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When a Single Feather Falls from the Sky · The Harmony Channel

• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Harmony Channel, a podcast on creating harmony from the inside out.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host, Siroes.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: When a single feather falls from the sky, this is where I'm going to take us in this episode to a secret language of feathers.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not long ago, I was driving, mind straddling two worlds, the road of the mountain and the road of my life.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I found myself pondering miracles, wondering if they were real, and if so, what possibilities they might bring.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I was also reflecting on the new work that has been coming through.
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: As I followed the bend in the physical road, my mind curved as well.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: My awareness was carried to something up ahead, swirling from the sky.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: A leaf would have been a common occurrence this time of year, but this pattern of descent did not drop or drift like any falling leaf I'd ever seen.
• 1:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Know this was something else, something even lighter.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was a feather spiraling from the clearing of trees as if it were contained in a clear vessel as if it were attached by a hidden thread to a central point in an invisible tube from the sky to the earth.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: This feather slowly yet confidently spun downward.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I watched this feather carefully trying to do so safely from inside our moving car.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nearly mesmerized by the twirling black feather, I considered what to do.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure many people would continue on their way, missing the moment or simply finding it amusing.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: But those people are not me.
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had wished there was time enough to roll down my window, to reach my hand into the wind, to grab hold of the spiraling plume, but I did not, and I was torn between what seemed illogical and what felt intuitive.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had to choose in that moment, so I did what any mystic in her right mind would do.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I made a U-turn as quickly as I could to retrieve this magical gift from a crow.
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: My family, also in the car with me, hallowed as I sped back to the scene of the sighting.
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I explained I'd seen a feather miraculously fall from the sky, and I needed to retrieve it.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: All eyes were on the lookout now, as I slowed down to where I thought it had fallen.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Had I imagined it?
• 2:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Disappointed I turned around, back in our original direction, slowly crawling in the car, determined to find this feather.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: There it was.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The road was narrow, but I pulled aside letting two unhappy cars pass by.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: They had no idea what I had gotten into my mind.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I quickly ran out, grabbed the treasure, and hopped back into the car.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I drove home with a bestowed quill quietly resting in my contented lap.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is an example of what my life has come to, paying attention to signs sometimes means you need a bumper sticker on your car that says, I break for feathers.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes it means your family thinks you're a little nuts.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: As I processed this unusual feather arrival, I found myself contemplating when this way began.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: When had I started to deeply listen to the land, to the feathers, because my life wasn't always this way, not exactly.
• 3:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: At first, each found feather was simply a beautiful object from nature that I was fortunate to come across.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Spirratically, over the course of a decade, the feathers appeared.
• 3:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I collected some, but not all.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I felt like an explorer each time finding gold.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had no idea these feathers were letters of a quiet language, whispering in audible words that the winds of my life were changing.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: The flight pattern was shifting.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Prepare yourself.
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: They may have been saying, for a new way of being is coming.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've always been drawn to the idea of signs, and there were several small occasions with the wind, the water, the forest, where I sensed their sentience.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, it took a long time to fully realize that these happenings were not just signs, but messages.
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Messages to me.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, at the end of August 2021, at our old house in Maine, I caught onto the subtlety of our relationship.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I finally realized the feathers were more than beautiful yet trivial objects.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I finally understood there was something mystical happening between us.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: The signs of feathers were speaking to me.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were appearing for me, serving as messages that led me to something I was desperate to find.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oliver.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: One evening at Twilight, Oliver watched the girls and me play in the garden as he crouched underneath our old Volvo Station wagon.
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was a skittish cat and was afraid of everyone except me so I didn't push him to go inside.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I let him be.
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would get him inside when the house was quiet and the girls had gone to bed.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: But my faint inner voice also knew something was different about that night.
• 5:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I brushed the soft and figured he would come inside when he was ready.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: The next day, Oliver was nowhere to be seen, and by nightfall, I was extremely worried.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was a soulmate kitty, a songbird, and one of my best buddies.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Where was he?
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I could not sleep wondering why he wasn't coming home.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the stillness, I closed my eyes searching for him in the darkness of my inner sight.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was all so new to me, but I saw a barn and could just barely make out a fuzzy outline on his face.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: He called me Mama, which brought tears to my eyes.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: As hard as I tried, I couldn't get a sense of anything else.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Was he alive?
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Was he dead?
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I sat outside on my house steps, weeping under the starry sky.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I called and waited for him to rub his long, soft black fur against my leg.
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I longed to hear his catsong.
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I waited for him to come home like a naughty teenager who stayed out past curfew.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I waited, but he did not come.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: As I was about to get up, I thought I heard the sound of him crying.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I could have sworn I heard his distinct, high-pitched meow.
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I sat and waited for him to come and greet me, but still nothing.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I looked around and he was not there.
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Was I just hearing things?
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Was I hearing him from the other world?
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: The idea of a spirit realm was still developing, but I was beginning to understand that there was an unseen world all around us that I had previously been unaware of.
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I went inside and tried to be patient.
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tomorrow he will come.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I said to myself, the barn might be at my neighbor's house.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe he got hurt and was resting there.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: They had two cats that he was front of me with, so perhaps he was just hanging out with them.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: The next day, Oliver still did not come home.
• 7:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I finally contacted my shaman teacher with whom I had been studying and asked if she could help me find him as she was also an animal communicator.
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: But finding lost animals was not something she offered.
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Instead she performed a remote energy healing, allowing me to relax and receive messages that might help me find him on my own.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: More at ease now, I close my eyes and sat in stillness, asking for help from my guides.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: I saw a field of green grass and faintly heard, go east if you look for him, you will find him.
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I opened my eyes and went outside to follow these simple instructions and to listen to my heart compass.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I walked east up a small mound of land into the wooded area of our property.
• 7:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I heard the crispy sound of dried leaves and felt them crunching under my feet.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I smelled the damp shade of the forest.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: A soft breeze kept me company as I looked down for any signs of Oliver.
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I did not call for him, I only listened, attuned to the air I heard nothing, I walked slowly, then caught sight of a crow feather, bending down I picked it up.
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: As I prowled the edge of our property, my direction shifted north, I found another feather, picked it up, and continued on.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I walked to a clearing with fewer trees and noticed a leaf dangling from a silken thread of gossamer stretched across a set of bare branches.
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: The thread twinkled as a sunlight trickled down through the trees.
• 8:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: The dead leaf was upside down, twisting in the wavering wind.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: For a moment the breeze stopped and in its absence the stem pointed like an arrow guiding me westward across the yard.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: To my astonishment I passed the sheep and goats who were stoned quiet as I crept by them which never happened.
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I continued searching for my beloved cat, wandering toward our side yard.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: A slight open stretch of green grass beside our small neglected, red barn half dilapidated.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: and then I felt him, and then I saw him, lying on a mossy log stretched out as if a sleep.
• 9:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: A sleepy was resting in peace.
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: His body had said goodbye to this world, and I bent my knees to the earth and felt to his side in sorrow.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: My little guy looked perfectly at ease with his sleek dark coat shimmering in the sun.
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Never had I witnessed a death in this way, so utterly gentle and serene.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I cried his name and cried some more to empty my body and my eyes with what felt like a thousand watery tears.
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Moments later, my husband came home with our girls and my mom.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: We all sat around Oliver, wishing his spirit well, singing our praises for his life and remembering his funny ways with love.
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: We buried him under the trees and arranged a stone circle around his resting place.
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was with the other spirits of the land, and he was now another guide on the other side.
• 10:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: All of her came to me that night when I was half asleep, my eyes were closed, and I saw his face and heard him again say, with almost giddy excitement, mama.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I knew our energies had connected as the tears streamed down my cheek.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I felt like he was right in front of me.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: The love was still there.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: His form had changed, but the love was the same.
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Still strong pumping through each of us.
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I thought about my spirit guides advising me to go east when I really needed to go west.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I began to doubt the message, but thought, had I gone west from the start, I would have missed listening to myself, to the land, the feathers, the spider web glistening in the sunlight, the leaf and the quiet.
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Finding Oliver in this way was impactful and called forward the new relationships I was beginning to form with nature, new relationships that were drumming within me.
• 11:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I talked with my shaman teacher about losing Oliver, she said it was almost like the changing of the guards.
• 11:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: The timing was interesting.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Weeks before his death, my teacher helped me meet my black Panther spirit animal.
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oliver, my black kitty, had very similar markings and colorings to a black Panther, and now he had passed away.
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: He had been in a way, my black Panther in the physical world, guiding me toward love.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: But with his death, I had two black
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even though I gained another ally in the spirit world, this was a tremendous loss and I took it very hard.
• 11:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I beat myself up for not trying harder to get him inside that last night when he came home and watched me from under the car.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: What if I had just grabbed him and forced him to go inside?
• 12:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Could I have gotten him to the vet in time to save him?
• 12:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: The burden of responsibility around his death weighed on me.
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I felt very, very lost without him.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I was feeling so different, was I now a person who could connect with my dead cat?
• 12:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Who was I becoming?
• 12:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: This has been a frequent question since that time four years ago.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: who am I becoming?
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had no idea what was happening to me at that time.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had no idea how much listening to the land would be part of my new way.
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Legally I still have no grasp of the magnitude of how much my life will continue to change as my relationship with the land wherever I am evolves.
• 12:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Before writing this episode, I would have thought this relationship began in Idaho two years ago.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: But then this new feather twirled down from the air as a prompt to reflect on my secret language with the birds, the feathers, the wind, the land, when had it all begun.
• 13:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's when I remembered this secret language has taken 15 years to develop, and I may have another 15 before I understand even a portion of what is possible when I listen.
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is a process that requires patience.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I believe the land council, my team of land spirits, sent that feather from the sky as a message to remember, to reflect, and perhaps most importantly to write.
• 13:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Write these very words.
• 13:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: The miracles I have been asking for are all ready happening.
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: The miracles are the connections I now have, with myself, with spirit, with nature.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: these seemed like a dream at one time, but through paying close attention and trusting spirit and my intuition, my family and I have opened pathways to create life shifts that have been challenging yet true.
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And though we are not perfectly harmonious, these changes have brought greater harmony to our family.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: The process has pinched and stretched us, and we are still in the mysterious squeeze of discomfort.
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this crow feather was a reminder of how far I have come, and how much magic is available when I least expect it.
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much for listening until the next episode.
• 14:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Much love, see you Rose.