Outer Knowing

I heard recently that if someone believes in spirits, or ghosts that can communicate with us from the other side, that they are participating in secular thinking. I disagree with this, and know that Dio de los Muertos is a very Catholic holiday where folks honor their ancestors when the veil is thin, and communicate with these ancestors and the dead through rituals, celebrations, and honoring photographs of the dead. Most Indigenous folk believe we can communicate with our ancestors, and Buddhists and Hindus all over the world make offerings to their ancestors and spirits in their temples or shrines with regularity, by offering fruit or other foods, incense, and trinkets or sacred objects. I myself believe in the dead, and in the veil. I speak with Steve often, and he is here walking beside me everyday. I practice divination in the forms of the pendulum, the tarot, runes, and reading smoke, tea, and signs and omens in nature. I still very much believe in Jesus and God, and I feel these things can all exist in tandem and in collaboration and have for millennium. I pray to and believe in the Goddess, and see echoes from the hidden realms and the ‘Other Side’ often. This is not hallucination or hearing voices, rather it is a manifestation of my gifts and abilities, in order to see into other realms that exist here among us. These forces are interpreted as ancestors, ghosts, ferries, spirits, dragons, omens, or deities etc., and are the personal language that one develops within their own spiritual experience.

I am not the best cook in the world. Over this last year, however, I have been cooking regularly. I make roast chicken, meatloaf, roast vegetables, soup, stir-fries, fried rice, simple Mexican food and enchiladas, curries, pasta dishes, other rice dishes, and muffins or pies (so far). In the beginning, I surprised myself as I could communicate very specifically with Steve and his boss “Fat Chef”, while throwing together these dishes, all mostly without a recipe. Today, the cooking guidance seems to be fading a bit, as I am developing my own experience, understanding, and personal style of cooking. Steve still lies on the bed where he passed away, and speaks to me, giving me cues about oven temperatures, ingredients, basic cooking chemistry, and heat and cooling. Cooking makes me feel close to him and at one with his Spirit.

On Steve’s birthday, the 14th of October, I found a dead Raven on the side of the road. I was on my bike, and I picked up the massive bird and carried her into the woods. I placed a cross of sticks on her breast, and said a prayer. I see this as a good or neutral omen, as I am not superstitious. It must have been sad for the Ravens who were its family, and later that day and the next, I heard them mourning in the woods around my home which was close by. Birds are always giving me a sense of natural awakening and are signs and speakers for the natural world and the world of our ancestors. For example, today I saw a Golden Eagle, much rarer than the Bald Eagles around here, on my bike ride. When I am close to other birds like herons or cranes, ravens, eagles and hawks, flickers and woodpeckers, hummingbirds, and sometimes just small brown birds, I feel connected to something deeper. When we tune into our planet and her signs, like reading the clouds, communicating with fire, or getting lost in reflections on water, gazing into her depths to the life within and below, one can feel a sense of awe and connection. I have always prayed to and communicated with trees in this fashion.

I encourage all to practice this type of communication, and the Day of the Dead and Halloween or Samhain give us pause while the veil is thinnest. Whether it is with God, one’s ancestors, a dead loved one, nature, an animal, or a human connection, this is what our earthly, plant and other life, human, and animal family needs right now in order to heal. We must start with ourselves; but in this communion, we may be healing without ourselves as well as within. Nature, and the other realms, hear us. We heal with these spirits and worlds as we communicate with our own inner knowing as well as with the outer knowing.