforest path, the ground is spongy, the air is moist, and the more-than-human voices are slightly muffled as if with a light cotton that allows the sound to emerge in the softness of a deep reverential prayer that sinks into soil and bark and skin. Large knobby knees of ancient trees make sure to say hello and catch me when I fall while looking into the forest beside me knowing I am being watched yet feeling completely safe. All around me are the sentinels of my soul and when I embrace one I feel them all respond with a pulsating flow of graceful compassion and I can cry into the bark that is softened already from the continual tears that Gaia sheds for the world. Here we are sheltered and can spread ourselves thin until I disappear cell by molecule by atom and am swept into the vast heart of misty oneness. 

I could become one of the little people, the unseen who aren’t really people at all, of course, for they are part of the elements more than the ego, their identity is reflected in the plants and animals of the penumbral glades and forest nooks where they shapeshift and live except on the occasional celebrations when they weave tiny bodies that confuse the senses and elude the mind. For I don’t see them with my eyes but with my soul and realize we are all the same.

I do become one of them and disappear into the play of waving grasses and bobbing blossoms, for a time forgetting that I was once a human. I don’t want to go back to the other form, and I have the choice. Do I take it? Do I choose to dance and play and disappear into soil and rock and acorn and pinecone and mossy carpets and mushroom caps? Do I choose to run as deer or hop as rabbit or toddle along as the turtle in and out of puddles and ponds? Hug a tree or become a tree? Leave the human world behind and merge into the enchanted realm of deep, moist, luxurious, nourishing womb? Do I reverse the process of living as I am born into the real world instead of dying daily in this one from toxins and ego and fear of over-culture indoctrination? 

Imagine the bliss... I can feel it now when I close my eyes and release this human body and become the universe that is older than time, greater than space, more wise and compassionate than imagined possible ... and in that moment I reach out to the suffering of the poor ignorant humans who are just beginning their journey to Truth, they struggle so, and I lift up that one by revealing a flower, and to that one I offer a branch to lean on, and to another I open my arms to embrace the tears that become the droplets glistening in the emerald forest.

Book Review: Strangers and Pilgrims

I stumbled across this book while reading the blog of an recent acquaintance that led me to the author’s blog. Don't you love how the threads of our lives connect in these mysterious patterns? This subtle, hidden interconnection is also mirrored in “Strangers and Pilgrims” by Vivienne Tuffnell. 

The author brings a unique voice and style to her storytelling, one that caught me by surprise and kept me flipping the pages as fast as I could. I was compelled to pick it up and read it in every spare moment I found, finishing the book in a mere day and a half. 

I could feel the angst of each character and found myself sympathizing, cheering each one on, resonating with the deep pain and grief expressed by the men and women alike as “my heart is broken and I am dying inside.” 

This is a beautifully crafted story!

Flowering and Nesting

The flowering of life-wisdom has little to do with toil and struggle yet more to do with the allowing we give to the earth as a container in which seeds can grow their sacred song into the world, where water droplets of morning dew shall quench the thirst of blossom-to-bee, and the metamorphosis of birth happens almost overnight where its essence rises and broadens into pink and green, and rainbows offer a slide for fairies to use as they gather us all up in bunches of colors, we the flowering spirits inhabiting form where forgotten memories pulse in our cells like limpid pools of blissful bubbles.

Each of us is a nest for the world’s rebirth into each moment. We tend to look outward and project the expectation that the world is meant as our nest, but what if we are looking at it backwards? Each of us is the radiant vibration of all the elements and each of us is the cobweb gathered to glue the bits of twig together to support this precious moment.

The Guardian Part 6

I didn’t know that this was here. These tall trees and steep slopes and the huge rocks. All I ever knew was the image of tall spiky ridges against the sky and how they changed shades. They looked like a wall against the horizon where the sun went to sleep at night. A wall so high that no one, not even Minx with her long slender legs and powerful heart would have been able to leap it though she had escaped the Big Man’s corral more times than we could count. But Rain brought me here. She says these are the Rocky Mountains but I’ve only ever lived on the Front Range.

We drove toward the wall and it was like magic happened! The purple wall turned into trees and dirt and gigantic rocks bigger than my old dog house, bigger even than the building with the blue door. I mean big. 

We drive along the narrow dirt road that twists and turns back and forth until I feel like I am going the way I had come already yet we have not turned around. We go up and then downhill, too, like a maze. I might never find my way out. I trust Rain but this is strange. When I whine just the tiniest bit, she talks to me in her soothing voice and massages my shoulders and gently rubs my ears. I feel better and relax. I curl into the seat next to her in the car. 

“You’re going to love it here, baby,” Rain says. “Our life will be wonderful. The house is small but sits into a hillside, tucked against the mountain like most of the other houses. Well, most of them are cabins or even shacks, but new people are starting to make them nicer and the road is a dead end down at a creek so only people who live here will be driving down the road. And as soon as word gets around that a deputy sheriff is living here, I will feel perfectly safe. We’ll be safe in our little house in the mountains. It’s like a dream come true! Like in one of my romance novels. And maybe Michael will be happier here. Maybe I won’t irritate him so much and his job won’t be so hard for him to deal with once he can come home to such a sweet little place of peace and quiet. We’ll make it as nice for him as possible, won’t we?”

I hear the sad, wistful tone in Rain’s voice that wasn’t there a few minutes ago. I want to make it go away so I forget my sloshy tummy and the winding road that is inside the magic wall. I bark. Twice! I leap to my feet, wag my plume of a tail, and watch Rain as she laughs out loud from my surprise bark. 

“You’re the best,” she says. “You’ve saved my life, I swear, girl.” 

Rain pets me as much as she can with one hand until we round a sharp turn downhill and she has to use her hand that was petting me to move the stick that is between the seats. This road makes her use the stick a lot and I see both her knees bobbing up and down as her feet press on the peddles on her side of the car floor.

“We’ll need a truck for winter,” Rain says. 

I know what a truck is and that will be fun. I like the back of a truck. My tummy doesn’t act so strange when I ride in a truck.

I keep my eyes on Rain. She’s smiling again but I know how fast that can change. Dark Man -- Rain calls him Michael or you-know-who -- will be at the house when we arrive. Rain told me he was working last night while I was sleeping in my room with the wire walls at the building with the blue door, and while Rain was asleep at the little apartment where she and Michael live. I don’t like that they live there and I live at Blue Door.

Rain says that Dark Man works a lot of nights. She says he likes that now I will be with Rain at night when he’s gone. But he doesn’t like me. I know he doesn’t. I often growl at him but low, quiet-like so that he can’t hear me. His face and posture change when Rain isn’t looking. And he doesn’t smell right at all. Like something rotten is under his skin. But when he sees people look at him, he puts on a big smile and he acts all friendly. But I know what is real. So I watch him close. But I don’t go close unless I have to. I stay with Rain.

Rain tells me that we are going to start hiking trails with the nice round-faced woman who took care of me at Blue Door. I call her Moon. Moon has a big black dog and a tall goofy red one. I like the black one who reminds me of my mum before I was taken away from her. But the red one is a spaz and not very smart and can’t remember even how to sit when Rain or Moon ask us to. It’s embarrassing. But I’m a big girl now. I’m six months old and all grown up. I have to take care of Rain so I can’t be bothered with a dog who can’t even remember words that are simple. 

Rain turns the wheel and pulls the car into a long slope of dirt next to a tiny house with tall trees all around it. It reminds me a little of Big Man and Wild Hair’s house because of the peeling paint and tilting roof.

“We’re here! Isn’t is marvelous? Just like a fairy tale cottage!”

When the sadness is hiding, Rain is always happy and smiling and laughing and talking about fairies. I don’t know what those are but I’m sure Rain will take me to meet one someday. Especially now that she says we will be living here together forever. I’m not sure what means “forever” but Rain says I can stay with her and sleep with her and not go back to Blue Door so that’s good enough for me. 

Rain rushes around the car to open my door and I jump out and start sniffing because I can’t help myself. All these smells! Wow! 

Rain watches me, but I see out of the corner of my eye a shadow in the doorway of the house. The shadow that is Dark Man. And the hair on the back of my neck stands straight up.

-- to be continued --

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"The Guardian" to read the story from the beginning