There are moments in your life when you feel your heart crack open. For some people itās looking at a baby but thatās not me Iām afraid, I would have run a mile from a baby in my past life. Though now I can actually stand still in their presence and appreciate the magnificence of creation, how those clear open eyes, untarnished by the world, hold the spark of the human creator, before society starts its relentless disempowerment.Ā For others itās a puppy being really cute, a whale or a rainbow. Those moments are often accompanied by a twist of pain which isnāt altogether comfortable. A sort of longing, a gnawing which we donāt know what to do with. I think thatās whatās called overjoy – were so unused to experiencing pure joy that it can put the body into overwhelm, literally. Babies usually evoke pure joy (unless, like me youāve layered that over with your own negative beliefs), as apparently do really big things, like whales. Animals vibrate a lot higher than us, since they have mastered unconditional love and thatās really why we get so much from being with them. Abraham Hicks says that whales evoke joy because they are so big that you physically canāt not be affected by their vibration! Sunsets, rainbow, universally evoke a sense of wonder, awe and joy in people. And often people are moved to tears by a beautiful sight, sometime just the awe of nature, sometimes by the realisation of other peoplesā love and compassion. All these things remind us there is so much more to life that the pursuit of money and material things, that all weāre ever really looking for is a way to feel happy.
If youāve seen any of my social media youāll know that a pheasant has started visiting the garden. He arrived day one, squawking at the door, with a female, and since then theyāve been working out how to get in and out of the garden around the chicken fencing, how to navigate the chickens, the cat and the magpies (who see themselves in the pecking order). On the second day we noticed poor Humphrey (so named by Gary) had snapped all his magnificent tail feathers, and over the next few days they fell off.Ā I say āpoor Humphreyā but Humphrey, as with all animals, is completely oblivious to the damage, and loves himself just the same, squawking and flapping his wings periodically, announcing his presence to the world. I donāt know if Humphrey is the same pheasant we saw last year, pecking at the windows, and occasionally in the field with his harem of three females. He has only one this year so far, who Gary has named Mabel. In the past I might have worried that he only had one female instead of three, but the animals has repeatedly shown me they donāt care about stuff like that. None of this is personal. If he had three, fine, but he doesnāt see only having Mabel as a reflection on himself. He doesnāt see his broken tail as a statement on his virility or his beauty. Animals, quite simply, couldnāt give a toss. This is delightfully demonstrated by Under One Sky Rescue, a charity we (the Animal Communication Collective) worked with recently. Under One Sky Rescue work with special needs cats, and their daily videos are just beautiful, cats with paralysed legs bouncing around playing, completely and utterly oblivious to their ādisablementā and finding new and novel ways to get where they want to goĀ (I highly recommend following them on Facebook, link below). When I first saw the videos they sent me into a paroxysm of sobbing, I couldnāt quite work it out as they are happy videos but I did a bit of exploration on myself with my guides, to understand what that was triggering in me, but thatās a story for another time. This was yet another nudge from the animals, making me face the realisation that I superimpose human emotion on to animal behaviour that simply isnāt there. Iām not saying animals donāt experience emotion, they do, just the same as us, but they donāt hold on toĀ it, analyse it, save it up and examine it, poke it and prod it to make sure itās still there, the way we humans do. When we see damage, we make all sorts of associations – like Humphrey’s broken tail means he wonāt get a mate, he wonāt be loved. Ridiculous. The lambs told me that last year, as I cried about the lame ones: they bounced up to me, looked me straight in the eye and told me it was all in my head. In my head, I saw them rejected by the other lambs, unable to play, alone and unloved. As they bounced around me, delighted, they told me they didnāt care. They donāt associate all that stuff with injury. Yes, they experience pain, but pain without all the other stuff layered on, is just that. Pain. You donāt normally cry over a hurt ankle. If, however you project that to mean youāll never walk again, youāll never get out the house, nobody will ever come and see you, youāll die alone and rejected, boy thatās going to hurt a lot more.
Humphrey is simply beautiful. Eye-wateringly, excruciatingly beautiful. He stands outside the window, proudly, the light catching his feathers, and my heart cracks wide open. I canāt describe the intricate patterning, the vivid, ripe colours, the details, the tones – all of it, itās just awe-inspiring. I desperately want close up photos to share, but I canāt get that close, he sees movement at the window and heāll wander off. He has a curved beak and a red head – it looks like a plush velvet, is so, so red itās practically pulsating. He has white ring around his neck that is whiter than white paper. His golden feathers are like tiger eye, with tiny intricate patterning, spots and swirls. Couple that with the shiny purple and green like peacock feathers. I could stare at him for hours, every nuance dancing before my eyes. He reminds me of swimming with tropical fish, fish painted so delicately, so ridiculously, so vividly and so vibrantly that you canāt believe they could exist in nature. Oh the arrogance of the human mind, that only we could out-do nature! Even Mabel, a fawn colour has beautiful markings. I picked up a feather and saw it had the same markings and swirls that Humphrey has, just in a quieter colour. Sheās like a tawny leopard, with subtle but equally intricate spots and markings. Sheās more timid than Humphrey (or less arrogant!) so Iām even less likely get a close up of her, but sheās fascinating.
There have been a couple of sick sheep on the farm and I offered to give them healing, and connected in with them. Jen-ni-fer as she wanted to be known, told me she was going to pass, there was nothing more that could be done. She was calm and peaceful and reassured me that animals fear nothing about death, one animal communicator I saw on YouTube said it was like shrugging off a coat for an animal, and thatās such a brilliant way to describe the triviality that eternal beings associate with changing form. What she did show me, a little gift for me, was a vision of the field, the other sheep as if through polythene, everything was just blurred slightly, muffled. She was showing me what itās like to be in spirit. She showed me that itās all there, they can still see and hear everything, as a “knowing” itās all there but itās muted. Different. āThatās why we want to be in physical formā she said, āitās only when you arenāt able to experience it do you realise how precious that isā. As Abraham Hicks says to see it, to feel it, to touch it and taste it. When I look at Humphrey suddenly itās all so clear to me. THIS is why weāre here. Itās like when you clean a dirty window and youāre blown away by the colours in the garden. Itās like removing the layer of tracing paper between photographs in an old fashioned photo album. This clarity, this beauty, the vividness of colour of smells, the feeling of a soft cat fur rubbing against your face, clean sheets against your freshly shaven legs, cold water of the sea smacking the back of your head, the smell of popcorn, the sound of rousing music. This is why weāre here. We come to experience life, to be blown away by beauty, to snuggle into cosy blankets, to hear the heartbeat of our loved ones, to feel the warmth of skin on skin, to feel your heart explode when you’re laughing uncontrollably. We choose to come into physical form to experience the glory and beauty of life. We have all chosen to be here. We have lived multiple lives, and each time, weāre gagging to come back, to try something different, to learn something new. Sometimes itās so hard to imagine that, that we seek out challenging experiences, we sat around and vaguely planned them out, determined that THIS TIME we would rise above our human conditioning and damn well enjoy the ride!
Looking at Humphrey is all part of the ride. Humphrey reminds me of the sheer awesomeness of nature. Of everything around me. And Mabel reminds me it doesnāt have to be showy to be equally beautiful. Every time we appreciate something beautiful, each time we notice the sky, the grass, the clouds, the fields, the flowers, little insects scurrying around, birds busying themselves, we open ourselves up to seeing more delightful things. Every time we acknowledge a little gentle thought instead of defaulting to irritation, we soften a bit more. Each time we appreciate someone elseās kindnesses instead of slagging off another one’s driving, each time we look for the good instead of announcing the bad, we get a little closer to enjoying the ride.
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