Yesterday afternoon as I sat lakeside, relishing good company and the nourishing outdoor air, a white feather drifted gracefully from the sky to its resting place upon my shoulder.
A most welcomed and familiar sight.
A mere two years ago, a quest toward personal transformation began when I stumbled upon a reading regarding the Law of Attraction. It suggested that our very thoughts are an infallible force, an energy that acts as a magnet, pulling into existence that which we focus upon.
I had the power to bend reality...with my mind?! Badass!
I was fascinated but skeptical. Was this just the spiritual junkies' latest fad? I decided I'd find out for myself through this little experiment:
I'd escape as often as I could to serene solitude, find my breath, close my eyes, and envision an ivory feather. Imagining with fierce focus its softness, weightlessness, and spotlessness. I'd see it float effortlessly from left to right, rising on gusts of air and falling, rhythmically dancing, slowly and silently succumbing to gravity's diligent hand.
Again and again, I'd carve out time to try my hand at manifesting, focusing always on white feathers, and eagerly anticipating the day one would mysteriously, spontaneously arrive.
Days passed.
Then weeks.
Months.
Nothing.
Defeated, I decided to leave feather-makin’ to the birds. That is until - as serendipity would have it - I came across this quote by his eminence Albert Einstein:
If Einstein himself, the man who shook the very foundations of our known world through his brilliance, recognized this force, then who was I to shun it?
My visualizations continued.
This time with unshakable faith. And, I suspect, that's what made the difference.
The day soon came when a beautiful ivory feather drifted its way to my lap - so small and covert that I may have missed its arrival had I not been wide-eyed and comatose in the couch potato position that accompanied my Sunday afternoons.
What thrilled me to chills was the peculiarity of its appearance, there seemed to be no source of the white feather. I hadn't any down comforters, pillows, or jackets nearby. My house was of the roofed variety and therefore uninhabited by birds. But there my long awaited ivory miracle landed, ever so friendly on my blue jeans, as if to say, "Here I am!"
✨ MAGIC ✨
Soon they would begin to appear everywhere. Often in the most bizarre and unexpected of places. My makeup bag. Yoga mat. On a page in my favorite book. If I had a dollar for every time someone’s discovered a white feather stuck to my ass I’d have 8 bucks in all, yet I don’t recall a single goose I’ve ever sat on.
From the unseen to the seen they just…appear.
Odd that, in my childhood, the first poem I ever loved enough to memorize was Hope is the Thing with Feathers, by Emily Dickinson.
How mysterious the ways of this wondrous Universe.
Sometimes the feathers appear to be a compass pointing me toward my destiny. The absence of them as though to hint you're getting colder Shannon and the presence you're getting warmer. I often wonder if I'm being Divinely led by breadcrumbs to some wonderful fate of which I have yet to fully realize.
Such a sweet nostalgia accompanies them too. As though they are paying a visit from an otherworldly place I once knew.
Looking at my life I realize that, to a large degree, what has materialized (and all that hasn't) is directly linked to what I've spent my precious time focusing on.
Thus, I've upgraded my thinking, and sense my world shifting in a profoundly new, beautiful direction.
Curious, what is it YOU think about most? What holds YOUR attention?
A masterpiece awaits.
