What's your price for flight?

I've been singing it all morning - Night Ranger's Sister Christian. No dear reader, this isn't a throwback to my Southern Baptist days (you can read a little about that if you haven't already here - As for Me and My House). Interestingly enough, my mother wanted to nickname me Christy, like the subject matter of Kelly Keagy, the song's writer. I'm happy to report that my grandfather rebuffed that and nicknamed me all sorts of things other than that, all of which were lovely and bring me joy to remember.

But to the question at hand - What IS your price for flight? As I was singing the lyrics this morning, I asked myself that question. What was my price for flight? Turns out - it was a lot. I took a swan dive like an osprey into this realm only to be ostracized, mocked, and punished severely simply for being me with extraordinary abilities and talents - it's probably why I easily became a sacred rebel (I wrote about that too here - When Love Comes to Town).

So I will rebel even further to talk about what it's like to be something rare - a clairproprioceptor. Proprioception is the sense of body position and movement - if you think about that in the "clair" world - your vessel is a living antenna, a transducer, a conductor, and a transmitter all at once. It also means I have all the other "clairs" albeit they function under the umbrella of clairproprioception - the sense of where I am in both the seen and unseen realms, simultaneously. If this is confusing for you, don't worry - it does me too. The raw truth of it all is that everyone has some extraordinary ability - everyone. To freely express this gift or gifts is another matter entirely.

This brings us back to the question posed earlier - the banner for this piece I chose from my favorite film, Eyes of Laura Mars written by the ineffable John Carpenter and the torch song, Prisoner performed by Barbara Streisand. Laura, played by Faye Dunaway, a high fashion photographer who has an extraordinary gift - she can see through the eyes of others - one individual in particular which I won't name because if you haven't seen the film, there are no spoilers here. If you're a Game of Thrones fan, you'll recognize this as "warging." Wargs are people with the ability to enter the minds of animals and perceive the world through their senses and even control their actions - Laura can't control actions, but she does perceive the world through the eyes of others - she brings this to life in her subject matter photography.

I can do this most exclusively in the dream state - I've never confessed that before - but since we're here - I might as well. I can be both the observer and the observed simultaneously in the dream state. On one particular occasion, whether it was a past life or ancestral rememberance, I was brought to a scene of the burning times. Dear reader, these women were little more than brutalized sexual objects by the Puritans. You're imagination isn't as dark, I guarantee, as to what these men did to these women (of ALL ages) - and we are back here again in 2025 standing at another precipice of control and subjugation. A return to innocence is required—immense inner child healing beckons.

Unfortunately, there is no amount of spiritual bypassing that will allow you to escape the path that is through this wilderness - you must know your price for flight, for if you don't, someone/something else will. I am willing to shed it all, all the pain, all the trauma, all the behaviors that no longer serve me - releasing them in gratitude - they helped me survive. It's time to thrive now, and they simply can't be part of the travel package anymore. The thing about shedding is this—it’s not just about letting go, it’s about making room - room for joy, for connection, for the truth of who you are. The first person you need to be generous, compassionate, and loving with in this journey, dear reader, is yourself. No that is not selfish or narcissistic. I know narcissists - they are incapable of these things towards the self - that's why they look to you and me, the empath, for feeding, for fuel.

In the Eyes of Laura Mars, Laura's ex-husband Michael (played by Raúl Juliá), is a incredibly weak man, preying on Laura's success, and completely in love with how he can woo women into caring for him - he even has the nerve to ask Laura for money. Naturally, Laura suspects it is Michael that is trying to ruin her with her abilities to see crimes being committed - it isn't him - I'll at least spoil that for you.

Laura, with her abilities, not only sacrifices a bit of her sanity throughout the film, but also the love interest she finds. The torch song I mentioned earlier, Prisoner, has the perfect lyric - I'm like a prisoner, captured in your eyes. Through this path of extraordinary gifts and life in this realm, it seems, part of the sacrifice required is a bit of your sanity - at least from a societal induced perspective. Individuals with abilities throughout the centuries were either highly revered or highly feared (and massacred usually if this is the case). So the price for flight can sometimes ultimately mean your life - I am not going to sugar-coat that.

It isn't all gloom and doom though - there's resolve and resilence as well as generosity and the comfort that in today's society, you can find community and others like you. That said, you have to have discernment - there are plentious charlatans out there - again those selling you spiritual bypassing "tools" and quick fixes. There is no shortcut to shadow work - there is not shortcut to traveling through the deep places where your trauma hides. "To thine own self be true," spoken by Polonius in Hamlet fits well in this context and in this piece. That's the true price for flight - in order to attain authenticity and sovereignty, you must be willing to pay the price for the wings that will carry you through what storms may come. No one can teach or tell you who you are - you have to discover that for yourself.

It's interesting a friend of mine shared with me the 7 mental illnesses that can be caused by narcisstic abuse - as we've discussed concerning the circle of 8 in other pieces prior to this one, we see the initiate surrounded by 8 swords. The initiate can only wield ONE should she unbind and unblind herself. The other 7, mental traps/prisons/whispers induced by trauma are to be shed. A veritable funhouse full of mirrors of bullshit. To walk (née fly) free, one must confront the self in the circle. Why blind-folded? Why hands bound? It isn't with your normal eyes that you'll see the truth reflected back at you in those funhouse mirrors and your hands are useless against yourself and what you need to realize. In fact, the hands bound prevent self-harm. This initiation space isn't for the faint of heart, and if in some small way, you too have found yourself there, I hope that somehow these pieces create a space for laughter, reflection, and lighten the load you carry. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is to listen to your own still inner voice and follow that even if it is a baby step despite what the world may be screaming at you.

I leave you with William Shakepeare (Measure for Measure Act 1, Scene 4) -

"Our doubts are traitors
And make us lose the good we oft might win"