A Turkey Visitor Provides Food for Thought

On March 27th, I was up early working at my computer with my balcony door open (which is pretty usual—I like lots of fresh air). I kept hearing what sounded like a turkey gobbling coming from down the street, but told myself it couldn’t be so, could it? It could have been a very weird dog.

The gobbling got closer and closer until it was coming from right in front of my house, at which point I had to get up to go check it out, because now it sounded unmistakably like a turkey. Sure enough, there in my front lawn was a young-looking turkey, strutting around. As soon as I stepped onto the balcony, though, it whisked around the corner into my side yard. I never realized that the land speed of a turkey was so fast.

I grabbed my camera and ran downstairs, then snuck quietly out the back door. It tried to come into my back yard but was foiled by the iron gate. When I came out, it turned around and headed for the northwest corner of my yard. I got a few pictures, one that isn’t very clear at all, one under the redwoods (taken through the iron gate), and a couple that I took by swinging wide and around the redwoods after it flew to the back fence. Then it spread its wings and flew away, rather gracefully and effortlessly for such a large bird.

I believe that, if we are alert and pay attention, information flows to us (and from us, but that’s not the topic today) all the time. This information can be in the way of messages to warn us, guide us, or otherwise inform us. These messages came come in any form, such as billboards that catch our eye, a stranger making a comment that catches out attention, and so on.

Especially, I believe that when we see animals, those animals bring messages of some sort. (Even animals who are in our lives every day, such as cats and dogs and even goldfish.) So my normal reaction when seeing an animal is to reflect upon what the message is that is being brought to me. I always get something interesting.

Somehow I failed that process this time, at least in as far as reflecting on it immediately. That might be in part because I just don’t know what to make of the turkey as a messenger. The usual animals I see, I tend to know their messages (hawks, hummingbirds, crows, and deer appear to me often, for example). But a turkey—? I was clueless.

This morning, however, I awoke thinking about it, and decided it was time to complete the process. After some Googling and reading, I found this Web site that seems to summarize most succinctly the turkey’s meanings (it also plays a nice little sound file of a turkey’s gobble).

After reading the various pages, I turned inward and asked my inner self what the meaning was for me. I got something related to the posted meanings, but personal for me, which is exactly perfect—to be meaningful, a message must be personally tailored to the individual it is meant for. Cookie-cutter symbolism, where a dog is said to mean the exact same thing to everyone, just doesn’t go far enough. It is a start, and that is all; it is up to the recipient of the message to get the gist of the message as it was meant for him or her.

The point of this post is not just to share my own experience, but also to encourage others to be alert to messages from the world coming their way. Being open to such messages enriches life immensely, and can help each of us make better, more informed choices in our lives.

The Simply True Show

I recently designed and edited Ingrid Katal’s book, What is Your Honor Code? Ingrid is starting a talk show soon, called “The Simply True Show.” This show is connected with Oprah, so many people will see her and her book, I am sure.

In her book, Ingrid offers food for thought and quite practical, do-able tools for understanding and improving many areas of one’s life. The gist of Ingrid’s message is that we are each responsible for our lives and that we create our own realities. I was very much in tune with her on this, which made editing the book a pleasure.

One of the strongest points of Ingrid’s book is that it uses a question-and-answer format, with bulleted answers, to help people learn about and understand the roots of a given issue, and take positive steps toward making matters better in that area. It is the kind of book that gets used, rather than just read. You can purchase used ones from Amazon.com; I think it will also soon be in Borders and Barnes & Noble, and of course you can order it directly from Ingrid’s Web site.

On Dreams

I just woke up from a rather horrible set of dreams. I believe that all dreams are real in some regard. I do not believe that they are things concocted by our own brains solely for our own use; if I meet in a dream someone I know in waking reality, I tend to think that there is the possibility, at least, that I have actually connected with and communicated with that person, if only on the soul level.

Therefore, if I encounter a disturbing situation in a dream, especially where people are doing bad things to other people, and especially if those bad things are being done to me, I ask myself about the meaning. I don’t always get good answers from myself. But this morning, I thought to tune in to my spirit friends and ask them to comment, especially since I had received some information last week that I thought might be related to the dreams. As soon as I did, I got the following reply, which I am recording as accurately as I can remember.

“When we dream, we venture into many realities. Some are our own and belong to us; others are realities that we are just visiting. Those that are our own reflect our own truths; those that belong to others, while still reflecting truths, do not necessarily reflect our truths unless we wish to accept them.”

This was just a brief reply, but it was very reassuring. If you want to hear more about my theories and experiences with dreams, I would be happy to write up a post for my Web site. Just let me know.

What to do with Reality

In the early 1980s, I started reading a series of books by Jane Roberts. Much like me, Jane Roberts was a highly gifted and clear channeler, though she was a trance channel while I am a conscious channel, and she mainly focused on creating and building a relationship with one entity, Seth, while I seem to have a cadre of spirit friends. Neither approach is better than the other; I am just pointing out similarities and differences.

Seth is what I call a probability master; he conveys a ton of information on the topic of probabilities and on how we construct our realities.

The Seth books were not my first introduction to the idea that we each create our individual realities—starting when I was 11, my mother used to drag me off to our local Church of Religious Science. The Religious Scientists basically teach the same thing, though they use different terminology, so when I started reading the Seth books, the concepts weren’t entirely new. However, the way they were presented, and the vast additional amount of practical information on how the universe works, were.