Ruffled Feathers

Evening Silence – Day Twenty Six

Posted on by Lisa Weikel 6 Comments

 

Evening Silence

I’m sitting here trying really hard to think of something even remotely interesting to write about tonight.

I’ve turned off the tv much earlier than usual (or at least, earlier than I used to), as I’ve done every evening since beginning the 1111 Devotion project, because it’s just way too distracting to have it on while I’m trying to write and thus the only way I’ll get the job done.

I must admit: I love listening to the silence, especially the silence that descends upon a room immediately upon clicking the tv into oblivion. It never fails to soothe me, no matter what I’m doing in the moment. And just like now, I wonder why I don’t seek evening silence out more often.

I’m calling it evening silence because I don’t seem to ever be tempted to turn the tv on during the day. Of course, a lot of times I’m not in a position to turn one on during the day. I’m not bringing this up as any ‘badge of honor’ sort of thing. It’s just a fact that I only rarely become aware of – but am appreciating much more often as a result of engaging my commitment.

Appreciation: A By-Product of My Act of Power

I guess you could say this appreciation of the evening silence is an unexpected but delightful by-product of this Act of Power. And in a way, it is a means of garnering power.

Even if I might be otherwise watching a program that edifies me in some way, I don’t think I get as much out of it, quite honestly, as I do the silence. Because if I lapse into the normal routine I was in prior to making this commitment, I would retire upstairs as soon as I turned off the tv. I might read my book for a few minutes, but in truth, my actual presence in and appreciation of the evening silence was minimal.

I find myself thinking back on when our sons were growing up, especially the two older ones, Karl and Maximus. Back when Karl was in elementary school, we didn’t get cable at first. We were limited to the three channels (3, 6, and 10) of the major networks, and maybe some UHF channels. Granted, that didn’t last long. But I know it made a difference in the way we spent our time.

Indeed, I sometimes wonder – especially lately – whether that is not a significant liability to my efforts to write the sequel to Owl Medicinehttps://amzn.to/2M6st6B. I’ve become addicted to the political news shows, especially. In some ways, I feel it is my civic responsibility to remain aware and informed. And goodness knows, it becomes harder and harder to peel our eyes away from the latest ‘news.’

But really, I have to ask myself: Is it worth my time? Wouldn’t I rather be spending time in the evening silence, immersed in one of my beloved books? Or writing one of my own?

Yeah, I think I would.

(T-1085)

New Moon/New Beginnings – Day Twenty Five

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New Moon/New Beginnings

Of necessity, I am not going to be able to write as much as I usually do this evening. But at the same time, I don’t want to leave you hanging on this whole ‘new moon’ thing that I started yesterday.

And I realize I may very well be talking about stuff you already know. If that’s the case, I hope you’ll forgive me.

Just from my dead giveaway ‘title’ to this post, yes, Virginia, when the moon is ‘new,’ which is also referred to as the ‘dark’ phase of the moon, it is generally thought to be a particularly auspicious time to embark upon new endeavors. New adventures, new jobs, new ideas, etc. It’s not that starting at other phases of the moon is ‘bad’ – it’s just generally thought to be most advantageous or giving the opportunity the greatest chance of success to begin it at a new moon.

And remember when I said last night that astrology is surprisingly complex? Well, just to give you a taste of that, beyond paying attention to the actual fact that the new moon is taking place today (be it December 6th or 7th, depending upon what time zone you live in), true astrologers also look to the sign in which the moon is hanging out, as well as the house of your particular natal chart. Yeah. I do not even pretend to have a rudimentary grasp of this. Yet. But it is intriguing to me and, after decades of relying on someone else to let me in on what all of this means, I’m actually starting to try to get a grip on it myself.

We’ll see. Who knows? By “talking about it out loud” here on my blog, maybe I’ll log the information into the appropriate folds of my brain and one day this stuff will start clicking.

I can tell you that the new moon tonight/tomorrow morning is occurring in Sagittarius, because that’s where the sun is right now – and a new moon is when the moon is lined up with (or ‘conjunct’) the sun and therefore not reflecting any of its light (hence it also being known as the ‘dark’ moon). While the sun moves through the 12 signs of the zodiac every 30 days (or so), the moon moves through each sign every 2.5 days (or so).

And yaaaaaaawn. That’s enough of that.

Some Favorite Astrology Links

So, here I’d like to give you links to two astrologers I enjoy following.

Kaypacha (Tom Lescher) publishes a weekly video called the Pele Report. He gives the technical aspects at the beginning (which still makes my eyes roll into the back of my head – but also makes me want to understand them better), and then he gives an entertaining and insightful explication on how the aspects occurring that week may play out or influence us in our daily lives (and on a global level, when and where appropriate). I find his personality endearing, and I relate to his goofiness all too easily. He knows his stuff, but he doesn’t take himself too seriously.

Chani used to give reports on a weekly basis, but is now giving them on a monthly basis. In order to get the most of Chani’s interpretations of the celestial aspects, it is extremely helpful to not only know your sun sign, but also your ascendant. That’s why I suggested you might want to discover yours in yesterday’s post. I find these interpretations extremely insightful and uncanny at times.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy these links. It’s really kind of neat to start paying attention to this information and noticing how it may or may not play out in what you see and feel unfolding in your life.

(T-1086)

 

Astrology and the New Moon – Day Twenty Four

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Esoteric Means of Understanding Ourselves Better

As you’re all discovering day-by-day and post by post (thank you for hanging with me), I’m fascinated by a wide range of esoteric means we humans have developed to help us understand our place in the Universe. I’ve been on the quest to understand myself better since my earliest memories. And of course, the admonition 28 years ago by the Taos Pueblo elder to “know” myself, as I describe in my book Owl Medicine , only clinched that early urge to soul search and gave me permission to translate it into a life-long passion.

Numerology

There’s numerology, which, as I’ve only tangentially touched upon, uses numbers based on a Pythagorean system of 9 to set forth a roadmap of our lives and the various gifts and challenges that our souls have come into this particular lifetime to experience and hopefully learn from and use to evolve.

Astrology

Another system is astrology. I’ve been fascinated for decades by this means of cultivating self-awareness, which is incredibly complicated and is far and away so much more in-depth and rich than the trite paragraph we used to read in the newspaper about our ‘sun sign’ when I was a kid.

At its most basic, astrology takes into account your ‘natal’ chart, which is the exact position of a wide range of heavenly bodies at the minute of your birth, from the perspective of where your mother was at the moment you were born. From this snapshot of the solar system, you do indeed know your ‘sun sign’ – which is the sign of the zodiac in which the sun was located at the minute of your birth.

Discovering Your Rising Sign or “Ascendant”

What many people don’t realize is that, while one’s sun sign can be a somewhat prominent indicator of traits that you carry in this lifetime, an actually more intimate and accurate indicator of who you are is what’s called your ‘rising’ sign – or the sign that was ‘on the ascendant’ at the minute of your birth. So, if you have a chance, I strongly urge you to research and discover your ascendant or rising sign.

One way to do this is to access the free website Astrodienst. (There are many others. I just happen to use this one.) You can either set up an account (again, for free) or just log on as a guest. Either way (under the ‘Free horoscopes’ tab, go to the far right and click on ‘natal chart, ascendant’ under the heading ‘Drawings and Calculations’) you can input your birth information. You’ll need the date of your birth (obviously), as well as the time (and this is important, as some important shifts can take place within minutes), but you can always input a default time until you can secure your specific birth time from your mom (wink) or on the ‘long form’ of your birth certificate. You’ll also need to know your birthplace (city, state, country). All of this information will add up to giving you a much richer, deeper picture of the heavens at the moment you arrived.

The three easiest and most basic aspects for you to discover are (a) your sun sign, which you probably know already unless you live under a rock; (b) your ascendant or ‘rising’ sign; and (c) your moon sign. Just knowing and delving into those three aspects of your personal astrological makeup can bring you an incredible amount of insight into yourself and how you ‘tick.’

What I find fascinating is how every form of roadmap that our souls have created for us to discover and work with, if we choose, matches up. In other words, when Alison Baughman gave me a comprehensive numerological reading years ago, it dovetailed in truly eerie and profound ways with every astrological reading I’ve received. (All told, I think I’ve had three or four separate astrologers read my natal chart for me, cultivating decades-long relationships with two of them, which means I would go back to them periodically to have them read my ‘transits.’)

I’ll talk about transits another day.

Roadmaps of Our Souls

My point, though, is that no matter what roadmap you look at, they all pretty obviously chart the same unique challenges and gifts. So it is as if we (as souls) leave cosmic magical breadcrumbs for our ego-selves to discover, in order to help us understand our strengths, weaknesses, and potential destinies, should we have the desire to discover them.

I started this post intending to discuss the fact that we will be experiencing a ‘new moon’ tomorrow and what that might mean for each of us. And then I got sidetracked into writing what I wrote.

But! The good news (for me) is that I just now realized that the new moon actually won’t ‘arrive’ until 2:20 a.m. EST on Friday, December 7th.

So maybe I’ll save what I was going to say tonight until tomorrow!

(T-1087)

Trust and Timing – Day Twenty Three

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Trust and Timing

Last night I almost wrote about ‘timing’ and ‘trust.’ The context out of which that potential topic arose was a recent scenario involving my extended family.

Before I get into the details, it’s only fair to admit to the long-standing and sometimes seemingly never-ending effort it has taken me to trust myself.

Not Trusting Myself? Or Not Trusting Spirit?

Hmm. Even as I write those words, I realize that’s not entirely accurate. It’s not always a case of me not trusting myself, or struggling to trust myself. At least in the context that I’m writing tonight, it’s almost always more a case of not trusting my connection to Spirit. Or, perhaps blasphemously, just basically not trusting Spirit. Period.

Sometimes that lack of trust springs from approaching an issue or situation from an overly intellectual perspective. I think I’ve written about this elsewhere, perhaps on my website, and I know I’ve spoken about it in many retreats and mentorships. It comes up because, well – for a lot of reasons, I guess.

I’m loathe to consider myself a flighty or insubstantial person. I was raised – and Karl and I raised our sons – to value education and pursue life-long cultivation of our minds. My education and career as an attorney is a big part of who I am and how I approach the world. I love a well-researched, logical, and precise argument or exposition. I like things to make sense.

So, when I first started working with the spiritual aspect of life – when I started learning how to take shamanic journeys and allowing myself to see, hear, and otherwise experience other ‘realities’ (and simply giving myself permission to entertain the possibility that other ‘realities’ could actually exist ) – it was a risk. I was entering into territory where I risked ridicule. Disbelief. Doubt.

I’ll write about what it was like for me to first journey another time.

Cultivating Trust in Spirit

For purposes of this post, I want to talk about how I’ve had to cultivate my trust in Spirit/God/Goddess/All That Is/Creator. Whatever you want to call that Source energy from which everything we know comes. I use the word ‘had’ deliberately because without that trust, I am confident I would have mucked up a lot of amazing experiences.

For instance, my niece and nephew endured a terrible tragedy earlier this year. I am at once intimately familiar with their pain and at the same time completely unable to fathom it.

When this tragedy unfolded, I felt a responsibility to be there for them, to provide whatever support or compassion I might uniquely be able to afford them.

But following the initial days, when many gathered and comforted as family and friends do, I got that weird ‘sense’ I’ve come to know – and trust – that is Spirit’s way of telling me what to do. Or not do. As weeks stretched on and I could see and feel the rawness being experienced, I wanted to provide insight. I wanted to do even more than that. I wanted to offer my unique interface with Spirit to ease their sorrow.

But Spirit said, “No.”

This made me uncomfortable, because even though I did reach out sporadically, privately, there was a part of me that sensed that they felt neglected by me. Or abandoned.

And yet, I kept checking in. “Is it time? May I?” And Spirit kept saying gently, “No. Not yet.”

“Trust.”

Trusting Divine Timing

Then just this past weekend, something shifted. I sensed it more and more each day. Both of them, but especially my niece, who I knew was away at a retreat specifically dedicated to their situation, were on my mind and in my heart. Each day, a part of me was sitting with her, just holding her and asking Spirit to heal her great pain.

Quite to my surprise, on Sunday afternoon, I had gone out to pick up a few things at the store. I was literally urged (and there is that trust of which I speak coming through and demanding to be honored) to pull over and send a text to my niece. As it happened, she was a passenger in the car of a fellow retreater, so we were able to have a ‘conversation.’

And the miracle is that I could tell she was ready. The timing was perfect.

Our dialogue continued the next day, as well, and it is hard for me to describe the gratitude I feel at the sense that everything is unfolding more perfectly than I, in my intellectual arrogance or maybe just human, stubborn, desire to help on my terms, when I thought I should, could ever have envisioned.

It’s times like these that I know I am not doing this alone. And wow, am I glad I’m always striving to cultivate that trust.

(T-1088)

Day Twenty Two (T-1089) – Housekeeping

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Housekeeping

Nope, I’m not going to be writing about my vacuuming, dusting, smudging, or laundry habits, which are vast and impressive, I hasten to assure you. (Right.)

When I put ‘Housekeeping’ in the title to this post, I’m actually referring to this blog. To this Endeavor of Dedication, this Act of Power.

It’s funny. On the one hand, I’m sitting here writing my 22nd consecutive daily blog post; something I would never have imagined myself actually doing: writing and posting every single day for 22 straight days.

On the other hand, though – there are the remaining 1089 consecutive days staring me in the face. When I look at things from that perspective, I’m just a baby. Really. To invoke a Carpenters’ ear-worm for those of you of a certain age, “We’ve only just begun…!” (You’re welcome.)

To that end, though, I must admit to being a total neophyte when it comes to pretty much all things blog. For instance, it seems kind of stupid to keep naming each post by its simple “Day number” (and the number of days remaining for me to complete my 1111 Devotion). But it does keep me on track and my eyes on the prize. Or rather, the destination. The prize is the doing; I do know that.

But I’m wondering if this then just looks like a bunch of gobbledygook to someone happening upon my blog. What would compel them to click on any of my posts, when they are all just titled with a generic day/count? I’m also compelled to think about indexing. What if some day I want to refer back to the post I wrote about ice cream, for instance? Or de-cluttering my bookshelves?

Last night I at least put “Books” behind the day/countdown.

I don’t know. This is probably a ridiculous thing for me to be writing about tonight. But it’s on my mind; and I’d like to set up my titles in an interesting, if not compelling (that seems too high a bar to shoot for in a blog title) manner that is consistent, but informative, and maybe even ‘searchable?’ And that’s where the relevance of the remaining number of posts comes in: I’ve barely scratched the surface at 22. So, now is the time for me to be figuring this out, since I don’t want to have to go back after a couple of hundred to re-title them (if that’s even possible).

And yeah, I guess I could’ve just kept this to myself and not dredged this mundane aspect of blogging into your lives. But heck – we’re in this for the long haul (please, I hope so), and maybe some of you will even be inspired to engage in a similar effort. So you can learn from my mistakes!

(Here I would like to note that I am noticing some posts on FB by a couple of you who read this, which also seem to be a daily devotion… YEA for you! They are lovely – joyful! – and thoughtful.)

So, you will see how this shakes out over the next few days. We’ll see if I stick to the format I’ve used since Day Two (T-1109), incorporate it into a new format, or change it all together. I’m sure you’re all on the edge of your seats.

I don’t know. I have to wonder if something ‘big’ is going to happen this week. I feel this sense of edginess, almost like I don’t want to get into anything too deeply. I didn’t intend this post to be so mundane. But for whatever reason, this is what it felt right to write about tonight.

What I was going to write about was ‘Timing’ and/or ‘Trusting’ when we should or shouldn’t say something. Guess I’ll save one of those for tomorrow.

Thank you for sticking with me.

Day Fifteen (T-1096)

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“Cawing” It Like I See It

 

This will probably be a pretty short post. I’m still in the midst of my laptop saga. There is a chance I will be visited by a Dell technician tomorrow, provided the new motherboard and LCD something-or-other have been delivered. But it sounds like the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, so it will be interesting to see how this unfolds. And of course I will keep you updated!

Once again: I am SO GRATEFUL to have my MacBook Air. Geesh, where would I be without it?

In the meantime, I want to alert you to a decidedly dubious decision made by Facebook today.

I have a great friend, Myrina, who recently launched a website and instagram account offering a unique and fascinating insight into the application of tarot in our lives, working specifically with a really cool deck that focuses on alchemy. This is her website . Her instagram name is cosmic.meta.crow.

Anyway, this is the post she just made a few days ago:

Now I want you to contemplate everything you see and hear and read about not only on FB, but also on television, in magazines, in movies, etc. Think about all of the egregious images and concepts that fill our airwaves every day.

Well, guess what? (I’m sure on some level you won’t be surprised in the least.) Facebook (or Instagram) (or both) refused to allow Myrina to promote her post for this week (a three card “spread” for which she offers an interpretation for readers to ponder) because of the Lovers Card!

Check that card out. It doesn’t even have any full-frontal nudity! It is the Lovers card. And her post was deemed offensive.

I find it offensive that we can be inundated with violence every day, but a drawing of two human bodies, in repose and affection, with hardly the slightest glimpse of anything is deemed too risqué for publication.

I think this whole ridiculousness highlights the astonishing prudishness (or should I say, “Puritanism?”) that remains vital and flourishing in this country.

How in the world can the human body be deemed offensive when killing and maiming it is not? Indeed, even more perverse is the categorization of the concept of “Lovers” as objectionable. Is it sex? They’re clearly not “having sex” on this card. Just what is so terrifying about the ultimate expression of our desire for union anyway?

If you are interested in a fascinating, complex, introspective perspective on tarot and how it might provide you with some insight and guidance each week, I encourage you to visit my subversive cosmic.meta.crow friend’s site. Be a little naughty (at least, according to Facebook) – you just might fly free!

Picking Cards – the Weikel Way – Day Seven (T-1104)

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Embracing Moose

Initially I was going to ‘apologize in advance’ for yet another blog post referencing the Medicine Cards©  by Jamie Sams and David Carson. But you know what? No apologies.

If you are still with me after six days of my posts (without me even giving you the option to receive them personally delivered to your email inbox – a feature coming soon to an inbox near you – perhaps as soon as tomorrow or the next day!), then you probably have surmised that these wonderful windows into understanding ourselves via Mother Nature’s creatures are a big part of my life.

With one thousand one hundred four blog posts on my horizon (at the very least), I can assure you that at least a half bazillion of them will center on, or in some way reference, the Medicine Cards© and how they impact my understanding of something in my life in one way or another. And I will write about it. And therefore you, if you’re as devoted to reading my blog as I will be to writing it, will read about it.

Feels like a full circle to me. Or at least some weird type of metaphysical co-dependency – but I’d rather think of it as a “circle of appreciation,” and perhaps even “wisdom sharing.” I would insert an eye roll here if I were texting.

Today’s post marks the completion of a full seven days of 1111 Devotion posts on Ruffled Feathers. In the grand scheme of things, this is a miniscule accomplishment. Not even 1%. Exactly 0.63%, to be honest. Hardly something to crow about. (Don’t go there.) And that is my human, perfectionist, egotistical, relentlessly critical perspective on my process. The one that says, “You can start to feel like you’re ‘all that’ when you get to, maybe, oh I don’t know, Day Five Hundred Fifty Six. But NOT ONE DAY BEFORE.”

But Spirit is different. Spirit is not an asshat to me. (I almost wrote the other word, but it just felt wrong – because Spirit’s not an asshole. Woops.)

On the contrary. Right out of the gate Spirit knew I would need reassurance that I had indeed “heard right” (i.e., listened) to the message that the best way to honor my son’s life was to engage in a substantial act of Devotion. 1111 sub-acts, to be precise.

Because let me tell you, since creating Ruffled Feathers in March of 2010, up through the day before writing my Devotion post, I had published a grand total of 31 entries, or an average of 3.5 per year. So committing to this Act of Power, as I’ve also called it, has almost every evening this past week caused my stomach to sort-of bottom out.

Yes, Spirit knew I would need a lot of coaxing to refrain from talking myself out of the fact that I’d actually received and correctly interpreted an inspiration (Spirit-nudge? Marching orders?) to write 1111 blog posts. I’m a lawyer. It would not take a lot for me to muster a pretty compelling argument that I’d somehow misheard that directive from Spirit.

But the fact remains that last Sunday (11/11) was the day I received the inspiration (and the confirmation from several sources, which I wrote about this past week) to do this thing.

Monday night I published my initial Devotion post, publicly committing to this Act of Power.

Tuesday morning, I picked:    Moose2. Yes, that correctly reads “Moose squared.” And what it means is that I chose Moose right side up, and the card on the bottom was a “blank.”

Remember, Karl and I choose cards virtually every single day at the start of our morning. Our ‘picking process’ is as follows:

Karl chooses first, shuffling, softly breathing his request for guidance on his day into the cards, shuffling some more, keeping his feet firmly planted on the ground to root him to Mother Earth…and then he picks what he picks. I read out loud the full main text of the top card, if it is upright, but if his top card is reversed, or ‘contrary,’ I read both the upright (main) and reversed passages in the accompanying text. I do not read out loud the information for the ‘underneath’ card. We just look at it, note it, and discuss how it might hone in on or otherwise clarify the application of the message of the top card.

Eventually it’s my turn, and I engage in essentially the same process.

So, to be clear, I’m never just picking up the deck and not shuffling, or doing anything else that might be odd or nefariously manipulating the deck, or my ‘pick,’ for the purpose of later writing about some amazing ‘coincidence.’ In fact, I shuffle and shuffle relentlessly, deliberately turning cards this way and that, just to ensure that they’re properly ‘mixed.’

Also, the Medicine Cards© deck comes with five or so ‘blank’ cards, which the authors or publishers suggest can be used for people who want to draw their own animals or insects or whatever. That’s not our thing. But we keep them in the deck for a two-fold purpose:

First, if we shuffle and shuffle and choose a “blank,” we take it to mean that we’re not grounded. Oftentimes we may be talking about extraneous things, joking around, being irreverent, or otherwise not being fully present to the task at hand, and we’ll get smacked by pulling a blank. So when we pull a blank, we know we need to settle ourselves and really get grounded and as clear as we can muster.

The other way we interpret the blanks is if they show up on the bottom of the deck after choosing our top or main card. If there is no other specific card showing up on the bottom to give the top card ‘context,’ then we consider that top pick ‘squared,’ and figure Spirit is telling us that the top card is either really important and we need to pay attention, or it’s influence is going to show up in our life very powerfully that day. Or both.

And so ends our ‘Medicine Cards© Tutorial/the Weikel-Way,’ which was not what I initially intended to focus upon in this post. But I’ve rambled on far too long, and if my posts take up too much time for you to read, you may never come back!

Who am I kidding? Yes, I should keep my posts to a reasonable length. But this one went long, and I have 1104 left to write after this one, so I might as well save my Moose discussion for tomorrow. Thank you for reading; it really means a lot to me.