Earlier this week, while meditating, I found myself in a car.
I wasn’t driving.
I was in the backseat.
There was a driver–no passenger, no one else with me–and the car itself felt floaty, almost buoyant. Like a Cadillac or a Lincoln. Big. Spacious. Comfortable. I felt completely safe.
I had no idea where we were going, but that didn’t bother me. The windows were enormous, and although there were no visible objects outside of them–no road, no landscape–I knew I was seeing something beautiful.
That’s the strange part.
There was nothing to look at, but I felt surrounded by beauty anyway.
The driver was a stranger. I couldn’t see their face. I couldn’t name them or identify them, and yet I trusted them without question. The feeling was nostalgic, almost like the kindness we associate with the American dream of the 1950s. The kind of calm, dependable goodness that sounds like Mr. Rogers’ voice.
The car felt old.
The driver felt masculine.
Maybe a suit jacket. Maybe a fedora. Put-together. Reliable.
At one point, I reached forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder with my right hand.
Instantly, we transformed.
We became a hawk with immense wings, bright yellow-gold feathers, powerful beyond words. It was magical. Expansive. Effortless. We weren’t driving anymore. We were flying.
At some point, we were back in the car again–moving along with the same steady calm. I reached forward once more, but this time, I used my left hand.
The driver turned toward me, and instead of a face, there was a giant glowing indigo eye. It felt ancient and feminine and vast. A witch’s eye. A third eye. Something that didn’t belong to a body at all. I fell into it and allowed it to consume me without fear.
I was still the bird.
And I was also the seeing.
Both were true at the same time.
There was no sense of contradiction. No sense of separation. Just the knowing that flight and perception were part of the same thing–two expressions of the same presence.
I don’t remember the other pieces of the meditation, and I’ve stopped caring about that. The pieces that matter–the ones with weight, with intention, are the ones that stay. And I trust that if I need them, I’ll remember.
Post Session
What stood out to me most, after awaking from the meditation, was how differently the experience shifted depending on how I reached forward.
When I touched the driver with my right hand, everything moved. The car dissolved. There was power and momentum and flight. It felt like trust expressed as action. Not thought, not analysis, just motion.
When I reached again with my left hand, the experience slowed. Instead of movement, there was perception. Instead of transformation, there was seeing. I wasn’t carried forward so much as drawn inward.
Neither felt better or more “true” than the other. They felt like different modes of the same presence.
But what I did notice was how easy both transformations felt for me.
Flight came naturally. Surrendering into motion felt familiar, almost practiced. Being the eye felt just as natural. Letting go of fear and falling into that way of seeing felt less like learning something new and more like remembering something old.
Lastly, I had the sense that I could have asked my guide directly some questions. It hadn’t occurred to me in the moment, so I want try that the next time.
Seeing the Guide
Today, which was a few days later, I returned to the same meditation-scape.
The same car.
The same driver.
The same sense of safety.
This time, I asked directly:
Can I see you?
The face that turned toward me was grotesque. Horrific. Almost comical–like exaggerated masks of fear, distortion, satire. It startled me at first, but the overall feeling of the car didn’t change.
I wasn’t afraid so much as… annoyed.
It felt flippant. Like the driver was intentionally not showing me their real face. And then, layered underneath the grotesque images, I saw something else.
Myself.
The message was clear: I am you. But you cannot see me.
I asked why, and the answer came immediately.
Because I never feel like I’m enough.
Because I don’t see myself as a healer when I remember the pain I’ve caused. The judgment I’ve held. The ways I’ve failed to live up to my own ideals. I can sense the power inside of me–the love, the capacity to heal and be a safe space–but I don’t trust myself to consciously harness it.
And whenever I have big “ah-ha” moments in meditation, my body begins to physically move.
Learning How Energy Moves
My arms began to move on their own.
I extended my right hand, fingers wide. I felt a pulsing in my fingertips–strong, alive. At first, I thought I was sending something out, but I was told to feel again.
This time, I understood. I was receiving.
When I closed my right palm, it felt heavy. Like holding a weighted ball.
Then I extended my left hand. The same pulsing appeared, but this time, the knowing was different. This energy was radiating outward.
When I closed my left palm, it felt light. I was releasing.
Receive on the right.
Send on the left.
Masculine and feminine.
Inhale and exhale.
Taking in and offering back.
I was shown that this is how I call on my higher self, my guides, the healing qualities I long to trust. The energy doesn’t originate solely inside me, and it can’t be sent outward immediately either. It has to pass through my heart first. So I practiced.
Right hand extended–absorbing energy.
Drawing it inward.
Feeling its weight.
Then bringing it to my heart space.
Then the left hand opening—releasing energy outward.
Letting it go.
Feeling the lightness.
Over and over.
I was too slow to synchronize it perfectly with my breath, but I understood the direction:
Inhale. Receive.
Heart.
Exhale. Release.
There is a moment between inhale and exhale–a micro pause–where the energy meets my heart. Right now, that place feels hard. Tired. Exhausted. Scared. Like I might not be able to do it. And yet, I will keep practicing.
A Guide I Met Before
I have one previous guide whom I’ve met through meditation. At least, that I know of…
That guide lived in a forest.
When I first encountered them, I could only see their feet and legs. They wore what looked like a skirt made of grass or leaves, something woven directly from the forest itself. For a long time, that was all I ever saw. We would meet at the base of a large tree, and our interactions were simple but meaningful.
Whenever I needed to learn something, I would reach out my hand.
When we touched, when our hands met, I would drop into a lesson. Information would arrive fully formed, not as words but as knowing. That became our way of communicating.
For a long time, I never saw their face.
And then one day, after many interactions, I finally did.
It was me.
What was even stranger, and somehow completely natural, was that after that moment, the perspective began to shift. Sometimes I was myself, meditating, watching my guide. Other times, I was the guide, watching my human self meditate. I could move back and forth between those viewpoints, inhabiting both without confusion.
We would run and play through the forest together. Explore. Wander.
At one point, we came across a large iron gate. Tall bars you could see through, with more forest stretching endlessly beyond it. We opened that gate together and ran through it.
Later, we came to something that didn’t belong there at all: a pocket door.
It was strange to find a door like that in the middle of a forest. It felt like it should have been in a house. I tried to open it with my right hand, and when I did, it opened, but there was nothing behind it. Just emptiness.
Then my guide told me to use my left hand.
I tried, but I couldn’t open it.
I tried again and again, and each time, the door stayed closed.
Eventually, that forest stopped appearing in my meditations altogether.
At the time, I didn’t know why.
A Thought I’ve Been Sitting With
Maybe I did open that door, just not in the way I expected.
I’m no longer meditating in that forest. I’m somewhere else now. In the car. With a different guide. In a completely different landscape. And I haven’t been back to the forest since.
The thought that this might be connected came back to me during an energy tracking and reading class from last week. One woman shared that she kept dreaming about the same house, over and over again, always stuck in it, always unable to open a certain door. Then one night, she dreamed she was in an airplane.
She said she was thinking about going back to the house dream to try opening the door again, but everyone else in the room could see what she couldn’t yet.
She had already opened it.
The airplane wasn’t a separate dream. It was where the door had led.
I don’t know this for certain, but it feels possible that my forest–and that pocket door–were a threshold. And that this new meditation landscape, this car and this guide, is what came next. It’s the continuation of my spiritual journey.
The Guides I Walk With
I know that this post is very sporadic, but the reality is, I can’t map this out or make it linear. I can’t see the patterns in pieces until I see the pattern.
So, too bad, here we keep going…
I know these guides are me.
One is a luminous, human-sized fairy. She’s barefoot, wild, mischievous. A forest dweller. Feral. Curious. Uncontained.
The other is the driver–somewhat of a businessman. Reliable. Good-humored. Wise. Steady. A keeper of safety.
They carry different energies, but they hold the same truth.
Both are safe spaces.
Both are loving.
Both are wise.
And both are reflections of qualities I am learning to forgive myself enough to embody.
