Take a moment and think about an image, a concept that, in one form or another, has been a constant in your life.

Mine is wings. Winged things have always, ever since I can remember being aware of such things, been my ‘image’.

The symbolism of wings is rather straightforward – it’s basic meaning is freedom. It certainly has religious meanings and I often see classical angel wings, not attached to any type of anthropomorphic figure, flit across my inner eye.

I’ve been fascinated with being able to fly since I was a child. I used to sit in the window of our attic, with my feet dangling, thinking “If I jump will I fall or fly?” Whenever I am up high I have a very strong urge to jump, because somehow, somewhere in my mind I think I will fly. And that I have discovered is a very common thought pattern. My father confessed to me that he shared that compulsion. A friend once confessed the same – he had been to Niagara Falls on vacation, and when he looked out over the falls that compulsion to jump, with the underlying thought that he would fly, not fall, overcame him.

Images of butterflies were a large part of my consciousness when I was in my 20’s. I had clothes with butterfly patterns, I had butterfly jewelry, think crazy cat lady with cat images on every thing she owns and wears, then substitute butterflies for cats – and that was me.

Butterflies symbolize change, transformation, transition and, freedom.

And then there are birds. They have taken up a lot of space in my subconscious and conscious mind. They took over from the butterflies somewhere along the line.

I watch birds fly and I feel like I am there with them; that I am them. I have a particular affinity with crows. Now the symbolism of crows is interesting and shares some of the meaning of butterflies.

While I was doing the research for this post I came across a site about spirit animals, the site has a quiz to help you find your spirit animal. I took the quiz and oddly enough my spirit animal was an owl, which also shares some of symbolic attributes of butterflies and crows – transition, change, wisdom, intuitiveness.

The pattern of my “images’ seems very consistent – in format and meaning. If I were a deep thinker I could/would delve more into the meaning of all this and how it relates to my actual life.

But I am not a deep thinker.  I am a deep feeler tho. I feel more than I think. I trust my feelings more than my intellect. I live in and of my feelings more than my intellect.

That said, I snort a bit at people who spout ooga-booga philosophies, like spirit animals, which is a concept that goes far back in the history of humans. Yet here I am, thinking “Yes, yes – that makes sense.”  Emotional sense, yes; intellectual sense, no.

And that is a dichotomy I have struggled with all my life.  What I feel to be true, what I believe in my gut, as opposed to what my intellect says is, shall we say, fanciful.

So what is it that you feel more strongly than you think?