I was walking in a corridor in my campus building where I walk everyday, and I looked up and saw this crow! I felt a voice inside me asking me to ‘click’ a pic. I am not much of a photographer but over the years I have trained myself to really heed this inside voice. Even though I found a crow to be a not so ‘inspiring subject to click’ I just clicked! Look at the magical show of lights I discovered when I was later going through the photos. There are no flowers or stars or gems that adorn these creepers – it is all just the play of light. Perhaps life itself is just a play of light, but that is the material for another post altogether!
When I felt the nudge to click the picture, none of these wonderful colours were visible to me with my naked eyes. I was just asked to focus on a boring black crow (which I did).
This seems to happen in my life all the time. In fact these days the ‘success rate’ or ‘surprise delight rate’ or ‘miracle rate’ of listening to that soft inner voice (or intuitive nudge) is so great that it has actually stopped surprising me. I have many delightful stories to share in this space. They are not photographic miracles but photography is a wonderful metaphor to use to explain what I am trying to say. There always seems to be much more in each frame of life than our physical senses can see. There seems to be many magical and miraculous ‘future possible’ effects of really simple actions taken in the present. What or who can guide us to take these actions? In my life experiences my intuitive voice has shown me not just once but again and again and again that it can (and wants to) guide me.
For example, honouring calls as simple as ‘go meet xyz’, or write a note saying ‘hello long time… to abc’ has created miraculous turnarounds like degree-saving inputs that infused new life into a staling and seemingly stuck PhD dissertation, or landing a job that I realised was all the things I have been asking for literally rolled into one. Each of the times I had decided to ‘act’ on these intuitive nudges my rational brain had no idea of how this action would be of ‘use’ or ‘benefit’ to me. I find this happening all the time in larger and smaller ways in my everyday work as well. Books jump out at me in bookshops, links scream at me from an ad-bar, or a particular email that seems like just another forward begs to be opened during a busy day. Most of the times when I decide to act on my intuition I get pleasant gifts and surprises which I could not have foreseen.
Who or what is it that cares for me so much, and loves me so much, looks out for me beyond my own physical eyes can see, and delights me in ways far beyond my brain’s capacity to imagine? I sometimes ascribe it to my Angels, sometimes to God, sometimes to my Subconscious mind, and sometimes to the Universe itself that gently holds the smaller ‘construct of me’ as part of it’s own larger self. Perhaps all these are the same thing even – Angels, God, Subconscious mind, Universe, and Me.
Perhaps it is indeed just a magical play of shimmering lights with the light itself creating the ‘constructs’ of photographer, camera, lens, voice of intuition, and even the act of photography. Yet within this illusion, each time I heed the whispers of intuition, I am delighted by more magic, and I am reminded that there is much much more to life than my physical eyes and ears and brain can together ‘figure out’.