The Witness and Mountain Goat: Oracle and Animal Guidance for the Week

This morning I felt called to pull our weekly cards from two different decks than I usually use. I’ve also recorded this reading. So if you’d rather listen, than read the message, you have that option.

 

So what is it we need to be aware of this week for our highest good?

From The Mystical Shaman Oracle:  The Witness

Right away I feel called to share that one of the key things I learned in Oracle School is witnessing and observing my own patterns and behaviors. This isn’t always an easy thing to do because with this can sometimes bring shame, pain, and/or guilt.

The Witness card asks us this week to pay attention to those moments these difficult feelings come up. And it’s important to remember that when they do to be gentle and compassionate with yourself. Within these moments that can feel painful and difficult is an opportunity to get to the root cause and begin to make changes to course correct and feel better about ourselves.

To the right of the woman, there is an eye and what appears to be light shining from it. I see this as reminding us to take time in stillness or meditation when uncomfortable feelings come up and tune into our own intuition. I see the eye on the card as representative of the third eye chakra which is about intuition, imagination, thought, and self-awareness.

Additional insight from the guidebook provides this invitation: The witness that has been by your side all along is now ready to become your ally. You thought you were the doer, but today you discover that things happen when you get out of your own way. Witness creation unfolding before you. Change reality by finding stillness and letting your true intent reveal itself.

All answers lie within, even when those answers are sometimes hard to acknowledge. But once we can become aware of them we can practice self-care and forgiveness towards ourselves, which then can help us to not only be more compassionate to ourselves but to also witness others in a more gentle way and also extend that compassion.

What animal ally is guiding us as we learn to be witness to ourselves?

From Messages from Your Spirit Animal Guides Oracle: Mountain Goat

So, yes, it can feel like an uphill and difficult climb when we witness and look at challenging feelings. But mountain goat reminds us that in order to restore balance to our whole being and especially within ourselves, being witness to the why of these feelings, becoming aware, and then working toward change will eventually lead us to feel freer and fully alive and experience more joy.

A line from the song Lonely Goatherd by Richard Rodgers popped into my head – High on a hill was a lonely goatherd. I see this as a reminder of the importance of being alone with ourselves and practicing stillness in order to find more balance in our every day lives.

Additional insight from the guidebook provides this invitation: It’s unrealistic to expect your life to stay completely in balance at all times, as it’s continuous interplay between the various polarities. Even the seasonal adjustments of light and dark slowly and gradually shift in a ceaseless dance. Notice how you feel when something is out of balance, and then take necessary steps to adjust in ways that provide greater equilibrium.

I’d like to add to this a quote I learned from my mom which is “this too shall pass.” When we are in a state of feeling dark, fearful, guilt or shame, it’s a signal to pause and just be with ourselves while also trusting that as it always does, it will eventually pass. Even when we may not have complete clarity of a challenging time in the moment, clarity often comes when we trust we will move through it, and insight will be revealed to guide and help us at some point. So staying in awareness is our friend (along with mountain goat!) to have beside us as we journey forward.

I hope this reading was helpful. Enjoy your week!

XO,

Barbara

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Cards used for this week’s general reading: The Mystical Shaman Oracle by Alberto Villoldo, Colette Baron-Reid and Marcela Lobos and Messages from Your Animal Spirit Guides Oracle by Dr. Steven Farmer.

The Bliss of the Non-Thinker. Part Two of Abstract Painting Incorporating Oracles.

Yesterday I shared on my blog how I felt out of my comfort zone creating this painting.

It occurred to me later in the day around 5 pm that it would be interesting to incorporate pulling an oracle card to see what message my first ever abstract painting had for me.

I’m sure you know by now my love of oracle cards. It’s my almost daily ritual to gain deeper insight into myself, plus I enjoy helping other’s do the same through my oracle card reading service.

This morning I set the painting in front of me and asked what message it had for me. I pulled a card from The Wisdom of the Oracle and received the card, Thinker. I chuckled quietly to myself.

As I shared yesterday I learned to move through the process of the painting. I’m now learning to just be with it and let it speak to me. It was all about getting out of my analytical mind and just feeling it.

The essential meaning of the card is: strategy; being analytical and logical. But I went with what I felt as I pulled that card and softly chuckled to myself. There are times for being just what the essential meaning of thinker is, but then there are times when it is the opposite as it was for me.

I wrote this in my journal:

The process of this abstract was about letting go of that overactive thinking mind of mine. Rest your eye and your mind. Relax into the colors. Just be with what is. Relax your weary wings that sometimes feel burdened when you try to analyze or find purpose in everything. Allow the universe to move through you with no agenda. Sink into the here and now and simply observe as your thoughts float away into nothing and into bliss.

I also received some fun, insightful and lovely comments on my post and on Facebook, plus some synchronistic moments about the painting. This just added to additional insight that feels so rewarding and fulfilling. Thank you!

P.S. I’ve decided to call this painting Blissful Non-Thinker.  🙂

XO,

Barbara

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Out of My Comfort Zone

abstract painting

My first ever abstract painting. I’m not sure what to think, but I’m allowing myself to just ponder what is and what unfolded. And the thing is, I’m just not quite sure. So as one of my good friends taught me and sometimes has to remind me to do…I’m simmering.

I’m taking part in an online class called The Sacred Circle. I was drawn to the title of the class as anything sacred with the word circle usually gets my attention.  🙂 I wasn’t too keen about the abstract part of it but was willing to give it a shot.

I’m not sure abstract painting is my thing. Though I do love the colors I used. But I kept feeling like I wanted to make something I could recognize. Like a bird, or a flower, or something than just splotches of paint. What’s the point of abstract I kept wondering?

I felt uncomfortable. I even started over after I had a bunch of color on the canvas. I just wasn’t feeling it so I put two coats of gesso over it and started again.

I posted my painting in the private Facebook group for the class and the teacher, Denise, said, “Abstract asks us to let go and create.”

Another student said, ” Don’t think too much, enjoy the feeling of it. Even if it feels a bit strange in the beginning.”

Two powerful statements that not only apply to painting but to anything new we try or a challenge we are working through.

I thought about the writing of my latest memoir. How I had to learn to let go and feel my way through the experience of what I was going through last year and working through a wound that needed to be healed. And then I went through it again as I wrote my book. It was, at times, uncomfortable in the middle of it all, both the experience and the writing of it. 

But what I was going through, I’d come to understand, wasn’t something I could logically find an answer for. It was by feeling my way through it even when it felt incredibly strange, painful, and lonely that I now find myself in this new space of freedom within. It no longer feels strange but welcoming as I enjoy this new me that I’ve evolved into.

As I’ve been writing this post, I’ve glanced up a few times at my painting hanging in front of me. I feel it growing on me. I’m actually feeling some delight looking at it. I see the joy in the colors. I feel a swirl of excitement that I gave this a try.

I feel myself letting go of that darn perfectionist part of me. So perhaps this is what it’s all about. 

The definition of abstract: existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence.

This makes sense. I see what I need to see and feel from the painting, and those who look at it will see and feel what they need to. There is nothing concrete in this painting and only perspective.

Nothing to prove. But to just let go and create and then take part in the evolving of whatever its meant to be.

Hmmmmm, perhaps I do like abstract after all.  🙂

XO,

Barbara

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