Today, my inner artist says, “Go to Luna’s Butterfly Café.”
She is clear in her request. She is gentle and firm.
For a moment, I get lulled and swayed into the energies of other people, rethink my day, question the organic impulse to travel out when the back-porch with a view of the pink roses could be so soothing, could be peaceful, too.
But at the hint of not answering the call, a mere consideration to not go, there’s a swift sadness that slumps my shoulders, an inward furling that threatens to extinguish the flickering light of enthusiasm, of possibility, of novelty.
I am learning to not put out my own light.
I am practicing trusting those whispers, and acting on their organic impulses. Perhaps with the only reason that it’ll bring my being ease, it will make my heart happy. And I’m prioritizing my happiness. Happiness is health. This is enough.
Go to Luna’s Butterfly café, my inner artist’s melodious voice again lifts up from the back of my heart, and in her voice there is a vision, a specific direction of where to sit at the café – adventure outside, settle into a table and chair neighboring a flower garden, journal in sunshine.
So I do.
I go where I am directed to go, with an openness, with a sweet ease.
Gifts spontaneously river to me – I befriend a vet named Angel, who is taking her lunch break outside and is eating her favorite sourdough sandwich that includes sliced avocado. We swap dog-lover stories. We are joyfully entertained by the grand freeing of monarch butterflies. The owner of the café tends and rehabilitates butterflies, and today, we marvel in awe as they are set loose to the awaiting flowers, to a magnetic blue sky.
They will be headed to Mexico soon. And they are in no hurry. They’ll trust their pace, their own winged timing.
I talk with a college student who is an old soul. He tells me about skiing in Montana and how the magnificent mountains and pure stretch of sky made him feel small, and in the best way. I share that I feel that way when I am by the sea – the ego-mind in all its haughty importance quiets and we return to re-remembering our perfect place, the size of what is truly significant, in the interconnected elegant vastness of life, universe, things.
I compliment him on his black tourmaline ring, and there is story about a chance stop off the interstate in Pennsylvania. There was a gas station, a Taco Bell and a crystal shop. He chose the crystal shop and had a heart-to-heart with the owner, an older woman who shared that to avoid hitting animals on the road, visualize the car with white light. Let it float out and around.
I tuck that valuable information away, and before he leaves, he gives me a black tourmaline bracelet from the store. He tells me he’s done with this now, and I can have it.
The kindred spirits, the butterflies, the flow of the day all set into motion by a small little step, by a question to my inner artist, which could also be described as the inner child, or tuning into the heart.
“What do you need?”
And the question is … can we hear AND then take the necessary action?
Or perhaps that is really my question. I do know my heart. I do know my desires. It’s the setting them loose, like those butterflies destined for a grand journey, one that is encoded in their being, one that they don’t need to strategize or get stressed about, they simply just follow the innate calling.
I think Marianne Williamson is correct in the assessment that our biggest fear is not our darkness, but our light.
We are heavily programmed and conditioned to think struggle and striving are necessary for life.
But when I look to nature, the easy-going pace of the butterfly’s wings, I feel into a truth that still beckons, still breathes and winks encouragement. To live as flow means releasing all the things, all the concepts, old programming that keeps us tethered. And this releasing can be startling, frightening, a shock to the system, it can rouse all the dormant fears who will howl that you’re putting yourself into danger by being authentic, true, by dropping a masked narrative that was never you.
It may be much easier to hold onto the familiar. Until one day it simply is not.
The back-porch is familiar – beautiful and peaceful and restorative. There will be a day where my inner artist will tell me to stay, to go there, and this is the dance. There are no set rules. There’s just the need for an affectionate allowing, a bright sense of wonder to accompany us when we soften to ask the question today and every day, “What do I need?” What does the inner artist, the inner child, the heart long for to experience this life, this life that is yours, this life-force that is you, so extraordinary and unique.
Right now, a tiny white butterfly flutters around the tables. She is a sign for me.
“You’re right where you’re supposed to be.”
Little steps. Little flutters. Little acted-upon-answers to keep us in the aligned pace that is life in breathing motion.
***
And to kindly add – that a dream of mine is in motion, and that’s Body Writes. These sessions are all about freeing self-expression through embodiment and creative arts practices. I believe to be human is to be creative, and the body has all the answers we need. This Sunday at 10am-12:15pm EST, we’ll be musing on the theme of Mercury Retrograde to re-center in the heart as we navigate the currents of life. If you feel a heart-tug of resonance, please register with the link below. I’d be soul-thrilled to have you!
Body Writes: Mercury Is In Retrograde: https://meredithkingsley.com/body-writes/2022/9/3/body-writes-mercury-is-in-retrograde