Follow The Yellow Brick Road

The movie The Wizard of Oz has been popping up a lot around me recently, and it started reminding me of how I would RELIGIOUSLY watch it on repeat every time I would go to my birth fathers’ parent’s house on weekends. I’d dance and sing my heart out to each and every song. I listened and paid attention to every single piece of that movie. I came to know it like the back of my hand.

I loved the colors, the cheeriness, and the messages in it. Well, the messages that a child’s mind could understand at those times anyway.

Now here I sit as a 21 year old with a whole new view of that film, and I’m beginning to realize I am sorta like Dorothy, and I am CERTAINLY not in Kansas anymore.

To give you a gist of what happens to Dorothy if you haven’t seen the film, here it is;

She starts out still being treated like a child and not paid any mind to. So she daydreams of a world “over the rainbow”. Shortly after, chaos ensues, and then she gets lost in a tornado and it sends her to a whole other world, sort of like the one she was asking for. With lots of new people and obstacles for her to face and her only focus was finding her way home. So she’s told that in order to get there she had to follow the path of the little yellow brick all the way a place called the Emerald City.

(I promise the emphasis on certain words here will make more sense, just keep reading!!)

***Note: While some may believe that not many things, if any thing is a sign from a higher source, I do. I am a firm believer that most things are NOT a coincidence, and so for this movie to be coming up in conversations around me so often in so little time span, I can’t help but to have it on my mind and for my mind to wonder why. So with that being said; ***

There have been many times in my own life when I felt I have been treated like a child as well, and I feel for how I grew up, even being as “young” as I am seen now, I don’t care for it. I think telling someone that the measurement of their biological growth is what is seen as the equivalent of their mental growth is deeply misleading and also offensive.

That is just SO ….

…limiting.

(Anywho…before I get distracted and go off on a tangent!)

I also feel I have spent most of my life in chaos, and have gotten lost in another world or two of my own. Daydreaming. Dreaming at night, including nightmares AND night terrors. Sleep paralysis. Out of body experiences. All of these things leave one in another realm. (Because you can absolutely go to other timelines and dimensions while still living, you only have to learn how.)

When I was younger, I did not have as much control over which I wanted to go to, as opposed to now, and so it would leave me confused and terrified.

This made me too, daydream of a place somewhere over the (a) rainbow. I longed to find a place that didn’t feel so dark, consuming, lonely, and scary because even my reality most times wasn’t such a happy place to be as a child.

But one day, almost two years ago, I feel that I got swept in the biggest tornado I’ve been in yet.

Little did I know it would send me to a whole new place where I’d meet so many new (side’s of) people, and so many obstacles would be placed in my path.

***insert spiritual awakening***

Since the day it started, I have had to be in quite the handful of particularly shitty situations, to be quite frank.

I was going through so many extremely hard mental, emotional, and spiritual obstacles, and all I wanted so badly was to feel stillness. To feel at home.

That’s when I realized I was to set out on my own journey to find my way back home.

And just like Dorothy, as she embarked on her adventure, she (I) would come to meet many friends and enemies alike.

Some of the friends Dorothy met had a few of their own fears, but also their own longing for something as well. One a brain, the other a heart, and the last wanting more courage.

Now again, I’m not much for coincidence but I believe I’ve been finding/healing more parts of those exact things in myself, on my own journey, just as she did in hers in her own way.

My brain; becoming more aware of my self, opening my third-eye, strengthening my intuition, etc.

My heart; learning true forgiveness and it allowing me to open my heart (chakra) so wide and to still always be protected no matter how open it remains, loving myself, and just being as kind and compassionate as I can be.

My courage; learning to stand strong in who I am, never allowing anyone to stick me in a box, and to always speak my mind.

Finding any of it wasn’t so simple. I had to meet my own kind of witches and flying monkeys that kept taking me from making it to my destination. And it DEFINITELY wasn’t easy for me to recognize who was and wasn’t an enemy (for humans are very deceitful in a very sly way), but I learned to use my discernment better with time. I had to defeat the things I was scared of and learn how to use my brain, my heart, and my courage to fight my way through to make it home. Ultimately I overcame my fears because my will was stronger than my fear.

And finally I made it to the Emerald City.

(Please allow me to note that my birthstone IS the emerald. Pretty neat stuff, and again “coincidence”???)

So there Dorothy (I) was. Finally at the last step of the journey. Oh god how great it is to be so close to touching and tasting home.

Then with a few shoe taps later…1…2…3…

Dorothy wakes up and she’s home. The tornado has passed, and the calmness has taken over the land. And as she wakes she is in excited disbelief to see her little house, room and the people who fill it, with her. She recognizes pieces of her friends from Oz in her loved ones after waking, is filled with joy, and expresses her love for them even more.

So my point of all of that is; this film being brought up so much around me could be debated that it’s because as I connect back with my child self, the universe is saying “Yes!! Yes!!! Here look at this! Look at this small piece of magic we gave you as a child, now find it again and find even more magic in it!”. I really do believe the things I hear and see around me are messages most of the time, and as I keep diving deeper into myself, I get confirmations that I am truly healing and falling deeper into a place of alignment. And I also realize why I found so much comfort in such things at such young tender ages.

Everything truly comes back full circle.

So as for me? I feel that I have now been able to see and do the same. I returned from my journey (Although is a spiritual journey one that ever really ends? Absolutely not.) I can see the lessons of my fears and others fears, and theirs strengths and my strengths alike in all the faces of those around me. And I love them and myself so much more for it.

As for my home, it’s not a place with four walls and a roof.

It’s my own two arms and my gentle, understanding, and passionate mind and heart.

Oh!

Just one more thing before I go! That little yellow brick road that got mentioned? My yellow brick road is the path to enlightenment.

The place I can journey to time and time again to find more of myself, and still return back from, with more than I left with because ohhh…there really is no place like home!

All my love, -A.