Anyway, lately...
Anyway, lately...
For a moment, I forgot how to be me. What to do, how to think, how to move. Some of this was a hangover from quarantine when my natural inclination to stare out the window was encouraged.
I swim in the river of Goodwill, trusting that things form themselves in response to what we are willing to imagine, envision and allow ourselves to have and to be.
Anyway, lately…
For a moment there, I forgot how to be me. I forgot what to do and how to think. I forgot, even, how to move. Some of this was a hangover from quarantine when my natural inclination to stare out the window was encouraged. Some of it, though, came into focus when I started posting the Flow Materials.
It was just what I’d feared might happen when I exposed these transmissions to the light of day. I feared that I’d feel very special - and not in a good way. I feared I’d feel special as in, ‘other’ - a freakish, weirdo who talks with invisible friends. That kind of ‘special.’ I feared that I’d feel special as in, elevated, full of herself. And that feeling that kind of special might make me forget that I actually AM special, but in that good way that all of us are special: unique, with our own wisdom and gifts to share.
It felt like power and I was afraid of it. And then, as I was wrestling with all of this, the angels (aka Love, aka God) intervened.
First, I noticed I was stuck. I was trying (so hard) to get the next set of transmissions onto the blog but in the space between the end of Book One and the beginning of Book Two, I found that I was unable to continue. I’d get a post started. I’d write a little when suddenly, bounce, I was back by the window in the living room.
Determined to push through, I made myself get out of pajamas into ‘real clothes.’ I drank gallons of strong tea, took vitamins, went to therapy. But still, each time I sat down again to post a new transmission, bounce, I was back at the window staring at the lawn.
I wrote and launched a new workshop. Bounce. I cancelled the workshop and started a different project. Bounce. I cleared my calendar and committed to sitting at my desk every day. Bounce. Every day.
It was like trying to drive a car through a rubber wall.
Finally, I gave up. I stopped trying to DO anything. Which was when something started doing itself - through me. And even though there was nothing I could point to and say, Hey! Look at that! so very much was going on below the surface.
During times like this, the liminal carouses with the numinous. For me, it was a time of dreaming.
I dreamed that three flying saucers were landing in my back yard. They were here to deliver three messages about (sigh) something I didn’t manage to write down.
Another night, I dreamed that I was picking up my pen and writing down a wonderful dream. I saw myself flowing words onto the page. The next morning, the page was blank.
Another night, I dreamed that I’d left my purse and keys on the table outside. Without them, I couldn’t buy anything, couldn’t go anywhere. Another night, I dreamed I was lost in Silicon Valley. A woman asked, “Where are you trying to go?” My response: “I’m missing.”
In the waking dream I was living, I was listening to an audiobook: The Secret History of the World, a book that I found in the GoodWill bins in Portland Oregon, and later listened to on Audible. This book was its own sort of magic, a talisman hidden in a heap of dusty discards. It glowed like an open door. Still, I kept putting it into and out of my shopping cart. Such is my relationship with mystery. I see it. I resist it. I reclaim it. Over and again. Even when I tucked it in my suitcase carried it home, I didn’t read it. I set it on a side table and started at it for weeks before I dug in.
Finally, I started reading. This book, a respectful retelling of virtually all recorded history through the lens of what was excised from the canon: the mystical, the feminine, the occult. Essentially, everything I had to piece together myself in the new age section of the bookstore - Theosophy, Alchemy, Astrology, Pyramids, Atlantis - was suddenly back in the story. With events in their proper order, people and things in their places, I felt more … real. Something was missing. Now it’s visible. That something is magic… and also, me.
Recently, my therapist told me, “Everything you want is already in the river with you.” This was such a simple truth that it almost seemed untrue. It was also, I realized, how I live when I have not written myself out of the canon of my own life. When I am most authentically me, I look around and I find, in the river with me, everything.
After I returned from Portland, I started visiting the GoodWill bins near my home. At first, it was just a lark. What could I find? Now, it’s … what is it? I don’t know. Sacred practice. Obsessive indulgence. I can have anything I want. And it seems, it’s all there.
I drive there (about 20 minutes) and I park. I pull on a white paper mask (against dust) and one blue surgical glove (against ick). I leave one hand bare to feel for silk, for linen, for wool. I tie back my bangs with a scarf (so I don’t touch my face). Then, I dive in.
I don’t look for specific things. Rather, I swim in the certainty that everything I want will emerge before me, that I will know it when I see it and that, once I find it, I will be able to afford it. This is a key principle for reasons I am just beginning to understand. I told my sister, “The bins are teaching me to feel blessed again. I can have all of it - I don’t have to put back most of the things I want to buy.”
I swim in the river of the bins, trusting that things form themselves in response to what we are willing to imagine, envision and allow ourselves to have and to be.
At the bins, I don’t rush to be first. I let the crowd rush the new merchandise. Then, I step in. There’s enough for everyone. And anyway, the things that I want aren’t the things most people are looking for.
I like worn things, chipped teacups, mismatched china. When I drove cross country, my favorite souvenir was a wooden angel with a broken wing. The trip - that was another kind of river journey. I didn’t know where I was going. I soared across the land in the air-conditioned bubble of my car. Everything was a surprise: fields of grain, windmills, cattle ranches. It was, metaphorically, like floating in a river. Everything I wanted would appear. When I saw it, I would know it was for me. Indeed, when I met the Colorado River, when it rushed over my bare feet, I knew - you’re mine.
At the bins, something happens to me. I stop thinking everything needs to be written down. I stop planning my day into segments. I let the flow flow me. While discerning quality, texture, color I am also resting. While meandering around the edges of the huge warehouse space interrogating other people’s castoffs, I am also dreaming. (Were these tiny silver sandals left here for me? Is this perfect wooden dollhouse a metaphor? Am I meant to take this home or rather, to let it flow by, back into the heap-jumble of everything all at once?)
Eventually, all thought ends and I enter the stream of meditative focus where anything can manifest. Ooh… hello, tiny striped leggings (Hannah Anderson). Ahhh… hello blue willow platters for Annie (my friend who sells vintage china). Here are Eileen Fisher pants in my size. And that white sweater I wanted at Free People last year but never purchased.
Anything can happen: resort wear, sexy bras, sun hats, muck boots. A flawless green cashmere from Scotland. A down coat and beneath it, a pure silk couture sample from the runways at Fashion Week.
Of course, none of that (really) matters. While I am bin diving, I am not shopping. I am moving the dream through my body.
Two weeks ago, I dreamed that Archangel Michael came to see me. He said: I am support in hard times. The Archangel of the age. He asked, Do you remember who I am? He asked me to remember. And what are my qualities?
“Strength, courage and fortitude,” I rattled off.
He nodded. Then, he said, Nietzche wrote a book about you which says, ‘Enter the door in the forest’.
“I have never read Nietzche,” I said. To which, Michael said, I am thinking about pagans and patriots. About roots. About time. I am guiding you now through a difficult time into the world that waits for you. The world of wonder: a free world unlike any world you've known.
He requested that I stop (for now) bringing the flow documents from the past, stating, If you are going to channel, channel freshly -and freely - in present time.
He said, not for the first time, You are the voice. To which I responded, “This isn’t a voice. It’s a thunderclap!”
And when, in the middle of the night, my hand cramped from trying to keep up with all he was saying - to write while, at the same time, listening, to capture while, at the same time, receiving - he said, I would speak through you. It will be easier for us both. Especially for you. All will be well, Amy dear. All will be well. We begin when you are ready.
“I am ready,” I said. And so, we’ll begin… again.
Last week, the guides told me about the bins. They said:
Going to the bins is practice for receiving. It will help you receive all that you need even as it also helps you receive our message. A necessary practice as we attune, as we prepare, together your joy in receiving, your discovery of the ease of finding just what you need. The pleasure of sifting physical reality, of pushing aside what is not wanted. Receiving our message is as simple as sorting through heaps of gap T-shirts and jeans. Sorting until the linen shirt or pants or designer dress appears before your eyes as if by magic and you receive them easily, without questions of worthiness or affordability.
This is the same sorting and sifting you do each day with the streams of information and experience you receive from your news media, from your life experience. You sort, selectively, through the ‘bins’ of your physical world, selecting this and sorting that aside. You were never meant to keep up with everything, or to know everything. Rather you are here (and you are designed) to sort reality; to set the compass of your attention to true north and to listen for that quality, that frequency, that vibration, that direction. You are here to set your inner tuning fork to high C and listen for and attune to the one note: the ground of OM.
Last week, just before the equinox, I cleaned the house. Vacuuming, shelving books, laundry. I filed seas of paper into folders. I brought a cozy blanket to the bench in my (unheated) sunroom. I can read there now that winter has passed. Now that things are melting.
That night, I dreamed that a water glass broke in my hands. Splitting into two perfect halves. I held them, one in each palm, water dripping through my fingers. Then, a glass splinter began to bloom from the tip of my finger and small perfect orbs, each made of hexagons, fell from the end of it. As they landed on the ground, they melted into the soil.
What does this mean? I have my ideas. Why talk about dreams? They’re emergences in the river. Conversations we are having with the layer of the world that’s coming back to life.
When we pay attention to dreams and their symbols, when we treat them as offerings, as invitations, everything changes. Rubber walls dissolve. The flow begins to flow. Magical bubbles are born from our fingertips. Angels invite us, again and again, to speak.
New! PILE
A new (sometimes) list of what’s consuming my attention
I’ve been deleting everything under my PROMOTIONS tab in Google. It’s enchantingly liberating.
I am trying to stay off social media. Eventually, I hope to STAY off and spend that time outside, in the world, dreaming.
Audio: I’m re-discovering that listening is my strongest sense (and a source of much pleasure). So,
Podcasts. Let’s start with this jewel: Poetry Unbound. I started with the first episode, and this poem, What you missed that day you were absent from fourth grade. I leave you to it. Go fall in love.
Audiobooks. As mentioned earlier, I’m re-listening to The Secret History of the World by Mark Booth
Reading: During pandemic, I made myself start reading again. Books, not online. I’ve just finished swimming through The Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah Maas. It’s a dreamy fantasy about a human who crosses into the faerie world. It’s not what you think.
Screens: I’m streaming: Ted Lasso (Apple TV), of course, and Daisy Jones and the Six (Prime). But also, Shrinking (Apple TV), which started out kinda meh but the excellent actors were assembled. I knew it could develop into something. It’s better now. I’m beginning to care.
Offerings, News and Updates:
NEW! One-on-One packages and mentoring
Now, you can purchase a package of sessions (for a lower price) and/or schedule steady mentoring conversations with me over time. Go see! https://amyoscar.com/illumination-sessions
You can read about all of my current offerings here.
You can follow me on Instagram here.
You can learn more about the guides here.
As ever, I love hearing from you - and so do the guides. Send an email, ask a question or leave a comment.
And, if you can support this work by subscribing to this newsletter, I welcome you.
I’m so grateful for your eyes, reading this, for your interest. For your response.
xxoo
Amy
I think Sarah J Maas might be my favorite author. :)