Gargoyles

This one definitely goes under the category of "too odd to have made up."

This morning at about 2:45am, I found myself drifting in and out of sleep in the usual wee-hour-of-the-morning way. When I gently opened my eyes, I was surprised to see Lillithia, my beautiful little cat, perched above me and slightly to my right, sitting and leaning her head down in the graceful way cats do when they're checking something out.

Then I realized that Lill was asleep next to my pillow, and when I looked back at the shadow, it had transformed into the top part of a chair sitting next to where I was sleeping. 

Hmm. The chair looked nothing like it just had a moment ago... Oh well.

I closed my eyes to drift some more, and the next time I opened them, this time looking toward the opposite wall of my room, I saw another small (about a foot and a half tall, seated) somewhat feline shadowy being looking at me. I blinked hard and this time the shadow transformed into another benign object.

Hmm. I could have sworn that was just something else...

I still didn't think much of it (such is the yummy emotional cloak of sleepiness) until I began to do some multidimensional work. I just spent a decent chunk of time in Sedona, most definitely on assignment, both healing and activating aspects of my own consciousness stream and assisting others to do the same. I found myself being pulled back there now, zooming astrally across the landscape toward the red rocks, then accompanying some Sedonian friends deep into the mountains, flipping energetic switches and powering up aspects of the city that have been dormant for way too long. 

To assist in this work, the portion of my consciousness that still rested in Los Angeles activated my heart chakra, swirling my torus field and reaching it upward, toward the sky. When my energy reached the ceiling, a very odd sound jerked me back from my multidimensional travels to the space where I am now sitting and typing this blog post. I slammed back into my body at the same moment as Lillithia waking with a jolt, jumping to attention next to my head, looking at the window.

We were listening to a short, shrill scream or call, repeated about three times. It was not quite animal, and definitely not human, but very close. Half a second later small feet scampered across the roof.

Hmm.

At this point, I began to remember the odd "shadows" I'd seen in my room a few minutes before and replay recent events in my mind.

What exactly was going on?

Seeing shadows or patterns morph into beings and then back into recognizable (and often abstract or otherwise non-uniform structures) is a common way to use intuition to perceive other realms. It is one of the many versions of multidimensional sight, and it is very handy when on a shamanistic journey, whether the journey is purely done within oneself through meditation, or externally situated, such as on a walk through a nature preserve or park, made with the intention to connect with multidimensional beings.

What could I have seen just now?

Well, the creature(s) had reminded me of my cat, Lillithia. And since connecting with her, she has often reminded me of a dragon - so much so, in fact, that I am mostly convinced at this point that cats actually evolved from dragons (which I believe actually existed.) Have you ever really looked into a cat's very reptilian eyes? Or watched them hunt? Scales could have become fur over millennia... 

So although that particular theory is neither here nor there, as the similarities to Lill came to my attention I also remembered last fall's visit from a very magical kindred spirit of mine, who came to stay with me for a week from her home on the East Coast and reported seeing gargoyles on the roofs of houses in my neighborhood (including mine.) 

At the time, I didn't think much of it - I had definitely felt presences outside before (and still do, especially when leaving for the gym in the still-dark pre-dawn hours) and when she mentioned gargoyles, the energy of the concept rang true. That said, I hadn't woken to one leaning over me before.

But what about the scream and the scamper? That gave me pause. Did it get freaked out by my heart energy? If so, something must be done about that - I'm not particularly into beings hanging out in my bedroom who get burned by love...

So I took a look.

I sat up into lotus pose (my preferred meditation style) and began to balance my chakras. Once I felt all open and flowy, I sat my intention origin point firmly in my heart chakra, using that impenetrable energy as a shield (just in case,) and projected my consciousness onto my roof.

Yep, sure enough, smallish shadowy beings darted around me up there, doing the energetic equivalent of sniffing me.

In that moment, I came from a place of defensive offense - if they wanted a fight, I could give them one (albeit one of the heart - a great loophole way to get things done when it comes to clearing space without tying more karmic knots around yourself and an opponent.) That said, I'd much rather parley.

The conversation we had next was not a verbal one, but rather a communication made of feelings, mental images, and impressions of somewhat nebulous ideas and intentions. This is normal when speaking to beings who aren't human.

Yes, they live here.

Yes, they were looking at me.

No, they didn't want any trouble.

In fact, although their energy was not exactly fluffy, they also weren't unfriendly. I do think that there is a potential for friendly camaraderie there.

So I left them a warm greeting and a thought of openness to a chill and mutually beneficial relationship when needed, and I descended back into my body.

There are some people who have a type of racism against certain creatures - and gargoyles fall into this category of being seen as scary and dangerous. But in my experience, the truth is a little different - these are protective beings, originally dragons in the old myths, who have been invoked for centuries to keep places and people safe. 

They don't have to be scary.

And who doesn't want a posse of badass beings who can help when needed? I'm not turning that down.

We'll see what happens....

One more thing. When searching for an image to describe what these dudes looked like, this is the most accurate one I found. (No, they weren't grimacing or snarling, the way you see many gargoyles portrayed in art...)

Happy awesomeness hunting!

(PS: I'm still working on my next book, Starseed Wilding. It'll be about fairies, DNA activation, and other generally randomly interesting stuff. Go here for more info.)

<3

Enchanted Evening

The time is currently 3:38am and I'm up and about on the third night of my sleep experiment.

I've been voraciously reading the book Seth Speaks, along with a couple of others, and it is blowing my mind in entirely new ways. One is by answering questions I never knew I had until I see someone else ask them in print before me as I read. The other is by giving suggestions that are completely new, but super intriguing, like the one I'm trying out now.

This one has me never sleeping more than 6 hours a pop (and, in order to go the whole hog, which I tend to do with odd things like this, I haven't topped 4 hours, just to be sure.) It isn't that you actually sleep any less once all is said and done in any 24 hour period, but the sleep times are moved around, allowing for a couple hours of waking time to break in to any large chunk of sleep. In my case, this is pretty easy since Friday was the last day of school and now Terrence and I are house sitting at a gorgeous place even farther back in the woods than we were before.

Anyway, for the past three nights I've been going to bed at the regular time but setting my alarm for the wee hours of the morning to pop up for a couple of hours, hang out, do some reading, have a cup of tea, maybe a few minutes of yoga, and generally benefit from the nighttime negative ions and energies that I ordinarily sleep through.

The idea behind this is that in the current cultural paradigm I, and probably you too, find ourselves in, we sleep in these massive chunks of sedentary unconsciousness every night. This splits the subjective, creative, emotional dreaming world from the objective, linear, intellectual waking world in a way that is unnatural, apparently - our nature-friendly ancestors would be up at various points in the night, checking to make sure all was well, perhaps doing some nighttime foraging or hunting, etc. Animals still do this, even house dogs and cats, I realized when thinking about it, remembering how my in-laws' little dog goes back and forth from room to room at night, checking on everyone.

Apparently, this huge split, along with the idea that being so still for so long is actually detrimental to the purely physical processes such as blood flow and metabolism (which I get, theoretically,) means that not only waking up a bit at night, but sleeping a bit during the day would even this out. For 9-5 workers, the author of the book recommends the first "nap" to be just after dinner, with the longer sleep periods a few hours later.

I will say that I adore napping and always have. Now I have an excuse to do it :) Although, to be fair, it isn't easy schedule-wise to do this, even for me. But in trying to be pure with my little experiment, I've realized that one should capitalize on that sleepy afternoon hour or so whenever possible and escape to dreamland.

Back to the objective/subjective thing. Apparently the difference between dreaming reality and waking reality is not nearly as huge as we think it is (which I believe, considering some of the caaraaazy nighttime journeys I've had over the years,) and flipping back and forth between the two modes of consciousness gives us a more authentic, "true" sense of the world we inhabit. I get that, and I've noticed a difference there.

Which leads me to...

How is it going?

Interestingly.

I really like being up at night. I'm ordinarily one of those annoying morning people, and I've found that now, I'm more mellow in early hours - not tired, I always awaken refreshed, but not so chipper and bouncy either, which I'm sure anyone I interact with before 10am would tell you is a relief. :)

The first night of my experiment, I woke up at 4am or so. I realized halfway through my 10 minutes of yoga that unless something unexpected was going on, every single person I knew in the world was asleep just then. My team was all vacant! And I shared this wakeful existence with others on the other side of the globe. That was pretty cool.

A drawback has been that I haven't smoothed my schedule so that I have predictable sleep times yet, which makes 6pm sometimes feel like 10:30 or 11 and past my bedtime. I'm trying to stay fluid with it, and there is something very delicious about occasionally waiting to go to bed until you're childishly sleepy. Feels sweet, almost like a piece of candy. I know that sounds odd, but it's my experience.

Tonight, on the first evening in a strange, albeit beautiful, place, I turned in at 10:30pm and set my clock for 2:30am. I awoke at 2:21, noticing the nearly-full moonshine on the bed below me and angling my head to get an eyeful of that magical view. I love how moonlight penetrates you when you gaze at a swollen moon, it has such a cleansing effect. I realized with a quiet chuckle that my body had anticipated my alarm clock and I got up, slowly going through an abbreviated morning routine to be comfortable for my up-at-night time.

Other claims on this new schedule is that creativity and energy will be enhanced and dreams will be more intense and easy to remember. I do feel more creative, especially at night. I've started work on a new book that's been percolating for a couple of weeks, only working at night so far. As for my energy level, I don't think I've given it enough time yet - I haven't noticed a shift in either direction so far.

I will say though, that waking life has taken on an interesting and yummy dreamlike feel. I'm not tired, but my mind and body are working differently. I don't get as caught up in the rush and mental chatter as I ordinarily do. I tend to use mindfulness to help with this, but I've stayed pretty mindful naturally. That alone is worth the shift.

Ok, I'm off to begin to wind down. I'm going back to sleep at 4am (so in 20 minutes or so) and then will arise at 8am, leaving an hour and a half later to go pick my sister up from the train station. Today's her birthday (happy birthday, Michal!) It will be the first time in years that we've gotten to be together on the actual day. Good times.

Happy dreams!