Current of Wishes

Being drawn along the magnetic lines of what we love

This morning I let a gray jay eat out of my hand.

There were three of them skimming the air from tree to tree, calling softly to each other. We saw them inspecting the rocks downhill from where we were sitting and enjoying the morning sun. I could tell they were jays by the way they flew - swooping up and down in a feathery arc - but they weren’t blue and I had forgotten their name. I wished they would come closer so that I could see them better. The current of their intentions merged with mine, and they skimmed and swooped up towards us. Into the fir trees, and down into the grasses again. Then quite close, onto the rocks next to where we were sitting.

The first time I had ever heard of someone feeding jays was in R.D. Lawrence’s “Secret Go the Wolves,” which I read about ten years ago. He describes how, when he would go on walk-abouts in the woods surrounding his home in the Canadian wilderness, he would bring nuts to share with the squirrels, the jays, the raccoons, and chipmunks. I was enchanted with the idea of a bird eating out of my hand and wanted it to happen right away. But like all beautiful things, and especially wild ones, it could not be forced. And so I waited.

In the meantime I came across other people who had been privileged with a bird perching for a snack. And I always thought how nice it would be for that to happen to me.

I have been noticing in the recent years of my life, that suddenly around the next corner, in an unsuspecting moment in time, the very thing I have been wanting and hoping for will arise of its own accord. Popping up like an autumn bolete (a mushroom) growing up to two feet in height overnight.

That gnomes might be involved is hardly in question.

I realize that this ripening process has always been happening, but recently it has become more obvious. And what impresses me the most, is that these spontaneous arisings usually occur after I have either forgotten about having the desire in the first place, or relaxed into the space of its perceived absence without any feelings of lack. When I look out over the tapestry of my life, I can see the convergence points, both small and large, where the pattern within the weaving changes unexpectedly on account of some wish of mine becoming fulfilled spontaneously. Or at least seemingly so. I know as well as you do, that gnomes or no gnomes, mushrooms do not just pop up out of the blue. They are the seasonal fruition of the running mycelium extending its luminous network throughout the living soils. And sometimes, when we know what to look for, we can see the mycelium coming to the surface many days or even weeks before the fruiting bodies appear.

The surprising appearance of a wished-for experience is very much the same, with its own vibrational current running through the atmosphere of our perception. Sometimes, when we know what to look for, we can see the signs that our requests made to Life are in their final stages of condensation from energy into form. And while the signs may be abundant, one very clear thing is that the timing is not up to any intellectual decision. It’s more like magnetics. We feel drawn towards the convergence point, just like geese sense an impulse to fly south. There is a part of us that understands elemental synergy and movement on a level below concept or linear logic.

I once heard a teacher say that our inner guidance is always calling us towards what we want, not warning us against what we don’t want. A warning is actually our signal that we are tuned to a frequency outside of our natural well-being. And in that way, a sense of warning is important to heed - though the primary action called for is our recalibration.

I am the only one who can block the flow of my natural well-being.

The geese are not being warned against winter’s arrival, but are being called along the magnetic lines of their desires. In this quantum universe, as the vibrational beings that we are, it makes sense to me that we would be guided towards our preferences, rather than warned away from what we don’t want. Focus and perception are quite literally creative, so even a mere sense of positive anticipation connects us to the growing vibrational web nurturing our desire’s fruition. When we feel what we call a warning, the same is true. Our focus is upon what is undesirable, traveling at superluminal speed towards that outcome.

I have learned to treat fear or worry as warnings of how I am focused, not true information of what is “coming for me.” The feeling of “waiting for the other shoe to drop” is just negatively anticipating, participating in cocreation at a frequency other than where I really want to be. And I get to choose. Form is flexible, mostly space and energy, and for a master (of which all of us have the capacity) nothing is truly set into stone. Not even the rocks.

Learning to relax, circulating my own mantra of “all is well” and “everything is completely okay,” I have shown myself again and again that external circumstances are not fixed, dictated by an external source, but are responding to my energetic atmosphere. It is a cocreation, and I have agency as much as every other point of consciousness does. As I said in the Creation Thought Bath,

“How we blend, how we meet

Depends on our mode of perception”

What a helpful rule of thumb, to allow ourselves to be drawn to what we love, rather than trying to back pedal away from what we want to avoid. When it feels like I need to get away from something, the most helpful question I can ask myself is “what am I actually wanting.” The answer to that question can always be distilled down to a feeling. I want to feel safe. I want to feel ease. I want to feel beautiful. I want to feel appreciation. Once I know what I want to feel, there is a path I can take through my internal realm of thinking and feeling on purpose.

When we follow the feelings of interest and genuine enjoyment, whether in the realms of our thoughts, emotions, words, or actions, then we synchronize with the river of our intentions, flowing steadily from our heart. And the confluence of us and our desires is a moment of collective creation. In this case, me and the gray jay, and their sweet little taloned feet gently pressing into the top of my leg while they gaze at me from one eye, lightly picking the piece of banana chip from my palm, flying off into the nearby fir tree with a murmured chirp.

Sometimes desire is equated with suffering, but I think that is only when desire becomes yearning via belief that the thing wanted is not possible. If I know that I am connected to all things, and all things are connected to me, then I am not separate from my request. I am one with the solution. I am one with my asking. The desire is born in my mind, and it belongs to me. I am in cocreation with it. We are creating it together.

Imagine wanting and knowing it is all possible, and simply allowing the space for it to arise. Granted, sometimes this does require a longer view. A wider lens. A sense of possibility not limited by linear time. Sometimes it requires trusting the unfolding, trusting the process of evolution, of the Earth, of humanity, of the Universe as a whole. A lot of times it requires remembering and reminding. Reminding myself of all the times life has delivered something to me before. Remembering that the kind of cocreation I am a part of is not just with other humans, but with what is truly wild. Consciousness and Nature. Awareness, and the elements, atoms, and electrons of this time-space reality.

One of the three jays was very shy, and would only do a fly-by across our knees to see if they could scoop up the snack. The other two were more curious - one with a few odd feathers out of place, and one who would stay and tilt their head and gaze for many seconds longer. When they hopped onto my knees, and then across to Victor’s, I felt such an intense wave of joy. Like the wild had just given me a kiss.

Then they flew off. In the distance I saw the brightness of their wings flash from between the dark green fir needles.

I sat and reflected on how an experience I had wished for many years ago had finally come true. It was a shift in the pattern. Something to savor. Something to remember. Evidence of a process that is always in motion. I have heard before that in any given moment there are twenty or thirty things occurring that we have asked the Universe for either specifically or implied through our living of life. But we need to be in the frame of mind to notice or receive those arisings. Same street, but who sees the flowers? What we notice comes down to our state of being, our mood, to how open or narrow our focus is.

Right now, I am looking out over the mountains. We are at 6000 feet, with the peerless Mount Shasta visible in the gathering dusk, and an almost endless array of peaks laid out before me like a carpet. The sun has set over the Pacific Ocean, which I cannot see but know is there. The mountains are dark azure and purple in the darkening sky, a pastel pink and bluish green, beneath a layer of slate colored clouds. Beauty is a request I have on repeat. (Along with birds and mountains.) And I have be the one to see it, to notice it, to realize that this is my desire received, and we are one. One in original creative essence, and one in embodied manifestation. It is up to me to be aware that this is something I have said I wanted - and receive the gift that it is.

I am not always in this frame of mind, but when I am there, I know it is the place I want to live from. It is the state of being where life feels truly amazing. Where something as small as the configuration of water droplets on a blade of grass stops me in my tracks. Where I am in the mood to play and have fun, to swing on the playground swings even as an adult, and give a full face smile to a stranger as we cross paths.

In the afternoon we hiked a handful of miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, accessible from where we are staying. I was in a heightened mood of appreciation from the morning time with the birds, and everything seemed extremely beautiful. There was a shock of gold running down the mountainside, which turned out to be a magical quaking Aspen grove. Their leaves trembled emphatically in the wind. Tiny golden hearts all aflutter. The meadowed mountainsides were flush with fall colors, and for the first time this season I felt my body embrace the elemental turning. We passed large stands of California False Hellebore, flowered out with brown stalks standing - looking like a kind of corn to my Wisconsin eyes. Yarrow was there, of course, still medicinal and able to staunch a wound even though yellowed and all dried out. Near the trailheads we passed by a group of people, each one in a very obvious good mood. I commented to Victor how nice it was to see happy people. Sometimes I forget that seeing people enjoy life and themselves is a strong desire of mine. I want to remember more that this is a request I am sending out, so I can notice it more when it arises - as it surely does - and appreciate how the underlying meaning of experiencing what I want is that I am in the current of my wishes. I am cocurrent with my wishes.

As humans focused on expansion and evolving, we often talk about “The Flow” as if it is something outside of ourselves we need to align with. I think the deeper reality is that the flow is our own. It is the river of our own energy that continually carves out our life experience. If we are “going with the flow,” we are following the golden threads of the warp we have decided to set and which we can change at any time. It feels so good to recognize the flow of our own being, and know when we are in sync with its resonance. When we allow ourselves to be drawn along the magnetic lines of our wishes, there is a specific kind of fulfillment available. It is a supreme satisfaction abiding beyond the changing conditions of form. It is a knowing that what our hearts are drawn to is possible. For us and for everyone else, for we are not working with a finite supply, but an infinite quantum universe.