In celestial news, the past two weeks have been a vortex of spiritual intensity -!
Have you been feeling it too? Lots of leveling up, stronger intuitive abilities, as well as big hints about soul purpose and life direction. If something isn’t aligned with soul purpose, bam! it’s gone. Or if it’s not yet gone, it’s on its way out, which means showing up with increasing intensity until the soul-level lesson is finally learned, so as to finally let it go.
In keeping with this celestial trend, my guides have been laying it on pretty thick with synchronicities and well-timed advice. Current messages center around “accepting sacred responsibility” (eg, stepping into soul purpose), “transcending separation consciousness” (seeing beyond the Matrix) and — most daunting of all to my rational mind — “less doing, more being” (that is, stopping the need to constantly accomplish things and allowing prolonged moments of presence).
The term “sacred responsibility” is apparently anathema to certain aspects of my soul, as they feel trepidation about being saddled with spiritual obligations. In their minds (and yes, that’s plural, as each soul aspect retains personality traits and egoic-awareness from prior lifetimes), stepping into sacred responsibility means all work and no play, being held to very high and unattainable standards of perfect behavior. Indeed, in prior lifetimes, this has been the case (they lived some lives in very repressive religious cultures), so it makes sense that they’d have negative associations with the concept.
As these “obligations” also come with letting go of the routines and stories these parts of myself have grown accustomed to, they are understandably scared of committing to this new way of being. As such, they have been employing the usual coping strategies: hiding on the astral; slinging magic left and right; holding onto judgment, resentment and anger; deflecting healing and abundance. In short, they’ve been doing their best to close my heart, shutting down to higher guidance about direction.
As these behaviors are coming from a place of self-protection — arising from ancient wounding and beliefs about how to safely navigate the Matrix — my guides have been counseling me to be both patient and compassionate with these parts of my soul.
At times I am able to find that compassion, but I must admit that generally it has been challenging — soul re-parenting is no cake walk! I’m feeling the feelings of my soul aspects while also feeling my own (“my”, in this instance, meaning the personality that I am in this lifetime) as well as those of Gaia and the collective. As such, it gets really confusing to know which feelings to feel and breathe into, and which to let go of!1
The answer from my guides? Loving acceptance of all of it. Breathe and feel every feeling that arises. Acceptance brings peace.
Even though I know this to be true, I don’t always feel up for it. It seems I have a bit of ascension fatigue — that is, a soul-weariness coming from all the leveling-up. Even though this process is reuniting us with Source Abundance — thank you Light Realms! — it is also asking us to let go of everything we have known to be true, and to do it in every now moment.
We are taking a master-class in spiritual enlightenment, condensed into a few weeks’ time, with new lessons every second of the day.
My guides, seeing my fatigue, have been introducing me to a new tool in the spiritual toolkit: playful experimentation.
But prior to delving into my playful experiments, a bit of backstory:
A few weeks ago, I started getting “sacred responsibility” hints from my guides.
“Go where you are guided,” they counseled.
When I would protest that this made no sense and I needed some rational explanation for this, they would actually quote Lord of the Rings at me, namely the second line below:
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.2
Poetic as that was, it was a frustratingly ambiguous answer, so I’d then ask where we were going. They would only respond with more poetic adages like “where your heart is aligned” or — the most concrete advice — “where you feel called to”.
Thus I’d get in the car and find myself driving aimlessly until I had a hunch to turn, then turn again. When I was on the right track, I’d get a peaceful feeling in me; when I was not, I’d feel anxious and unsafe. When finally arriving at a spot, I’d check in with my guides — is this the right one? — and they would either affirm it or tell me why it wasn’t (often I was being pulled by thoughts of the past or others’ energies).
In this exercise, they were training me to trust my body’s new awareness.3 And as much as my rational mind has resisted it, I have to admit it’s a rather genius way of teaching me how to test and trust these new abilities.
Once I would arrive at a place, I would be asked to do something, though again, I wouldn’t know what, I just had to “feel into it”. If it made my body feel happy and relaxed, it was the right thing to do. Sometimes this was meditating in a certain way, or just breathing and feeling; sometimes it was walking or moving vigorously; sometimes it was cold-plunging.
This week, they told me to start singing.
“This is one of your gifts,” they said. “It’s time for you to use it for the highest good.”
See, I used to be a singer-songwriter (in my teens and early 20s), but when a former lover told me both that my music “wasn’t cool” and “I harmonized too much” — something I did without thinking to every song on the radio because it gave me much joy — it deflated me so completely that I stopped singing entirely. Later, when I tried to come back to it, I realized that all of my own song lyrics were laments of heartbreak and longing (see example here), and it felt as though I was — as a magical person — weaving more longing and heartbreak in the world by singing these songs.
Not knowing what else to sing, I continued my song silence.
That is until late last year when
— Port Townsend song-circle leader extraordinaire — encountered me on the trail to Marmot Pass. She and a friend were heading up there as well, and we fell into step and easy conversation. We felt immediate kismet, and not only did she encourage me to start leading Write & Hike Retreats, she also later offered to lead a song circle at our Writing in the New Year Retreat.Sensing I didn’t know what a song circle was, Heidi invited me over to her house to give me a sense of her offering. And oh, in that session, how my life changed! The songs she taught — many by local musicians — were like prayers on the wind, mantras of positive, heart-based intention.4 They were songs that could weave new realities rooted in love and peace, songs that all of me — body, mind and soul — felt good singing.
In that session, I found my voice again. And I haven’t stopped singing since! These beautiful songs just percolate within me, showing up when I most need them, and when I sing them aloud, my world changes.
At first, I was just singing the songs I was learning in Heidi’s song circles.
These would show up when I was doing my guides-led wanderings, and I would know I was supposed to sing them. This most frequently happened next to water.
By way of example:
Last week, drawn to Fort Flagler’s beach spit, I was moved to sing to the seal colony just offshore (depicted in the main video of this post). Thirty of them popped up to listen and seemed to have song preferences, staying above water when they liked the song, even “applauding” afterward with some playful splashing, but disappearing under the water if the song was less to their taste. After singing a few selections, I then went to meet them in the water, swimming within 10 yards of them. Seals are very inquisitive (divers report that they first approach when your back is turned to playfully nip at your flipper to see how you react; if deemed safe, you are then honored by nose-bumps and curious engagement), so a couple of them ventured nearer to get a closer look (no nose-bumping, but a girl can dare to dream!).
The whole experience made my heart exalt with delight!
Then two days ago, when I was on a wandering in the Dosewallips, spending the night in my hammock under the full moon, I awoke the following morning and was gifted a song by the river itself:
It was lighthearted and a little goofy (in keeping with my own sense of humor) but also had deep meaning. As I sat by the river and sang, other verses emerged (as well as two harmony / rhythm parts, which I’ll share once I figure out to do a multitrack recording).
Lyrics from the Dosewallips Song:
Hey River, I’m looking at you
You and me have got something to do
We’re gonna flow, flow
Down to the ocean into oneness we goHey Ocean, now I’m with you
You and me have got something to do
We’re gonna flow, flow
Expand our awareness into oneness we goHey Oneness, now I AM you
There is nothing I need to do
Just flow, flow
No need to wander
Nothing to know
This song has stayed with me, emerging again on another wander-hike yesterday on a compassionate mountain.5 My guides and I will be working on it a bit more, and who knows…? Maybe you’ll hear a more polished version of it here in future posts...? Maybe it will show up in a song circle near you…? Or perhaps it will find you on its own, burbling up from the water the next time you wander along a river.
Or maybe — and I really love this one — the river will gift you with your own song to sing from the heart. All it requires is a few playful experiments…and a willingness to deeply listen.
Pro tip for empaths: stating aloud “These are not my feelings,” can be a powerful way to free oneself from feelings that are not actually your own.
From J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Did I mention we are leveling up? Well our bodies are too! New multidimensional awareness is coming in somatically.
Here’s a list of the songs Heidi taught at our retreat, in case you’d like to learn them too:
May I Be Open Carly Loveling (not on the internet currently)
Wind in the Trees Laura Sandage ( not on the internet currently)
This is a story in and of itself, which I shall save for another time as its lessons are still unfolding.
Share this post