Change Your Point Of View- by Ingrid Nazar
/Things are looking different..
One thing I have learned through my studies of earth based spirituality is that throughout time our ancestors, the ones living in harmony with the earth have been students of their environment. I myself have a particularly close affinity to birds and owls in particular with their seemingly infinite wisdom. Looking into their gaze they look back with an air of knowing that makes you believe that they surely know something beyond the everyday. Owls I learned have much to teach. In particular owls have the ability to turn their gaze a full 360 degrees. These incredibly flexible birds can teach us humans how to be flexible in our perspective. The wise old owl did not get this way with limited vision or limited perspective, this bird sees things from all angles. Not much gets past them. With this all knowing gaze they earn the reputation of wisdom. So how can we as humans learn from this? First of all what lies behind us interestingly is our shadow. Life is not only what is right before our eyes it is largely in part what we do not wish to look at, can't see or what lies in the unconscious. So what if we were like the owl and could see with eyes in the back of our head? What would we see? .... Our shadow.
The shadow, a term made common first by Swiss Psychiatrist Carl Jung describes what lies deep in our disowned or even darker aspects of self. It most always is something that we judge in ourselves or judge in others (often through projection) and represents an aspect of our personality that we'd rather not acknowledge. The most important aspect of our shadow to consider is the affect it plays on our everyday life. Just because you can't see something doesn't mean it is not there, in fact it is there alright running the show from behind the scenes. Owl teaches us to see in the darkness and bring to light. What we think, what we believe and perceive manifests in our daily life. Which is why so many individuals who practice the law of attraction and manifestation are discouraged with their lack of results. What they fail to realize is that everything that is believed especially on an unconscious level is what is going to become manifest.
Owl medicine pierces through the layers with keen vision and insight bringing to light what we need to see. Often this insight will come through nocturnal dreams laden with messages that attempt to bring awareness to these unconscious belief patterns. If the shadow can come to light it can be healed. If disowned aspects of self can be recognized they can be reclaimed in a healthy way and thus become fully integrated. Wise old owl is not afraid of the dark and neither should you be, because it is in the darkness where we can find our salvation. Be like owl and turn it around.
