The Light of Animals and The Light with Animals
Since early childhood, animals have been a significant and invaluable part of my life. My soul has expanded and been healed by each mammal, bird, reptile, marine life, and insect I have met on my journey. In my darkest moments, especially after the death of my Fiance, my greatest solace was found in nature and with my companion animals. So, I created this gallery for all of my fellow animal lovers in the hopes that they would find comfort in seeing that animals are loved, supported, and surrounded by The Light. And, when animals shed their physical form and return back into The Light, they continue to live and be present in our lives.
This photograph was taken using a Leica V-LUX 1 camera (no flash) and features The Light of a spirit bird. I captured this image at a public botanical garden on the afternoon of July 23, 2010. This was only the second photograph I had taken of a Light Being and this experience occurred 4 months after the death of my Fiance, Ken.
On that day I was tracking a Bewick’s Wren through the Chappell trail of a local botanical garden, which is an area of the garden known for patches of Poison Oak and large Oak trees. There is a thin dirt trail to walk on that is flanked by downed twigs and dead Oak leaves. Wrens are not very common in my neighborhood, but at at this garden I discovered House Wrens and Bewick’s Wrens and these little brown birds are quick moving as they zip through shrubs and low tree branches, snatching up insects.
The Bewick’s Wren I was following on that Friday afternoon, since I had gotten out of work early as part of my employer’s “summer flex hours,” was busy searching for food. I took a series of pictures of the wren perched on a pile of twigs, before it suddenly flew away to a nearby Oak tree. I knew I had not gotten close enough to the bird to take a decent picture, so I did not stop to review any of the images on the camera's viewfinder. I went home and uploaded my images onto my computer and as I had predicted, my wren images were disappointing. The wren appeared slightly blurry because the Oak trees did not afford much light in the area and my ISO setting was too low to capture the bird in focus as it moved. As I scrolled through the images, I suddenly realized there was a Striped Racer snake (also known as a Whipsnake) hidden underneath the twigs where the wren was perched when I was photographing it (can you locate the snake in this image?). I never saw the snake, since it was well concealed by the dried Oak leaves it was hiding under, and that was a little unsettling. Then, in the image where the wren was absent, since it had just flown away, there was a white, semi-transparent, form of a bird. I could clearly see the bird’s head, right eye and beak. It had a round body and two wings. I had photographed the spirit of a bird! The spirit bird looked as if it was flying directly towards the snake and my first impression was that the spirit bird was intentionally flying in to warn the wren about the snake. It was the first time I had even considered that animals may have their own animal spirit guides, protecting and guiding them. This opened up a whole new concept for me regarding the wisdom of animals and the roles they play on earth and when they have transitioned back into The Light.
With that said, when I publicly shared this photograph and experience during an interview on YouTube, a viewer asked me why a spirit bird would want to warn the wren when it was perfectly natural for a snake to eat a bird to sustain its life. The answer to that question was that this experience was not about the snake filling its stomach. It was that the wren and the spirit bird were both messengers for me. By having this experience, it broadened my awareness. I was meant to capture this on film to learn from it, and to share with others to make them think beyond their perceptive reality. It is part of the bigger picture.
