Where are your wings? What happened to them? When did you last fly?
What have you done with your wings?
When I ask those questions, everyone has a sense of what I am saying. Even though they are not very rational questions. Or rather, they are not very left brain questions. Not questions that are rooted in ordinary reality.
Yet we all know what is being said. Many of us instinctively think, feel or touch between our shoulder blades. We all understand what is being asked when I say,
Where are your wings?
We can also go back to a time when we remember having wings. If not actually remember, in ordinary reality, we can definitely remember in non ordinary reality, in a non verbal sense. We can go back to a time before words imprisoned our minds. We can remember a time when our light shone bright. A time before there was time.
Perhaps we were young, or perhaps it was in the dreamtime, or in the land in between. Nonetheless, we all remember our wings.
What happened? When did we decide to put them away? Did we lose them? Did they break? Where are they now? And what would it mean to get our wings back?
I remember when my son was around six or seven years old in class one. He had climbed a tree and brought down a tiny bird chick in his cupped hands. The girls in his class teased him about this until he cried. I am still not sure why. Then they teased him about being a cry baby. They said boys don't cry – only babies do. He came home distraught and conflicted, asking me if this was true. Did boys not cry? Did men not cry? Did we cry, he wanted to know, for he had not really seen us do this.
I told him that everyone cries. That only real men cry. That tears are good. That they keep his golden heart open. But I could see it was the start of the dimming of his light, the clipping of his wings.
The decision to put away our wings, to disconnect from our wings, to forget we have wings, is usually a decision to dim our light.
This dimming of our light does not happen overnight. Losing our wings is a gradual, subtle, imperceptible process. Our light becomes dimmed when we turn away from ourself. When we forget who we are. Or when we try to hide who we are, because we don't want to be too visible. It's the introverts like myself who most suffer from this affliction. It is we, who are more comfortable in the quiet, lonely places, that shy away from too much contact and seek out the dappled shadows who really try to hide our wings.
Martin my Jung teacher would say to me,
'You need to come out from under your rock. You need to let your light shine.'
I have tried, really tried, but always, at the last moment, I scuttle away. It's hard to explain why one does that, even to one's self. Perhaps the light is too bright and we can't contain it. Perhaps we fear that like Icarus, if we move too close to the sun we will melt and burn.
Certainly the extroverts of the world who so love shining, and so pursue admiration find it very hard to understand. Even introverts looking in on others like themselves find it hard.
When my daughter was young, I would dress her up for a party, in some or other outfit to match the party theme – fairy, mermaid, cat – beautiful, colourful outfits, many with wings. She always looked stunning and even though she'd picked the outfit, and wanted to wear it, and loved the outfit, she always pulled most of it off at the very last moment, just before she stepped out of the car. That's introverted, hiding your light stuff.
Some of us hide in plain sight. We go out there giving talks and leading workshops and being seen in some way – and then we rush back into our internal woods to hide in our cabins, often under the bed, with a blanket and a good book.
I often wonder about those who are always in the media light. Actors, writers, artists, politicians, musicians. What effect does it have on their energy field, on their light, to share it with so many people? Could it be the reason so many talented people die so tragically? Is it that they cannot contain their light? Or is it that they have shared so much of it, they've burnt out like a star?
I wonder about the famous – about the effect of others linking into their energy fields. Many seem to flourish from the contact. It makes me wonder. Do the extroverts draw the energy of others? Is that what makes them 'charismatic'? Able to withstand all the attention? Do extroverts absorb the light of others, whereas introverts share theirs? Who knows?
Getting back to wings though, I have started some amazing energetic processing around reconnecting people with their wings. It's really spectacular work, which is creating amazing results. What I find so profound, is the variety of expression and experience. Some have had a wing broken which needs repair, some have hidden their wings. Others cannot connect to their wings – they don't feel their wings belong to them any more.
Some people report their wings are made of light, some of feathers, some wings have tails and some have wings that are made of stars. What is truly wonderful though, is that every single person I have worked with, can find and connect (and re-connect) with their wings.
There are many books and movies involving wings and human flight. Sue Monk Kidd wrote the amazing 'Invention of wings”. In this book, the African ancestors of Hetty 'Handful' could apparently fly. One of my favourite movies, Wim Wenders' awesome masterpiece, 'Wings of Desire', shows angels wandering around Berlin, listening to the thoughts of others and adding comfort. They look like humans, but not everyone can see them. Of course, like all angels, they have wings.
Our myths and legends are filled with winged creatures like the Garuda, phoenix, dragon, hyppogriff, pegasus, sphynx. In the Greek pantheon there are winged gods like Hermes, and daimons like Zelos. The sky gods and goddesses, all winged, who command the winds, the dawn, the sunset and the rainbows. There are the elementals of the fairy kingdom, and of course the host of angels and archangels – all of whom have wings and can fly.
There are many saints too, who could fly. Like St Joseph of Cupertino (1603-1663) who would float to the ceiling whenever he became ecstatic with heavenly joy. Seventy odd reports of this. Theresa of Avila (1515-1582) had such a problem with levitation that she had weights tied to her feet!
For years I flew in my dreams. These flying dreams were a very different type of dream – this I know as I have done years of Jung and dream recording. In the flying dreams I am in human form and I actually feel the sensation of taking flight in a physical body – lifting off in a very specific way. There is always a moment of disbelief, of being certain it can not be done, of being sure I am going to crash. Then there is that instant of lift off. Unsteady, wavering a bit, before leaving the ground and then the flight itself, in which I am always parallel to the ground, and never much higher than the trees. These flights never lasted very long. Seconds perhaps, and then having to return and land, again with a sense of fear of crashing. When I woke up, always straight afterwards, it was with the clear and distinct feeling that this was something that had actually happened – in a physical body. That this could happen. That it was real.
Sometimes in these dreams, I held hands and flew with a young blonde boy who I know was my husband Shaun. So you see we flew together in our dreams as children, long before we'd met.
There. Now no one will ever take anything I say about wealth creation seriously any more.
Long before I ever wrote my first book, I wrote a poem, prompted by a prompt, in Anne Schuster's writing class. (Rest in peace Anne – we miss you!)
It went like this:
Jump off the edge!
I’m going to jump off the edge,
leap up from my bed!
Out of the car, out of the blues,
I’m going to kick mediocrity
with high heeled shoes.
I’m going to give the finger
to dos and shoulds,
and even possibilities,
’cause they don’t rhyme
I’m going to jump up, leap off, shake out, fly,
then climb!
I’m going to write up a storm,
then do it again.
I’m going to sing out bestsellers
and walk in the rain with
an umbrella of starlight, and nothing else
I’m going to kick timidity in the butt
or maybe its arse,
’cause it doesn’t rhyme
and you can’t keep down a good thing –
that would be a crime
Believing in magic!
Fire!
Jump the edge!
Fly into tomorrow and
peer over the ledge
to see yourself climbing
out of your book
have a peek, have a peek,
have another look
I’m going to stretch out my wings
and write that book.
Look!
It was two years later, almost to the month, when I read out this poem, while wearing large pink wings at the book launch of my first book, Money Alchemy.
Then I think I put away my wings. Or that's what it feels like.
So where are your wings? When did you last use them? Why did you hide them or put them away?
Did someone make you, or ask you to? Did someone clip your wings?
Where are your wings? What could you use them for today?
Call your wings back. They're much closer than you think. Look for them, find them, connect with them, and let them show you where you need to fly.