Toad Medicine from Animal Spirit Guides by Stephen Farmer, PH.D.   If a toad shows up, it means:

• It’s a good time to withdraw into solitude and contemplate emotional or spiritual matters.
• You’ll have an opportunity to review and clear some uncomfortable emotional issues from the past.
• This is an opportunity to contact your most primal, instinctual self-the part of you that’s the seed of any new personal or spiritual growth.
• This is a volatile period of personal change, one where you’ll feel unsettled and fragmented, yet one in which a new “you” will emerge feeling more integrated and whole.
• You have much more available to you in terms of skills, experience, and inner strength than you’re aware of.

Detachment seems to be the new “it” word in the spiritual community of late.  It is certainly a word that I have used often in private and group client sessions over the last six months or so.  “We must acknowledge the drama in our lives, but not be attached to it”.  Becoming the neutral witness to our dramas seems to be the new avant-garde experience as we move toward a shift of consciousness on this planet.  We are all being called to move to a place of transcended awareness that allows us to experience the emotions attached to our daily drama without becoming those same emotions.   So you may wonder, appropriately, how I am going to lead you to the croaking toads.

Recently, I have been dealing with  a significant experience of detachment.  It has been painful, but yet expansive at the same time.  And in this process I have been challenged to move out of a place of rejection.  Like the most diligent of litigation attorneys, I have prepared my case clinging resolutely to the vestiges of my wounded ego.

But alas in the eleventh hour a stay of execution from the universe has mercifully intervened.  As one of my close friends is fond of saying, nobody I know gets as expedient and fun messages from the universe as you do Maria. Usually most of the fun stuff comes off of license plates of cars that are either coming toward me or pulling right out in front of me.  Last year, I authored a chapter in a Soul Coaching book called Soul Whispers II: Secret Alchemy of the Elements in Soul Coaching called As Grace Unfolds. In this chapter I describe how effortlessly fluid life can be when one is able to be present to what the universe has to offer, when one is willing to just let grace unfold.

I decided to take my own advice and on Tuesday morning, I said aloud “Ok, I’m giving it up to you.”  “Show me the way”.   I decided to then pull a card from Denise Linn’s Soul Coaching Deck asking for advice on a particular email that I was about to send.  I pulled the card “grace” and it read, “…kindly honor the reality of others.  Even if you absolutely know that your opinion is right, sometimes its wise not to push your point.  Let it drop.  Its not that important…hear the truth of others without the overlay of your opinions.  Speak with love, kindness, and diplomacy.”  I could feel the energy shift immediately in the room.  I went about sending out an email that would reflect this mantra.  The reply came back full of grace.  Lesson number one:  You get what you give.

I continued my conversation with the universe by moving into a sacred space, my shower.  As I stood there pondering my existence, my stoic countenance begged the question to anyone who might be listening, “Who am I?” The reply can wait for another day but will be relevant to to this story shortly.  A friend of mine was packing for her impending move off Cape, so I headed over to her house to say goodbye. Our goodbye turned into a three-hour epic conversation about changing the world. As we continued to talk and I casually glanced at my watch, I realized that two hours into our conversation a question was formulating.  The question  in response to both of us wondering how we could find our way out of our seemingly stuck positions was  “Do you want to dance?”  Are you willing to move?   Funny given the fact that my friend was indeed physically moving. We never really answered the question, but it felt like a “yes”.

Wednesday morning, I asked the universe again to help me out and give me a hint of what was in store for me.  “What do I need to know today?”  “Believe” was the card that I pulled.   “…Have faith in magic and miracles.  If you can believe it you can conceive it…. expectations can act in both negative and positive ways, and your fixed thoughts and opinions about yourself have created your world and your experiences.”  That brings me to the beautiful Eliza, a messenger of universal proportion, aka, my yoga instructor.  She is not only beautiful on the outside, but she is beautiful on the inside as well.   She begins every yoga class with an intention.  Wednesday evening her intention was centered on an invitation to dance.  I smiled.  She asked us if we would be willing to move from a position of rigidity.  Could we further take this intention into our yoga practice that evening?  Ok, so now I was beginning to feel like I was in the flow of things both physically and energetically.   Not surprisingly she ended our amazing yoga class with a brief recital that begged the question, “Who are you?”   I smiled for the second time that evening.   Heading home, again I could once more feel the energy shifting.  I was launched into an evening of amazingly healing dreams, waking up even more expanded then the day before.  Lesson number two: when you are stuck, it only takes a small shift to create a more fluid awareness of self.  Sometimes it is just our perception that ails us.

Thursday morning refreshed and ready to face the new day with a new perspective, I decide to pull another card just for good measure.  “Voyage” was the message for the day.  “A journey is coming.  Rather than staying in a safe harbor, let your sails unfurl to the wind.  The universe absolutely knows cherishes and protects you as you ride the currents of your life.  Your life is a spiritual voyage and it isn’t always what it seems…. there have been no wrong turns…every adventure and misadventure was part of the course.  Even when you are sailing through dark waters and stormy seas, if you will allow yourself to feel it you’ll know that you are always seen, cherished and loved by the universe.”   Lesson number three: embrace everything seen and unseen.  Acknowledge that both the significant and seemingly insignificant things play an equally important role in our lives.  Resolve to the fact that there are so many layers available for healing, if we are open to be vulnerable and explore.

So today, Friday, my card says “Awakening”.  “It’s time to wake up!  Step out of you’re routine and notice what is truly occurring around you…Awaken your potential and power-move, shake and take action…” It’s 9:30am and Eliza has prepared another intention to get us started with yoga this morning.  She has asked us to consider the “croaking toad” as a metaphor for that little voice in our head whispering sweet nothings filled with everything that limits us in our lives.  This morning’s class was all about shaking things up, twisting and turning, and pushing us outside of our comfort zone.  Eliza challenged us to participate fully and release those limited beliefs of self.  But wait, didn’t I hear this already this morning?  I nod my head and smile as if to say I am up for the challenge, whatever that means.  Moving fairly fluidly through the vinyasa moves for most of the class, I hear Eliza ask us to consider moving into the Crane pose. Uh-oh.  The crane pose involves balancing your legs on your elbows and for those of us overachieving athletic types usually requires a crash helmet. Ok I can do this I said to myself even though I have tried repeatedly to do this move with little success. Eliza suggests that we use a block to squat on while attempting this pose.  Great I think, now I have farther to fall.  I get up on the blocks, Eliza woos me with her patient smile and magically it happens, just for a nanosecond, but it happens.  I have found a place of balance.  I realize it only takes a second in this pose to shift my perception of what is possible. Ok so now the universe is moving in for the kill.  A big part of my experience this week was about my claiming myself fully into the universe with no guilt, no qualifiers and no excuses. Eliza finishes off class this morning with Marianne Williamson’s Our Deepest Fear.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

So now I am heading home from yoga class buzzing like a hornet’s nest that has just been accidently disturbed.   Wow what has just happened?  How did all of this unfold in less than a week?  I call my girlfriend, the one who comments often about how lucky I am that the universe always gives me such great props.  I tell her about all of the amazing synchronicities that have occurred this week after surrendering to the universe.  I say that I think I’ve got it.  If I can consider releasing some of those limiting believes of self acquired over many life times, I just might have a fighting chance.  As I am saying those words, I look up and the car coming toward me has a license plate that reads “ouch”.  I smile into the phone and say you are not going to believe this…   Lesson number four: nobody ever said it was going to be easy.

So the next time you hear those “croaking toads”, consider that the problem whatever it is, is not the problem.  The problem is the resistance to the problem.  If you can get past the resistance, the “croaking toad” may just lead you to your next best thing.