Image by the author - Watercolour of a gull landing
… But You Can Stop Them Making Nests in Your Hair
What a wonderful Chinese proverb!
Nesting sorrow birds. Hmm. Yes, I’d say the last few days have been rather too permissive of nest-building for my sad flock. But how to send them kindly on their way? Therein lies the rub…
The rub comes from wanting to send them on their way. And who doesn’t want to send sadness packing? It’s instinctual. We want to shoo misery away.
Unfortunately, in a vibrational universe, that desire backfires on us, BIG time. Attention, laser-like, paints a target by its frequency. The painted target attracts more of the same.
There’s a wonderful scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1. It comes to mind as I imagine the law of attraction at work…
A charm has been placed on a hoard of gold treasure: chalices, platters and so on, the riches in a well-stocked vault.
Harry is attempting to retrieve an object from the far end of the vault, but soon discovers grave danger. Any golden object, when touched, begins replicating: once, twice, then over and over and over again… Soon the vault is a heaving, expanding mass of solid gold objects, threatening to bury our hero alive…
So it is with any focus of our attention. Whether it’s “Ooooh YES! Lovely!” attention, or the polar opposite. It’s all laser focus that starts the replication… in vibrational form first. We feel it instantly.
Law of attraction brings us vibrationally matching — similar feeling — experiences to the ones that have our focus — be they people, events, thoughts, emotions… or whatever.
We’ve all had experiences of the law at work. We may call it coincidence, ‘sod’s law’ or having ‘one of those days’…
What we focus our attention on multiplies. What we resist persists…
And so it is with sorrow.
The minute I get into ‘Shoo, sorrow-bird, shoo,” I set my vibrational tuning dial to ‘sorrow’. I send out a signal saying, “Come to me all sorrow-birds — make a home in my hair!”
It’s so clear to me now. I smile as I type.
Yep, I fell for that one again. That, “Nooooo!” when the tears come. Yes indeedie.
Tears come, that’s Step 1*.
They arrived on Saturday.
I wrestled them Saturday through Tuesday with interludes — angel-friends providing reprieves! (Thank you!)
Tuesday started with more fowl-fellows…
Exhaustion helped. Simply stopped trying on Tuesday. That brought some relief.
I nearly didn’t write this Wednesday offering at all.
So where is the gem of this sorrow-bird saga? What broke me out of the funk? And how might it offer hope to another?
It appeared this afternoon. In my journalling, searching for some help with my head, now bird-burdened…
Here’s a pivotal piece. Bold is used for the words from my ‘Resourceful’ Self in cahoots with imagined guides and teachers — yes, I am making it all up, but don’t knock it, it works — :
Have you noticed that each time you think you’ve cracked the ‘code’ for success, for joy, for living, it crumbles into dust?
I so have. It makes me cry just thinking about it.
Remember Amanda, this isn’t about cracking a code. It’s about learning to trust in a relationship. A living, breathing, moment to moment relationship you’re having with all of us.
Nothing else will satisfy. Nothing else will have the flexibility to reach into your lived experience. You’ve got no option but to let go of your need to systematise this life experience.
The words hit home.
I keep trying to blinking well control this grieving thing! Jeez Louise, when will I ever learn! Imagining myself alone and lost is the illusion of ‘control’. When I seek control I lose my Self.
I find my Self in an inner-world relationship. A communicating, co-mingled, vibrational, conversational relationship.
This Self is pure, positive energy in flow. This Self knows. This Self loves. Completely.
This Self calls to me through the pain of imagined separation. (All pain is imagined separation from the Self we are, at core.)
My sadness is my Inner Being calling me Home. The melancholy cries of the gulls flying over are signals of vibrations that don’t belong with me.
When I notice the sadness and speak it out with my Self, I say, ‘Ah, sorrow, look how it comes, how it cries!’
When I trust my Self to take care of those sorrow-birds, I release them to fly on overhead. The gulls don’t even think about nesting on my head, when I’m moving with the flow, downstream to what I’m wanting.
I can’t do this alone. I have to hand sorrow over.
I talk to my Self. I write to her. I write and speak back to myself, from her. From Divine Energy. From teachers and loved ones. From Michael, when I can. (Scientific studies are gathering around the benefits of talking to ourselves…)
I have to trust that talking to this ‘other’, this Self and her crew, works. I talk, imagine words coming back and then put the whole thing down to leave a space for the birds to move on…
One other thing to add.
To release my nest-builders today, I had to verbalise the worst thought in my head.
The. Worst. One.
I said it out loud.
“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break." — Shakespeare
It released me, instantly. From four days of grieving. Like a spell, broken.
The gulls vacated my hair. (I’ll wash it tonight, don’t worry!)
I write to you, my friend, nest-free and happy.
That’s all it took.
— Verbalising the worst of what I felt.
— Talking it out with an ‘imagined’ support team composed of Divine, pure, positive love.
Imagination is so much more powerful than we allow ourselves to believe.
If you’re experiencing the sharp pangs of loss, give it a try.
Keep your hair nest-free!
If you are working through loss of any kind, my heart is with you.
“Nothing that grieves us can be called little; by the external laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.” — Mark Twain, ‘Which Was The Dream?’
If you’d like a little help, don’t hesitate to reach out.
*Step 1 — an Abraham term