The Journey of a Sacred Tattoo

In this solo episode, I take you deep into the transformative journey of my sacred chest tattoo. What started as a simple request for power animals on my arm evolved into a spirit-guided, deeply spiritual experience that taught me powerful lessons about patience, surrender, and divine timing.

I'll share the highs, the lows, and everything in between—from being blindfolded and transported by medicine music into trance-like states, to visiting (and feeding!) the giraffes that by a wild act of synchronicity happened to live minutes from our pop-up AirBnb tattoo parlour. I describe the challenges and lessons I learned through the process. 

I'll also share about the tattoo's meaning and what it means to me to do my best to embody the spiritual significance of this powerful piece of art.

Join me as I reflect on the spiritual lessons of patience, acceptance, protection, and surrender, and explore how embracing these insights has guided me toward deeper self-awareness and growth.

Check out my upcoming Awakened Hearts retreat here- https://www.wil-fullyliving.com/events

Transcript

Hello beloveds, and welcome back to another episode of queerly beloved today, I'm doing a solo podcast, and I'm sharing about the journey of My sacred tattoo. It's been years in the making, and it just got complete last month, and I'm so excited to share with you more about this process, give you the full story of that tattoo and its symbolism, and also share with you all the lessons that I gathered in the process of its creations, lessons about trusting the guidance of the Divine, lessons about surrendering and lessons about the perfect orchestration of divine timing. So I'll be sharing both the symbolism behind the sacred artwork and the lessons it revealed to me. So if you're on my socials, you've probably seen glimpses of the artwork. It's also in the artwork for this particular episode, so you can see that in the show notes. But to give you a sense of it, it's this majestic giraffe face, which is at the center of my chest. It's fully colored, very, very beautiful, bright colors. Above the giraffe's face is a tree of life, almost crowning the giraffe. And then it's flanked by two powerful lionesses. And above the lionesses is this rose quartz that that's shooting up above them, and this tattoo, much like life itself, it was never about my egoic personal preferences of what I thought I wanted and when. So this process was different than just going to a tattoo studio, flipping through a book and pointing to a tattoo image and then asking some stranger to put it on your body. This was much more involved. And for me, so much of what I received from this process was learning how to listen to spirit and learning to let go in order to allow what wants to come through to take form in its own way and in its own timeline. So let's get into it, shall we? So the process really began when I decided that I wanted a tattoo of one or more of my spirit animals. And I feel like my relationship with spirit animals deserves an entire episode dedicated to it. But for now, I'll just share a little bit about that. So for context, in power animals, the book power animals by rock star shaman, otherwise known as Allison Charles, who is a podcast interviewee subject in an earlier pod. So check that one out, and she'll share more about power animals, and I share more about my relationship with powder animals as that one as well. But anyways, she defines power animals as spiritual allies that embodies specific, energetic, healing properties, traits and empowering teachings. These animals serve as guides, offering strength and wisdom to navigate life's journey. Charles emphasizes that every animal, whether an insect, mammal, amphibian, bird, whatever it, possesses unique messages and teachings beneficial to our personal growth. And so for years, I've had spirit animals appear in my mind's eye during meditation and, more specifically, during plant medicine ceremonies. And they have come as messengers, as guides, of reflections, of the energies that I am embodying or needing to embody and honestly, before I connected with any other spirit guides, it was the animals who arrived at first. I like to think about in the movie in Kanto, if you've seen it, there's the character Antonio Madrigal. He's the youngest member of the magical family, and on his fifth birthday, he receives the magical gift of communication with animals, which allows him to speak with them. So I kind of feel like I am the Antonio of the magical family with my spirit animals, not actual living animals. They've just been my teachers for so long now I work with my core totem animal, kind of spirit team, and sense their presence helping me navigate through life's challenges and celebrate its wins. I also work with messenger power animals by paying attention to what animals appear in my mind's eye, what what my subconscious wants me to hear through the symbols and energies of animals that appear. Sometimes they actually appear in real life, and I pay attention to that or via oracle cards. So spirit animal cards are my go to oracle cards. I love to do them for myself and for my clients. I always have them at my retreats as well. So people are often pulling animal cards for the day. So it really felt natural to honor them, these spirit animals, these power animals in a permanent way through this sacred ink work. So I reached out to my tattoo artist ash, who is also a friend and a spiritual teacher of mine. I'll also be interviewing him in a future episode. But. His work is more again than just a quick tattoo process. It's a long, transformational ritual, and he works deeply aligned with spirit, and he really prays and sits with the possibilities and allows the artwork to come through him, to to receive guidance of what art is meant, to go on what body at what time, through spirit. And so my initial plan in my egoic mind was to simply have a tattoo on my left arm. And honestly, I put forth raccoon because I was the first spirit animal that had come to me, and is a huge, huge, valuable totem animal for me and but I also shared with me other spirit animals that are part of my totem, part of my team that had been coming through Recently, and those involved dolphins and spider and lizard and line lions and lionesses and giraffes. And like I said, I'm the Antonio magical so lots of animals, but they all had significance to me, right? Each one of them held significance to me and came through in significant moments. But giraffe had been coming through quite a bit, and lion as well. And so I then got to hear from him, you know, what was coming through when he sat with this request and when he sat in the possibilities of what might appear. And so what I found out was that it wasn't going to be an arm piece. It was going to be a chest piece. Be a chest piece. And I found out that it was going to be a lion and giraffes and maybe dolphins. And at first I resisted. So my mind had already decided that my preference was for my left arm. I already have a major tattoo on my right arm, Ardha na rishvara, a beautiful deity that represents the divine masculine meeting the divine feminine. And so I wanted my left arm so I could be, you know, symmetrical. But this was what came through to him, was that it was meant to be on my chest, and it was meant to be the giraffe the lions and maybe the dolphins. And so this was unexpected, and I had a choice in that moment to cling to my attachment, or to trust the process and to trust my friend and teacher, an artist, trust spirit and to surrender to what was coming through. And so I surrendered, and I nervously arrived at his studio in the East Village for my first session. I hadn't seen the artwork yet. I just knew it was a chess piece. I thought that it was going to be a lion in the middle or something. And then he had actually received the download for the art itself, uh, earlier that morning, so it didn't come until that day. And so he had drawn it out for me that morning, and the moment he revealed it, you know, this beautiful giraffe, the lionesses, and I just, I burst into tears. I can still like, remember how that moment felt, to see that, and it felt so powerful, and it felt, I felt, in some ways, intimidated by the art. It was like, Can I actually hold that powerful piece on my body, on my chest, but it was there for me to receive it come through very clearly, and my reaction to it, this open hearted, emotional response, that feeling very moved and and excited and energized by it. I knew this was my piece, and so we went for it, right? And the first session, it really was the beginning of the ritual. And we had some beautiful medicine music playing, and I was able to invite a small amount of of medicine, sacred medicine, that was in my system. And I was blindfolded for the entire time, so I was in complete darkness for those hours, and I got to receive the needle on my skin and the pain that comes with it. And that's when I really began to receive these lessons and surrender. You know, I didn't have any site, and I didn't have control, and so I was made to release resistance. I was made to trust, to allow to release my grip on how I wanted things to be my preference. My preference was to be comfortable and not in pain and my comfort. My preference was to be able to see everything and control everything instead of just trusting and surrendering. And by doing that, it really allowed me to fully let go and release into this trance like state. And now this was the first session, and I guess my thought, my preference, my egoic mind, thought that we'd get through this tattoo and have it completed in like, a year. But this tattoo was never meant to be fast. And as I think about how it was a lot for me to hold when I saw the piece for that first time, I realized that I wasn't fully ready to hold all the energy of this completed piece just yet, and so it was a longer process than what I anticipated. So the outline of the tattoo alone sat on my skin for probably two years waiting for completion. And sometimes during those years, I was frustrated. We would try to schedule things, and then conflicts would come up, and there'd be missed opportunities, and it was just one thing after the next, and I really felt like my patience was being tested. And one of the key lessons that I learned through this process is that patience is just another word for trust, and that when we fully trust in the divine timing of all things, then we are at peace. It's only when we start questioning, really or controlling or pushing our own agenda onto time, that's when impatience arises. The universe is never slow. It's never late. It's simply operating in a rhythm beyond our understanding. And when we are able to look back at it, often, we can see how perfect that was when we resist that rhythm, when we try to force something before it's ready, we miss out on the perfection that is unfolding. And I want to re emphasize that word perfection. And so this piece needed to take time, and it needed to be completed in its own sacred way. And that was really affirmed this understanding of divine timing was affirmed when we landed with this plan to finish the process in Palm Springs in the heart of the desert. Ash had received this guidance that he was meant to finish it in the desert, and so we followed that, and he came out to Palm Springs his first time on the West Coast, on the southern southern West Coast, which was really cool. And when we arrived, all these synchronicities started happening immediately. So one of the most epic was that on the first day that we were there, we were returning from an errand, and we passed this place called the Living Desert, which was literally just minutes from the casita where we were tattooing, and something clicked. And I was like, Oh my gosh, they have giraffes there. And so I share that with them. I'm like, I have a feeling that this place right near our casita has giraffes. And sure enough, I went online, and they not only have giraffes, but you can feed giraffes at this place called the Living Desert. So on the day when we colored in the giraffe, which was of this entire process, my longest session, that morning, I found myself standing eye to eye with a real giraffe, this beautiful, older giraffe named Kelly, and offering these giant leaves to Kelly and connecting deeply feeling the presence of this incredible creature in the flesh. It was so moving, and it really was just so confirming of the divine timing that we were meant to do this piece here in the desert at this time, and it could have been more perfect. What was really cool was that this older giraffe, Kelly, who really hung out with us the most, he had these unique markings, these like Knobby, like wisdom filled bumps on his head and ash was as I was feeding him, just watching him, he was, you know, feet away from this giraffe's face, and was able to study him more than you can just study a Google image or something. And so that time with Kelly, with the giraffes, it really impacted the artwork as well, which is really cool. So after that incredible experience in the day that evening, we began the work. And so I want to share a little bit more about that particular day. This would be a ritual within the larger ritual. And on that day, I was working with, well, let's just say, a favorite medicine of Tim Leary's and that medicine, it really amplified everything, so every sensation was heightened. And it was a beautiful day. There was these beautiful clouds. It's like Cloud show happening above us as the sun was setting behind the palm trees and the mountain tops and the desert sky. There were these like pink clouds reflecting off the water of the pool, and it was all so beautiful. And I couldn't just lie around looking at the clouds. I needed to be on the tattoo table getting tattooed. And so it was really challenging the thought of lying still and allowing the tattoo artist to work with his needles on my skin, blind.

Unknown Speaker  15:00  
Hold it for hours at a time. It's already an intense thing, and this made it even more intense. And I just craved comfort. I was just longing to, you know, cuddle and lie around. I didn't want to be still and endure pain. But that was the challenge I was meant to face. I was meant to face this release of

Unknown Speaker  15:20  
preferences. I used my my courage and my determination to choose, to let go of these cravings and to let go of the preference for comfort in sacrifice for something greater, right? And so I surrendered, and in that surrender on that table, I was eventually able to relax and release control and accept what was and even though he was tattooing the most sensitive part of the whole piece at the very center of my chest, because I was able to accept it and not resist it, the pain went away, Well, almost completely, but not totally, but it was really, really phenomenal. And it felt like I was purging these old parts of myself as we were, you know, burning off old skin. And I felt like this new energy was coming in through the ink work. And it was a really powerful ritual within a ritual. So then on day three, the next day, which was the final session of this years in the making ritual, my body was so exhausted, my spirit was stretched to its edges, and honestly, I didn't know if I could make it through the final stretch, but I persevered, and when we reached the last like strokes of ink, all I felt was peace, and I just knew that this all happened exactly as it was meant to happen. So that's the main story of that tattoo. I also want to share about the symbolism of the artwork. So the giraffes. So giraffes are known to have one of the biggest hearts in the animal kingdom, because they need it to pump the blood up their long neck, right? And so giraffes symbolize leading with the heart, which is such a huge value of mine and such a big teaching that I hold for myself and for the folks that I work with. It also symbolizes seeing from a higher perspective, right? Their head is way up above, and they're able to see out into the Serengeti. And so this symbolizes, yeah, seeing through a spiritual lens, seeing through a higher perspective, rather than getting bogged down in the stressors of daily life. And now in order to safely lead with my heart and see through that spiritual lens, I also need to be practical and be safe. And so the lionesses represent creating that space. Space really they they represent protecting my boundaries. And then the rose quartz, it further amplifies my open heartedness. And then the Tree of Life represents the sacredness of all life on this planet. So not only is there a beautiful symbolism in the work that I get to be reminded every time I see it, but also the incredible lessons of the process? And so with those lessons in mind, I invite you, my beloveds, to spend a little time reflecting on where in your life you might sometimes be resisting divine timing, and feeling like things aren't happening as quickly as you would like them to be, and feeling that impatience and what can help you lean more into trusting divine timing. What could help you surrender and let go of some of the egoic attachments that might not be your greatest and highest good. How can you really release more control and trust that everything is unfolding in the perfect way? I just invite you to reflect on some of those things, because they were great lessons for me through this process. And thank you so much for listening. It was so fun to get to share this with you, and I can't wait to meet you in person, and when we do be able to show you this tattoo and the beautiful colors it's it's really pretty cool piece. I'm pretty proud of it, and proud of the of moving through the whole experience. And so speaking of seeing you in person, I want to extend an invitation to my in person, gathering group, gathering, awakened hearts, retreat happening May 15 through 18th in Joshua Tree, and still have some spaces left for it. And this is for gbtq men to come together and to connect from their hearts like giraffe teaches us, and to deepen your self love and really tap into your authenticity and your self expression. It's a beautiful, really fun, really joyful, really healing, really transformational event, and I'd love for you to check it out. There's details in the show notes. Please reach out if you have. Any questions again. Thank you so much for listening. Much. Love you.