Flag Oracle #18: Remembering what you already know
and trusting what lies ahead
Hello friends,
Today we go back to the origin of the Flag Oracle. When I set out on the first hike with a flag in September 2020, I had no idea what I was doing other than that I wanted to see my flags hanging from trees in the forest. I didn’t know how to hang them, compose photographs, or understand the effects of light on colorful objects in a natural setting. I didn’t know how writing photo essays after the hikes would help metabolize the experience of the hikes and return me to the practice of writing. I didn’t know the photographs and flags would appear in a large-scale art installation or that I would make an Oracle deck.
What I did know is that by showing up to do the work and following my instincts, I would get somewhere. Today’s cards convey that experience and will be especially helpful if you’re stuck or beginning something new.
This is the site where the Flag Oracle began. I didn’t have much of a plan or know exactly what I was doing, so I listened to the forest and the Inner Fire flag to make new choices and learn my own methods.
This card is an invitation to remember how to do the thing that only you know how to do. Once you begin, the doing is automatic, inspired, and takes you outside of time. The time you spent learning other people’s methods and doing other people’s projects is instantly erased. Here, you remember who are; your only purpose is to be a human in this moment, doing this thing.
Your creation is unique, something only you could have made, not quite what you envisioned, but better. It’s the thing that no one could have dreamed up because it could only have happened in the moment when you lost your ideas and became the vessel for the Higher Self’s ideas. The doing is part of you, from you, a partnership with Source that you can claim as your own because you finally let yourself surrender.
The remembering remakes you. In one moment after the next, you become wholly new, holy you.
Here on the hillside, at the golden hour of a clear day, the trail takes us around a bend where we can expect to see more blue ocean and blue skies ahead. The wind is calm, the steps are clear, and more marvelous views await as we come out of the glade and into the light.
In the night position following the Remembrance card, Blue Skies Ahead reminds you to trust that you’re on the right path as you move through the unknown, one step at a time. In moments of doubt, know that the Universe is looking out for you, and keep an open mind so that you can remain flexible if life’s plans differ from your own.
You may release your fears and proceed with confidence. Because every step is marvelous—and the hillside is steep—proceed with mindfulness. It’s not that you’re likely to fall, it’s that you don’t want to miss a thing. Here in this land of summer fog and plentiful winter rain, blue skies aren’t permanent, so don’t take them for granted.
Inspiration from a geranium
Observing the vigorous growth of plants in the springtime sometimes leaves me puzzled by how hard it can be for humans to follow the natural course of their soul desires. But we are much more complex beings who have been conditioned to believe all sorts of wacky things. For me, life’s constant surrender to what I think I knew turns into a remembrance of what I didn’t know I already knew.
Perhaps my quest for light is like this geranium poking through a knothole in a fence—because if it were next to all the other geraniums on the other side, it wouldn’t be so special, would it?
May you have an inspiring week!
Love, Lee Ann
