Animal Allies

Settling into my new digs in Mt Airy.

Yona and I took a long walk with our dearest male companion, Lee. We walked for two hours in the park that has become my second home in many ways. Yona has been long deprived of the daily walks that made up my life with my buddy Attah, the most remarkable canine companion I have experienced.

Yona is now 22 months old and a full blown adolescent. He is full of himself, and why shouldn't he be? He is a remarkable co-creator that has, in his short time here, already offered enormous contributions to my journey. (Yona is represented in the upper right corner of this blog with the dark face and piercing orange eyes)

In a post I wrote about winter 2007, I spoke about the visions that led Yona to me. Those long winded explanations were intended as the solid foundation necessary to open you to the real life, unexpected experiences I have shared with many animals, especially those with Attah on her last days.

It was, after all, specifically the unfolding of those experiences that spawned the personal evaluation and intimate restructuring of my life as I know it.

Not many people believe mystical experiences to be a part of their current reality. Of those few who do, fewer still find access to such experiences through the realm of the animal or of nature.

It is easy to understand how it is difficult to believe in events and experiences that stand so far "outside the box" when human culture and ego strives so hard to keep us aligned with all that is linear in concept and structure.

If we are born into a situation that either catapults us toward what we starve for the most or if we comfortably find our path their without effort, as my dear friend Heather has, (near Geneva; look for blogger; "HeatherRemembers". She also has posted a couple wonderful YouTube videos of her animal companions.. I need to check email to grab her links.. will post.. Heather.. if you are reading.. feel free to post the links in the comments). Anywho... certainly, in our uniqueness, there is no one path to allow for all good things to flow.. my path has fluctuated between glorious, free flowing, unexpected encounters with the magical and the tension created when my focus is diverted elsewhere.

The slingshot theory, brought to my attention by my dear friend Sandi, (powerful manifestor and sparkling soul), really feels like the perfect example of my experience into an expanded perception of life as we know it. The idea is simple really: the harder we are pressed, the more tension created, the more we are stretched and pulled by forces beyond our awareness, (whether seemingly imposed by others or self) the further our capacity to catapult far beyond our expectations into a life extraordinary.

My early childhood home was filled with turmoil that challenged all of us. My parents, both intensely creative and passionate faced challenges that stirred them deeply. Like many highly creative people who bore the weight of a previous generation's judgement for thinking too far outside the box, my parents found themselves stuck. Their parents feared art was an unreliable career and not only were they not supported, but there was a burden offered unwittingly by my grandparents in their desire to steer their children back into the structure and stability of life within the box.

However, my parents simply did not fit the linear world, yet, they had no confidence or clear path to access their creativity in a fashion that enabled it to manifest fully. Interesting though, it was this perceived limitation that helped to explode me deep into creativity and into expansive thinking. It was, after all, my grandparent's repression that bolstered my mother and father's desire to support the early sparks of creativity they saw in me.

The other side of the coin it would appear as if I might die emotionally within my childhood home. My sisters and I were reared in an environment where great, daily battles were fought with such ferocity that we each carried a frightened and embattled notion of life for many years. As the youngest child, I was so deeply embedded in fear and trauma that I would have night terrors, waking screaming aloud, lieing in a knot of blankets under my bed soaking in sweat.

I was an extremely shy child that would clutch to my mother's leg when stranger's approached. Today, of course I find myself to be a largely confident creature, eager for adventure and courageous when need be and filled with a long term stability and sense of being loved that defies my early childhood experience. Therapy helped, doing artwork helped, having a family that learned to evolve helped. Pursuing an ever evolving spiritual path has helped. But, deep within me, I know the foundation for any movement forward is grounded in a single experience I had as a 12 year old girl on the heels of the last fight I ever remember witnessing with either of my parents.

By that time in my life, my mother and father were divorced. My mother was dating a family friend who I rejected merely on principle. I had a father after all, and was not interested in that important figure in my life being dethroned, no matter how imperfect he was. Of course, looking back, Max was a good man, one I would probably enjoy as an adult. Yet, there I was, 12 years old, listening to yet another explosive argument.