Hello Dear Ones!

An intriguing question to consider today: are you a Spiritual Seeker or a Finder? When I first read this question (asked originally by Andrew Cohen), my immediate response was that I am, most definitely, a Finder!

Yet since that first contemplation I have reviewed and re-evaluated my response – bouncing back and forth between the two options with regularity and depending upon which aspect of my life and my spiritual growth I would find myself considering.

As a child, when the innate gifts I chose to bring with me into this physical life were utilized regularly, innocently and to the fullest, seeing auras, recognizing beings not ‘seen’ by the average human, the ability to ‘read’ minds and know illness in others … I had no need to seek nor to find my spiritual connections. My spirituality was as much a part of me as my own skin, as flowing as the breath in my lungs and the blood through my veins.

Then I began public school and the spirituality was pushed, shoved, enticed, intimidated and ridiculed out of me. It took many years and much aching from the loss of what had been not only been a vital but an essential aspect of my self before I realized that I needed to search for what had been taken from me – or, in truth, what I had allowed to be institutionalized out of me. By that time I was in my late teens.

Where did I search for what I believed was missing? In churches. Keep in mind that I was raised Protestant:  my family were regular church-goers, more from habit than from religious passion. I eventually began to teach Sunday School. Till one day I realized that the new curriculum I was to teach was attempting to provide logical rationale for the miracles performed by Christ. Needless to say, I rebelled. Yet I longed to fill a gap that was like a missing tooth – the tongue of my spirituality returned again and again to the space left vacant by my societal conformity and conditioning. In order to bite into life, I needed a full set of teeth. I thought to find it in the more ancient Catholic structures. There were even thoughts of becoming a nun … really!

I traveled with a musical group (Up With People) for a year and in every city we visited, I would go to the nearest Catholic edifice. Was my spirituality in New York City? Or in L.A.? Was it in Santa Fe, New Mexico? Was it in Montreal, Quebec or in Panama or Puerto Rico? I never found it.

With each search, and with each unsuccessful attempt to find what appeared to be so very absent from the stones, the icons and the music, came the realization that I was aching more often, more deeply, more longingly than when I first began.

When my sojourn with Up With People came to an end, I returned to be with family – my parents and siblings. I completed my education, found full time employment, met a nice man, married, settled down, had children … all the typical life experiences set out as expected to be lived by a woman in the 1960s and ’70s. We did not attend church. My husband had been raised Catholic and we were married in the Protestant church, so he was persona non grata by his own faith. My interest in the church was simply to appease the parents and grandparents who expected a church wedding and Christenings of the children to mark our duty done and their souls saved. Yes, it may seem blasphemous to many, yet I speak today of the truth of then.

I was introduced to the writings of Jane Roberts through her books Seth Speaks and even the Adventures of Oversoul Seven (which I absolutely adored!) back in the late ’70s but other than that my spiritual journey had come pretty much to a close as my life was filled with babies, diapers, and life as a mother and housewife. Then I began attending university in the mid-1980s and I filled my life with my studies at the same time and at the same kitchen table that my children used to do their homework. During all this time, on hindsight, I was neither a seeker nor a finder. I filled that emptiness with life and physical things.

It took a dream in 1989 to spark the change. In the dream I was standing in the middle of a mob of panicked people – everyone was screaming and running hither and yon. Absolute bedlam was running rampant. I recalled seeing a mountain at the edges of all this pandemonium. Just as I thought to help these people find some sense of calm, the crowd parted just like I envisioned the Red Sea parted for Moses. There was now a clear path between myself and the mountain. A man walked toward me. He was wearing the full hide of a black wolf, the wolf’s head upon his own head, its eyes open and looking at me. No words were spoken, yet I knew I was to follow him. We walked up a path I had not originally seen that took us to a mid-way point on the mountain where we could look below us to see the people still in their varying and harrying states of unrest.

I sensed this man was to become my spiritual ‘teacher’. Just as this thought entered the realm of my dream, the man himself changed into a real black wolf. I had a sense of telepathic communication with him telling me that the time was not right to meet. We both had much yet to learn. When each of us was ready we would find each other in the physical. With that he ran off on all fours. I could ‘see’ his aura and where it led, though he had gone into the deepest part of the mountain forest.

Suddenly, I changed into a white owl – a huge Snowy Owl. This was the first time in any of my dreams that I literally flew!!!!!! What an incredible experience! Snowy Owls fly silently … there was no sound, merely sensation – broad wings beating with grace and beauty and power … I followed the auric trail of the black wolf into the woods.

My dream ended before I found him, but the experience remained with me when I awoke and I recorded the dream. Needless to say, I began to seek out a teacher that would bring me closer to such a real encounter. I began to read every book I could get my hands on with regards to Native American culture. I eventually found a Native Elder who was willing to teach me and I studied with her for the better part of 5 years. It was an amazing journey and I am so deeply richer because of the experience. This woman has since transitioned (sadly, for those who love her, she passed at such an early age) and she often comes to me now in the dream-time.

It was through this fascinating woman that I met Mike. She and I and several others we knew were about to attend the sunrise ceremony at the Elder’s Conference at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada one bitterly cold February morning. With snow up to our knees and temperatures at minus 15 degrees Celsius, our small group of 10 people were awake at 4:30 in the morning, gathering all of the layers of clothes we possibly could get on to keep ourselves protected from the cold until we got to the warmth of the sacred fire that we would encircle during the ceremony.

I was standing in the middle of my hotel room, bundled up, when I suddenly had the urge to prepare a tobacco tie: a gift of tobacco prepared and placed into a small square of red cotton cloth and tied with red yarn, to be held in a certain way in order to introduce a prayer, or request, into the tobacco. This little gift was to be given to an Elder. I had no idea to whom this was to be given, I just trusted that I would know when the time was right. I placed the wee bundle into my left coat pocket – the side nearest my heart – till such a time as I knew the recipient.

The gang of us headed out into the still-dark winter chill and trudged over to the area where the ceremony was being held. There was a large group of people in attendance that year. And while we stood in the thigh-high snow, stomping it down to made a more solid base for our footing, the man I now call my husband stepped into the circle. Mike stood in his red capote (a Voyageur-style woolen coat with built in hood) and it was Mike who performed the ceremony in honour of the sun’s arrival that incredible morning. I knew him immediately! He was the man I had met in my dream exactly four years before – exactly four years to the day, I realized later! It was to this man I was to give the tobacco tie.

There is more to the story but no time to tell it all here. Just know that my spiritual search had grown from an interest to a passionate way of life. Mike and I have both expanded our spiritual focus, beliefs and direction. The more we learn, the more we grow and the deeper we move into the spirituality of who each of us is individually and as a couple. It has been, and continues to be, an incredible journey.

I originally found myself saying that I was a finder – and yet, because my journey continues to grow and expand, I would now have to say that I am still a seeker. I am open to knowing all there is to learn about myself and my Self and my connection to All That Is and my role in the Universe. I am ever so much closer to recognizing the Divine within my being, to honouring that aspect of who I truly am at the depth of my soul. It is a joyous journey and one I am excited to continue to expand and expound upon …

In my perception, when I eventually do become a Finder, I will have chosen to step into the flow of the Divine and to have released my physical presence in this reality. In the meantime, I’m going to thoroughly enjoy the journey along the way.

My view …

In Light and Laughter,

Marcia

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Follow this link to read Mike’s View.