11. Shadow Revelations

Jackie's ecosystem is enriched by the arrival of two budgies. But Willy came back from his outing with a tail injury. Jackie is shocked, who could have hurt him !!?

Reality is often not what it seems, so she is looking inside her to find the reasons for so much violence in the world. She finds soothing through meditation, showing more love seems to be the only answer.

Music by Rahul Popawala

Transcript

Chapter 11 Shadow Revelations Warning.

The following reading deals with sensitive subjects related to deep-seated trauma.

Dear listeners,

Please be aware that this story may trigger intense emotional reactions so please listen carefully to yourself and don't hesitate to ask for the help you need.

Janik,

Author and story healer.

October 25,

2021.

Settled into my writer's world with my willy,

My music,

My plants and our budgies.

They arrived on October 22nd like Willy last year so it looks like this date is becoming adoption day.

Last Friday,

Phil's co-worker brother left his pair of budgies behind in his small downtown apartment.

He's going back home in Ukraine.

His co-worker,

Who lives part-time in that apartment,

Asked Phil if he knew anyone who would take care of it.

The phone rang and I said yes.

Why not?

It's what our ecosystem has been lacking,

Birds.

It's also a way to give Willy some companions.

Coco and Kosha,

One green,

The other one blue.

I made them each a crystal bracelet to welcome them and spent the whole day thinking about the best place to install their cage in safety.

After a few adjustments,

There they are in the center of the living room with a view on the trees outside.

Willy was interested at first but now he sleeps next to me even though the birds are chattering.

Phil thinks it sounds like we're in the forest.

It's even livelier in here.

October 26,

2021.

After a full moon filled with gifts and love,

It fades and pales.

She makes way for other forces including Mars,

The god of war.

Willy came back from yesterday's outing with a broken tail.

As I stroked him,

I noticed the swelling and when I touched his tail,

He meowed.

Also,

It no longer lifts even when we give him his beloved food.

He looks at me with his eyes full of love and distress.

Who could have done such a thing?

There are so many people who don't like cats.

He's lying between my legs this morning.

We're listening to the budgies sing.

He's resting.

I'm going to imitate him.

He has the wisdom of the beasts.

This morning marks the 15th day of the 40 meditations on transformation.

The theme was non-violence.

I've been looking for the culprit and revenge against the person who hurt my cat but the universe had another answer for me.

Repeating my mantra as I sat in the center of my tropical living room,

I held firm.

I cried for the first 10 minutes like little Jackie who had her stems and marbles stolen,

Like a child who had her doll's hair cut off.

I cried so hard wondering why there was so much violence right there around me,

Inside me.

My mother came to console me.

My parental grandmother too.

I felt their hands rubbing my back.

I felt a maternal embrace rocking me tenderly.

When I was strong enough,

I went to see the wild woman.

She had opened the windows of her house and the breeze and sounds of life were entering her dwelling.

She was washing herself.

She was showering in the mother river,

The one that flows at my feet,

The one that softens even the hardest of hearts.

She emerged from the water,

Naked,

Tall,

Slim,

And radiant.

We sat together,

Clean and pure.

Vengeance was left on the shore like sediment,

Ready to be washed away by the next tide.

We returned home to the sanctuary with our sacred hands.

We offered Willy a relaxing massage,

One that creates healing for his tail.

We generated space filled with swirling fresh water,

Like a wind vortex.

Back on my cushion,

I know what to do with my day.

I'll make bread,

Take care of the animals and my plants,

Make art,

And make love.

Because it's the only possible response to the violence of the world,

Just a little more love.

October 27,

2021.

I recovered a piece of my soul through meditation,

A piece I'd lost somewhere in a basement,

Dangling from the end of a row.

In a way,

It was my radio that I had lost.

A beautiful wooden box,

A magic box,

With which I could pick up lots of stations.

When I was little,

It scared me because it played music I didn't like.

News so tragic that I preferred to keep it closed,

Tucked away in a corner,

Buried by my mess,

Forgotten.

Yesterday,

Phil asked me what was the point of going to see ancestors and past lives.

My answer didn't come right away,

But I replied that it was for my own healing,

Mine and those around me.

This healing comes from my ability to pick up the channels,

To go into these parallel universes,

Which are right there around our material existence.

I learn,

But often only receive confirmation of what I intuitively know,

Like my choice to live in the West,

In the territory of transformation,

According to the medicine wheel.

I receive and share,

And I've also started to spread my own assets.

I understand even more the importance of taking only what you need.

I feel less and less weird.

I find my way,

My role in my community.

Phil,

The Taurus Ascendant,

Still seems to doubt my abilities,

Believing that I confuse vision with imagination.

That's okay,

Because I,

Too,

Am sometimes speechless when it comes to what I see.

I'm exploring in a shamanic way a practice that's perfectly suited to the place I'm in,

Its portals,

Its history,

And its resources.

From here,

I can go anywhere,

Sitting comfortably on my cushion.

October 28.

The moon is warning,

And we've entered the season of the scorpion,

The season of darkness,

Shadows,

And inner gloom.

I can feel it.

My throat is knotted.

My eyes are full of water.

My body is slow.

My heart aches,

Too.

I feel myself being pulled towards the inner forest,

In the rain,

In the night.

These are sensations I use to distance myself from thanks to my addictions.

I have chosen sobriety,

But I have to admit that right now,

I could really use a little drink.

From experience,

I know it would distract me and take me elsewhere,

Away from the shadows.

This other path I've taken isn't the easiest.

Instead of running away,

I have to sit with my shadows in the shadows.

There are so many of them around me.

I know some of them,

But they are also all those I don't know.

I feel like I'm trying to build a fire with wet fuel under a light mist.

It doesn't take.

It smokes and stinks.

I know I have to keep trying,

Looking for dry twigs under the rocks,

Under cover.

I find some enough to make a micro-fire.

This mere burning of these twigs is enough to light up my night.

It's less frightening.

The shadows are transformed into something familiar,

Almost friendly.

Thanks to this little fire,

Which I feed gently so as not to smother it,

I can start a discussion with these shadows.

Specialists call it shadow work.

In my material world,

I'm having a ball this morning.

Willie is convalescing.

I'm worried another part of me knows I shouldn't be.

It's raining heavily outside,

But I'm sheltered and warm with nothing to fear.

I think back to my experiences of spiritualism between the ages of 14 and 17.

Not aligned,

I couldn't astral travel.

My house,

Where my mother died,

Was not healthy for me.

I think back to those sessions with high school friends,

When my black cat had things to say to me,

And to that time when a friend's deceased sister came to visit him.

He punched a hole in the wall of my room,

Holding it for the destruction of this entity.

I was already a shaman,

Or a witch.

Since 2017,

I've been following the shamanism wheel without consciously knowing it.

I left the East to settle in the West.

As soon as I arrived,

My transformation began.

At first,

In the most obvious way,

My physique became thinner.

The closer I get to my bones,

The clearer my visions become,

The more I accept my singularity,

My weirdness.

October 29,

2021.

We finally saw the wound on Willie's tail.

It smells infected,

So I put on a little antibiotic cream,

Trying not to play God.

I failed in my attempt to live this ordeal with detachment.

I had an anxiety attack and went into the dark zone,

The one of the near-death announcements.

I could feel the fear stirring in all my cells,

Like a storm raging inside me.

Unable to align a sequence of thoughts,

Gestures,

No longer able to make my sober,

Incoherent speech blurred vision,

The last time I visited this area,

I had symbolically cut off my ex-boyfriend's head,

Announcing my departure for the West,

Into the arms of his best friend.

Phil had to wake me up from this walking nightmare.

He called me to order.

I could see Willie dying,

Like everything I love,

Like everything I've ever loved.

I love too much.

I love badly.

I take everything on my shoulders.

I substitute myself for God.

I no longer trust in anything except my ability to save the one,

The one or the ones I love.

I pose as a superhero,

A super scholar.

I take responsibility,

The suffering of others.

I take it all in,

And at the same time,

I'm so afraid,

So afraid of losing everything.

I'm losing it.

Humility.

I'm nothing,

Just another parasite who tells herself stories and thinks she's something more.

I have to come back down to earth,

Close to the world of my Philou.

November 1st,

2021.

Monday morning.

Everything was frozen except for the two of us and those who were able to spend the night inside.

I had a good night's sleep with Willie next to me,

My reiki cat.

His tail has recovered from its infection and resumed its question mark-like position.

I now can see the fang marks,

The torn skin,

The missing fur,

Probably in a race to escape.

It wasn't a human who hurt Willie,

It was another animal,

Possibly a dog.

So Willie passed into the adult world.

He received his initiation to pass into this other world.

He had to cross the sacred territory,

Guarded by doorkeepers,

Armed with fangs.

He had to face the beasts,

Run for his life and leave them a bite to eat.

Alive,

Bearing the mark of his bravery,

Having earned the respect of the doorman and the other cats in the community,

Led by the no-tail cat.

I think back to my great aunt who had glass bone disease,

Osteogenesis imperfecta,

A rare genetic disorder.

She was like a glass doll,

Always broken.

I think back also to the novel,

Maria Chapdelaine,

Which I've just re-read with everything I know about my history.

This novel is set in the same period,

In the same area.

But instead of writing a neat love story,

The vision of a man,

A visiting Frenchman,

I could write the story of people driven to inbreeding and abuse by the social context and institutions in place.

Beyond my grandparents' house stood the Blue Mountains,

A wilderness of ignorance.

The real story is much dirtier than the one we've been re-editing for the last hundred years.

It's steeped in mud,

Sweat and blood.

This story cannot be cleaned up with holy water.

Only my healing can dissolve the evil and suffering experienced by these colonial people.

November 2,

2021.

I'm using the end of this lunar cycle to have my tarot drawn.

Using only the major arcana,

I use the cross and call upon the integration of the new self.

The moon is at the top,

The sun to my left,

The star is in the center,

The nameless card to the right,

And the fool walks below.

Yet another confirmation that I'm in the right place and I'm doing the right thing.

I went on a journey inside myself.

I warmed up my identities in the sun.

I laid them bare.

I made them grow.

I'm facing death.

I've brought to light what was hidden there at the bottom of the water.

I light up my night now.

I carry within me the story that has been revealed to me.

I let it flow.

Nature is all around.

I feed the streams with my urns to the sound of birds.

In my quest to find a new balance,

I've taken and continue to take practical steps to understand.

It's in my depth that my talents are hidden,

Like my book,

And it makes me happy to be able to share them.

I must,

As the death card shows me,

Mow till my soil,

Make gardens,

And blossom my former life.

Reviews

Listening to you brings me closer to myself and gives me more and more understanding of my own gifts. Thank you again and again Janick🫂♥️ because of your sharing it is allowing me to open up little by little🌹and allows me to not feel so alone.

Thank you for sharing this journey through shadows. I felt the need to revenge. And the help of your ancestors.