Last year, a friend of mine named what I see in my meditations: the Shadow Farm.
Overall, the Shadow Farm is a new thing to me. Or maybe it’s better to say that it’s a new awareness of it that has taken a huge leap in the last 6 months since I healed all those old childhood wounds. It’s like there’s now room in my life, in place of the old sorrows, for a new spiritual expansion.
Dreams and Visions
Before I explain the Shadow Farm (and in case you’re new to my writings), let me say that I’ve always had prophetic as well as metaphorical dreams, as far back as early adolescence. It runs in the family, as I’ve discovered cousins and the children of cousins. Seems the “gift” is in our DNA. I’ve also always been prone to prophetic “flashes” that are like memories of the future, complete with a momentary visual and the emotions surrounding it, and sometimes the smell or touch or temperature associated with the “flash” of a visual moment. These usually come to pass unless I specifically do something to change it or tell someone who specifically does something to change it. For a long time, I shut off these dreams, fearing they foretold deaths and I had no power in them, but when I dreamed of my mother’s father reaching out from the grave and, because of my dream, she immediately when to check on him, he survived a medication problem and lived several more years. It was a unique situation and one that I could not have foreseen, but he visited me in a dream and woke me up to help him. So I know these dreams, flashes, visions, whatever, can indeed be a gift rather than a curse as I thought they were when I was a teen and young adult.
Metaphysical Houses
Sometimes my dreams would consist of “metaphysical houses” or dream houses, which gave me insight into the inner rooms of a person in my life. These weren’t me invading their territory intentionally–there was some bond that drew me in. The result was increased insight. I’ve written extensively about them over the years and you can find those articles on this blog, though the above link was my favorite experience.
Empathy and Chakras
While working with a BioGenesis healer in 2005, I discovered I was extremely empathic and always had been, but I’d been in a long-term relationship that had smothered that ability, largely because I had adopted his feelings and wiped out my own boundaries without realizing it. Only after my divorce did I begin to…let it out. I began to understand energetic connections and feel them in different chakras. This still occurs. It’s been especially useful in knowing when a boyfriend was hurting, though the reason for emotional upset was not something I could access–just the emotion, which was terribly confusing to me. Eventually I found that the turbulence I felt in him was caused by something other than what he’d led me to believe, but the feeling itself was quite real, regardless of the motivation for it.
The Empathic Net
As I began working more with my empathic abilities after my dad died in 2006, I began to notice more than dreams and feelings that weren’t mine. A bit less than 2 years ago, after ritual work with a shaman friend on some mutual goals, I began to notice that people I was bonded with in some way, or had an energetic connection with, would show up in an empathic netaround me. It can probably be best described as a heads-up display-like dome around me where I can sense different bright lights of energy, some brighter than others. I could pick out my kids over here, my mom over there, different friends here and there. If I was concerned about them, I could reach out in my mind to see if they were okay and know there were…or weren’t. I did not intrude: I just sent a pulse, much like I might send a text asking, “U ok?” and get back a “Yep” or a “Pls call me.”
The Shadow Farm
It was this empathic net that later morphed into the Shadow Farm and continues to evolve. I had been meditating off and on for the last 10 years with limited success, but this shaman friend really fired me up to do more and I made progress in new areas. My previous meditations had often involved Enchanted Forest scenes or between-the-worlds locations that were mine alone and where I communed mostly with my Higher Self and my guides, angels, and Deity. I began to access my empathic net in my meditations, and things started to change.
The first time was when I realized that I was somewhere between the worlds in my meditation, on a steep, grassy hillside reminiscent of the farm where I grew up. I was standing in the center of a dome, or sphere if you consider the bottom half of it, and the “edge” in front of me was like the edge of a cliff or planet. It looked out into nothingness, but not a black nothingness. Just like looking “off-planet.”
I was aware of my kids, riding bicycles around me and laughing. They weren’t actually riding bikes but this was a metaphor for them playing and being at ease in the world. My mom was behind me, on her knees in her garden, planting flowers. This might well have been actual but more than likely a metaphor for her peacefully doing her own thing in her garden and being okay. An old boyfriend with a deep bond was in a hole under a rock, down in front of me at about 11:00 on the clock, about 25 feet out. I couldn’t see him, but I eventually knew he was in there hiding. That bond was still strong even though I thought it was broken, as he was present but not looking at me, which tends to mean focused on me or thinking about me. There was a woman I worked with standing behind me, whispering in my ear, and though we weren’t bonded in any way, I later came to realize that people who were intently focused on me would show up on the Shadow Farm, too. And then there was my shaman friend in what later became known as sentry position, at 2:00, at the edge of the world, looking out “off-planet” and being protective of me, which he was at the time.
Later, I found that my bond with him was extremely draining to me, and I quietly but intentionally disconnected. Usually, that’s enough unless someone tries to reconnect or rebond and then I may have to disconnect again. He stayed in place on the Shadow Farm, still in the sentry position, since he maintained a focus on me, and it wasn’t until he himself chose to disconnect that he vanished from the Shadow Farm. I do not believe either of us was being an intentional energy vampire, or psychic vampire, as neither of us was drawing energy from the other but our shared energy was clearly (to me) in the bond that we both had to sever. I knew he was still either connected to me or thinking of me because he was present on the Shadow Farm. We had both put considerable joint effort into the esoteric work we’d done together and it was quite heady, but I don’t believe we can ever work together and would harm ourselves and each other if we tried. I know the moment he severed his end of the bond, not only because he vanished from the Shadow Farm but because I felt of whoosh of energy come rushing back to me and my health and energy levels improved immediately. For a month prior to that, I’d felt I had a virus and was exhausted. There’s more to think about with that connection and the results of it, but I’m not ready to explore it again any time soon as it’s not healthy for either of us.
For the next 18 months, I continued to work with the Shadow Farm in meditations and though it didn’t evolve much, I did come to understand the people populating it better and why. It turned out to be a very busy place and with people coming and going! The people on the Shadow Farm or rather the ones “around me” energetically are strictly people who are bonded with me or who have a focus on me. They’re not just anyone and most people don’t need to worry if I see them there because I really don’t see most people there. It’s mainly loved ones, people I’m responsible for in some way, and occasionally people who are obsessed. Yeah, that last thing…it happens, too.
Why I Can See This and You Can’t (or May Not)
The dome around me has slowly developed into something I see beyond meditations. Here’s how that works: If you’re driving down the road, you don’t even think about your windshield. You’re just looking through it. But if you stop and LOOK at the glass, you can see the fingerprints or doggie nose prints or fog on it. It’s only when I focus on the Shadow Farm that I can see it as an overlay around me.
That may should bizarre if you don’t see things like I do, but consider this: our senses are different. I can look at flickering light bulbs that are painful strobe lights and you’ll see nary a flicker because of critical fusion frequency. My kids’ friends were howling in pain when I played a high pitch tone that I couldn’t hear at all, and it reminded me of a jewelry store my mom used to haul me into as a kid and I would have to plug my ears while none of the adults heard the piercing whine. Do you ever wonder why people have gone…what’s the new euphemism?…”nose blind” to smells around them? What about The Hum in Taos, New Mexico? Can you hear it? I can and I can’t take but a few minutes of it. It rattles me to my bones. I heard it years ago while on a business trip to NM and sat in a briefing where I was wearing a moldavite necklace and having heart palpitations–terrifying. My point is, we don’t all see, hear, smell, or sense the same way. Something in my genetics and in my genes as I age accounts for being able to see flickers, hear The Hum, not hear the burglar alarm sounds in jewelry stores, smell cigarettes from the car in front of me when my windows are up, and see translucent shadows of people I have an energetic connection with, whether it’s a connection we formed together or a connection formed by focus on what I’m doing with my life or sometimes what they want to blame me for.
What Happens on the Shadow Farm Doesn’t Stay on the Shadow Farm
I’ve seen people come and go on the Shadow Farm and understand now that their attention is elsewhere or they’re busy elsewhere when they vanish, or they don’t want anything to do with me or they just no longer have any concern over how I affect their lives. I can go there to check up on someone. For example, I wasn’t too worried when my younger daughter stopped answering my texts because on the Shadow Farm, I heard her laughing with her boyfriend and saw him swinging her around. Turned out to be a glitch with her new phone but previously, I would’ve been worried sick if she wasn’t answering.
When one of my previous bosses showed up in the sentry position, I knew he was really trying to help me with something–for the first time–and that proved true on the physical plane about a week later. When he disappeared from the Shadow Farm, I knew he was done with helping, and two days later, I learned I would have a new boss.
When a problem arose at work with people I’d not even met, I went to the Shadow Farm, and there was a troublemaker from a while back, standing in her old position behind me, glaring at me and whispering. I got physical confirmation within a 24 hours that the conflict came from her blathering to my new associates.
I’ve had a long-lost best friend walk across the 11:45 path in front of me a few days before Thanksgiving and embrace me and sob into my shoulder for two days, proclaiming how much I’m missed and clinging to me before gathering senses and walking back. I have no confirmation on that one, but felt that person’s presence all around me for days, two weekends in a row. For some reason, I’m on their mind again.
One of the first people to show up on the Shadow Farm, even when it was just an empathic net, was a total surprise. This was an acquaintance who blames me for everything that has gone wrong in her professional and private lives for several years now. Since Spring 2014, she has moved all over the Shadow Farm, and it’s been certainly linked to the physical world, a reflection of it and vice versa. She started out sitting in a straight, wooden porch chair to the far right at 3:00, just watching, watching, watching. Then, right before some big events, she moved to about 13:30 in front of me, 20 feet out, standing on the chair and ready to pounce (some odd lion and chair theme going on). At one point, she was at the same angle about 6 feet out, getting closer and more dangerous. I’ve seen her walk off into the distance with a man, hand in hand, and all lovey, and then return to in front of me, standing there in the Ether, glaring at me and glaring at him and glaring at me. I’ve seen her dancing and twirling for several days after she did something to hurt me publicly, and I’ve seen her sobbing in front of me over…I don’t know…some deep loss or frustration. Last summer, she stalked up to me on the Shadow Farm and stood in front of me, yelling at the man in a knock-down-drag-out fight. They were close enough to me that I could have reached out and touched…well, maybe not, as my hand would have gone right through their 10% solid shadow selves. Then she turned and screamed at me, her face contorting into one of those stretched Beetlejuice faces and cursing at me. Parts of her emotional life have been confirmed to me and match what I’ve seen on the Shadow Farm. Given her disdain toward me, I’m sure she’d have a hissy fit if she knew just how much of her private pain I know because she focuses such intense emotions in my direction and opens that door for me to see her. She’s connected to me, and in doing so, she tells me…everything. Everything.
The Shadow Farm Evolves
In the last 2 months, the Shadow Farm has evolved in two ways. It’s now both metaphorical and prophetic…like my dreams.
On the prophetic side, there have been at least 5 different scenes I’ve watched take place on the Shadow Farm in the past 2 months and manifested in near identical form. For example, in an evening meditation, I saw a woman ahead of me at a certain angle, in certain attire, ready to turn and create drama. The next day, I was in an unexpected location at an unexpected hour, and I rounded the corner in time to see the exact scene from the Shadow Farm as the woman came out of an office and had just turned her back to me. I almost ran over her! I had to stop, hold my breath, and retrace my steps backward around the corner because I didn’t want to deal with her right then. Probably pretty funny to anyone watching.
In other instances, I have seen someone at a very unexpected location and recognized them only because I’d seen them in my meditation in the same place, same clothes, for several days. This had never happened until about 2 months ago, and has become eerily regular in warning me of seeing particular people in particular situations in close proximity to me. The most recent one, I clearly saw someone from my past standing about 3 feet from me with his back slightly turned away. I knew even before I walked through the door that he was going to be there. It was almost like walking my Shadow Farm heads-up display up to the real situation and aligning the two.
Of course, I always wonder just how real this is. Is it my imagination? Is it truly a bond I’m seeing in an overlay form? That’s why it’s great to have friends on the Shadow Farm who know they’re on the Shadow Farm and will help me test it out as I did with my shaman friend last year.
An example of that kind of test and of the Shadow Farm as metaphor for or reflection of what’s happening on the physical plane is a situation with a close friend of mine I missed seeing for a couple of weeks in November. Which is odd, because we lunch on a regular basis and he’s one of the most dependable and trustworthy friends I have.
Without divulging what was happening on physical plane in his life, let me say that I became suddenly aware that he no longer had his left arm looped through my right arm as he often does on the Shadow Farm, and we’d missed lunch that week. I had a sinking feeling–empathic bond–that something serious was going on, so I checked on the Shadow Farm. He was there, a few feet to my right, at 3:00 but about 6 feet away. He’s a firefighter and was performing a particular action that was confusing to me but was a metaphor for the actual situation. When I told him what I was seeing in the meditation, we made a lunch date to discuss what had really happened–and how close it was to my meditation. I watched over the next week as the Shadow Farm scene played out while the situation resolved on the physical plane, and I knew when it was over. He is now back arm in arm with me on the Shadow Farm, like the good friend he is.
Where to Next?
I think I’ll probably stay at this new level for a little while. I think I need to. The specificity of the scenes that manifest on the physical plane are a little scary, anxious, odd, nerve-wracking right now. Understanding through my friends–after the fact–that what is happening on the Shadow Farm is playing out in “real life” is equally unnerving. It’s odd to KNOW what’s going on with certain people, regardless of what they show the world. That’s going to take some getting used to.
It’s all a reflection. As above, so below. As without, so within.
Key Takeaway: Dreams are pathways connected to our reality.
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