The Clearing

Into the forest.

The lush scent of oxygen-rich air floods your lungs.

Look up. The branches nod and beckon.

Look in, The Clearing waits.

carlssen

The Clearing was my comfort spot. I felt completely at home and free to be myself at a time when the life I was living wasn't conducive to being myself. As I began this journey full of rabbit holes and changes, I made the decision to unhide, be myself and write a book.

There were many challenges but the one I explore in this blog was finding the heart of all the words I'd poured onto the screen. I wasn't new to writing, but definitely new to writing a whole book. I'd written feverishly for six months waking up at 5:30am. No alarm needed. After that I began the slow process of organizing it and figuring out what kind of book it wanted to be. Self-help, memoir, creative non-fiction were all the genres that applied, but which one would my book adopt and what was the beating heart running through it?

For inspiration I looked through all my journals to find the dreams and visions I'd written over the years. There were a series of visions that occurred in a clearing in the woods. As I read them all again in chronological order, I was aware they were describing pivotal moments of transformation. The grandfather trees spoke with such tenderness, yet the weight of what they said easily pierced the lifetime of amour I'd layered around me.

The old souls nod their branches.

Minute rustles birth complex chords.

Melodies spiral with each nod pulsing upwards

through muffled clouds and patches of soundscapes.

She wakes.

carlssen

The Clearing itself is hard to describe. Visually, it was a circular glade in the forest floor and well worn judging from its lack of vegetation and sandy brown colour. In the center was a slight dip. In stark contrast, tall, huge coniferous trees lined the clearing like sentinels, the bark on their massive trunks rippled with age. Other trees and ferns grew in between the huge trees but they remained small. In this place, all my senses were engaged so the air had a richness, a texture, and my lungs drank it in like it was liquid manna.

I found the Clearing in the forest about twenty years ago. I’d been working as a receptionist at an aromatherapy store where we made custom essential oil blends for wholesale companies. Everything one would need to make any kind of essential oil product was available there, too. One day when I answered the phone, a man started speaking. My senses perked up immediately because he didn’t identify himself despite my skill at collecting pertinent information from callers so I could transfer them to the appropriate person. He said he wanted to speak with me, so we talked about 10 minutes. I don’t remember the call precisely, but my sense of it was that he was ‘reading’ me to assess how awake, aware and conscious I was. No-one had done that before so deeply. I felt my heart racing and my empath radar was on high alert.

The phone call left me with an uncomfortable, almost violated feeling. The only information he gave me was that he was from the Foundation and interested in combining essential oils but didn’t divulge its purpose. Foundation of what, I thought. He seemed to be wanting something from me, but I didn’t know what it was. The really odd thing, though, is shortly after that, he appeared in the first vision I had on the forest path leading up to a clearing.

In the past, it had been easy for me to go down a self-deprecating road finding endless flaws in myself, my book and anything that was me, but my time in The Clearing drew my attention inward away from my faults to who I was inside. Something was teaching me that to find my being, I needed to stop looking ‘out there’ for answers. That’s when the whispers started and the meaning of my visions unfolded. They are the whispers of our divine self, our soul.

I've had vivid dreams that I remember in detail for a long time. Sometimes I have the sense I'm working out an issue I'm struggling with. I've also had futuristic dreams, dreams that take place in all manner of dwellings, frustration dreams, and, what I call, ‘garbage’ dreams. Most of them are in what I call ‘dream colour’. I see different colours but they're muted as if I'm seeing them through a filter. The Clearing Visions were different. The colours were much more vivid and conveyed feelings. The deep, verdant colour of the forest was instantly and deeply comforting. Colours convey feelings to me here in the physical world, too, but not as intensely as in a vision. In the Clearing Visions, the grandfather trees paid no attention to me at all until I approached them. As I was ready to hear them, they began sharing their wisdom with me.

One of the first vivid dreams I had was like remembering something I’d actually lived and done. I spent some time trying to figure out what it meant but this was a dream that would travel with me for years before I really understood it. It was the beginning of an awareness that home was so much more than a building and the forest was not just a forest. Years later I realized this dream was a vision and a precursor to The Clearing Visions that appeared as I began walking the path of transformation and purpose. In a flash of inspiration, I realized that the Clearing Visions were the backbone and the pulsing heart of my book.

The Clearing Visions and dreams are still teaching me how to transform into the author/healer/visionary me that is yet to come. Perhaps writing is the more public visionary vehicle I'm being called to bring forth. That would suit me just fine. Interesting that when I'd finished writing my first book and the last Clearing Vision was written down, I haven't been able to visit this amazing space I called The Clearing. I have the feeling that space was preparing me, yet again, for something new.