"May All Be Forgiven" - A Prayer of Forgiveness

"May all who have been involved in destruction 

in this time and throughout time feel forgiveness. 

On this day, may they feel forgiveness and find freedom. 

May all who have been involved in destruction 

feel forgiveness, 

find freedom,

 and remember how to fly." 

                                        - Dawn, 07/27/2014

When I awoke yesterday with the word forgiveness going through my mind, I knew it was time for these simple lines penned in my journal but never shared.  In late July when they came to me, I needed to pen them in my heart which was really the more important place to record them.

And to be honest I was afraid.  What would people think of such a message, actually a prayer asking that all involved in destruction throughout time, not just today, experience forgiveness?  How could I share that when I wasn't sure I had forgiven at this level myself?

July ended and I was well into August before printing out the monthly Celestial Timings I receive from Cayelin Castell. Inside I smiled, as I read that August offered many opportunities for practicing radical forgiveness.  This is why the prayer above came to me, yet still I did not share it.

That was nearly a month ago.

With the word forgiveness literally on my mind yesterday morning, I returned to the prayer which may have even more relevance today.  In the last three weeks, destruction has been in the forefront with the events here at "home" in Ferguson and overseas in Israel, Palestine, Iraq and Syria.  Jesus' words, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do comes to mind."

Returning to the initial writing also allowed me to see the note I made in relation to two feathers I found in my yard that last week of July.

Beneath the prayer, I had written the phrase "the balancing of debts."

I have found dozens of feathers over the years yet never had I found two specific feathers within moments of one another as I did.

Woodpecker and Blue Jay left perfect gifts in my yard.  In their balance and the symmetry of black and white and black and blue I saw the balancing of karmic debts between blacks and whites, the black and white of duality and the planes of Earth and Sky.

Forgiveness balances debts on planes that are planetary and personal which takes me back around to me. The most important place to start is within, isn't it?

Destruction occurs at many levels in many ways, but that for which I first need forgiveness is with myself.  I participate in self-destruction when I do not forgive myself for not persisting with a particular screenplay years ago and for not having fierce focus with my creativity.  My energy drains and I am not fully present if I do not forgive myself for prior decisions when I did not listen and trust in Me?  

I have participated in the destroying of trust at a transpersonal level through holding a grudge against the Universe and the Great Mystery of my life.  I didn't realize until recently that I have not forgiven the Divine for happenings with the actor Bill Murray and events in France and in the Grand Canyon? (Those are stories for another day and no, I was not in France or the Grand Canyon with Bill Murray, at least in this life.)

Fortunately this morning I decided to also read ahead in Celestial Timings for the coming days.

Radical self-love and forgiveness were referenced repeatedly as the Moon is in Leo today and passes near Venus tomorrow then the star Regulus in the heart of the lion on Monday.

Cayelin writes, "It (the Virgo New Moon exact Monday morning) is a powerful time to use sacred ceremony and forgive all the harm that has ever been thought or done toward any part of life. This includes forgiving the unforgivable with the understanding that what has been done cannot be undone but does not have to continue to influence future events. 

By forgiving everything it frees up the old stuck patterns of the heart and the mind, so something new, magical and ever so sacred can emerge." * 

This connects directly to the prayer  with which I began.  

I often am harsh with myself as to my own timing. I judge myself as procrastinating or late so often with my writings and my life.  Yet in the bigger picture this is the perfect timing for the sharing of the forgiveness prayer.  

Let us turn our attention toward forgiveness as the skies profoundly assist us. We are offered assistance in so many ways.  

This morning I realized my assistants, woodpecker and blue jay, offered one last message relevant to this time.  Woodpecker represents new rhythms while blue jay represents the proper use of power.  

By consciously forgiving, we can use our personal power to clear ourselves internally and with one another.  Doing this allows us to discover a new rhythm as individuals and as a collective in which we are free from all the ways we have held ourselves back. 

May we ALL feel forgiveness, find freedom and fly.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 22 August 2014

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

To learn how the nest in the photo above and I found one another click HERE. 

*This particular paragraph is from the Monday August 25, 2014 Celestial Timing by Cayelin Castelle.  

Anaconda - The Healing Power of Venom

Yesterday I learned the homeopathic remedy I'm taking for hot flashes is derived from snake venom.  When the doctor shared this I told him about the story that follows. I actually used the word anaconda to describe the snake I saw.

I didn't think anymore about this interaction until I picked up the newspaper this afternoon.  Actually I, who never read the sports page, picked up "USA Today Sports" from where Jerry had placed it on the stool.

$3.2 billion caught my attention then I saw "Anaconda" just below a photo of Nicki Minaj.  I am out of the pop culture loop totally but I pay attention to synchronicity.  So I found this vision from two years ago and reread it.

In light of all the violence in the world right now this story may be more important today than it was when it was shown to me.  Here's what happened in August 2012.

*****************

I was shown the fuchsia face of a man in the stars.  He reminded me of former vice-president Cheney yet I knew it wasn't him.  The face vanished and an elephant's trunk appeared.  It then vanished and was replaced by a huge snake reminiscent of the one in the Harry Potter series.  And though I've never seen one, I thought of an anaconda.  It crawled into my field of vision in the stars then opened its mouth just like in the movie.

Everything went black.  Then a fuchsia heart shape appeared.  I could feel it pulsing energy to me, feeding and invigorating me, as I recorded the vision and wondered what it meant.

I sensed the snake represented the Divine Feminine enveloping the man as the word transmutation came to mind.  Yet I wondered, 'Who was the man?'

Twenty-days later I came home from being out of town for a week.  I was sorting the mail and newspapers saved for us by a neighbor.  The story and photos on the front page of the Tennessean from two days prior literally took my breath.

There on the cover of our local paper was the man in my vision sitting atop an elephant he had killed.  The story's heading read: "He takes hunting to an extreme."  The reporter told of a local sixty-year old who after a health scare in 1999 decided to hunt "dangerous" animals.  The story referred to animals of course as 'game' but this was no game to me.  This man hunts my children, an elephant and leopard in Zimbabwe, a brown bear in Russia, a hippopotamus, zebra, fox, every deer imaginable and thousands of fowl.

I did not want to read the story.  Even now to write of it brings tears to my eyes.  Yet to avoid it was to neglect the vision and resist listening for its message.

So I read.  And I have  read the story again and again this week listening, still listening wanting to discern why this was delivered to me by the Universe and the newspaper man.

The local hunter invoked God in defending his pastime quoting scripture from Genesis where God told Noah that every moving thing that lived was food for him and his family.  I thought, 'I bet God wants to take that back.'  Surely God had no idea Earth would become so overrun with people, people who would crowd out and kill off creation with a hunting arsenal like this mans.

The writer relates how local school children in one village were dismissed from school when the hunter killed the hippopotamus, so they could gather meat for their families from the bed of his truck.  Similarly the elephant fed 100 people in a village for over a month.  I read this yet thought, "Why not use your passion and money to teach these villagers something that would last a lifetime that they could pass on to their children, something that didn't involve killing the endangered animals of God's earth?"

The writer quoted him as saying, "Everything I do, I do to an extreme."

And this is where the story comes around to me - to me, to you, to the snake and the fuchsia heart.  We are here to love to the extreme. 

I knew the August afternoon of the vision that I was to follow the example of the snake, to ingest the traits of this person I find most disturbing in order to transmute the negative in him as well as myself.  The Snake as a Divine symbol says, "Hold the all of who this man is as well as yourself in Love."

Then earlier this week I came across the latest National Geographic buried beneath a pile of papers.  I had not yet looked at it. I glanced at the cover and saw what I knew was a message for me.  A story headline in the bottom corner read: The Healing Power of Venom.  

My breath was taken.  Immediately I knew what I consider poisonous in this man is here to activate the power of my heart creating a healing venom for him and for me.

If I had to rely on myself alone I could not respond to the Call of this vision.  Yet I, nor we, do this alone.  The Heart of the Universe that pulsed energy to me, whether you call it God, Great Spirit or Goddess feeds us if we are open to holding the abuses and violations of this world that stem from shame, ignorance, arrogance, and self-hate. 

Is there anything more beautiful than transforming the poisons in our world into venom that heals?  Is there anything more beautiful than loving in extreme in this profound way?

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 21 August 2014
first posted15 Feb. 2013

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

My Mail Box, My In-Box and the Farting Boom Box - On What Do You Place Your Attention?

"No experience is ever wasted. Everything has meaning."  

- Oprah (from a recent Starbucks chai sleeve)

I had been curious as to the meaning and metaphor of the randomly occurring farting noises in my house when Oprah confirmed what I believe.

No, Oprah didn't knock on my door and literally confirm what I believe but yes, you did just read, "farting noises" and we didn't have a ghost or gas.

This random sound first occurred as I squatted in the kitchen about a month ago.  I laughed aloud and wished for a witness other than the cats.  The sounds continued periodically for several days and finally occurred when Jerry was home.

We laughed.  We laughed a lot and I eventually found the farting boom box we bought in Sedona years ago.  We like to hike in Sedona though many people go there to experience the energy of the red rocks or on a New Age quest.

To look at our mail, one would think our new age is old age which could make the episodic farting machine quite appropo.  I consider age a matter of attitude and heart. I am an old soul who most days is going on 8 in spirit even if my body at times suggests otherwise when I first get out of bed.

Like most children, I am curious which is why I truly had been wondering why after all these years
had the farting machine decided to intermittently work.  Was it suggesting I was at risk of becoming an 'old fart' as Jerry's mother refers to the elderly men in her town?  Or did I just need more laughs?

Why had this gadget decided to spontaneously work?

Then I went to see Kelly a massage therapist who I had not seen in months.  I scheduled thirty minutes for her to specifically work on my feet.  At the end of the half hour, she asked if I had time for her to work on my neck.  She intuitively felt a need to be at my neck.

I agreed so she started by holding my head at which point she exclaimed that my right brain energetically was huge. She asked if I had been writing.

That's when I heard myself say, "No, actually I'm backed up."

As soon as I heard myself utter that line I began to laugh.  Immediately I recognized the farting machine's symbolism.

What proceeded to happen for the following 24 hours was even funnier and on point.  Thanks to Kelly's intuition and an energetic technique she used, I got back on a creative roll and the machine did as well.  That day and the next as I sat at my computer upstairs, farts echoed from downstairs.

As I let go and wrote, the boom box seemed to "let go" as well.

Life continually requests my engagement.  It's up to me as to where I place my attention.  If I place my attention on my in-box and mail-box, what's next is incontinence, falling down and being unable to get back up, the end of the Earth, gloom, doom and yes, flatulence.  I prefer living from my intuition and what gets my attention or calls to me, rather than from what I'm told to fear.

I prefer to place my attention on a farting boom box and the simple signs offered up as clues and cues as to why I am here and the next step I'm to take.  Although I do not do this 24/7, what I experience and know is my life unfolds best when I listen then do what comes next without having to know where next is leading me.  I am learning to let go as I am continually offered opportunities to listen.

Like Oprah, I believe everything does have meaning.  Yet unlike Oprah, I suspect experience can be wasted.  I've wasted experiences for which I've grateful received do-overs repeatedly.  When we do not use the events of the present, whether they are personal or communal (as is happening in Ferguson, MO), we miss opportunities to ask deeper questions, to build bridges, to change and to connect.  I suspect this is why history is prone to repeating itself.

And yet Life calls.  On what do you place your attention?  Life calls.  How do you answer?

-Dawn, The Good News Muse,  21 August 2014

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Can We Return to Being the Lover's Who First Made the Leap? - An Appalachian Trail Epiphany

 Hot Springs Spa on the French Broad River, Hot Springs, NC

"It's beautiful from up there," volunteered the hiker I met on the trail.  I'm certain she saw the are-we-there-yet look on my sweat-lined face.  I was headed up as she was headed down a portion of the Appalachian Trail in Hot Springs, NC.  

"It's beautiful from up there." 

Cognitively I knew she was referring to the view from my destination, Lover's Leap, but intuitively I sensed something else.  I heard this simple encourager and knew this is what we all feel as we look to Earth from the starry Universe.  Earth is an exquisite pearl from 'up there.'  

Imagine the thrill of being a soul knowing it's about to come here.  For just one minute, imagine the feeling of looking down on this blue, green orb knowing your time is near.  

You are a Lover getting to make this journey to beloved Earth!

Talk about a Lover's Leap! 

And then it happens.  The leap occurs.

We find ourselves in a suit made of skin that will be our vehicle for exploring this beautiful place we've seen from afar.

And then it happens.  Many of us begin to get messages related to our bodies - don't touch, don't cry, don't stare, you didn't hear/see/experience that.  We learn to crawl, walk, run, play and accumulate skinned knees and boo boos, not to mention disappointments, fears of abandonment, engulfment and control alongside prejudices, stereotypes, family and tribal legacies.

Most of us enter schools where competition is valued over wonder, curiosity, and asking tough questions whose answers aren't found in texts. Our tanks are quietly filled with less-than and shame.

We fall in love. We experience hurt.  We fall in love.  We contribute to hurt.  The internal pains accumulate.

We go from Lovers looking upon this beautiful planet to neglecting ourselves and Earth. We take for granted our beautiful bodies as well as Earth's.  We go about in varying ways destroying one another and Earth through deed, word and thought.

One can say I'm oversimplifying complex historical, biological, psychological dynamics, but to me it's pretty simple.  This is how we go from the thrill of coming here to the reality of being here.

When we allow them, cumulative disappointments, pains, fears, and legacies separate us from being the Lovers we are and what we knew 'out there.'

Fortunately the story doesn't end here.  Those who are tenacious, resilient, and waking up can shed the above and find our way back to the wonder, beauty, curiosity, joy, grace and glory of getting to be here because it's not only beautiful from "up there."

  It is beautiful here!  

Despite the killing and warring, all around Mother Earth, I believe it is beautiful here because Mother   

Earth is still beautiful and we are too. 

We and she are beautiful processors of presence.  With an open heart and mind, hurts can be forgiven and stereotypes overcome.

Healing can happen as a much bigger Mystery unfolds.   This Mystery weaves its way through our days and our nights.  

I was reminded of this just this morning as I sat outside.  A robin began singing in my neighbor's tree just as I heard a crow caw.  This took me back to April when I was witness to a crow eating a young robin in the nest just outside my window.  I could not quit crying over this.  I kept saying to my partner, Jerry, that I felt like my ongoing tears were related to France. 

This morning as the robin sang, a thought came to me: 'This is the key to how Joan of Arc died. She was singing inside.'  

Then my friend Rachel crossed my mind.  Rachel is in Germany at the present researching and visiting sites where women who were intuitive, healed with herbs and consulted the Earth were killed as witches. 

I thought of Rachel then heard church bells.  I have sat in this yard a multitude of mornings spanning twenty years.  I hear traffic, dogs, birds, neighbors and the train miles away but never have I heard the church bells I was guessing two miles away at Christ the King.  This was perfect since the church killed so many women in the times Rachel is researching.  

And even more perfect was the fact that I was hearing 8am chimes.  The number 8 represents infinity.  

Here on Earth there is something mythical and magical is occurring across time and planes because it is beautiful here. 

Equally as beautiful this time a year ago, Mystery arrived in my mother's and my life as she and I experienced cancer scares and tests the very same week only one day apart.  Both of us vulnerable, we shared life's journey on a deeper level.  Relating from the heart as we really are is vital to the beauty of being here.  

Closer to present time, a week ago tonight my neighbor asked if I wanted to come by and be with her and her cat of 21 years before he parted.  Afterwards I sat outside and wrote in my journal, 'To be allowed into another's life when they are at their most vulnerable is such a gift.'  

My friend would probably say I gifted her but the sentence above relates to her gifting me.  Inviting me to spend a bit of time with her family and her dear cat was a gift they gave me. 

And then I ask myself do I  truly believe it is beautiful here when the news carries repeated stories of senseless killing and loss.

Yes, I do believe it is beautiful here for I believe the power of Love is greater than hate.  I believe in the beauty of hearts more than I will live in fear.  I believe it is possible to remember we are all Lovers who once made the leap.  It has taken me much of my 55 years to "get this" in my body and I suspect I will continue to "get it."

Life is at its best when we remember we are lover's continually leaping into the unknown, moment by moment with heart's (and minds) open.

Imagine the Shift occurring as increasing numbers of us remember the Earth that was beautiful from 'up there' is equally beautiful down here.  

May we return to remembering the beauty that we are. 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 14 August 2014

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Lion's of Light - A Vision Honoring this 08/08 Day

I share this vision in honor of today's August 8 (08/08) Lion's Gate.  Originally experienced in late 2012, it is still, if not more, important today. 

Print used by permission by Harold Rigsby. 

Last night I saw lions of light.  As I lay in bed, I was suddenly in the Universe.  In the stars appeared the face of a lion. Its mane and features were outlined in faint white lines of energy's light.  Then to the right of the male appeared a female lioness, her face was similarly outlined in what I knew was energy's white light.

Two lions male and female symbols of courage, strength, loyalty, love and honor showed themselves in the stars. And I knew I was being shown the presence of the Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine arriving in this time.

Never before have we had this degree of opportunity for both masculine and feminine energies to be present on Earth in partnership, strength, vulnerability and balance within each of us and between each of us.

These lions and lines of light are making themselves available to us to awaken the lines of light of which we're made so we may carry the energy of the lions and their courage, love and strength.

Imagine the Shift this brings.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 
08 August 2014
first posted 19 November 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Missing the Mystery and Spirit Persisting - In Honor of World Cat Day

For the world's Cats and ALL who love them on this 2014 World Cat Day -

This, along with Bill Murray's unknowingly episodically stalking me, is a story I've shared repeatedly.  (I try to avoid repeating stories for fear folks will grow bored and think 'Here she goes again.'  Yet I once heard author and teacher Peggy Rubin say she watched Shakespeare's plays repeatedly because as she evolved she saw new levels in each repeated play.)

So here I go again. This story surfaces in the still waters of memory as I've learned it is World Cat Day.

It was January 2008.  My mother who had hardly been sick a day in her life had just had her second surgery in five months. This surgery was an emergency necessitated by the surgeon having missed a tumor pressing against her spinal chord causing major body numbness.  During this time, I was vaguely aware Templeton my cat of many years wasn't eating. I chalked this up to her being tuned in to my stress from sleeping in hospital recliners and loosing the balance I thought I could maintain.

It was after my mother got settled into rehab that I realized something was truly amiss with Templeton.  Only months prior her blood work prompted the vet to say, "This cat will outlive both of us."

Through the 2-3 week journey that followed, Templeton did not eat or drink yet she taught me more about myself and love in a handful of days than I had experienced in a lifetime. She and I had a crash course on joy and pain.

Early one Sunday morning, I called teacher and friend Jean Houston's office to leave a message on her answering machine. Knowing she had beloved dogs, I wanted to tell Jean to savor watching Zeus her Airedale eat every Cheerioat during his morning meal.

To my surprise in the wee West Coast morning hours on a weekend, Jean answered her phone. I shared my message and of course, Jean the always-teaching teacher likewise shared a message with me.

She asked if I wanted Templeton to return. I hadn't even thought of that has an option but the answer was a no-brainer.

Jean then suggested that I talk with Templeton about passing, where she was going and then specify when I wanted her to return to me if she were willing.  With Templeton across from me, I sat in the floor and shared the specifics of her journey to the Universal rehab where she would not only have time to recover from whatever was causing this loss but that she would regain her missing paw too.

(Templeton and I found each other at the Parthenon as a student was giving away kittens in the early '90's. Being three pawed, Templeton was the last one given away. I held her not intending to get a kitten, but as I did a chorus of people surrounded me saying, "Look at how that kitten looks at her." In retrospect it was divinely staged.)

I gave her four months to recover and asked that she return around my birthday at May's end.

The final thing Jean said to me which I wrote and just found in a notebook was "You must first release her in joy."

I never dreamed I could be so happy as this dear cat who had seen me through so many lives in this life lived and died over the days ahead. I was joyful and at times sad too but when the heart is open even in loss the preciousness of each moment is front and center. As Rumi and others have written, I experienced the joy and sorrow that are one and the same.

May rolled around and this little voice in the back of my head said, "Remember Templeton." I hesitantly at first began to visit shelters and a local shop, hesitant because I did not trust this whole return thing might actually work and I didn't know if I trusted myself to know when I had found Templeton though I specified she let me know 'it' was her.

As May proceeded, my anticipation and panic heightened. What if I miss her? I had specified my birthday week but forgotten this is often when we're out of town. What if she's on the Oregon coast looking for me and I'm in Nashville this year? I held kittens daily at one particular shop asking each one as it looked me in the face:  Are you Templeton? Give me a sign.

By week two I finally confided my quest in a quiet whisper to folks. Instead of their thinking I was strange, I heard repeated stories like mine of people requesting their cats and dogs return. Only one person had not experienced success.

One day I just knew I saw Temp's face in a Metro shelter ad in the morning paper. I jumped in my car to be there when the doors opened and suspected the woman in the car behind me at every turn was determined to get the same cat. I was so relieved when she didn't follow me into the shelter parking lot. The kitten from the photo I then learned was from a week prior. I still held each one present that morning sensing not even the slightest connection.

Time after time, my fear showed its face yet I stayed open and kept searching.

My birthday came and I took the week off. I went to the cat shop every day but Thursday when instead I went to play golf.  Even then I kept watch for a kitten at the pro shop and on the fairways.

The next morning I went to the cat shop and looked again. It was a Friday. The week was winding down and still no Templeton. I feared she was roaming the rocky Southern Oregon coast.

That night I was overcome with anxiety, something I rarely have.  It was the strangest thing. I felt like I was on the cusp of missing Templeton yet I had just been to the cat shop that very day. It never occurred to me until this retelling (Thank you, Peggy) that maybe this new sensory experience was about my being on the cusp of finding Templeton.

I felt compelled to dig out her kitten photos. In her adult life Templeton was very regal. She looked  like a Maine Coon. I had forgotten that day in front of the Parthenon she looked like a tabby, a generic tabby without any hint of the fur to come.

The next morning before leaving town to hike as planned, I told Jerry that I had to get to the cat shop.   Knowing the importance of this quest, he patiently waited for me.

I entered the shop that morning just after ten and on the door mat inside a little bundle of tabby with his butt facing me took my breath away. I can still feel it as well as hear myself exclaiming, "Where did he come from?"

Someone had dropped him off at the store's door on the busy street the night prior.

I scooped Whooper Jr. (now Bogeysattva) into my hands certain he was Templeton. But not only did he not give me a sign, he refused to even look at me. This was the first kitten that didn't look me eye-to-eye in this whole month's quest.

For the coming month, I left work regularly to hold Whopper Jr. and continue to search for Templeton. Some days I would lie on the floor in the back of the shop and hold him on my chest.  Other visits we'd just walk and talk, me always whispering: Won't you give me a sign? And him always avoiding my eyes. How could I bring home a cat that wouldn't even look at me?

Finally I realized I had my sign. Just as Templeton opened the door to my heart in her passing, this kitten had done likewise in his arrival. Bogey who literally can open doors and drawers had opened my heart's door. I pulled out of my driveway that day realizing for the first time in maybe forever I was putting my heart's need first for a necessary change.

As for those eyes and the sign, upon arriving home he looked at me! Had this been a test to see if I could trust and listen to my heart without receiving a sign? Or was seeing and being seen coming full circle as Templeton saw me twenty years ago.  This time I had to see her/him.

Months later I came across a session recorded with my friend Maryann who had a vision where Templeton returned as a male kitten. She emphatically told me not to bypass getting the boy kitten I was to find, adding that he was cute and was boxing in the vision (something Bogey does regularly in his little cat tent). She may have sensed my mistrust as to whether she was actually seeing a male because she added, "I know it's a boy. He's showing me little balls." I had forgotten this until later finding the recording.

So now that I've retold this story again during this the time of Bogey's three year anniversary. I realize both Bill Murray and Bogey are stories of magic, of missing the mystery yet Spirit persisting waking me repeatedly to my heart's path and the beauty of listening to life.

I'm also certain just as at the Parthenon that summer day twenty years ago, that this too is all divinely staged not just my finding Templeton again but our living in this Time of such potential for peace, love and awakening.

How does magic and mystery arrive in your life each day?

Tucked in the layers of repeated behaviors and what may appear to be mundane hides Magic. Take it from Bogey, Mystery (cat 2), Redbud (cat3) Templeton and Me.

Listen. See. Believe.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse
8 August 2014
2 July 2011

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Sightings from the Tree of Life (A Cross-Quarter Day Vision)

I have been sluggish today.  I could blame my tiredness on hormonal shifts, potential rain, energetic turbulence on Mother Earth or an unexpected flirtation with the sore throat thing I've known others to recently have.

Or it could be the stars.

I forgot that today is a Cross-Quarter day, the mid-way point between Summer Solstice and Fall Equinox.  The monthly Celestial Timings I receive suggests this as a good day to listen and meditate, to be open and receptive to messages from beyond.  

I had read this earlier in the week and knew I needed to set aside time to listen today yet I forgot.  All morning long I fussed with myself and analyzed why I was so tired.

Finally after lunch I pushed myself upstairs to take a shower.  As I did I noticed Mystery and Bogeysattvah curled up in the front windows.  That's when for the first time in twenty years, I curled up on the living room sofa.  Don't get me wrong. I've lain on this sofa many times but never suddenly like this or at the end of the sofa on which I found myself today.  

As I did the first thing that caught my eye was this tree. I'm quite familiar with this tree.  It is the hackberry on which there is a face on the drive-way side and a screech owl house that is in reality a squirrel abode on the opposite side.   

I thought I was familiar with this tree but this unexpected angle revealed its many branched beauty.

Then within seconds of closing my eyes, I saw the smallest monarch butterfly in the stars as energy entered my third eye.  The butterfly was followed by a firefly then more bugs than I could count.  The bugs were followed by flower blossom after flower blossom. 

I lay on my sofa and knew why I was so sleepy.  I needed to lie down on this in-between day and be.   Be and listen. 

These gifts stopped and I realized this amazing tree out my window had just shown me creatures on the Tree of Life.  These bugs and blossoms in the natural world came to me to be received, named and birthed.  

As scientists work in labs creating mechanical bugs and genetically modified flowers and such, it is the responsibility of those of us who are wiling to own it to be available to calling in Creation.  

Some may call this sacrilegious.  I call it owning my responsibility to Creator and Creation. 

It's nearly impossible to go through one day in these times without hearing references to butterflies and bees diminishing or flowers and vegetables being genetically modified. 

The way I figure it, I can live in a place of anger and fear about this or I can use my energy to call in the creations I was shown today. 

I want to live awake and aware, calling in creation on this day and every day.  

What about you? On what will you place your focus? 

-Dawn, the Good News Muse  7 August 2014

dawn@imaginetheshift.com