Untarnished Memory: What do you see?

A reflection on imagination, intuition and remembering your inner childlikeness.

What does it mean to see images in clouds? Or animals carved into stone, a queen standing in the arch of a tree, an old man’s profile in the swirling wood grain of a door?

Is it the mark of a mystic - proof that some of us still walk with the veil thin and fluttering around us? Or is it the light of our inner child, untarnished, peeking through, reminding us of how to imagine, how to dream?

Maybe it’s both.

I often look up and see birds soaring in the sky - not just real birds, but clouds shaped like eagles, swallows, winged messengers riding invisible currents. Perfectly formed for a fleeting moment. And when I point them out, or pause to snap a photo - Look, do you see the eagle? Do you see the swallow, the giant above us? -
I’m met with puzzled glances. I discover that it’s just me who sees the wonder.

I see queens and high priestesses crowned by twisting branches. Faces hidden in the folds of curtains or Knights staring back from stone walls. There’s a rock on my altar that looks exactly like a sleeping frog - so perfect in its stillness that it feels like a small spell all its own.

Why is that?

Maybe it’s because I’ve never stopped listening. Because I walk with the directional spirits - North, South, East, and West - and the elementals - all as old friends. So connected that I feel the hum of the earth beneath my feet.

Maybe it’s because I've spent years tending that part of myself - the wild, untamed, untarnished part. The child who saw the world not as it appeared, but as it whispered to be.

The truth is, there’s a kind of second sight that belongs to those who remember how to see. Not only with their eyes, but with something deeper. A sense beneath the senses, attuned to the quiet language of the earth, the hidden language of dreams. Of Creation. Of God.

I believe we all came into this world with that knowing. That ability to see faces in the grain, wings in the clouds, patterns in the stars. It doesn’t fade. It waits.

I walk often with my spirit guides - sometimes in waking moments, sometimes through dreamscapes where the air is thick with symbols. Forests rise around me, winds carry familiar voices I can almost name. They speak in signs, in riddles, in moments so clear they ring like bells. And when I return - whether from sleep or silence - I remember: The messages were never far. They’ve always been here, scattered across the landscape, hidden in plain sight. Waiting for me to remember how to see.

The frog rock on my altar.
The priestess in the tree.
The eagle in the sky.

It’s all the same conversation. A call to return to that untarnished being within - the one who never stopped believing in magic. Maybe that’s the real work of the mystic. To see what others have forgotten. To remind them the world is still speaking.

What have you seen lately - something no one else noticed? A shape, a symbol, a sign just for you? Maybe it’s time to start looking again. Or rather, remembering how.

Feel free to share (in the comments) the dragons you’ve spotted soaring in the clouds, the beetles hiding in shadows on your walls, the hearts shaped from stone, or the faces of ancestors surfacing in wood grain. Let’s remind one another how to see. Let’s keep the magic alive together.

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