I’ve been pushing through an iron deficiency for the past six months, which means that at night, when I normally love to lucid dream, I really just need to sleep. Sometimes I still get lucid. I fly, walk through walls and have those weird and wonderful dreams where I know I’m dreaming and can wander around exploring whatever world my subconscious has decided to build for the evening. But lately, the symbolism hasn’t been getting to me in quite the way it sometimes does.
So, the Universe has stepped up its game and started sending me animals instead.
To be fair, I’ve got a lot going on right now. I’m writing a little personal thesis, trying to understand the very tip of the enormous iceberg that is Traditional Chinese Medicine, getting my Zen Thai Shiatsu hours up before October, creating Adventurous Souls, working, writing and organising the approximately seventeen thousand things that seem to be happening at once.
I’d also been trying to decide what to do with Lola, my beloved little yellow 1988 HiAce, who appears to have spent the past few weeks taking a beating on my behalf. A business dropped a beam on her roof while I was in Bali. Then, a few weeks later, someone smashed into her back side panel.
I said to Mum the other day, before all the dings, that I’d probably be happy to get $8,000 for Lola if I sold her. The engine is great and she is vintage, which is all the rage these days! The first insurance claim was around $3,000. The second repair has now been quoted at around $5,000. Maybe I should’ve said I thought I’d get $25k!
At this rate, Lola seems to be trying to fund her own retirement!
If I can take the insurance money rather than repair her, then sell her cheaply as a project to someone who wants to bring the old girl back to life, we might both come out of this surprisingly well. I love her so much, but after a few years of living in her, travelling in her and creating a very different life for myself because of the freedom she gave me, I’ve known for a while that I’m ready for something bigger. And something that might actually fit another person!
A few days earlier, some friends wanted to see whales. Obviously, whales are wild animals and no one can promise you anything, but I had decided I wanted a proper humpback mugging. If you don’t know what that means, it’s when whales choose to come right up to the boat and hang around, sometimes for ages, essentially stopping the boat from moving because they’re so close. So naturally, I manifested the fuck out of it. Australia is the only country I’d wish a mugging on people I love!
The crew told me I should be open minded and happy with what we see. I remember saying, “Oh no, we’re getting mugged.” WE GOT MUGGED BY HUMPBACKS ON MONDAY!!! Honestly, once a humpback has backed up your manifestation game, it makes sense why I believe in magic!
Then, last week, I ended up naked, trying to get a gecko off my back. Haha, yep, literally!
I was about to have a shower when I tried to move the little cutie out of the way. Instead, he ran up my arm and apparently decided that my body was considerably nicer than wherever I was trying to relocate him. I tried taking him to the garden, but he wasn't having it. He nestled into the crease of my elbow, which is quite a weird-looking body part until a tiny gecko curls up in it, then somehow it becomes strangely adorable. Then he migrated to my shoulder and eventually my back. I was still naked.
Eventually I wrapped myself in a towel and wandered through the camp looking for help! I found a caravan with its lights on and the door open and explained my predicament to the older couple inside. The woman side-eyed her husband. He came out, said that he was very glad I'd put a towel on, removed the tiny hitchhiker from my back and not-so-gently relocated him to the garden.
Then, a few days later, I was chatting to Toto, my ChatGPT, about growing Adventurous Souls and asking questions about some of the directions my work could take when a dragonfly landed right on my phone! A gorgeous little blue dragonfly, and it sat there for about a minute.
THEN, yesterday, I looked up from my van and saw a tawny frogmouth staring down at me from the tree above. He was actually there a couple of weeks ago too. The guy at the park said no one else ever seems to see him. I'd quite like to believe he only turns up when I'm there, but it's probably far more likely that he's sitting there perfectly camouflaged while everyone walks underneath him. But that’s not the story I’m telling!
I felt the urge to look up. He stayed there for hours, watching me potter around and live my strange little life from the van. So naturally, I asked Toto what all these creatures were trying to tell me.
Whether you believe the Universe sends messages through animals, think I’m just weird for finding meaning in everything, or sit somewhere happily in between, the metaphors were too good not to play with.
The humpbacks, for me, were abundance and trust. Big, wild, impossible-to-control creatures that I couldn’t summon or command, but could absolutely ask for and hope to meet. They reminded me that sometimes you can hold a vision without needing to know exactly how it’s going to happen. Sometimes you just keep saying, “Nope, we’re getting mugged,” even when everyone else tells you to be satisfied with what you’ve already got!
The gecko became a symbol of shedding, regeneration and adaptability. And honestly, could the Universe have been any less subtle? I wasn't wearing a single thing. Nothing! There was nothing between my skin and this tiny creature associated with shedding and renewal, who literally refused to get off my body. Maybe there was something in that: come back to the body, shed a skin, something is changing.
Then came the dragonfly. Dragonflies begin their lives in water before eventually emerging into the air, and they've become beautiful symbols of transformation, change and moving between different states of being. Mine landed on my phone while I was talking about the future of something I'm creating. Transform. Let something take another form. Pay attention to what is emerging.
Then there was the tawny frogmouth: stillness, observation, camouflage, patience and seeing in the dark. Tawny frogmouths can sit almost completely motionless and disappear into a tree. They can be right above you and you'll walk straight underneath them, which is exactly what everyone seems to be doing with this beauty. But not me. I keep looking up!
Toto said something I loved: maybe the magic was already there; you were simply the one who noticed it.
Like I said, I'm standing in the middle of quite a lot of change, and my instinct when I want something is usually to make a decision, move, plan and get stuck in my head. Maybe my little parade of animal visitors is reminding me to do things differently. I’ve been working really hard on feeling my intuition. The whales said trust. The gecko said shed. The dragonfly said transform. The tawny said see. Come back into your body, allow yourself to change, then get quiet enough to notice what's appearing in front of you.
And then something appeared. A van.
I’d been looking for a newer HiAce to replace Lola and had a picture in my head of roughly what I wanted. Somewhere along the way I’d also been doing a little manifesting. I told the Universe I wanted to spend under $25,000, and when I imagined the odometer, for some reason I kept seeing kilometres somewhere in the 70,000s. Then I found a 2007 Toyota HiAce Commuter. Older than I originally planned, but under my budget, one government owner, full service history and 78,000 kilometres on the clock.
There are times when you can ask for a sign and then continue analysing the absolute shit out of it. There are other times when something appears so ridiculously close to what you've been asking for that eventually you have to stop asking questions. So, I bought the van….
Suddenly, the change I'd been thinking about wasn't something happening somewhere in the future. It happened. I had a new home on wheels and a giant blank canvas waiting to become mine. So now I’m manifesting the money for the fit-out so I don’t have to take out a loan. There are already a few possible streams: an unexpected work trip to Cape York, insurance money from Lola, whatever I eventually sell her for, work, writing, bodywork, Adventurous Souls coaching and consulting and whatever other unexpected opportunities might find their way towards me. I know what I want the outcome to be. I don't necessarily need to control every route the money takes to get there. I’m trusting and learning to let go of the how.
This morning, I feel like the Universe wanted to acknowledge my progress. So, while I was meditating, a bird shat on me. Haha, a huge shit down my arm and leg! I wiped it off and kept meditating. I didn’t even lose my visualisation. I’ve decided that this might be the greatest sign of all! The outside world literally dumped shit on me while I was meditating and I dealt with it like it didn’t even happen.
And, because being shat on by a bird is considered good luck, I have naturally decided that this particular messenger was delivering a financial omen for the van fit-out! I will get an awesome van fit-out without having to take out a loan! The whole sequence has become so funny that I can't help but love it. The whales said trust. The gecko said shed. The dragonfly said transform. The tawny said observe. I bought the van. Then the bird apparently said, great work, here's some shit for luck.
I’ve listened to podcasts this eclipse season saying things will move quickly, and maybe they’re onto something.
A month ago, I was contemplating whether I should spend money repairing Lola or finally let myself upgrade. Since then she's been damaged twice, two insurance claims have appeared, I've found a van that somehow landed inside the numbers I'd been imagining and I've actually bought it. Somewhere in amongst all that, humpbacks also mugged our boat after I confidently announced that they would. Something is definitely shifting.
I love magic!
None of these things can tell me exactly what comes next. They can't tell me how Adventurous Souls will grow, where my writing will take me, how my bodywork will evolve or exactly where the money for my beautiful new van fit-out is going to come from. But they've made me stop, notice, laugh, trust what I feel and take the leap when things feel right.
If the Universe would like to keep communicating with me through animals, I'm completely open to it. Naked landings are acceptable. Humpback muggings are encouraged. Apparently, so is being shat on!
