Beginning with my pilgrimage to Meherabad in 2003, I had noticed a large, black bird with coppery wings that regularly drew my attention, apart from all others. For many years, our relationship was no more than being in each other’s vicinity, but while I remained unaware, the relationship would evolve into an intimate one.
About 2012, one day I had a sense of receiving a message from a coucal perched nearby. After a number of encounters that began to seem planned, I had asked if the coucal had a message, and it did. Since then, I might see one every day, or not at all; then there was one day when I noted nine sightings. Increasingly I experienced its timing tied to my location: as I reached a certain point on my walk, I would catch a glimpse of it on a branch or see it cross the lane close to my approaching steps. The day that I first saw it at my home, I was amazed. It became a somewhat regular visitor, walking the brick security wall, strutting across the ground, or moving through a tree’s branches—always allowing me to note its coppery wings and behavior, both of which are different from the crow’s. My next awareness was that it would appear in flight across a road just as I reached its point of take-off. Partway through my experience, I realized that its message might not be by inner words but rather a forecast of something important about to happen. My constant behavior remained to experience but not to question.
By this year’s winter months, the coucal had become noticeably absent. Thinking that its purpose had ended, I accepted the loss. Then surprising me, it would reappear, not only locally, but for what I considered to be its final contact during my travel with a driver at a distance from my home when one flew across the road in what I thought of as a unique good-bye. Then fate entered. In May, during the writing of this blog when I had long since thought of a coucal, going to the kitchen window and looking out, I exclaimed, OMG! Strutting in the view through the open door, a coucal passed behind the drinking pool then disappeared beyond the brick corner. Hastily taking my nearby iPhone, I went to three other windows—hopeful but to no avail. Yet I had had another confirmation of inner communication, even if without a verifying photo.
Soon, returning from my writing to the kitchen a coucal landed just where I could take its photo. My experience in learning from birds and animals dates back twenty years as part of a broader span of abilities awakened in me during that time. I have written about them in the following chapter entitled “Early Occult Experiences” taken from my forthcoming book, A Flower for God.*
From 1990 I’d had abilities of knowing in ways that I’ve heard referred to
as psychic, occult, shamanic, dowsing, and soul sensing. There are
differences among these names, but as topics I’ve felt little interest. What
has been significant is seeing and understanding in new ways. In response
to my having been questioned about a view I held, a man I’ve found trustworthy
over ten years of spiritual friendship abruptly said, “These are your God-given
gifts.” I valued his simple response, for as abilities have come and gone
according to what I needed to experience, I’ve held onto none when they ended.
as psychic, occult, shamanic, dowsing, and soul sensing. There are
differences among these names, but as topics I’ve felt little interest. What
has been significant is seeing and understanding in new ways. In response
to my having been questioned about a view I held, a man I’ve found trustworthy
over ten years of spiritual friendship abruptly said, “These are your God-given
gifts.” I valued his simple response, for as abilities have come and gone
according to what I needed to experience, I’ve held onto none when they ended.
Bird and animal communication had begun in 1997.
Hawks shrill, metallic cries called me out of the house when they circled overhead,
knowing to await a message, and within a few days a message would arrive. I once
saw one I believed was intentionally waiting in a tree until I passed, watching as it
then flew off. Then another time a hawk dove at my car door so swiftly that I moved
my body away from the door as it swerved away within inches. … Whereas the signs bolstered my well-being, and made me aware of a benevolent force present and guiding,
I accepted that real truth lay within and that outside happenings were only helpers on a journey of change.
knowing to await a message, and within a few days a message would arrive. I once
saw one I believed was intentionally waiting in a tree until I passed, watching as it
then flew off. Then another time a hawk dove at my car door so swiftly that I moved
my body away from the door as it swerved away within inches. … Whereas the signs bolstered my well-being, and made me aware of a benevolent force present and guiding,
I accepted that real truth lay within and that outside happenings were only helpers on a journey of change.
My realization is, “It may be easier than it seems to turn the words we speak to birds and animals into conversations, in which we sense that we are hearing a reply.”