Where Angels Fear to Tread?

In July 2004 I was staying on Bainbridge Island, WA as part of a 2 week trip I was making to be with my new partner Isaac. My mother had shortly passed and this trip had been postponed a couple of weeks so I could go to her funeral. It was my first time on Bainbridge and we stayed a couple of nights with a dear friend of Isaac’s, Sara, who he had met in serendipitous circumstances. They hadn’t long known each other and yet were old soul friends who felt a familiar and loving connection with each other at a far deeper level than the few times they had spent together would normally suggest. Between Sara and I there was a deep connection too which beyond the personality level that I was open to knowing more about.

The photo drew me in and I was totally absorbed. I began to feel that the bird was actually right there in the diner, and the sounds of the diner and that of Isaac and Sula chatting faded into the background.  I began to experience myself as the bird. I could feel the haughty magnificence of the eagle, its detached attitude, or more like, its non-attached nature. I could feel the way my head moved on my neck, like stretching your head up and shoulders down and swivelling the head around. Not a human body awareness but an eagle’s.  I felt the eagle’s strength and its ability to fly so powerfully and see from such a great distance. Again, I felt the non-attached sovereign regal haughtiness; not from it feeling superior to anything but simply its non-emotional nature, and it was not a cruel feeling.  I could see from such a high perspective, so totally non-attached to the land, so far above it. I felt incredible power course through my body and felt my eyes shoot out intense lightning like energy that was so piercing in its crystal clear clarity.

At the same time, I was also observing my experience and was totally amazed at it all, it was so fascinating to be able to experience even a little of what it was to be an eagle. I was literally awestruck and as I came out of the experience I was not able to share it with Isaac and Sula so intense that it was.  I had to take some time to myself in the washroom where I shed some tears at the sheer beauty of this bird and thanked the Source of Creation for my experience, and for gifting us the incredible diversity of Earth’s nature.

Little did I know at that point that this was just the appetiser!

Fond goodbyes said we headed off the Island to our next destination, taking the Interstate 5 down to Oregon. Isaac was doing most of the driving, and I had the road map out – not because Isaac didn’t know where we were going because he did because he was living in Oregon at the time – no, I had the map out because I have a thing about maps; I’ve found them fascinating for years and would regularly pore over the atlas and road maps exploring energetically where I was drawn to. Indeed, I’d already explored this area of the Pacific Northwest by map some years previously and I’d been particularly drawn to the area around Olympia, WA, and noted that there was an Aberdeen here as well as in Scotland. I file away little things like this that peak my interest – they often come into play, sometimes years later and awareness arises out of the connections which adds depth and understanding to my life experiences.

As we got just south of Olympia, the map open as I traced the area where we were with my finger and also with my mind. I alternated between this and gazing out of the side window towards where I imagined the area on the map was. Something started to shift in my perception and I found myself entering a trance like state of consciousness. Having become familiar with this over previous months I did not try to stop and simply allowed myself to ‘journey’ into another time and dimension. In these imaginal realms I found myself running along a forest track with prominent tree roots, through a beautiful pine forest. I was running so fast! And full of such joy it was almost overwhelming to my current self as I felt the vibrations of that time in my body as if it were happening right now! I was aware I was not human as I was now – my body was light and slender and not very tall, it was far subtler, more ethereal, not completely solid in form. The attitude was of innocence and complete freedom – in comparison to today’s world I was neither as mature as an adult nor as immature as a child. I could not tell if I was a fully grown being or an adolescent, though I knew I was neither male nor female but androgynous, without a gender, without genitals.

As ‘I’ was running through the forest, I was also aware of being connected to another being, what I can only describe as a twin who was flying in the shape of a hawk directly above me – we were in full telepathic communication with each other – it would be more accurate to say we shared awareness yet also knew ourselves to be individuals. I then became aware of a remarkable thing, that we actually shared a heart, though I do not know how this would be possible physically; it was certainly possible in these bodies which were not fully physical in the sense as we know it today. In that very moment I knew my twin was our friend Sara but it was some years before I felt it was the right moment to share this with her.

Still furiously running along the track completely out of control, my foot caught on a tree root – I knew I had done this in an ‘accidentally on purpose’ manner and I fell headlong towards the ground, but just before the moment of impact I shapeshifted into a young deer. Oh the sheer joy of this form was incredible to experience! Faster even than before with powerful leaps I bound forward, so sensitive to every sound, smell and movement of air around me. With four powerful legs to carry me on I was completely unstoppable and immersed in an ecstatic state of incredible joy. I felt the phenomenal spring like ability of deer legs in bounding along and I will never forget how amazing that was. In this animal form it was now possible to exchange ‘places’ with my twin, now a hawk soaring above with a cool detached attitude, then back to being the wild deer – we shifted between forms till as the deer, I reached the edge of the land, leaping from the cliff edge, and soaring through the air, then hitting the water as a dolphin! I dove deeply beneath the water, strong and streamlined I felt every inch a dolphin as I sat in the car; every cell in my body remembering, coming awake to this alternate body.

I began to feel my current reality intruding upon my trance state and soon I left the dolphin and hawk/deer twins and returned to the car. I started yawning excessively (this is one of the ways in which I release). I began to stretch and soon I was contorting my body into extreme stretches, utilising whatever I could in the cramped car to assist me. I twisted and turned, stretching every way I could to help release energy from deep inside my very bones – feet up on the dashboard, using the seat belt, whatever it took and it felt and looked very strange indeed! Isaac was a star and he continued to focus on driving safely as I twisted and contorted my body in pretzel like shapes for 45 minutes or so.

Once I returned to Scotland, I booked some time with my teacher and as I shared the experience with him he tuned into it and said “You are a shapeshifter Lynn, we’ve said so to you in the past but you didn’t understand what was meant; now you do. In order to change form you have to be completely out of control, yet with some awareness and complete trust of the process. That is why you deliberately ‘accidentally’ caught your foot in a tree root, for that was how the shapeshift occurred. In falling through the air the shift became possible”. I could feel the truth of this as a vibration in my body, I also realised that during dreams where I can fly, it had happened through tripping over, or falling out of control. Since then, whenever I have these flying dreams, I try to be as lucid as I can to consciously choose to fly longer and further.

Moving forward a few years, Sara came on an extended visit to Scotland and stayed with us for 3 months. At the time we were living close to Loch Lomond in central Scotland, in an area of outstanding natural beauty, in an idyllic cottage in the countryside which was surrounded by fields, woods, rivers and streams. We would regularly see deer roaming through the woods and fields next to our house. One such day I was in the kitchen with Sara watching them. Remembrance came upon me as I felt in my body the awareness of the deer and the feeling of that body – I became immersed in the experience and began to share the story with Sara which deepened our connection beyond the present time, consciously linking us together across time and space which we later realised had opened us to abilities to tune into each other even when thousands of miles apart.

Red-tailed-hawk-800-Alan-McDonley-CC

Not my video but shows the way deer spring and bound.