When your soul gets its wings clipped for the first time, it is pleased. It says “Thank god that dead weight is lifted from my shoulders. I didn’t think the burning would ever stop.” The weightlessness is ironic. The soul feels as though it could fly, now that its wings are gone. But this is not the case. Instead, it gets captured and assigned to a physical body, one that can never grow wings like it once had. None that shimmer in as many colors as the old ones did. None that possess a crystalline transparency that refracts light like icicles.
But the soul does not care about the other-worldly beauty the wings possessed. All that matters is the unbearable weight having wings brings with it. So, when the wings are clipped and jarred, the soul rejoices in the absence of that which is envied by all.
So too should we, when we are simply left to exist on our own. But, when our existence is requested elsewhere, we begin to question where we choose to exist, an idea many people are privileged to have never thought. People can simply be. They never have to choose where to be. But for us, we must be decisive. Our wings have been clipped. We are bound by existential forces. After all, one cannot be in two places at once.
The folly of man is this ingratitude of freedom. They complain about restrictions they set upon themselves! Governments, covenants, even diets are considered limitations to their freedom, and yet they have never been plagued with the guilt for resisting a polytonal voice silently calling out your name to be elsewhere.
When this occurs, one should not feel as if they belong. They cannot belong. And yet, this call does not necessarily guarantee a sense of belonging there either. It can only remove a current sense of belonging. It is the call to change. The call to reformation. The call to newness. The call to a new way. The call to a new path. The call to connection. The call to relationship.
You become both the bridge and the bridge traveler. You are both and neither at the same moment. You are the means to getting what it wants. Whether it is you or something else is up for the universe to decide.
...
I have been summoned, and I do not yet know by who or why. It’s like when you know your star sign before you’re ever told what you are. It’s like that. There’s no external confirmation that what you’re feeling is real, but it is. You have to trust yourself.
Do you lack confidence because there isn’t a ruler you can hold up to the feeling and go, “Yeah, I observe my emotions are at a six. I must have anger management issues.”? You are your own ruler. Does that make you uncomfortable? Yes? Good. Then you know how to play along.
When you’re summoned, though, you have to stop playing along. When you accept the summoning, you deliberately choose one reality over the other. At first, your origin resists. It chastises you and guilt trips you. If neither of those work, gaslighting does nearly every single time. Which is why so many good realities have already died. The original one gaslights souls into staying. You ask yourself, “Maybe I’m summoning myself,” and you stay put.
...
But the fact of the matter is that you are summoning yourself, but it’s a different version of you. It’s an older you. A taller you. A wiser you. A dangerous you. A violent you. A talkative you. A risky you. A flagrant you. A dying you. A happy you. A lonely you.
But never is it a bored you. See, you get bored when you stay in one reality for too long. You get stuck in the astral slime that holds you in place, and slowly it swallows you up like quicksand. When that slime starts sinking into your mouth, that is when boredom forces you to change things. It forces you to summon yourself somewhere else…
Or it forces you to summon someone else. Maybe you like your reality and would prefer to keep it the same. But in order to get out of the quickslime, you’d rather someone else pull you out. And you’d prefer that none of this astral slime gets on them, but maybe some of it does. Or maybe they start sinking.
And if only both of you had your wings of boredom you could soar out of there. But they have been clipped, and we are trapped under the weight of being forced to choose between staying or going. Living in devastation or moving on to desolation. For maybe you could escape the astral slime by summoning yourself somewhere else, but it’s more than likely that somewhere else is also covered in astral slime. If you stop moving, you get sucked in. Would it just be easier to stay put in the original slime and not even waste the effort? Yeah, maybe it would…
So here, I stand, on the brink of change, fearing what will happen, should I answer my own call. So goes every decision I make. An eternal battle gets waged in my head. “If only I had wings,” I say, “so that I could sink in peace.”
And then I realize what I’m saying. My wings seem to be a contradiction. The freedom to choose a future is freeing as well as binding. Surely, fear and indecision can plague the mind, but is that not the price to pay for such beautiful wings?
“All I have to do is keep moving,” I say. “Keep flying… don’t ever stop… keep moving… You were born to summon… and to be summoned.”