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Creating Bridges: Spirituality & Philosophy:
Wisdom Walks In Circles:
As the Crow Flies
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by Margaret Lewis |
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While waiting in line at the grocery recently, I overheard a man relate the location of his new home to the cashier. He used the old saying, "as the crow flies" to describe the distance between his old and new home. My eavesdropping spurred a new interest in that old saying. What does it really mean?
Crows are very determined fliers, always finding the most direct route. After a long absence due to West Nile Virus, the flock of crows that once fed in my back yard is making appearances again. While foraging in new lands free from the virus, I wonder where their journeys led them? What sights did they see? What was it that brought them back home again? As the crow flies, I sense that they have completed a circle.
A constant illusion whose bubble we must often burst is that life will take a straight and narrow path leading us the shortest distance between two points. The linear projection of a crow’s flight is the perception we grasp a hold of whenever we set out to explore new territory or attempt to manifest new creations. We see the goal in sight and believe we can and will walk a straight line to achieve it. Therein lies our folly. For the wise knows that the foolish must walk the crooked path, seeing all the sights and smelling all the wildflowers before the path ends at the heart’s desire.
The dream of our destination follows the path of the crow’s flight. While dreaming, it is possible to fly over obstacles, above the winding path, taking the shortest route to our pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Within the dream of our goal, all the loose ends are tied into place and the winds of change are harnessed to fill our sails with smooth passage. Thank heavens for the dream, for its vision keeps us going when we sink into deep valleys of despair and doubt. Keeping the dream buoyant is the propulsion of hope and a prayer.
Unique as a falling snowflake, the dream, colored by our most intimate perception, is seen only by the inner eyes. The plan is the outer eyes’ vision. Our mind lays out a map to achieve the dream, which is dictated by the crow, for this wise bird finds the most direct route. But crow does not bestow wings for such a voyage. The winds of fate swirl and play the tempest’s game. Our task is to grow the wings of surest flight. Will we be forever dust floating upon these winds or will we shift our shape into arrows directed by the force of our intent?
Inspired passion sounds like a choir of angels, bringing sweet song to our quest. Passion drives the dream and molds the plan into final form, finding its lofty domain under the wings of the crow. When we are lost on another twist in the trail, passion lifts us. Passion is the soul’s cry for freedom, the dream’s higher calling, and the plan’s ultimate view. It is the candle that alights when desperation hovers like thick fog. Without love, passion is as absent as the sun at dawn. All great weavers, potters and poets know love as the answer. It is the final form of beauty’s shape and size. Love is the secret power that manifests the dream.
Wisdom does indeed, walk in circles. The circle is a common symbol germane to many cultures around the world. The four directions of the circle are like the four points on a compass and each direction represents an aspect of the fundamental energies of the universe. Theoretically, any subject matter can be placed on a wheel and have its attributes described in the four directions. Manifesting a creation requires movement around the wheel of your life.
“As the crow flies” is the distance between two directions on the circle of life’s manifestations. In the West direction we find the dream. In the East lives the plan. In the North we find our inspired passion and in the South is love’s completed form. As the crow flies from the west’s dream to the east’s plan, it must then journey north to find inspired passion, which empowers the move south to love’s form. Traversing the wheel from west to east and then from north to south, crow marks the Celtic knotwork of the labyrinthine path of life. She flies straight and true, in the Above zone of higher sight, yet she honors the journey Below that is fraught with spiraling circles of experience and insight.
The crow in her flight of regal majesty recognizes the natural laws of attraction, correspondence and causation. With each straight line and each curve, the design is plotted on the matrix of life’s journey and from her vista above, she wisely notes the spiraling loops and heart patterns formed on life’s gridwork. Crow flies the path of your soul's mythic dream, marking the trail of your life’s destiny.
Standing in my kitchen bay window warmed by the morning sun, I watch the crows come and feed on scattered shreds of stale bread and apples gone too soft for enjoyment. While those gathered on the lawn peck and feed, there is always one, the sentry crow, perched high in the old maple, keeping watch on the activity below. If I venture outdoors, his cackling alerts the others of my presence. And if perchance, the neighboring red tail hawk circles above, a wild raucous of cawing ensues until the predator wings away.
Sentry crow’s model of the observer role is an image salient to the achievement of any dream or goal in life. Without the observer we are lost in the details of activity and can easily lose sight of the prize. Sentry crow sees the big picture, sensing the danger of meandering off track due to distraction or the predatory nature of life’s other commitments and duties. Sentry crow keeps careful watch over the trail. She caws out a warning or gives direction instigated by the inner voice of spiritual guidance, dream interpretation, or answers to riddles that plague the mind. Sentry crow is a good guide.
Consider this aspect of yourself which enacts the observer’s role. How do you perceive this guardian within you? Do you pay heed to its cawing advice? Envisioning the sentry crow as perched upon my left shoulder, I take pause at its presence and reassess whatever lays before me. Like my guardian angel, I sense a strong field of protection surrounding me when the sentry appears. I stop what I am doing and listen to its intuitions. Sometimes this presence is a gentle pressure while other times it has the jarring effect of a blaring trumpet! Either way, my awareness shivers up my spine and I sit up straight at full focus and attention. The witnessing sentry is a resource we can always draw upon whenever we forget the path or become befuddled over the next step on the journey. Sentry Crow reminds us that we never walk alone.
Once found; crow will take that nugget of gold, her treasure, to a high place where only she can enjoy it. Perched atop her mountain of a telephone pole or oak tree, she pecks at its essence, finding the core of its golden center. She savors the moment of a dream accomplished.
Unlike the crow, we often fail to relish our newfound treasures because the achievement of the goal doesn’t live up to the dream. A dream achieved creates a very different picture than what we first envisioned. Is this it, we wonder? The reality achieved absent the glitter of our imagined goal brings us up short and we sigh with deflation. The goal realized is never the same because the journey of achievement changes us dramatically. No longer are we the same people who dreamt the dream, and we experience difficulty when reconciling the dichotomy between the dream and manifested reality. The resulting pain of our disillusionment can thwart us from savoring our nugget of gold.
Crow teaches us to remain in the moment of achievement, to take the prize to the heights of our consciousness and to find the core lesson, the truth beyond all perception, despite the inevitable illusions that follow. Crow sees and understands each step in the journey found at the heart of the golden treasure.
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Margaret Lewis,
Author & Shamanic Practitioner
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Margaret H. Lewis is a highly regarded professional speaker, workshop facilitator, business and personal development consultant, gifted spiritual practitioner and author. For over 20 years she has provided countless training seminars and workshops on a wide range of life management and personal development skills.
Margaret is a graduate of an intensive four-year program of spiritual study, receiving her professional certification and ministerial license. Margaret holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Ohio State University and is a graduate of the Science and Art of Herbology Course, created by Rosemary Gladstar, author of Herbal Healing for Women (Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 1993).
From 2000 - 2005, Margaret directed Lynn Andrews’s website where she designed, wrote, and taught Online Spirituality Courses with Ms. Andrews. In her role as the Online Course Creator, Margaret oversaw the entire learning environment and curriculum presentation. Margaret has ventured out on her own, offering a monthly newsletter, message board, and online courses on her website at www.wisdomwalks.
com/.
Margaret’s first book, Wisdom Walks In Circles, The Spiraling Journey of Your Inner Voice offers a compelling story of a hero's journey to the heart of intuition.
Woven within this tale are the essential elements needed to forge a deep and lasting relationship with your inner voice of intuition. Among the numerous titles written about accessing intuition, none have taken this unique storytelling approach. While whisking you into the center of sacred wheel teachings, Margaret offers empowering strategies to break through the internal and external challenges we face when attempting to access our often-elusive inner voice of wisdom.
Please visit Margaret at http://www.wisdomwalks.
com/ to learn more about Wisdom Walks In Circles, and Landings, The Spiritual Return to Living Fully in the Body, her new book, which is in the publication process.
In private consultations, Margaret has assisted hundreds of people in releasing the blocks that are holding them back from achieving their goals and visions of fulfillment. To set up an appointment with Margaret, please email her at
info@wisdomwalks.com
or visit her online store at
http://www.wisdomwalks.
com/.
Come join Margret in an online adventure of spirit with unique coursework offering pathways for reuniting with your Wise Inner Teen!
Visit her site for a full course description:
www.wisdomwalks.com/
Services/kuanyin.html
A Note from Margaret:
I hope you will join me for my February, 2006 online course, The Spiraling Journey of Kuan Yin, Wayshower of Compassionate Intuition.
Each of my online courses focuses upon a direction on the wheel of life. At each direction on the wheel is a life stage and an attribute of our intuitive nature.
The wheel is used as a model to illuminate the pathway leading to the intuitive voice as described in my book, Wisdom Walks in Circles, the Spiraling Journey of your Inner Voice.
My online courses place the developmental stages of life, spanning from childhood to wise age, around the wheel and describe the inherent gateways of intuition at each life stage.
www.wisdomwalks.com/
Services/kuanyin.html
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