Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Journey to Your Spirit Animal

Many different traditions, from around the world and across time, involve a guide or helper in the form of a spirit animal. This guided visualization is a meditative tool you can use to meet an animal spirit helper and learn from it. Once you have met the spirit animal, you will have a connection with it and can interact with it during everyday meditations without having to go through the guided visualization again. At different times during your life, different animals may appear to help and guide you; you can use this journey more than once, to meet those different spirit helpers.

You can record this meditation and play it back as you relax and do the visualization, or you can have someone read it to you. This journey is my original work, so if you choose to share it with anyone else, please be sure to include proper credit.



Journey to Your Spirit Animal
by Laura Perry

Today you will journey to a place where you can meet your spirit animal and learn its energy and purpose in your life. Once you have reached your spirit animal, spoken with it and learned about it, you may make its energy and purpose part of your life.

Choose a time and place where you will be undisturbed while undertaking this visualization. Loosen any tight clothing and sit or lie down in a comfortable position. A sitting position is the better choice if you tend to fall asleep during meditations.

Let us begin.

Relax your body and feel your weight upon the Earth. Feel your breath and your heartbeat slow as you sink down into the Earth, growing heavier and heavier. You become one with the Earth beneath you.

You see before you in your mind’s eye a great darkness. Look into this darkness. Feel the warmth and closeness of a cave, the security of the womb of the Earth. You are in a dark cave. You can see nothing at all. But you can feel the warm, moist air and smell the deep, rich earth. All sound is muffled by the still air deep in the cave.

As you try to look around you see a pale light far ahead. This is the mouth of the cave. You begin to move toward the cave mouth, toward the light of the outside. You must climb up, out of the depths of the Earth, to get to the cave mouth. It is a long climb. When you reach the opening you look out on a lush countryside, green and alive, with all the things you find beautiful in the outdoors.

Step out of the cave and into the fresh air. Look around you and see the beauty, the energy, the life. Smell the scent of plants and flowers and Earth. Feel the warm sun on your skin, the soil beneath your feet. This is a good place, a safe place, a place full of life.

Explore the countryside around you. Feel its energy, the abundance of moving, living, growing energy. As you explore you hear the sound of a babbling brook. Follow this sound through the land until you find the brook.

It is a small, shallow creek but you know that it is a token of a much greater boundary. It extends in either direction farther than you can see. As you look across the brook you see that on the far bank is the animal whose spirit you have called upon: your spirit animal. It awaits you, ready to answer your questions and lend its energies to your life path.

To reach your spirit animal you must cross the brook. Where your spirit animal stands, the land on the other side of the brook, there is only truth. Any questions you ask will be answered in full truth. Do not cross the creek if you seek other than the deepest truth for your life path. Now it is time to cross the water.

Stand on the bank in front of the creek. It is narrow; you will cross it with three steps. Set one foot into the water on this side of the creek. With this step you leave behind your preconceptions about your spirit animal. Set the other foot in the water on the far side of the stream. With this step you leave behind your preconceptions about your life path. Step out onto the bank on the other side. You have crossed the border from your domain to that of purest truth. Before you is the animal you have called. Before you waits your spirit animal.

You may now speak to your spirit animal. Ask of it anything you wish to know. It will answer fully and in truth. But especially, ask how its energies and purpose pertain to your life path. Begin by asking it why you chose it and why it chose you. When you have done with speaking to your spirit animal, say so and you will continue on your journey.

LONG PAUSE

You are now familiar with your spirit animal’s energies. You know why it calls to you and how it can be a part of your life path. You may now make your spirit animal’s energies and purpose a part of you as well. This is a mating of spirits, a merging of energies. From this mating will be born a new you, a fresh approach to your life’s activities and a renewed sense of purpose on your path. Ask your spirit animal and it will show you how. When you are done, say so and you will continue on your journey.

PAUSE

Feel now the energies within you, merging and emerging. You are your spirit animal. You know the way into this place. Should you ever wish to do so, you can come here again. Now it is time to leave, bringing back with you all that you have learned and all that you have become on this journey. Say your goodbyes to your spirit animal, knowing that you carry its spirit with you now and always. You have a connection now; you can call upon your spirit animal any time without having to make the full journey back here.

PAUSE

Look around you at the beautiful countryside until you find the brook again. Once again you will cross it in three steps, but the steps have new meaning now. Set one foot into the creek on this side. With this step you bring the truth of this place into you and hence into the rest of your life. Set the other foot into the water on the far side. With this step you bring the energies of your spirit animal to your consciousness where you can use them in all your life. Step out onto the bank of the creek, on the side where you began earlier. With this step you bring the realization that you are the only one who truly has the power to direct your life path; you walk your own walk; you choose your own life.

Stroll across the beautiful countryside taking in the sights, sounds, smells, sensations. This beauty is all within you. This much life, vitality, strength, and abundance is within you. You know where it is now and how to reach it. When you are in need of beauty, of great richness of life, seek out this place within you. It is always here.

Now as you move across the landscape you see the mouth of the cave, the opening whence you were born into this place. Enter the cave now, knowing that this is the portal to your inner self, to tranquility, beauty and strength. Through this cave you are reborn to yourself, to your own life.

Feel the warm, secure darkness around you as you move deep into the cave. Feel the energy within you: your new knowledge, the energy of your spirit animal, the spark of life within you. This is who you truly are: what can be seen only with the heart. Look inside you now and see your beauty, your strength, your purpose. You carry these with you now and always. Remember them well.

The air in the cave grows gently and gradually cooler as you move toward the far end, toward the surface of the earth. You feel the weight of your body in the earth. You grow slowly and gently lighter as the earth releases you, as you return to your starting place. Feel your breath and your heartbeat as you center yourself once again in your body.

You have returned from a great journey, a pilgrimage within yourself. Awake, arise and refresh yourself as a traveler might do. But remember that you are only at rest; you have not yet reached your journey’s end. Allow the spirit animal's energy to enter your daily life, that it may help you along the way.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Thunder Meditation

When you need to raise energy for a purpose - healing, moving forward, achieving a goal - this meditation is an effective tool. Always make sure you clarify your purpose and focus on it before raising energy; send the collected energy to its purpose then ground yourself well to release any stray energy.

You can record this meditation and play it back as you relax and do the visualization, or you can have someone read it to you. This meditation is my original work, so if you choose to share it with anyone else, please be sure to include proper credit.

Lightning on the Columbia River by Ian Boggs
Accessed via Wikimedia Commons
Thunder Meditation
by Laura Perry

You are standing outside in a field at the base of a grassy hill. Feel the soft air around you, the warm sun on your skin, the damp earth beneath your bare feet.

Before you stands a square stone as high as your chest, rough on the sides but smooth and flat on top. You know this great stone is an altar. You walk up to the monolith, reaching out toward it. You feel the magic here and know this place has been special time out of mind. You know, too, that here you can gather the energy to fulfill your purpose.

Place your hands on top of the stone, palms down, and feel its smooth, cool surface. Speak to the stone through your hands; tell it why you are here, why you must raise energy. Feel the stone acknowledge your thoughts, your needs. The energy of your body connects with the energy of the stone and of the earth beneath it through the palms of your hands. You sense the great depth and weight of the stone, the immensity of the earth’s energy beneath you.

As you become aware of this connection you look up towards the hill. Storm-clouds begin to roll in around the top of the rise and the breeze picks up. An inner urge compels you to leave the altar and climb the hill. As you remove your hands from the stone you retain the energetic connection with the earth, sensing it all through your body. You begin to walk up the hill.

Under your bare feet you feel the smooth grass and the damp earth as you climb upwards. The cool wind brushes your skin, tugs at your hair. You taste the mist in the air as you breathe deeply, filling your lungs. As you approach the summit of the hill the storm clouds converge and the sky darkens. The electricity in the air makes your skin tingle and the earth vibrates beneath your feet.

When you reach the hilltop you lie down on your back in the grass, the earth pressing against your body as you settle down onto the ground. The wind whips across your bare skin, raising goosebumps all over you. The air crackles with electricity as the storm gathers. Thunder rumbles in the distance. The smell of ozone lies heavy around you.

The storm moves steadily toward the hill, toward you. Your body tingles more and more as the storm approaches, from your scalp all the way down to your toes. The energy swirls through you, centering in your belly. You see the core of power glow within you.

Suddenly the thunder cracks above you and the rain begins to pour. You feel the raindrops slap your skin, light and soft at first but thumping harder and harder as the rain pours down. The water runs in little rivulets across the earth, snaking along your arms and legs, soaking the ground around you.

The driving rain stings your skin all over. Lightning strikes the hilltop beside you, thrusting electricity through the earth. You tingle and the core of power within you grows stronger, glowing and pulsing in time with your heartbeat. The thunder cracks and rumbles, shaking the earth. Lightning strikes all around you, lighting up the storm-dark sky. With each blazing bolt the energy grows stronger within you, seeping into you from the ground below, passing into you through the air.

The storm continues until you have absorbed all the energy you can hold; you are filled with glowing energy, full of power and purpose. What you cannot contain is safely absorbed by the earth beneath you. You revel in the power - the thunder, the lightning, the howling wind, the driving rain. You are one with the wild.

As the storm begins to abate you feel the energy still glowing and pulsing within you. The thunder and lightning cease. The rain slackens to a drizzle then a gentle mist. The clouds begin to drift away. You feel the ground warm beneath you and you feel your body energized and full of power, ready to move to a purpose. You stand up, feeling the now warm air against your damp skin as you begin the walk back down the hillside.

You step over to the stone, to the place you stood before the storm. You feel a tension in the air as if the stone were waiting for you to take action. You feel the core of power pulsing within you as you once again place your hands on the surface of the stone. The stone remembers what you told it before and reminds you of your purpose here. As you focus your mind on this purpose you open the energy flow through your palms and into the stone, connecting with it and through it, with the earth.

You picture clearly in your mind the purpose for which you need the energy and once again instruct the stone about that purpose, speaking through your touch. When the goal is focused within your mind, you gather up the energy in your belly and send it out through your hands into the stone, into the earth, to the purpose for which you intend it. You empty out all your energy to this purpose knowing it will go where you choose to send it and nowhere else. Picture now in your mind the purpose completed, the goal fulfilled.

Now feel your hands on the stone, your palms on the smooth, cool surface. Feel the earth beneath your bare feet, the soft breeze and the warm sun on your skin. You are done here, your purpose fulfilled. You thank the stone and the earth and the energies of this place for their help. Take your hands off the stone and experience your body as whole and separate, relaxed and at peace. You have done what you needed to do. Now you turn to go, knowing you can find your way here again whenever you have need.