HOW GOOD CAN YOU STAND IT? Are you afraid to be all of you?

HOW GOOD CAN YOU STAND IT? Are you afraid to be all of of you?

Aloha MM’s,

Well, you’ll be pleased to know I'm not sending this from the public library. I haven’t had to train my Ninja Ginger fur children Leo Ray Jr. and the horror child Mr. Beaumont to sing and dance on the pavement, while I rattle a tin cup. This, admittedly is an unlikely scenario—I’d never get Leo to agree to it. And Mr. Beaumont would spend his whole time giving me puzzled looks, “Why are we doing this again, Mum?”

And really, that seems to be the whole theme of what’s going on for me and other metaphysicians right now.

Why are we doing this? Is this REALLY, REALLY, I mean, REALLY, are you bloody sure, this is REALLY what we want to do? And it’s about that irritating to do as well as read that last piece, I’m sure. LOL.

It reminds me of the line from Dirty Dancing. “Don’t put your heel down.” I feel like that at the moment. Like I’m walking across a tightrope, high above Niagara Falls, the water thundering and exploding beneath me, while I walk across on the thinnest piano wire possible, doing the best balancing act in the world.

If this was just happening to me, I’d think I had some ghastly belief system on board about doing things the hard way. But it’s happening to other mets. as well.

What we seem to be being asked to do is not only trust and have enormous amounts of faith, but also be so precise in what we want—it almost seems life and death. One wrong move ½ a millimeter (yes, we don’t even get inches on this one) and we plunge over the side into the abyss.

And it’s not the Guides or the Universe being nasty and mean. It seems to go with a global awareness or awakening that’s going on for everyone. We’re being asked, 

“What do you REALLY want in your soul? Deep down in the very depths of your being.”

Not the ‘nicey’ stuff, like, “I’d quite like to move to France once day.”

But the gut wrenching, if you didn’t have this happen, your life might cease to exist stuff. I know that sounds dramatic, but this has a particular feel to it. Really do-or-die stuff.

Do you REALLY want that job as a flight attendant or travel consultant? Or actually…would you soul REALLY want to lead Alpaca tours across southwest Istanbul, on an all meat, champagne and orange juice culinary adventure. Ya what?  

See, this is what I mean. It’s not piddly ‘easy’ decision stuff. It seems to require great dredging up of the DEEPEST desires you can possibly have in your soul and doing that.

And here’s the thing: If you don’t do that, the whole kit and caboodle stops turning, moving and grooving for you. Just stops. It doesn’t slow down. It stops DEAD.

On Tuesday, you’re powering ahead. By Wednesday lunchtime, the whole thing’s a dead duck in the water. It reminds me of driving across in the dead of winter once from Michigan to California. We got caught in three snow storms and got ‘shut down’ a lot on the highways. We had to come through from Winslow, AZ through to Kingman. A hundred mile journey took us five hours…

And every inch of that road had to negotiated. It was so unpredictable. We stopped, we started. We got out of the truck and literally skated on ice. The highway patrol had to call the cinder truck out to get grit down on the road, so we could move. Big trucks were holed up. They had to roll back onto their chains and pray that when they put the brakes on, they stopped. We crawled along on the icy snow laden roads. Twenty miles an hour was about our top speed.

Most of us stayed in the convoy of trucks, slowly making our way along, hauling Grandma (1^st or one of the very low gears for the big trucks.) Every so often, someone would get fed up with the whole process and pull out, plowing past us all. We’d then pass him, stopped in the middle of the road. He’d hit what looked like a snow drift and stopped DEAD. The snow drift had iced in the night and become solid ice. It was like hitting a concrete wall.

This is what this feels like.

One wrong move and you’re toast. Martha Beck once likened it to a client she'd had who'd been caught in a thunderstorm on a high ridge in the dark. He literally had to put one foot in front of the other and TRUST he was being looked after, to get himself down. One wrong move either way and he would have plummeted to his death over the edge.

So, why is it being like this? No, it’s not the Guides idea of extreme exercise or the Hunger Games. Although it certainly feels that way.  Nor are they amusing themselves just to piss us off.

We seem to be being taught to trust, have faith and above all else—not put our heel down. In other words, no second best, no ‘it’ll do for now’ choices or ‘this would be a good move, even if not the right one ultimately’ stuff.

Is this what you REALLY want? One hundred percent, not an ounce of conflict in your soul. If yes, it’s a go. If no, it’s hit that concrete snow wall. You’re stopped dead. You can’t settle even slightly. The energy just won’t take it.

We’re being asked to be every piece of our authentic soul that we can possibly be.

Do you really want to teach people metaphysics? Well…it would be okay. NO. That’s out. The classes you have planned, never get a single person enrolling. Do you really want to write about being a pantser writer because it might make you a wee bit of money until you get your heart and soul writing off the ground? It would make me a bit of money you think. Despite the fact you feel slightly icky and panicky when you write it. NO. That’s out. You think about moving down the coast for a change of pace. What you really want to do is move home to Hawai’i. But this would be good in the meantime. NO. That’s out. NOTHING happens to make that a go.

And on it goes…

I am finding this absolutely infuriating. I only have to move something ½ a millimeter and the whole energy platform crashes and burns.

Years ago, when my twin soul Donnie still had his business, he was going mad with the whole thing. He’d had a million signs he was in the wrong life, but he kept plowing on. It didn’t matter what he did with his business, the whole thing just wouldn’t do its thing. And he’d always been really successful. He said to his mum, “It’s as if I’m supposed to fail.” In fact, that was exactly what was happening. The Universe did it darnedest to get him out of a life that no longer worked for him. That wasn’t his heart and soul. No matter which way he turned, it all fell over. Soul survival—not soul sabotage.

So there’s two ways you can do this. The easy way or the very, very, oh my god, are you serious, just shoot me now way.

The hard way is resisting things at every step of the way. But I’ve been getting these signs for a year! Why the hell would I change horses now? Because you need to. That’s the short answer. And it’s a non-answer. I can’t work out whether I’m changing so fast, that the direction is changing. Or I’m working my way through a ‘culling process.’

When I used to shoot stock photography, you might start off with say a thousand transparencies. When you put them up on the projector or light box, the majority of them look good. You cull out a few that are obviously not right. The light’s wrong, frame’s out, doesn’t feel right, boring etc.

You’re now down to 853.

You wander off and have a break. You come back and go through them again. You start comparing similar shots side by side. No, that’s gone, the angle’s slightly different, or this one intuitively feels better. You’re now down to 622.

This process keeps going until eventually you might end up with 50 or so PERFECT shots. Composition, lighting, color, action, feel—everything is perfect.

And these are the only transparencies you keep in your portfolio for that shoot.

If you then go back and look at the other transparencies, you’ll be tempted to put some of them back in, but there was something minutely ‘off’ about them and you must leave them in the ‘do not use,’ pile.

This is what this is like.

We’re looking for the PERFECT shot for our soul.

No more ‘amateur’ photography piccies. No more, but it’s ‘still fun,’ shots. It is that precise at the moment.

And if you step off that path by a millimeter, you’re OFF path. The energy stops dead. 

So, the feedback you’re getting is also precise, fast and on. You’ll know within a few days if you’ve wandered again. You have to adjust back on path. And it seems to go on.

So anything that you don’t want to do, even by a fraction, it simply doesn’t work.

Things have sped up, gotten more intense. I don’t know why, but everyone’s feeling it.

So what does my soul want to do? I think…and I say this guardedly, because I keep thinking I DO know what I bloody well want, only to keep hitting that ice wall. I think…(stay tuned, on Friday, it will have changed…or not…please let that be the case!) 

I think…I want to go home to Hawai’i to live and write my romance books that I absolutely love writing. And I have a man I’ve been in love with for a while that seems like the maddest craziest thing out there, but well, I want him. He’s lovely. 

So…here’s the deal. It sounds very PERFECT. 

It would push me on some levels, but not in an awful way. More in a, you have to be true to yourself way. You have to authentic. You have to show up. Only do what calls to you. Forget the obligations. The guilty ‘visits’ to people who you really don’t need in your life. Forget the conformity. Other people’s opinions, ideas, ways of living and doing things.

This is it.

Am I willing to be me? All of me?

I know on a gut level, the answer is yes. And some of the ‘being me’ means that some of the parts of me that are here now, will have to disappear. Because they’re the obligation/guilt/my ‘public persona’ parts of me.

I own an extremely large brown leather Bernhardt couch. I’ve had it for years. When I first got my money, I wanted that couch with all my being. I was so happy when I bought it. Now I feel like I’m being disloyal on some level wanting to let it go. But it doesn’t call to me anymore. Trying to shed these old ‘skins’ of myself is harder than I thought it’d be. I used to be good at this stuff. I sold three bookcases the other week and again, I had a slightly hard time with it. But now I don’t miss them. I feel free. 

They were brown. I like white bookcases.

And this funny old me/new or the real me/ stuff is my hardest thing in a way. I keep feeling like I’m popping back and forth between a portal. And the two sides are so different, it’s not even funny.

I feel like I’m trying to shed an old skin, wriggling out of it and it grasps me tightly every so often.

I am explaining this all very badly, but it has been one of the hardest concepts to put into words for me. My old self feels I should have hung onto the brown bookcases. They were ‘nice’ and ‘wooden’ and ‘matched.’ My other self wants white bookcases. Or black teak. I also love Chinese furniture. It soothes me.

My old self says I should hang onto the leather couch. It’s a Bernhardt. It’s leather. It’s big. It’s classy. And all the other rubbish that self says.

My new self wants my tropical floral wicker couch that’s been in wrapped in moving paper for three years now. The one with one of the cushions shredding at a seam. The one with the bright orange trumpet flowers on it and tropical green leaves on the black background that looks lovely with my Chinese altar and cabinet. That’s more feminine. But my big cat Beau won’t be able to drape on it. I will find him a large feather pillow for the arm.

You see…this is the stuff that is, in a way, ridiculous.

But the subtleties in this on a very deep level are what is going on for me.

And if you can follow any of this, you’re doing jolly well. I’m having a hell of a time explaining this. But it’s almost so organic, that I can’t put solid form to it.

The truth is: I’m afraid to step into the ME I really want to be. A much freer, less confined, less ‘grown up’ version of who I seem to be now.

Despite knowing it’s the ONLY thing my soul is asking me to do right now.

I feel slightly like that scene in ‘Love Actually’ where Colin Firths character arrives at the door of his relatives for Christmas and everyone’s excited to see him. Then he says, in a puzzled voice, something like, “Actually…no…I have to go.” And you see it’s just occurred to him that there is something much bigger he needs to be doing with his life. They’re all rather put out. But he’s on a mission. That’s how I feel. I’m on a mission to find my right life.

“Actually…no…I have to go…”

Are you in the same boat?

Leave a comment please. I’d love to hear about other people’s soul paths right now. Aloha to the brave metaphysicians out there doing this walk. I hear you!

Aloha and great care for the emerging tender butterflies that are trying to come out of the cocoons right now. Meg J

Why aren't I manifesting what I want?! Arghhh...

Me with my twin soul Donnie Staal at the Royal Kona,
 on the Big Island of Hawai'i

Aloha MM’s, 

Sorry, this blog is a wee bit behind. The Guides have had me on the “Trust and Faith Outward Bound Boot Camp 2014” thing.  

And I’m really, really, bloody sick of it!  

As well as having to have extraordinary amounts of trust and faith. I’ve also been having this conversation with myself daily—what the bloody hell have I missed? Arghhh…

Here’s the deal. When you have been putting out for something and it hasn’t manifested, something’s wrong somewhere. You Watson, now have to do an amazing amount of tricks to figure out what. 

And this is the MOST frustrating thing in manifesting, I think.  

As Stuart Wilde says, you’ve stuffed alfafa up your nose, said the Lord’s Prayer backwards 13.2 times, made sure you always get out of bed on the same foot every morning, given the cat down the block the conspiratory connection wink (he could be a Guide in disguise) and still… The thing you most want is not here. Why?  

Well, in my experience, we’re often going for the wrong thing. Every so often, it’s timing, but you’ll get a feeling for timing. The desire will still be there, but your inner self won’t push it. It often has a feeling of ‘right time,’ to it.  

I was once looking for my darling puss Leo Ray Jr. to come back into my life. I’d had a million signs he was coming… soon… any day now. But he wasn’t. 

I kept getting the signs though. When I arrived in California, I’d cut out the adoption thing from the paper and had it in my ‘in-tray,’ but hadn’t been pushed to ring up. Then I ‘suddenly’ got a bee in my bonnet and started screaming at the Universe and Guides, “Give me my cat back. I want him back and I want him back NOW!” 

We don’t have to be all love, peace and jingle bells with the Guides. They’re in spirit, on the other side with no ego. They’re not going to throw a wobbly and snub you for days if you don’t address them with utmost reverence, sweetness and light.  

I got to work on Wednesday and fingered the ad in my in-tray. But…no…couldn’t quite make myself do it. Then on Thursday, I was seized with this overwhelming compulsion to ring up the adoption agency about finding a new kitten. 

I rang and left a message. I was looking for a short haired, ginger and white tabby boy. 

Within twenty minutes, I had a call back. “You won’t believe this,” she said. I probably would. Things like this happen all the time to me when I’m on. “But just yesterday we got in five ginger and white kittens, three girls and two boys. The girls are already gone, but I have the two boys left, one’s a tabby, the other one’s a patch.”  

Long story, short and the whole story is at the end of this blog and in the book. It was my cat, back in his new body, ready for me to take him home. J

So, THAT was a matter of timing. Waiting for him to be born, grow enough, so I could take him home. There’s an ‘inaction’ energy in it that needs to be followed. 

I just read a brilliant article about this last week on the Good Vibe Blog. Love that place. http://goodvibeblog.com/10-types-of-action-time-to-upgrade/ Go and have a wee look at this, because I can’t say it better than Jeannette Maw over there.  

But sometimes it’s just not happening and you know it’s not. There are no signs. Or signs and nothings happening and you KNOW there should be something.  

BTW—don’t buy into the ‘good things come to those who wait.’ Often they don’t. Often the good thing sails past your nose, because you’ve been so busy, being ‘good’ and waiting, that you missed the whole thing. Or they’re plain not happening.  

The truth is, in manifesting. You should expect a fairly quick turn around time. I have a window of about three weeks. If something hasn’t happened in that time, I can pretty much say, it’s a dead duck in the water. You’ll get to know your own time frame. I will walk away from it, or reassess, and rework it after this time. There’s no point flogging a dead horse. Better to find the glitch, adjust the energy and move things along.  

Sometimes what we think we want, we don’t.  

Sometimes there might be a more immediate want that needs addressing first.  

One of the stories I always think of is metaphysician Sonia Choquette’s story. She was having breakfast with a friend and said she couldn’t seem to get motivated to write her book. She really wanted to and couldn’t understand why she wasn’t getting into it. He looked at her and said, “Sonia, what do you need RIGHT now, more than anything.”  

“Sleep, I need sleep,” she said, looking back at through the toothpicks holding up here eyelids.  

He said gently to her, “Then, that’s your goal.”  

The truth was, Sonia had two small children, was getting bugger all sleep, had a big old house they were renovating and things were just overstretched all round.  

Sometimes the big goal seems like the one we should be heading for. But our wants are often more immediate and smaller, to keep us on path. Once Sonia caught up on sleep, and got her household a bit more under control, the book started to flow. She was on.  

So, figuring out this ‘why the bloody hell isn’t this manifesting’ can be a bit like working a Rubik’s Cube. Incredibly frustrating, irritating, you keep thinking you see the pattern, you twist this way and that and still end up with a row on the bottom that’s not right.  

And thus I found myself, wanting to peel off the stickers and line the damn thing up!

So, here’s what’s been happening. The Guides have me on their boot camp for naughty wayward Mets. who have strayed off course. It requires me to trust them explicitly, know I’m always looked after, even when it appears I’m in trouble. They keep coming through for me at the eleventh hour.  

Note: this was started in New Zealand the year before I was born. They were ready for me!!! :-)

On top of that, I have signs for New Orleans every single day. Flurries of them sometimes, but I’m still sitting here in Modesto, going quietly mad.  

I’ve looked at this from every angle. Maybe New Orleans was wrong. The house I want. The French Quarter. That restaurant on the corner is wrong (oh yes, it’s gotten to the silly stage) and on it goes. But the signs were still coming in thick and fast. I checked, rechecked, adjusted, screamed.  

I ‘stumbled’ across the wonderful Good Vibe blog and found a great blog there that someone had written in, asking a question about why she wasn’t manifesting something. 

http://goodvibeblog.com/all-is-well-attitude-harmful/ 

I read what the person was asking. Had some inklings, read some of the responses, went back and read the letter and bingo. There is was. Written in the first couple of sentences. She wanted to work from home, but wasn’t ‘allowing’ herself too.  

It’s always easier to see someone else’s stuff, but I thought, why don’t I pretend to write a letter to the column and see what I’d ask. I typed fast and without much thought, so I wouldn’t let my brain jump in and say ‘sensible’ things. A couple of things were there but nothing big. I kept going.  

Then it hit me, I read it back to myself… I felt guilty and disloyal to Aaron my husband who died earlier this year for wanting to go to New Orleans. Completely leave our life behind her and all it’s crap. Start again without him, without the perimeter of my old life and in a way, say no to what we’d had.  

I bawled.  

Always a good sign. You know you’ve really hit something, the moment you get the sting in you nose, the first tightening of the eyes and the clogged throat. Excellent!  

I poked around and had a big talk with Aaron on the ethers about the whole situation. The truth is, he wants me to move on, be happy, get a life that works for me. I said, it didn’t feel like much time and he pointed out that if he hadn’t died, we would have been separated nearly a year in October. (Yes, we were still living together when he died, we were good friends, so it felt complicated when he passed on many levels.)  

I realized he was right. I hadn’t thought about it like that. So I worked through that and felt a lot better. Like I’d cleared a bit chunk off my plate and NOW I could move forward. My energy shot up. Here we go, I thought… I’m riding the wave.  

Only to find myself, swept off my surfboard, with the water washing back and forth over my feet as I lay in the shallows on the beach, grounded, once again. Wipeout.  

That’s when I said again…Oh God…I’ve missed something big here. Bugger!  

I’ve been ‘trying’ to make things happen too. Never a good thing. I was out of flow, and nothing I did was working. I couldn’t sell anything, pick up an edit job, get my computer back, nothing. When you’re stalled, you’re off. That’s all there is to it. I have seen energy turned around in as little as an hour, when things are a GO and on. So don’t get caught in the, it just takes time. Usually it doesn’t.  

I’ve been saying to myself. Look, all I want to do is write!!! I suddenly realized I wasn’t even doing that. I was waffling, doing social media but not writing a new story or even alternating with a new story and editing.  

Enough, start a new story. What would I like to write about? I decided on a new romance and talked to my best writing friend Mikey Rakes about it. She said, go for it. So I did. And it flowed… Yay, something good happening.  

But elsewhere in my life…nada. 

I moaned to Mikey about it on Friday and she said, maybe you need to go home to Hawai’i for a bit. You seem to be pulled to there and not New Orleans right now. Why is this new story set in Hawai’i. All your stuff is always about Hawai’i. I realized, clonk, she was possibly right. I poked around in it. I burst into tears. It was correct.  

My heart DID want to go home to Hawai’i. I wanted to take some of Aaron’s ashes back to bury in a sacred place to keep him safe. Let some of his ashes go in spots we always swam and snorkeled at on the Big Island. Into the Pacific…where he belonged. Home.  

I thought, what the hell…let’s change the visualization and see what happens. At this point, I have nothing to lose. Within a hour of deciding to do that, I got a ‘push.’  

I sold something! Good lord! After weeks of nothing.  

I got a long text from my Hawaiian soul sister that I hadn’t heard from in over a month, saying her son, who I have a connection to, was going home to Hawai’i on Tuesday. I sold more things.  

Something every single day that let me know, I was moving again.  

So, stay tuned.  

If I next email you from the public library you’ll know this whole trust and faith and following signs things fell over on me and I’m now a bag lady. 

But somehow I have my doubts on that. I’ve been rolling flow energy now since Friday… I’m not sitting on my surfboard on a sheet of flat water, with not a wave in sight. There’s movement there.  

Here’s the other thing and this is what happens when you don’t blog for weeks…  

I’m learning to only do what ‘feels’ good or right, as opposed to what I think I should or ought to be doing. This is hard, when your brain is screaming, go and get a job, have a garage sale, DO SOMETHING. But your heart and soul is saying, write, sleep, rest, read.  

Following our heart, allows the energy to flow. It’s the action of doing inaction that makes things happen. The first Good Vibes blog on here talks about those very things.  

So… stay tuned. See if I’ve got caught the wave this time, or I’m still missing something. Also feel free to email me or leave a comment about anything you might be stuck in. I can see other people’s stuff, easier than my own. LOL.  

And here’s my boy Leo Ray Jrs coming home story. Aloha, may your manifesting magic happen quickly and easily. Aloha Meg J
 

THE POWER OF LOVE from the book
The Mystic Manifestor by Megana Amor

AMAZON

When my big Leo died, my darling big ginger cat, I was utterly devastated.

I screamed at the Universe and Guides. “I want my cat back. Where is he?” I was completely grief stricken.

Not long after he died, I went to a channeling session to see if I could get any information as to where he was and what was happening. I wanted to know whether he was coming back to me. Cats are contractual, so they often come back to their owners throughout a lifetime. Hence the reference to a cat having nine lives.

I constantly asked for signs and got them, but I wanted to hear some definitive thing about him. We settled into listening to the channel and I found myself naturally dropping into trance as well. I thought, oh, okay, I’ll see who comes through. To my surprise, my mum popped up. I hadn’t spoken to her for years. The channel I’d come to hear was pretty awful and I was glad I’d dropped into a channel space myself.

“God isn’t this ghastly,” said Mum, and I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. It was such a Mum comment, and unexpected. You know you’re channeling clearly and not just making it up when you hear something unexpected. Then you can be sure you’re getting it directly from the other side, loud and clear. Mum and I had a good catch up. My gran also popped in. Finally I asked Mum about Leo.

She said he was fine and coming back to me.

“How will I know it’s him?” I asked.

“You’ll hear his voice, see his eyes and he’ll have the white stripe on his face.”

Thank God.

Time passed. I wondered where he was. I’m not remotely known for my patience. I’m an Aries. We’re built for now, Now, NOW!

We went to New York on Thanksgiving weekend to see my uncle and I felt sure Leo would turn up that weekend. I thought I’d get to New York and my uncle would say, “Do you want a kitten? A friend of ours has some.” But no, that didn’t happen?

Okay, ever the optimist, I had visions of finding a small ginger kitten on my doorstep just waiting for me to return from New York. But again—no. Not that either. Puzzling. I’d felt something though and kind of shook my head. In the end, I decided he might have been born that weekend.

I started to ask people to let me know if they had kittens. I asked for a sign as to whether he was coming back to me and where. Yes, I kept checking. Things do change. Besides, I’m paranoid. I need to check things a lot!

I went to work on Monday and asked around for kittens. One girl, who I never talked to, looked directly at me and said, “You’ll get your cat when you get to California.” (We were moving there in January, a couple of months away.)

Bingo! Thanks Universe/Guides for the sign. So, I knew he was coming back to me and in California.

We arrived in California in January, set up the apartment and started jobs. I was looking for Leo, but not getting a big ‘push’ (that feeling of urgency you get when it’s a ‘go.’) I’d cut the cat adoption page out of the paper. It sat in my in-tray at work forever. I kept meaning to ring up, but couldn’t bring myself to do this.

As an aside, I notice when I’m not motivated to do something, there’s often a reason why, a timing issue, or something else is involved. The trick is learning to go with the flow, not letting our brain and social conditioning push us into acting too soon. Or self-goading words like “you’re just being lazy.”

If it feels right, do it.

If in doubt, don’t.

Don’t make any moves until it feels right. Over time you’ll get better at the feel of this.

I’d had the adoption number sitting in my tray for a few weeks, but hadn’t felt pushed to do anything. For a person who was aching to get her cat back, I seemed extremely slack now. But my inner self obviously knew something my outer self/brain didn’t.

One day I yelled at the Guides.

“Get me my cat back! I want him back and I want him back now!”

You really don’t have to be all angelic and self-sacrificing with the Guides. They’re very tolerant souls and are unaffected by our human range of emotions. They will do whatever you ask them, no matter what tone you use.

After that little outburst, I started to get signs he was close. Each day I’d get something. I just ‘happened’ to flick to the TV, which I don’t usually watch, and there was an advertisement with a ginger cat.

The next day I was driving along and the light turned orange. Remember I have no patience, so I was all set to run it as usual. Yes…this is true. But instead, I slammed on my brakes. As I looked across the road, a ginger cat popped out from behind a hedge, almost metaphorically raising his cap to me: noted.

As the week went on, it continued. I went into a Goodwill store to buy a second hand couch.

I asked the lady in the store about it and she was most puzzled. “Oh no dear, we don’t sell cats here.”

Now… I know my accent can be hard for Americans to grasp, but not that hard! Another sign.

My husband and I went to the beach. As we walked along the footpath, a ginger cat popped out from behind a bush and stared at us. He was close. My cat was very, very close.

I went to work and thumbed the adoption paper number again on Wednesday, but couldn’t bring myself to ring up. On Thursday, I was suddenly gripped by a strong urge to ring. I left a message saying I was looking for a short haired, male, ginger and white tabby kitten.

Within twenty minutes, I got a call back. “Would you believe it?” she said.

Yes, probably. (I’m used to ‘weird’ things happening.)

The woman said, “Just yesterday we got five ginger kittens. Three have already gone, the girls. We have two boys left, a tabby and a patch.”

My heart sped up.

“They were born at Thanksgiving.”

Oh my God, it’s him.

I was a wreck. I garbled something at my boss about taking an early lunch and belted up the freeway to see the tabby in the pet store. She had the patch at home, but I wanted a tabby. More specifically, I wanted my tabby in his new body. I raced up the freeway convinced it was him.

I was shaking like a leaf. When I got, I looked at this kitten, and looked, and looked, and looked. It wasn’t him. I was devastated. I kept thinking I’d missed something, but in the end, I gave up, defeated and cried all the way back to work.

I rang the lady at the adoption place and said, “It’s not him.”

She said, “Look, I don’t know where you live, but why don’t you bring me a photo of your cat sometime and I’ll keep an eye out for him.”

As it ‘happened,’ she was only three blocks from my work. Amazing ‘coincidence,’ considering I lived in Silicon Valley and it’s a big place. But of course, there are such things as coincidences. As she was close, I went to her house after work and showed her my big Leo’s photo.

She looked at it and said, “Hang on a minute,” and off she went upstairs.

Five minutes later, she came down the stairs, carrying a cat carrier.

All I could hear was a wee cat voice coming down the stairs, “meow, meow, meow.”

Then he was level with me. I could see his eyes and yes, the white stripe on his face, the same side!

“It’s him, isn’t it,” she said.

“Yes, it’s him,” I said, beaming like a silly thing, with tears in my eyes.

I’d heard his voice, seen his eyes, and he had the white stripe just as Mum had said.

He was the “patch” she had at home. He’s not what I’d call a patch, but a tabby in the majority of his body with white tummy and paws like a lot of stripy children. I got my tabby cat back.

Needless to say, I took him home straight away. Tears prick my eyes even when I think about this now. At first I didn’t know whether to call him Leo again. But, I lived in the States and Americans don’t think it’s odd to add generational markings to the end of names like Jr. or the Third. So I called him Leo Ray Jr.

What convinced me to call him that though, was that after only twenty-four hours, I was sure it was my big Leo Ray back in his new body. He did odd things my big Leo had done which I’ve never seen another cat do.

He scratched up all his paper over his food bowl like a dog does, covering it. This was a particular thing my big Leo did. He also had slightly odd back legs as though he was pigeon toed and my big Leo’s rear legs had been very weak at the end.

Andrew, who didn’t share my beliefs, nonetheless also knew on some level it was big Leo. My big Leo was extremely sensitive to smells, and kitty litter with perfume was out. We always bought him the plain unscented one. We peered under the bed looking at this very small and exact miniature version of our big guy, marveling he was actually there.

Andrew said, “We’d better go and get him some kitty litter and stuff. Remember we can’t get him the scented one, he hates that.”

I didn’t mention it, but just smiled because it was my big Leo. Even Andrew had picked it up.

My bubba was home.

In a lovely finale to this story, I got him on the anniversary date of my mum’s death, February 20th. Thanks Mum. Death and rebirth completes a cycle.

Leo treated Aaron like he was his dad right from the start. They just connected to each other, which was very unusual for Leo. In Maori custom, (which Aaron was,) a person’s grave is not marked for a year. They have an unveiling ceremony at the one year anniversary of someone’s death. Leo was born on the day they had the unveiling ceremony for Aaron’s mum. Both our mothers connected across time.

As he grows older, he looks much like big Leo did at the same age in his facial expressions and mannerisms. I had my big Leo when he was already a fully-grown cat living in Australia the first time. This time he’s not as big in body size and periodically we have to remind him he’s a much smaller cat this lifetime as he attempts to beat up someone twice his size!

He’s just a wee Aussie battler at heart.

Oh dear.

I’m quite sure cats view themselves differently to our picture—they’re actually just miniature lions kindly lent to us for the duration.

He’s an international jetsetter type of guy and I’ve taken him with me whenever I’ve moved. He came to Australia when I lived there a second time and as soon as he was out of quarantine, he came straight home.

He settled in immediately and seemed perfectly at home. This is quite unusual for him as he’s a naturally jittery soul and usually tends to slink around a new house for about a week before he’s comfortable. But his first day home, he went around the inside of the house and figured out where all the doors were, without us opening them or going to them, other than the front door. After his inspection, he demanded I open a door for him to go outside.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “You’ve only been home from quarantine, not even a day!”

But he really did think this should happen and kept going to each door. “Mum, open the door!”

When I finally did let him outside, he was at home and relaxed. Not at all skittish.

Donnie, who was staying at the time, thought he’d probably remembered living in Australia before in his old body as big Leo, which was why he was so at home. His theory was the smells and bird sounds were probably familiar to him. Given he has always been a slightly nervous child everywhere I’ve first taken him, I’d agree with that.

Getting my darling boy back was one of the greatest joys of my life, and continues to be so.