forest & trees

millie shows me an eagle flying high.  it can see all the small things on the ground, but it is soaring high above them.  it's a very powerful picture.


"view your life from a broader perspective.  humans tend to get bogged down in the minutiae of your lives.  notice the small things, appreciate them for what they bring to your life, but don't get caught up in them."

I'm having a hard time reconciling this advice with the 'slow down and appreciate the gems in your life' advice.


"take time to *see* the gems around you, but also look at your life from a higher place -- notice how the small things fit in with everything else.  be engaged with your life and simultaneously able to see it from a distance."

she shows me a heavily wooded slope.  we zoom in on a tree, we can even see a bird on a branch, then our perspective shifts and we are looking at the whole forest.  she takes me back and forth between the two perspectives a few times... tree, forest, tree, forest.  then suddenly we are looking both at the tree AND the forest at the same time.


"see the parts of your life from a broader perspective, as part of the rich and varied tapestry of *everything*.  re-examine the true size and importance of things that bother or upset you.  they are not as large as they seem if you zoom out.  put them in perspective.  soar above them.  you may find that what bothered you yesterday is not so important today.  give it a try."

I practice this perspective thing she is talking about.  I look at my daily annoyances, then zoom out and look at the miracle of my life as a whole.  I do this several times, like she showed me with the trees, and then something shifts.  it gets easier, for one thing, and new connections become visible between people, animals, everything.  everyone and everything is connected, and the connections show up as gold strings, lines, pipes, leading from each being to everything around it.


"that's it, you've got it."

thank you, millie.

brain storm

some days I hear millie perfectly and it is easy and fluid.  some days it takes me forever to catch even a little piece of her story, what she is telling me.  those days are frustrating.  today was one of those days.  finally, my brain shut up enough that I could see the picture she was sending me, of a thunderstorm moving through, complete with dark clouds and lightning and thunder, with lots of tension in the air.


"once the storm moves through and the atmosphere clears, everything is calmer and you can hear better."

so I have thunderstorms in my brain?


"electrical storms, yes."

how do I calm them down?


"you know how.  find your center.  ground.  sit in silence and intend to quiet yourself.  use your tools."

why do they happen?


"it is normal.  maybe from habit, from the way you prepare yourself to face the world or respond to certain situations."

she shows me a train running on a track.


"your habits, your ways of thinking and being, are deeply ingrained.  like a train on a track, it is difficult for you to travel anywhere except on the tracks you have built for yourself."

so how do I change my thinking?  I start to picture building new tracks, but she interrupts that thought and shows me a scene with no tracks at all.


"you don't need your tracks.  you can decide in each moment what to think, how to act.  you don't need old programming telling you what to do.  try moving through your life with no tracks -- see how that goes."

wow.  okay, I'll try.

thank you, millie.

the myth of control

millie shows me two scenes simultaneously.  in both scenes, a woman is walking through a field of head high wheat.  it is impossible for them to see where they are going.  the first person is enjoying the walk, noticing the color of the sky, the feel of the wheat brushing her skin, the smell of the earth, the hum of the insects.  the first person is connected to the world around her.  she is curious, but not afraid.

the second person is anxious, always trying to see what is up ahead, not taking the time to enjoy the walk, the sunshine, the experience.  she is not connected to the world around her, she is barely connected to herself.  all of her focus and energy is being thrown out in front of her to try and achieve the impossible-- to see what is coming before it gets here.

because the second person is so hyper alert, she catches a glimpse of a tiger ahead in the distance.  she instantly goes into fear overdrive, into emotional red alert.  she is sure the tiger will eat her at any moment, so she redoubles her efforts to see what is coming, to foretell her future.  the more she tries to see the path ahead but cannot, the more afraid and anxious and disconnected she becomes.

suddenly, they walk into a clearing, where there is a circus -- complete with circus animals.  the first person is delighted and relaxed and enjoys this bit of serendipity with all of her focus.  the second person nearly collapses from exhaustion and relief that the tiger cannot eat her, she cannot focus herself enough to enjoy the show, and she immediately starts to worry about the next invisible 'threat' down the road.


"these scenes are of the same person, making two different choices.  you can choose to live in the moment, enjoying what comes your way, or you can choose to be tense and anxious and fearful.  it is completely up to you.


there is absolutely no sense in worrying about anything.  you. can't. possibly. know. what to worry about."

this story, and millie's comment make me think of something I heard on the news the other night.  a woman was crushed by a rock falling on the car she was in.  her friend was driving her to work, and was unscathed.  the news story reported that the woman who was crushed had stopped driving herself anywhere because she was afraid something would happen to her.  turns out, if she had driven herself, she would not have been crushed by that rock.


"trying to climb up for a better view, stretching yourself tighter and tighter in order to attempt to control the future is a waste of energy.  it is also exhausting.  for you and probably for those around you.


relax into your space, luxuriate in your life -- that is how you are meant to live.  identify that feeling -- your particular feeling of you trying to be in control -- know it so you recognize it when it comes, so you can avoid it and remind yourself to relax and enjoy the flow.


let go and experience life.  it's all any of us can really do.  our ability to direct our lives is internal, not external.  we can create our world, we can remember why we came.  we can remember how to live in love."


thank you, millie.

your inner child

millie shows me two kids in a sailboat.  it feels free and fun and light and happy.  as I watch, my adult brain says danger.  there are no grownups with those kids, no one to protect them.  the boat is small and the wind is brisk and the sea is large, those kids aren't safe.

"kids have the right sense of adventure for life.  you can *do* anything, *be* anything you want.  there are no limits.  and it is fun, kids understand fun.  they don't worry about the danger, the 'what ifs', the safety factor, it doesn't cross their minds.


remember when 'what would happen if....?' was not a scary question, but one fraught with possibility?  treat life as the game it is.  let go of the responsibility for making everything work out.  you can't.  life just is.


find that kid inside of you.  seek her out if she is hiding.  lure him out with crayons and finger paint.  reconnect.  remember.  the child inside you has a great deal of wisdom about how to move through the world.  ask your inner child for advice.  listen to the answers."

walls

millie shows me a human figure with their nose right up against a very tall brick wall that seems to go on forever to each side.


"you create your walls.  you make them big and strong because you believe in them.  they look big and solid up close, but they are energetic walls, not physical ones."

the view changes, as the human begins to float a little, the wall becomes smaller and more transparent.  the human floats above the wall and looks down on a maze of similar wall segments.


"the more you flow, the smaller the walls get.  you can make them disappear completely.  don't believe in them.  live your life in joy, moment to moment.  the walls will dissolve.


stop worrying about the future.  call your energy back to the present moment -- how do you feel right now?  focus on what makes you feel good.  each moment is infinite and full of possibility.


staying in the moment helps with the flow, helps you stay out of fear, helps  you connect with joy."

now she shows me a cobblestone street.  directly around me, inside my personal space, the stones are precious gems.


"only by staying in the moment will you see the gems, the gifts your life has for you.  slow down.  look around.  don't just notice it, let it in.  remove your focus from your busy life, your worries.  be present in the moment and feel your gifts.  treasure them."

I stopped getting new information, but millie didn't leave my lap like she usually does when I've 'got it.'  so I asked, am I missing a key piece?

"you're not *doing* it."

ah.  true, I was not.  thinking about living in the moment is not the same thing as actually doing it.  I managed a few seconds of truly living in the moment, and then I had to go home and feed the dogs.  give it a try, it's as hard as you make it for yourself, to quote a furry friend of mine.

symphony of love

there was more to millie's message yesterday than I was able to express.  I asked her to explain it a different way today to see if I could expand on it.  she showed me crystals in a honeycomb arrangement, nearly touching but not quite, and with an undefinable substance flowing between them.


"the crystals are individual humans.  the substance flowing between the crystals is the love field, the life force, the "stuff" that we all exist in that connects us all.


crystals are a good example because they can hold a vibration.  so can you.  if you vibrate singly, it can be beautiful but disorganized when looked at as a whole.  if everyone is vibrating on their own frequency, some vibrations will cancel others out and the overall effect is a little noisy.


if you vibrate together, it is a symphony."

in the past you have told us to vibrate at our own particular vibration, to vibrate at 'me.'


"yes.  in that context I said it is better not to try to lower your vibration to match that of others.  now I am suggesting that you direct your own *individual* vibration toward a common goal.  like an orchestra...  right now humans sound like an orchestra that is tuning up, not yet playing together.  it is noisy and chaotic.  each individual instrument makes a beautiful sound, but together all you are producing is noise.


I am suggesting that you begin to participate in the symphony as a group."

how do we do that?


"intend it.  vibrate at love.  let it flow through and around you, filling the space between you and the next.  as more of you vibrate at love, in harmony, it will become easier for the rest."

thank you, millie.

who am I?

"every being, in or out of body, is the perfect expression of itself.  you are the answer to the question that only you being you can answer.  you are the solution to the puzzle of you.  you are the key to the lock that only your key can open.  only you can fit perfectly into your place in the everything."

millie shows me fish swimming.


"fish move through their world with ease, as perfect fish.  water is life-force, part of the everything that we all move through, it's just easier to see as water.  where the water touches the fish, the place where the water and the fish meet, is an intersection.  


where you intersect with all of creation -- physically, mentally, energetically -- that space is magical.  bring your focus to that space, not totally inward, not totally outside of yourself, but where you meet with everything else.  that is a sacred place.  a place of infinite possibility.  all of the answers to the question that is you, happen in that space.  feel the oneness that we are all a part of, then feel the tiny speck that you are in the everythingness."

a human teacher of mine calls this space that you are talking about the 'crossroads.'


"it goes by many names.  recognize it by its electric feeling, by the way you can be all at once an atom and the entire universe, shrinking and expanding at the same time.  that feeling means you have found the space."

what do we do when we find it?


"just be.  feel the love that you are, that is everything.  connect."

thank you, millie.