Red Wing Rising - Gifts from the Unknown

Every year in spring, I await the arrival of the red-winged blackbird. This year, they were suddenly there, like a bolt out of the blue. I wasn’t even looking for them as it was wintry and snowing.

I have become attached to the blackbird after hearing a beautiful call in the tree beside my property years ago. When I went to investigate, I discovered this bird and since then, they visit my garden often.

The beginning of an interesting new relationship.

The red-winged blackbird has become symbolic for me. The black I see as the essence of being, the infinite awareness of emptiness, the Unknown, out of which arises the light of the sun, the light of creation, represented by the red and yellow colours on the wings, just like the rising sun out of the night.

I had a talk with the blackbird a while ago during a walk and asked what message it had for me. At the end of the walk, I perceived the word opportunity. The black emptiness and nothingness, the Unknown, are infinite potential from which all is created. The Unknown gives rise to the quantum field where creation takes place, energy winking in and out of existence. Here lives a great energy potential that can fall and inaugurate creation. Another way of putting this is the idea, the thought, arising from the Unknown and gestating in the cosmic womb. The Unknown represents infinite possibilities that eventually become opportunities in our physical world.

This year, I am having a big encounter with the red-winged blackbird. All of a sudden, on 1 May, the ground covered with snow and the sky littered with heavy, wet snowflakes, I see two males sitting in my tree. Like a bolt out of the blue, or, rather, out of the black, the Unknown. Then there are six, then seven, and finally eight. The entire afternoon seven or eight blackbirds sit in my tree, silent, sometimes singing or making their other vocalizations.

There is something special about this. The seven or eight blackbirds remind me of the first seven divisions of creation. Sometimes, counting the Great Mother, they are eight. This is the Great Mother, the creator, and her first seven phases of creation. I have explored this at length in my book When We Wake Up, Anything Is Possible.

We find the first seven or eight in many mythologies and spiritual teachings. In Buddhism, for example, there is the eightfold path, and the eight auspicious symbols. One of those symbols is the dharma wheel that has eight spokes. This wheel is like a mandala of reality, representing the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. These three are the pillars of the Buddhist faith. In my view, the wheel represents the three-fold creation: the Unknown, or the Buddha mind, from which arises the teaching and creation, as well as the community that lives in harmony with the laws of creation.

Interestingly, the word dharma has meanings of to hold or to support and firm or stable. The African Dogon tribe’s God Amma means to hold firmly. I interpret this to mean upholding creation through the laws that govern it.  This is about creation and living in harmony with the laws of creation.

The blackbirds sit like sentinels, protectors, or guardians in the tree, the entire afternoon and into the evening. This is unusual. They bring or accompany something. They are the announcers of something that will arise, just like Bellatrix and Betelgeuse, the stars making up Orion’s shoulders, who some interpret as the announcers of a greater light.

I meditate with the birds to see what is happening. My crown chakra begins to tingle and I see a large, counterclockwise-moving, scintillating pool of energy there on my head. There is great depth to it and from it something large arises. I first see a spire and then the head of a Buddha follows. The spire on the head of the Buddha is a sign of wisdom and enlightenment and it and the head arise through the crown. Focusing on the head, it begins to radiate bands of yellow light all around it.

It makes so much sense: the first seven announcing the arising of the Buddha, the greater light.

It is clear to me the red-winged blackbird has indeed a special connection with the Unknown, bringing opportunity and gifts.

We receive gifts all the time. They come from the Unknown. Last Christmas, I was watching a movie that showed the bag of Santa Claus containing a universe of gifts. I realized then that the gift-giving around this time of year is based on something real that happens in our universe and at inner levels. I have also experienced how the deer is associated with gift-giving, which is included in the Santa Claus myth as the deer pull the sleigh that carries the bag with gifts.

The portrayal of a universe with gifts is very close to the truth. The Unknown, the quantum field that permeates us and the universe, creates energy, life, or gifts all the time.  We can receive gifts at any time, but perhaps around the solstice in December when the days get longer and the light begins to return announcing the rebirth of life, it is a special time of gifts.

Many things can facilitate the giving of gifts. The red-winged blackbird and the deer do, but so do animals in general. People or nature can facilitate gifts, anything really because all of life is connected and arises from the Unknown. So the gifts can arise from the Unknown through anything in matter or they can arise directly in our hearts. When I checked in with my heart around Christmas, I saw several gifts waiting for me.

But we have to pay attention. If I hadn’t enquired into the blackbirds or checked with my heart, I wouldn’t have been aware of these gifts. Does that mean then that I wouldn’t have gotten them? That is a good question. We can say yes or no to gifts, at the conscious and unconscious levels. Receiving gifts that we are not conscious of but say yes to at that level will still have a function and do their inner work but we are just not aware of it. But if we consciously or unconsciously say no to a gift, we won’t get it. That is our free will.

Life talks to us all the time.  Everything has its own language. The body and organs speak with sensation, emotion, and imagery. The heart loves and intuits. The wind murmurs, the ocean roars, the mountains tell their stories, trees and flowers whisper, and animals speak to us. Stars, suns, cosmic winds, and galaxies communicate, as well as planets and the land under our feet.

 The Unknown offers its gifts and opportunities through all of life, but it requires our awareness and attention and the willingness to engage for these gifts and opportunities to come to consciousness and begin to manifest. This is where living in harmony with our essence and all aspects of our universe comes in, just like the dharma wheel says. The more in harmony we live with our reality, the more we are in alignment, and the more we are aware about what is going on in our inner and outer worlds, the more we will be open to the many possibilities, gifts, and opportunities the Unknown has in store for us.  Another metaphor for this in addition to the bag of Santa Claus filled with gifts is the hoard the dragon sits on and guards. The hoard constitutes the Unknown, the emptiness filled with the essence of being, and the life and gifts it is and creates.

Life itself and all of its aspects are a gift. But we are limited in our ability to perceive them. We have physical as well as spiritual and psychological limitations. We are limited in how the body has been created. We can walk and run but we can’t fly.  How we perceive the world has limitations. What we see with our two eyes is limited to the visible electromagnetic spectrum that ranges from the wavelengths of the colours red to violet. But there is much more beyond this spectrum, such as gamma and x-rays as well as micro and radio waves, that we don’t see. Animals can communicate in ways we can’t and also have abilities of smell, sight, and others that we don’t have.

Psychologically and spiritually, we have limitations. Our separation from God or our essence as well as traumas and wounds form a veil in the mind that obscures reality. We perceive life differently through the lens of our pain and the stories we tell about it. This is a big limitation to our awareness of life in and around us. Our wounds and pain block our spiritual centers and our ability to live in our hearts, distorting and limiting our awareness of life. These blocks imprison us in our 3D dimension and prevent us from seeing into other dimensions of life that are inside of us and all around us.

Whether we are open to gifts and see opportunities and new potential depends on these limitations. If we are in our trance and conditioning, in the past with our traumas and wounds, then we may reject gifts or don’t see opportunity. If we are invested in our wounds and negative beliefs, then the spark of light, however faint or strong, that arises from the Unknown is dismissed by the thinking mind. If this is where we live, then the spark of a gift may not be noticed or snuffed out quickly.

But as we heal from our wounds and learn to let go of our pain and stories and make the leap to the heart, we become more sensitive, and we can overcome some of these limitations and see and feel more deeply into life. This is when the gift of life opens for us and a magical multi-dimensional world is revealed. This is our real world, filled with beauty, surprises, encounters, potential, and opportunity.

It is a matter of where we place our attention. If I focus on the outer world or my pain and wounding, then that is where I will live and I will experience that. But if I place my attention in my heart and the love that lives there, the world will become imbued with it and I will experience that. This doesn’t mean that there is no trauma and pain in life. There is, in spades. But once we are firmly ensconced in the heart, the experience of it will be different, and our stories will change, creating a better world for us.

This gives rise to the question that if we say no to a gift, will our lives be irrevocably set on another path? Will something be lost to us forever?

When I was travelling in Peru, I encountered a shaman who was sent to me to show me some sacred sites. He seemed a bit arrogant and judgmental and I wondered if I should spend my day with him. I did and later received an unexpected healing from him and a memory arising of my other half or twin.

There are interesting theories about this in quantum physics. One is that quantum particles exist in all their possible states at the same time, which is called the wave function. Once the particle is observed or measured, the wave function collapses and one state is chosen and one reality manifests. But the parallel universes theory says that with observation or action, a split happens in the universe to accommodate all the possible outcomes. This means that all possibilities happen and each possibility has its own universe, where a copy of us lives, resulting in an infinite number of alternate universes. And then there is also string theory, the latest of theories, which posits that parallel universes, 11 dimensions, exist and that they can interact.

Mind boggling, isn’t it?

In my experience, which is limited, there are multiple dimensions in our universe. If I understand things correctly, dimensions are the same thing as what is meant by parallel universes. The dimensions exist in and around us, much like the different layers of an onion. And they do interact, just like string theory suggests, in my experience. I have also seen that our universe is attached to the field of pure awareness or consciousness by an umbilical cord and that this consciousness field, or quantum field, can birth many universes.  A universe, like ours, can give birth to another universe, through the implosion of massive stars into black holes, and on and on, much like the Russian doll scenario. We can travel between these dimensions or universes through black and worm holes. I often experienced this in my journey described in my book When We Wake Up, Anything Is Possible.

It doesn’t make sense to me that there would be an infinite number of universes where many copies of me live, and I have no experience of this. I do know that I exist in multiple dimensions. I have encountered two more evolved manifestations of me in other dimensions and I interpret them to be dimensions at different frequencies where I am more evolved. Our dimension is a tangible, solid dimension where we have physical bodies, but the other dimensions are subtle energy where we have subtle bodies and dense matter doesn’t exist. The other dimensions may be in the future but they also exist now.  Just like someone who is located in Amsterdam lives in the future relative to Calgary, but we also both exist in this now moment.

When we say no to a gift, when we make that choice or action, that particular gift is lost, and it will change our path. This is in alignment with the theory that we collapse the wave function with our action and one reality comes into being.

It would have far-reaching implications if the parallel universes theory were correct, which it may be. Then, when we say no to a gift, we will still get it but in another, split-off universe. What would this say about our free will? The theory holds that we would not be aware of our other lives in other universes and if that’s the case, what is the point of this? If we were aware, even if just at the unconscious level, and could see that other decisions and choices would have been better or worse, if we would see the consequences of our actions, then we would be learning something. This would make more sense to me. But this, of course, assumes that anything that happens in the universe has to have a function or a meaning or purpose. Reality doesn’t conform to what I may think is logical or preferable. Here are those pesky beliefs again.

Having said this, a gift being lost when we say no doesn’t mean that it will not come again. It won’t be the same because it will arise at a later time in a different context, but the opportunity will return. The Divine is constantly knocking on our doors with gifts, possibilities, and opportunities, asking us to engage fully with life and to come back home and be who we are. The question is whether we hear it and whether we will say yes and engage.

The truth of what we are cannot be denied forever, unless maybe we really, really insist. Reality is a great magnet that will keep attracting us. And not to forget, we are this reality; we can’t be anything else, but we can pretend or try.  Eventually, all our resistance, distraction, and focusing elsewhere will run out as it takes a lot of energy to sustain our attention away from what we are.

When we live in harmony with the laws of life, when we have made friends with the dragon that guards the hoard, and we pay attention to the gifts in Santa Claus’s bag, we will step into the magic of life and receive an abundance of gifts.