Earthworm: Time to Get Dirty
Have you ever even considered that a creature like an earthworm could bring to you medicine of the earth in its message? On the path of the shaman, everything is a true message when you are listening. For today's oracle I went into meditation to receive what the oracle messenger for us all today. I saw earthworms in a garden and wrote down a few thoughts. Then I went outside with my son and my dog, and an earthworm literally "jumped". I have never seen an earthworm do that. It was squirming around at first going in a certain direction and then the front of its body literally jumped and shifted its direction slightly.
The worm reminded me of when I was a teenager and I went fishing for the first time ever with my then boyfriend. We had a bucket of worms, which I was not a big fan of. They were way too mobile for my liking at the time and they were "gross", or so I thought. I could not get myself to hook one on to the hook, so my boyfriend did it for me.
I put the line in the water and almost immediately caught a fish. It was a sunfish and it was so colorful and beautiful. I saw it struggle with the hook in its mouth trying to get free, and I immediately burst into tears. I wasn't vegan at the time and was eating fish just like everyone else in my family, so I was rather shocked by my reaction. But I was crying, from deep within my heart, I felt so sorry for what I had done and for hurting this creature for no reason. My boyfriend quickly realized my distress and unhooked the fish and threw it back in and it swam away. That was my last encounter with fishing. But, I still wasn't able to see the value in the earthworm. I had judgments about it. It was ugly, squirmy, slimy, and it was not pretty to me. So on that basis of human ignorance and arrogance, I didn't feel any sorrow for the worm as IT struggled on the hook.
So almost 30 years later, earthworm comes to me as today's oracle and jumps out to greet me. This whole memory popped up and I contemplated how profound and sacred all of life is. Every tree, every blade of grass, every earthworm, every bug.... We will one day in the not too distant future be food for those earthworms we may have deemed lowly and ugly.... we will be consumed by them as our earthly bodies disintegrate into the dirt. As we become them, and they become us. A powerful reminder of our true interconnectedness on this planet.
The earthworm is a hermaphrodite, possessing both male and female organs, providing us with a message of fertility. This can mean either literal fertility or it can mean fertility of the "gardens" in your life - your work, your writing, your art, your creativity, your relationships. Earthworm asks us to nurture and aerate the gardens in our lives, as earthworm aerates the soil that it moves through, creating better soil in which plants can grow. This teaches us that when we take the time to nurture and infused our own gardens with oxygen, love and light, we will reap many rich plants.
The earthworm both takes nourishment from the earth, and gives back to it, signalling us to do the same. Take a look at your daily life, are you interacting with Mother Earth and giving her back some of the love you are receiving from her daily that is keeping you alive? Every morsel of food you consume comes to you from her bounty, are you respecting all of her creation and nourishing her when and how you can? Symbiosis is a powerful message of the earthworm, because we cannot continue to take and take, without giving anything in return. That is true in our friendships, our intimate relationships, our work, our health, and our coexistence on this magnificent planet.
Another powerful theme for earthworm is this: it is time for you to get dirty. If you have been avoiding doing the real work, the tough stuff that no one wants to do, it is time to roll up your sleeves and get to it. You will know exactly what it is that you are still avoiding. Get into the dirt and don't be afraid of your emotions. If you don't deal with it now, your garden will flood and you will eventually be overwhelmed by the emotional waters you have been trying to keep down. <3 Liana