Wild Wings
© Robin Easton - All Rights Reserved
Canada Geese can fly 1,500 miles in 24 hours.
There are many people in our world who are in positions of potential power: doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, lawyers, teachers, family, friends, government officials, spiritual healers, gurus, and more. These people and professions definitely have their place in our lives and in the world. Some are very good at what they do, and some are not.
In navigating this potential power, I always turn to nature, because nature repeatedly reminds me that there is nothing more powerful or fundamental than my own intuition and instincts. When we spend quiet time with nature, we are reminded of our own already-existing intelligence and inherent knowing. We are reminded that we are part of something vast and highly intelligent. We begin to feel a strong sense of self, and start to feel our own inner courage, beauty, and wisdom.
Without an interactive relationship with our primordial gifts of keen intelligence and original wisdom, we often have no anchor. We are adrift from our core and left desperately seeking elsewhere for anchorage. Unfortunately, we sometimes willingly abandon our own ancient truth and knowing. Taking responsibility for our lives can feel like too great a burden, too frightening and unsure. We often don’t trust our own choices, or even the right to make our own choices...and mistakes.
Frequently, we aren’t conscious of our desperation and fear as we blindly turn to someone in a position of power. We hope they will somehow fill our core needs, or tell us what choices to make, or which direction to turn, and what to believe and feel.
In some cases, it has been so long since we acted upon our instincts that it feels foreign to do so. To trust our own instincts feels flimsy and far removed from us. Sometimes we cannot feel them at all. They have been so long denied expression that the ‘Instinct Voice’ is faint. Hence, we again abandon our instincts by the roadside, unused, unloved, without voice or experience. In this, we abandon ourselves.
However, our instincts and their need to be heard never go away, nor does our basic need to feel anchored in our own lives. We hunger to feel deeply rooted in our choices, actions, purpose, and sense of self and home. To be anchored in ‘our right place’ is part of who we are. We need to stop abandoning ourselves and start nurturing our inner guiding force.
This does not mean that others cannot help us on our journeys, or that we cannot help them. Nor does it mean that sometimes others know more than we do about some facet of life. I feel that we are meant to experience this life with others, not only with our own species but with other species, as well. Sharing our feelings, experiences, and lives is one of the best ways to experience who we are, and who others are. We also experience ‘connection’ and learn that we are never separate from the rest of life. At the root of us, we often discover that we have more in common than we initially thought.
However, nature also reminds me that I must always trust, and never neglect my own wild heart, my own primal instincts, and personal power. I must always stay well-anchored in my own soul’s truth.
At the very least, I feel that we all need to explore these core strengths that are hardwired into each of us as part of our very nature and necessary survival kit. These core instincts are eons-old and have been keeping life alive and moving forward for millions of years. (Article continues below next photo)
When we turn our power over to another soul, we sometimes lose our way and even forget who we are, or that we have power. We tend to lose the strength of our own capabilities. We can easily forget that the power and wisdom we seek, already lives and breathes within us. This forgetting can happen so subtly that we don’t notice its occurrence.
We sometimes forget that it is our birthright to trust our most fundamental instincts, instincts that we sometimes bury so deeply they seem unreal to us when we finally get a glimpse of their existence. We can even feel that we are going crazy as we approach the realm of pure instinct. We quickly scurry back to safe, familiar territory. After all, how many times might we have heard, “Who do you think you are? What do you know, anyway?” Or, “You aren’t a trained expert.”
Trained or not, the most important thing to remember is that…you are human. You are Life itself. Like all life, you are born of thousands upon thousands of years of evolving intelligence. You have the weight of millennia behind you…and with you. Instincts were hardwired into you long before you came into this world. They are beautiful, keen intelligence at the most pristine level. Instincts are the Map of Life imprinted upon the soul, a uniquely tailored guide to the truest unfolding of life.
Whether or not others understand or approve of our instincts, they are still worthy of our highest respect and exploration. This already-whole part of our humanity is who we are. And, no one can give us who we already are and what is already ours. They can only remind us that truth lives within us, or they can point out a possible path that leads back to ourselves and our own inner power.
The most potent people of power will not ask you to follow them. They will encourage you to follow your own true heart and instincts. They will see you as already fully intelligent and whole.
It is never too late to enter into relationship with the Ancient Voice of Instinct. For those unaccustomed to trusting their instincts and then acting upon them, we can gently ease into trusting something small. Once we have a history of instinct-success, we can draw upon our successes to follow ever deeper callings. Bit by bit we reenter life and learn to trust ourselves.
The more we use our instincts and act upon them, the more they awaken, the stronger they become, and the more clearly they guide us. We might make a few mistakes along the way, but that is an integral part of garnering information to acutely hone our instincts. It is a natural part of reawakening to ourselves and life.
With time we remember that stored in our cells, our very DNA, stirs the same ancient wisdom that compels billions of autumn birds to lift their wings and follow their internal compass southward. No one tells them when to do this, or how to do it. Yet, they have done it for thousands of years. Some birds like the northern wheatear fly nine thousand miles. The birds just know. They do not resist the powerful magnetism of instinct.
Instinct is much like love. It is a force of immense passion, a call to let go and release yourself into the Great Flow of Love. With time it is a call that we learn to blindly trust, without question. Inseparable from nature’s love, birds feel the pull in their bones, an urge that lifts their wings and beckons the soul forward into action…and life. They do not resist.
When we allow it, our primal wisdom rises to the surface as naturally as bubbles in water. Geese, ducks, songbirds, and minuscule hummingbirds lift their wings, compelled by the undeniable force of love that hungers to guide them thousands of miles homeward. This is miraculous to the extreme. Birds are small beings with even smaller brains, and yet, by following their passionate instincts they accomplish the seemingly impossible. They relinquish their hold on reason and fly homeward on wings of love.
Try not to let anyone crush your hardwired, original wisdom. When we seek another person’s help, we can seek those who have a genuine desire to guide us back to ourselves and our own inner truth.
We can trust our own ancient knowing, just as the autumn birds give way to the pull of their southward journey. We too can go very far on instinct alone.
You and I have the same eons-old instincts stored in our vital memory, still intact, still alive, instincts that beg to show us our own truth, our own unique and beautiful way home.
© Robin Easton