Happy Anniversary; listening to signs

Last week, I used an ancient Greek technique of divination to receive the 

“Oracle of Hermes (Mercury).” 

It was part of a workshop I was participating in, and though I had read about the technique before, I had never used it.  

Hermes/Mercury, among many other things, rules signs and is connected to divination. 

Here is how it goes:

Speak the question, call on Hermes (in ancient Greece, they would place a coin on the statue of him in his shrine and whisper their request in its ear), place wax in your ears, and then go to a crowded marketplace of some kind with many people talking, and remove the wax. The first thing you hear is the oracle’s answer.

I simply asked for general guidance, put on earplugs (you could also use cotton balls), got into my car, and drove to Whole Foods. I removed the earplugs as I was entering the store. Initially, it was an exercise in frustration. For the life of me, I couldn’t clearly hear what anyone was saying, just indistinct murmurs in the background. This went on for some time, almost the entire time I was in the store, about ten to fifteen minutes. To be totally transparent at this point, I was feeling like it was a bust. Then, finally, as I was using the self-checkout, I heard someone loudly exclaim, “It’s our anniversary.” I noted the time (seriously, astrologers draw up a chart for everything) and then got into the car and headed home, thinking, well, what could that be about?  

I was about halfway there when it hit me, wasn’t it just about five years ago that I began sending these emails out? Shortly after I arrived, I checked my Constant Contact database, and sure enough, the day I did the exercise was the day prior to my first email. 

It was delightfully mindblowing. 

When I wrote about my experience in my journal, what became even more valuable to explore was my initial frustration. How I had oh so easily slipped into an inner narrative of defeat while moving through Whole Foods because I had anticipated an almost instant response when I took the earplugs out. At one point, I had actually had an inner dialogue about feeling like a shade in the underworld, one of those creatures who moved about invisibly and unheard.  

One of my favorite quotes is by Max Ehrmann: “Whether it is clear to you or not, no doubt, the universe is unfolding as it should.” It’s one of the many reasons I love astrology so much, when I spend time with my own, or another's chart, seeing the interconnecting threads laid out between it and how literal events, different pathways, and experiences correspond. As I have said before, it always takes my breath away. Yet clearly, I, like most humans, find that challenging to live up to in my day-to-day life. 

It was simultaneously eye-opening and humbling to recognize the degree to which this gap, though it has substantially narrowed over the years, still exists between the magic of seeing how everything is connected and my day-to-day experience with life/myself. 

Don’t get me wrong, I largely follow my guidance, what I refer to as the voice of my heart, implicitly. But there is still a gap. A place of self-doubt when it comes to my life.

What I saw about myself when I explored my frustration, and how I started anticipating failure during the exercise, was a type of distrust. It wasn’t loud, it was actually very subtle. To be honest, I was grateful to recognize it because in order to shift an unconscious belief, you have to be able to see it operating in your life.  Why? I asked myself, even though I see and experience these types of connections (including this one with the Mercury Oracle),  miracles, large and small, daily through my work, and have had so many extraordinary synchronicities change my life trajectory, would trusting this feel like such a challenge?  

My hope with these emails/blogs has always been to give something that might make a difference for you at the moment you need it. This is why I am sharing this experience, including my frustration during the exercise, because I believe on some level at least, this is true for all of us:  To fully embrace and actually believe we are loved, supported, and guided by the universe, to fully let go of fears and concerns, we have to surrender our cynicism and all of that prickly barbed wire that is intertwined within it. We have to give up “realistic.”

And I don’t think I am alone in this. Most likely on a certain level, some part of you, if you are honest with yourself, finds belief in being unconditionally supported and given guidance by something larger in ourselves somewhat terrifying, as it means releasing the illusion of control and allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. Allowing ourselves to trust the process of our lives. At the very least, we don’t want to seem foolish.  

Take a moment, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and imagine that you are fully supported. That every dream, particularly the ones you won’t speak out loud, is backed by the universe. That whatever fear or worry you might be harboring is handled. How do you feel? What happens in your body? Mine relaxes. 

Do we listen to the guidance around us? Mercury, the messenger, is also known as the guide of souls. In other words, he both sends us messages and guides us. Or more aptly put, he sends us a sign to guide us. But are we able to listen? How often do we place the voice of our self-doubt ahead of the guidance we receive?

Signs/messages consistently show up. As Carl Jung said, “Synchronicity is an ever-present reality for those who have eyes to see.” I would add ears to hear.  

A student of mine recently said to me in a conversation, “You know me, I don’t like to try something if I don’t know it’s going to work.” And I thought about Mercury, particularly his Gemini qualities (Mercury rules two signs, Gemini and Virgo), which are about exploration and discovery. Neither of these is associated with certainty.  

If you felt safe, aka trusted the signs, what would you allow yourself to do or try?

So, I say with profound gratitude, happy anniversary. Thank you for being such a supportive audience and for listening to what I am guided to share. 

*In ancient Greece stacks of rocks that guided someone along the trail were known as  herms and associated with  Hermes/Mercury