I’m currently taking a longish break away from home and at the moment I’m on Bainbridge Island which is one of the islands in the Puget Sound and close to Seattle, WA.  It’s stunningly gorgeous here, a little gem of an island far removed from the usual mainland USA despite it being very close geographically. It’s a little sanctuary, and in fact, I was told it was only used by the native Indian women and men did not set foot upon the island as it was deemed to be the place where women would go for their menstruation periods, and other feminine transformational & transitional  experiences.

Apparently the only time men would come upon this island was for their first sexual initiation, which was a sacred rite conducted by elder woman for the young men.  How true any of this is I’m not sure, though I must say the island is certainly having an effect on me; I feel very held here and have deepened my appreciation and gratitude for our Mother and all the She represents to us.

As I’m writing this at 2pm on a sunny afternoon, there is a young male deer in the garden at the home I’m staying in – he seems quite unperturbed by my presence and I am able to go outside and just sit observing him.  I’ve called him Eugene in honour of an animal totem vision I had many years ago in which I was approached by a young fawn, and on asking his name, he replied Eugene – which at the time I did think was rather unusual!

This is my second visit to Bainbridge Island, I was first here back in 2004 when I was over from Scotland visiting my beloved Isaac in July of that year. We were doing a road trip, meeting some dear friends of his that he wanted me to meet.  One of those was Sara.  We visited with her for a couple of days and on our departure day we were sitting having breakfast at the Streamliner diner in Winslow, the main town on Bainbridge.

After we had eaten, Isaac and Sara were chatting away and I allowed myself to drift off into a lovely soft state of consciousness (this was easy as I was almost constantly in a state of bliss the whole time on that that trip).  My eyes settled on a photograph picture on the wall of an American bald eagle. The photo was a close up of the bird’s head and shoulders, in semi profile.

This picture here is similar in energy though the pose is different – the one in the diner showed more of it’s shoulders and that gave me a different perspective. I’ve always loved eagles and hawks, and whilst I see a fair number of hawks, my sightings of eagles have been limited to once or twice in Scotland where I’ve golden eagles, and also on a skiing trip in Nevada.  I once saw a sea eagle which was amazing.

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.

I had another eagle experience later on that road trip whilst we were driving down from spending a few hours up Mt Shasta in California.  I was on the look for chipmunks (my God, how cute are they – I want one) which we don’t have in the UK and so didn’t notice a golden eagle soaring above.  It swooped down and flew right over our car; Isaac saw it and said it was no more than a few feet above us.  Though I didn’t actually see it, I could feel it’s HUGE presence and looked up and over at Isaac and said in awe “What on earth was that?”

To this day, when I tune in or see eagles, I can still feel some of that ‘eagle-ness’ in my body. My understanding of what happened was that I ‘merged’ energetically with the eagle or spirit of eagle and that anyone can do this with practise and intention.  It happened spontaneously for me at that time and has not happened since with eagles, though it has with other life intelligence, such as flowers, or animals, insects etc. and this has happened in various differing ways, but always from a sense of total absorption and love, of what I now call “Beholding the Beloved”.  I wonder also if there was a memory of shape-shifting in this experience, and if you wish to know more about what I mean I invite you to read the next part of the story which happened as we travelled down the Interstate 5 to Oregon.  Animals; Merging and Shape Shifting ~ July 2004 ~ Pacific North West USA