Shadow Puppets Made of Light

I have a backlog in my brain that’s immobilizing me at times. The to-do list is long and overwhelming. Just when I complete something on it, everything else I’ve yet to do starts to pull at me, making me want to sit and do nothing.

It took considerable energy last year to pry us out of fifteen years in Ojai, five more in California, and then get all five of us to Chicago. There was much to do with a deadline in place while also doing life at the same time. The utility companies don’t care that your life got harder or busier; you still have to pay the bills.

Once we landed here, doing what worked in the past was the best we could do, and to be honest, it’s not working quite as it used to. Change is the nature of our reality. If one thing is certain, nothing stays as it is. Everything evolves, and it’s either shift along with it or die out.

What used to produce for us is no longer quite as productive, and what used to support us is supporting us a bit less. Certainly, these times are not helping as people are holding onto what they have a bit more tightly. The fear of what may come hinders flow. I include myself in the word “people” spoken in the prior sentence.

I know this place. I have been here before and before that and before that and before that into infinity. I also know that everything will work out, as it always has. I am an optimist with a healthy dose of faith in the highest timelines for all while incorporating a practicality and grounded awareness of the moment at hand that keeps me from slipping into magical thinking (most of the time) or delusion (hardly ever, although there was that gifting circle thing).

I am having new business cards printed as I type this. This was the first action I took thirty-five years ago when I dipped my toe into the pool of rebranding myself as a professional tarot card reader. This was years before I would establish conscious contact with my guides. Actually, this isn’t completely true, because at that time, my sister and I were experiencing some level of contact in the apartment we shared in Bucktown.

“I am seeing these images of people on the walls of my bedroom,” my sister revealed to me over a late-night meal at a diner after I’d spontaneously shared with her the experience I’d had with our long-dead grandmother showing up in my bedroom in the middle of the night three years before that. I don’t know what/who prompted me to tell the story to her, but it opened her up. Jill’s eyes widened as she listened to my tale, and then as she told me hers. She had been coming home after her cocktail waitressing shift in the darkness of early morning, sitting on the floor of her bedroom with her headphones on, listening to classical music, and watching the people appear on her walls.

“Cool! Let’s go look!” was my response.

We headed back to our third-floor walk-up apartment, sat on the floor of her bedroom in the darkness, and settled in with music playing. Soon, they began to emerge, silhouettes of people made of golden light, who then began to animate. They were all different genders, ages, and from various periods (based on their clothing and hairstyles), and would come in and out of focus. They waved at us and interacted with us, their mouths moving as if they were speaking to us. Some were solo, and others were in pairs and groups.

We were enthralled and a little freaked out. We both saw the exact same beings in the exact same places. Two girls wearing braids and swinging on a porch swing, laughing and waving, come immediately to mind. They would speak to each other, look at us, and then mouth words to us. They were definitely from another era.

Jill and I were the only ones who could ever see them. Friends, relatives, and my boyfriend at the time all tried, but no one else was invited into the show. After trying for a while and not being able to see what we did, our mother dismissed it as an optical illusion.

Jill and I thought maybe it had something to do with the building, but records were hard for us to find. We asked a professional psychic to look into it for us, and he replied with, “Frankly, what you two are experiencing is beyond my abilities.”

Over time, she and I stopped tuning in after being unable to discern what it all was. However, at any moment, either of us could choose to connect, and there it would all be again, mostly projected onto the walls of her bedroom and then eventually bleeding out onto the walls of the dining room, which shared a wall with her bedroom.

Decades later, I now think it was at least partially a record of our experiences in this lifetime and others, especially considering that only she and I could see it. It was for us and only us. We also both saw the face of our stepfather. His appearance there confused us as to the nature of what we were experiencing. It’s all fun when it’s Little House on the Prairie girls swinging on a swing, it’s another thing altogether when your abuser’s face appears.

The creative process of writing is a fascinating thing. I had no intention of sharing about any of this when I started today. What I wanted to talk about was how taking physical action toward what you desire, no matter how small the step, is a spell towards bringing that thing about. I am not sure how the holographic projections/visitations on the walls of my old apartment fit into this, other than they happened the first time I created business cards for my work as a mystic, as I am creating business cards for this version of myself today.

I think the memory is nudging me to literally see the magic in front of me. It’s serving to shake me out of my belief that my clairvoyance/seeing abilities are not as strong as my hearing, feeling, and knowing abilities are. I am now recalling a startlingly clear clairvoyant episode I experienced the other night while between waking and sleeping. It was just like those who are dominant in clairvoyance describe it; I was watching a movie play out in my mind’s eye. I’ve never had an experience quite like that one before.

Hmmmm, maybe I’ll stare at the walls tonight.

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