Despite my desire for zen-like calm, I've been affected by the deeply unpleasant US election and negative, hard-to-believe-this-is-the-US, stories in the news media. Sometimes I feel afraid…of nuclear war, climate change, and violence that I can't control. I worry about “what could happen.” And in addition to the national and international unrest, I have my own worries, as this past summer I had a serious health scare. I'm fine now, but it shook me.
Even though I’ve been working with the metaphoric realm for years and know without a doubt that this healing realm of other-worldly wisdom and transformative creative energies urgently wants to communicate with us… I need constant reminders.
There is something else other than this everyday world that we see with our ordinary eyesight. Something much bigger than us. And it sounds so simplistic to say that. "Well of course," one might say.
Yesterday I had a powerful session with a client. The ‘image’ that showed up was an azure blue field of energy. It was not diffuse energy…it was clearly a “thing” and it wanted to be known as a thing. Here was its message:
“I am a thing. I am not nothing. I need to be athing. I need to be a thing for you. People don't see the 'something' in the middle realm. You think there is something to fear. There is nothing to fear. I came here to tell you that. When you feel afraid, remember me.”
There is another reality that I often describe as “under the surface,” but it’s not under the surface. It’s right here, but we don’t see it because it requires a different way of looking.
The intense beauty of the metaphoric realm is dormant...until we give it our attention. Seeing it requires a shift of our perception...a shift to seeing the metaphoric space in which the creative unfolding happens.
I grew up in a middle-class, conservative Midwestern family and I was trained to be an academic at a rigorous and prestigious institution of higher education. I did not have new-age hippy parents. My family valued science and viewed creativity as “fluff.” I am not, by any means, a spiritual guru—talking about anything spiritual or “other worldly” is far outside of my comfort zone. My friends and family never spoke of experiences of non-ordinary reality and I certainly don’t want to attract any kind of negative attention toward myself. Given all this, I’m the last person I would have thought would ever speak about other “realms.”
I dismissed my own messages and experiences from the metaphoric realm for many years. I ignored mystical experiences of profound beauty and intuitive knowing—pushing them under the rug because I didn’t want to deal with anything that didn’t fit my own limited conception of reality. Even when I knew there was a disjuncture between what I was studying about human learning through years of research and high-level academic teaching positions, and how I learned in my own life, I still dismissed my own experiences.
It took a lot for the metaphoric realm to shake me out of my own dismissal. But the more I took these non-ordinary experiences of metaphoric knowing seriously, the more my life started changing dramatically.
It's time for us to look differently.
When we look through the eyes of metaphor, we experience the deep, profound creative energies of the Universe...unfolding.
If you would like to align with the deep creative forces that want to express and move through your life, please join me for my upcoming Alliance event on December 9th, The Power of Metaphor: Unlocking the Creative.
