The Collective Consciousness At Work

The other day I spied a pile of turkey feathers in the road near my hen house. My last surviving turkey was nowhere to be seen. 

I sighed and thought, “Merry Christmas, Mr. Fox,” and that evening I closed in the peacocks and chickens to assure their safety.

 Yesterday the weather was so bad I barely stopped by to check my animals, only tossing a bit of food out in the torrential rainfall, and again, I didn’t see a turkey, but then, I didn’t expect to see one. 

Today, I went to feed my poultry, and there, huddled against the fence was a very drenched, forlorn looking turkey, her white feathers all soiled from some kind of tussle in the wet, red Georgia clay.

“Hi,” I said, bending down to stroke her feathers. “I thought I lost you. You must be hungry.”  I tossed a shovelful of chicken scratch on the ground under the eves of the chicken house where it would stay dry and she waddled over to eat. She wasn’t walking normally and her backside looked a bit ravaged. Ah, something did try to get her, but she escaped. Goodgirl.  I tend to appreciate anyone or anything with  the survival instinct, so I gave her some special care and tucked her in safely into the pen thinking, it just goes to show, you should never be so quick to write off a friend, because they may surprise you and turn up when you least expect it.

 Speaking of which, I heard from a long lost friend this very week. It was one of those weird coincidences that Mark would chalk up to the“universal collective consciousness”. He has a theory that all people are connected in this metaphysical way, and all ideas and thoughts are swirling around in great pool of brainpower. And sometimes, people key in to the idea pool and draw ideas out at the same time, which explains why more than one person can invent something simultaneously even if they live half a world apart. At other times, one person can tap into the collective consciousness and it will spark a response from someone else. This is why weird coincidences occur, such as you thinking of a person and suddenly they up and call you out of the blue. In other words, there are no coincidences; we are all linked in this invisible, spiritual way even if we don’t readily recognize it.

 Anyway, the other day I wrote a blog where I mentioned an old friend that I haven’t seen in 35 years. I didn’t mention the fellow by name, so it’s not like he goggled himself and found my blog. I just mentioned that someone had walked into my yoga class and it made me think of an old boyfriend and I wondered how his life turned out.

 Then, two days later, I received a message from that very friend through a classmates finder website. He just wanted to say Hi and was curious how my life turned out. How weird is that?

 He was the great love of my young life, a wild rock and roller with a wicked sense of humor and more talent than he knew what to do with. He sent me a short letter outlining the details of his life, and I must say, his hasn’t been an easy one. Married & divorced three times (though now grateful to be in a lovely relationship with someone special). Had a business, sold it and retired early, then had a financial hardship that turned that blessing upside down (um… I can relate) and now he is starting over with a new company, working from the ground up again. Had two kids, both who passed away due to separate accidents (my heart ached to hear such news.) And to top it all off, he has had to battle flare-ups from his MS for years. That was the news that so often bothered me when I thought of him, because I assumed his affliction probably meant he had given up his beloved music, and I hated imagining him without it.

 But with his letter, he sent me a recent picture, and I can barely describe the thrill I felt looking at it. Because he doesn’t look at all like a fellow dealing with health issues, beaten down by life. He looks amazing. He is behind his guitar (still playing in a band for fun– how perfect is that!) fit and tanned, his body all ripped, with arms like Popeye sporting some bad-boy tattoos that certainly suit him. Ah, my dear rock & roller is living true to himself, and I must say it is not often you find that in old high school friends 35 years after they move on from the youthful dreaming stage.  The only thing different is that my former long haired rocker is now bald, but lately (must be a 50 year old thing) I’ve noticed many bald men are rather attractive, and bald certainly works for rocker ChrisDaughtry, so why not Joe?

Anyway, it warmed my heart to hear from him and see him still behind a guitar in his 50’s. I haven’t written him back yet, but I will one day soon. I just need to think about how to describe my own life journey in a few bullet point pages.Last he saw me he had driven me and a U-hall filled with all my possessions to New York City where I was moving (and leaving him) to pursue my dream to be a dancer. I was 18. Needless to say, a lot has happened since then. I don’t think he is expecting me to be living in rural Georgia mothering a beat up turkey and telling all my darkest secrets to a donkey- but at least I can report that I still dance and I kept up the writing that even back then, found it’s way out of me in the form of poems, stories and journal entries. Yes, we both loved our respective arts and thankfully, we kept that love alive despite the allure of more traditional lifestyles. But perhaps that is the very character trait we recognized in each other way back when, the thing that forged our friendship.

Anyway, here’s to the collective consciousness…. May we all tap into it now and again to reconnect, understand, and share a slice of life with important people from our past. And if not, at least it is nice to know that we are capable of deeper connections, if only we keep an open mind to the endless possibilities swirling around out there in the murky universe.