shapeshifting

Something really struck me the other day, it filled my soul with gratitude that the universe had helped me discover who I really am. I was reading Spellcraft, an article by Lucy Cavendish on "Shapeshifters: the courage to die, so that we may live". It was an extraordinary article. She wrote:

"Nature is cyclic and yet we humans often think everything must be fixed, like a certain temperature for our buildings which must be made of certain things. We must wear certain clothes and do things in particular ways...yet shapeshifters ask us to go right back to the source, to nature herself and watch the unfolding of a flower, the rise of the sun, and understand that although there are patterns, nothing is fixed in one place. All is changing and patterns are woven and rewoven to create the shape of the universe. We must allow ourselves to consider that we are more than the sum of what we have previously agreed to be and do, and sometimes something less, something simpler than what we believe ourselves to be; and that we may in fact be reacting from a wound, or from conditioning, or from habits, all of which may not support us in becoming our authentic self. In order to become anything akin to what we imagine is our true self - which will change, and change again - we must allow ourselves to 'not know' and to 'become'.

All life is becoming - a dying. Over and over I learn that in order to live, I must first learn how to die. We must allow what is no longer 'us' to leave. This is not always easy, and it can often be painful, but there is such grace in fortitude. This is a path that is carved from the recognition that letting go of what is no longer authentic to serve you will allow you to live more fully, to drink fearlessly from the cauldron of Cerridwen that contains Awen that will allow us to live, and live, and live within what seems to be one lifetime.

When I look at my grandmother for example, I see that for almost her entire life she lived the life of who she thought she was. She was, in the main, the person she was told to be by the Church, and by her parents, and her employers, and by the conditioning of a very small country town where gossip was poisonous and swift to strike. She learned to live the one life that would lessen the chances of being isolated, and disapproved of, by her tribe of the time. Yet, as we all do, she inevitably shifted.

For my grandmother, the great shift came in the form of dementia. And within that shift, other aspects of this woman emerged. A great tenderness overcame this prim and judgemental, often racist and unkind woman. Her self-righteousness melted away, and the keen eye of criticism that she had cast upon others to reassure herself she was a 'lady' simply melted away. Something innate that had been masked over, bandaged up and cut off revived and surged forth into the life of my grandmother. The less she knew who she was, the more in some ways she became herself. She could not remember who I was. This became a most wonderful gift to me, as she had found me very difficult to understand and to like. As she lost touch with her ideas of who people were, she formed relationships based on what was done in the present moment and somehow, for my grandmother, I became an angel. I am no angel, but I know that she meant what I was doing wih her was loving and helpful to her. And my heart flowered with love for this woman who I had resented and wondered at, with her fixed views and her disapproval. She no longer cared about the colour of skin or the language a person spoke. She cooed over my baby and she loved my room mate, a woman she would never have spoken to in her former life. My grandmother, who had feared and hated anyone who fell outside of her experience, became a loving, wise, joyous woman...because she lost herself.

And so, we change and we shift. We are a different creature within the womb, and we are born into a world where we breathe a different element. Birth, the great shapeshift. Adolescence, another great shapeshift. Journey into motherhood, fatherhood, old age, and finally our death - all shapeshifting.

I see so many people trapped in jobs they say they cannot leave. Others tell me they 'cannot help' what they do as they are simply 'being themselves'. Others will not leave unhappy or hollow relationships. This is where we can ask the shapeshifter beings to assist us, to show us how to walk through a time of change.

The great shapeshifters are the ones who are close to nature. They are of earthly and of more etheric origins. The are not fantasy, although they are often unseen by the physical eye. They are butterflies, racoons, dragonflies, wolves, deer, the fish who defiantly swim upstream, and those who do not go with the flow. They show us when to come forth, how to let a part of ourself die, when to rebirth the self, and how to seek a safe place for a time to seek shelter. It is not always time to be open; sometimes it is a time to be quiet.

To be alive, you will need to shift your shape, change your form. It may happen literally with weight gain or loss, pregnancy, growth in some form or another, the reshaping of your form through taking up a discipline that shapes your physicality, or a study or wisdom that can shape your mind. We change and change. And in doing so we learn how to live. We will be changed too by life. Scars, the signs of our wisdoms and lessons, will appear as we live. We will be wounded, and we will suffer for this gift of life. But in changing, adapting and growing stronger, we shape ourselves and life shapes us, just as a tree grows into such beautiful shapes influenced by the shapes made by the elements of earth, wind and water.

Perhaps, we are all that tree..."