Owl

Week 29

OWL

Animal and human spirit guides come and go depending on where you are on your journey through life and what you need at that time.  One of the animals that seems to be working with me at the moment is owl, specifically Barn Owls.  When you are drawn to something over and over again, you have to stop and wonder why.  So I dug out my *medicine cards and read up on Owl.

Owl is 'deception'. Associated with clairvoyance, astral projection and magic (dark/light), owl sees what is really there and cannot be deceived.  A deadly hunter that flies silently, thanks to it's amazing feathers that literally absorb sound. Their prey really don't know what's coming until it hits them.

Owl has always been associated with wisdom and you must remember the little clockwork owl in Clash of the Titans.  Athena was the Greek goddess of wisdom and her owl is said to have revealed unseen truths to her and lit up her dark side so she could truly see all around.  You know about their impressive head rotation, they really do see all the way around.  If you can see it all, you can be furnished with the whole truth and speak the whole truth.  This scares people apparently as you can see through people's ulterior motives and call them out on them.

The card says that* "if you've pulled the Owl card, you are being asked to use your powers of keen, silent observation to intuit some life situation.  Owl is befriending you and aiding you in seeing the total truth. Owl can bring you messages in the night through dreams or meditation. Pay attention to the signals and omens. The Truth always brings further enlightenment."  Going on my current situation, I can certainly see why Owl is around.

Interestingly, Native American stories, which these Medicine cards are based on, have contradicting views on Owls. Owl is a harrbringer of death, so to see or hear one means there will be a death.  So I had a look into this a bit more and found a really interesting article on it.  America is a big place and there were many Indian nations, most share the same viewpoint about owls - they were either feared or embraced.

Read this great article by someone who's gleamed this knowledge from many tribal elders over the years.

I found the remains of a barn owl in 2010 in the woods. I have two wings and a foot that I have been storing, ready to turn into a smudge fan and other craft tools, for my use.  Maybe Owl is reminding me to get a move on with it, four years is long enough to dry out.

Kyle is an amazing wildlife photographer, check his website out

Fear

Week 11

Fuck it!

Fear
One of the reasons I didn't write my blog leading up to the operation was fear. I was going through one of my phases of being consumed by my fears.  The operation involved general anaesthetic and I had it in my head that I would go under and be lost to it.  For weeks, I had my Will going around my head, who would I leave what to and who would raise my son.  I even spoke with my friends about it.  It wasn't the fear of dying, it was the fear of what I was leaving behind and how it would be without me.  So I did a video Will and posted it on my desktop, I made sure all the passwords and log ins for the websites, emails etc were all written down.  I bust my arse getting jobs finished before I went in for the op.

The evening before my op, I told myself that they wouldn't operate if I was at risk and if anything did happen, I was in a hospital and they'd be monitoring me and not to worry.  It's daft... fear. It grabs you and then digs in deeper and sets all kinds of insecurities off.

A few years ago I had a t-shirt made up to remind me:

FEAR? 

MEH!

FACE IT...

FUCK IT! 

Fear of the event is usually worse than the event itself as they say.. working yourself up, getting anxious... and then it's never as bad as you thought it was going to be.

This obviously doesn't apply to real fear - of violence and other such traumatic things. That kind of fear cannot be dismissed. It's justified.

For all those other fears, anxieties, things you have no control over... try this:

"Saying Fuck It is like massage for the mind
Relaxing you, releasing tension, giving up on things that aren't working.
John C. Parkin argues that saying Fuck It is a spiritual act:
That it is the perfect western expression of the eastern ideas of letting go, giving up and finding real freedom by realising that things dont matter so much (if at all).
This is The Fuck It Way.
It works very simply: if you're feeling stressed about something, say Fuck It you feel instantly better."

FUCK IT! 

Yep, I feel better already

The other thing to consider is that you can call your fears to you, to make them manifest into reality. This is told in the story of rabbit in the medicine cards I use.. in my words.

One day Rabbit was eating grass and spotted Eagle flying high above.
Rabbit was afraid 'oh no, it's Eagle, what if he sees me and eats me'
Eagle hadn't seen him.
Rabbit shouted out louder 'oh no it's Eagle, he's going to eat me'
Eagle noticed something below and went to have a look
Rabbit ran 'shit, Eagle is going to eat meeeeeeeeeeeeee!'
Eagle swooped down and got Rabbit and ate him.

As this story shows, Rabbit medicine people are so afraid of tragedy, illness, disaster, and "being taken," that they call those very fears to them to teach them lessons.  The keynote here is: what you resist will persist! What you fear most is what you will become.

If you pulled Rabbit, stop talking about horrible things happening and get rid of "what it" in your vocabulary. This card may signal a time of worry about the future or of trying to exercise your control over that which is not yet in form - the future. Stop now! Write your fears down and be willing to feel them. Breathe into them, and feel them running through your body into Mother Earth as a give-away.

Makes perfect sense to me.... face your fears and say FUCK IT... don't let them bind you, enslave you to them or depression surely follows, inability to act and all those things you feared, will come to you. Best to face them honestly.  It's not easy to do... you'll get there though, so don't give up.  Takes a strong person to see these patterns, face them and deal with them.  Don't beat yourself up, have faith x