Walls

As a writer, I spend a lot of time indoors...too much time, according to my wife, Julie.  I have to admit, I am an indoor person by inclination, and I can always find excuses for giving in to that inclination.  But there are more forces at work to get me outdoors than just my wife, though she is undoubtedly the most beautiful (and usually the most persuasive) of them.  Which leads me to my story for today....

I had been happily working at the computer, noting as I glanced out the windows that it was a sunny day outside but otherwise not paying much attention to it.  At one point I had to get up to walk into our bedroom to get something from a bureau standing near a window.  Mission accomplished, I turned to walk back to the living room when I felt a distinct tug on my back as if someone had grabbed hold of my sweater and was pulling on it.  I thought at first my sweater had snagged on something, and I turned around to see what it could be.  But there was nothing behind me, and my sweater was perfectly fine.

That was when I noticed a presence protruding out of the wall next to the window.  I have had other experiences when subtle beings have "tugged" on me to get my attention.  They are pulling on my subtle energy field--my aura, if you will--not on anything physical, but the sensation it produces is very much a physical one.

In this case, I became aware as I focused my attention of a cluster of small beings who apparently were living in the wall.  The communication between us was swift, telepathic, and non-verbal, but I'll render it here as if it were a normal human dialogue.

"Who are you?"  I asked.  I had never before considered that there might be subtle beings living in the walls of the house.  However, just on a physical level, there are plenty of creatures that live in our house besides Julie, my kids and myself; there are insects like spiders (for which I have great affection), birds make nests under the eaves, and then there are undoubtedly billions of microbes of all kinds--they are, after all, the most numerous lifeforms on earth. So why not subtle beings as well?  Over the years, I have encountered species of subtle beings that are insect-like and microbe-like living in and around the energy fields that human beings create through our thinking, feeling, and creating.  Most of them, I think, ignore us and many may not even know we exist, any more than the bacteria that surround us in the world know that we exist except perhaps as a surface to live on.

"We are...." and here I got a complex image of the house as a living organism with the wall as its "cell membrane."  The house was "breathing" subtle energies, and these beings mediated this reciprocal flow of life forces between the inside of the house and the environment outside.

I should say at this point that most subtle beings that I see do not have a solid form; they are protean, able to take different forms as required. It's true that in conversation with human beings, they make take on a human form, but that is for our convenience, not necessarily their own.  When I first became aware of subtle beings over sixty years ago as a very young child, they rarely appeared in human shape (unless they were human to begin with or connected to humanity in some way), so I've never really come to expect it.  So in this instance, these beings didn't look like little people living in the walls of my house (like the "Borrowers" of children's literature).  They were simply condensations of light. But as I came more into attunement with them, small heads and arms and hands began to appear out of the swirls of light.

"I've never seen you before," I said. "I never knew you existed."

"You never looked!"  Which was, unfortunately, all too true. But who knew to look in the walls for subtle beings?  I had forgotten one of the rules of ecology which fits the inner worlds as much as the outer one:  if there's an ecological niche or an appropriate environment, some organism will fill it.  And in this case, it made perfect sense, for these were "boundary beings," a kind of subtle organism that can often be found at the thresholds and boundaries mediating the exchange and interaction between different states.  The walls of a building or house make a perfect place for such beings to locate.

"We help the living energies of the world to come into your house," they said in unison like a choir.  They were bouncing with happiness and excitement that they had caught my attention and were in fact talking with me.  Mostly they must live lives of being ignored.

"Thank you," I replied.  "This is a wonderful thing, and I'm grateful."  In that moment, I had a clear image that human beings often inadvertently create boundaries and walls that shut things out that shouldn't be shut out and block the flow of subtle energies when they shouldn't be blocked.  Beings such as the ones bouncing in my wall really do provide a service by inhabiting our boundaries and making them more permeable and open than they might be otherwise.

"And we bring you a message," one of them said.

"A message?"

"Yes.  The nature beings in your yard want you to come out.  They said to tell you you've been inside too long and need to come out where they can meet you."  And with this came another clear image of myself looking pale and wan energetically and a cluster of nature spirits around the trees and bushes in my backyard waving invitingly for me to come out and get some sunshine and good natural energies.

So I thanked my new "wall-friends" and went outside.  And indeed, I did find renewal and re-invigoration in our backyard amongst the trees and grass and bushes and among the nature spirits that live in and around them.  But I also found they were drawing something from me.  There are qualities that are generated by our human presence that the land and plants can use as well.

One of these qualities is love and another is appreciation. Both of these are like energetic food. But there are other qualities as well that are not so easily named but which arise from our humanness.  This should not be surprising. We have evolved as an integral part of nature in both its physical and its non-physical or energetic aspects.  We are fed by nature, but we feed it as well.  Perhaps a better image is that we breath into each other, giving each other something essential and living for our mutual benefit.

Living as we do for the most part in artificial environments, we forget this. The boundaries that truly divide us from the world are not the walls of our buildings or the electromagnetic fields generated by all the electronic gadgets that increasingly surround us these days; they are boundaries of thought and feeling, attitudes and forgetfulness.

In my last blog, I said that I view subtle beings as "fellow members of the earth."  We usually think of subtle beings--assuming we believe they exist at all--as coming from "somewhere else," from some strange other realm.  And many of them do.  But many do not and inhabit the world around us, in some cases, like my "wall-elementals," very intimately with us.  And others, while living elsewhere, come here to work (putting it in a human metaphor).  Such beings share this world with us and can both benefit us and be benefited by us.  Often all that prevents this are our attitudes and disbelief.
There are some walls that no one should or can inhabit and which only we can tear down.