Following My Sonar – Day Four

Dolphin reversed/Jaguar

I suspect this is going to be anti-climactic, since I’ve delayed writing about it for two days; nevertheless, here is the short tale of how my “pick” for the day on Sunday started the ball rolling toward this mammoth freaking blogging extravaganza. Commitment.

As I mentioned in my Devotion post, when I asked Karl (my husband), how we could best honor our son, Karl’s, life, the “answer” immediately flashed in my head: “Karl must do art and I must write.” I knew it in an instant, and I knew it to be true.

But of course this seemed obvious to me. Our son was relentlessly creative – and probably more talented than both of his parents combined. So yeah, I understood why each of us engaging in our favored creative outlets would be the best way to “honor” his life. So, even though I knew this “answer” had flashed distinctly into my mind, I wasn’t convinced the answer was pure.

Following this initial conversation, Karl and I fell silent, lost in our private thoughts, savoring our early morning coffee, and ultimately choosing our Medicine Cards^© for the day. As I described in my “Devotion” post, the intention I held as I chose my cards for the day was specifically, “How can I be of greatest service to the memory of my Bug Pie?” And thus, I chose Dolphin reversed with Jaguar underneath.

As I’ve described before, Karl and I have chosen Medicine Cards^© virtually every day for the past 28 years or so. We take the top card we choose as the main card for our day, and we look to the bottom card for “context” or to help us understand better the application or interpretation of the top card. I’ve also described how I make a point of reading the entire description of the top card chosen, in spite of the fact that we’ve been engaging in this practice every day for so many years. (For expediency’s sake, though, we never read the bottom card – we just take into account our general knowledge of the essential characteristics of that card and see if it helps us understand what the top card is telling us.)

As I read Dolphin, I was acutely aware this day of the irony that Dolphin begins with these words:

“Dolphin speaks to us of the breath of life, the only thing that humans cannot go without for more than a few minutes. We can live without water and food for days, but oxygen is the source of our sustenance. …”

Hmmm, yes. It was oxygen, specifically, that Karl was forced to go without – at his peril.

The next part of the essay on Dolphin that spoke to me was:

“Dolphin was given a new job. He became the carrier of messages of our progress. (…) This can be a time when you are to link with Great Spirit and bring answers to your own questions or to those of others.”

The reversal of Dolphin didn’t make a lot of sense to me vis-à-vis my question, except when I read:

“Pay close attention to your health and your feelings. (…) Another message of contrary Dolphin is that many signals are carried through universal tides or waves, and you may be failing to use your sonar.”

It was at this point that the specific word Devotion first came to mind. It popped into my head and I knew without question that I’d not been paying attention to my feelings. I’ve felt something big approaching, some profound change in the nature or scope of my healing work, or my teaching, or perhaps even my writing (which if I’m honest has languished since publishing Owl Medicine in 2001), but I wasn’t “getting it.” I’ve honestly been wondering what “change” was on the horizon, yearning for it to be revealed.

I wasn’t getting it. Or maybe, I wasn’t doing it.

Yet it wasn’t simply the sense that I’ve been ‘failing to use my sonar’ (or failing to listen to what I should be focusing upon and acting upon it). It was also the fact that Jaguar was “underneath,” coloring and adding nuance to this scenario. Jaguar – an archetype profoundly dear to me, both personally and in my work in the shamanic realm. Jaguar – which represents, for me at least, the qualities of integrity and impeccability; qualities that I aspire to live by and hold as the guiding standards for my behavior; qualities that perhaps I wasn’t applying to the message being sent by Dolphin.

It was then that I realized that, yes, the best way I could be of greatest service to Karl’s memory is to write – to not only engage in my creative outlet but in so doing be a “message carrier” – but that I must do so with the integrity and impeccability I hold so dear: I must engage this writing with DEVOTION.

This was (and is) big for me, as I give my writing the least priority of anything else I do.

Thus, as I read Dolphin and its reversal, and coupled it with the exacting standards of Jaguar underneath, I had the feeling that I am being called to a Devotion; to engage in an Act of Power in Karl’s honor: writing a blog post every single day, no matter how long or short, for at least one year.

So where did the leap to 1111 days come from?

Tomorrow. I’ll save that part for tomorrow.

(T-1107)