Cultivate Your Eagle Vision
How to Shift Your Gaze to the Far Horizon
Eagle is an ally that we can call upon when we’re hoping to expand our perspective, vision into the future, or deepen our objectivity and discernment.
Over the past month, I’ve been working intentionally on cultivating my eagle-eye vision. I find future visioning work with eagle as my guide to be especially potent in the early morning, just as the sun begins to rise.
As much as I’d like to stay in bed for an extra few rounds with the snooze bar, eagle prods me to work with the expansive energy of first light. And some days, I actually listen!
To support this “eagle-eye” practice, I greet the new day, get out my journal and start to write. As I do, I embody an eagle’s perspective, looking at my life from a distance. From here, I inquire into what my heart most desires for the future.
Some journaling prompts I’ve found to be especially helpful in this work include:
What would I like to have more of in my life?
What are my intentions around healing?
In which areas do I feel most inspired or creative?
If time and money were no object, what would I most like to be doing one year from now?
What projects, goals, or intentions do I most want to spend my time on over the season ahead?
I’d like to give myself…
I’m ready to share…
Eagle helps us see the places where our power lives, and what next steps we can take to claim it.
As I was preparing to facilitate my New Moon ritual this past month, one thing eagle reminded me of is the principle of aligned action.
Reasearch shows that we experience more happiness and satisfaction in life when we fix our eye on a distant point on the horizon: a big goal, dream, or plan for the future. But we only arrive there by pointing ourselves consistently toward that goal, methodically flapping our wings in the right direction.
One action at a time. Until that momentum multiplies, eventually carry us into brand new territory.
I’m also reminded of research in the field of positive psychology that backs up what eagle’s been telling us for time immemorial. We’ve got a fancy name for it these days: The Science of Priming. Basically, it’s the idea that what we feed our mind consistently becomes reality.
When we envision a desired future state, we’re priming our brain to actually make it happen. We create a connection between our conscious and subconscious mind, which allows us to more readily see possibilities, connections, and actions that align with the vision we hold. If we do this consistently, we begin to unconsciously scan our environment for opportunities that match the picture we’re painting in our dreams.
Professional athletes do this all the time! It’s why they practice and do drills to reinforce the basics. In conditioning their body to make those moves, the actions become reflexive when the moment actually arrives on the court. In basketball, players practice their free throws over and over again. And the REALLY good ones also imagine doing it in vivid detail because they know that performance is enhanced when practice both physical and mental conditioning.
But you don’t need to be a pro athlete to benefit from mental training. Here’s a few strategies you can try to help lock in any dream or goal:
Daydream and/or journal. Paint a vivid picture in words and mental images of your desired future state
Create an altar or visual representation in your home that you’ll see and interact with regularly
Make a vision board or put some pictures on your fridge. If you prefer digital, Pinterest is great for this.
Incorporate the concept into your passwords. You can reinforce your dream whenever you log onto your computer, with passwords like “EuropeTour2023” or “WriteABook!”)
When you first begin working toward a new goal or intention, the details may seem fuzzy around the edges. That's not a planning failure on your part - it's as it should be! It just means that you’re imagining outcomes that you’ve never before experienced, and your brain doesn’t have all the puzzle pieces yet.
Eagle is also here to remind us that we can’t see all the landscape features of the place we’re headed toward when we first take flight.
You may not know all the details, or how long it will take to arrive. Eagle simply asks that you believe wholeheartedly in the vision and listen carefully to your inner navigation system.
