This morning my heart called me to do a beach walk. It was a walk of many sensations, the perfect moving meditation.
As my feet kissed the sand, I was struck by the sudden sensation of coolness on my skin.
Winter is almost upon us, after all. And after that moment of grounding, I walked towards the ocean, my eyes scanning the beauty around me.
It was an overcast day, and the strong cloud cover brought out the deep blue and green colours of the ocean. Although the wind was still, the waves were large. The criss-cross of white froth on their underside flashed for an instant like a beautifully embroidered skirt on a Parisian Can-Can dancer, before it dropped its skirts and plunged down to meet the sand, accompanied by the sound of nature’s applause.
I’ve learned to open my physical and spiritual vision as I do my beach walks, allowing myself to become one with the wind, the ocean, the sand and the sky.
This is how I do a beautiful moving meditation. I simply release my mind and let myself free-fall, breathing in the beauty and life that’s all around me.
This particular day, the tide was coming in and a handful of people wandered the shores. My eyes were scanning the beauty of the shoreline when a flash of something caught my peripheral vision. I looked, and a large bird had just dived into the ocean to catch a fish.
There was something about its grace and magnificence that compelled me to stop and turn my full attention to it.
It leapt from the ocean, flew into the sky, circled then plunged once more, and then again, and again as it hunted for its breakfast.
“Wow, it’s so big!” I thought. I could see cormorants nearby. This bird had the body shape of a cormorant with a long neck and sharp head, yet it was at least 50% larger than a cormorant, and more like the size of an eagle. Its wingspan was easily a metre, possibly more, and its colour was a soft grey mixed with white.
I noticed a girl coming near me to take a photograph on her phone. “Oh, she’s admiring it too!” I thought. Of course she would be! Who could not stop in awe to watch this magnificent bird?
I was going to say something to her about it, but when I looked at her, she was photographing the ocean, not the bird. She didn’t even appear to notice the bird.
Then I saw a lady I recognised walking towards me along the beach, and I stopped her and asked her about the bird. Did she know what it was? Had she seen it before? She shrugged her shoulders and kept walking.
For a moment, I had that funny sensation that I was seeing something that was visible to no one else.
How often does this happen in our life? We see what we are meant to see, and sometimes that vision is a message or symbol just for us. After all, Spirit speaks to us in symbols not only in our dreamtime, but also in our waking time.
As I watched this beautiful bird circling and then flying further afield, I noticed it wasn’t alone. Two other birds flew the shores with it. They kept their distance from each other, but their colours and size told me they were the same type of bird.
Their wings were so long that they had a completely different motion to the cormorant as they flew. Where a cormorant’s wings trill like a lorikeet with very fast flaps, these birds moved their wings with a two part motion – first the part of the wing joining the body would flap, then the tips of the wings would gracefully follow, giving their flight a two-part motion that reminded me of the majestic eagles, or the arms of a beautiful Hawaiian dancer.
Today, I’ve consulted every bird identification book in my possession and spoken to two bird experts, and no one has been able to shed any light on these magnificent creatures I saw this morning.
My conclusion is that three angels flew with me today as I walked on the beach, reminding me of their presence, and watching over me with their grace and peace.
I had gone to the beach aware of some inner loneliness as social isolation draws into its 9th or 10th week, and I left the beach touched by light. It’s not surprising that as I drove home, I saw a man crouched on the side of the road. I stopped to ask him if he was ok, and saw that he was protecting a blue-eyed honeyeater that had crossed paths with his windshield, and was laying stunned on the side of the road. I stayed with him until the bird had recovered and flown off.
I needed a reminder of the beauty and love that’s all around us, and I received that today, and so much more.
Affirmations
- Love is all around me
- I am one with the Universe – no less than the trees and the stars, I have the right to be here
- I breathe life into the bottoms of my feet, up through my spine, and out of my crown
- Angels watch over me – I am always protected
- I free fall, allowing my cells to expand, and the air to move freely between them
- I take care of myself, so I can take care of others
- In this instant, anything and everything is possible
- I am surrounded by Miracles