Enjoy the ride
There are moments in your life when you feel your heart crack open. For some people itâs looking at a baby but thatâs not me Iâm 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. For others itâs a puppy being really cute, a whale or a rainbow. Those moments are often accompanied by a twist of pain which isnât altogether comfortable. A sort of longing, a gnawing which we donât know what to do with. I think thatâs whatâs 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 youâve 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 thatâs 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 canât 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 peoplesâ 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 weâre ever really looking for is a way to feel happy.
If youâve seen any of my social media youâll know that a pheasant has started visiting the garden. He arrived day one, squawking at the door, with a female, and since then theyâve 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. I say âpoor Humphreyâ 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 donât 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 donât care about stuff like that. None of this is personal. If he had three, fine, but he doesnât see only having Mabel as a reflection on himself. He doesnât see his broken tail as a statement on his virility or his beauty. Animals, quite simply, couldnât 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 âdisablementâ and finding new and novel ways to get where they want to go (I highly recommend following them on Facebook, link below). When I first saw the videos they sent me into a paroxysm of sobbing, I couldnât 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 thatâs 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 isnât there. Iâm not saying animals donât experience emotion, they do, just the same as us, but they donât hold on to it, analyse it, save it up and examine it, poke it and prod it to make sure itâs still there, the way we humans do. When we see damage, we make all sorts of associations – like Humphrey’s broken tail means he wonât get a mate, he wonât 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 didnât care. They donât associate all that stuff with injury. Yes, they experience pain, but pain without all the other stuff layered on, is just that. Pain. You donât normally cry over a hurt ankle. If, however you project that to mean youâll never walk again, youâll never get out the house, nobody will ever come and see you, youâll die alone and rejected, boy thatâs 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 canât describe the intricate patterning, the vivid, ripe colours, the details, the tones – all of it, itâs just awe-inspiring. I desperately want close up photos to share, but I canât get that close, he sees movement at the window and heâll wander off. He has a curved beak and a red head – it looks like a plush velvet, is so, so red itâs 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 canât 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. Sheâs like a tawny leopard, with subtle but equally intricate spots and markings. Sheâs more timid than Humphrey (or less arrogant!) so Iâm even less likely get a close up of her, but sheâs 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 thatâs 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 itâs like to be in spirit. She showed me that itâs all there, they can still see and hear everything, as a “knowing” itâs all there but itâs muted. Different. âThatâs why we want to be in physical formâ she said, âitâs only when you arenât able to experience it do you realise how precious that isâ. As Abraham Hicks says to see it, to feel it, to touch it and taste it. When I look at Humphrey suddenly itâs all so clear to me. THIS is why weâre here. Itâs like when you clean a dirty window and youâre blown away by the colours in the garden. Itâs 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 weâre 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, weâre gagging to come back, to try something different, to learn something new. Sometimes itâs 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 doesnât 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 elseâs 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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Image by Layers from Pixabay 
Image by Sarah Richter from Pixabay