intuitive oracle guidance

Getting Back to What Matters

Posted by Barbara Techel
Getting Back to What Matters
Swallowtail butterfly outside my kitchen window
 
You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes you. This is the place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen. ~Joseph Campbell
 
So many distractions this morning that could have easily derailed me from my commitment to working on my new book. Waking up late because I didn’t feel well overnight, to John being crabby, of which he eventually shared with me it was regarding a work challenge, to the insurance company calling to help me file my claim for the damage to my car from a hit and run.
 
When I first became a writer, I admit I was entranced by the fantasy of solitude and spilling out the contents of my heart effortlessly on a daily basis. I’ve learned a lot in eleven years and the reality that is. While there are many days it is divine and flows with ease, most days just don’t shake out this way. Writing is work. But it’s work I don’t intend on giving up anytime too soon.
 
Though I almost threw in the towel today and said the heck with it. I’m tired after a restless night, the energy was heavy in the house with John’s concerns over work, and then dealing with three different people regarding the claim on my car….well, a nap sure seemed like the better thing to do.  🙂
 
But I thought about the manifesto I’d written for my book yesterday and my About Page I recently updated on my website. While this book is another memoir, it’s more than that. It’s about helping empower women to open to their inner voice, express their fears and desires, expand their perspective, emerge into new possibilities, and continue to evolve as their True Self.
 
Sitting down to do my daily oracle card reading for myself and then journal as my daily ritual, it was confirmed what I needed to tap into to get my butt in my writing chair despite all the distractions from the morning.
 
As I shuffled, I heard to count down to the fourth card from the top. 
 
From the Wisdom of the Oracle: Higher Power #4
 
I then pulled a card from an inspirational deck I recently provided feedback for (of which I can’t share yet as it is still in the works, but will share when I can!).
 
The card was SHARE.
 
Okay, universe. I hear you. A reminder that I’m not writing this book alone. To get out of my small self that was feeling tired and irritated by how the morning had played out so far. I’m not creating this book alone and it’s my connection to something bigger than me that I felt re-energized and ready to get to the task at hand. Pulling the Share card a reminder that in sharing my story, I will make a difference in the lives of women my book is meant to touch.
 
And it triggered remembering a quote I recently read by Joseph Campbell which I shared above. It’s true the importance of taking time each day to “simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.”
 
This place, of which I have as a physical space in my writing cottage, I also feel it’s important to say that it’s also that inner space that we must take time to be with each day. Though, of course, this is what Joseph Campbell speaks to also. While the physical place is often more easily achieved, it’s the inner space we don’t always value enough in a fast-driven society. But it’s the space in which the answers lie.
 
From sitting with what felt like an empty well after the interruptions of the morning, to finding my center once again, moving to my writing desk became a choice that truly matters to me and the impact I want to leave on the world. And while my writing session wasn’t without effort today, I’m in a place of contentment for having stayed committed to what is important to me.
 
Just as I finished writing this post, I remembered the photo I captured of a swallowtail butterfly outside my kitchen window early last evening. Looking up it’s meaning made me smile as another beautiful reminder of how the universe is always supporting us with signs to guide us along our path:
 
Inspiration, intuition, higher consciousness, transformation, resurrection, flashes of insight, power of beauty, strength in vulnerability.
 
XO,
Barbara
P.S. My reward for doing what matters today besides feeling good I did the work? This afternoon I’m going with my dear friend to see the movie, Christopher Robin with Winnie-the-Pooh and the Gang! I’m sure glad author A.A. Milne did what mattered to him.

Reflections on Feeling Stuck From Wild Woman Oracle and Betty Blue Flowers

Posted by Barbara Techel

A saying exists: a writer gets to live twice. First we live, and then we write about how we lived. Like a cow that brings up its feed and chews it again, a writer has a second chance to digest experience. The second time is in the notebook or in front of a computer screen. Often the second is the real time for a writer. It is then we get to claim our existence. ~Natalie Goldberg, Let the Whole Thundering World Come In

There is so much depth and truth in this statement Natalie shares in her new book about her recent journey with cancer and how that unfolded for her. Not only did she have to endure her experience of cancer once, but she opened herself up again to all the feelings for others to glean from it what they will. And in large part because it’s who she is as a writer.

As I woke this morning my mind immediately drifted to where I left off yesterday working on writing my newest, and third, memoir. I was feeling very stuck. Which led me to feeling frustrated. Which then led me to trying to talk myself down from the ledge of being hard on myself. I reminded myself that this is a process. I also reminded myself that I have my own process and that I must trust it. And all of this…this is part of the process of writing a book.

For me, I’m not just actively writing when I’m at the keyboard, it’s what I want to write in upcoming chapters, or the next days writing on my mind, that drifts in and out most days when I’m in the thick of a new book. It’s not always easy for me to turn it off. I’ve come to a better place in understanding now that this is how I write and thus I’m much more comfortable with how I move through my process.

But there are times I feel stuck, as I did this morning, dreading the moment I’d come to the computer screen. As I walked out my bedroom patio door to my writing cottage, across the deck, it was the flowers in the window planter, called “Betty Blue” that caught my eye.

I reflected on how when the weather is not to their liking, they close, and I’m not able to enjoy their soft blue color I love so much. Instead they look brown and almost as if they are dying. I realized then they just go inward for a time being, conserving their energy, to appear again another day. While they may appear to being doing nothing, it’s truly not the case. They are alive and well within their own process.

So what do I need this morning, I thought, that will guide me along in my process? Normally I meditate first. Then I sit down at the table behind my writing desk, overlooking the gully full of luscious greenery this time of year, ponder a question I’d like Spirit to help me with, write it down, and then pick an oracle card or two to see what insight they have to offer, along with trusting my intuition to guide me, also.

Instead, today I felt called to ponder my question first, write it down, tuck it in my mind as I meditated, and then pull an oracle card from The Mystical Shaman Oracle deck (my new favorite that I can’t seem to get enough of!) and write my insight in my journal.

While the flowers and their reflection had encouraged me to go inward, the first place my eye landed when I picked the Wild Woman card, was her heart. My eye was then drawn to the tree coming out the top of her head.

I wrote: Stay connected to your true nature which is at the heart of who you are.

I felt that vibrate throughout my body as truth. I’d felt stuck because I had fear around what I wanted to write about next – fear of judgement and my ego trying once again to protect me.

As my eye wandered up to the wild branches blooming from Wild Woman’s head I knew I wanted more than anything to let my thoughts flow and branch out into manifestation without fear of how they will land.

Then reading what the booklet had to offer, I smiled as what resonated for me is this: “Your authentic self does not fit in a box. Our light gets dimmed by the restrictions placed upon us as a society. Wild Woman reminds us to shine brightly regardless of perceived outcomes.”

I thought back to Natalie’s quote and how true it is that not only do writers live their experience as our own, but then we subject ourselves to opening and sharing with others, which means what we write may not always be what others agree with. But what we feel called to do, not only as a big part of who we are, but as a way in which we do get this opportunity to move through the experiences of our own lives again, thus gaining even more clarity and understanding of who we truly are.

Spending this time in honoring what was calling to me and time in reflection, I found my way to where I’d left off yesterday, and ended up with words flowing effortlessly from the end of my fingers, and grateful for a keyboard to capture them as fast as they were coming.

XO,

Barbara

Are you feeling stuck in an area of your life? Book a private intuitive oracle guidance session with me here.  I’d be honored to be your guide.