Time Marches On...

A year ago today, I lost a father. Not my biological father, though in the past year he's had his own issues, but still, a father.

There's something to be said for the family that chooses you. You don't have a choice, the parents you are born to, the siblings that are born before or after you, the extended family you end up with - but to choose someone, to think of them as family... That's something else entirely.

Thinking back on the circumstances surrounding my move to California recently, I realized that Tom Stein chose me before I chose him. He was the one who told Lona to come get me. He went out of his way to make sure I was comfortable and felt safe in my new home - and in that way, he became a symbol of my safety in this new place, with all these new life experiences that I'd never had before.

We started to really bond, though, and I started seeing him as "dad" rather than just "man who makes things safe," around the time that he took a day off of work specifically to make sure I got to go to the La Brea Tar Pits and the Los Angeles County Museum Of Natural History for the first time. It was ambitious to think we could do them both in one day... but we pulled it off. And he literally, for the rest of his life, never stopped bragging to people he met about "his daughter" who essentially gave a lecture to a museum employee because one of the bones in the neck of a particular dinosaur specimen was in the wrong place.

The museum's dinosaur halls closed down for renovation less than a month later. They're reopening next month, and part of me is honestly wondering if *I* had something to do with it. A little narsissistic, yes, but the truth is that it COULD have been just the push they needed to do the renovation. Or maybe it's just that dad was so proud of me, that has me thinking that way. It wasn't a big deal to me, but it was something amazing to him.

I couldn't think clearly yesterday. Ironically, I seem to be thinking clearer today. I crashed out around ten thirty last night, and woke up at 4 am. I puttered around the house, I started a patch downloading for World Of Warcraft, I read some stories and looked at some pictures... But my mind was a year in the past.

I still remember the hospital rooms, the smells, the sounds... Antiseptic, blood... My nose hasn't been the same since spending so much time in hospitals while dad was in them. But I was focusing on that night, a year ago last night, when we all sat in the ER, around dad. I remember listening to him breathing, watching his hands and foot twitch. I remember Nyx realizing he was playing the piano in his sleep, which made us all feel a little better. I remember the heavy, cold weight of Death itself in the room. I remember having to run out.

I remember them moving him to a CD Unit, even though there was no critical decision to be made... he was dying. He wasn't registering on the heart monitors at all, but he was still breathing. He was still breathing for over six hours. They had to turn the monitors off because all it would show was flatline, and send all of us into a panic.

The family came in and said their goodbyes, only those of us who lived with dad stayed with him. Exhausted, mom and Lona insisted that Kata, Nyx, and I go home and try to get a couple of hours sleep, and feed the cats breakfast. It was around 8 in the morning when we laid down.

I knew when we left the hospital that we wouldn't see dad again. I said goodbye when we left. I said I loved him, and I did. I still do. I'm trying not to cry right now, writing this, but I need to write it. I have to get it out. Because otherwise it's just going to be bottled up inside me and hurt more.

Looking back on it, I realize that I felt when Death left, and when dad went... It was several hours before he stopped breathing. Around the time that I was suddenly able to fall asleep. I couldn't sleep with that presence in the room, no matter how tired I was. Moe the ghost cat, who had been with dad from the very beginning in every hospital stay, also disappeared around that time. I realized later that he'd gone with dad. He'd come as a kind of escort, I suppose.

Around ten thirty, we were woken up by the phone call telling us dad was gone. We piled into the car and headed back to the hospital, though none of us knew what we could do - we wound up turning around before we got there because Kata (who'd headed back right when we got the phone call, while Nyx and I had to get dressed first) had already gotten there, and picked up mom and Lona, and was bringing them home. So... we went home.

I don't remember much of the rest of that day. I... did a lot of spastic cleaning. I looked up mortuary numbers, and somehow helped mom keep it together while we made phone calls and worked on what had to be done now. Lona crashed in bed, which I can't blame her for... and eventually I know I slept again too. I just don't remember when it was.

The next few days were incredibly strange. We all felt like we were waiting for dad to call from the hospital, or from the end of a night gig. Every time the phone would ring, I expected it to be him saying he wanted to come home now. I didn't know what else to expect. I... well, I've lost people before in my life, but never a person with whom I'd had such a direct connection.

The closest thing to this was in 2006, when my aunt killed herself. And I was separated from that, as it happened in Texas and I made the decision (with my mom's urging) not to miss finals week in English class just to fly out there for a memorial service. There wasn't anything I could do, anyway. I had the same feeling of thinking I should call her and then everything would be OK... It was my first experience with losing a loved one I'd actually known, and because of the distance involved, it wasn't... Well, there was nothing to prepare me for what it felt like to lose someone who lived in your own house.

I still miss dad, every day. Some days are harder than others. There's an undeniable hole in this house that can't be filled... And this is coming from the spiritually sensitive person who has the strongest connection to the dead of anyone in this house. Dad has since passed several messages along through me, from beyond the grave... One of which was a personal apology, as he'd doubted me when I claimed to see and commune with ghost cats in the house. I suppose being on the other side can make you see certain things a little clearer.

Dad doesn't haunt our house... what he does isn't haunting. Lona's seen him several times, and I know the cats see him - he never shows himself to me. I think he knows seeing him would freak me out. I prefer to hear humans and see animal spirits. That makes it a bit easier for me to deal with - I've been seeing animal spirits my whole life, but a human is a whole other thing, and a person I KNEW... I don't think I could handle that, and dad seems to respect that. In a strange way... dad is still my safety. Because I feel him. I know he's still here. He's become a guardian angel of sorts over the house and everyone in it. He's still loud, he still yells when he's angry or when someone's doing something he doesn't agree with (and I'm not the only one who hears him when he does).

Moe the cat ghost came back with him, about a month after he died. I see Moe around the house again, regularly, and that's a bit of a comfort as well.

Time marches on, but you never forget those who you loved and who loved you. And sometimes, the most important thing to remember is that they never forget you, either.

I love you, dad. And I will always miss you.

Lone Wolf Roaming - Shift Happens 4

When you’re in college, sometimes you take classes because they’re required even if you already know all of the information. That was why I wound up taking a class that was literally an introduction to the Windows Vista operating system. An operating system that I’d already been using and was well aware of the ins and outs of long before I took the class. I got an A in the class with no effort at all – however, not having to put out effort in a class isn’t a good thing. It means that I still have to attend the class, and be bored out of my mind. Therefore, I started finding other ways to pass the time. And when I realized that the teacher didn’t take role until the end of class, therefore I could never skip out at break and get out of the interminable boredom, I knew I would have to find some way to occupy myself.

Why am I telling this story in a blog where I’m supposed to be discussing astral and dream shifting? Well, the boredom I suffered in that Vista class inspired me to try something I’d never attempted before – astral travel while my physical body remained conscious.

An astral shift is similar to a phantom shift, except that you are specifically changing the shape of your energy half fully into your theriotype, and then using that to move around independent of your physical body.  The first step is a separation. I will not go through the process of how to separate your energy half from your physical have for a sheer matter of safety. If you know how to do it already, you know the risks and the situation you are putting yourself in while doing it. If you don’t know how to do it, then one blog post will not be enough to teach you. And this series was never meant so much as a teaching series, but as an informative series.

Once you’ve achieved enough separation that shifting your astral energy isn’t going to cause your physical body to ache because of the different shape, you can quickly apply the techniques mentioned in the first post in this series to shift your astral energy self into your theriotype. And now comes the fun part – explore. You can go anywhere within the physical and astral plane. I’ve noticed several times that people in the physical world will even react to your presence even though they quite obviously can’t see you.

On the night I was talking about, I went for a run around the campus. I shot past people, jumped over a bench, sniffed at the food I could smell coming from the Cafeteria and the Denny’s across the street. I didn’t have much to do, and didn’t dare go very far from the class or my body for fear that I would be called on to answer a question or something and would have to snap back to my body at a moment’s notice. I could still kind of hear with my physical ears, and therefore I was aware of the teacher continuing to lecture while I was running around. Thankfully, though, I wasn’t needed to snap back, and after I’d run around for a while and shaken off my boredom, I made my way back to the classroom, shifted back to human form and settled myself in my body again just in time for roll call.

As you can see, being able to astral travel can be a great blessing, but again, it is not something I’m here to teach anyone to do. It’s simply another type of shift – albeit the most freeing type, in my opinion, because you are as close to physically BEING your theriotype and running around with your human mind in total control of the animal’s body and instincts.

As for dream shifting, directed dream shifting is more like lucid (or controlled) dreaming. Most therians, or even non-therians, have experienced vivid dreams in which they are someone or something else. Sometimes these dreams are in the first person POV, other times they are in third person and allow you to get a very good look at what you are. In my case, dreams like this are how I know what my dire wolf self looks like, for the most part.

Triggering a dream shift can be very simple – just think about your theriotype and a normal course of action for it as you are falling asleep. This can be enough to trigger your dream shift. Sometimes, though, should you wish this to be a true lucid dream, a bit more is necessary in order to really get yourself to register that A) you are dreaming, and B) you can control it. Unfortunately, this technique is a bit more advanced than I find myself able to explain right now. It involves giving yourself some sort of trigger that your subconscious will insert into dreams to make you realize that you’re dreaming. It can take years to create this mental image – something that will be out of place enough to jar you, no matter what you’re dreaming about. My personal visualization is a full moon within a dinner plate. I’ve had this show up in the most random places in dreams – from sitting on a rock in the middle of a field, to flying up to me as if it was some sort of flying saucer. But when I see that image, a photorealistic full moon in the middle of a china plate, it jars my brain and I realize that I must be dreaming.

My earliest experience with a lucid dream is something that I’ll never forget, though it didn’t have anything to do with shifting, and it was years before I’d perfected my lucid dream trigger. I was walking through the apartment complex where I used to live (still did live, at the time), when suddenly a ninja dropped down from the roof and threatened me with throwing stars. I was terrified, my heart was pounding – and then somewhere in the logical recesses of my mind, I remember thinking, “A ninja? What is a ninja doing in my apartment complex? This can’t be real…” And I faced the ninja, stood up as tall as a twelve year old can stand, and said, “This is MY dream, and you get out of it NOW!”

And, just like that, the ninja disappeared. But I was still dreaming. I remember laughing, looking around, and deciding that I could control anything in this dream world – and I wanted to fly. Next thing I knew, I was flying around the neighborhood. I landed on roofs, flew around the park down the street, and eventually came home. I don’t remember if I made the decision to wake up when I came home or not, but I did. And to this day, that it still one of the coolest lucid dreams that I’ve ever had. Facing down a ninja and telling it to get out of my dream. It still makes me laugh.

Dream shifts and astral shifts allow you the freedom to change and move about the world in the form of your theriotype. In my final post in this series, we will discuss the only other way this could ever happen – a way which, unfortunately, is more than impossible, and yet I don’t know a single therian who hasn’t fantasized about it at one time or another. In the final post of the series, we will examine the forever elusive P-Shift, or Physical Shift… Actually turning from human to animal like the movie werewolf – the impossible dream of most therians and anyone who’s ever wished to become a bird that they could fly away from their troubles.

Flights Of Fancy...

I missed last Monday's post... and I very nearly missed this week. Nothing horrible happened, it just seemed that my writer's block turned into flat out creative block of all types. I couldn't even really get into WoW beyond running dailies and other things I'd done thousands of times already.

The good news seems to be that my muse is back, and I did notice a bit of a connection to something else. In the last few weeks, I haven't had a single dream that I remembered. I didn't even have that moment after you wake up of knowing you'd been dreaming but not sure what it was about.

Last night, I had several very vivid dreams. The one that keeps coming back in my head involved trying to find a place that sold an aquarium that would be perfect for Pokey, my turtle. My turtle who's been dead for quite a few years, actually, so having him of all former pets show up in my dream was kind of strange. However, there he was, and I couldn't find an aquarium that I liked for him. And then there were two other turtles, and I'm not sure what happened from there.

There was also a strange sequence about my cat, Buddy, running around on the balconies of an apartment building that looked like something out of Venice, Italy, but that's even foggier than the turtle dream. But the point of this is that I have come to the realization that I might have been having a creative crash because the part of my brain that creativity is based in was.. offline for maintenance or something. I don't know WHY that would happen, or what I can do to make sure it doesn't happen again, but I seem to have gotten past it now.

What does this mean for you, my wonderful readers? It means that the next two posts in the Shift Happens series will be up soon (possibly not on Mondays, just whenever I get them done), and that I'll be blogging regularly again (I hope).

Just goes to show you that dreams, and other flights of fancy, are important to your psyche. Who knows what you might lose if you lose them?