I walked through a doorway last night in the dreamtime. It took me a long time getting there, and when I finally arrived, I stood at the threshold a while not quite ready to walk through. We are like that, we humans. We ask to be shown our path, and when we are, we pull back – the journey too steep, the door too far away, the other side too frightening – we hesitate to go forward.
My dog, Daisy, and I didn’t get our walk in until later in the day. It had warmed up quite a bit by then. We turned right out of the lane and began walking south. For some reason I turned into the path that leads past the old shack and through the cornfields. I was a little uneasy because of hearing the coyotes so close early this morning and seeing a coyote run out of the corn field last week. I called Daisy over, holding her closer to me than usual. I used to walk this path all the time, but it’s been a while and its familiarity lost. What I had once kept open with a mower was now weed covered and full of fallen branches. I hardly recognized the opening into the woods on the other side of the field. Only by memory of its placement was I able to find it.
As I moved out of the cut cornstalk-lined path and into the woods, I knew this was a journey of trust. And I knew it had to do with the doorway I walked through last night, early this morning actually before Coyote came to welcome me and howl my praise while also reminding me to not take myself too seriously.
Daisy and I wound our way through the woods. When we could no longer find the wider path, we followed the deer’s trail and when we could no longer find that, we cut our own path; me climbing over fallen trees, Daisy jumping over them. No respectable coyote, or deer for that matter, would have been seen near us so noisy we were breaking twigs under our feet as we stomped thought the growth as tall as Daisy and as thick as a dog’s winter undercoat.
We eventually came out behind the house. Daisy seemed surprised to see the meadow so close by. She too seemed to understand that we had been on a journey, and adventure of discovery where only trust provides us safety. When I smiled at her and said okay, she bounded away into the meadow where she danced and barked and ran around in celebration of returning home.
It’s like that with humans too. When we return home after wandering afar, we are joyful. We may not dance and bark the way Daisy did. Our celebration may be quieter, but we know something has altered us, our intuition tells us so. We may not even be aware of what has changed, only that something within us is different; we have somehow deepened. It is right and as it should be, and all we need do is to be grateful and listen for that small inner voice that will whisper a tad stronger now.
Originally published on my old blog site Awakening 2/25/2017