Dark Shadows Upon the Wing

Animal synchronicities can be quite revealing, quite literally. Here are a few tales that fit the bill...

The inspiration for today's post comes from a post I just read on Trish and Rob MacGregor's Synchronicity blog. Yesterday they told the story of a person wondering why an owl had died outside their yoga studio, and whether the event had any synchronistic meaning. For synchronicities I have always felt the best way to deal with them is to FEEL them, not to analyze them too much. A symbol could mean a hundred different things according to the person's personal experience, culture, and life circumstances. Owls are generally symbols of wisdom. Maybe the studio/owner needs to allow a little more wisdom from some source, as it is dying...

Interestingly, just as I was travelling to work on the subway, about two hours before I read that post, I was reading Eldon Taylor's book Mind Programming on my Kindle. In the chapter i was reading, Taylor wrote about how a much loved dog of his had died after being shot. Taylor writes that although he could not prove it, he was pretty sure who the assassin was. He approached that person, and was so full of rage that it took all of his willpower not to inflict physical injury on the said individual.

Yet the event was to have an unexpected twist, for not long after, Taylor's adult daughter told him that her cat had died, but returned to her in a dream to deliver a message to her. That message was that the cat had died so as to save her daughter's baby's life. The cat told the woman via the dream that her baby had stopped breathing, and that she should get out of bed and go to it immediately. This she did, and the baby had in fact stopped breathing. Fortunately after administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, the baby was revived.

Taylor then goes on to state that he believes that some animals die so as to save human lives. If this is true it is not too much to consider the possibility that they might also sacrifice themselves to deliver an important message to a human being. Perhaps the owl which died in front of the yoga studio was such a case.

The reason I refer to this profound idea is that it reminded me of a profound experience that happened to me at an inner child/healing/meditation retreat some years ago. My father and brother had died only a few weeks before that gathering, so it was a tough time for me. My father had died unexpectedly of a heart condition at the age of 58, and my young brother Jerome had committed suicide just hours after his funeral. One of the most traumatic things I have ever had to do was going to the morgue to formally identify his body. I will never forget it when they wheeled his cold body out on a metal tray. he had hung himself, so he was not in the most physically attractive state, as you can imgine. His eyes were still open, and as I looked into them I almost thought that there was life in there. But alas, it was just fanciful thinking. I left the hospital weeping uncontrollably.

Jerome was just 21 years old.

Given this, at the time of the healing group gathering a few weeks later, I was dealing with a lot of issues related to death and dying. The gathering as held over a weekend, in a retreat on a farm in countryside not too far from Wellington, New Zealand.

During a break on the Saturday afternoon, I felt the need for a little alone time, and stepped outside to do a little meditation. I sat down in a chair, which was situated such that one wall of the building was directly behind me, and I looking out into countryside. As I relaxed a small bird suddenly flew straight at me, swerving upward just before it would have struck my head. The bird did not slow its flight, and smacked right into the wall at full speed directly above my head. It fell directly to my feet. Shocked, I looked straight down at the little bird before me and right into the one open eye facing me. My eyes were less than a metre away from the bird's, as I peered directly into its very being. I felt and saw its consciousness. Then within a moment the eye clouded, dimmed and closed, seemingly in slow motion. I literally saw and felt the bird's consciousness evacuate its body.

It was all rather shocking. I picked up the little bird, hoping that it would awaken, but it never did. It is the only time in my life I have ever seen the final moments of a living thing’s life in full intimacy. The bird shared its death with me.

There was something so profound in that intimate moment that words cannot express it, and to this day I cannot articulate what it was. Yet it seemed as if it was meant to be, that the bird's death and my psyche were part of a greater connection in way that can be sensed, but not full recognised.

I have often talked about soul issues, and how each of us carry them. Soul issues contain within them a theme and a narrative that we are destined to explore, whether we like it or not. One of my soul issues has been the fear of death. I suspect I am not the only one carrying this issue.

Just three months before my father and brother died I had been travelling around the south island of New Zealand on my summer break (I was teaching in Wellington). At that time, while sleeping in a dorm in the small town of Nelson, at the very tip of the South Island, I had an extremely eerie dream. I dreamed that I was floating, disembodied, beside an old wooden fence. Inside the fence was a cemetery, where old decaying headstones jutted out of the earth. I floated along, as eerie music played in the background, like an old horror movie. I awoke, spooked. Just a day or two later I awoke from an afternoon nap, alone in the same dorm room. From the silence of the musty room a male voice spoke to me very clearly. It said these precise words (and I will never forget them):

"Dark shadows will cross your path."

The voice wasn't kidding.