Yesterday I took a walk in the woods. A question had been lingering in my mind all day regarding someone dear to my heart who is going through a challenging time: If I could converse with their higher self, what would it have to say about my role in their life and our relationship? What’s most important for me to know?
This is something I’ve contemplated in the past with regard to other close relationships. It’s like when you’re not getting anywhere talking with a frontline worker, so you go over their head and speak with the manager. When you’re able to tap into something greater than the personality, higher wisdom can come through.
I can’t say for sure where it comes from. Maybe we connect with our own higher nature or the other person’s, or perhaps at that level we’re not separate anyway. Nonphysical guides? Who’s to say? Seems to me it’s not necessary to have that part figured out to receive useful guidance.
I decided to take a trail I was less familiar with and after a while wondered if it would take me where I wanted to go. At one point, I considered turning around and taking the road back to where my car was parked. However, intuition kept me on the path.
Eventually, I encountered a tree that was absolutely bursting with birdsong—the liveliest bird-music I’d heard so far this year. It was so intoxicating that I stopped walking to marvel at and record the songbirds.
A couple minutes into recording, a car came within earshot. A young man in the car was belting out a song. He had a decent voice, but after a few lines, he began shrieking out the lyrics, and I stopped recording. Until the shrieking began, I didn’t pay much attention. I was more interested in the birdsong. However, the shrieking drew my attention and curiosity. I realized it was a song I knew well.
I continued walking—a little faster now, aware of and grateful for others on the path because this guy seemed a little unhinged!
When I got home that evening, I listened to the recording and pulled up the lyrics for the song (“You Say” by Lauren Daigle). The part of the song I recorded (before the voice became completely distorted) seemed like clear guidance concerning the question I carried in my heart:
“I keep fighting voices in my mind that say I’m not enough
Every single lie that tells me I will never measure up
Am I more than just the sum of every high and every low
Remind me once again just who I am because I need to knowYou say I am loved when I can’t feel a thing
You say I am strong when I think I am weak
And you say I am held when I am falling short”…
I’m actually blown away by this because I had prayed for guidance. And there it came, drifting through the air in a moment of stillness and deep listening in the woods. Although I hadn’t intended to end up where I was when this happened and felt a little lost, I was exactly where I needed to be to experience this.
How perfect that the birdsong was enchanting enough to stop me in my tracks and keep me in that spot long enough for me to be in the right place at the right time so the words could reach me!
My husband and I had planned to walk together, but I felt drawn to this particular trail rather than ones closer to home. He had a lot to do and decided not to go with me. Which felt right. Had we been walking together, I probably wouldn’t have stopped to listen to the birds. The pieces wouldn’t have come together.
I’m amused by the idea of the young man who had given in to a crazy outburst in the company of his two friends. He was completely unaware that he was serving as a messenger for a woman he didn’t even notice walking on a nearby trail. It makes me think of how we might be entirely unaware of the roles we inadvertently play in someone’s life—even strangers, as we pass through their field of awareness, however briefly. How many times have we been an unwitting messenger or catalyst?
By the way, the song is amazing. The first time I heard it, I found myself annoyed by yet another “codependent love song” during the second verse (not part of the above excerpt). But as I kept listening, I realized it carried a powerful message if I imagined it being sung to the higher self, not to another person. Later, I learned that was actually the songwriter’s intention. Lauren Daigle is a Christian artist, and she wasn’t singing about a codependent relationship.
If you’re interested, here’s the birdsong recording (with singing at the very end):
© 2022 Susan Meyer. All rights reserved. You are welcome to share this post or excerpts of it as long as you give proper credit to Susan Meyer and SusanTaraMeyer.com. Susan Meyer is a photographer, writer, and spiritual teacher who lives on the Hudson River in Upstate New York.