My life right now is full of reading. For a subject that very few people know about at this point in time, you would not believe how much information is out there about the Akashics!  I have a small list of books and sites listed on my website on the Resources page and I’ll be adding more shortly, but that’s just a small sampling.

What I’m reading right now are the ancient texts.  Think Rig Veda, Buddhism, Tibetan Book of the Dead, and Kabbalah just to name a few.  And I’m making notes and associations and connections at the speed of thought.  Which means all my books are studded with post-it notes and look like paper porcupines.  I’m currently reading a text on Kabbalah and realized that each sephiroth has a traditional guided visualization attached to it.  And that is a direct conduit to the Akashics and the places that students are exploring are places in the Akashics!  Which I now very much want to explore.

I’m also interweaving all of this with works by contemporary authors who are keeping track of the scientists that are discovering the physical aspects of the Akashics and how it maintains and supports the universe and all its workings.  You know, a little light reading as a cleansing of the palate between deep dives into religion and philosophy.  LOL  I know we as a culture are encouraged to do summer reading, but I don’t think this is what common wisdom had in mind!

Ah well, back to reading…

There are times when it is best to be objective about something.  Which means to set aside any wishes or desires you have about the outcome, anything you have personally invested in it, and think of it as a logic problem or like math.  Or go into child-mind or no-mind and look at the events or the facts without any preconceived notions.  If you can.  It’s a skill to be able to do so, is never fully achievable, and sometimes is impossible.

On the other hand, sometimes it is best to be subjective about things.  Because the issue at hand needs to have all the emotions, the passions, the expectations included in order to have it make sense.  Making a choices about medical interventions concerning cancer, about hospice vs. elder care facilities, about a love match vs. career advancement, these are things that objectivity can support, but in the end the equation is about care, about connection, about compassion…it’s subjective.

Working with the Akashics takes a balance of both.  To read your own book you need to be able to be objective about the answers you receive.  Because they are not like fortune cookies.  They can be in riddles, they can be puns, they can be like videos, they can be symbols, they can be cryptic as all get out or plain as day.  And they will always be the truth, which is many times not what we want and sometimes unpleasant.  On the other hand you need to be subjective.  Because the Akashics is not an oracle waiting to tell you wisdom that you need nor a parent hovering over you trying to guide your every move.  You need to want things, you need to feel connected with them, passionate about them, invest yourself in them, in order to communicate clearly in the Akashics and get answers to the questions you have about them.  So asking the small questions is great practice, but asking the big questions gets you the big answers, which are the best kind.

But there’s the rub.  How to be passionate about something and still objective about the answer.  It’s like being a dancer.  Being strong and yet flexible, being self directed and yet aware of everything and everyone around you and being responsive to others in the dance.  It takes effort, it takes practice, it means failing over and over again.  No one is a savant.  No one is so gifted that they can do it right every time.  But trying is worth it.  Because you get better with each try and what you learn from it is not just the answers you get in the Akashics, but is a skill that applies to your entire life.  And that kind of balance is worth a few initial missteps.

I have written a great deal about people’s Akashic Records or their Soul Books and you can find this information accumulated in one place in my free e-book, The Akashics, Soul Books, and the Soul.  However, its summer and I thought it might be good to do a quick recap of the essentials.  So in brief:

Most people who have heard of the Akashics have only heard it spoken about as the Akashic Library, the repository for Soul Books.  But this is only one small part of the Akashics.  In fact that is only one building in an immense city and there is a great deal more outside the city to experience and explore.

Most people focus on their own Soul Book in the Akashic Library and understandably so.  Because they are wanting to know more about themselves, their purpose for being here, their past lives and such.  But Soul Books are only one type of book in the Library and there is more than just books there.   And it is not an empty space, but a lively place full of people and other beings and Librarians trying to help them all to learn what they are seeking to learn.

Then there are the actual Soul Books.  Many people think of them like Tarot or crystal balls or some wise guide that is just waiting to impart some vital message.  But they are not oracles nor are they waiting for anything.  They are living documents holding all the information about each soul from the time is came into being until now.  Some of the information is historical such as the information on past lives and their meanings.  Some of it is held in reserve while a soul is embodied such as the knowledge of who the soul really is when it is not embodied or the career it employs when home in the Akashics.  And some are constantly updating such as the notes made about this life, the reasons for living it, and the goals to be achieved during its brief duration.  Or the opportunity map which adjusts with each choice made, each direction taken, each decision that one thing is not part of this life and another is.  Like an Encyclopedia or a Dictionary, it contains everything, but has no specific message to impart.  It is a reference book available to the viewer and what is gained from it comes from the questions asked and the information sought.

So accessing the Akashics and reading Soul Books is less about being a passive recipient of wisdom and more about being an active participant in the process of creating your life.  Knowing that you have the ability to be a part of the process, what life do you want to create today?

Because we are humans, bipedal beings who rely on intelligence rather than strength or speed for our survival and well being, and because we are taught in our culture that we are the top of the food chain and made in the image of the supreme being, we assume that anything on ‘the other side’ would look like us, act like us, and basically be us with slight tweaks for wisdom or awesomeness factors.  Anything that doesn’t look or act like us would be at the least ‘less than’ and at the worst total anathema and inimical to our mental and spiritual well being.  It’s logical in that while we’re in these bodies we forget all that we know about the rest of the universe, how things actually work and that this is just a temporary situation.  But it can create blind spots in our ability to accept non-conforming facts, experiences, and perspectives.  I suspect this is the root cause why so many people see things in the Akashics which are wholly human centric and talk as if these are central to the place instead of only one small part.  Their inability to accept or even realize there is more leads them to only access this portion and give it a relevance it might not otherwise deserve.  And it prevents them from noticing all the beings around them that are not bipedal, human variant beings or that those they do seem might be putting on that ‘form’ in order to be seen by the person.  It’s a bit like wearing blinders and saying that the entire world is flat and hard and made of asphalt when all around are amazing buildings, rolling hills, and abundance of every variety.

Coming from a culture that doesn’t perceive humans as the top of any hierarchical structure, in fact we see things as all interconnected in circles and spheres, it’s easier to get in touch with beings who aren’t in any way humanoid nor do they interact with the world in that manner. Native American culture honors all aspects of life as equal to humans as goes beyond this to seek them out as teachers, as holding wisdom that humans tend to forget.  This is not about idolatry any more than asking a leader in any professional field a question about their speciality.  It’s about honoring the wisdom of the individual and learning from it in order to become a better version of the self.  This is what we mean when we speak of totems.

In most Native American cultures, people are identified by their totems, and are born into clans which are identified with animal spirits.  This is in part because they see animals are integral to life, therefore respect and value as much as humans or even more so.  Animals are also seen as wise elders, teachers who help people discover and develop their true nature and manifest it in the physical in order to live the best life possible making each action improve life for everyone and everything.  Hence the use of feathers, claws, fur, leather, and teeth in art, clothing, and sacred items.  It honors the totem and imbues the user with a deep connection to their totem and themselves.

Totems represent aspects of our souls made physical.  They are expressions of our true selves, our hearts/souls/bodies in harmony, expressing themselves in the world.  Like astrological signs or the Chinese year you were born into, your totem is a key to aspects of your essential nature.  Unlike those others it is something you can experience holistically through the Akashics, for you are your totem.

I was having a conversation with someone recently, talking about the Akashics, when they asked, “How much of our lives are about this?”  I wasn’t quite sure what they meant, but after a bit of questioning it became clear they were talking about this embodied life.  So the question was, how much of our true lives, the lives of our spirit, is dedicated to embodiment.  To which I responded, “Very little.”

Even though a great many of us have lived hundreds of embodied lives, in fact most people I work with have so many its difficult for me to wade through them to find what I’m looking for, it’s a drop in the bucket of their total existence, which is lived in the Akashics and may have nothing to do with this planet, embodiment, or the physical universe at all.  The human brain is an amazing organ able to conceive of wonders never seen, invent things that have never existed, and write tales of lives never lived, but it is mostly limited by its experience and its innate need to keep us safe and healthy which means keeping us at the top of the food chain.  Hence we are taught that man is the ultimate form of existence, that we are made in the image of spiritual beings (which really means that we can anthropomorphize spiritual beings), and that we are meant to ‘manage’ all other forms of life.

Yeah, well….that’s lovely, and it keeps our attention where it’s supposed to be in a physical life, which is focused on ourselves.  Being in a body is hard and takes quite a bit of effort and then there is all that thinking and doing and interconnecting beyond just survival which needs to be attended to.  But when we are no longer in bodies, we’re not focused on all that and we remember that this is only one means of existing and there is so much more to….everything…than this.  And we are part of that.  An integral part of that.  Which is one of the many reasons I love reading people’s soul books.  Because who we are and what we do when we are not living an embodied life is written there.  And each one is stunning and beautiful and I find that seeing it, reading it, causes me to laugh in delight and wonder.    So yes, there is life beyond this.  We’re only here for a brief moment. And we are eternal underneath it all and return to the wonders we have left wiser, better, and more complete in order to more fully delve into all that is possible for us at home…in the Akashics.

Humans have known about the Akashics forever.  Lately I’ve been exploring those references to see how others have perceived it, how they apply that knowledge to their spirituality and mythology and how it informs their practice.  It’s interesting to see the wide range of cultures that have retained written texts on the subject.

In Buddhism there’s akasa-dhatu, the physical aspect which is the container which provides the place and space for matter to reside.  Scientists seem to be bringing this more and more into concrete provable reality and moving it out of theology and metaphysics.  They also have ajatakasa which is the non-physical, energetic, spirit of the universe aspect.  I’ll be spending more time looking into this.  It fascinates me.

The Hinduism speaks of this via the Rig Veda The Rig Veda: Complete (Forgotten Books) and in particular the Aitareya Brahmana Rigveda Brahmanas: The Aitareya and Kausitaki Brahmanas of the Rigveda which speaks of Akasa as the raw material from which life was created.  It needed the will of the universe to activate it.  Which is really similar to the understanding I’ve developed of the Akashics over the past 20 years.  The Akashics exists and is of itself, but it doesn’t act.  It is not an entity, but a place and a force.  It is a means by which our free wills are able to act in order to live.  Without it we would be nothing but desire with no ability to change or grow or become.  This is somewhat of a false duality that is useful for divining meaning and having conversations about it but in reality hides the fact that Akasa is not separate from us nor us from it.  But more about that later.

Meanwhile, I have found that reading some non-ancient texts has been helpful.  Helena Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled, Vol. 1 of 2 (Forgotten Books) has been a treasure trove of information.  Well, ok, it’s been a bit fun to read out the cutting edge of science from the 1800′s and all the predictions and ‘understandings’ that came from it.  And fun to read about some of the interesting spirituality ‘facts’ she reports.  Vampires!  Who knew they would become a TV and movie staple.  Of course, she didn’t know about TV and Movies….and she never met a sparkly vampire…probably for the best.  However, I digress.  The interesting parts for me stem from the fact that Ms. Blavatsky was amazingly well read and well educated.  And she notes her sources thoroughly.  So while I might not agree with a great deal of her conclusions, where she found her information on the Akasha is well documented.  She even gives summaries of the Akashic information to be found in them which is incredibly helpful to the researcher.

And just as a nod to the current writers of our times who are writing about spirituality I did look at Scott Cunningham and his understanding of Akasha Earth, Air, Fire & Water: More Techniques of Natural Magic (Llewellyn’s Practical Magick Series).  He does write about it in relation to it being a 5th element such as Ether was for the alchemists. A one page nod that holds almost no information, which is basically all that anyone is saying about it in the last 100 years.  So with that nod I’m off to look at more ancient texts.  And while I’m at it I’ll be adding more reading from scientists that are discovering what the ancients and indigenous cultures have always know, the Akashics exists and are a part of every piece of…well…everything.

Now in the Twenty-First Century the Akashics are no longer for the few, but are open to everyone who seeks to find the answers to their questions and to act on what they find.  In fact, what most people don’t know is that they have always been open to everyone.  Every living human being accesses the Akashics naturally while they are sleeping.  Those dreams that seem just a bit more real and coherent than the others, where you are talking to someone you know but don’t recognize their face, that’s the Akashics.  You were there.  That dream where you are your happiest in that special place where the world is perfect?  That’s you in the Akashics.  That dream where you wake up having figured out the answer to that nagging question magically out of now where?  Yep, that’s the Akashics too.  You’re a natural.  You’re in.

This is in part because of your soul.  Many people have taken in the message that our souls are some mystical ‘thing’ that is important but separate from our physical selves and daily lives, when the reality is quite different.  Our souls give us life and make us unique. Our bodies, our emotions, our intellect are all manifestations of our soul in relationship with the world around us and all other things.  We are in an ongoing conversation with ‘all that is’ and this is reflected in how we live in the world.  However, souls are not small things that hover in our chests or hide at the base of our skulls or live in a nebulous cloud throughout our bodies.  Each individual soul is very large and only a small portion of each soul resides in a person.  The remainder of the soul remains on the spiritual plane that includes the Akashics.

Imagine if you will a rubber band being stretched in your hands.  One part is in your left hand and the other is in your right. If you look at only one hand you could perceive that the rubber band resides only there.  But if you look at both you can see that it is all connected and if you move your hands closer together the rubber band relaxes and you are able to easily see that it is one thing.  Souls are much like this.  When you are in conscious connection with the Akashics your soul moves toward wholeness and you are able receive the benefits of that which can and do include wisdom, healing, empowerment, and knowledge, among others.

There are a multitude of experiences that one can have in the Akashics, too many to number here.  The purpose of this class is specifically for you to learn how to access the Akashics in order to read your own Soul book. You will also meet your own guides or those guides who wish to work with you during this process. Reading your Soul book will give you the ability to learn why you are here, what the meaning of your life has been so far, what challenges you are here to work through, what expectations you have for yourself, what are your gifts and abilities, what you are to learn, and who you wanted to become.  Among many, many other things!  As many questions as you can imagine, there are responses and support in your Soul book.

Learn more at Find Your Soul Purpose through the Akashics

In the Akashics there are any number of ways to discover things about yourself and your life only one of which is reading from your Soul Book.  In my online class Find Your Soul Purpose Through The Akashics I teach a number of them including meeting your animal guide, going to a place which is specifically for you, and finding an item which is yours and holds significance for you.  Sometimes people recognize that significance right away, other times it takes reflection and research. Sometimes the message is to go and find that item in the physical, sometimes students are able to manifest that item by pulling it to them directly from the Akashics into the real.

But there are many other meditations and practices one can do in the Akashics to discover more about the self.  For instance, each of us consists of and interacts with the four elements on a daily basis.  Anyone who has ever been to the Hawaiian islands will have noticed this. All the elements are active and interactive there in a way that has had no human intervention.  The ocean and the wind intermingle with the earth of the islands which is constantly being reformed and recreated through volcanic fire.  It’s rare to have all four interacting at the same time in such a fundamental manner and it heightens the senses to such a degree that some sensitives simply can’t remain there for any length of time.  And because being there is being in all four elements in their active state somewhat like being fully immersed in a healing.  Anything that is out of balance, it brings to the surface and attempts to heal it, which can be somewhat dramatic and not necessarily in a miraculous way!

We can work consciously with the Akashics to learn more about the elements and what they mean for us and how we work with them.  There are several ways that this can be done depending on what interests you and how you work with the elements already.  Remembering that how we ask the question, how we set up the boundaries of the meditation, guides the answers and the experience, we can choose to work with the symbols of the elements (rock/crystal/pentacle – sword/incense/feather – rod/candle/oil – chalice/clear bowl/wet cloth) or with the elements themselves (dirt – breeze – flame – stream) or with the concept of them (earth – air – fire – water).  Holding any of these images or concepts in mind while going to the Akashics with the intention of discovering what they mean to the person will bring a plethora of information.  That information can come in an experience such as feeling oneself actually interacting with them and with other beings in the Akashics.  It can be symbolic pictures mean to be reflected on.  It can be movies played out for further research.  It can be messages provided by beings there specifically for that person.

Try working with the Akashics in this way and you will discover whole new facets of your self, your soul, that you did not realize existed.  It will change the way you see and feel the world around you.

We are by nature social creatures.  We’re not meant to live in isolation.  But what does that actually mean in the 21st century?  Where being social can mean being online in a MMORPG or on a social networking site of which there are a massive variety?  Or on cell phones and smart phones?  Where being social can mean the mall or a table for two at the local pub?  Where organizations and groups and mashups have become the community which was once the neighborhood or the village?

And therefore being seen takes on a different quality entirely.  The multifaceted nature of being a human being develops new facets when we think of online presence.  Local, professional, personal, casual personas get online personas and avatars added to their ranks.  Just more roles that we inhabit in order to be socially connected in the world.  And if you think you don’t live out roles in your daily life then think about this:  authenticity in public figures such as politicians/reporters/actors wouldn’t be such a surprise and so suspicious if it weren’t uncommon and authenticity for people in general wouldn’t be a goal and a rallying cry if it were common place.

So how do we make ourselves known, how can we be seen in all this social activity when we are maneuvering between roles and lives both offline and on?  Start by seeing yourself.  Take a moment away from all the doing, all the have to’s and running to get from one thing to the next.  And start seeing who you are both in your body and in your identity.  Not with the critical eye for how you aren’t who you want to be and how you could be better.  That’s not really looking, that’s a marketing manager tsk-tsking over the raw material they had hoped would have more to it.  Leave the critical, problem solving left-brain out of it and really look at yourself.  See all of the good features, the positive things, the stuff that we discount because we can’t focus on what’s working when we are focusing on what’s broke.  Look at the things you do well and don’t judge them for their ‘value’.  Look at the things you do everyday that make the world a better place.

Then look at your perspective on the world and how you wield it.  New concept?  You aren’t an island, remember? Your perspective on the world leads you to act and your actions become part of the world around you.  You aren’t impotent and just flailing along in life, you’re an amazing creator of positive things in life.  Look at what you do each day.  From smiling at your neighbor, providing positive living space for your family, trying each day to be a bit better which means you are a role model for others, putting out positive things into the world to share with others.  The list is endless.  And you are limitless.

So for today, be seen.  Be seen by the one person that matters the most, You!

The most exciting part of working with the Akashics, in my experience, is revealing new pieces of my own journey, new facets of myself that I have not yet explored, and receiving perspectives on the experiences I’ve had in my life that I never would have arrived at on my own.  Living the details day-to-day and making meaning that way can lead us in one direction.  Working in the Akashics with beings that are seeing the bigger picture, with soul books that see the over arching and underlying patterns, getting away from the distractions to focus on the essential all help to create a richer understanding of what life is all about.

Notice how I use all these active words?  Learning and becoming in the Akashics is not a passive thing.  It’s active and participatory and a choice and a challenge.  It’s somewhat like a ‘make your own adventure’ game where the choices you make lead you in one direction instead of another.  And where the short term goals are to learn facets of who you are.  And the long term challenge is to apply what you have learned in your physical life.

Most people, if they receive information from a medium, a card reader, Astrologer, guru or Akashic reader, try to fit that information into the life that they already have.  And if it doesn’t fit they throw it out or forget about it entirely.  And in some cases that might be valid.  Not all information you receive is accurate, not all of it makes sense in context, not all of it comes through in a way that we can use it.  That’s where critical thinking and gut checking things comes in handy.  But what if, instead of throwing this information out or trying to make it fit, we tried to apply it?  What if we meditated about it, seeing it as a means to become more of our potential?  What if we use it to inspire us?  What if we allowed it to challenge us to listen to our inner knowing, our inspiration, our fondest desires and greatest fears?  What if we let it lead us where we’re supposed to go?

The greatest challenge to living our best life might not be that we don’t know where to go or what to do.  It might just be that we stand in our own way keeping things status quo, mundane, and manageable.  When they could be magical…   So in the end, you are the challenge in your life. It’s up to you what type of challenge you want to be.

Working in the Akashics isn’t so much ‘how do I get there?’ as it is about ‘what do I do with what I find there?’  And for that you need to have an open mind.  Easier said than done and more of a balancing act that one might imagine.

I liken this to the Savasana शवासन or Corpse Pose in Yoga.  It looks like you’re just lying there.  And most of us in Western culture are so sleep deprived that within a few minutes of being in the pose we are nodding off to nap time.  And yet others can’t get their minds to settle and so wander off into what needs to happen with the rest of their day or day dreams of what could be or should be in their lives or whatever else is floating around in there.

But the pose is meant to be something directly in between those two things.  Having woken your body for 60 – 90 minutes through other poses and quieted your mind through that practice, which is a moving meditation, Savasana is meant to be the exact balance between these two states, perfect relaxation of woken body and woken mind.  So you hold your full attention on the body which is fully attending to its sense of being and well being.  And nothing else.

So with the Akashics as a practice.  No matter how you get there, the idea is to fully attend to being there without expectations.  That doesn’t mean letting go of everything you know in the world and tripping out to some psychedelic dream or listening to a voice that tells you that gravity will end shortly and you should glue all your change into your pockets.  Nor does it mean that you should set your heart on receiving some certain answer or some specific experience and refuse to allow or acknowledge anything else that occurs.

You need to have an open mind.  Which means having at your disposal all of your wisdom, your experience, your hopes and dreams, and your sense of adventure so that you are open to whatever happens.  And balancing that with critical thinking skills to interpret and learn from what you experience.  It’s that balance of being completely yourself and yet relinquishing control of the experience so that there can be two way communication.  When you achieve that you are able to open the book of your Soul and find what lies within.

It’s not something I say out loud, but I have the thought often.  Do you really want what you are talking about?  Hours and hours, day after day of talking about a situation, griping about the futility of it, pointing out the resolution, knowing that things would be better if….and then going all over it again.  Or talking through a problem facet by facet, like rubbing a strand of worry beads, round and round and round, never finding a resolution yet talking and worrying and talking…

Most times there may not be simple solutions, but there are steps that can be taken to help improve the situation or even turn it around.  And the person either hears them and discounts them, stares at them uncomprehendingly, or enumerates them as if they are items in a museum to be discussed but never touched.  And what it all comes down to is the simple question, do you really want what you are talking about?  Do you want a solution?  The answer to which seems to be yes and no.  Yes if I don’t have to change in any way, if my life can remain exactly the same as it has ever been and if I have no responsibility in the outcome and can put minimal or no effort into the solving process.  No if I have to change my life, my mindset, my way of being in the world, take responsibility for any part of the situation, or be seen in any kind of unfavorable light.  Even bigger NO if the solution requires me to do something which is physically, socially, or emotionally uncomfortable.

So my question is, “What do you really want?”  If its to talk about a situation, to a certain extent I’m with you.  Making the emotions real by sharing them with another person is many times necessary to help them move through in a healthy way.  Talking can help us work through our understanding of the situation and bring on ‘aha!’ moments and clarity that we didn’t have before.  And having another’s opinion and perspective can be invaluable.  But if what you do is stop at talk, if what you choose is to live in the situation without acting in any way, if what you do is anything but what you know will make your life better, help you to grow and become, support you in becoming the best you that is possible, even if it’s hard, challenging, frightening, or just unpleasant, then what you want isn’t what you’re talking about at all.  What you want is something else entirely.

Which means what you should be talking about isn’t the tribulation of the moment, but why you can’t seem to live without it.

“It takes a village….”  Well, yes it does.  For a soul to become embodied and live a life in the physical takes a village and then some.  It is not automatic for a soul to enter into a body.  And it’s not something we do easily nor are any of us automatically proficient at it.  There are beings in the Akashics whose role is to help us enter into developing infants and help us make that transition from telempathic beings with no form to condensed and enveloped entities integrated with matter.  And our soul group and teacher are available at any instant to help us transition from embodied life into telempathic beings once again.  Because that movement can be at the minimum disorienting and confusing before it becomes a relief and a joy.

In between those two points is life.  Which is neither predestined nor predetermined.  Free will exists and we use it each and every second that we are alive no matter what form we’re in.  Life is full of the magic of serendipity, of the path less traveled, and random circumstance.  And to those who say ‘there’s a grand plan and there is a point to everything and all happens for a reason…blah…blah…blah’ I say, read a soul book, any soul book, and you’ll see that this is not the case.  It may make things easier to bear, it might let people feel that they aren’t responsible for the outcomes of things, but it isn’t true any more than that there is no point to everything and nothing happens for a reason.  Like everything else the reality lies somewhere in between.  Which makes life an amazingly rich, magical, terrifying and joyful place to be and fires me up everyday to see what happens next.

And this is why embodied life takes a village.  We preplan, extensively, how we want our life to go.  We contract with other beings to fulfill the roles we need, we set out goals and obligations and a full bucket list of things to experience.  Then we let fly.  Because the point of being embodied is to experience life differently than how we live at home in the Akashics.  It’s about condensing ourselves into a container, like steam cooling back into water, and experiencing ourselves undiluted by others thoughts and feelings.  Learning connection in an entirely different way, but learning ourselves without any interference and seeing ourselves without masks or distractions or excuses.  It is the definition of ‘me time’.  To achieve that one of the body’s jobs is to help us forget what and who we are when we are not embodied.  Which means we forget all the preplanning that happened before we left.  Add in free will and the whole thing would go out the door.

Enter the spiritual village, our guides or guardian angels who look out for us.  They can’t take away our free will which means what they can do is limited, but they can help nudge us in the right direction, can answer questions if we actually ask them, and, within the limits of what we have agreed to before hand, they can intervene with us when we get off the track we have set for ourselves in a way that would keep us from our large bullet point goals.  Each guide has a function or a role in helping us through life.  Some are supportive of career choices, some are to help us through childhood.  One common role is of ‘imaginary friend’ to help us as young children.  Some can be protectors that help keep us out of trouble we don’t even realize we’re getting into.  Some support our family relationships or intimate ones.  Some inspire us like the muses of old.  Some are the voice of conscience when we need it most.  Others support us when we need courage or dissuade us when we might go too far astray.

They are not gods, they are not omniscient, omnipotent, or even omnipresent.  Which means that they are basically just like us only not in bodies.  They make mistakes, get distracted, sometimes obsess, have opinions and have emotions about things.  But they are here for us.  They are the cheering squad that supports our actions every day and seek to make our lives the best they can be given what we have come here to do and be.  And that’s something to take to heart and celebrate.  Because it takes a spiritual village…

There are exceptions to every rule.  In fact, there is common wisdom that says exceptions prove the rule.  And I agree with that to a great extent.  Rules govern categories of things.  If the rule is inclusive of everything, meaning you can use the words ‘all’, ‘never’, and ‘always’, then the rule is a load of bull….because the universe is full of uniqueness, becoming, innovation, and individuals and so absolutes inevitably fail.  (Note the irony that I just made an absolute statement?  It’s Monday.  Deal with it.)

Exceptions are to be expected.  Exceptions in behavior even more common than in physics because humans are complex creatures making meaning out of life as we go along.  And that’s where the exceptions get interesting.   Because if they are in behavior then they come from choices and they are changeable.  The thing is exceptions in behavior are only about 50% conscious choices.  The other 50% come from unexamined perspectives and behaviors.  And then they get examined, but usually by someone else, either a bystander or the recipient of the behavior.  And at some point, someone drops a flag on the play and the behaviors come up for examination.

A really common example of this lives and thrives in the spiritual community.  There is tendency to have ‘us vs. them’ mentality between members of Religion (mostly the religions of the Book Judaism/Christianity/Islam) and members of the world wide spiritual community (a loose generic term for those who ascribe not to a formal religion but to spiritual practices of infinite variety).  The spiritual community points to Religion and says that it’s members live a duality of being spiritual or religious on their designated gathering/holy days and the rest of the time live secular lives which are contrary to their espoused beliefs.  Meanwhile members of the spiritual community point to the fact that they live their values every day because each one is holy and this is seen as an improvement and a feather in the cap of the spiritually minded.  These are grand generalities and there are all manner of gradations between these two points, but for sake of argument, let’s work with generalities.

The thing about this position with the spiritual community is it puts the exceptions in stark contrast.  If spiritual people live their spirituality every day, then all of their actions must be spiritual and reflect their values and choices.  But what happens when they don’t?  When they have different rules of conduct within their family from those they have with the greater spiritual community?  When they give themselves a pass to act badly towards others in their personal life even though they act to correct this in others?  When they use a different set of values when in public than they do when they are with their family or community?  Does this prove the rule?  Or does it highlight that spiritual doesn’t automatically mean better?

Maybe being aware of exceptions is a challenge to examine ourselves and choose to reconcile what we believe with who we choose to be each day.  It doesn’t necessarily mean choosing to act differently.  It may mean choosing to change what we believe.  Although there are always exceptions to that rule too.

There are really two reasons why people work with the Akashics.  One is to learn about ‘me’, either themselves or someone else, the other is to learn about ‘not me’ which really means anything else in the world other than a specific person. Most people want to know about ‘me.’  And that’s true of life as well so no surprises there.  They want to know who they were, why they are the way they are, why the are connected to so-n-so or not connected to so-n-so, why so-n-so did this, what that happened, and what’s coming next.  All good stuff and worthy of looking into.  Each person’s soul book has these records as well as a whole lot more with a couple of caveats.  It has information about other people only in as much as that information pertains to the person asking the question.  It won’t have a deep dive on someone else’s soul path, they psychology, their karma or any other thing of that nature.  So if someone is looking for insights into someone else’s soul, they might not get everything on their list.

The less explored side of things is ‘not me.’  In the ancient past people reached to the Akashics to understand the large questions about life such as ‘why is the world the way it is?’, ‘why are we here?’, ‘why is genocide a thing?’, ‘what is life full of suffering?’,'why poverty and death and disease?’…you get the drift.  Over time the questions have changed depending on the culture and the emphasis of the age.  During the Renaissance the questions were more focused on invention, on scientific facts, on the practical application of magic (which is science once the principles are understood) and so on.  During the industrial revolution the questions were more on finance, on invention in the realm of production, and on cultural changes.  And in the 20th century the questions delved more into whether or not the world was going to end and when and why and what could be done about it.

These, of course are very broad generalizations because for every period where questions tended to be specific about change in the world, there were segments of the population that felt called to look at the oldest of questions, ‘How does the Universe Work?’.  From the medicine people of the indigenous cultures, to the secret societies of Asia and Europe over the past 2000 years, from Theosophy in the 1800′s to now, and even today, there are those who are taking ‘not me’ to the levels of the cosmos.  There are books in the Library that cover every topic, that look into every mystery, and there are beings even now that are researching and bringing back ancient knowledge that has not been utilized for millennia and seeing how to weave it into our now and into the future.  And there is so much more in the Akashics than the Library to explore.

Don’t limit your questioning to ‘me’.  Broaden your horizons, open your mind to possibility and limitlessness.  Beyond ‘me’ is ‘not me’ in its infinite variety and bounty.  What new thing will your bring into being just by asking one simple question?

There are things about the Akashics and about ourselves that we only learn from long association and examination.  One of those things is that there is a limit to how many answers you get even if there’s no limit to the questions you feel the need to ask.  I’m not talking about the small stuff questions like “What should I wear today?” or “Will there be cute guys/girls at the mall/bar/party tonight?”  I’m talking the big questions that people reach out to readers and mediums and the Akashics in order to get the answers.  You know, like “Who am I?”, “What’s the purpose of my life?”, “Should I choose this career or that?”,”Should I get married?”,”Should I get divorced?”, “Will I ever be happy?”

For those questions, there is a limit to how many answers we can take in and process.  Just like there’s a limit to how much food we can take in at any meal.  The stomach is a physical organ that obeys the laws of matter and quantum physics and so has a load capacity.  And the body tries valiantly (If only sometimes marginally successfully) to enforce our good health by keeping us within those limits.  So too does your soul book and the beings in the Akashics.  Because just like digesting a meal, we need to digest the answers we have received.  We need to incorporate them into our identity, our understanding of the world around us.  And the process of incorporating them isn’t just an intellectual pursuit.  It means applying them in our actions, taking them into account in our interactions with others, working through them so that we make them a part of us holistically and completely, however we end up doing that.

If we don’t do this, if we choose to ignore the answers or to simply acknowledge them intellectually and don’t apply them, we aren’t allowed to move forward.  I have seen soul books go completely blank when additional questions are asked after a certain point.  Or if the same question is asked at a later date.  I associate this as the ‘pearls before swine’ effect.  Why answer again if the first answer wasn’t accepted and used?  Beings in the Akashics respond this way as well.  Because the relationship between the questioner and the Akashics, both soul book and beings, isn’t a one way street.  It’s a conversation, a relationship which, just like here, runs well on trust and respect.  You don’t have to agree with what you’re told, you don’t have to implement it the way its been suggested, but ignoring what’s been said and continuously asking for a different answer using the same question, will get you dirty looks and eventually will end the conversation. Because who wants to talk with someone who is rude and doesn’t listen?

So in working with the Akashics is a 1 step/2 step process.  First, ask the question and receive the answer.  Second, apply the information, work with it, figure it out, make it your own and become.  Then go back and start with the first thing again.  You put your left foot in, you take your left foot out….

Working with the Akashics brings home to me, over and over again, what spiritual figures, religions, and indigenous cultures around the globe have been telling us for millenia:  It’s all connected.  We are all integral parts of one community.

So when I read this, I felt the truth of it in my soul:

The Times newspaper had asked a number of authors to write on the topic: “What’s wrong with the world?”  G.K. Chesterton was one of them.  And his answer at that time was the shortest of those submitted – he simply wrote: “Dear Sirs, I am. Sincerely yours, G.K. Chesterton”.

Because the difficulties of the world, war and poverty and hunger and disease, aren’t ‘out there’.  They are right here because nothing is separate.  Nothing is other.  Life is a cooperative effort each and every day.  Which can seem overwhelming.  Because what can one person do to alleviate the worlds problems?  What can one person do to deal with such massive issues.

And that’s just it.  No one person can deal with the massive problems.  But they don’t have to.  That’s the mystery and the magic of it.  No one person made them, no one person keeps them going and no one person can manifest the cure.  But one person can foster change through their choices and their actions each day.  If we are all connected, then each choice we make is part of the whole, so if we choose to do something differently, if we choose to help, if we choose to think a different way, then we are part of the change.  We are part of what helps solve those problems, one act at a time.  And if you don’t think that one act means anything, look at a lake or a river or an ocean.  Because they are made up one drop at a time and added together they are a force of nature that we still have not been able to conquer for all our vaunted knowledge and power.  Or look at a sandy beach.  It’s all made of tiny pieces of rock and glass, one piece at a time.

So challenge yourself.  Look at the world as Tom Shadyac has and see that the answer, to “What is right about the world?” is “I am”.

As someone who comes from an indigenous culture with a rich oral tradition, I know first hand the power of story in our lives.  I point this out to my clients.  In the end we are the stories we tell whether that is to others or to ourselves.  And when we change the story we radically shift our identity and our perception of the world around us.  But practical story telling here in the physical is about language.  Spoken or visual language, written or enacted, it’s all about words and the meaning we invest them with.  The storyteller creates the words and weaves them into a story, then the listeners receive the story and invest it with meaning.  Sometimes that meaning is the same as the one intended by the storyteller and sometimes not.  Such is the nature, mystery and magic of stories.

Stories are part of life in the Akashics as well.  However, storytelling is a bit different.  Communication between beings in the Akashics is not via sound waves and spoken or written language necessarily, but through thought and emotion.  Stories are not told so much as lived and in the living those who are listening to the story live them too.  Worlds come into being, live, and fall away in the matter of moments.  Sunlight bursts from darkness, colors flow into shapes, matter and energy dance and meaning comes into being.  Storytellers are the stories they tell in a very real, holistic, full body way which helps create the world around them.  They weave experience into their audience which becomes an integral part of who they are.

In this life there are stories that carry us away, make us think, inspire us to new ways of living. Today’s storytellers are writers and movie makers and their works have added a great deal to our culture: Star Wars, the Matrix, Star Trek, Firefly, Harry Potter and many others.  What story are you sharing with the world right now and what story have you not yet dared to write?

Wishing it were so doesn’t mean you can stop working and go frolic in meadows for the rest of your life.  Bills still have to get paid and winning the lottery may sound good, but you than have to ‘manage’ all that money which means tax advisors, money managers, and those pesky sudo friends and long lost relatives that all want a to be your best friend.  So it’s not so much where you are or where you are trying to get to, it’s about how you get there.

Yes, everyone says that, but I’m not here to repeat a Facebook meme.  If you want to smell the roses, get out in your garden, plant some roses, then go smell them.  Or goto your local grocery store or florist.  Just be ready to explain if you are in your neighbor’s yard smelling their roses.  They sometimes notice these things.  What I’m trying to point out is something just as practical but a bit more to the point.  You still have to get all the requirements of life taken care of such as paying bills, feeding/washing/clothing/teaching your children, acknowledging the presence of your significant other, etc, etc.  It’s how you do that which makes the difference.

Somewhere along the line we get taught that everything else is the priority and we’re the last on the list, that personal time is what is left over at the end of the day, and whatever we can squeeze in for us will just have to do.  Sleep seems to have become optional as well or at least a negative necessity that needs to be reduced as much as possible.  All of which is completely backwards!  All the ‘need to’s’ of life are there in order to support you.  You are the number one priority and so refocus how you do things in order to reflect that.  Need to do a bunch of errands, plan something fun to do that evening and get the errands done on the way.  Then they aren’t the focus, you are, and you get to do something fun in the bargain.  Need to exercise?  Find things that you like to do that include exercise and plan them in your daily routine.  Make an hour long play list of dance beat music that you love, then dance your heart out at home.  Sing along because you want to.  Take dance classes or go dancing.  Take yoga and make it part of your daily life.  Go for walks because they clear your head as well as work out your body.  Do something you love because you love it, let the ‘it does my body good’ be the side effect.  See work as brief interludes between you living your life each day, don’t live your life around your work.  It will improve your attitude, your work performance, and your entire outlook on life.

You may find that it opens you up to new things, new possibilities, and new opportunities to be the best and brightest you that is possible in this moment.  And that’s what life is all about.

All the advice, wisdom, guidance, destiny, paths, ancient texts, readings and messages are pretty much meaningless if you don’t listen to what they have to say.  I don’t mean blindly listen to anything and everything and then act on it like it’s the truth.  Just like the internet or tv, don’t believe everything you hear.  You have to use your judgement.  But in order to use your judgement, you have to at least listen to what is being told to you.

At one time or another all people providing readings or coaching or counseling have met with a client who spontaneous tell them “I’ve heard this all before.”  They are either surprised or they are frustrated or defeated.  Usually the practitioner is not surprised by this admission.  Because they hear but they don’t listen.  And it’s not as if this is some aberration of human nature.  We’ve all been through this.  For whatever reason we want something to be true so badly that we ignore anything that doesn’t match our achieving that something.  It’s really common in teenagers but adults fall prey to it as well and it can happen at any point in life.  The hard part is that it can happen over and over again if we don’t learn to listen.  Or it can stretch on forever with us spending all of our time not listening.

The worst part of this is the fact that it’s all backwards.  We want something, some specific thing so badly.  We map out exactly what it will look like, how it will happen, even when, and then focus all of our energy on that, to the exclusion of other things.  And because of all this focus and specificity we’re unable to see the other options available, we’re unable to step back and see the bigger picture, we’re unable even to see the answer right in front of us.  It could walk up and do a naked interpretive dance in front of us and we would just get frustrated that it was in our way!  Meanwhile, in reality, what we want minus the specifics, is more than likely possible if we would just listen.

So when asking for help, actually listen to the answer.  Don’t listen for things that match with or validate your preconceived notions of what the answer should be, but listen to the answer.  You might find things you never thought of, realized, or conceived of.  You might get a different perspective that makes everything fall into place.  You might find that the answer is ‘not right now’, which is never fun, but also is glorious in that it releases you to do and be other things that are just as good.  Waiting doesn’t have to be boring.  And the answers might just spur you into new directions that actually lead you where you want to be.  Therefore it’s important to listen.

It’s not enough to know what the plan is.  You still have to take action.  It’s not enough to read your soul book in the Akashics and know who you are and what you chose to do this time around.  Knowing that won’t create a magic faery wand that blesses you with everything you need and hand you the accomplishment on a platter.  You still have to take the necessary actions, make the necessary choices in order to achieve those goals.

The first and sometimes the hardest is to come into harmony with yourself.  Because the only way to live your authentic life, to walk your path, to fulfill you destiny, is to be fully who you truly are.  And that means body, mind, heart and soul.  If all of those aren’t in sync then you will be putting your energy into struggling without their support and ignoring the issue or putting all of you into trying to fix the side effects of the problem when you could be resolving it.  So first, healer heal thyself, be honest, be true to who you actually are.  And if that means you acknowledge that you don’t know, that you are in a place of confusion and awkward emotions, then good. Because that is truly where you are and you can’t move forward without that awareness.

And if you are in a place of knowing but have never admitted what you know, time to come clean, if only with yourself.  Because living in masks that make you socially acceptable to your community (family, significant other, friends, peers…) not only reflects on you, it truly reflects on them that they aren’t relating to who you truly are.  Hopefully they see you behind the mask and are waiting for you to come out.  But if not, then you know they aren’t really part of your community at all.  Because they need the mask, not the real.  Once you are free of the mask, you are free.

What we think is best, right, good, valuable, or precious is not always similar to how other people see these things.  And this is one of the things that can hurt us the most.  It can be the most damaging to relationships, but not necessarily in the way you might think.  I mean, it’s obvious that when someone doesn’t value you anymore your relationship is more than likely over.   People have been howling along to country western songs about this since….well…way too long, if you ask me.  But you didn’t so we’ll continue…ahem…

No, it’s when we are at our most well meaning that things get screwed up.  Because we think we’re doing the right thing and we think we know what the other person wants or needs, or even more perilously, we think we know what is best for them.  And so we act without communicating that.  We ask without asking.  We act on what is really important to us and find that it’s not really important to that other person.  We give them the heirloom that came from Great Uncle Henry and they sell it on Ebay.  We pay off their bills to help them get on their feet again and they go gambling with all the ‘free money’ they now have and end up in the same amount of debt they had before.  We buy them new clothes and they give them to their children or grandchildren who ‘need them more’.

It’s a harsh way to find out about a person’s values.  To find out that the situation they are in isn’t happenstance, but choice.  To find out that what you love they don’t care about and vice versa.  It can be heart breaking.  But like words spoken in anger, it is earth shatteringly true.  And relationships can change because of it. Not necessarily because of a boundary or a resolution, but for the sheer fact that who they are isn’t who you thought. And hopefully, as Maya Angelou says so eloquently, “The first time people show you who they are, believe them.”  It’s also sometimes harsh to find out about your own values.  To realize that you weighted your own choices above theirs and that you acted without asking, taking away part of their free will.  It can be harder, but it is rarely less painful to do this in the opposite way.  Ask first, act second.  In the end it will at least help you avoid taking action where none is wanted.

One of the most often asked questions presented to the Akashic records is “Why?”  Why did this happen?  Was it meant to happen?   Did I know it was going to happen?  What am I supposed to learn from this?  And there is a huge amount of emotional charge around this question because usually the issue that happened was not happy or pleasant or positive in the short or even long term.  So to turn outrage and hurt and despair around and make something positive about it the person wants to know why.  For me the question doesn’t start with why, it starts with who.

We tend to assume that when emotionally relevant things happen in our lives that involve individuals interacting with us, those events are connected with us and we are the main focus.  Concerts, speeches, vacations, corporate events, tv shows, workshops, movies, and conventions may move us emotionally for one reason or another, but we are usually aware that we are not the focus of the event and that the particulars are less conscious than synchronistic.  Individual events are directed and specific and like children of divorce we tend to think that they are about us and we may be responsible for them.  But as in the case of divorce, that may not be the truth of the matter.

So for these questions I look for the who.  Who is actually the focus of the events that unfolded.  Because my client may just be experiencing the side effects of the event.  If they are, then I can usually find the bones of the reason for the event in their soul book, see some of the motivations of the parties involved and explain why it happened when it happened. If necessary I can request further documents from the Akashics or ask for guides and teachers to come speak to me about the situation. If the client is not the main focus, knowing that can really help.  I can then start relating whether they knew and had agreed to participate in the event, what they agreed to do and what they were planning to get from the situation.  This kind of clarification can release from the stasis they were in, let their identity adjust, let the story they are weaving that is who they are include a new perspective of events and adjust the chapter accordingly.  It’s amazing what not being responsible for something can do for a person. It’s freeing!

However, there are times when the client is the focus of the story.  But not how they think they are.  They may have lost a parent in early childhood and feel abandoned and forever searching for something that will never be there.  But the why of the situation is that the parent needed to leave early for their own reasons and this was preplanned. And the client agreed to this knowing that they only needed a short time in order to receive all the love and guidance and role modelling they would need in order to be a terrific parent themselves.  In fact, this process would cause them to become stronger, more active, more authentic as a person and as a parent than they would have been otherwise.  So it’s not about loss, it’s about so much more gained.  Just looking at the other side of the coin can give someone’s identity a new lease on life and knowing that the event wasn’t about them can help them let go of unnecessary burden.

Wanting to know why is so very important, but so is knowing who.  Who is this really about,  who is the lesson for (if there is one), and who is responsible for the situation.  Why unfolds much more clearly once you know who.

I have some new classes I’ll be offering in May and June.  I’m adding some in person classes for this summer just to spice things up.

May 29 – June 19, Wednesdays 6-7:30pm I’ll be holding a class on Honoring the Divine Masculine.  This will be exploring the changes in paradigm, both male and female, that define the roles we are expected to fit into and maintain.  We’ll look at the challenges and opportunities offered through living an authentic life practically and what that means when talking about the Divine Masculine.  It’s an exciting, confusing, challenging time to be a guy these days, but hopefully this will help sort out the change from the old norms that have been forced them and the news avenues open to experiencing life in this millennium. You can see the details here.

July 4 – 25, Thursdays 6-7:30pm I’ll be teaching a four-week class based on my online Akashic class Find Your Soul Purpose Through the Akashics.  We’ll have a chance to go through a number of the lessons in depth and explore each student’s experiences, hone techniques, and gather unique wisdom that will help each student in their daily lives.  More details to follow shortly.

It’s going to be a fun summer.

Just because someone does something nice or does the right thing, doesn’t necessarily make it a good thing or make the outcome pleasant or appropriate.   On the surface things can seem one way, but the meaning underneath can be something completely different.   Take court testimony.  If you read a transcript, you get the facts, the actual words that were said.  And the words, strung together in that specific order, interconnected with other words spoken by other people overlaid on the rituals and rules of the court system, make meaning out of the whole thing that is unique to that proceedings.  And if a witness knows that, then they can speak in such a way that the record says something that is correct and incomplete.  Because the court reporter doesn’t have a way to record irony.  They can’t note down sarcasm.  They don’t have any means of documenting the averted eyes, the confrontational stare, or the non-reaction to aggression which takes the piss out of the argument.  And so what goes on record is the words which have their own meaning.

The underlying motivations behind an act have their own meaning which modifies the act.  A man saying “I love you” in general is seen as a lovely thing.  But if his motivation is to control someone, to keep them from doing something he doesn’t want, if he says it while physically intimidating them, then the meaning is completely different.  And yet if you look at “the transcript” of the event it looks loving.  If a woman brings flowers from her flower beds or vegetables from her garden to her neighbor, that would be friendly and generous.  If she did so because she wanted her neighbor to feel inferior, if she wanted an opportunity to flaunt her wealth, her expertise and her superiority, then the gesture is no longer positive.

At times it can be difficult to see the issue.  Because we get caught in the face value of things and excuse away the negative results or give them very little weight for our own reasons or just don’t recognize them beyond a vague feeling of unease.  But if we stop labeling the actions for their surface value, set aside the labels of ‘good deed’ and look at the results only, motivations become clear.  And then we can make a choice as to how to go forward in that situation.  Of course, that means we understand our own underlying motivations, right?

When a new client books a reading with me, I send them a note confirming their phone number and asking what questions they have for the reading.  In the note I point out that this is to help me prep their soul book and any other documents we might need.  Which is intentionally vague because I don’t know what documents we might need until I see the questions.  Some clients make the totally logical assumption that this has somehow to do with Astrology and the charting process or some other means of getting intuitive information that can help pin point the answers they are looking for.  A large number of psychic readers and mediums request and rely on this information to make a connection with the client so that makes complete sense.  However, it’s not what I’m doing or why I’m requesting the information.

The client, by booking a reading, gives me permission to look at their soul book, the record of all that there is to know about this soul at this current time and even some information about their future as it is unfolding.  But it is also fairly limited to that.  In particular, if the client wants to know about a specific person in their life or why a person acted in a particular way and not in another, what I’m going to find in their book may not answer the question.  What is in a soul book is specific to the soul so it may contain hints about another soul’s motivations for things, it will definitely have details about specific events and a great deal of information as to all the threads that wove into the actions that occurred, but less than complete information about motivations or underlying factors for the other people involved.

So there are times when I go looking elsewhere to figure out the ‘Why?’ of it all.  One is to ask the client’s teacher.  If the person we’re asking about is actually a soul group member, then this teacher is their teacher as well and will have a great deal of insight that they may be willing to share.  I also can request that any guides who work with that individual and are willing to speak with me come before or during the reading to impart further information about the situation.  As for documents, while I don’t have permission to look at another person’s soul book, I do have the ability to pull up contracts.  Contracts are ‘public’ documents stored by the Archivists which detail what we have agreed to/are agreeing to do with another soul and why.  Contracts show both parties information including their motivations, what they agree to do, what they agree not to do, how they agree to do it, what they want to get out of it, etc, etc, etc…  Like a soul book, contracts are living documents and so what I see isn’t a script that is to be followed, but a collection of if/then statements that are affected by free will choices until the contract is complete by both parties.

During readings teachers have brought documents forward for my use such as relationship maps a soul group is using due to a collective goal they created prior to embodiment.  Other times supplementary books are brought in to give more insight into a career, a skill being learned, or an apprenticeship in process.  And these are just a few of the many documents that I have utilized during a reading.

Which is just more evidence that we are not islands, not even when it comes to our soul books.  We are interrelated and interconnected beings on all levels which means that even in the Akashics we are not living in a ‘paperless’ environment. 

One of the things that I find magical about reading people’s soul books in the Akashics is the notes that we leave for ourselves about this lifetime.  It can clarify soooo many things that are going on for us in this time.  Most people look at it as a means to find out where they should be going, but sometimes it is a means to find out that we need to stop going or to do a course correction.  Because sometimes what we think we should be doing and what we actually should be doing are two different things.

For example, using a nail brush to clean under your finger nails after working in the garden is a good thing and having the nail brush is necessary for that.  So at some point either you or someone else had to acquire that tool.  Using that tool to scrub skin in other places on the body, doing it repetitively over a long period of time, can cause damage where none existed.  This is true of healing techniques as well.  Removing armor created through difficult childhood experiences can be a good thing.  Attempting to remove armor that was never created during those childhoods means that the healing techniques are destructive and causing violence and damage to the person looking for healing.

Spiritual and soul healing techniques are not universally good nor are they one size fits all.  Just like a toothbrush is wonderful for many things, only one of which is cleaning teeth, it isn’t great for a whole host of other things and shouldn’t be used for everything in every circumstance.  We learn to use thousands upon thousands of items throughout our lives, performing literally millions of individual and unique tasks.  We should use the discernment we have developed in the physical realm on the spiritual realm as well, learning what the tools/skills/practices are for, learning how they work for us, and then applying them or not as necessary to achieve a goal.

Reading people’s soul books gives me insights on when someone should be looking for their next step or should ‘stop doing and stand there’.  It can point me in the right direction, help fill in the gaps as to why things have happened the way they did and what that means for the person, and then lead me to what would work best as the next step.  Just one more tool in the spiritual tool belt, but one I find infinitely satisfying.

There is magic that happens when you harmonize your thoughts and actions with your dreams.  If you pay attention, while you might at times experience doubt or anxiety or fear or sometimes all three at once, you will notice that over time, and relatively quickly, you will be experiencing excitement, joy, contentment, and a smile that comes out of nowhere and won’t leave.  You may also notice that synchronicities start happening frequently.  Which is a sure sign you are on the right track.

Most people live the life that develops for them over time, accumulating around them like coral building up on a reef making its own organic structure.  Or they live in denial of who they truly are or what they want for one reason or another.  Not wanting to cause a change or lose a relationship, fear that finances won’t be there and life will become a catastrophe, fear of ridicule, of what family will say or do, or just fear of change and the unknown.  And so they live constantly out of sync with themselves and 99% of the time dreaming of what could be and working hard to keep it from happening.  Numbing out with TV or constantly doing something, work alcoholism, drugs, alcohol, revolving relationships, drama real or contrived…all of it keeps people from having to look at who they are and what they could be.

Harmonizing with who you really are is a leap of faith and takes an act of courage.  Even if what you dream of is something that is supported by mainstream culture, it’s difficult to trust that what you truly want is something you can achieve.  It makes us vulnerable, brings what is closest to our heart into the light of the world and makes it visible to others, their judgements, their opinions, their well meaning critiques.  But here’s the thing:  being in harmony with who you are releases you.  It allows you to stop bleeding out all that energy in an attempt to keep things hidden and instead do what makes you happy.  Which takes very little effort at all.  And when you do that, you entrain with all the other beings out there that are doing the same thing.  Which allows for synchronicity.  You get connected with the infinite cause/effect process that is ongoing in the world striving to help all of us become better beings.  And when what we want and what we do comes into harmony, what we ask for makes sense out there in the world and starts happening for us.

So don’t wait for a someday that might never come.  Love yourself enough to stop trying not be you.  Open up to being yourself and let the Universe unfold to you.

The mind is an amazing thing.  We use it to make meaning out of our experiences and then extrapolate from that meaning an understanding of things beyond our experience.  We imagine what could be possible and then set ourselves to discover if that is true, making more meaning, understanding the world just a bit more, and so on and so on.  Entire fields of study and existence are based on this capability:  theology, philosophy, psychology, anthropology…  It’s an amazing and sometimes miraculous capability we take for granted, for the most part.  But its by no means infallible and can lead us down paths that get us into difficult situations.

One that I see quite a bit is the notion that the entire Universe is formed around the symbols of male and female.  This is very prevalent in theology and mythology and also shows up in most other realms where concepts are developed beyond the scope of our experience.  Holy fathers and mothers are created to help us understand and explain the mechanisms of the world around us, gods and goddesses personify aspects our personalities, and all used as a means to understand, to create meaning out of our world where we can’t find it any other way.  And that’s a valid means of exploring the truth of things, but it is also very limiting and can be destructive if carried too far.  For one, even on this planet there are thousands of examples of life forms that do not exist in this duality of male and female.  They don’t reproduce through sexuality in this form and their existence is not predicated on it.  In fact, if we look at everything we know that exists in the Universe (and I’m sure we are woefully ignorant of most of it) very few things live in a sexualized duality that is defined as male and female.  So using our experience of life and extrapolating from it what the rest of the world is like, how it formed, how it exists using that notion of duality and sexuality as the means for creation actually gets in our way of understanding how things actually work.  Because, while it’s not impossible, it’s highly unlikely that the world started because a female existence met a male existence and the rubbed their naughty bits (where did they come from) together or they merged in some existential bliss and the universe came into being.  Too anthropomorphic and too simplistic.  And for me, it really takes the majesty and grandeur and awe out of the whole process.

Similarly, putting so much weight and meaning on being masculine and feminine, which is seemingly just a thought or a concept or a means of talking about things, actually forms and changes the symbols and therefore affects those of us who exemplify them.  The notion that the supreme being of all things is male gives weight and power to all things male.  It changes that role giving it rules and responsibilities which it wouldn’t otherwise have.  And then men are required to live up to it, challenge it, disregard it, fight against it, or succumb to it.  And as men are not a category but a set of unique individuals, each will do some or all of these things throughout their lifetime, none of which is actually necessary as the essence of being male isn’t the thought or concept we place upon it.  Defining masculine as being opposite of  feminine, making arbitrary choices concerning defining characteristics between the two, prevents the masculine form from expressing those things which are natural to it.  If to be creative and nurturing is feminine, then being masculine cannot contain those things, so we are taught.  Therefore a man who is creative and nurturing must be expressing his feminine aspects.  He cannot be expressing those aspects of his masculinity, because those things are not masculine.  Therefore expressing them makes him less of a man than he might otherwise be.

Such dualities, definitions, and symbols limit us.  As much as they have built a structure by which we can understand and make meaning of our world, they also do violence to it by keeping us from a deeper understanding of the truth.  The power in the Divine Masculine, I believe, is now in saying ‘no’ to the old paradigm of what it is to be a man.  For if the old dualities are stripped away, then perhaps we can learn what it is to be masculine, creative, nurturing, strong, and in the end, powerful, without taking anything away from the Divine Feminine.

It is common for people to talk about the Earth, meaning the ecosystem we live in as well as the planet we are on, as our mother.  The metaphors and symbols used include putting things into her, her being the creative resource for all life, things bursting forth from her womb, water being her blood, stone being her bones, needing to be kind and thankful to her for her bounty, momma getting angry and being punishing when we do wrong, on ad on and on.  But it wasn’t always so.

Other cultures see things differently and attribute different qualities to the things around us.  Take the moon and the sun.  Current wisdom has it that the moon is female due to its association with the tides, with monthly cycles, with women’s monthly cycles, which leads to cracks about PMS and craziness and randomness and contrariness, which I find interesting since if the moon’s actions were contrary we’d be having huge problems on this planet of catastrophic proportions depending on how it spun or didn’t or wobbled close or far.  In fact, the moon is fairly stable and easily charted, so the craziness thing…well good luck with that.  I’ll see you on the full moon.  So the sun is therefore masculine, active, providing the life force for things to grow, providing enlightenment and all things motivational.  Without it everything would just sleep and be stagnant.  Hmmmmm….well in my culture we see things the opposite way.  The moon is seen as male and the sun as female.  It’s somewhat like the god and goddess of the celts with the ever present goddess and the sun king who is birthed in spring, comes to full power in summer and then dies in fall.  These are just different ways of seeing the world around us.  Different means of perceiving our world and making meaning out of it.

But those perceptions are not inconsequential.  If the switch the polarities on the moon and the sun, how does that inform our understanding of what it is to be female?  To be male?  If the divine masculine is associated with the moon, with calmness and cooling, with the stead drum beat of the heart that comes with the movement of the moon through the heavens each day/night, if it seeks the sun/female not out of lack, but out of love, then how does that change how men perceive themselves in this physical life? But let’s go even more radical.  Let’s go back to mother earth and flip that on its head as well. And let’s look at where the father is in this.  If Earth is our mother, then who is our father? Which points to a sky father out there of which there are a plethora of myths and religious symbols to choose from.  God the father, Zeus, and Odin are just a few I can think of off the top of my head.  But what if we reversed this?  Well, we’d be in Egypt.

Egyptians saw the Earth as our father and the Universe or sky as our mother.  The Earth was seen, not as the stuff that is impregnated, but the seed of life burgeoning to create and the entire Universe as waiting, as willing, as co creator in life.  Instead of always seeking for a return to the womb, they saw the world as forever in the womb of life, constantly begetting new and wonderous things, constantly creating life.  And the earth was the potential that met with all of this creation bringing life to…everything.  Imagine if the father of everything was not somewhere else judging and forgiving and mandating tasks and lessons, but was us.  Was the Earth from which we came and to which we will return.  What would it be like to be intimately connected with a nurturing father?  What would it be like to be the divine masculine that doesn’t need to strive and conquer and dominate in order to define itself, but instead can be benevolent and in harmony and in connection with everything just because it exists?  What would it be like to be forever suspended in our mother the Universe?  To be the divine feminine that is forever in ecstasy and enraptured by life?

Things can be different.  And we can start by challenging the symbols we use and the metaphors we live.

It’s called an essentialist view when we define women or men based on their biology.  While it is part of the mix of who we are and how we perceive things, if it is seen to determine how we will think or act, if it’s seen as the be all and end all of who and what we are, then it’s essentialist.  Like all women are nurturing and all men tend towards acts of strength and destruction.  The minute you say ‘all’ you are automatically in trouble because there is an exception to most if not all rules and even if there isn’t some fool is going to spend their life trying to find one.  But there are many essentialist definitions of men and women floating around that we have accepted as truth.  And in honoring the divine masculine those are being challenged now on both sides of that fence.

Take for example the notion that men think and act linearly and women spherically.  Which is why we can sometimes have difficulty talking to each other.  Because for women it seems that all the relevant facts and pieces to the puzzle are necessary to reach the end point, which might be just to have someone listen to your reasoning or thoughts.  While for men each conversation is a mission with a beginning, middle, and end.  Therefore if someone is speaking to them it must mean that something needs to be done.  Thus conversation can many times be at cross purposes without either party realizing it.  But is this true, is it essential to our makeups, or is it something we are taught as part of our roles in the old social structure.  Or is it a bit of both and/or neither.

What I find interesting is this nature of linear and spheres or spirals.  People who seek to achieve balance between the sexes, equality and harmony as it were, have sometimes suggested that having each act and try to think like the other would help us gain perspective and the ability to meet in the middle.  But I think this is still very much essentialist.  It seems to presuppose that being male is about being linear and if a woman acts and thinks linearly then she will learn the male perspective and therefore come to an epiphany and live happier ever after.  And vice versa for the man.  It’s too simple a model to actually define or even describe male and female and how we work and interrelate, to my mind.  And I don’t believe that these traits are essential to us.  What’s more, I don’t think we truly know what is essential to us as we haven’t actually explored the options due to the roles and strictures we have lived in for so very long.

So let’s step back from the concepts of linear and spiral and peer into the meaning underneath them.  Being linear is a symbol for being worldly focused.  Doing vs being, and individual actor in the world interacting with other actors in order to create and change on a macro scale.  While being spiral is about bringing things in, creating systems and connectivity, going inward, understanding essence, being welcoming and receptive.  It is about the inward journey vs the outward.  So if we strip the concepts of linear and spiral off these meanings, then hand them back, giving inward to men and outward to women, what symbols emerge?  What concepts are developed?  What is inward when applied to male and what essential aspects will they bring to light?

Part of what I have seen in working with men in this way is that the inward journey isn’t about spirals and about finding the cave, but in structure.  It’s about squares and triangles and creating safe space for all their loved ones to thrive in. And in that way it is about connection, about relationship.  Because the structure isn’t about going out, making a buck, creating status, then coming home to rest up for doing it again, but about creating the place where the family and the community can thrive.  It means building home out of love and sweat and presence and listening.  About men truly seeing the people they love, warts and all, and doing the best they can to support them.  And to support themselves.  Which can be  an even bigger challenge.  Because, just as for women, if there is a problem with cabin pressure while in flight, the air bag will drop and you must first put on YOURS, before helping anyone else.  Because if you’re dead, you’re not much help.

Honoring the divine masculine is about going within and finding out who each man truly is and bringing that forth with courage and honor and vulnerability and excitement.  It means not forcing men to become ‘the wife’ in order to support women’s sovereignty so that they become ‘the husband’.  These roles aren’t necessary, aren’t natural or automatic.  They aren’t genetic and we don’t need to trade genders and keep the bad models of behavior.  Men can soften while we become active and that doesn’t make them less manlike, it makes them more.

It’s simple to categorize all Native American and First Nation peoples as if we are all the same.  And by the same, I mean like the fantasy images of plain tribes people who movies and TV and books and posters and art have created.  Where all of us wear fringed leather (women in white because that’s practical), men with no shirts on if its summer, everyone in highly decorated, beaded items because we always wear our Sunday best (no irony there!) and in full war bonnet finest because every day is a day to be ready to kill someone.  Oh, and don’t get me started on those images of Native American women looking into pools surrounded by baby animals with images of dream catchers, eagles/wolves floating in the air behind them.  And men in war bonnets riding horses raising their arms in battle cries or prayer to the eagle spirit.  Because you’ve got to be s****ing me!

So let’s be clear, those images and most other fantasies created by white western culture are amazingly wrong, if only because they don’t have one ounce of common sense in them. Let alone the issues with colonialism and spiritual tourism…..well, anyway.  Those pictures of what it is to be Native are waaaayyy off base even for the tribes that they could actually be associated with.  Coastal and river tribes never hunted buffalo, tribes in hot country like the south-west weren’t wearing heavy leather unless it snowed, and those of us who lived in the south-east made clothing out of birch bark and grasses before white settlers arrived.  And when we saw calico cloth, which is beautiful and light, easily cleaned and hard wearing, we were all over it.  Which is why at pow wow’s you will see us in what look like prairie dresses rather than buckskin.  Because we never wore buckskin so why would we now? 

Sequoyah (ᏎᏉᏯ) & Cherokee Syllabary

But I digress.  Not all Native American tribes are the same.  Cherokee culture is noted not only for its tradition of being healers, but for our balanced relationship between the sexes.  We strive to honor both men and women for their unique attributes, what they bring to the table, so to speak, but also how they make each other better by joining together.  Men are seen, not as bread winners or dominant decision makers, but as an interlocking piece in the whole which is created in partnership with women.   It means that we look at the Divine Masculine, not just as men are from Mars and so can never be understood.  We support each man in defining for himself what his path is.  We watch him choose how he will fulfill it using the roles and opportunities laid before him as the raw material to create his life as a living work of art which is always in progress.  It means that his life unfolds just as a woman’s does, one moment at a time.  That while he may seek a ‘mission’ or several over a lifetime in order to grow and become, to feel satisfied personally and professionally, to serve a purpose and utilize his gifts for the betterment of all things, he is not judged on doing or not doing so.  And he is not valued solely by what he achieves, but on who he chooses to be in each moment.  Because we are not the things we do, we are who we are with nothing to prove to anyone else besides ourselves and Spirit.

In this 21st century changing paradigm women are being called to turn outward to express themselves and men to turn inward to discover themselves.  Which is exciting for all of us.  Because while it may seem that these paths have already been trod, that women are catching up to men and men are catching up to women, nothing could be further from the truth.  How men have expressed themselves in the world will not be how women do so, although some things will be similar, I’m sure and we will make some of the same mistakes and discover some of the same truths.  And this can also be said for men.  How they walk the inner roads of their own becoming will be uniquely theirs, holding as much truth as our own, but with so many new insights and discoveries it makes me anxious to know what comes next.  I can hardly wait.

Will men’s internal journey be going into the cave and experiencing the spiral of life that begins there?  Seeing the Earth as mother birthing possibility?  Or will it be an experience like the Egyptians where they see the Earth as father, seed the impregnates the Universe?  And what is it like going inward into the seed that ignites the creation of things? What is it like to be enfolded fully in possibility?  What insights and truths and new knowledge will come from this journey?  One that is less like the hero’s journey of the patriarchal myths and more a new/ancient journey the flows outward spherically from the feet of those who walk it?  Hopefully they will tell us or perhaps even show us…

I was in a conversation recently where a peer, out of the blue, stated in ringing tones that men were active beings and women were passive, receptive, emotional, artistic things.  I had to work not to let my jaw drop in public.  Are you kidding me?  In all of my life, I don’t believe anyone would have described me as passive.  I’m an A type personality who has been in management in international corporations and now runs her own business and is a professional author.  Still not passive. I can’t even watch tv without working on my personal art.  And I’m not some exception to the rule.  All the women I know in my life are very active, following their passions, doing the best they can to make ends meet, raise their kids, and get through all the challenges of being adult.  And if you think women are passive, just spend a couple of hours with a mom and her two year old.  Nope, not even possible.

We are not passive and that perspective is out moded and needs to be jettisoned, not because things have changed, but because our understanding of things is changing.  Women are becoming more sovereign in their own lives.  And men aren’t floating around somewhere else while this is happening.  And they aren’t victims of some New Age, Feminazi revolution that is going on.  The paradigm of what it is to be female and to be male is changing.  That’s not to say that our essential natures are changing, but that our understanding of what they are, of our capabilities, of the possibilities is changing.  And as women open up and expand and attempt new things and new ways of being, so men are as well.  Or at least they are trying.

Something that has been showing up in men’s Akashic records over the past decade is a shift away from the rigid roles they have been required to fit. This notion of man as bread winner, as career oriented, as going out from the home and then coming back to it like an emotionless worker ant is falling away.  And a new (ancient) paradigm of what is to be male is beginning to be created.  For centuries we have been told that men are linear, that they go out and come back (very phallic symbology) and that women are home makers, staying in one place, making space for men and family, sending them out and awaiting their return (bowl and pelvis symbology).  It’s very simplistic, but language and symbols can help us create a framework in which we can learn, discuss, create meaning from life.   As long as we’re aware that’s what’s happening and don’t mistake the symbols and the language for reality.

But what if we look at things differently.  What if we change the symbols up to show different aspects of the masculine.  What I see in men’s soul books is much more akin to the Emperor in the Tarot.  That they are being challenged not to leave the home, but to create it.  To create the structure in which women can have safe and nurturing space to create and grow, to unfold into their sovereignty.  It’s not about power over any more than women being home maker was about power.  It’s about being in balance both external/creative and internal/present so that women and children have full access to what it is that is essentially male.  It is such a gift to know that the male in our life is paying attention, even when no action is needed.  That they are able to participate in the events of the family, that they can add their wisdom to family and community life.  That the mission is not to be on a mission, but to be there, available, accessible, and comfortable with the feeling of building it as you go along.

It’s not about ‘getting in touch with your inner female’ as much as getting in touch with being male.  It’s not about being softer, it’s about being here and not constantly trying to get somewhere else or solve something.  Many times there’s nothing to solve except the long term mission of being part of the family/community.  So if women are creating new ways of being in the 21st century, so are men.  And we need to honor them and their work and their courage just as much.

For decades it has been portrayed to us that women becoming empowered, becoming equal, becoming ‘non-traditional’ was somehow challenging to men, ‘us vs. them’, and a new facet of the War of the Sexes.  Because there is a finite amount of power in the world and if women had some, then men couldn’t have it.  Blah de blah….

Also, for centuries we have been taught that the male perspective is universal, it is relevant equally to men and women, and that things specific to women are less than, a minority point of view, and a special interest not something that can be seen as universally relevant.  I didn’t realize how pervasive this was until I was talking with a coworker about a degree I was taking in Women’s Spirituality.  He was curious about what that meant and as I was explaining he nodded along, following the concepts I was discussing.  And then he stated that it would be easier for us since we could build on the classic texts, concepts, and theories that had already been created throughout time.  And I just looked at him, then asked “Why would we?  Those are all from a male perspective and there’s no reason to start from the assumption that they are relevant at all.”  The shock on his face was cartoon classic.  And it became clear to me how much we have accepted that male perspectives are everyone’s perspectives.

This is not to say that they aren’t relevant.  They are. And that’s where perhaps my Native background informs my understanding of things.  Because in my culture we see men and women as coequal partners in life, both needing the other in order for their to be not only harmony, but beauty in relationship, in the community and in the world.  And just to be clear, this isn’t about heterosexual relationship to the exclusion of all else.  All gender expressions are included and seen as variations of harmony and wholeness.  LGBT people are considered more in balance or achieving balance in themselves between the masculine and the feminine and are therefore honored for their experience and their wisdom.

So, if both masculine and feminine are intertwined and support each other, then women becoming more sovereign and empowered in life doesn’t take away from men, it challenges them to become more as well.  It’s not about power, but about becoming for fully and wholly your self.  For men, what I am seeing that it is about the challenge of being masculine without the structure and roles that defined masculinity.  It’s about creating a structure within which women can be sovereign, can live a fully creative and impassioned life. It’s about being the support structure for that relationship without giving up their own sovereignty.  It’s about being a coequal partner.  It’s about ‘don’t just do something, stand there’ and what it means to be there for your partner for your kids for your family without having a mission other than to be there.  It’s about being able to not only show what it is to be a man, but to be able to talk about it openly even if the answer is “I don’t know”.  Just the fact that you are there to be asked is an amazing feat.  That you have created a space where it’s ok to ask you something is even better.  That you have created a relationship where you can be asked the big questions and it’s not an event of monumental proportions but just a part of being part of their lives, that’s a goal worth striving for.

So while we focus on women and supporting them in achieving their own sovereignty , it’s worth remembering that men are part of that equation.  An important part.  And it’s not about defeating them or beating them or becoming them.  It’s about acknowledging their divinity as much as hours and working together to make harmony and beauty and a better world.

It may seem like a mystery to you now, but before you came into this embodied life you preplanned what you wanted to do and be and achieve this time around.  In fact, you worked long and hard to map things out. Does that mean that everything is predestined and can be seen laid out before you?  Nope.  We are not meat puppets…well actors are, but that another discussion for another day…and our higher selves or teachers or Akashic masters are not pulling our strings.  We have free will and so can make choices, take chances, make mistakes, go in completely new and uncharted ways in each moment.  That’s why all the preplanning!

We know that to experience this lifetime fully we need to compartmentalize our knowledge of how the universe actually works and how often we’ve done this and who we truly are when we’re home in the Akashics. And that’s part of the body’s job.  It helps us forget so we can focus on this now…and this one..and now this one…  And because of that forgetting, we forgot the master plan for what we want to do this time around.  So the preplanning we do is not like a bullet list of todo items or a power point presentation of the best case scenarios for living our life (although death by power point could be one of the scenarios we have preplanned, ironically.)  It is a complex, infinitely detailed plan that has contingency plans for its contingency plans to cover every scenario we might dream up or bump into so that the important bits, the achieving our dreams, learning our personal lessons, doing our service work, meeting our partner, having our kids….all of these things happen (hopefully) regardless of the choices we make on how we get there.

So is it helpful to look at your soul book?  Yes, absolutely.  Because you can refresh your memory on why you’re here and what you actually wanted to do.  You can confirm what you have always know in the back of your mind, in your gut, with  your intuition, in those persistent dreams, that you should be doing this thing which seems perfect and yet completely alternative and illogical and joyfully right.  It can also point out where your stuck, why you tend to stick there, and what you can do to get unstuck.  It can point you to the best of many options, give you hope for something you want to see happen in the future, and help you see that you are unique and perfect and just the way you ought to be right now.  And that’s something we need to be reminded of every once in a while…or every day….how about right now…

There are a lot of practitioners out there who work with a technique or a practice and have been doing so for years.  Soul healers, massage therapists, acupuncturists, aura readers, tarot readers, you name it, there are people out there practicing it.  And that’s a very good thing.  Because all of these skills and perspectives are ancient means of keeping us healthy and helping us live or lives to the best of our ability.  Some are like vitamins we should take on a regular basis to prevent problems from occurring and others are best used as remedies when problems occur.

But having one tool or a few tools in the tool kit is no longer what is called for.  More and more people are realizing that to live a healthy and balanced life they need a bit of all of these things at various times and they don’t have the time or the inclination to find a different practitioner each time they need something.  And, as most of us have found out through working with Western Medicine, dealing with GPs and specialists of all sorts causes confusion in diagnosis, lost records, conflicting prescriptions and a many headed hydra response to issues which are not separate at all, in reality, but just various symptoms of one over all or underlying problem.

At the same time, practitioners are finding that what they have been doing for these many years is no longer working.  Either their business is dwindling as clients are no longer drawn to them or they are no longer interested in doing the work.  More and more I hear from my peers about this nagging feeling they have that they need to change what they are doing, maybe get out of the business all together, but they have no idea what to do now.  And in working with them, it has become clear that this is not a signal that their work is over, but instead that their work has just begun.  They just need to go deeper.

It is time to move away from specialization as we have understood it and to move even more closely towards holistic healing.  To be equally conversant in the body, the soul, the mind and the heart.  To be a life coach/counselor as well as a physical therapist.  To read tarot after using Ayurveda to determine the nature of the issues the client is having, rather than what they perceive.  To use yoga to help people contact their core, then have them create art to express what they have found.  Just to point out a few examples of what is out there.  People need to go deeper, to experience more profoundly who they truly are, and even more, to learn how to bring that knowledge into their daily lives and begin living an authentic life.  Practitioners and white lighters are being called to more fully explore their service work, their abilities, their own selves and expand their practice into more dimensions of being.  It’s time to see what’s next, to go deeper into our selves and see who we become.

We are social animals.  We relate to each other in such a variety of ways that we create categories of relationship just to be able to sort through them, much in the way we use the word ‘chair’ to define an infinite array of seating options.  And as much as we work to define relationships as above, beyond, or outside of the physical realm we do so by referencing the physical nature of relationships.  Because geography, time, experience, and the details of our physical bodies are integral parts of who we are and what we’re doing here.  They may not be the primary facts, but they are definitely in the mix.

So when a person we are connected to leaves this physical life, it can feel like the relationship is at an end.  Because they are no longer here.  They are no longer physical and will not be able to interact with us here in the physical.  And its true.  They are no longer here.  But that doesn’t mean the relationship is at an end.  Just as they are going through a liminal moment of transition, so is our connection to them.  And as with all relationships, when the connection changes between two or more people, the people change as well.   That is a significant part of the grieving process.  Like the dragonfly emerging from the water, we are transformed by the changing of our relationships with the person who is no longer with us.  We have lost what the relationship once was and we work through what the relationship can now be.

Memorials are one way in which we attempt to continue our connection with those who are gone.  They are a conversation between us, expressing our love, our gratitude, our loss, and our pledge to remember and continue to be in relationship.  What is difficult to realize is that those who are gone wish to continue to be connected with us as well.  Part of that difficulty is caused by time.  When we end this physical life and return home, we spend time alone with our teacher reviewing the life we have left, turning experiences into lessons, embodying those lessons and converting them to wisdom.  During this time we are unavailable to interact with others both at home in the Akashics and those who remain embodied.  It can feel as if we are truly gone.  By the time we have completed this process, those we love have often moved on, closing off the connections between us in order to heal and ‘move on’ with their lives.

This is natural, but prevents the ongoing connection that is possible.  Those we love, who love us, don’t stop loving us because they have returned home.  Nor do they stop wanting to support us and nurture us or just give us a smile on a down day.  The connection continues because, in the end, we are immortal.  So, when time has passed, when the grieving is done and colors return to the world around you, open your heart to memories of what has been.  You might start to notice synchronicities, flashes of insight, or just a warm feeling when you least expect it.  Because the connection continues…

Yes, I’ve done it.  I realized that after over 2 years and almost 600 posts on the blog, it would be practically impossible for all but the most intrepid spelunkers to find the Akashic posts they are looking for.  So I’ve collected them all in one place.

In here you’ll find information about past lives and how to work with them, about soul books, what they contain and the mysteries they can unravel, the nature of souls and how they interact including information about soul groups and soul mates, and…of course….there is information about the Akashics from introductory material explaining what it is to advanced details about what lies beyond the Akashic Library and Akashic Records.

And it’s all FREE to you.  You can sign up here to receive your free download.

There is so much focus on the Akashic Library and on Akashic records that people usually have no idea that there are other places in the Akashics to explore.  Most people who even know that the Akashics exist are looking for answers about themselves, about situations, about things that they want.  They want answers to what matters most to them, what is holding them back or keeping them from sleeping at night. Or they just want to know if Bobby or Sally is their soul mate.  Admit it, we’ve all been there. 

Cherry Tree Swing, Japan

But there are so many other ways to explore who you are, to learn from the Akashics.  Soul books and Akashic records are a left brain, logical, directed way in which to learn about yourself.  Great for information, not so much for holistic learning or becoming.  For that you have to wander farther afield.  I find myself smiling when I listen to my peers talk about their favorite places to go in the Akashics when they are doing their own personal work.  One goes to a huge tree swing and just swings like she’s a little kid again. All the worries and the stress and the ‘have-to’s’ drop away and she’s free and flying in her perfect place.  Others go to what I call the dolphin room.  It’s a building in the Akashic city that is made of white stone pillars and an arched ceiling.  In between the pillars it’s all clear glass windows floor to ceiling and the rooms are 3 stories tall.  The dolphin room has no furniture, but in the floor are multiple pools, like swimming pools.  The water is clear and blue and always in movement because the pools are connected to water ways and influenced by the tides and by those creatures who swim in them.  Dolphins are able to visit the city through these waterways and come into the room to interact with other beings.  It’s a beautiful and peaceful and fun to go swimming during the heat of the day.

I personally enjoy going to the fields of opportunity.  Each area is a different plant and I like to wander through them smelling the scents on the breeze, feeling the tips of wheat or the petals of poppies against my palms as I walk.  There is a garden maze with a great many surprises in it, the lake where people congregate to enjoy the water and the sun, and the primeval forest full of the breath of trees and the silence that is not silent.

Experiencing these places is one way to learn about yourself, but even more, being open to explore them calls teachers, guides and the learned to talk with you, support you, and guide you in that experience.  Because our becoming benefits everyone and who doesn’t want to share in having fun.

There are times when we wonder who we can depend on in a given situation.  If we need a certain someone to do a certain something, can we depend on them to do it?  Even if they say they will?  If we go through the hoops that a company or organization says we need to, will they follow through and do what they have agreed to do or what they say they will in their PR?  Do we have anyone in our life we can depend on just to be there? Sometimes the world feels like a lonely place.

We should be able to depend on ourselves, but here’s the rub.  Many of us are dependable in a negative way.  We feel we can be depended on to screw up, to give in to fear, to do exactly the wrong thing, to never quite fit in, to not be smart enough, fast enough, good looking enough to do what we need to get done.  Which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because if that’s what we believe, then we act on those beliefs.  We either do those things or we avoid situations where we might do them.  And so we never even try to find out if what we believe is wrong.

So let today be the day when you become your best advocate and the one person you know you can depend on when all else fails.  You don’t need to be a superhero, just someone you can depend on to try their best.  You don’t have to be ‘successful’ just available to laugh at the small stuff and to remind you that it’s all small stuff.  You don’t need to be a super model, just the best cheerleader out their for your home team, which is you.  You can look in the mirror and see someone who sets good boundaries, chooses to act authentically, love honestly, and seek out your dreams.  And each time you act that way you can depend on yourself to say “great job”.    With that kind of support, it doesn’t matter how many mistakes or setbacks you have in life, because you will already have succeeded in life.

When I give a reading for a new client I begin by looking at their physicality. This sometimes surprises clients and I have found that there are a couple of reasons for this.  One is that the soft and hard sciences have worked very hard to see the body as a machine with various parts and functions which interact but are independent of each other and so can malfunction and be treated or replaced. All of which is separate from our emotions and from our mind and thought.  The other comes from various religions and spiritualities which emphasize the concept that this body is transitory and the soul is immortal therefore the body is irrelevant to the soul and its operation.

Coming from a culture and spirituality which values holistic healing and holistic approaches to life, I’m biased away from these understandings of things. However, even more relevant is the reality I find in readings and in working with people in regular life and that is that the body is not separate from the soul nor an ill-fitting meat suit that we put on and take off at will.  We choose to come into each embodied life and we preplan in enormous detail what that life will look like and all the events in it that we possibly can (free will is the wild card that makes life unpredictable and magical) and that includes the body.  We pick the family, the sex, the body that we will come into as much as that is possible and we pick it because it best matches who we are, who we want to become, and the lessons/challenges/joys we wish to work through this time around.

Bodies are our interface with the world around us on all levels of being.  So they influence the soul just as much as the soul influences them.  They are not a barrier to experiencing who we truly are, they are great communicator of where we are at, what we are working through, and what we need to do as the next step to getting there.  They help and support us in this, signal when we are off course, open the gates wide when we are on it and reflect who we are in any given moment, which has nothing to do with societal norms of beauty or health or fitness or appropriateness.  So when I want to learn about a person’s path and where they are at in embodying it (notice the body part of that word) I look at their physical self.  It’s like looking at a light bulb to see how dim or bright it is.  And what a person is working through shows like paint against the light bulb.  And there is wealth of information in where and how it shows which tells me more than just asking a bunch of questions of the client.

One reason I do this is purely practical.  Soul books are immense and contain everything there is to know about a soul.  I could wade for weeks through a soul book and not find a particular answer I’m looking for.  And I only have an hour with the client.  So knowing where they are on their path, what they are working on, helps me narrow down where I’m looking and what I’m looking for.  The other is for the client.  Most want to know if they are on the right path.  They want validation of their instincts, their choices, and their ability to be happy and fulfilled.  I can and will find that information for them in their book, but for the most part that will be emotional and mental and will possibly lead them into deeper soul connection.  Getting that information from their body puts them in better harmony with it all, gives them validation that their body isn’t against them or trying to sabotage them.  It helps them see that their body is an ally and is congruent with a spiritual life.

Why would we choose to live embodied lives full of struggle and pain and failure and mistakes and inevitable death?  Why would we choose to come be in bodies and lifetimes full of sorry and regret?  Why keep ourselves on a continuous wheel full of negative experiences and punishment?  Well, there is no one reason why we enter into any given life, but the over arching reason why we enter into embodied lives is to feel.

I like coming into a body like condensing vapor into liquid.  Souls have no form or, more to the point, they have the potentiality for all forms.  Souls communicate telempathically with each other and so everyone feels what the other feels, has the same thought at the time that someone thinks it, and lives the experience at the same moment that another soul is experiencing it.  And that is going on all around us in every second.  Which causes two things to influence our communications and our experiences and our thoughts.  One, we are conscious that we effect others and so we try to minimize impact on others through modulating our behaviors. Just like having an indoor voice when being around other people, it doesn’t change our message, our ability to live our lives, it just modulates it in order to be courteous to others and make social interactions more conducive to positive connection.  The other thing that happens is that through this modulation and social interaction we learn to be more than we are, interconnected and so a great deal more socially aware of each other and ourselves.  We become considerate citizens of a broader community working for the betterment of everyone because it is literally true that the betterment of one member of the community makes me a better person.  Because I can feel their feelings, have their thoughts and experience their lives.

But what that also does is slow down our own learning process, our own becoming.  Because becoming involves so many others and we move carefully and interconnectedly.  Also, it keeps us a bit distant from our individual selves since there are very few times or means of becoming isolated, separate, or alone.

Embodied lives take who we are and condenses it.  We are no longer spread out throughout the community, but are truly, purely, 100% just us.  And everything becomes immediate and sensual and completely foreign.  No more direct input from others.  No more guidance and communal voice urging us on or cautioning us.  No benign censorship of what we think or feel or do.  Anything is possible and we are responsible for our own actions and the consequences.  Learning and becoming accelerate because of this.  What might take millennia as a soul can take only a lifetime or even just a few years to accomplish in a body.  So many aspects of self can be experienced and explored, some that we might not have any chance to play out as a soul.  And as we learn as much or more from negative experiences and negative emotions, from mistakes and failures, as we do from success, being embodied is the perfect place to learn and grow and become for those who are willing to take on the challenge.

You are experiencing one of the most difficult things a soul can do.  You are learning you. You are becoming more of who you can truly be hour by hour.  Past lives can show you how you did it before, give you perspective on how to do it better this time, and give you courage to follow your personal path and your dreams.  Because there is no reason why not to.  The only thing holding you back is you.

I find it interesting to look at past lives to see how the individual soul works with the roles of male and female.  Mostly I’m looking at the past few millenia as there are so many lives in any one soul book that there’s no real reason to go back that far unless there is something specific to the person’s current life or to a question they are posing. Which means that being male or being female have highly structured definitions and boundaries which we put on when we become embodied.  And that can seem like a straight jacket keeping us too tightly bound or it can feel like a support helping us to become at a much greater and safer rate.

What interests me is the variety of ways in which we interpret and experience these roles, choosing to subvert them, fully embrace them, rebel against them, immerse ourselves in them, or utilize them for our own ends.  Each past life weaves these choices into the fabric of that creates the foundation of that narrative.  Being female in the 40′s and learning about empowerment through factory work to support the troops.  Being male in the Middle East during the lifetime of Mohammed and choosing to leave the old tribal ways behind for a new type of community…or not.  Being female in Ireland during the potato famine.  Being male in Germany during the Roman invasion.

Each choice, each role we take on is planned not only to participate in the times, but to explore our own natures, to wear the role and make it our own, to find out about this aspect of ourselves, to fully and completely embody what it is to be male or to be female.  And in all my experience I have found no soul that has been only one or the other.  We all take on both rolls at times. And at times we blur the lines between them. Because our true nature is neither one nor the other.  It is both and neither for the distinctions do not apply to souls.  It is a gift to be able to split our nature into these two essential parts.  It allows us to combine them in a multiplicity of ways too enormous to fathom.

Looking at our past lives allows us to see all that we have learned about what it is to be male, to be female, and points out all that we have yet to learn.  Remembering this wisdom can help us be better at it this time around.

We’ve all heard about life not being perfect and about needing to fail multiple times in order to succeed and that everyone makes mistakes.  And all of this is true.  And it applies in the macro as well as the micro.  Our past lives are a record of our successes and our failures.  And guaranteed, in order to be as successful in life as we are now (I know, it doesn’t feel like it, but trust me, you are) we have failed…spectacularly…a lot.

Want to succeed in business and be a sea captain with a merchant fleet, you end of shipwrecked with a crew that is out of meat and is looking at you as lunch.  Want to have a large family and you choose to be a missionary and unfortunately your children all die of various diseases and injuries.  Want to help the poor and end up dying in a political uprising.  Want to have power so you come into the world as a guy and a Viking and end up lonely and alone on a decimated stretch of land with nothing to come home to.

We don’t always succeed.  And it can be shocking to see the outcomes of lives where we didn’t.  Sometimes those outcomes are out of our control like dying of a disease you caught because you were living with missionary parents.  Sometimes they very much are like being a crappy ship’s captain and therefore becoming what’s on the menu when someone has to be the entre.  We don’t think of ourselves as being those people because we aren’t them any more.  We’ve learned from those events, we’ve grown and become and are now working on new lessons.  And in this industrialized world where a great many of us do not live in situations where our lives are endanger regularly or in jobs which are dangerous to our health, it is an even bigger shock to our system to come face to face with our history which shows at one time we were and we did.

Past lives can be educational in many different ways.  Hopefully one of the best things they can teach us is to be grateful for who we are now.  We’ve worked very hard to get here and we are amazing.  Cut yourself some slack today.  You’ve earned it. 

People remember living lives before this one.  Whether they are fabricating those memories, conflating stories they heard in childhood with memory, or if these are actually memories, the fact is that they are happening.  The way in which they do so fall into two general categories:  spontaneously as part of childhood development or as a retrieved memory in adulthood.  There are scientists who are dedicating their careers to studying children who self report and I find the criteria they use to try to make the process as scientific as possible and to make the results as verifiable just as fascinating as the results they continue to publish.

However, I don’t work with children and so my experience is with adults and trying to help them navigate the world, which includes helping them make sense of past life information.  Some people remember flashes of past lives on their own.  Like remembering something you forgot from years before, these memories feel familiar and connected and yet are a bit abstract and disconcerting since they don’t seem to apply to the here and now.  Others are frustrated with or somewhat hampered in life by phobias or habits which have no seeming cause in this lifetime and yet their effect is far reaching.  We all seek meaning out of our experiences and even more so when the experience is coming from within us.  And still others seek healing for physical or mental difficulties that are debilitating and find hypnotic regressing can allow them to bypass mental blocks to help them work with whatever within them is aiding and abetting the problem.

I take my grain of salt dose when I listen to practitioners claim that past life regression is a magic cure all for people’s woes and their accounts of miraculous healings.  No one thing is a magic wand for all hurts.  Aspirin is an amazing healing tool, but it won’t stop the bleeding when you get stabbed.  Life is complex and we are quite able to navigate that complexity mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually.  So while I’m sure that past life regression heals some, it’s not magic.

Just as in this current life, experiences impact and change us.  And yay!  Because if they didn’t we wouldn’t grow or become or create.  We’d just be static, stagnant things with no purpose.  Interaction, experience, change are all integral components of life.  And each experience helps us create who we are, our identity, and therefore influences our current choices.  They don’t control them or determine them, but they do have an influence.  They are part of the perspective we hold on things and the lens through which we see the world around us.  So past lives do influence our current life.  However, rarely see where something from a past life has ‘leaked’ into a current life by accident.  We do a tremendous amount of preplanning before we enter into an embodied life and so it is rare that we would manage to bring with us something random from a previous life.

What I see most often is that our past lives have themes to them, things we are working on, skills we are developing, personality traits we are supporting or correcting, and challenges we are working through.  To accomplish this we utilize various aspects of our previous experiences in a variety of ways, like weaving or braiding hair, we take strands from one life and strands from another and weave them into the complexity of this life in order to set up the right mix of circumstances, behaviors and choices in order for us to learn and grow and become.  Phobias are one way in which to accomplish this.  It’s never as simple as “I don’t want to jump off of high places to my death” or “I was strangled in as past life therefore I don’t like turtlenecks.”  These phobias are usually symbols, densely packed messages to the self that over time we are to unfold and work with.

Past lives affect us in a great many ways because once a bell is rung it cannot be unrung.  What has happened to us previously helps form who we are today.  But what shape we take and what choices we make are not predetermined.  We are not a victim of our pasts.  And the remains of past lives don’t linger waiting to trip us up nor are they like toilet paper stuck to our shoe, a forgotten and overlooked piece of trash to be removed and disposed of and causing us embarrassment.  They are a part of us and valuable for the lessons they have taught us and what we have become because of them.  If you have brought some aspects of them with you this time, think of this as a note from a previous self to be read by the you that you are now.  What is it you are trying to tell yourself?

Some people think of past lives as evidence that life is somewhat like living on the eternal and universal playground where a bully is forever grabbing their wrist and hitting them with their own hand while chanting “Why’re you hitting yourself?  Why’re you hitting yourself?”  Others think of past lives as an ongoing class with a punitive teacher who assigns difficult or impossible tasks, and then punishes them for not being perfect at them by submitting them to ridicule, making them suffer endlessly, making them repeat the project over and over again until they achieve the end result with perfect technique.

Both of these perspectives place people in the subordinate role of student with an authority or beings of power controlling the situation. Underlying these notions is the ideas that people are powerless, are victims, and that the system must be escaped somehow or that someone other than people need to intervene in order to rectify such negative experiences.  Some people feel that with enough time in they will graduate from the incarnation process and move on to a better place.  Others feel that there is some practice, some state of being or some way of life that will help them escape all together.

While I understand where these ideas come from, I find none of them validated in people’s Soul Books or in their Past Life records.  What I have found recorded over and over again is the fact that no one is required to live an embodied life.  It is a choice that we enter into freely each time we embody.  And each life we undertake is a choice we make after a huge amount of research, self reflection and evaluation, preplanning, and preparation.  The wild cards in the mix are the fact that we forget who we truly are while we are here in order to focus on this life exclusively and free will.  All beings have it and everyone is free willing every second of their lives so random happens and that is part of the mystery and the amazingness of life.

Looking at people’s past lives is fascinating not only because of the variety of them, but because of the choices made prior to their start and while they are being lived.  Actions and reactions, choices of careers, of circumstances, of relationships, of opportunities and what we do with those choices or whether we choose to make them at all makes each one a work of art that can be noir or stark or resplendent or sepia or just a wash of color and feeling.  We aren’t completely in control of everything, because we are just one part of the interconnected web of things, but we are not entirely victims of some punitive God who delights in our suffering.  Past lives can show us the choices we have made and help us understand more clearly who we are and what potential we have for this lifetime.

There are quite a few notions swirling around out there about past lives, what they mean, why we have them, and what we do about them. And there are a great many people out there trying to provide understanding and support, mostly by, unfortunately, claiming that they know a secret, an ancient practice, have communication with someone/something, or have the one true way to work with past lives.  All of which I take with scepticism and a grain of salt as big as the one I use when dealing with any religion or belief that claims to have the one true way and all the answers.  As the only thing I know for sure is that I might be wrong, I try to keep an open mind, but I personally have difficulty sifting out the message from the messenger at times and I find that the message gets tainted in all the sparkles and mystery that it hides behind.

There are good people out there working to figure things out.  You can usually tell that someone is at least on the right track when they talk about everything but themselves or their patented techniques, when they focus on the people, on the practical, on results, and that they don’t have all the answers.  I like open ended processes because it allows us to continue to explore and find out what it is that we don’t know.

There are many reasons for being interested in past lives.  Some children remember their most recent past life and pull those memories into their consciousness so they retain them this time around instead of forgetting them in early childhood.  It’s interesting to know why, mostly if the memories bother the child.  If someone has persistent dreams about another person or an event that seem to be from another time period that are bothersome or just causing curiosity.  If someone has a phobia or ongoing fear or attraction to something that seems completely disconnected from everything else in this lifetime (not so much a general fear of spiders, for instance, but more like a deep seated all consuming fear of being gored by a bull even though you’ve never been near one nor ever gone to Spain and seen a bull fight.)  Or going to a place that you’ve never been to before (verified by parents and siblings) and feeling that you know it completely and have been there before. Usually accompanied by feelings of complete comfort and a sense of home or fear and loathing.

Just as no one reason brings you to an interest in your past lives or past lives in general, so no one means of accessing them will work in every situation to get you the information you need.  Finding the relevant person or process to get at the crux of the matter, the why of the situation, can be a process of trial and error.  You should approach it like car shopping.  You know some of what you want and what price you are willing to pay, but then you have to either get online or actually go to a place and look around. You should check the CarFax, look under the hood, give it a test drive and decide if this is the right car for you.  Don’t just buy whatever car you find when you start looking.  If the information is to be relevant to you, then the means by which you acquire it should be too.

Having worked with soul books and the Akashic records for so long, I sometimes forget that people are taught by various religions that we only get one lifetime.  Which may be true, but from what I see in people’s soul books, this is not the case.  Clients ask me if I can find ‘a past life’ for them.  And yes, yes I can.  In fact, most soul books have so many listed that it takes up over half of the entire book.  I sometimes have difficulty sorting through all of them to find something that matches what they are looking for.  Because we all want to be relevant and important and seen, even if it’s in a life that happened before we were born this time around.

Did you live in Egypt?

People want to know they were famous or important in some way and usually think of that as within the past couple of hundred years or in a variety of cool cultures and time periods that they were taught about in school.  Egyptian is a past life favorite, Roman is another, Native American is high on the list for  US/Europe/Canada, and Celtic is coming into favor.  Irish during the potato famine is not even thought of, classical Greek culture makes people a bit squeamish, and Christian during the time of Christ is problematic on a great many levels.  You can’t say you were Christ in a past life because you’ll be put in a mental institution or at least be put on severe meds. Besides, it’s been done folks.  It’s not even a Facebook meme at this point. And the Christians had this whole persecution thing and seem to have been dirty and poor and hunted….martydom is great in theory, but not as fun to relive.

What I find interesting about people’s past lives are not the individual lives, the most of which are mundane from a ‘famous person’ standpoint, but the themes or lessons or methodology that appear when they are viewed together. In reading people’s soul books, what I see is some people choose to embody as male when doing research or working on a project such as being an explorer or a scientist or a merchant that travels.  They live solitary lives this way over and over, not to learn a lesson, but to learn more about how the world works and how humans work within it.  Like PhD research.  Pauses between these lives are large.  Others choose to embody as couples over and over again because they work best as a team and part of their work is to provide loving stable homes for other beings to grow in, creating a platform for those beings to start their journey’s earlier than otherwise possible.  Still others go through life after life working through personal issues such as learning that sovereignty doesn’t require power over another and that power doesn’t empower individuals necessarily.  This can be seen in life after life, switching back and forth from male to female, from powerful to disempowered, to lives where sovereignty is available if effort is extended.

We all have past lives and they are amazing stories not only of unique events that have helped form us, but of choices about who we wish to be and who we choose to become.  They aren’t necessarily dramatic stories of grand success or utter failure, but of the best parts of our selves.  Those parts who try when it would be easier to just sit back.

Not everyone likes dealing with confrontation.  Ok, people who actually like debate team, politicians, upper management of corporations, yadda yadda, those people do like it and therefore seek out ways to participate in it.  But for the most part people don’t like it and try to avoid it.  We associate it with uncomfortable conversations, unpleasant interactions, anger and sometimes violence.  We feel that it never ends well and that it’s better that it not happen and if it does happen we end it as quickly as possible.

Which is one reason people struggle so much to find their voice, to be authentic, to live their true life.  Because we’ve associated confrontation with negativity and negative outcome entirely instead of seeing it as a positive and necessary component of being alive.  Because confrontation isn’t necessarily negative.  It’s one piece of creating identity, of setting boundaries, of creating a life that supports us and helps us to become our true selves.  It starts from that moment in our very young lives when we learned to say “No”.   Any parent will remember that phase.  It’s an assertion of our unique perspective on things which we, at first, wield indiscriminately.  Everything becomes “no” even if we want it.  It’s the only word we use for weeks and months at a time.  It is the first experience of sovereignty and personal empowerment we get in this life.  And it’s confrontational.

It’s helpful in adult life to remember that time when “no” was freedom and empowerment.  When ‘no’ helped us create ourselves.  It wasn’t negative, it didn’t kill our relationships with our parent/sibling/friend/relative and it didn’t end life as we know it.  Which is key.  When someone confronts us or when we need to confront someone else, it’s most likely not the end of the world, even though it might be scary, it might be dramatic, it might be freighted with importance and it might change everything.  It’s a blessing because it helps us see a facet of who the other person is (either their true self or the fact that they aren’t acting from their true nature which is just as valuable to know) and allows us to act from our true nature and show that to them.

If the situation is dangerous in some way, physically, mentally abusive, etc, then ‘stop/drop/roll’ and get to safety.  But for the average, everyday confrontations of life, remember that feeling of saying “no” and meaning it.  You still have that power. Of course, you can always use the “imagine them in their underwear” trick as well.  It could leave you with imagery that scars you for life, bit it could release enough of the stress that you’re able to get your point across successfully.

Something I hear from clients and friends and family is “I can’t ‘do some kind of skill or activity’ so I’m just giving up.  I’ll never ‘whatever it is’.”  And on the one hand I can understand.  Boundaries and appropriate expectations are good to have.  I’m pretty sure I won’t be an astronaut in this lifetime so it’s probably a good thing that I don’t have my hopes set on it and I’m not expending a huge amount of energy to achieve this goal.  However, I’ve come to that conclusion due to a couple of things. One, I have no interest in becoming an astronaut.  Two, I repeatedly do things that would prevent me from becoming one.  Three, I have spent decades doing those things so it seems that I enjoy them or am working through them and they are more important that becoming an astronaut, which is not one time thing, but a lifetime commitment.

On the other hand, when people say these things to me, it’s usually not because they don’t want to do them.  Quite the opposite.  They very much want to be able to do them, do them in a certain way, and get a specific result from them.  And for one or many reasons they haven’t been able to do so.  They are therefore in the process of creating an identity that says “I am not that”.  I’m not a smart person, I’m not a high achiever, I’m not going to make a difference in this world, I’m not going to have a circle of friends and family that I can count on, I’m not going to be seen for who I truly am…on and on and on. So they don’t have my number one issue.  But they may have my number two or number three issue or both.  And from that they are creating a boundary that says that they can never achieve what they want.

The thing is, never doesn’t actually exist.  It’s a fantasy word we use to make a point when we are communicating.  So if never is not an option that is on the table then ‘possibly’ and ‘maybe’ come into play.  What I point to most often is:  what you are experiencing today is just one moment in time.  It influences but does not control what will happen in the next moment or the next.  No person is doomed to miss out on their dream or want just because they haven’t had it before and don’t have it now and have failed to achieve it in past attempts.  Those attempts have taught you not only what not to do again, but given you insight on what to do next to get that one step further.   Perhaps you need to start with smaller steps.  Perhaps you need to heal or prep or learn some key component before you can move forward.  Perhaps you need to reevaluate the specifics of the goal you have st.  It might be that you can achieve it in a different way, through different means, that fit better with who you are.

Who we are is not set in stone.  That’s part of the magic in life.  Past experiences and current states influence but don’t dictate what will happen in the future.  This is just one moment in time.  The next one is full of possibility.  And one possibility is you moving closer to being able to live your dreams.

Western culture has taught us that spirituality, religion, belief, faith is something that is separate from daily experience.  There is secular life and then there is spiritual life.  And those who merge the two are notable for their ‘difference.’  Clergy of all faiths, those who dedicate themselves to a cause or way of living are the exceptions that prove the rule.

So it comes as a surprise to people who I start each reading by looking at my client’s physical presence.  Because they think that the Akashics is somewhere else divorced from them and the ‘real world’ and that I’m going to do some mystical magic trick to find information about themselves.  The truth is that the soul isn’t separate from the body.  The body is not a meat car our soul is driving at the moment.  It’s an integral and integrated part of who we are in this moment and it is connected to our minds, our emotions, and our soul.  So what is going on with us spiritually is reflected in our bodies, in our thoughts, in our emotions, and in our lives and vice versa.  Looking at a persons physical body tells me volumes about who they are, what their spiritual path is, and what they are working on or working through at that moment.  And that’s very helpful when I go to read their book in the Akashics, because each book is like an Encyclopedia for the soul and that’s a lot of information to try to scan through to find the answers we’re looking for.  It’s nice to be able to narrow the field a bit.

But knowing that, knowing that the spiritual is here in our bodies, that there truly is nothing secular about life at all, that all of our actions are sacred choices makes life funny at times (choosing from Fruit Loops, Life, or Lucky Charms for breakfast as a sacred act is kinda chuckle worthy) but it also makes things very frustrating.  In response to tragedies spiritual pundits and wise advice givers start sharing their opinions that we shouldn’t dwell on negative images and should instead send love.  Which, yes, we should. But we are spiritual beings living in bodies…living…in…bodies.

So we shouldn’t just go inward, radiate love, and go on with our days as if the events exist somewhere else.  They exist here and we are part of here.  No need for retribution, for anger, or for despair, just for action.  As spiritual beings we can use the emotions we feel to spur us to do something, to take one step to improve the world around us in response to a negative act.  Just one thing: donate blood locally, donate to an organization, volunteer for one day to help someone who needs it like visiting an elder care facility.  Play a hand of poker with a vet at the VA near you.  Help meals on wheels deliver food.  Work a few hours to build a home for someone with Habitat for Humanity. Look at the parents of the children from Sandyhook.  They are taking their emotions and making choices, spiritual choices, to improve the world around them, without anger, without recriminations, with the inexorable truth that they will wear on their bodies forever.

In the face of tragedy, choose to be the spirituality you feel and act on it.  Let your love, your grief, your sense of self shine through and make this world a better place, one act of humanity at a time.

I grew up in a community where complaining and gossiping about others was a national pastime.  Small town, small school, plethora of churches with small congregations where there was as much daytime drama in real life as there was on TV.  Never a dull moment unless you found petty drama boring…  So one thing I’ve become a bit of an expert at is recognizing the self-propelled grievance story.  It’s the motivating force of the moment for the person I’m talking about, has them wound up and motivated, they are putting most if not all of their emotional and mental energy into ‘dealing with it,’ and they desperately need you to know all about it.  And you are more than likely not the first person who has heard about it nor will you be the last.

The speaker needs to have community support for their ordeal and to weave how they are dealing with it into reality.  They need people to agree with them and to validate them.  The need to hear that they are right and the other party(ies) are wrong.  And so be it.  We’ve all been there at one time or another.  We’ve all been the injured party and needed support to get us through it whether the matter was small or large or seemed large to us. I have no problem supporting people who need to be heard and validated.  I get it.

But after the story is told, after the facts as they feel them have been fleshed out and the emotions have been spent, when the plans for ‘dealing with it’ start coming out, I like to ask one question:  Have you talked to them about it?  Because in all this talking there are usually quite a few statements about the fact that the person or persons ‘just doesn’t realize’ or ‘how can they not know’ or ‘they must be blind not to see what this is doing’ etc, etc, etc.  And it will usually become obvious right away that the speaker has talked to everyone they can find other than the parties at the center of the story.  And at the end of the story the plan to ‘deal with it’ is usually a statement of high moral integrity that includes not notifying or in any way interacting with the parties involved.  Which is explained in detail as the best approach considering….

Over the years I have found that I’m not good at being respectful during that portion of the conversation because I just can’t seem to want to waste the time listening to it.  So I cut past that right to the practical:  Have you talked to them about it?  To which the answer is usually a stunned silence or a startled “no” as if I’ve asked if they walked naked on the highway that day.  Because, contrary to what common sense would lead us to believe, this person doesn’t want a resolution to the issue.  They don’t want to work through things, they want to be able to tell the story.  Either the issue is something they don’t want to actually confront for a variety of reasons, but is emotional enough they are attempting to work it through or the story is the point and if they don’t have this story to tell then they will find another.  Because some people need the drama in their lives; it’s a purpose to them and fulfills a need.  But also have a need.  I need to not support people in prolonged drama.  I’m a spoil sport, sad to say.

So when someone has explained the situation and starts telling me the complexities of how they are going to rearrange their life in order to rise above the situation, thereby making their life all about the situation to the point of making it a focal point, I derail the conversation by asking my question.  I know it’s not what they are wanting from me, but I always hope that they will take this moment to try to do things differently this time. But if nothing else, it provides them with one more drama of the week to tell their friends…

Descriptions of the Akashics suffer from the ‘blind man and the elephant‘ syndrome.  The Akashics is a place, but it is an amazingly vast place full of a great deal more than most people have or ever will experience.  And people’s ability to experience it vary depending on the techniques they use and their skill set.  Add to this the fact that many who are reporting their experiences have not had the experience directly at all, they are reporting descriptions given to them through channeling.  And still others are reporting their experience as if it were the truth for all instead of one experience geared towards communication based on their needs and wants and expressed questions.

All of which is to say that no one person’s description or explanation of the Akashics is definitive.  It’s just one piece of a much greater whole.  I see this even working with my students through guided meditation.  I take my students to the Temple of Life in the Akashics.  They are directed there through a very particular path and should arrive in one particular area.  That’s the theory, anyway. However, the point of the meditation is self as well as Akashic exploration and so I leave things open ended enough that the person can explore and experience whatever they need at the time.  And the results are always fascinating.

The Temple of Life is a vast space with many different structures in it including cavern ceremony spaces, outdoor courtyards, rooms to interact with various spectrums of light, the effects of harmonics, the nature of symbolic life forms, and all other facets of living beings.  Students have arrived at all of these spots instead of the central area and been drawn to explore.  And each student initially confuses where they have been as some other temple or as having done something uncomfortably different from what the meditation directed.  But it’s just a matter of the blind man and the elephant.  They were exactly where they needed to be, just in an area that better fitted them than the one I described in the meditation.  As they spend more time there exploring that come to realize how vast the Temple is and that it could take several lifetimes to explore it all.

So when I read other people’s descriptions of the Akashics and they seem very different from what I have experienced and what my network of peers has discussed, I don’t see them as a contradiction, I see them as one more person adding information to the mix.  It’s when they see their experiences and the meaning they ascribe to them as definitive that I shake my head.  Because if you aren’t able to work in collaboration with all the others, how will you ever learn about the rest of the elephant?

There is theory and then there is practice.  What you think or the meaning that you make from what others think and express is different from what will actually come into being when you start doing or putting form on that thought.  Which is why there are lineages to Buddhism and Reiki, a rich tapestry of Hinduism throughout regions as well as centuries, libraries of scholarship for Judaism, a couple thousand years of lived experience in Christianity which has brought about schism and reform and entirely new religions, as well as all of the versions of Islam out there today and that’s just a quick run down of things on the spiritual side.

Books and websites and classes and conversations can only give you so much.  At some point you have to take that step to actually practice what you’ve been learning.  At first that may look like doing chemistry experiments in a lab situation.  Very controlled, very simple, with a clear result that can be measured.  There is a point at which adding salt to water no longer creates salt water, but instead creates very wet salt.  After that, things become much more personal, more enlightening, and more empowering.  Because you move away from the theory, to the application and no two people do the same thing in exactly the same way.  You will need to find out your practice works for you, what your gifts are, your innate skills, your challenges, your gifts, and what just doesn’t work for you. Because not everything does. And that’s ok too.  Knowing what you aren’t is just as valuable as knowing what you are.  It keeps you from wasting time and energy on things that won’t give positive results and allows you to focus on what supports your becoming.

So once you’ve read and learned and got an idea in your head, start working with it.  Just a little bit each week or each day.  Try something that works with who you are.  You don’t need to cast an entire circle each day and do prayers for whirled peas, pull one tarot card in the morning and meditate on it, then allow that card to be part of your day and see how it helps inform the days events or opens up insights for you.  Dedicate yourself to working with one element each month.  Pick and element and sit with it each morning, then see how that element is involved in how the world works around you every day.  Wind blows through everything as we breath, as we talk, as we communicate via electronics.  It dances with water to create music.  Water helps us connect with other people through empathy, through commonalities, through sitcoms that make us laugh, through dramas that stir our hearts to action.   Water mixes with earth to move structures, to change the substance we reside on.  The combination brings revolution changing how we think and feel, changing our stance on issues and moving us to act.  Earth supports us in helping us create a nurturing life, building connections that last a lifetime.  Fire stirs us to break new ground, seek joy, and reach for what is possible.  Earth and fire combine to create dancing, which is influenced by air and water’s combining into music.

It’s not difficult to open up to a deeper understanding, but it won’t be handed to you.  It requires stepping out to put what you think you know into practice.  Because the only way to truly know is to become through doing.

When I was training to become a sign language interpreter one of the concepts that really struck me was the fact that to interpret you have separate the meaning from the words used so that you can put the meaning back out in another language.  And while you’re stripping out the meaning from the words, you also have to add in the meaning you get from inflection, from body language, from the subtle cues that are non-verbal to the mix and then put that into your translation as well. Because language is not separate from culture so how one culture represents something visually, through body language, through tone, through attitude and facial expression can be very different from another.  One of the prime examples of this is the difference between head nodding in America vs Greece.  In America nodding the head up and down means yes while shaking it from side to side means no.  It is completely the opposite in Greece which can get tourists into all types of difficulties.

Attempting to put communication, the means by which we attempt to express thoughts or meaning, into linear form such as written or spoken language forces and contorts it into shapes which wasn’t necessarily the intent.  And in our efforts to communicate clearly, we can lose sight of the fact that our words are just symbols for the meaning we are attempting to convey.  The words begin to feel like meaning themselves and take on more relevance than they necessarily would have.  We begin to rely on them to make meaning instead of seeing them as one of many tools we have for communication.

Working in the Akashics requires you to move away from a dependence on words for communication.  It’s not about magical thinking or telepathy, but an opening of the right brain’s means of seeing the symbolic nature of experience and reuniting that with the logical left brain which distills meaning from that input.  It’s about seeing the pictures and getting the world play being presented, about watching a pun being enacted, about seeing all the levels of symbolism in one interaction, about seeing the interconnection of simple and mundane things that bring a bigger understanding of this now.  As well as much, much more.

If you are working in the Akashics and everything seems dreamlike yet full of epiphanies and symbolism which leaves you asking “What does that mean?” then you are on the right track.  Because communication is much more than linear..

Finding out that someone you know has died creates a liminal moment.  Whether that person died after a long illness or through a sudden event like a car accident just the fact that they are no longer alive stops time.  It shocks us out of the metal, emotional, and physical routines we live by, jumps us out of our comfortable box, and thrusts us into a moment of now.  It causes us to evaluate our connections, our identity, which has irrevocably changed.  How it has changed is something we begin exploring slowly, like an unfurling flower, petal by petal via small movements, feeling our way into being ourselves again, but subtly or not so subtly different.

Part of that process to about connection.  When a person dies we lose connection with that person in the way that it had been before.  The living connection has ended.  Like a phone call that drops suddenly in mid sentence.  We had more to say, more to talk about, more to plan and do, yet there is no one on the other end of the line.  So what do we do with all that.  If it is someone in your family the experience is an odd mix of feeling shocked into stillness where time has no meaning while at the same time events are hurtling by and everything feels rushed and hectic as logistics come into play.  There are gatherings of family, notification of friends, financial matters to go through, possessions to deal with, and memorials to be held.  And yet everything inside is in slow-mo or strobing through emotions like someone turning the volume up and down and up and down…..

During this shock period we are pushed out of time to deal with connection.  We are interconnected beings living a socially intertwined life.  And during this time of loss it’s all about connection.  Some of that is people coming together to share their shock, to mourn their loss, to speak the words of their emotions and have them witnessed by others.  But there is also the process of reconnecting and forging new connections.  This liminal period allows us to explore in a very deep and meaningful way who we are, how we are now changed, and see this in others as well. New connections can be made, relationships changed, healed, improved, and our identity  opens up to this new life with a structure that has been fundamentally changed to include a new reality.

Memorials are a means for us to continue the phone conversation we were having with the person so that connection to them is not lost.  It continues in a new form as long as we are willing to continue talking.  As long as we are willing to spend time in the shock, in that liminal moment, changing, becoming and then unfurling our new self to the world.  If we aren’t, if we choose to try to hold back time, to keep from experiencing this change, then it is not only our friend or loved one who is lost…

I’m still confused by what people mean by that.  Or by the vague, “I got this information in the Akashics.”  Well, from whom?  From where in the Akashics?  The Akashics is not a who, but a place, and it doesn’t spit out random bits of information to people who drop into a meditative state.  It’s not a hovering all-knowing presence waiting for us to fall into an open state so we can hear it’s wisdom any more than Paris or Maui or Zimbabwe are.  It’s a place where beings reside. One part of that place is the Akashic records which are in the Akashic Library.  One can access knowledge and wisdom there or can ask someone for help on a matter of interest.  There is a great deal of wisdom to be had there which can lead to empowerment, enlightenment, and even possibly wisdom.  It can provide healing on a variety of aspects of being and help our growth as living beings.  But it isn’t a faery godmother waiting to sprinkle us with happiness dust.

So when I see people saying they access the Akashics I go looking for more.  How are they doing it?  Who are they contacting?  What questions are they asking?  If I can’t find any of that then I go spelunking a bit farther.  Are they claiming to have great knowledge about the world that hasn’t been known before?  Do they use ‘new age speak’ to refer to things vaguely which seem to have no relevance to real life?  If so then I just stop reading.  What’s the point?  Either they will be stating “truths” that their perception of things or the wisdom they received is “The Wisdom” which contradicts everyone else out there who purports to have received wisdom from the Akashics this way or they will be giving out some theory that this world is an illusion and we are in complete control of it or control none of it.  None of which is practical for the reader except as marketing to buy their book or to bring in more clients.

I would be less skeptical if they could be clear about where they were getting the information.  Are they channeling it and from what source?  If they can’t even figure out the person they are speaking with or are unwilling to even query them, then how can they know that the information they are receiving is accurate?  Because not everyone on the other side is omniscient, omnipotent, and infallible.  Hell, we come from the other side and that’s where we go at the end of life.  Do we become all of that when we die?  I haven’t found any evidence of it in the hundreds and hundreds of soul books I’ve read, the documents I’ve gone through, and nor have I found that to be true of the thousands of beings I’ve communicated with in the Akashics.

Just like here, they have their own experiences, their own perspectives, and their own skill sets so what information they have to give is influenced by these just as ours would be.  Also, the information we get back isn’t necessarily “the truth” any more than any survey gets unbiased information.  The information you get back is heavily influenced by the type and the way you asked the question.  So if you’re looking for information on multiple universes, multi-dimensional life, and new ways to see this world that “make it all make sense” then you will more than likely find that information.  Is that information relevant?  Is it complete?  Is it being given out of context?  Without being honest, critical, and logical about the search for new information or understandings about the world, there is no way to know if the information is even worth the pixels it uses for display in the electronic world.

Channeling the Akashics is not a means to create authority.  In fact it’s a red flag that what you’re presenting can’t stand on its own two feet.  If they aren’t speaking directly about the Akashics, if they aren’t citing how they came to their understanding of what they’re writing about, if they can’t cite their sources and the amount of checking, verifying, and working with the information they have done beyond personal meditation, then you may want to walk away.  Because the Akashics isn’t a guru, it’s a place.  Everyone goes there.  Everyone has access.  Connecting with it doesn’t make you special, it makes you normal.

There is truth in the reality that taking that first step towards achieving something you’ve always wanted is better than not taking that step.  Exercise mavens chant this mantra all the time.  ‘Just move’, ‘get off the couch’, ‘any effort is a good start’….  But after that first effort it takes a bit more.  There is a decided difference between whole hearted effort and half-assed participation.  Both will get you somewhere, but where and when and with what result?  Slow and steady does win the race, but underneath that concept is the fact that slow or not, the turtle is giving it his all.  He isn’t slow because he’s dragging his feet.  His top speed just seems slow in comparison to others such as the rabbit.  And we know where his over confidence and half-assed efforts got him.

Effort is not equal to competency, to skill, to achievement or to success.  If you put a huge amount of effort into something, you aren’t guaranteed to get the outcome that you want.  But not putting in the effort guarantees you won’t get it.  And putting in only a token amount of effort makes the situation look like you’re trying when you’re not.  Which isn’t going to fool the person that matters, which is you.  If you want something, if you really want it, them put yourself into it.  Give yourself to it.  Open yourself up to the adventure of it and see where it takes you.  You may be amazed, you may end up somewhere unexpected, you may find things about yourself you never realized, but you will never be disappointed.

Doing something only half way can teach you something about that thing, but it can also teach you about yourself.  It can point to the fact that what you think you want and what you really want are two different things.  Or it can show you that the path you need to take is different from the one you are walking.  It can speak to an identity you have built for yourself that is contrary to who you truly are.  It can split you open so you can find the real you.  So if you aren’t able to commit to something whole heartedly and you feel at your wit’s end because you are doing all you can do, stop doing.  Take a beat and reconsider.  Is this what you really need?  Is it who you truly are?

We build our identities through our experiences and the meaning we make from them.  And we assume…we decide….that the meaning we have made out of those experiences are like gravity.  They are the absolute truth and can be depended on in every case.  But our experiences are limited, they are finite, they are influenced by our families, our living situations, our friends, our schools, and all of the inputs that have surrounded us since they day we were born.  Some of our experiences are stories, opinions, myths and misconceptions we have been told by others, some of our experiences are of others acting as role models, as symbols, as templates for how all people of that nature would act.  Which takes one specific instance and makes it into much more than it really is.  But that’s our experience.

It’s like saying the high chair you sat in as a baby is the only type of chair that is actually a a chair.  All other chair-like objects are something else entirely and all chairs that don’t conform to high chair standards and functionality are somehow broken, less than, unworthy, or can’t be trusted. That meaning that has been created is valid for the person who holds it, but it is limiting and it doesn’t allow them to experience the amazing benefits of a Lazyboy let alone cope with a bar stool that has a back and arms.  That must be a confusing situation for them and for the bartender as well. 

As children we rely on the input of others to help us navigate our world.  And if we’re lucky the inputs we get help us open up and become and expand into a world full of beauty and adventure and possibilities.  But if that’s not the case, then before we can experience who we truly are, we need to strip it all down.  We need to stop, drop and roll.  We need to put out the fires we’ve become embroiled in so we can sort through all the meanings to find out what is us, what is someone else, what we can let go of and what we want to keep.  It may seem overwhelming, but the alternative is to live in a skin made up out of everyone else’s reality. Personally, wouldn’t you rather get to know your own?

I’m commonly asked what a client’s life plan is or what they should do next.  They want to know what the next step is, what their spiritual goals are, to see everything laid out ahead of them.  And that would be comforting, in a way, because it takes the weight of responsibility off of us and takes away the uncomfortableness of the unknown.  Better to know than to not know, right?

There’s one problem with that, though and that is no one can tell you what to do next or what is going to happen next.  Free will is such a double edged sword that way.  You have the ability to choose anything, be anything, do anything, but you are responsible for making choices.  Your life plan is not a static thing determining your actions, by a dynamic schematic that speaks to what you wanted to do, the things put in place to help guide you to do it, and the paths you’ve taken so far which have brought you to this now in the shape you are in.  Your teachers and angels and guides can point out your options, can point out the issues that are keeping you from seeing clearly or achieving your goals, can help you see what goals you had set, but they can’t mandate what choices you make or what to do next.  That’s all completely up to you.

So the questions is not, what should I do next, but what directions are best at helping me achieve my best and highest self.  Rarely is there only one, but usually there is a better one or a selection of better ones that will help you get there.  And it may be fun and fantastic and exactly what you want to be doing or it could be the one thing you have avoided doing your entire life.  And you don’t have to choose to do it.  Again, your life is up to you.  It’s a ‘create your own adventure’ story and only you can choose to go right or left or back or straight ahead.  Which means the only thing holding you back from starting down the path to your best life is you.  So you tell me, what is your next step?

In physical life contracts are structured, formal ties between people or entities.  They are that way because we humans are full of free will, limited in our ability to see far into the cause and effect future that will come from our decisions now, and fluid in our decision making process so our minds change constantly.  Contracts seek to create and maintain order in this apparent chaos and to control behavior.  And if they worked well then we wouldn’t need lawyers.  See how that’s working out for us so far? 

Anyway, contracts in the Akashics are fluid and ever changing to incorporate our free will and allow for choices, changes, and ongoing growth.  I’ve discussed them a bit previously here and here.  One of the keys to understanding contracts in the Akashics is to get rid of the notion that every relationship, every contact, every moment of our interaction with another being is ‘for a reason’ or ‘preordained’ or ‘meant to be’.  These notions can bridge the gap for us between cause and effect that we can’t see because of the complexity, but they can be limiting because they ignore the fact that we have free will.  If some power greater than us is directing our lives, then why are we here?  What is the point of puppets on a stage other than for the amusement of some higher being.  I have found no evidence of this and so throw the notion out.

Contracts are fluid because of free will.  Each of us puts a great amount of effort into preplanning the life we will lead here because of free will.  Because the minute we are born we begin the necessary forgetting process that allows us to see time as linear, that allows us to condense our nature into a single form that feels separate from others and helps us to experience life in an immediate way we cannot do otherwise.  Because of the forgetting and due to free will our lives almost never follow the script as written, which is why we write the script as a ‘choose your own adventure’ story.  We know we will go in various paths depending on events influenced by our and other’s free will.  So we don’t make just one agreement with one person to act in one kind of role for ourselves but instead contract with many hoping we will meet up with one of them at the appointed time.  And we cannot foresee who we will be, what choices we will make in the moment, or who they will have become by the time we get there.

So most contracts will never be acted upon, and those that are will be updated, amended, altered, and/or foreshortened as necessary once they have begun.  Which is something to consider when working with the Akashics.  A) A contract won’t tell you what is going to happen, only the plans that each party has made with caveats and addendums for circumstances.  B) You can consciously choose to extend or end your side of a contract at any time.  Need a relationship to end, sign the contact and it is ended.  The connection between you two will start dissolving organically from that point on.  Want a relationship to continue, write that into the contract.  Just remember.  Free will applies and everyone has it.  You can’t control other people or their choices. All you control is yourself…

We a taught in school and even preschool that creating is a definable thing we do.  It’s a moment in time where we create a something like a picture or a clay animal or an ashtray or a popsicle person.  And then we go on to do something else.  We are taught that creativity has its place and should be relegated to making things, to art time, and should not have to do with regular things like walls or surfaces or yards.  We are taught that the stories we make up and live are not creativity, they are make believe and therefore not valuable.  We are taught to value reality as it is, to see exploration as something other people do in story books and histories, that science has nothing to do with being creative and that we need to ‘grow up.’

Well, I refuse to grow up. Ask my family.    And I refuse to see creativity as limited to arts and crafts night and only to things that hang on a wall or a window or gather dust on a table.  Beauty is not only for the eye, but for all the senses and creativity is how we live our lives every day.  The choices we make about what to where, where to live, even what to have for breakfast is a creative act.  It creates something that wasn’t there before and weaves that into the tapestry of life all around us, not just in our personal history.  What we do matters and what we do participates in the world around us adding our particular creations to the All.

There is no such thing as ‘make believe.’  It’s just a creative way of weaving possibilities into the world that weren’t there before.  A way of allowing our dreams to have their first forms, like releasing pieces of colored paper into the breeze and watching them drift away on their own paths.  Inspiration comes to those who open themselves up to possibility, to doing what the heart wants and following through with it until it’s accomplished.  What song will your heart sing today?  Will it sing out loud?  Will it whisper softly of what could be?  What colors attract your eye?  What dance do you feel and will your feet follow this message from your soul?  What will you create today?

We so very much want cause and effect to be linear and immediate and simple.  Flora Bowley gets comments all the time how amazing it is that she’s become an instant success.  Luckily she’s a good sport and laughs at the misunderstanding.  She’s been working as an artist for over 18 years and it has taken many a side road, inspiration, desperate measure and willingness to try whatever is going to work in order to get her where she is today.  Not to say it wasn’t and isn’t a wonderful ride, but it certainly wasn’t a short day trip with the top down.

Just because you have a goal, a plan, and the willingness to implement doesn’t mean that the road to your end point will be smooth nor does it mean you’ll actually get to that end goal.  Life is an amazingly intricate tapestry woven in multiple dimensions filled with beings, all with free will, making choices in every second of every day.  The complexity of  causes and the multitude of effects that they engender boggles the mind.  For some it is frightening and causes people to freeze and never want to do anything.  For others like myself its energizing.  I find it beautiful and awe inspiring and mesmerizing.  I see the potential to be anything, do anything, create anything in all of that beingness that is going on out there.

Practically what that means is that we can’t know the details of how things are going to unfold until they start doing it.  So while we can imagine a great deal, we can make the best laid plans, we can prepare for the known and possibly for some aspects of the unknown, what we call ‘mystery’, which is all the causes and effects out there interacting with us beyond our ability to comprehend the interconnection of it all, is working to bring us what we might possibly need or what might spur us to something new, some new aspect of our goal, our life, our beingness.  Opportunities open up for us when we open up to opportunity.  The thing is we can’t control which ones, what they look like, or when they appear.  Our job is to communicate our goals and plans, to sort through opportunities, taking those that make sense, weeding out those that don’t, going in directions we never thought of before, sticking to those we know we need to go in, becoming part of the conversation that is the Universe around us.  Because it is a conversation and we can choose to participate in it or we can use all of our energy to try to drown it out.

Getting from here to there is an adventure that we each make every day.  We can do it with open eyes enjoying the adventure of how it unfolds or with our eyes shut tight and our fingers in our ears trying to ignore it and hope for the best.  How will you step out into today?

When talking about living a spiritual life and walking a medicine path, I’m reminded that it’s not necessarily a gradual thing.  Some people can transition their lives gently over time and look back wondering how they got from point A to point Z, but others get confronted with aspects of it as if someone had taken a spoon and stirred up their entire life and everything is now whirling around them uncontrollably.   The details vary, but the principles are basically the same.  To walk a spiritual path means healing yourself first and foremost.  Whether your path is what would describe as being a ‘healer’ or whether you are doing something not directly related to people at all, you still have to go through ‘healer heal thyself.’  And if you haven’t already done it, that process will shatter the notion that your body and spirit are separate from each other first and foremost.

I’ve talked about this before and you can see more information on my blog here,Body Soul Reflection, and here, Living Sacred.

The healing process that ensues can seem amazingly random and completely chaotic.  In some very dramatic cases food preferences change like the person has crossed a big, bright line.  One day they love pizza and pasta and ice cream and the next those foods don’t interest them one way or the other and they are eating protein and vegetables and buying cookbooks to try out new recipes.  For others old physical issues or traumas that they thought were long done become front and center again.  It’s one thing to just accept that you will have a physical limitation, it’s another when you step on the path and your spirit challenges you to truly heal the nagging condition.  You’re not just changing the way you think about things, you are literally changing how you walk in this world with your body, which is not a meat suit, but part of your integral being and how you interact with the world.

Something that I have learned over time and that helps in these situations is to look at your body, the entire system, with that symbolic, meaning generating system that bridges the right and left brains (which are part of your body, btw).  Chinese medicine and Hindu spirituality chart out how this works in various ways and helps us understand how the emotions, the spirit and the mind interrelate with each other and with the body.  For example, having knee issues talks about our ability to be flexible, to absorb shocks in life, to be able to move with what comes.  Issues with digestion talk about our ability or inability to digest what is coming to us or to provide nutrition and support for ourselves.  Perhaps we are internalizing other’s issues and pains instead of setting correct boundaries and this is ‘eating us up’ inside.

Starting down the path of a spiritual life is not a daily exercise, but a life choice.  To be in harmony with everything around you starts with being in harmony with yourself.  What issues do you have shoved in the background that might need some airing?

I see a dichotomy in how people who work with the Akashics perceive that experience.  Some see it as a means to get answers to questions they have about themselves in this life.  Which, ironically, includes learning about their past lives.  There are some people who are interested in their past lives just to find out what is there and whether they were Cleopatra or Napoleon, but for the most part people are looking for insights into how to make this life better.  Whether they are going to Akashics yourself, having a medium seek out guidance from the Akashics, or having a reader go look at their information themselves in whatever way they do that, they are looking for answers about this life.

The other way that people perceive the Akashics as somewhat like a trip into the world of Alice in Wonderland.  It’s a journey that makes no sense at first, comes to have its own logic, which still makes no sense, and seems not only divorced from reality, but to be fantastical for the sake of fantasy.  And most of us have an innate love of fantasy, of tall tales, of myths and legends and faery tales and so the Akashics becomes one more fantasy adventure with no relevance to this life.  Some people are attracted to this and delve further into it, some find it a lovely diversion, like going to a theme park, and then go back to their regular lives as if nothing happened.  And still others dismiss it all as stories they are making up in their head.

There is a third option that people seem to deselect.  I’m still unsure if this is because they are taught that only mystics and ‘special’ people are called to interact with the Akashics this way or it just doesn’t occur to them.  Hopefully over time it will make more sense to me or I can help resolve the issue.  Aspects of these two perspectives, these two experiences can be combined into a means of interacting with the Akashics in order to improve real life through in depth self discovery.  The idea is to enter into the Akashics with questions, but instead of seeking an authority to answer them or a book to read about them, to enter into conversation with the Akashics itself.  Unlike conversations with other people where the listener has an agenda and it is rare to find someone who will truly listen and acknowledge the conversation being imparted, the Akashics is invested in listening to not only to the surface level of the communication but all the layers including meta message.

Something to note is that the Akashics does not usually provide direct answers, but instead provides opportunities for the seeker to explore in order to find the answer or develop the answer themselves.  This is due to the presence of free will and the respect accorded to each individual to become their best self in the most appropriate way possible.  Learning the answer rather than being handed the answer makes the answer part of the individual.  It develops into part of their being through experience rather than rote memorization and is therefore a more enduring and fundamental change and growth.

For example, on one of my own personal explorations of the Akashics I was seeking clarification concerning my path and the opportunities in front of me.  In the Akashics I was led to the edge of a cliff where I could look down into the valley below.  There I saw field after cultivated field of flowers and crops.  I descended the cliff face via stairs and began walking through the fields.  Each was square, making the land look like a colorful checkerboard and as I entered each field I would know what opportunity this was and be able to explore its purpose, its gifts and affects and the ramifications of taking it on.  In this way I was led to sample in a gentle and beautiful way, removing stress, left brain logic, and the need to be right. I have been to the fields many times since then and this area has helped me quite a bit to make positive decisions in my life.

There are many ways to experience the Akashics and utilize this type of conversation to improve our lives in this lifetime.  All it takes is a minor change in our Akashic focus.

For some reason, all evidence to the contrary, we seem to think that the way our minds make meaning out of the world at any particular moment is truth and that our mind is somehow unaffected by inputs, external or internal.  Like we’re objectively observing a movie instead of living in it.  And that somehow our brains are logical, calculating, and rational at all times in all circumstances.  Somewhat like having little Spocks in our heads bending over the monitor looking at the rest of us as inputs into his scientific equations from which he can create a logical hypothesis.

But it just ain’t so.  Our brain, even the logical left side, is a physical organ which is dependent on a great deal of our physical anatomy for basic functional needs like blood, oxygen, nutrients, spinal fluid, plus the input from sensory organs, and is bathed in the chemicals we put out to control various functions in our lives that make them…well…lives.  And the lack of any of these things, plus the state of the body, the emotions that influence the body, the soul which guides the body all effect what the mind perceives, how it perceives it, and which affects what meaning it can make out of it.  Which is just another reason why I’m constantly amazed at human beings and how we manage to live even semi-coherent existences of free will.  Life is complex and we are amazingly beautiful, complex creatures which can dazzle right up until the point that they scratch and unmentionable area, hawk a loogie in the street, or pick at their nasal passages.  Then everything goes back to status quo.

However, the thing to know is that what we think about things, the impressions we get about a situation in the moment, the meaning we make out of it aren’t necessarily or really ever the absolute truth about a thing.  They are influenced by all kinds of things including when you last ate and how much sleep you got the night before and what got said between you and your honey and the roommates and the kids this morning before you walked out the door.  So when things seem to be horrible or frustrating or incomprehensible or in need of immediate adjustment, you might want to take a minute to see if part of the issue really is about you.  Not in a judgmental way, but in light of the mechanics.  Do you need to eat before you make any decisions?   Would a nap make things better? (In my opinion its a very underutilized and valued remedy to many things) Could you think more clearly about this if you resolved a ‘discussion’ you were having with xxx person?

Sometimes absolute thinking gets you absolutely no where.  Learning how your body works can help your mind see things a bit more clearly.

Some people go to readers (tarot/astrology/mediums/Akashic/numerologists….) with an open mind just wondering what they will hear.  Or they go seeking to know what is most important to know at that particular moment rather than selecting a subject to focus on.  Then there are others that have a question, but are interested to hear what might come as the answer.  And there are those who already have an answer in mind and want the reader or the method of reading to validate it.

The last category are the most difficult and sometimes the most heartbreaking of clients.  Because by the time they reach me they have already consulted dozens of readers of various kinds who have all given them variations on the same information I’m giving them.  They nod and smile and acknowledge that the information is correct, it makes sense, it’s very helpful in a sad, not quite what they wanted to hear way, and then go about their day.  And what their day consists of is negating everything they just heard and preparing to seek out someone or something else that can validate the answer that they want.

Now I’m not saying that people shouldn’t strive to achieve what they want to in live.  Go for your dreams because that’s the only way you’ll achieve them.  And I’m not saying that the path they are choosing is wrong for them or causing harm or that it will lead to a bad result.  For the most part they don’t and if they are I refer them to help to prevent that harm.  However, it seems sad to me that people get stuck in this constant loop of wanting answers but not listening to the answers that they get.   If you like your answer, then act on that.  If you like the answer that someone else gives, then work with that.  But move forward in one way or another.  Unfortunately, some people choose not to do this.

What I’ve come to realize is that they are missing the part of the equation called acceptance.  They feel something is missing, something isn’t right, they need something to be different than it is. And that’s healthy and what keeps creative people creating and soul becoming.  But they never accept any solution to their issue, never take a step to resolve that feeling for a plethora of reasons, and so live a life of questions with an avalanche of answers they steadfastly ignore.  We admire people who seem to have made something of themselves, have created happy lives and become happy people, and the adventures they have, the skills they use, the thoughts they express.  But what we don’t realize is that at one point they were asking a question, or several, and that they accepted an answer and acted on that answer.  Even if it was the wrong one.  Even if it didn’t work out the way they planned.  They moved beyond the question into action.  And from those actions they have found more questions for which they are seeking answers and those answers spur them to action.

What are you doing about the questions in your life?

I’ve talked about soul groups before and you can see a general description of them here:  Soul Groups.

Soul groups are a part of each reading I do for my clients because I invite any soul group members that are home at the time of the reading to come and listen in. Clients are sometimes confused by this thinking that these people are coming forward with messages for them, but this is not the case.  Not all beings in the Akashics are able to communicate with embodied beings.  It takes specific skills  to be able to penetrate the physicality we live in and reach our minds or hearts, which are busy almost 24/7.  Most souls haven’t learned nor do they need those skills.  Which means soul group members don’t have direct access with their siblings once the embodied life begins.  During a reading I provide a bridge through the reading process so they can see and hear and be in contact again with their loved on.  So they come to listen.

I find it important to talk about soul groups for another reason and that is this notion of Soul Mates.  It’s a concept that has a very large influence on the thoughts of people in the Western world that is out of sync with the reality of life.  Not everyone has a soul mate and I highly recommend not taking that route to find a happy and healthy relationship for your life.  Setting up embodied lives with a soul mate component is like throwing two darts towards each other from several thousands miles away and hoping that they hit each other in the middle.  Everything can and will interfere with their reaching that goal and if they do manage to reach it they are so banged up and traumatized and it has taken so long that the rewards, while emotionally fantastic, are limited and of short duration.

It’s not that I haven’t seen these situations work out.  I have.  But for the most part, soul makes is not a concept that is in play in people’s lives.  But we do tend to look for them and therefore confuse the meeting of a soul group member with meeting a soul mate. We recognize people from our soul group because we have known them intimately since our creation.  We recognize them no matter what body they are in or under what circumstances we meet them.  And the relationship we have with them is usually deep because they ‘get’ us.  And everyone likes that feeling and longs for it because we remember it from being at home.  But that confusion can lead to emotional and logistical issues if we’re not careful.

Michael Newton has written two wonderful books that include information concerning soul groups and how they interact with each other.  I highly recommend them for anyone who is interested in learning more.  You can find them and other books concerning the Akashics here:  Akashic Resources

Self value is like a coin.  It has two sides.  Some people favor the side that shows our value is something we create within ourselves.  Some favor the side that takes input from others in order to validate who we think we are.  And the reality is that we need both sides of that coin in order to be balanced and whole.  As long as they are positive, supportive, life affirming, provide constructive criticism and help us live the truth of who we are.  We need to value ourselves positively and be healthy in our uniqueness and the worth of what we do and who we are.  We also need to be seen and appreciated for who we are even if only for a brief moment through the smile of someone passing by.

Our self value can suffer when these two things our out of balance.  If we don’t value input from others or don’t look into the mirror that their observations provide we can lose ourselves in the meaning we create in our minds and our hearts which can quickly become divorced from reality.  We can become absorbed by an idea, an emotion, a moment in time that no longer exists, or fall into circular thinking that keeps us from seeing the positive.  We can weave stories about ourselves that limit what we do, who we are, and keep us from experiencing the amazing possibilities all around us.

If we don’t value our own knowledge of self, if we aren’t willing to look at the deep truths of who we are, we can spend our lives trying to create realities that always fall apart, fall short, and create emotional black holes that we fall into.  We spend all of our energy and time attempting to make reality fit these scenarios, following lovers to break up soon after, leaving old jobs to start new careers that never emerge, plunging head first into education programs that prevent us from graduation or which keep us from reaching our stated goal.

Valuing ourselves means first liking who we are, including the hard truths about ourselves which may not be pretty, but are the bedrock we have to build our lives on.  Before looking for validation of what we think we want and that will make everything “all right” first we should look at whether or not the thing we want is in harmony with who we truly are.

Martha Beck points out something I was speaking about in my workshop on Saturday.  Life isn’t actually linear, it’s a spiral.  So we don’t heal and then forget an issue that is central to our life, we revisit it from different perspectives throughout our life, learning a bit more each time we do.

“As every life coach knows, the way we do anything is the way we do everything. The same thoughts that make me squirm in the labyrinth torture me when I’m writing, emailing, even sleeping. I should be going faster, getting somewhere. I should have more to show for this. I shouldn’t have to double back, to revisit old emotional issues, to wipe the same damn kitchen counter every day. These thoughts burble along just under the surface of my consciousness every day. They make me slightly anxious—okay, some days irrationally terrified—and lend a driven quality to moments when I could be relaxed and present.

I’ve heard the same comments from countless people, all schooled to the same obsession with forward progress. We set goals, draw flowcharts, march forward, criticize ourselves if we have to go back, if the same old stuff comes back to haunt us. We want to be DONE with things: the chronic pain, the haunting doubt, the bad relationship patterns, the grief of loss. We want to solve the maze and get out, to the place where we imagine there will be no problems to solve.

The labyrinth is teaching me to question the bits of driven, linear, achievement-based dysfunction that can make me miserable in a life of incredible blessings and good fortune. We didn’t enter life to get it done. There is no place not worth revisiting. We double back to find the pieces of ourselves that still clutch the same issues like a baby clutching its pacifier. Compassion invited us to this unbearably repetitive, slow, complex path of self-discovery, to show us that only when we surrender our idea of how things should be going do we notice that the entire thing is breathtakingly beautiful.”

To read the entire article: The Labyrinth of Life

Living in a body is hard work.  I point this out to my clients and students often because we tend to dismiss it out of hand.  But it is the truth that as spiritual beings living an embodied experience, the body takes a great deal of effort to manage and maintain.  It brings us huge rewards and a great deal of pleasure and joy and amusement as well so it all balances out in the end.  But when clients come to me asking about Past Live and Karma, they aren’t looking at the positives, they are looking at all the negatives, letting the accumulation of years and disappointments and hurts add up to a feeling that they or someone they love are being punished for something that doesn’t seem to have any cause in their current situation.  So it has to be for something that has happened in the past, right?  And therefore it can be corrected by some action now and then ‘wallah!’ everything will be all better and happily ever after….

And this could be the case for some people out there in the world.  I’m not ruling that out.  But in the decades that I’ve been working with the Akashics and working with clients and students, I haven’t found any.  What I find is that first, being in a body is hard work.  There’s no magic wand that will fix that and no magic recipe for getting around it.  It’s good work and rewarding work and worth every minute, but in the low times it can be hard to feel that.  Meanwhile, I have not yet found in anybody’s records that they were forced into an embodied life as a punishment.  Becoming embodied is a choice that we each make and we preplan the event down to the last minute detail in order to give us the best chance possible to achieve all the goals, learn all the lessons, and have all the experiences we want to in the brief time we are here.

Which is not to say that our lives are predestined or that everything we have experienced in our lives was preplanned.  Quite the opposite.  Free Will is a gift that all of us have been given and therefore the old adage is quite true “life happens while we’re making plans.”  All the preplanning we do is to help us achieve our goals in spite of and because of free will, ours and everyone elses.  And the reason we choose to become embodied is not so we can force ourselves to learn hard lessons like forcing a dog’s nose into his piddle so he won’t pee on the floor ever again, but because everything here is concentrated, condensed and immediate.  When not embodied we are free form, integrated, and communicate our emotions and thoughts immediately so that everyone feels and knows them at the moment they occur.  Everything we are is part of everyone else and so mitigated and ameliorated by everyone else.  In order to work concentratedly on ourselves without distraction, we come into a world, into a life where we are forcibly distanced from everyone else through physical matter: bodies.

Living an embodied life makes everything our own.  We feel all of our feelings intensely even with mitigation from others.  We experience each moment directly and fully without distraction other than the distractions we allow into our lives.  We are fully and completely present unto ourselves in every minute of every day in our bodies.  And our choices, our actions, and our reactions are very much ours alone in a way we do not experience when we are at home in the Akashics.  It is an amazing opportunity and a gift that we choose to accept when we become embodied, not a punishment.  It’s difficult, it’s exhausting, it’s in our face every moment of every day, but we’re only here for a very brief amount of time.  So take the opportunity to live every moment.  You aren’t being punished, you’re being given a chance to become.  Who will you be today?

Michael J. Sandel is a professor at Harvard Law School who has delved into the moral ambiguities of political philosophy by asking the not just hard, but impossible questions which we face every day.   I was struck by something he said in one of his lectures because it is just as true of the Akashics and working with your soul book as it is of political philosophy:

“It works by taking what we know from familiar, unquestioned settings and making it strange….[It] estranges us from the familiar, not by supplying new information but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing.  But, and here’s the risk, once the familiar turns strange, it’s never quite the same again. Self knowledge is like lost innocence.  However unsettling you find it, it can never be unthought or unknown.  What makes this enterprise difficult but also riveting is that [it] is a story and you don’t know where the story will lead but what you do know is that the story is about you.”

This warning label.  “Turn back now, here be your true self…”

People seek answers to their questions in the Akashics, which is a good thing. The Akashics has a great deal of wisdom to share.  Many times people have questions not because they don’t know the answer, but because they need verification, validation, support and acknowledgement to act on what they know.  And don’t we all at one point or another in our lives.  No matter who we are it’s nice to hear from someone else that they see things the way we do, agree with our decisions on things, and support us in the actions we are taking.  If it wasn’t then people in power wouldn’t have ‘yes’ men/women around them like a Greek chorus.  They do it because it feels good to be validated.  Many times when working with clients I find that the information in their soul book is a validation of what they already know.  The reading helps them clarify the details and gives them permission to act more directly and with a better understanding of the overall plan, the reasons behind it, and where they are headed.

But there are times when the records in a soul book tell a different story.  We don’t always act in our own best interest and we don’t always like the path that’s ahead of us.  Sometimes truths are hard and sometimes the actions in front of us don’t lead to an immediate happy ending.  Soul books show when current situations are a diversion from hard truths.  They will not provide the sought out validation, unfortunately other than to acknowledge the facts of the situation at hand.  The records will show the consequences of moving forward on that path as well as all the others that are available.

Oracle’s Temple at Delphi

Soul books are not like the tarot which provides a means for your soul and your guides and teacher to speak to you about your current situation and things you can do to improve it or avoid negative consequences.  It’s not like the I-ching or working with a medium to get guidance and advice.  It’s much more like the Oracle of Delphi in that it hands out truth but doesn’t direct you towards what to do about that truth.  You get to choose what actions you take or don’t take concerning the matter.

So the question is, do you really want to know?  Do you want validation of the ‘Hail Mary’ pass you are making in your life right now trying to make a bad situation not so bad or make something that’s not working palatable?  Or do you want to know what steps to take to find your authentic life and how to live it?  Are you ready to acknowledge the truth about who you are and who you could be?  I hope so, because that’s where the magic lies.

Every soul book has a section at the end that I call the roadmap.  It’s all the possibilities, the if/then’s of a life mapped out as actions (lines) and choices or options (boxes).  I explain it as looking like an amazingly complex March Madness game schedule because it shows everything from birth to projected end of life and is constantly updating and changing even while I look.  The handy part of it is that the choices already made, the life already lived, is marked in ‘ink’ over all the possibilities so it’s very easy for me to see where the person is currently…riiiiighhht…there!

The information I see there is invaluable as it shows me not only where the person is at and what influences are currently at play in their situation, but also all the possibilities laid out in front of them and what is supporting those being the next steps and not others. All of which can change during the reading as the client makes choices and thinks/feels about things during the reading.

Life is like a wave reaching the beach.

There are two major trends in what I see when I look at a roadmap.  Either I’m seeing that the discussion is about what opportunities are ahead and where those choices lead or I can see that we aren’t going to be able to talk about future opportunities until we deal with the situation at hand.  I sometimes feel as if life is lived like ocean waves moving towards the shore.  We gather ourselves into ourselves, then begin to move towards a goal, releasing ourselves outward in a beautiful growing expansion that expresses our true nature, which changes in the expression, which stretches out until every last drop has been expended, then we retreat inward gathering ourselves again.  Many times when we are at the point where we have completely expended ourselves we can see the shore, see the next possibility and then we despair that we’ll never get there.  We feel empty and used up and frustrated and injured and lost, but we don’t allow ourselves the grace to regather, to move inward and replenish ourselves so we can move forward again.  We strain to stay in this place, never wanting to change, forming our world around the fact that this feeling of over extended, stressed, painful never quite thereness on the shore is all there is and all there ever will be.

I see this time and again when looking at roadmaps.  Clients come to me in the stretched out state wanting hope that things will change.  And they will.  But you have to let go.  You have to let go of the identity that says this is all there is, that things will never change, than the world is meant to keep you in this pain, that there is no hope and nothing left within you.  It’s there, but you have to let go.  Let your identity change.  Let the old you slip away so you can replenish the new you that is forming.  And when that happens you’ll be able to see the shore with all its possibilities and reach for it without strain, in the fullness of all that is possible and probable and magical.

No one likes to be negatively criticized.  There are those who welcome input, negative or positive, for a variety of reasons and are able to make positive results from it.  However, no matter what your coping skills or the amount of positive spin you put on things, no one likes to be criticized.  And for those who don’t have coping skills or who have adopted coping skills that are less than perfect (haven’t we all) what can happen is that instead of listening to the criticism and being able to accept it as a growth opportunity, they try to deflect it by turning the issue around on the messenger.  This can be done by classifying the issue as something personal to them that doesn’t have anything to do with the person being criticized.  Or it can be negated all together by saying that the point isn’t relevant the person should just be grateful for the experience they are having, regardless of its flaws.  It’s existence far outweighs any improvement that could be made to it.

It’s common to be shut down this way:  “Can’t you just be grateful for….. it was hard to do…takes a lot of effort….was done just for your benefit….is a sign of love/respect/affection….”  All of which is aimed at making the person stop doing/saying whatever it is they are doing/saying.   And many people don’t speak up because of this.  Because of this reaction, this negative feedback, this judgement that what are, what they feel, what they have to say is somehow wrong or will be taken wrong, will cause negativity and cause a scene.  So they don’t speak out.  And that I think is so very damaging to everyone.

Being able to speak your truth shouldn’t be the opposite of being grateful.  Saying something that is important to you shouldn’t negate what the other person is doing or why they have done it.  Someone doing something for you shouldn’t be a burden that you carry around and feel obligated to nourish at your own expense.  Speaking out, taking care of yourself, feeling empowered should be the obvious companion to being grateful.  Receiving a gift of such magnitude that it engenders gratitude should nourish a person into taking their own action to care for themselves and the world around them.  It should give them a voice, not take it away.

So when you speak out and get back “you should be grateful….” acknowledge, if only to yourself, that you are and that is WHY you are speaking out.  Be grateful and act on that feeling by giving back through your own voice.  You are not alone and your voice may be speaking for dozens or hundreds of others who have not yet found theirs.

Ervin Laszlo

I enjoy reading Ervin Laszlo, at least the books he’s written for the general public.  As a theoretical physicist working on the ToE (Theory of Everything) and a systems philosopher the details he works with go waaaayyy over my head.  However, what he’s working on, or to be more accurate, the results of his studies and that of dozens of other scientists from most other scientific disciplines is fascinating to me.  Because their research is progressing towards discovery of the Akashic field.  They already know that it has to be out there, discovering the Higgs Boson particle is another step in that direction, and he’s written books that explain why all the scientific theories and evidence is leading in that direction. It’s great to see science catching up to what has been known by the spiritual community for centuries.  And as a philosopher he’s able to understand that part of things and marvel.

In a 2012 article for the Huffington Post he looks at things, not as us trying to get there, but the Akashic field influencing what we are and what we do here.  He moves away from the industrial 1st world concepts of the material being inimical to life and instead sees that improving life as we know it means living fully in the world and of it.  He lists 16 ideas that indicate an Akashic way of thinking.  I really appreciate #4 and #16 isn’t bad either.  Which ones resonate with you?

Ervin Laszlo:  Akasha Think

Just as light can be a wave or a particle depending on how you attempt to measure it or interact with it, so the Akashics is both a physical force, the force that creates the laws on which our Universe operates, and also a place.  We all go there on a regular basis, usually once a week for the average Joe or Josephine, in our dreams or what I call dreamtime.  It’s those dreams you wake up from remembering that you were just getting out of class at your Junior High or High School. You can’t remember the class, just that you were gathering up your books and you weren’t the only student and that school was done for the day.  That’s the Akashics. You finished your wake up cycle just as you were getting done with your brush up class on whatever it is your soul is currently working on there.  We never stop being connected or stop learning and becoming. Also, those dreams of flying, yep that’s the Akashics.  Those amazingly clear dreams where everything seems stunningly bright and beautiful?  Yep, those too.  The dreams where you are naked in front of a group of people? Well you’re on your own. You might want to research Freud or Jung.

The Akashics can seem like a malleable place because due to our interconnected nature as souls and the fact that we communicate telepathically, thought forms take physical shape and we are therefore able to interact in our environment there in somewhat of an Alice in Wonderland way.  However, people mistake this as complete control such as “this is all in my head”, which it is not.  When in the Akashics we are in conversation with it and with all living  things.  Not a monologue, but a conversation.  So we only control 1/2 of the situation.  Which means what we communicate comes into being if the other party agrees and only until they communicate, when their thought forms come to life and then the process repeats, over and over again. Just as conversations do in real life only without the object actually appearing.

The Akashics is a place and, as I demonstrate for my students, the structures there stay in place and in shape regardless of our thoughts or how many people visit them.  The Library, the Temple of Life, the great Mountain, the formal gardens, the city, all of these things are there and are the same for all of us who visit them.  And if we visit them at the same time we can see each other there as well as beings that dwell there. The Akashics hold more wisdom and experience than any one being can comprehend and it is all available to us if we wish to access it.

Here’s some more info about the Akashics:

It’s not just a Library

It’s not just for Bipeds

This was written by a writer about writing, but I think it applies to all endeavors and life in general.   It’s something I try to live by everyday.

“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time.  Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.  The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now.  Something more will arise for later, something better.  These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.  Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive.  Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you.  You open your safe and find ashes.”

Annie Dillard “Write Till You Drop”

Beyond their surprise at the ease with which my students are able to access the Akashics in a meaningful and direct way, they are almost always surprised by the way they experience it because it’s never what they expect.  Most people on first working their consciously, myself included, tend to expect that it’s somewhat like going to a party at a friend’s house where you’ve never been to their house before.  You don’t know what the place will look like, you don’t know a lot of the people, and you take in everything quickly in order to sort social connections and fit into the situation.  It’s all about taking in all the sensory data, making meaning out of it, and going through the social niceties of meeting people for the first time, making initial connections, etc.

But the Akashics is a place we have all been before. In fact we go there on a weekly basis while we are sleeping.  This is a normal and healthy process that keeps us in sync with our origins, our teacher and guides, and that part of our being that did not come with us into corporeal life.  We continue our studies or our service work, catch up on the greater scheme of things coming for our lives and in general keep ourselves healthy and balanced and whole.  When we wake up we have everything we need in our mind, just not in our conscious for the most part.  Some people remember bits of these sessions as dreams but for the most part there’s no need so we don’t.

And so when we enter the Akashics consciously it may seem new to us and yet familiar.  The process may seem awkward and yet it’s relatively easy and we learn it quickly.  Even more, the beings we meet and interact with there recognize us and do not act as if they are strangers.  They are gentle with our confusions around communicating, patient with our inability to remember or recognize them, and are prepared to help us with whatever it is we need.  And that’s where the holistic healing comes in.  Because just like healers in this life, they look at everything that is going on with us, try to suss out the root causes, and while being mindful of the current moment, the task at hand, the expresses wishes and unvoiced wants, they work to help heal what underlies it all without infringing on our free will.

Which can lead people to think of beings in the Akashics as all knowing, all powerful, and a degree above anything going on here in the physical.  But that is not the case.  Choosing to live an embodied life includes the knowledge that to be here we have to forget our true nature and home to a great extent.  And we have to keep that information hidden in order to experience time as linear and to experience emotions and senses and interconnection in such a heightened and direct way.  Beings in the Akashics are not maintaining physical forms such as we carry, do not experience separation and do not need to utilize forgetfulness in anything they do.  They are able to look at who we are in the moment in all aspects and help guide us, nudge us, entice us and support us in realizing deeper meaning in who we are and what we are doing in our lives.  They can shine a bright light on what is most efficacious for us to know which may seem to have no relevance to our lives in the moment.  But paying attention to it, letting go of expectations and following where their insights lead can bring a depth of healing we never imagined.

What does it mean?

Whether you are currently living a spiritually based life or not, everyone has experienced a moment when all the elements just come together, when a circumstance becomes a synchronicity, when some connection is made that is “too good to be true”, and then is done as abruptly as it started.  And most people are left wondering “What does that mean?”  Most of the time no real answer comes and it becomes a random thing that happened and is filed away and forgotten until some party or conversation where it becomes a fun story to tell.

The thing is, there is an answer, but the meaning, the cause and effect of it, all the ramifications that ripple out from it and all the factors that caused it to be possible and that were involved in making it happen are so complex, involved, interrelated and stretched out in linear time and multidimensional space that we can’t comprehend them let alone make meaning out of them.

For those that dabble in spiritual practices like having their tarot read, getting their astrological chart, or working with a medium, “what does that mean?” looms larger because a lot of information is thrown at the person, somewhat like the Universe testing spaghetti.  Throw a lot of stuff and see what sticks.  And what doesn’t stick seems random and makes no sense, but we want things to make sense and so we ask and we puzzle and we figure, trying to make things fit.  The thing is, the pieces usually make sense over time as we gain a better understanding of ourselves and our situation, as we gain experience, and as events unfold that factor in, but haven’t yet happened.

Living a spiritual life means living with “what does that mean?” events all the time.  It means taking responsibility of your own life, of knowing yourself and being conscious of who you are while at the same time surrendering the need to make sense of events in the moment, of knowing what it all means and trusting that it will make sense later or doesn’t need to make sense at all.  Living a spiritual life means trusting in the interconnection of all life and being available to help others directly, indirectly, or seemingly randomly.  Random acts of kindness become normal, synchronicity becomes a friend, and getting logic and common sense to loosen their stranglehold on life so that possibility has just as much space to work as probability becomes a goal and not a hope.

So don’t worry about what it means.  You’ll figure it out one day…or you won’t.  And in the meantime you’ll have lived.

Habits aren’t just something that we do, they are small bits of our identity.  They are part of the framework we have built our lives on and therefore not easy to change.  Life is a full body experience exploding with sensory input in every second, so much so that we need to shut off input for hours at a time not only to let our bodies recuperate, but to let our minds process everything we have felt and learned so that we can become.  Habits help us to separate out what is routine from what needs our focused attention.  They help us be able to do the mundane things while focusing on creating and living and, hopefully, achieving joy and happiness living fully in the moment.

Knight at the Crossroads 1878 Viktor Vasnetsov

However, habits are formed based on the needs and the information of the moment.  Both of which change from second to second.  As we grow and change and become, so should our habits.  We should update those that just need to be tweaked to meet our new situation, create new ones that support our becoming, and get rid of the old ones that no longer serve or become injurious.   And not just the obviously physically injurious ones like smoking or drinking to excess or talking at the theater.  There are also emotional and mental habits that can cause us grief if they remain in play and unexamined after their service is no longer required.

Being hyper alert and sensitive as a child in a war zone or in an abusive family situation is an asset that can help you survive.  As an adult its a habit that can cause you mental and emotional distress and even physical issues if taken to an extreme in public or private settings. However, it can be an asset if you’re in the military or your career takes you into potentially dangerous situations (war torn areas, society functions, board rooms).  Being analytical is great if your career is in a scientific field, but it’s not necessarily an asset in your personal relationships and can actual prevent you from having healthy ones.  Being able to set boundaries around that mindset can save a partnership.  Old habits die hard, not just because they are habits and therefore hard to focus on, like an object just outside our peripheral vision, but because they have become part of our identity.  They have become how we see ourselves and our world.  Changing them means changing who we are and the question then becomes, “Who am I if I am not this?”  Which to my mind is one of the best, most exciting questions to ask yourself.  The answer(s) may amaze you.

Making a new connection with old technology

I was on the phone (long ago in the landline days) with someone having an intense conversation. I don’t remember what it was about at this point just to show how amazingly relevant it was. However, in the middle of the conversation the line went dead. I looked around me and found that my sweetheart had hung up the phone and was staring at me with this emotionally pained expression on his face. He started shaking he was so upset and trying not to yell at me. He’d been bottling things up for a while but he just couldn’t take it any more the way this friend talked to me and demanded explanations from me for everything I did like I had to report to my teacher or something.  I was an adult and I deserved to be treated better, he thought.  He had to leave after that and get some air.

It is a gift I have never been able to repay, that insight into things. I thought I was doing well in life that I had examined quite a bit of the things that had hurt me and held me back in my life and was headed towards healing.  But here was a whole new perspective for me.  What if the people I had known forever, the way I had lived because of them, was not healthy?  What if the structure that had formed my perception of life was off and not supportive of me becoming the best me that I could be?  What if there was more to this examined life than just confronting the bad guys?

Very little in this life is black and white although it would be easier if it was.  Love is not a light switch that turns off when someone hurts you.  Just because someone does a good deed doesn’t make them a knight in shining armor.  Everything is interconnected and essential yet temporary in the moment and our lives are weavings of meaning we make from our experiences and so every growing and changing.  Living an examined life is just that, living it.  It’s not a treatment regimen or a one time workshop or a gadget that will make everything better.  It’s a way of life that allows you to find the real you under all the layers of family traditions and social interactions, the cultural mores, the educational propaganda, the religious traditions, the job/career molds, and all the other influences that try to shape who you are.  It’s not a means to make you separate from all that. It’s a means to live your life consciously choosing what parts of it are real and how you will live with/in/around/through them.  It’s how you build a life, not live one that is a reaction to everyone and everything else.

There are some things about human beings that we have become amazingly distanced from due to civilization, urbanization, and mechanization.  The fact that we are mammals that prefer to live above ground, we are diurnal liking daytime and sunlight, and we are by nature social/herd animals who for safety and emotional well being live in groups.  All of these things influence our perceptions of the world around us even in our symbolic thinking about things.  So does the fact that are primary sense is sight.  We make meaning out of the world based on these preexisting baselines of our physicality.  So light and up are good while dark and down are bad.  Not knowing something is bad as it is probably a predator coming to get you vs being able to see something on its way towards you so you can prepare and/or escape.  Things behind us bad as we can’t see them, things in front good.

Which is why all horror movies use darkness and hidden things and surprises as their motifs.  They scare us the most and give us shots of adrenaline even though we know it’s just a picture on a screen.  This is why we’re told not to dwell on what is behind us, because what’s in front of us is what’s important today.  It’s why Heaven is bright and light and above us so we can ascend to it and why Hell is below us and dark and infernal and we descend to it.  And all of this makes the concept of going into our own depths to figure out who we are and why we are as seem a scary negative process.  Just the words we use invoke fear “into” “depths”.  It implies leaving this place, going somewhere unknown, and that going is downward.  All tend to be fear or at least anxiety provoking.  Then there is the notion that bad things are in the depths.  Even though they are us, it would seem better not to know about them, which is why we have kept them “in the dark” and pushed “deep down” inside us.  Seeking the truth about ourselves is coded by our symbols and words with danger and fear.

Diving Deep

Yet, if we want to continue to use this symbol system, going into the depths brings the things there to light.  Instead of monsters, most people find that there are pieces of themselves that have been neglected, shunned, tormented and bedeviled into submission for no reason other than someone said they should be.  The answers to who you could be if only _____ are there but hidden in a cloak of ‘not socially acceptable’ or ‘could get me in trouble’ or ‘know one will love me if they know.’  Living an authentic life means that, at some point, you will bring the light of “Know Thyself” to these parts of you, love them, apologize to them, and allow them the healing, acknowledgement and life they deserve.

Know thyself isn’t a goal, it’s a life choice. It means examining your life, being conscious about your choices, and constantly asking yourself why and why and why. It’s why I love the book “An Unknown Woman” by Alice Koller. It’s her autobiography of taking herself to an island on the east coast and sitting alone in the house with her dog and digging down to why for every preference and action and thought that she had until she got rid of all the programming everyone else in life had given. She found the root of her self and didn’t like it at all. So she changed it and started her life over, as an adult, consciously choosing everything she did from then on. It’s a ruthless process but when you can finally, truthfully ask the questions, when you can answer them without trying to hide what the actual answer is or change it into something else, then you have begun the amazing, soul nourishing journey to “Know Thyself”. Which is inscribed on the entry to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece.

Liminal State

One of the things which has drawn me to the writings of Charles De Lint is how he thinks of the movement between what we consider reality, and what lies beyond it.  His works of Urban Fantasy place the people and creatures of myth, legend, and story into our everyday lives and weave the connections giving us answers to “Why is that…?” and “What do we do now?”  I like that his characters are real, meaning flawed and living lives of decisions in the moment, making mistakes and correcting them and living…most of all living.  How he sees the intersection of the mundane world and the mystery behind it all is through the between places.  Those spaces between one place and another.  Like a doorway or a window frame, the edge of a river, the place where shadow meets the light on pavement, the grass between a home’s yard and the road, and so on and so on.  Places which are neither one place or the other, neither here nor there, are the ways in which we slip between states, letting go of what we were and not yet becoming what we will be.

Transformation is heralded by liminal states.  And not just in fiction, but in life.  Marriage, divorce, having children, getting a career, changing careers, moving to another state or country, confronting an idea or action or activity which creates an “Ah Ha!” all bring on liminal states in which we transition from who we were and leave us in a place where we are not yet what we will eventually become.  And these are just the biggees that we recognize at the time.  There are often smaller liminal moments that we recognize only dimly and some we don’t recognize at all until they are complete.

The challenge of an examined life it to awaken to the liminal in life.  To be aware of those moments and take advantage of them to investigate and truly inhabit the soul in a way that the mundane world keeps us from.  It’s to live the life of a poet, often overwhelmed by the amount of life that comes flooding into us, becoming over sensitized to the world around us, learning who we truly are by living without rules and without limits.  To walk a spiritual path is to seek out the liminal in life in order to fully experience the self.  To ‘Know Thyself’ as is inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi is to move beyond the everyday to find the liminal spaces.  And then come back to the everyday transformed and to build a life based on who you are now.  So that you can find the liminal again….and again….and again.

I’ve blogged about it briefly a couple of times:

http://www.akashicreading.com/healing-is-relational/

http://www.akashicreading.com/seeking-yourself-is-an-act-of-courage/

Positive change is always good for you and good for everyone around you even if its tangential and the positive effects show up in the long term and not the short.  But, at least in the short term, it may not feel that way to the people who care about you the most and that can be problematic.

It’s a common theme that I bring up with my clients who are working on deep internal processes and making huge changes in their life such relocating, changing careers, ending or starting significant relationships, or changing the boundaries of family relationships:  people don’t like change and so the people you care most about in your life are more than likely not going to be happy with you making this change.  I don’t say it to scare people or to make things more difficult.  I point it out because it’s true.

No one can see inside you to see the changes that are occurring.  They can only see the results as they affect your actions and behaviors and choices. And your changing changes the structure of their life, which they don’t like, so they will react in some form either to back away from you so that the changes don’t affect them or to keep you from changing.  They want their life to be stable and you’re a part of their life so they need you to stay the same.

Martha Beck takes this farther by giving some tips on how to deal with this situations when it arises.  Because like everything else, it’s not black/white, either/or.  You can have your positive change and still keep the people you love the most.  Just remember that everything is interconnected so as you change so will your relationships.

http://marthabeck.com/2012/10/change-back-attacks/

Something I regularly point out to clients is that quite a bit of the symbology we use to make meaning out of the world we experience, both internal and external, is based on the fact that we depend on our sight as our dominant sense.  Which is why most if not all horror movies are based on darkness or on things coming from ‘nowhere’ to get us.  Not being able to see something triggers our lizard brains into remembering that we are in essence herd and prey animals and are subject to being ‘got’ by predators.  Since that’s not the way we actually live our lives (most of the time) horror movies help add that spice to our lives that we aren’t getting from every day activities.

Focusing on sight also points to why so many car accidents are due to rear-ending someone or being rear-ended.  And why some of the most common accidents in stores are people backing into others or bumping into displays or each other with carts.  Gallagher used to say, ‘Look where you’re going or go where you’re looking!’  And our lives are full of wisdom about not looking back, keep your eyes on the prize, keep to the path that is in front of you, it’s always darkest before the light, etc, etc.  I’m sure you can think of a dozen more truisms like this.

Which means that we equate darkness with fear.  Because being without our sight, being in the dark, is one of the scariest places to be.  And we equate not knowing about something, having no experience of something, or not being sure of what will happen next as ‘being in the dark.’  Which means we fear the state of being where we don’t know or ‘can’t see our way clearly.’  This makes delving into the ‘dark’ parts of ourselves even more frightening.  To think that there is something other within us, something we don’t know, something not of the ‘light’ makes it frightening even though it’s part of ourselves.  But the truth is that nothing exists in the darkness that isn’t there in the light.  Even nocturnal animals live in the light, they just sleep through it.  The only thing to be scared about in the dark is that your primary means of knowing the world has been limited.  And there’s nothing actually scary about that because you have other senses. You have other means of knowing and experiencing the world around you.  And there is nothing inside you that you don’t already know about, it’s just hidden right now because for whatever reason you’ve got it in the dark.

Separate fear from darkness and you’ll be able to explore entire new worlds all around you.  Including within yourself.  Who knows what magic and beauty await you?

People speak about fear as detracting from manifesting.  And this can be true, but it depends on what you mean by fear.  Being afraid of something in real time, like an oncoming car or a bear standing next to you in the woods, or the decorative railing on the balcony of a high rise apartment are all good fears that help your body gear up to keep you safe.  They help you manifest well-being by allowing you to deal with a dangerous situation.  Fear of something that has not yet occurred such as an interview, a date, a bill, a payment, a response to a request, all of these fears are called “dirty pain” as they are fears we generate in ourselves without any external source. They are worries that do not help us to take our energies away from positive actions.  In the short term they can help us take action to prevent a negative outcome, but once this is done, they become unhelpful and a hindrance.  They mimic real time fear in that they can cause our bodies to react, but they are actually emotional and mental actions.  In manifesting this kind of fear does not prevent the manifesting process to work, but it allows the conversation to manifest what is feared rather than what is hoped for.  Imagine that this is like being in a room full of people and trying to talk with someone over the sound of other conversations. In essence what you want to manifest you are saying rarely and at a whisper while what you’re afraid of you shout at them over and over again.  Which part will they remember and respond to?  Yup, what you fear.  So that’s what you’ll get in the end.

As with any conversation, you can’t always do the talking.  You have to listen as well and give the other side equal time, which is why, once you have formulated your request, you shouldn’t dwell on it.  You can work on it a bit each day if there are actions you can take, but once that is done, let it go and go on with the rest of your day.  Let the Universe work on its end.  And when events happen to support your request, “listen” to them i.e. recognize them for what they are, act upon them, say “Thank You” and keep going.  It’s all part of the conversation.

Another matter to keep in mind is that things may not unfold exactly as you expect them too.  Like all creations the end result is never exactly like what you’ve seen in your head, but it’s a reflection of your skills and abilities of the moment interacting with the materials on hand.  That’s a great part of all creative processes whether in art, construction, or business. Manifesting something will bring an end result that will be what you asked for, but unique to your situation, the resources at hand and responsive to the moment. And receiving it will change you and this will take you to the next thing you wish to manifest.  Such is the interconnectedness of life.  So be open to what the Universe brings, be flexible so you can appreciate all the opportunities being offered and listen so you don’t miss what is put in front of you.

Manifestation in its simplest form is a conversation between an individual and the Universe in all its aspects.  One side speaks and then the other in an ongoing communication that allows each to express itself.  This being the case, the clearer the person is on what they are trying to communicate the better chance for the receiver to understand and be able to respond appropriately.  So in working to manifest things the person must use all of themselves in order to be clear in their message. The right brain works with the soul to discover what you truly want.  Then to manifest what you desire, be it an object, an event, or a life change, you must know that it is true thoroughly and completely. Just as the Oracle explained to Neo “You know what that means? It’s Latin. Means Know thyself. I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Being the One is just like being in love. No one can tell you you’re in love, you just know it. Through and through. Balls to bones.” Your soul must want it unconditionally, not with fear or lack, but with love such that you know it will become part of your life. The heart must know that the thing will become real and feel joy each time you think about it.  The body should be able to feel that the thing has already manifested.  Then and only then should the left brain enter into the process.  And the left brain cannot be allowed to overrule this knowing, but only function to help you take steps to make manufacturing it happen.

Also, as part of the manifesting process it’s good to keep in mind that the Universe is not one singular being, one entity that somehow interacts with each individual and each particle of matter in some magic way with some grand plan.  It is an interconnected web of life so complicated we may never understand all its intricacies.  What we can know is that our understanding of cause and effect is amazingly limited due to the nature of our brains and our need to deal with temporal and local realities, while the Universe is relatively unlimited.  So while manifesting can sometimes seem like a magic trick or some kind of spell casting, in reality it is a conversation with the Universe which starts with a request and causes multitudinous events in response.  Because we can’t see all the connections and all the cause and effect steps along the way, what we do see seems mystical or random or synchronistic.  And that’s fine because part of the manifestation is about surrender and trust as is true with any relationship.

The concept of “Start Where You Are” is predicated on somewhat of an either/or proposition.  Basically the wisdom is to not wait until you have a perfect situation to start doing what you want or what is best because then you never will.  So start where you are and go from there.  But what if the proposition isn’t either/or, do or don’t do?  What if you are willing to start doing but what you’re doing isn’t working.  Then starting where you are might not be the answer.

Perhaps the answer for the moment isn’t to do something, but to stop doing things.  “Don’t just do something, stand there!”  Because sometimes the answer really lies not in the Starting part of the equation but in the Where You Are part.  Because where you are isn’t quite where you could and should be to launch off into what you really want.  For example, every great project starts with an idea, either yours or someone else’s, but then there is prep work.  If you don’t do the prep work than execution on the idea is going to suffer and fail.  You can have all the talent in the world, but if you don’t know what you want to do, then you end up just doing stuff.

Also, if where you are includes a healthy dose of misperception, sprinkled with old role models, other’s opinions, and left over labels you might want to clear up your space before you start heading out because nothing weights you down like old worn out baggage.  Before you take on the next leg of your journey, throw out what you no longer need.  Look at who you are, evaluate all the things that people have said you are, have wanted you to be, and have expected you to take on and see if they fit.  If they aren’t helping you become who you want to be or get you where you want to go, get rid of them.  If they are holding you back or harming you or keeping you from being happy, get fearless and let the go.  With gusto if necessary.

Because sometimes you have to deal with where you are before you can get the party started.

Like many things in our lives we have a very us/them relationship with Sacred Space.  For the most part we see it as other than us, residing in buildings specifically designed to create and contain it such as churches, existing in nature such as awe inspiring mountains, water falls, rivers, or canyons, and forming temporarily in large public gatherings such as the Presidential inauguration or Burning Man.

We do not see Sacred Space as something that connects with our day-to-day life.  Our living spaces, our work spaces, our mundane doings see to have nothing to do with sacred anything and so if we want to partake of the sacred we need to stop what we’re doing, change tack, and do something to bring sacrality into our lives such as prayer or go somewhere that sacrality resides.  We look at people who live in a sacred manner as ‘other’ such as Tibetan monks or Catholic nuns or those who live in ashrams in India seeing the convergence of sacrality with life as removing people from real living.  Sacrality is seen as being about being other than real and not being connected with this life.

But that’s and artificial separation that we maintain.  Most indigenous cultures have difficulty even discussion spirituality with outsiders because they do not have this concept of separation between life and the sacred.  My own culture has no word for religion.  Our spirituality is how we live our lives and our lives are sacred.  And this refers to us now, not just to our dead ancestors that used to hunt deer and wear leather and birch bark.  In fact, I remember one of my elders using a hot glue gun when helping a few of us construct some ritual items and the shock students showed.  In exasperation she told them succinctly, “If the elders would have had this, it would have been a sacred item!”  Which is the truth.  Things and traditions aren’t sacred because they were used in a sacred way, they are sacred because we imbue them with sacrality.  We honor them and open our sacred selves to them in order to relate with them via our souls.  And there is no reason that we need to become a monk or a nun to do this in our daily lives.  We don’t have to give up living to live in a sacred way.  We just need to honor ourselves as sacred.

How would you do things differently if you saw yourself as sacred in the same way as the Grand Canyon, Chatre Cathedral, Stone Henge?

Our left brain seeks to make meaning out of the world around us including our personal experiences of it.  Many times it weighs these experiences the same as physical laws such as gravity, so if something has always happened to you in the past, just like objects always having to fall to earth, this something will always happen to you in the future.  But unlike the laws of gravitational force or electro-magnetism the meaning your mind has made out of your experiences may not truly be the case.  You aren’t fated to always get the worst projects at work, you aren’t always going to be alone, to meet the exact wrong person, to have to struggle in every situation you are in, to always be taken advantage of.  If nothing else, the law of averages won’t allow it.  You have to catch a break sometime.  And just because you never have before doesn’t mean you won’t now even if your logical left brain says you will.  The Mentor is here to help you remember that the meaning of the world around you is what you make of it.  If you don’t like the conclusions you’ve come to and the results you are getting, take action to change them.

The first thing to do in making a change in your life, big or small, is to change your mind about the situation.  Well, one ½ of your mind, the left half.  One way to do this is to reach out to the right brain for inspiration while befuddling and distracting the left by thinking in opposites.  When you have a thought about something, say a deadline or a bill or a project and you think a declarative statement about that, immediately think about its opposite.  For example, “I have so much to do to meet that deadline on Friday!  My week is screwed.”  The opposite could be, “I have almost nothing to do to meet that deadline on Friday!  My week is great.”  Both statements are equally valid, both have the same weight, and both could become the truth in your life depending on your choices and actions.  But to make the second one true you need to let go of the first and start thinking creatively.  How can you meet the deadline without having to work so hard?  Are there technologies to help?  Are there resources in other departments that could share the load?  Is there a temp who could do basic grunt work for you?  Does someone owe you a favor you can call in?  Can you delegate some of the work to people on your team?  Think outside the box.  Live in opposite land where the right brain reigns supreme in thinking up possibilities and let your left brain do what it’s best at, problem solve and figure out the details for making those possibilities happen.

You can use the same technique on just about anything.  Need to meet a requirement for a promotion but hate your job and feel stuck?  Why not throw out the job and get a new one?  Why not look into a career that better meets your needs and makes you happy and supports you financially?  See, problem solved. No more arbitrary hoops to jump through and a whole new vista of opportunities to explore.  Relationship not working? Feel that the person would be perfect and we could live happily ever after if they would just__________?  Well, turn it all around by thinking “I could live happily ever after even if this person never__________.”  Immediately whole new opportunities open up for you. Either you open your life to meeting someone perfect who does __________ because you no longer need the first person to do it or you see that __________wasn’t an impediment to a healthy relationship with the person at all.  And letting go of all that worry that is probably stressing you out and making you crazy might cause others to relax around you and make things better all around. Let your right brain break down the barriers to success.

People speak about change in two very contradictory ways.  One puts people in the role of victim.  “You can’t stop change from happening.  You are born, you grow old, then you die.”  Which, while true, misses some key facts along the way such as our bodies constantly repairing themselves, sluffing off old cells and building new ones and the fact that while we do this we still manage to hold onto things like scars and birthmarks even though the cells that make them up are replenished hundreds and hundreds of times over the years.

Then there is the other perspective where we are completely in charge of the changes in our lives.  “You have the power to be anything that you want to be.  All you have to do is imagine it!”  Well, and that is partially true in that we self limit by not allowing ourselves to imagine the possible or ofttimes even the probable.  But life doesn’t come with a magic wand feature, all fiction and movies to the contrary.  If thinking made it so our world would be a crazy place full of contradictory….everything…nothing would make sense and mayhem would ensue.  Which at times I find intriguing, but then I have a bit more tea and move on.

Change is neither of these things and both and quite a bit in between them. Change happens.  We are neither a victim of it nor  its master.  We cohabit the Universe which is, to a large extent, a vehicle for and experiment in change.  The notable things about the Universe are those that change so little over time that they seem to stand still.  And yet I believe the amazingness about everything here is the opportunity for change.  The ability to experience it in realtime, to have the chance to open ourselves up to possibilities, to expand ourselves into ‘what if?’  So many people live their lives trying not to change, trying to hold onto what they are in that moment even thought that’s impossible.  And that stems from fear, fear of loss, fear of the unknown, fear of the new.  But if you realize that you won’t lose who you are when you change, you’ll just become more and better and truer to youself, then you can let go of the fear which is the best change any of us can ever make.

It’s funny to me how we tend to think of things as going only one way.  Such as the external world doing things to us, but us having hardly any impact on the external world.  It’s like we’re a leaf being blown around by the wind and we can’t see that we may be creating a wind block for others so they aren’t affected by the wind or that the wind lifts us up and carries us over obstacles or that we can float with the wind and enjoy the ride.  To extend a metaphor way to far.

Another way we do this is in our homes.  Most women realize at some level that our homes are a direct reflection of who we are and how we feel about ourselves and the world.  They are a huge collection of symbols for everything going on inside us.  But we see this street as one way.  If something inside changes, then the way we live in the house will change so I need to make changes inside of me.  But the house affects us as well.  Living in a place with no light is comforting to some and depressing to others.  Living in a small space can be cozy and supportive or cramped and crazy making.  It just depends on the person and where they are at in their lives with their needs and their perspectives.

So if your living space is a reflection of you and you are not happy with what is going on with you right now, and trying to change things from the inside out isn’t working and you feel lost and overwhelmed and hopeless, why not come at the problem from the other direction. Feeling stuck at work, clean up your work area at home.  Clearing up the clutter, making decisions about what to do with this or that, all of it is symbols that will affect your internal self.  It will prompt you to see the big picture in the little symbol you are holding and help you make decisions that might seem overwhelming or confusing seem manageable and doable.  And if nothing else it helps you feel better in the moment and see things more clearly.  It puts things in perspective.  Feeling like you can’t get any movement in a relationship, clean off your kitchen counters.  It’s one of the more relational areas of the house, usually the heart of any home, and making space makes space in your life to deal with each other in a good way.  Feeling like you are just dragging around so much shit and can’t let go of anything, clean the bathroom.  No lie.  Or fix that toilet that doesn’t have enough water pressure or that leaks.  Change out the light bulbs over the sink.  Clean the fan.  Change out that washer so the sink stops dripping.  It’s stunning but true that this will help you resolve those stinky issues that are plaguing you.

As above, so below, as within so without.  You might think that you have everything about you all contained inside and hidden from the world, but we manifest our reality in every choice we make and every action we take.  So it’s in our homes as well as in our heads.  If you want to make a change, start cleaning a closet or decluttering the junk drawer.  You’ll be glad you did.

There are a few things that most everyone agrees on.  Taxes are no fun and no one likes paying them.  The Dentist may be a fun person, but going to the dentist office is never going to be a fun event.  And our teenage years are something that we never want to revisit.  In fact, almost universally people send up prayers of thanks every time they think about having survived those years and being past them.

But the echo of them remains forever because there is a time in every transition where you reach that awkward teenage moment when you aren’t completely done being who you were and you aren’t fully comfortable with who you are becoming.  It’s that stuck place where everything is raw and new and has to be focused on so you don’t trip over your own feet or do something publicly that will never be forgotten or gotten over by everyone who witnessed it and everyone they tell about it.  Even good-naturedly.

Like being at a public event with tables full of food and realizing you can’t eat anything because you’ve lost 86 lbs and have another 80 to go and everything there is a carb or a sugar or both.  It’s not that you don’t want to. You could go there so easily.  It all looks and smells delicious.  And one little plate won’t kill you or set you back much.  But that’s the old you talking and the new you is buying new clothes….again….tomorrow because you have slimmed out of everything you own and its an amazing transformation you don’t want to set back or give up on.  Or settling into a new career and the new life that unfolding for you and getting a call from someone you used to know from work with a job that would just fit you. And it might and you would be great at it and it would be a wonderful opportunity.  But that old life was killing you and not even slowly. And your new life may be full of unknowns and uncertainties, but you are flourishing in it one day at a time, finding your way and creating something that is good for you and everyone around you.   And you don’t want to give that up without giving it a chance.

You get the picture.  We never stop having those awkward teenage moments, unfortunately.  Luckily, having survived them the first time, we know that they don’t stay forever, that if we just hold out they will pass and we’ll get through to the other side.  And things will get remarkably better.  Amazingly, stunningly, breathtakingly better.  Just hang in there.

As adults a great part of our life is about the limited amount of time and energy we have in each day and how we choose or don’t choose to use it.  Many years ago I took a management class which was mainly fluff and incredibly basic, but there was one gem that I have remembered from it.  If you don’t manage your Inbox, then it will manage you.  Your day and possibly your life (thanks to never being unplugged) will be a constant attempt to get the tail to stop wagging the dog and you will chase the illusion of ‘finally.  It’s all taken care of’ until you are burned out or fired.  You’ll never be successful, you’ll never be happy, your productivity will be reduced to nothing while your energy output will be incredibly high and no one will be happy, especially your bosses.  Unless they like busy work.  Then they’ll be ecstatic until they see the revenue forecast for the next quarter.

So what’s the answer?  Time management.  It doesn’t matter how many fires are burning down the building, set aside a few hours each day to do what you need to get done.  Make them mandatory, not optional.  Make them the same every day and stick to your guns.  Don’t allow interruptions.  Period. And people will try to interrupt.  Because their issues, ideas, random thoughts or just plain boredom will always trump whatever you have going on.  Be tough, be strict, be honest, and carve out the time to take care of the Inbox.  You’ll find that the rest of the day doesn’t wag you, if you do, because you will have dealt with the priorities in life. Just like the Steward on the plane tells you every time, you need to put your air mask on first because if you don’t you won’t be around to help the person next to you anyway. (They say it much more genteelly than that, but we all get the picture if we’re paying any attention at all.  Which most of the time we’re not.)

The same thing goes for normal day-to-day life.  Yes, with kids, with family, with careers, and meetings, and all of the things we jam into our lives at this point.  It gets to the point where we just bounce from one thing to the next all day until we get to the end and realize that everything else got done except what we wanted, which causes the whole day to feel like a disaster or a tragedy.  Well, tomorrow is another day, so do something different instead of the same thing again, like Groundhog’s day.  It’s not entirely fate or random happenstance that gets you in that situation.  You participated in the process, so time to change how that gets done.  Carve out the hour to two hours you need to take care of you.  Or choose to prioritize what you need one day a week.  Have a special occasion you want to celebrate, get a baby sitter for the entire day so you can be ready for the certain someone.  Need time to yourself, start putting yourself down for naps and getting up early.  Need to focus on working out, work to get the distractions out of the way during the day or the night before so there is nothing to stop you from reaching your goal.

Make yourself as much of a priority as everyone else in your life.  Make time for you each and every day and make that time quality instead of a scraped together minute in between everything else.  Make self care a necessary part of every day because if you don’t think you’re good enough to be taken care of, it really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, right?

Several years ago I was working with a group of women and we all happened to be single at the time when February came around.  As we were sitting, drinking tea and talking about whatever, the topic came around to Valentine’s Day and the lamenting began. Woe is me that I’m single during this romantic day.  It’s so sad that I won’t get blah-de-blah present and do blah-de-blah thing that I would like to do and the whole day is so depressing wha-wha-wha…

I guess I got a look on my face because the conversation kinda petered out after a bit.  That’s when I sprung it on them that everything they said was garbage and self talk that they were putting into their own lives for no reason.  And then I laughed because of the looks on their faces.  Such shock! LOL  Besides the fact that the holiday is just a huge marketing ploy that we try to make the best out of and is set up to fail for more relationships than it is a day of rejoicing and enjoyment…setting aside all the bitterness and the visions of greedy corporate moguls chuckling evilly over all the money they are raking in on flowers and cards and chocolates and meals and romantic pretty much anything…the day is theoretically about Love.  Love that comes from, hopefully, someone who loves you unconditionally and is willing to demonstrate it all the other days of the year and just a little bit extra on this one.

So why can’t that person be you?  If you don’t love yourself unconditionally, truly and thoroughly, then who the heck else is gonna?  So show yourself the love you deserve and treat yourself the way you’ve always wanted to be treated.  Don’t wait for someone else to do it, do it now.  That year we planned a perfect Valentine’s Day for ourselves.  We went shopping for Valentine’s chocolate at all the stores we never go in but have always wanted to.  We bought special Valentine’s mugs and wine glasses, we gathered the romantic chick flicks we love and wanted to share, then gathered at my house to sit around in appropriately comfortable and unapologetically girly jammies, ate chocolate and other treats, drank tea and wine (not at the same time), and watched chick flicks ’till we couldn’t stay awake another minute while giggling and laughing and thoroughly enjoying ourselves.

And that’s just one example.  This year I’m making chocolate covered strawberries and taking myself out to see a movie I’ve been waiting to see for a while with one of my favorite actors in it.  What will you do to show yourself that you are unconditionally loved?

There is definitely a line between focusing on a goal, and focusing so tightly on what we want that we are unable to see what is right in front of you.  It’s good to work towards something and to focus on that enough to be able to accomplish it.  But if that is all you focus on, what wonders you will miss along the way.  Besides the fact that a laser-like focus can keep you from seeing that all the actions you take are futile because the target you want to hit and what you are aiming at are two very different things.

I have clients that ask me questions about why they can’t succeed in their jobs, why they can’t get promoted, why they struggle every step of the way just to get the basic benefits of the job that everyone else gets, why they have to go through extra hoops to get what they deserve…..And they expend huge amounts of energy trying to make all of this work for a host of reasons that are all very logical and prosaic.  They funnel all of their time either into working on issues, doing their job, or worrying about the issues and the job.  They become not only frustrated and unsatisfied with the work, but exhausted mentally, emotionally, and physically. And the answer their soul books usually provide is, stop working at that job.  It’s not going to work out because it’s not what you’re supposed to be doing. Prepare to do something that you will enjoy and that will match who you truly are.  Doh!  The glitch is that they never thought of that because they were so focused on the goal of making this job work.  Release yourself from the hamster wheel and find somewhere that fosters your soul instead of slowly killing it.

Others are just stuck on having that one person in their life.  Not any person, not the right person, not someone who makes sense and will make a good life with them, but ‘that’ person over there.  The one that ignores them or makes them miserable or that they failed at having a relationship with.  It doesn’t matter that there are several other options available, that they could be ridiculously happy with a small change in their lives that allows them to meet a new segment of the population.  Their goal is to make this situation work with this one person who doesn’t want to be with them or can’t be with them because its awful when they are.  Let it go.  Believe the other person.  Believe our own experience.  Grieve that relationship and let it go, but don’t tie in your ability to love and be loved to that one relationship.  The world isn’t over if this one doesn’t work. There will be others if you allow it.

And still others are fixated on how spirituality works for them. It’s not working if they are getting messages from beyond.  It’s not working if they don’t have some psychic talent.  It’s not real if there isn’t some magical something happening that proves they are special and unique and gifted. Which is backwards from how it really works.  Spirituality isn’t some party game, it’s a way of life.  And magic happens all the time regardless of whether we are noticing it or not.  And we are special, whether or not we are noticing the magic.  The idea is to live.  Live life to its fullest using everything you’ve got, heart/soul, mind/body.  When you do that, when you open yourself to who you truly are, naiveté and mistarts and successes and joyous ‘aha!’s along the way, then you can see and really appreciate the amazing and unique things that happen every day and not have to go searching for them or have them appear as proof of your good works. You’ll have proof enough of that within yourself.

So much has been written about manifesting.  I don’t usually weigh in because people have become habituated to thinking that it’s about thinking and control.  You are controlling your destiny, the world around you, just by your thoughts.  Which just makes my mind boggle.  Because if our thoughts manifested things so easily then children’s lives would be full of spandex wearing people jumping through the house roaring around saving things, destroying things, and making dramatic statements that are overly obvious.  A great number of homes would be very serious “Tick” episodes and the kitchens would be overflowing with every junk food and candy known to man.

Don’t even get me started on the porn that would be flowing out of every nook and cranny.  So I believe it is safe to say that thinking about things, even obsessively thinking about things, doesn’t make it so.  Manifesting isn’t the ability to get your every wish fulfilled.

Meanwhile, manifesting can and does happen every day.  And not just with elbow grease and plodding through life.  But it’s a process that includes every aspect of your being, not just your brain.  In fact, the brain is really the smallest part of the manifestation team.  To manifest something, first you must want something.  Not from a sense of lack or of entitlement, but because it’s a dream you haven’t yet fulfilled.  You have to want something that makes you happy in a soulful way, like having the home of your dreams, working in a career that fulfills you, or becoming something you always knew you could be like an artist or an aid worker or a doctor.

Once you have the dream, you turn on all of your systems to know that the dream will come true.  You know it in your heart where it is a persistent feeling that can’t be dissuade by logic or events.  It’s an irrational knowing that wears away at obstacles like water wears away stone.  And you know it in your body which gives you the feeling of completeness and serenity every time you focus on the dream, supporting you in taking all the necessary steps to reach it. You know it in your soul which allows you to see that regardless of what anyone says or does, this is the right goal for you and matches who you truly are in this moment.  Then and only then do you focus your brain on the issue and allow the problem solving system to help you figure out how to get from here to there.  And the key to manifesting is knowing that it is not you against the world, it is you working with the world to get the job done.  Because if you are flexible to be connected with what is and work with it to create what can be, then things flow, not without resistance, but with support to become what you know they can be.

The last section of all soul books is the Life Roadmap.  It works with the Embodied Life Record and the Relationship Map to gather all the information about that current life and plot out all the opportunities available, from conception to the grave, as “if/then” statements, meaning that “if” this choice is made “then” this path is taken, these opportunities become available and this choice will come next if you continue on this path.  All of the information gathered and noted in the Embodied Life Record, all the calculations, opportunities and possible outcomes are converted here into a map, a two dimensional web which allows the life to layout visually in all its complexity. Each choice is a nexus moving the soul in a direction towards the next array of choices and away from many others.

Reading a Life Roadmap is a bit like experiencing a living masterpiece in a gallery.  Standing in front of a Monet or a Gauguin is a full body experience that takes us, for a moment, back to the experience of being the spiritual beings we truly are.  Opening ourselves to that way of knowing when working through the Roadmap allows us to view it without judgment and to become aware of all the possibilities it presents.  Paradoxically, it also roots us in linear experienced time in a way even more profound than that provided by past life records. While the map is showing us potential events and opportunities not yet taken, it is also showing all the opportunities in an ever updating ever creating real world timeline.  I liken this to cartooning where the artist creates the original sketch or drawing in pencil and when satisfied they complete it by inking it in permanently.  Similarly the Roadmap is written by the Embodied Life Record in what I term pencil, albeit colored and constantly in movement, but as the life is lived, as choices are made and paths are travelled, a record of this is inked in over the penciling.  All that has come to pass is now a permanent record, all other opportunities either concluding or continuing based on those choices and actions.  It is therefore relatively easy to see where the soul is on the path, what has led them to their current life situation and what paths and choices and opportunities lie before them.

From this, just the overwhelming amount of choices and options, activities and experiences shown on the Roadmap we can become overwhelmed and begin to feel that life is all random chance and we are just a leaf floating on a stream with no control, just a little speck in the immensity of life.  And this is where our goals and preplanning come in.  We co-create our existence in part because our soul helps us navigate through all of these stimuli.  And this is where the artistry comes in.  Because through all of these straight lines and angles and paths our soul helps us keep on track by spiraling us through our lives on an ever turning trajectory.  When we are meant to learn something or experience something or become something and the choices we make lead us away from this, the opportunity is not lost.  It comes around again arriving in a new form, in a new way, altering to fit with who we have become, giving us another chance at following our soul path. Some people experience this as the Universe speaking to us through circumstances.  An event catches our attention, but we shake it off as coincidence.  Then a similar thing happens, but it’s bigger and more obvious.  If we continue to ignore it the events can become so obvious that even unknowing bystanders can see and understand the meaning and implications.

Parents are human beings.  Most adults realize that at some point.  Usually it comes to us in our 30′s, although life circumstances might bring that point home much earlier, for better or worse.  Parents have their own perspectives, their own histories, their own baggage, their own hopes and dreams and aspirations. All of which inform how they parent, the home they create, and the life they bequeath to their children.

Most of us our taught to talk about parenting as if it’s some generic role that everyone fits into.  Everyone goes through 5th grade and survives it, everyone can be a parent, it’s natural and normal and everyone can do it.  *face palm*  Unfortunately real life shows that this isn’t the case.  Parenting isn’t some one-size-fits all role that everyone wears and that never chafes and is easy to get through.  Being a parent means being a person and being responsible for another person(s).  And it could mean being in intimate relationship with another adult, or not, and being in closer relationship with family (happy and/or sad for you) or not.  It’s a case-by-case, always unique situation that we get through and make up and enjoy and delight in as we go along.

With that said, part of being a parent is creating meaning out of the world we live in and teaching that meaning to children.  Part of that meaning is their own identity.  Who they become is in part who you tell them they are either because they take that in and become it or they refuse to take it in and fight against it.  In the case of siblings you add in the roles within the family that parents assign them such as athlete, scholar, politician, doctor, etc.  These roles define a person in ways they will explore for the rest of their lives. So for parents and for children, be aware of the structures you live in and build and accept for yourself.  They are constructs that we create not laws of physics such as gravity.  They can change and so can you.  Just because you create a parental paradigm or have lived in one doesn’t mean you are stuck with it.  Challenge yourself to find a new one or allow life to inform you of a new shape that is coming into being.  Be open to explore the truth as it unfolds.  Because parents are just people and people are nothing if not changeable.

I know it may be mind boggling, but relationships require relating.  Which means actually paying attention to the other person.  Not stalking, not clinging, not co-dependenting, but actually paying attention to them.  Listening to what they are saying and actually hearing them.  Talking to them, not at them, and inviting them into your life, not adding them like a piece of furniture that looks nice with everything else, is useful and comfortable, but eminently forgettable and interchangeable.

So many times what I hear from clients is “I want this person in my life.  They are perfect and we fit.  It should work, but….”  And then they outline all the ways it should work and how confused they are that it doesn’t.  They can give me details on what they have done to make it work, and they can give me chapter and verse on the reactions they got from their chosen ‘one’, but they don’t understand the response and why it’s not working.  One thing I could point out, although I don’t because it wouldn’t matter so I don’t waste my breath, is that if you can outline all the logic about something as if you’re evaluating purchasing a car and a house, then it’s not love.  Because love is indefinable, turns off the logic brain, and we live it, we don’t over think it.  So there’s a red flag on the play already.  But the thing I do try to point out is that, with every ounce of energy they are putting into everything else, they have missed out on the one important thing.  Their ‘one’ has been telling them what is going on and they aren’t believing what’s being said.

You can’t have a good relationship without good communication of some kind.  Even if it’s smoke signals you need some.  And you can’t have good communication if you don’t believe what is being said.  It’s a trust thing.  If you constantly negate what the other says, tell them they are mistaken, don’t understand, are naïve, need more experience, whatever, over time they stop talking and you stop having connection.  To my mind, why would you want to have a relationship with someone who is always wrong, but that’s just me.  In the end, if they are talking to you, unless they are being ironic or sarcastic, I would believe what they are saying.  When they say they are too busy, they probably are.  That there is something else to be read into that may or may not be true, but that’s a different issue.  If they don’t want to do ‘xxxxxxx’, believe them.  Take the opportunity to find something they do want to do that you can agree on.  Let this allow you to explore new areas of your relationship. If they are just not into you and they say it out loud, believe them and move on.  Don’t waste your stalking abilities on them.  Go find someone new to stalk. Or perhaps you could go to Stalkers Anonymous and start meeting people who actually want to be friends and hang out with you.  It could happen, if you only believe…

Due to language constructs and concepts and how our brains create meaning of our experiences of the world around us, we tend to talk and even think in black and white extremist symbols.  We use words like ‘everything’, ‘nothing’, ‘always’, ‘never’ as if they actually exist while at the same time we can cite a handful of times in which those words don’t apply.  It’s all a construct of the mind that, while helping us make meaning of our world and navigate it, also can keep us caught and misdirect us, keeping us from moving in the right direction.

One of the ways this happens is when we talk about personal change.  There are a couple of extremes that come up right away.  One is that personal change is so difficult that it can’t be done, it’s overwhelming and takes an army, requires that we have some traumatic event or ‘hit bottom’ in order to even attempt it.  And yet we are changing daily without any real effort at all.  Every time we eat or breath we are changing as we intake new matter into our bodies and transmute it into something else we need to live.  Each day we get a bit older and our body changes in reaction to the experiences we’ve had, the energy and time expended, and just the fact that we’re moving through gravity.  Just think of getting a paper cut.  If we weren’t natural changers then that thing would bleed forever.  But it doesn’t.  We heal.  It’s hard wired into us to change.  The notion that we can’t or that it’s too hard, is an extremist concept we have in our heads. Try letting go of that and see what change would actually be like.  You might be surprised.

The other extreme view of personal change that is really common is that it makes no difference.  When we think if personal change as a means of changing the world around us in some significant way, we immediately go black and white, Universe and one small person, seeing ourselves as insignificant, seeing our actions as minimal and affecting nothing much, and seeing ourselves as irrelevant.  Or we compare our actions to someone famous, or powerful, again going to the extreme, and saying “I’m not that and that’s an example of a person whose personal change influences the world.”  But actual change doesn’t come from powerful people, it comes from THE People who agree to that change and act on it.  It comes from one person at a time making that change and sticking to it.  Which is why propaganda works. And brand awareness advertising.  And protests. And social media.  It’s not about one famous or rich person doing something, it’s about each individual doing that thing and others connected to them seeing it and then doing it, etc, etc, etc.  Because no one is an island, everything is connected, and each individual makes a difference.  What you do matters, not just to you, but to everyone around you.

So when people say “All  I Can Change Is Me”, that is true.  But thousands of me’s agreeing with that and then doing it, ignoring the extreme black and white view that it doesn’t matter what they do and changing themselves is too hard to undertake, well that, my friend is a force that can change the world.

A client came to me with a question about something a psychic had told them.  They said the information came from the Akashics and so it must be true, but it didn’t seem true, didn’t match the reality of the situation, and just plain ole didn’t make sense.  So they wanted to know what I thought about it.  The first thing I pointed out is that saying information comes from the Akashics is like saying that fish come from the Pacific ocean.

So what? What kind of fish?  Where in the Pacific ocean?  It’s a pretty big place and amazingly varied in all kinds of ways like temperature, environment, ecosystems, coast line, depth….you get my drift.  Most psychic information either comes from the Akashics or comes from a being that is currently working in the Akashics.  That means next to nothing and certainly doesn’t make the information true or relevant.  And if it came from a being in the Akashics, it is their interpretation given to someone who then interpreted it for you.  The spiritual ‘telephone’ game, as it were.  Beings in the Akashics are no more or less likely to be wise or knowledgeable about the question than anyone here.  They are less likely to be spiteful or mean, which is saying something, but that’s not necessarily helpful if the information they give you doesn’t answer the question. most beings over there are well meaning and will seek to help to the best of their ability, but who they are, what they know, and what their skills are is something the psychic should be knowledgeable about or at least aware of so they can proceed accordingly.

So the issue isn’t “Did this information come from the Akashics?” but “What is the source of this information in the Akashics and how did the psychic access it?”  The answers to this question resolve a couple of things for the client.  It gives them an idea how accurate the information will be, how many steps removed it is from source data and that kind of thing, and it also gives them knowledge about the psychic or reader that they are working with.

Part of the meaning and structure we make from the input we get is informed by our experiences.  From the time we are born we are gathering data and spinning a life out of it.  And this is a good thing otherwise our life would become a weird and very painful version of Ground Hog’s Day where we kept doing things, forgetting that we had already done them and what the ramifications of them were.  Think about burning your fingers on a hot stove element every day or several times a day because you never made meaning out of the separate pieces stove/heat/hand/hurt.  Life would just be awful, however we wouldn’t realize why because we wouldn’t have made any meaning from the pieces.

However, that’s not usually the case for us (exceptions exist periodically.  The prove the rule, right?) and so we make meaning out of a lot of things including our experiences in the world from the physical to the spiritual and everything in between.  But what if we’re wrong?  What if the meaning that we make is completely off base?  Our truth, our understanding of things isn’t necessarily physics.  We may think that the structure of our lives is like gravity.  It always works this way and it will always work this way unless I take some extraordinary measures to change things like going into a weightless environment.  However, that’s not necessarily the case.  What if your truth is like Charlie Brown and the football.  It has always been this way, but not because it’s always like that, not because it’s like gravity, but because of Lucy and her need, for *pick a reason here* pulls the football out of reach.

That puts a whole new spin on things.  If how your life is, the structure you have built, the meaning that you have used to form your identity isn’t gravity, it’s Peanuts and Charlie Brown and Lucy and football, then doesn’t that change everything?  It’s not inevitable, there are a great many things about it that can change.  Stop playing football.  Stop playing football with Lucy.  Stop hanging out with Lucy at all.  Have a non-violent confrontation with Lucy resetting boundaries around your relationship (trust is off the menu.  And you can’t punch her lights out no matter how much you want to, not because she’s a girl, but because you don’t want jail time on your record and violence is never the answer.) Stop living in a cartoon world and take a look at reality.  Stop wearing the yellow and back shirt for goodness sake!   Question your truths to see what they are made out of and if they are still relevant.  They may not be.  They are based on past experiences and you’re not that person any more.  And if the laws you’ve come to live by aren’t the laws of physics but meaning you’ve built out of experience, perhaps it’s time to use a little scientific method on them and challenge their veracity.  You might find that there are new truths out their waiting to be discovered.

When we talk about things, a lot of times we talk in black and white examples, in extremes, using these as symbols for the concepts we are trying to convey.  Like all politicians are corrupt and all aid organizations are altruistic and successful and all scientists are single-minded and socially inept.  These are generalizations and extreme caricatures of people, but they have become symbols that we recognize so make communication at least quicker, if not clearer and more coherent.  However, nothing is truly black and white, the extremes are exactly that and all the other 98% of everything lies between them, and communication about reality might take more time, but it’s endlessly more fruitful and enlightening if we at least try for it.

Spiritual paths, callings, authentic lives…all of these things have their own extremes as well and all have developed their own symbols in our cultures and languages.  There is the hermit in the desert living in rags eating bugs and meditating day and night on God, there’s the shaman or medicine man using arcane objects to heal imagined sickness, there are the monks that spend all their lives searching for the answers to koans and riddle the meaning of the universe so they can transcend it.  The wise man on the mountain, the searcher that seeks enlightenment only to be sent off by the wise man to go battle some other bad thing in order to find out that he already knew his answers all along and he was asking the wrong questions.  The list goes on and on and on.

And because these examples are extreme, because they have become symbols, most people don’t associate them with regular life, don’t associate the role models they offer, the processes they describe as having anything to do with daily life, and so ignore them out of hand when thinking about their own spirituality.  Which, in my personal opinion, is one reason why Joseph Campbell’s work has such popular appeal.  He translated the myths and symbols and structure of these things into language that people could understand, took the extremes and made them understandable to the 98% and pointed out how these are just ways of understanding the life of the 98% and made them usable.

My clients often struggle with the gap between the symbols and their real lives.  They seek an authentic life, to have their real lives in sync with their spiritual calling, with their souls.  But many of them want that to happen without any effort on their part, like a gift from a faery godmother.  Or they want it to happen without having to spend too much energy or without anything in their lives having to change, especially how they think and act.  Which I understand.  I think at one time or another we all had to hit that wall and realize that part (not all) of the issue was how we were doing things or thinking about things and that it had to change.  And that change is difficult.  Living an authentic life is not all flowers and bonbons.  It’s like anything else in life.  It’s work and fun and struggle and reward and as we get used to it the effort is part of the fun as well.  And like any skill set, with practice it gets easier.

So when you think about having or living an authentic life, stop and notice how you are thinking about it.  Is it just ‘happening’ to you like winning the lottery?  Does it happen without you taking any steps to achieve it?  Is it in some future time period not connected with now?  If so, then you might want to spend some time rethinking all of that.  Because everything is connected, you can’t get what you don’t even try for, and there is no time like the present to begin moving towards the life you want and deserve.  And no, you don’t have to be a hermit and eat bugs in order to achieve it…unless you want to.  I’m not judging. 

I have a strongly negative reaction to the terms ‘shaman’ and ‘shamanism’ as do most Native Americans.  And there are several reasons for that.  The most general is that almost 100% of people who are claiming to be shamans are just trying to get money from people.  They may or may not have any gifts or be able to perform the skills they advertise, but really they are just out for easy money and possibly for fame.  In the Native community and in most indigenous cultures that I have come in contact with or even read about, anyone that would fall into the category ‘shaman’ never uses that word, doesn’t advertise their services, and doesn’t want fame for what they do.  They work hard and are of service to the people and are supported for their efforts.  That’s the way of spirit.

Another reason for this is that the term ‘shaman’ is actually not a generic word, but specific ancient cultures in Turkey and Mongolia.  It’s their word for their healers and spiritual leaders.  It was co-opted by White Western scholars after the 1500′s and applied as a generic term.  Which brings me to reason three that I dislike these terms, which is that they are derogatory to the cultures to which they are applied.  They have been used by dominant, colonizing mindsets to see indigenous spirituality is other and less than and uneducated naiveté and continue to be so today.  Disrespect has been imbedded in the term which is problematic at best even for those who attempt to use it respectfully.

And unfortunately it has now become the term used by those who are searching for ancient teachings, for lost wisdom on how to live and how to authentically be in the world, and how live a fully spiritual and yet embodied life.  And indigenous cultures retain their perspectives on this and their spiritual elders and healers have attempted to retain this knowledge, continue its practice and to pass it on against the odds for the most part.  So for the time being, it is unfortunately part of our language structure, but I urge you to look at the term in a different way.  It’s not generic, it’s not positive, and it doesn’t support and encourage the indigenous cultures it labels.  You can read more about it just by searching for ‘shaman’ on Wikipedia.

What should we use instead?  Well, I try to not use a generic term when referring to an elder of another culture or tribe, I try to find out what term they use or what title they hold and use that as a gesture of respect.  When speaking about the spiritual leaders, elders, and healers of most Native American tribes, the term most widely accepted is ‘medicine’.  Which is a generic term we use to describe a life of service to spirit and our community which is as  varied as the tribe and the individual and not something that person would be called.  It is one part of who they are and only one and as most tribes have no separate word for religion or spirituality as it is not separate from life and living each moment of each day, it would be unusual to call that one part out for any given person.  Best to call them by their title or by a term of respect.  And please, don’t call them a shaman.

A common question I get asked by clients is “Why did X period of my life have to happen?”  It’s usually something that took 5/10/20 years, seems from the perspective of cultural norms to have been a failure to achieve the standard goal, and to have nothing to do with the current phase of life that the client is in or not be related in any way to what they want out of life.  They feel it was wasted time and effort and could have been avoided, either because it was a mistake of some sort or because it hasn’t connected in a straight line, cause and effect way to their perceived goals and ambitions.

And I get that.  Why spend 5 years in a relationship that ends when we’re told that it should bring us happiness, last ‘forever’ bring children and family and fulfill all of our needs and wants, but ends in disaster instead?  Why dedicate yourself to a religion that ends up either disappointing you or expelling you or both when it should give you all the answers?  Why get all this education and experience to find that there is no job for you in your field or that the jobs available are so hard on you that you can’t cope being in them when they should feed your soul and propel you to abundance and happiness?  Yep, it’s a conundrum and yet it’s not.  At least not usually.  And while it can sometimes be a process of finding the silver lining in things, many times it’s really about stepping back from your expectations about the outcome of the event and looking at it from a completely different perspective.

First of all, let’s jettison the notion that just because the event didn’t meet goals we are told it should, that it was a mistake.  Throw it into a pile of judgements that we’ll haul out to the trash in a moment.  Labeling something a mistake is a judgement, not a fact.  Let’s avoid those for the moment.  Also, let’s throw out the concepts of “wasted time” and all those goals that society and culture say should come out of these events.  Again, those are judgements and expectations that will just get people hung up and unable to actually scrutinize the events.  Once all of that is out in the ‘to be trashed’ heap, then we can actually look at the event.  Many times these things happen because we need to learn something or develop in some way in order to achieve something else.  Think about this in terms of chess.  You have been looking at your life 1-2 moves ahead, but your planning is 12 moves ahead and you are playing the long game.  That relationship, how much did it help you create boundaries and independence and help you to create a sense of self that you can now share with a partner in a healthy way?  Would you have had that otherwise?  How much did you learn about your spirituality and your understanding of how the world works, politically and socially as well as spiritually through your struggles with your religious institution?  Would you have opened yourself up in new ways if you hadn’t?  Would you have questioned and searched and developed if you hadn’t been spurred on through that struggle?  How much courage would it have taken for you to take that professional leap of faith and move into a completely new career path if you hadn’t been barred and frustrated in the first one?  Would you have done it at all?

Sometimes the things we go through seem random and disjointed, can seem like mistakes or failures or huge digressions and wastes of time in our lives, but those are judgements we place on them.  Take a look at them, not as ends in themselves, but as education, skill building processes, and stages or development that get you closer to your goal of living an authentic, meaningful and even happy life.  I’m not saying that this will take away from your need to use the voodoo doll with the pins every once in a while or will stop that nagging urge to throw darts at the picture of your previous boss’s face, and why should you?   But it can really help you to stop negatively judging yourself and allow you to see yourself as a work in progress whose life is not as random as it might seem.

Clients, friends and family come to me to talk about their dreams.  I’ve worked with them extensively for decades and while each dream is unique to the dreamer, I usually can provide some insight that they might not have come to on their own or point them in the right direction to get the most from the message.

The thing is, not all dreams are super duper relevant, important, or even newsworthy.  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.  Remembering dreams comes from going through the body’s waking cycle while still in the dreaming state.  Our conscious mind comes online as the dreaming portions slowly shut down.  There is a crossing of the streams, as it were, and so you remember a portion of the dream.  We dream quite often during sleep, but remember only that small sliver of that dreaming unless we are woken from the dreaming state in order to remember it, which is a rare event.

So with that said, let’s go through some of the various types of dreams out there.  Most of our dreams are just us processing what happened during the day, making meaning out of it, incorporating it into our identity and our full system memory banks, emotional strata and letting it go so it doesn’t have to be held in the body as physical memory, which causes physical difficulties.  These aren’t usually very memorable, are amazingly random, and fade quickly.  Then there are dreams we have as we’re waking with a full bladder.  These I call “pee dreams.”  They can be amazingly vibrant, detailed, seem relevant because they will usually hold whole trains of thought that we’ve recently had or relate to something important to us in the moment, but have random water elements to them such as the main characters wading through knee deep water or having business meetings while the fire alarm is going off along with the sprinklers, or finding out there is a concert going on under a waterfall.  These dreams can be ignored, although they can be a good story to relate to friends, because they are triggered by the ‘hurry up’ wake up cycle related to bladder relief and any message is really about you getting up before something happens that you have to clean up later.

Then there are various types of significant dreams that do talk to you about your life both external and internal.  Dreams about houses or rooms in houses are talking about you, your identity, your feelings about your life at the moment.  The details of the house or the room may be symbolic, the situation that got you there or is getting you out, or the people associated with the room might be the key.  What is usually most important is how you tell the dream.  So write it down or tell it to someone.  Because the key to its meaning is in how you tell it.  The words you use, what you emphasize, what you downplay, all have meaning.  Usually you will say the actual meaning as part of the story and not realize it until after you’ve said it.

Then there are the traveling dreams.  The where you are going is usually vague, but the how you are going, with whom, when, how fast all of this has symbology and meaning.  You may not be traveling in real life, but traveling dreams mean that you are on the road, working towards something, changing something, progressing towards something. Change is happening and you’re trying to give yourself a heads up as to all the ramifications of this even if it’s just about your emotions, intent, needs, and head space around it.

And then there are the dreams about people you know, or people you don’t, but think you should.  These can be dreams about them, dreams about your relationship with them, or dreams about them trying to tell you something.  These are not always symbolic but they can be and it’s important to talk it out or write it down to see where the message lies.  I once had a dream about my workplace that was quite startling, but amazingly insightful.  You would think it would be frightening or a nightmare, but it wasn’t.  I was very calm and peaceful throughout and yet as I walked through the office I was able to identify the various employees there as vampires, werewolves, and other creatures, the most startling of which was the ‘marshmallow dead person.’  When I woke up I realized that I wasn’t viewing a horror flick, but identifying how these people operated in the world and I should act accordingly.  Some were energy/career vampires, taking from others to satisfy their career and personal goes.  Others were werewolves who instigated trouble and tried to get others to do the same.  And some were not even quite zombies, but just filler, not doing anything but sitting and taking up space.  Like marshmallows.  No real flavor, no real purpose if not in a smore or in hot chocolate.  Just taking up space.  This knowledge really helped me to adjust how I worked with people to navigate the workplace more effectively.

So paying attention to your dreams is good, but make sure you don’t over or under emphasize their importance.  Because sometimes it’s just better to go “Huh?” and get on  with the day. 

There are all types of knowing that people can and do experience, some valued more than others and some discounted all together.  Muscle memory allows your body to know an action or a process through repetition so the brain doesn’t have to focus on performing that action.  Muscle knowing helps you know how best to do a thing and how to be the best you physically.  It’s an amazing gift and one we don’t utilize half enough. Left brain logical thinking is valued very highly.  It’s great at making meaning out of the information we intake, helping us figure out how to get from A-B-….Z and keeping us to look first before stepping off that cliff which would get us killed. Unless you’re base jumping and then it helps you step off the cliff safely so its fun.  So it’s a cause and effect manager that is fantastic at problem solving.  Which is fabulous for certain things, but not for others.  However we’re taught that its primary in our ways of knowing and this can get us into difficulties.

There is also the right brain, which doesn’t see logic in the same way.  It sees connectivity and boundriless opportunity.  It sees non-linear causality and is very much not into goals and linear anything.  It is its own way of knowing most frequently associated with artists, poets, and dreamers.  But it also used by entrepreneurs and inventors, and anyone that thinks outside the box.  Because the right brain doesn’t care about boxes other than that they are just one more shape in a world full of colors and shapes.  This type of knowing, which is experiential and doesn’t seek to make meaning out of input in linear ways is just as valid as left brain knowing, but not as governable in a society that needs order and structure in order to control the populace so we are trained to devalue it.  At this point arts and artistic experience and expression of the world has been removed from even our grade schools it is so little valued.

Meanwhile there is also emotional knowing.  Or what I like to refer to as heart-felt knowing. This is different from listening to your gut.  This is about looking at a situation where you have to make a choice, ignoring the left brain that jumps in to problem solve every input, issue, and variable it can find, ignoring all the opportunities being seen through the right brain, and just listing to what you feel.  Because feelings aren’t logical, they are intrinsically you.  They are connected to who you truly are aside from all the psychobabble you talk about to others and that runs through your own head in self-talk.  Heart felt knowing isn’t some romantic thing, it isn’t impulsive, and it isn’t random.  It is the way your soul, your true self, can speak to you about important decisions or issues in your day.  Heart felt knowing is also unequivocal.  It doesn’t matter how equal two different items or situations are, your heart will point to one over another.  Doesn’t matter what the logic mind says, your heart knows what it wants.  And once its decided you get that “ah…..” satisfaction, that matter is settled feeling, which the brain can’t give you.  Because the right brain will never see anything as better than anything else and the left brain will never stop problem solving so it will never stop finding variables to worry over.  That’s one of the reasons it’s call the monkey mind.

So utilize the various ways you can know things, but use them like the team they are.  Each has a role, each is good at some things and not at others.  And if you rely on one more than the others, think about stretching yourself to start using all of them.  Practice can only help and you’ll be surprised at how much you know…

I cannot stress enough how efficacious it is to look back at where you’ve been and where you’ve come from.  Not just as a life review, but in regular life as well. This was pointed out to me by my sister who spent a decade as a forester.  We are visual beings who record in our mind what the world is like by what we see.  If you only look ahead you will only see one side of things from one perspective and when you turn around to get back, you’ll be completely lost because everything will look different and you will have no markers to judge where the #(@^%*$^ you are.  So periodically look back to get your bearings.  I found this particularly helpful when we went to visit a relative in a large hospital complex.  I kept turning to look back at where we’d been and so was able to navigate us out of the rat warren…ahem….hospital complex with speed and ease when it came time to get home.

So in real life, we shouldn’t wait for dramatic events or melancholy moments to look back at what’s happened, we should do it periodically just to keep our bearings.  And we should keep in mind that what we see is not ‘THE TRUTH’ but a perspective on the landmarks we are looking at, see from one particular moment in time being influenced by everything else that is happening to us and for us in this now.  The next time you look back those landmarks will look different and again the next time, and so on and so on because you get distance on them and they relate to more things that are now in your field of vision.  Doesn’t change that they happened, doesn’t change their factualness, but the meanings for you change as you change and learn and become.

This can be very helpful when asking the ‘why me’ questions of life.  Why did I spend all that time in a religion that couldn’t actually serve me?  Why did I stay with that person for X number of years? Why did I not get what I need in that time that I needed it?  Why was that situation that way and not this other way that would have been much better?  In the moment these situations look one way and are full of emotions and complexities.  As we get distance and look at them we are able to understand better the complexities, the influences, the positives, the negatives, the choices that led one way or another, and see how these situations have prepared us to have better lives down the road.  But if you don’t look back, or you back up and look back at the situation from the old vantage point instead of the new one, you will keep yourself stuck and going over old territory again and again.  It’s ok to see things in a new way.  It’s ok to see how it made you stronger, how you chose to become more independent and self-reliant, how you chose to channel your energies into something that has served you well or will do so now.  It doesn’t lessen the event, it acknowledges that you are now more than you were before.

So take a look back.  What do you see?

Because of the multitudinous amounts of input we receive every day we have learned coping skills for wading through it and deflecting what we can’t deal with or want to hold onto for later.  One of these skills is using our ears to hear what is incoming, but decoupling the mental ‘listening’ faculty from this so that we either don’t have to process the information or can minimally deal with it.  Some people call this ‘selective deafness’ when Mom’s don’t hear children whining, spouses don’t hear each other talking, bosses don’t listen to their employees, politicians don’t listen to anyone and no one listens to politicians.  The list goes on and on.

The problem comes in when we can’t turn the listening part of us back on.  When we actually want to attend to information we should be able to turn the listening part of our brain back on so we can intake the information, experience, wisdom, that is occurring.  That way we can apply it to our lives or reject it or work with it for self-improvement, etc, etc.  But what happens when we can’t listen?  We can always hear what is coming our way.  Many times we actually can’t not heart it.  However all of our coping skills start up immediately to screen it out, shunt it away, divert us from its message and keep us from dealing with it at all.

This happens often when people ask a question and then get an answer.  They act as if they are taking in the message, but in reality they are dealing with coping skills that screens them from it.  So they then ask the same question again, ask it another way, ask it from another angle, ask and ask and ask again, constantly getting answers, but never truly ‘getting’ them.  Some of this is habit, which are hard to break because we don’t realize they are a habit and instead think of them as part of our identity.  “It’s that way because that’s just the way I am.”  Well, no.  It’s the way you’ve become.  Choose to work on that to become something different.  But much of this is also that listening requires us to stop, to change, to become quiet, and quiet can be deafening and terrifying.  Because if we’re quiet, we might hear the truth…that we’ve had the answer all along and now we have to do something about it.

Most people, when learning about or working with the Akashics are dealing directly with the Akashic Library.  Which makes sense because most people doing so are looking for answers, working on self-exploration, seeking healing, etc., etc., etc.  As the Library holds a great many answers and beings who can help people find the answers, it makes sense to focus there.  However, over time, people have come to think of the Library AS the Akashics instead of just a part of it, which is very limiting.

The Akashics is a great deal vaster than any one building.  In fact it does have an amazing city of which the Library is only one small facet.  Yet the city is just a small blip in a huge landscape full of so much more to explore.  One aspect that my students sometimes experience is the lawn directly outside the Temple of life and the Lake just at its foot.  It’s a place where many beings come to find peace and a bit of relaxation so there are usually numbers of people enjoying the sun and the water.  And as I help my students experience their affinities for winged creatures in conjunction with their introduction to the Temple, some have even been able to transform into a winged creature and explore the local area including the woods beyond the lake and the foothills of the mountain beyond that.

Another place I like to take students is the garden maze.  Teachers can meet with students there and utilize it’s complicated patterns to help them release old mental patterns and preconceived notions so as to open to new means of perceiving the issue the are working on.  If you can see the obstacles, structures, challenges, and opportunities in a new way you can many times come up with new resolutions and take on new understandings about the questions as well as the answers.

For the next couple of months I’ll be working on writing a class that guides students through an exploration of a portion of the Akashics that is not connected to the Library. It is a place set aside for those who are seeking to find their calling, their soul’s path in this lifetime.  I’m excited to share this and to see my students take on the challenge of working with spiritual teachers in this manner.

I focus a lot on self-improvement and self actualization in my blogs.  Mostly because it’s the one thing any of us has control over.  However, in this year of the Snake where we’re being challenged to make deep internal changes and transitions, I think it’s worth talking about some externals as well.  And that is the fact that all of us are resistant to change.  Not just change within ourselves, but external changes.  Specifically, in those that we love and depend on.

There is so much inside of us that is changing constantly.  We are bombarded by input every conscious moment and trying to make meaning out of it and act on that meaning to create our lives, even if it’s just to get more gas in the car.  We need some things to remain constant.  Thank goodness for gravity.  Weightlessness is fun because it rarely occurs.  It’s a special one-off that proves the rule.  I like it that my glassware stays on flat surfaces when I set it down, thank you very much.  We have an emotional need for people to remain the same as well.  Being social creatures we need some of them as well and we need them to remain who and what they are in order for our world to function once we have agreed to accept them as part of our world.  When they change it upsets our world (not to be selfish about things, but each of us is a world unto ourselves and required to keep ourselves healthy and functioning if we’re going to be able to help others) and we don’t like it.  Not one bit.  It jerks us out of what we are doing/thinking/becoming and makes us pay attention to structural issues, which we will work to avoid doing.

I’m not pointing to changes like getting more education, teenagers moving out of the parental home, high school or college graduations and such things.  These are planned changes that you, for the most part, can see coming and prepare for.  And they are happy changes that bring benefit to everyone involved even tangentially.  What I’m talking about are the changes that are going on internally that no one outside you can see until it starts to manifest.  For example, dysfunctional families resist members getting healthy because it upsets the structure of the family.  Besides the fact that the healing person no longer fits in, and perhaps there are 11 people for dinner instead of the required 12, the healing process challenges everyone elses choices and roles and behaviors.  It upsets family structure and the entire family will resist this.  They will attempt to keep the family member from completing their process and they may succeed. This is why people with addictions are advised to remove themselves from their previous friends and family.  Break the structure and create a new one that will be supportive.

As you transition this month, be aware that while it is quite possible that everyone around you is supportive of your health and well-being, they may respond with questioning commentary or with neutral to negative feedback to changes you are making.  This is not because they do not care but because they are resistant to your changing which causes the structure of your relationship and their world to change.  Be patient, take their responses with a grain of salt and don’t allow them to derail you from your process.  They will come around eventually and you will all be better for it.

Last year’s work with Dragon has shaken things up, spit you out into  new places, broken you out of old patterns and left you wondering what  happened.  Some things were good, some things were painful, and no  matter what the sum of it all is, it was all drastic and sudden and  just a bit chaotic.  But you got through it and it’s left you with a  lot of potential for creating a wonderful 2013.

Here’s the deal, though.  Things don’t just happen around you or to  you, they also happen within you.  Where last year was really about  the world around you and how you navigate within it, this year will  take all of that change and work with you from the inside out to  change you to fit your new circumstances.  Snake is all about  transformation and black snake, water snake in Chinese Astrology, is  all about the internal journey.  Going within, using your new-found  knowledge and skills to see yourself in a new way and become an  entirely new person, then emerging transformed.  Shedding the old skin  and coming forth with a shiny new one.  Seeing things in a new way  with, literally, new eyes.

On the macro level last year’s Dragon energy was the external world,  our journey in changing who we are and having adventures that  challenge our view of ourselves, asking us to take on our dreams and  desires and make them reality. This year is the year when we move  inward and transform who we thought we were into who we have become  and what we can truly be.  And on the middle ground we will be moved  back and forth between these on a monthly basis as Snake winds through  the moon cycles helping us to adjust or forcing us to deal with all  that this entails in digestible portions. On the micro scale it is up  to us to choose whether we will aid this process on a daily basis by  being in tune and on board with the changes that are occurring or  whether we will struggle to try to keep the status quo and our own  perceptions of what should be in the face of what is being presented  to us.  Either way, the journey will always continue.

What habits do you have that set the structure for your life?  Do you over think things?  Do you leap before you look?  Do you just wander letting life set your course for you?  Do you try to force life into the course you want it to have?  Do you constantly want things that don’t happen?  Do you seek immediate results and so never try for things long-term?  Do you ignore the short-term pleasures in life trying to reach that ultimate goal?  Does your life seem to fill up before you think or do anything that has any relevance to anything at all?

Today, choose to do something differently.  Shake it up.  Challenge yourself to do something a different way.  Don’t worry about what needs to get done or what other people will think, just do something that you’ve always wanted to do.  Or think about something and what people will think if you do it and see if that changes what you were going to do or how you were going to do it.  Do something that you enjoy that creates new beauty in the world instead of just doing something to be doing something.  Or stop doing and just stand there because doing is all you ever do.  Say no when you always say yes.  Say yes to things where you always tell them no.

Do something the opposite way you have ‘always’ done it and see what happens.  The prisons we live in many times are just thoughts in our heads that are only real to us….

What if the world is not what you think it is?  What if your brain, which is a meaning making machine, has created meaning where none exists or put together facts to make meaning where the facts don’t fit together?  What if what you assume isn’t true?  What would your life look like then?

Wouldn’t it be interesting to wind back to when we were children and we assumed nothing at all?  To live in the wonder of a child just discovering life?  Figuring out texture and sensation and deciding what was good by what made us feel happy?  It’s possible, we just need to get out of the left side of our head.

Try it today.  Every time you have a thought about things such as “that never works for me” or “I can’t because” or “I really need xxxxx and so I have to do yyyyy” challenge yourself to see things completely differently.  Take a piece of paper, right in the moment (unless you’re driving.  Don’t try to write while driving. Keep your hands at 2 and 10 please…) and write down exactly the opposite of what you thought.  Because that is just as true as the thought you just had.  ‘That never works’ becomes ‘that sometimes works’.  ‘I can’t because’ becomes ‘I can because’.  ‘I really need xxxx’ becomes ‘I don’t need xxxxx’   And so on and so on.  Make those statements and see how life changes for you in this moment.

What does your life become when you challenge your brain to get out of the way and see things differently?  Who are you when you become free?

I had a friend with a great sense of humor, sometimes wickedly so.  One of his more oft used phrases, said in a comedic ‘idiot’ type of voice was, “Math is Hard”.  This could mean that someone was claiming they hadn’t done a project because the most basic parts of it were too difficult for them to put out the effort or it had made them significantly late in getting it done.  Or it could mean that someone was complaining about a task because it was unpleasant and they were claiming that it was technically difficult instead.  This could just be whining or it could be trying to get out of the task all together.  In any case we all recognized the phrase and would get a laugh out of it, then put our noses back to the grindstones of our own lives.

It is very common for people to value their dreams, their happiness, goals that will make them successful so little, to wrap their identities so firmly around failure, that they will do whatever is possible to undermine them while still having them.  It’s a weird form of torture that validates their failure and their identities as failures.  “Math is Hard” is one way that people do this.  Having a dream, their logical left brain looks at all the options they have for achieving it.  And then it separates those out into tasks and timelines, even if they are vague, and can even make an action plan to get them done.  Which is the point at which math can become hard because it is very easy at that point to see how the steps in the plan will affect and change day-to-day life and that’s not always a short-term improvement.

Taking on a second part-time job in order to pay off a credit card has long-term rewards.  But in the short-term it can be exhausting, it can put you in situations that can be humiliating or just mind numbing or frustrating or all three.  It can cause short-term stress on the body, it takes up all your free time that you would be using for something fun, and leaves you with little energy to enjoy what free time you have.  Sucky, right?  But these are short-term things and once the credit card is paid off you no longer need the job, are out from under a significant stress, you can work on not getting into debt again, you have more money for yourself since you’re not paying a credit card bill, etc, etc.  So short-term pain, long-term gain.  However, ‘Math is Hard’ and so many people just won’t even go there.  They’d rather let things go on the way they are and not improve their lives or make changes of any kind.  And then complain when the world ‘does things’ to them because there are consequences even when you do nothing.

So what area of your life are you ignoring because ‘Math is Hard’?  It’s just too difficult for me to take on right now, I don’t want to think about it, ‘I’ll get around to it’ later, or something will happen to fix it…well, imagine this is your Round Tuit.

Something I figured out about myself a while ago is the categories I put things into in my head when I’m thinking about everything that could/should/would happen in that day.  Being a Capricorn I’m a list maker and so either the night before or in the morning I’m making to-do list.  It’s how I categorize the list that finally dawned on me one day.

There are ‘have to’ items which either get done because otherwise bad things will happen like getting the garbage can out to the curb so it can get picked up (otherwise the garage will stink like every progressively decaying garbage for an additional week and I will have paid for pick up anyway, which is a waste of money) or that get done because otherwise things I have worked on/for will miss deadlines or not come to fruition like getting a proposal in to my publisher by the due date.

Then there are ‘need to’ things on the list like getting the groceries done so I can eat without having to be creative or going out.  Like cleaning the upstairs so I don’t feel like  a slob or it doesn’t distract me from being able to focus on writing.  Minimal distractions really help because, as most writers know, we are amazingly creative at finding ways in which to not be creative by writing. Writing is just dang hard.  But then there is the category of ‘get to’.  I get to work on art projects or do dance workouts or craft with friends or hang out with my friends and their kids.  These are ‘get to’ things that also go on the list.  I know that many people don’t put ‘get to’ things on their list on purpose because only ‘need to’ and ‘have to’ things go on a to do list, but I’m a Capricorn and so everything that is going to happen that day goes on the list.  Compulsive or positive reinforcement, you decide….

So, realizing that I had these categories, I was then able to start valuing things differently and prioritizing them in my daily activities differently than I had before.  A day with all need to’s and have to’s would drain my energy and leave me exhausted and listless.  It could even demotivate me before I ever got out of bed.  While days with get to’s might seem jam packed and tiring, but instead it would leave me energized for days to come.  So I’ve started putting more get to’s into my day each and every day.  Sometimes as the priority item of the day.  And while I’m still trying to not see those days as ‘slacking’ or ‘non-productive’ days, I do manage to enjoy them thoroughly.  And it makes life a whole lot nicer to live if there is a bit of joy in it each day and not as some grand reward for time served at the end.  At least I think so.  We’ll find out…

Over the past three months many of us have lost loved ones due to illness or simply because they had lived long and happy lives and it was there time to leave us.  In my own family we have had two elders and one of my generation cross over since October.  Knowing that they are no longer in pain, they are no longer suffering and have returned home and are now with their teachers and soul group integrating what they have learned and become during this lifetime relieves the mind and heart of some sorrow, but the grief remains because they are no longer here.

Grieving what has been lost is complicated and yet very simple.  They are gone and we our lives are changed forever because of this.  When I work through grief I try to see two aspects of this which really helps me to be able to put things into perspective.  One is that part of what I’m grieving is the change in me.  I love my family and my lover will never change nor will it ever go away.  I don’t feel any different about them than I did before, and in fact with this transition the pain and distress I felt because of their conditions is now lifted and I can remember who they were in the prime of their lives and all the good things and challenging things about them that made my life a better place to be.  No, what I grieve is the change in me.  Relationships become part of our identity and changes in those relationships change parts of who we are.  That’s a significant part of what a relationship is.  Letting someone outside of you become a part of you and vice versa.  Once they are gone, that part of you changes.  And that’s ok.  I guess that’s the part that can be very difficult.  To allow that change to be ok and to see that as much as it is a loss, it’s also a new phase of life with its own amazing story to tell and adventures to explore.  It takes time to see that, though.

The other part of the grieving process is the change in the relationship.  Because it can feel like an amputation.  That person was there and now they are not.  And so how can there be a relationship when the other person isn’t there.  I think this is why I really like Halloween and the Day of the Dead celebrations.  And why I resonate with people who set up spontaneous Memorials to those who are gone.  Because the fact is that our relationships don’t end when the person is gone.  They just change into a new phase.  Besides the fact that the person has moved on to a new form of existence, we don’t stop loving them, we don’t stop thinking about them or wanting to share with them or be connected with them.  So the grieving process helps us to work through this transition between how we have related to them in the past and how we will relate to them now.  Because we will relate to them one way or another.  Love is not a light switch that we can somehow turn off.  It exists and we will express it one way or another.  I prefer to express it through art and dance and music and memorials, but to each their own.

So grieve what has been lost, but know that grieving is its own process, not a forever state of being.  It is a transformation and just like snake sluffing off its old skin, each of us will arrive at the end of it renewed and new with a completely unexpected vision of the world as seen through new eyes.

During this transformation year of the Snake, it’s not just fear that we have to learn to respect and work with, but with success.  Part of the self-identity that we hold so dear is the part that says we will be successful ‘someday’.  Anything that suggests that is changing or has already changed, we ignore or diminish or explain away.  So it can seem to us as if we are still the same person that we were.  But just as we need to be clear on the lessons that fear can teach us, we need to learn how to be clear on who we are which includes the fact that we are changing and that being successful is part of that change.

Dragon challenged us last year by providing us what we had asked for exactly how we had asked for it.  So if we hadn’t been specific or if we needed a big change landed in our lap, that’s how it happened.  And Dragon doesn’t work in half measures so out of the sky “BOOM” there is dropped right into the middle of things and then we had to deal with it.  Which we did.  Snake isn’t that showy, but is just as strong and just as adamant that we deal with reality.  And this means the reality that we stop seeing ourselves in negative terms, stop identifying with success in some future when, and realize that we are being successful now and are living the path that will lead us to the life we have chosen.

So stop for a minute and think about where you are actually at right now in your life.  Not the litany of things you haven’t accomplished yet, the goals on the list yet to be achieved, or the To Do list to be gone through, but where you are right now.  Even in just the past two weeks, look at who you have become due to all the things you did in 2012, the new opportunities that have opened up for you, the choices you have made and how you’ve incorporated that into your life.  And allow that to inform your perspective on yourself.  Let this become your new and improved self-image.  You have been successful and you will be again, some more, in this year of the snake.  Congrats!

There is so much out there right now about ignoring your fears, releasing them, powering through them, not letting them hold you back, etc, etc.  But what about actually listening to them?  Fear is a warning sign that something is going on that you need to attend to.  It’s not some external warning system trying to force you into or out of something, its You.  So when you have fear, pay attention.  The question is, what kind of attention, and what do you do once you’ve paid it?

Fear does not come in one color and is not one-size-fits-all.  There is actual fear of harm which comes from being stalked by a predator, getting caught in front of a speeding car, or being confronted a hungry swarm of piranha.  Then there is fear of the unknown, fear of pain, fear of negative repercussions, fear of loss, fear of punishment, the list goes on and on.  Some fears are truly made in the mind.  They have nothing to do with what is happening in the now and only apply to one set of outcomes from any given situation.  Some fears come from the knowledge that we will change if the event occurs and since we don’t know what the change will be we imagine the worst case scenario.

Paying attention to these fears is good.  It allows your body, mind and emotions to let up on the pressure so you can come out of the fight/flight response.  The trick is to not allow the fears to be right or to control the situation once you’ve paid attention to them.  Again, they are only a warning system.  If the danger is imminent, of course fight or flee.  But if the danger hasn’t occurred yet, then there is no need to take action in this moment so take the time to investigate what is causing the alert.  It may not be what you think.  Fears that repeat over and over again, just like dating the wrong kind of person over and over again, usually stem, not from events, but from internal perceptions that are creating your vision of what you are experiencing.  Instead of trying to deal with the facts of this particular fear right now, take a moment to allow this fear to lead you inside to find the source of the fear.  Because it’s a long held belief or world view that is supporting you in being afraid and aiding in causing you to repeat this pattern over and over again.  If you can heal that issue or worldview, then the experiences will stop because you’ll see things and act in new ways.

Fear can lead you to discover things about yourself and the world around you that you never knew before.  If you step back from them and look at them from a distance.  They may not be as irrational as you think.  Maybe you are more sensitive than others to certain situations and so have a fear of being forced into them.  Good to know.  This is something you conquer, it’s something you acknowledge about yourself.  The upside, being sensitive means you see and feel more of the world than most and you can use that in art, music, health professions, etc.  The downside, you won’t be comfortable in large, loud group settings and get over stimulated easily.  So limit how much time and how often you get into those types of situations, make sure you set up an escape excuse before you go, and don’t beat yourself up when you feel better out of the noise.  You’re fine and so are all of those who stay.

Let fear guide you, don’t let it control you.  Fear is a great teacher if you allow it to be.

So, this is the first New Moon of our Snake year.  The months cycle through moving inward, from Full Moon to New Moon, and cycling outward from New Moon to Full Moon.  We’ve been introspective since the Holidays and that makes sense.  We’ve been figuring out what last year meant, what happened and why, going through all the top 10 lists of things and people that happened to us and each other, but now it’s time to look forward and start doing with the new year ahead of us.

This being a snake year things are a bit of this and a bit of that.  We will wind to one side to work on who we are becoming in light of all that happened to us in 2012 and then we will wind to the other side working on how we want to craft our lives from that becoming.  Which I’m beginning to think might echo the moon phases shifting our focus from inward to outward organically.  Or jerking us around from one to the other if we’re overly focused in one direction or the other.  So prepare to be flowing like water or jerked about from one thing to another, depending on where you are with this process.

This year will be a balancing act between being present, being active in the process and going with the flow.  Because it’s the year of water snake, the fire that flows.  Like lava it will build new land, it will carve new pathways, it will change form and create form, while destroying everything in its path that is no longer necessary.  So my recommendation is be alert (the world needs more ‘lerts’) to what is going on within you and around you, listen to your intuition, do what you feel like doing even if its counter intuitive, don’t negatively judge the emotions or needs you have around it, and let meaning come as inspiration rather than logic.  Because logic is going to be loosey goosey this year and very much so this month.  The snake can’t see anything while its shedding it’s skin.  Seeing comes after the transition is complete.

I enjoy working with clients (and friends and family for that matter) on the issues that are really troubling them.  Not that I have a magic wand that can fix things or that I’m some all powerful being that has all the answers.  Wouldn’t that be amazing and boring?  I mean, everything would become “So what?” and I would just give people an answer or fix the issue and then what would I do for the rest of the day?….anyway, what I like is that just sitting and talking about the issue not only allows them to blow off steam, can bring into being some pretty funny and/or crazy, and sometimes both, stories, and gives them a different perspective on the situation.  But best of all it allows them to say the answer, which they usually know and can articulate, they have just been ignoring it.

Here’s what I mean:  A client comes to me wanting to know what they should do with their life now that they have lived through or are completing a significant transition event (divorce, relocation, end of job, kids graduating, grandkids coming on the scene, etc).  After explaining how they go there, they start explaining their confusion by giving me all the details of what they want to do, what they have done to make that possible, where their ultimate goal is, and then sputter into silence because they are completely confused as to what they should do next.  But if I make suggestions they perk right back up to let me know whether that works or doesn’t with their plan, which they don’t think they have and are confused over.

I’m not sure whether it’s a trust issue in that they have learned not to trust themselves or whether they need external validation, because let’s face it, we all do and that’s not an inherently bad thing, but whatever it is, what they really need is to be able to say the words, to hear themselves speak the truth, in order for them to start acting on it.  So whether I point out to them that they already know the answer to their questions, or just lead them around to that perspective and let them discover it on their own, the reality is that I love facilitating these conversations.  Because talking it out is amazingly powerful and empowering.  Being able to say it to another person makes it real.   And helping dreams become reality is one of the best parts of my job.

So what about your life in this New Year do you need to talk out?  Tomorrow is New Moon in January and will signal and end to our 2012 hangover and rehashing of what has been, regardless of what the media will keep doing (It is now Awards season after all), and will move us to start acting on our transformations.  Let’s start talking, shall we?  Discuss amongst yourselves…

I bumped into some friends of mine at the pub the other day and had an unexpected and delightful conversation with them for a couple of hours.  We just sat and got caught up with each other, but the fun part is that this past year has been amazing for all of us in that we’ve radically changed our lives.  My writing career finally got launched and I’m now teaching online and in person.  They asked themselves if now was the later they had been waiting for so they could start living their authentic lives and found out that it was.  So they started on their journey to create their version of paradise, which is a wonderful farm about 30 minutes outside of town.

That decision has started a full year cycle of change for them and their entire family.  Last year they found the farm and the farm house, were able to buy it and start renovations on the house.  It was in bad shape, but with elbow grease and a bit of reno budget it’s going to become the house that love built.  Last summer was tear off the roof and replace it season.  Which prevented winter becoming the season of their discontent and woe-is-me.  Winter is now the ‘work with the contractor’ season so that renovations can be complete before June.  Because June is ‘graduate our children from college and high school’ month and then July becomes ‘move into the new house’ month.  And then the rest of summer and fall will be about the acreage and getting livestock.

Which should feel crazy, out of control, exhausting and a touch frightening, but to all of us sounded exciting and wonderful and fulfilling.  Of course, I love reno and putting together a house so that it is functional and soul inspiring (I’m a fan of HGTV of course) so I get what they are doing.  They helped me a few years ago when I moved into my dream home so they know.

Taking on difficult projects aren’t necessarily arduous if it is all part of your dream and helping you reach the goal of being truly happy in your life.  They can be rollercoaster rides of delight.  It’s all about whether later has become now or not.

We don’t usually judge our friends or acquaintances or peers because they need help with something or don’t know something or aren’t perfect at doing something.  At least not the first hundred times.    After 100 we tend to get judgmental but I think it might be warranted in some cases.  However, most people are 100% negative when it comes to themselves in these situations.  Compassion seems to go out the window.  We aren’t allowed to be human, to be unsure, to make mistakes, to try something and fail at it, or to need or need to be healed.  We are perfectionists when it comes to ourselves and since we know intimately that we aren’t perfect, we are constantly reinforcing for ourselves our brokenness, incompetence, and utter failure at being.

There are whole industries built around helping us deal with this as well as others trying to foster it (…ahem…advertising…ahem…marketing…*cough*).  To me the issue is not to try and fix ourselves so we become perfect, but to try to heal this need to be perfect.  Ain’t gonna happen so why try?  Why continue to punish ourselves for something we never be?  Why hold ourselves up to higher standards that we have for any other living being?  Even super heroes fail sometimes and have flaws and act human.  That’s why we like them.  If they don’t we have no interest in them, can’t relate, and are turned off because they seem to be a judgement on the rest of us….aha!  Perfectionism is judgement.  I think there’s a truth in there somewhere.

I bring this up because 2013 is all about self evaluation, internal change and process, and taking in what happened in 2012 so we can make a new self from the revelations.  It’s all about becoming.  And the transformation process is so NOT about judgment and perfectionism.  It’s messy and painful and full of insight and new awareness and totally new perceptions.  It’s about experiencing being raw and exposed and honest, even if only to yourself, so that you can start taking the steps that will lead you to a more authentic life.  And it’s impossible to delve into the depths and experience transformation if you are constantly distancing yourself from the truth by judging yourself and looking for perfection.  If you feel that being sad about something or needing something is a failure, then you lose the opportunity to find out the root cause of the emotions which can lead you to healing and an entirely new aspect of yourself.

So just say no to Perfectionism.  Give yourself as much empathy and respect and support as you give to others or to your personal hero or inspiration.  Stop the beatings and start being honest about yourself.  You’re allowed to need and want and hurt and cry and laugh.  In fact, we would all be a bit less if you weren’t.  If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for us.

I’ve been thinking about mirrors.  Mirrors as metaphor, people as mirrors, mirrors as the enemy of all women, mirrors as an indicator that our vision is incredibly skewed, etc, etc.  I use the concept of mirrors in working with my clients that are overly sensitive to the perspectives, opinions, and actions of others.  I have them imagine that they are in a bubble that is made of two-way mirror.  They can see out, but others can’t see in.  What others see is themselves and the images they are trying to place on others so as not to have to deal with the issues personally.  What this does is help the client build up healthy boundaries and separate themselves from the over entangled relationships with others as well as help them see others objectively.  I do warn them that this practice can cause the ‘fighting fish’ response.  Ever see a fighting fish in a fishbowl react when you put a piece of mirror in visual range?  They think it’s a rival, will start aggression displays and then move to outright attack.  People will do this as well.  They will react to what they perceive is happening instead of seeing that it’s actually a reflection.  Respond appropriately and accordingly.  I recommend walking away so as to alleviate the situation.  And evaluating whether you want to associate with the person any further, because whatever issue they are working with isn’t gonna change any time soon.

Meanwhile, mirrors can really help us see ourselves if we can get past all the programming we’ve received in our lives about what we see.  However, I hesitate to suggest them as a healing tool to people because of all the negative messaging we have around them, or perhaps more accurately, all the marketing message we have absorbed that make the mirror image into a broken, lacking, needing item that requires much purchasing in order to fix.  How can we even begin to look at ourselves with self-love and admiration and fascination if we’re told to do so is narcissistic and unhealthy on the one hand and that what we see is ugly, broken, and in need of drastic repair on the other?  How can we hope to feel enriched and happy and successful and wonderful if what we see each day is something to fear and avoid?

I don’t have an answer for that yet and I don’t know that there is an easy one other than to recognize the issue.  The mirror can be used to pick at our flaws, but it can also be used to see our amazing uniqueness and to celebrate our existence which is a miracle.  I choose to do the latter, one day at a time.

I have always been frustrated by the hero’s journey as described by Joseph Campbell and by Greek mythology which seemed so out of touch with or misogynist about women and goddesses.  I never understood or had any connection with the Persephone myth.  It’s this really weird rape fantasy piece where she is the perfect and unspoiled girl, there are no positive male characters, an adult male kidnaps her, forces her to live in a place against her will, the whole ‘eating of the pomegranate’ is a metaphor for sex which somehow binds her to live with him forever, as if she has no free will or common sense or ability to make judgements and decide her own fate, and as if, for some reason, he’s not good enough to have a woman without his ‘magic sex’ somehow enslaving her.  It’s all really twisted for all the characters and in the end she returns to her mother.  *shakes head*

This was never a paradigm that seemed healthy or that brought any enlightenment or encouraged appropriate behavior.  It seemed to be an excuse for bad male behavior and yet it’s really sad for guys too.  If you are not worthy of having a woman in your life, if you aren’t good on your own merits, then who are you?  Time to throw out this idea of what it is to go inside and find out about yourself.  No more rape and resignation and thinking sex is some magic lasso that will capture the girl and make everything all right.  So let’s look at some different ways of journeying within.

Susan Griffin wrote Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her in 1978 and it’s an amazing look at women’s perspective on the world and women’s experience that still resonates today.  Although its a very good read, it’s best when read aloud and even better with a group of people, mixed company or no.  The 3rd chapter is entitled “PASSAGE: Her Journey Through the Labyrinth to the Cave Where She Has Her Vision”  It’s the internal journey to personal source which she paints not as a descent into darkness but a spiral inward to the center of self.  Also as a return, a return to ancient wisdom and ancient knowing which she likens to finding cave paintings left behind by those who have gone before.  So in this sex is neither the point nor involved, yet sexuality in healthy balance with all other things is and being female includes being sexual and sexy.  There are no other characters other than the explorer and yet she is surrounded by community.  There is no fear, just the unknown to be explored and as spirals move in both directions, when she has discovered herself she returns to the sunlight refreshed, renewed, and more fully herself than ever before.

Another way to look at this is the ancient myth of Inanna.  I recommend the translation by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer:  Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth. This tale is older than the Persephone myth and historians believe that the Greeks used it as a basis for their story.  However the emphasis is very different.  Inanna is not a girl, but a woman with a husband and is lusciously sexual.  In fact the first part of the story is full of hymns to her full womanness including praise for her sexuality and a call for her husband to come and pleasure here, which he does.  (Good on both of them).  But she feels the need to go into the underworld and so, not being forced or abducted, she chooses to go into the underworld where her sister lives.  Her sister Ereshkigal lives there in pain and suffering of her own making, for she is trapped in her emotional pain and taking no steps to heal it or change her situation.  Inanna travels to her, going through an amazing transformation in the process, helps her sister to break through her emotional jail cell, and then returns.  Ereshkigal is able to free herself and heal, Inanna returns changed, and both begin to work to improve their world.  The striking part of this is not only the self-empowerment of the female characters, but the fact that community, connection, and interaction are the focus of the journey, not fighting through some wilderness to find a hidden object or some lofty goal.

So when you are going through your transition in this snake year, know that it doesn’t have to be scary and dark, it doesn’t have to be forced upon you, you are no victim.  You can choose what your journey looks like and how you participate with it.  Spiral in and see where the journey takes you.  You may be surprised as how much wonder awaits.

Many cultures see snake symbology as fire, the element that succinctly changes something from one form into another.  It changes complex, multifunctional, crafted items into base components in moments, alters the sense of separateness into one of forced unity through deconstruction, and threatens our sense of control and what we know to be unalterable truths in a heartbeat.  Fire brings us heat, it gives us the energy to convert items into digestible comestibles, it allows us to survive in habitats and weather where we wouldn’t otherwise.  So it is as flexible and changeable in its relationship with us as it is with any object that it transforms by burning.

However, this year is the water snake and so its properties don’t have to do with fire, which is an external alteration which can consume us until the change is complete from the outside in, but with water which means a change from the inside out.  While some pundits will say that water snake signifies slow change, I would have to disagree.  Having lived in Texas for several years I don’t find Water Moccasins slow-moving at all nor would I want to count on their slowness when meeting them.  And water properties don’t necessarily include slowness as anyone who has even seen footage of a Tsunami would attest.  So this year the change is from the inside out and will doubtless be slow-moving for some, but for most will be challenging because the momentum of 2012′s Dragon is still in play.

I believe that this year will be more about surfing that it will be about cautious, thought out, preplanned journey’s into our interior.  Dragon has heard our prayers and activated our dreams, shaking us up and helping us on our way towards becoming who we have wanted to become, either joyfully or a bit forcefully.  Water Snake of 2013 is hear to help us shake off the surprise of it all and help us see where this leads, which is into ourselves to challenge those deeply held beliefs that are holding us back and allow us to take action on the opportunities that have been laid out before us.

So don’t think it through, trust that you already know and just surf what is coming your way.  Clean out the closets, take that job offer that just appeared, accept that the wild thoughts you are having aren’t day dreams and start acting on them.  Even if they make no sense or make no money or seem to take you in a completely different direction from where you were headed before.  Snake moves in winding patterns and so will you.  Stand up on the board and enjoy the ride.

Death

2013 – the year of the water snake – can also be translated into Tarot terms as the Death card.  This is not a literal death, although it can be for those who are ready to make the final transition from this life back into spirit.  It is actually a very natural process of transformation.

It can be seen as an external journey of transition from one state of being to another such as moving from one apartment to another, one city to another, one job to another, or one relationship (or several) to another.  But in the year of the water snake the external transitions have already happened and we are dealing with how that affects us personally or they will happen as a result of our working on ourselves personally.  Because water means going within.  Which means these transformations are about being lead to the entrance of someplace we have never been and going inside that place, learning and growing and becoming, then coming out again with an entire new perspective on life.

This is the medicine journey of transformation.  We see it in the tale of Persephone who is taken into the Underworld, is met with challenges in all aspects of her life, and returns.  In broad terms she is a girl and through experience she becomes a woman.  This can be seen in more matriarchal terms in the story of Inanna.  She goes into the depths to find and rescue her sister, having to strip herself of everything she has ever known and been.  And in the end she isn’t able to rescue her sister, but provides her with the healing she needs to rescue herself.  And Inanna is changed as well becoming sovereign over her life and literally becoming a new woman.

Dragon has shaken us and put us through the shake, rattle and roll of an amazing roller coaster year.  This year challenges us to face what happened, go deeply into ourselves, allow what has happened to change us and mold us, to co-create ourselves with these new experiences, and return to our lives changed and better and more than we were before.  Because the true death is pretending that nothing happened and that everything is exactly as it was before.  Change may seem like death, but there is new life in it.  The snake cannot rejuvenate without letting go of the old skin.  That old skin isn’t a dead snake, it’s just the way things used to be.  This year is the process of sluffing off that old skin.  Will you voluntarily walk through the door to start the process?

Year of the Black Snake

Congratulations on surviving the Mayan Apocalypse and arriving in 2013!  You have an entire new year ahead of you.  Yay!  So here’s some things to know about this year so you can plan ahead.

Last year’s work with Dragon has shaken things up, spit you out into new places, broken you out of old patterns and left you wondering what happened.  Some things were good, some things were painful, and no matter what the sum of it all is, it was all drastic and sudden and just a bit chaotic.  But you got through it and it’s left you with a lot of potential for creating a wonderful 2013.

Here’s the deal, though.  Things don’t just happen around you or to you, they also happen within you.  However, where last year was really about the world around you and how you navigate within it, this year will take all of that change and work with you from the inside out to change you to fit your new circumstances.  Snake is all about transformation and black snake, water snake in Chinese Astrology, is all about the internal journey.  Going within, using your new-found knowledge and skills to see yourself in a new way and become an entirely new person, then emerging transformed.  Shedding the old skin and coming forth with a shiny new one.  Seeing things in a new way with, literally, new eyes.

So while things will feel like they are slowing down, becoming more organic and less tumultuous, the processes that are coming will be deeper and more life altering, healing and transformative than last year and with even greater lasting results.  So hang onto your hat and be prepared to be amazed.  It’s going to be a fantastic ride.

So tonight a huge number of people around the globe will celebrate the ending of 2012 and the beginning of 2013.  The date and time are arbitrary and do not sync with anything in nature or with our biorhythms, but what the heck.  Time to release the old with all it’s worries and failures and defeats and move into a bright shiny new year full of potential, right?  You’re so funny.

Besides the facts that 2012 was not a horrendous defeat of the soul and that no matter where you go, there you are, so 2012 will now always be with you, 2013 would just be a Ground Hog’s Day of a year if you left 2012 behind as if it hadn’t happened or ignored all you had done, learned and become during it.  So while it’s fun to celebrate the coming new year, let’s not look at tonight as a bright line in the sand of time, because there is no such thing.  Let’s look at it as a continuation of the spiral of life.  It’s just another turn as we continue to move upwards and outwards towards are continued becoming.

2013 is the year of the snake.  Similar to Dragon energy it’s about taking what has been created, all that explosion of creating and changing and becoming that happened in 2012, and transforming the self into a new reality because of it.  Think of all the metaphors around sluffing skin, becoming raw and new, being blind during the transformation and then seeing with new eyes, that and so much more awaits in 2013.  So let’s meet the new year, not with a blank slate but with expectation and agenda and hope.  Because it’s time for us to put what we’ve become into action starting with our internal sense of self.  Who’s in there I wonder?…..

Ok, so looking back at 2012 can be a vision of woe seeing only what didn’t get done, what shouldn’t have been done, and all the failures that occurred or it can be a great way to check off the list of all the things you’ve achieved and a way to build the platform for more achievements in 2013.  I’m thinking the glass half full is probably the more positive and life affirming way to go so let’s pick option 2.

Last year you had a list of or idea of what you wanted to accomplish in the year.  Could have been grand castles in the sky dreams, could have been just maintain because what I’ve got is good, could have been ‘Dear Cheesus, please save me from the horrendous life!’ or anywhere in between.  But you had the vision and it may have morphed through the year as situations happened and life changed.  So now is a good time to look back and work on two things:  1) What was my vision(s) of what I was going to become in 2012 and how does that influence the vision(s) I have for 2013?  2) What did I accomplish in 2012 that helped me achieve that vision(s) and what did that teach me about myself and life so I can achieve my vision(s) for 2013?

It’s not about blame or shame, it’s about digging your hands into the bowl of 2012 that you’ve collected and sifting everything through your fingers.  The bowl is full of beautiful bits of stuff from tiny to large and as you’re wanting to start the new piece of art that is 2013 you’ll be working with this bowl as a starting point.  So sift through it to find what worked and what is going to make sense going forward.  You don’t want to just dump all this stuff on the new artwork because then it wouldn’t be art.  Get your hands dirty, look at every little piece of what happened last year and see it’s beauty and it’s possibilities.  This is who you were and the blank canvas in front of you is who you will become.  You can’t make art if you hate the medium you’re working with so open your mind and turn off the critic that judges you before you’ve even started.  If you don’t give yourself a chance, who will?

It’s something we all do and I’m not sure why, but there you are.  We look back at the year that is ending, get out our favorite bludgeoning tool and start beating ourselves up for everything we didn’t get done, everything we should have done, everything we think we did wrong and everything we could have done right if only….  And we don’t stop with just one review. We’ll be doing this throughout the rest of the week right up until the ball drops.  I think that’s one of the reasons we celebrate the coming new year so hard.  Because it’s the light at the end of the tunnel of self violence we put ourselves through.

So lets stop the violence this year.  Think about it: Has anything good ever come out of the self castigation you put yourself through the end of each year?  Has some inspiration come from it that has improved your life?  Have you gotten more energy and more will power to do the things you didn’t get done the year before?  Or does it just pound into your noggin and your body and your heart the fact that you’re a failure….again?   Well, then let’s be radical.  Let’s take a stand against self violence.  Let’s look back without blame or recriminations.

I’m not saying let’s get cumbaya and change history by only looking at the good stuff.  That’s what the champagne is for.    However, let’s not get out the torture tools when we look back.  Let’s just look.  How about, just for today, we look back and don’t take blame and responsibility for everything bad or negative or frustrating or not quite right that happened?  Let’s just take that baby step.  Let’s look at the things that happened in our life and see where there were circumstances that weren’t in our control and mark them off our naughty list. There…doesn’t that feel just a bit better?

This year, let’s do something a little bit different.  Instead of proclaiming New Year’s resolutions that are so lofty they can’t be reached and setting ourselves up for failure, let’s set up the New Year right.  Let’s change the paradigm we’re using to think about 2013.  Because most people when thinking about the New Year go into a sort of victim mode.  They look at it as a steam roller that is coming for them and the best they can hope for is to get on their knees and pray and hope that it veers out of the way in the nick of time or some comic book hero or angel comes to scoop them up in time.  Which is a terrible way to see the future, btw.  Just a bit fatalistic and sad.  And for those few who stand up and shake their fist at the steam roller, well good for you.  However, I’d prefer it if you’d just step out of the way.  Steam rollers don’t maneuver on a dime you know….

Ahem… anyway, life shouldn’t be a steam roller and so none of that should be necessary.  Life is full of opportunity and everything is possible in this coming 2013 and we aren’t victims of our fate.  We’re participants in it.  So let’s participate.  Visualize 2013 and see yourself in it.  Not in the grand bullet point items that you would use to make resolutions, but in the day-to-day.  Are you happy?  Are you doing what you want?  Are you where you want to be?  Are you making motions to achieve your dreams?  Take note of all of that.  There are no right or wrong answers, just truth.  Knowing where you are allows you to make a start towards where you want to be.

Now start imagining the year being the way you want it to be.  Don’t try to logic it, don’t undersell it, don’t make action plans, just imagine it being the way you want.  And each time you think about New Years, think of that.  Feel it in your heart and in your body and know that it’s true.  It’s not a magic bullet that changes everything around you, but it does set you up to succeed, sets up all of your choices and actions to support your success, and guides you to opportunities that will make it achievable.

The arbitrary end of the year is here.  I call it arbitrary because it doesn’t coincide with anything in nature or anything organically cultural, it’s just a date on the calendar that people celebrate at this point.  And a time when we set ourselves up to fail.  One of the many reasons I try to avoid it along with the fact that there are too many drunk drivers out and about New Year’s Eve and hung over drivers New Year’s Day.  But to my point.

Regardless of when you think the year ends, November for the Cherokee people, December 31 for White Western culture, and February for the Chinese to name a few, making the transition should be about laying the past to rest and starting a fresh new year.  How you do that makes all the difference.  I have watched year after year as family and friends take this opportunity to make grand resolutions that are completely impractical, set goals for themselves that only an Olympic athlete could achieve and convince themselves that they are going to achieve these things through sheer will power without the need to change their lives in any way.

And of course the inevitable happens.  Within a week to a month they have given up on all of it and perhaps even forgotten that they started in that direction and life goes back to the way it was before.  Which seems harmless on the surface of it and everyone makes light of this practice knowing that achieving or even acting on New Year’s resolutions has a very low chance of ever happening.  However, what is actually going on is self-abuse.  The resolutions we set for ourselves usually fall into two categories:  things we think we should do because other people think we should or things that are dear to our hearts that we truly wish to achieve.  In either case, stating out loud that we are going to do these things tells our hearts/minds/bodies and even soul that we are going to give ourselves this reward.

And what happens when we don’t, we lose confidence in ourselves.  We set ourselves up to fail and we succeed in failing.  We reiterate to ourselves that we are incapable of achieving our dreams or those dreams that have been applied to our lives and we make ourselves less.  And so the year is a failure from the outset and any victories or gains that we make only fill in some of the debt we have created within ourselves.

Choose to do things differently.  This year, make a New Year’s Resolution not to set any goals you can’t achieve and set no goals that don’t come from your own dreams.  Be your own best advocate and make this year a win/win situation by being reasonable and practical.  It’s great to reach for the stars, but at the same time, build a ladder and climb it one rung at a time.

I hope that everyone travels safely, arrives at their destination with fanfare and rejoicing, is able to spend time with the ones they love, (yes that includes pets) and spends the evening doing something that brings them happiness and spreads joy into the world.  And thanks to NORAD for helping us keep track of that Jolly Ol’ Elf.  I can’t think of a better way to spend our tax dollars.  Santa is currently dropping presents in Africa.  At the time of this post he’s near Mogadishu.   www.noradsanta.org

There are, to my mind, three kinds of Holiday celebrations: C-stressful, with weeks of angst and harried preparation, lots of forgotten things or things that just didn’t work out, blunders, regrets and not much time for celebration, B – family bustle that takes a bunch of effort but is worth it to have all the family together in one place for the memories and the blackmail material, and A – those holiday seasons where everything gets done by December 22 and everyone can relax, do things at a normal pace, and just enjoy each other fully, being present in each moment and a present to each other.

Now I know that A seems like a Unicorn, a mythological thing that no one every actually sees or experiences by is written large in those stories that are supposed to give us hope.  But it does happen.  It’s not just some faery story.  You can have that kind of Holiday as well.  It doesn’t take the efforts of Hercules or NASA level planning of all events, just mindfulness and willingness to let go of perfection and expectations.

If your mind prioritizes the ‘getting things done’ part of the Holidays over the ‘experiencing’ part of the holidays then that is where you will spend all of your time and effort.  Because there will always be one more thing you can do to make it all ‘perfect’ for everyone…but you, of course.  Because the holidays isn’t about you, right?  LOL  But if you turn that around 180..if you make the experience of the Holidays the priority, if you put you on the priority list and your happiness as part of the mix, then things come into a happier perspective.  The have to list gets shorter, the need for that one more thing goes away, and a smile can come back sooner and without the need for a hot toddy starting at about 6am. 

Be the holiday you want to have.  Start from the feeling you want and work out from there.  Even if it is just you this holiday season, you are the reason for the season so make your plans accordingly.  Santa’s helpers can shop for themselves because who knows you better than you?  Be original, be spontaneous, be a kid again, because the holidays is all about play and joy and fun.  Do what you want because you are worth it and chuck the rest.  Don’t have the holiday that gets graded as a C, get at least a B if not an A and have a wonderful Holiday season.

Today is the shortest day of the year and tomorrow Winter begins and the return of the sun for those of us in the Northern hemisphere.  Winter is a time for turning inwards.  The hard work of harvest and storage is done.  The land sleeps and we can rest from all of our hard work and prepare for the coming year.  It is a time for family.  It is a time for coming together and sharing our lives.  To tell new stories and remember the old ones.  For looking back at what has been, sorting through what to hold onto and what to keep.  It’s time for weaving in what we have done this year into the greater fabric of our life stories and our family stories and the greater culture’s stories.  Because our lives truly are the stories we tell not only each other, but ourselves.

Today is a time for lighting candles to celebrate the return of the sun.  It’s a time for dialing it back a notch and remembering why we do all the crazy, difficult, exhausting things we do all year.  To see our dreams dance in the flame and remember that new life is promised and will awaken.  So take this down time to truly take in all you have accomplished, all that you’ve learned and become. Celebrate it and the same in everyone around you.  Bask in the warm glow of the fire and each other’s hearts.  Repair your tools, spend time crafting and creating.  Let your imagination flow.

It’s yule.  Celebrate the coming of the light.  And the ability to set our burdens down and truly enjoy life.

Instead of forming structure and culture from the perspective of humanity’s fallen nature doomed to an embodied life, perhaps the structure could be formed around humanity being spiritual beings that live in harmony with the All That Is.  And that life would consist of far more than the embodied life experienced on earth.  And what if an embodied life was not a fall from grace, a rebellion, a mistake or misstep but a choice?  What if, instead of being a punishment, physical life was an opportunity to learn and become and more fully understand what it means to live? What if this earth provided a challenging environment that confronts us with the need to utilize free will, responsibility, and right action or at least to try?  What if our embodied life were only one portion of a much greater life that continues after embodiment ends?  What if the embodied life is only an interlude and not the goal of humanity?  If these are concepts of what humanity is, who are we then?

Just to be clear, none of these concepts are things I invented or just theories that I’m throwing out there.  Aboriginal cultures around the globe have seen themselves and the world in this fashion since time immemorial. And my extensive work with the Akashics reaffirms this for me every day. Being Cherokee helps me to see human beings are as unique and amazing individuals each created within and of the numinous, each having their own role to play in the All That Is, yet each no more or no better than any other creature or thing within the cosmos.  Everything, including them, is made from the stuff of stars.  All is equal and should be seen and treated as such.  Human beings are neither fallen in nature nor are they any more perfect than any other creature.  Every human being is a work in progress, learning by doing, becoming through living, and while mistakes are inevitable, they are also some of the greatest teachers.  So being perfect is not the goal, nor is attempting to create a fiction of superiority or control over our fellow creatures.  If we and the rivers and the mountains and the plains and the wind currents are all created from the same stuff, then we should treat them with the same respect we would wish to experience.  And we should see these things as fellow travelers experiencing life here right along with us.

This is the story of the First Man, the Cherokee story of our first male ancestor as it is told in my family.

In the beginning all creatures lived in harmony, the animals, the stone people, the plant people, the tree people, and even man.  Everyone talked with each other, helped each other, and there were many gatherings with dancing and music and much laughter.  But over time man stopped listening to the people.  He stopped coming to the gatherings and paying his respects. He started hunting for sport and harvesting just to destroy and all the people gathered together to discuss what should be done.  Among the people there was much fear and consternation because too much hunting and too much destruction threatened them all.

The people gathered into a council circle to speak their hearts.  Bear said that man lived in arrogance thinking he could do whatever he wanted.  Rabbit said man had lost his fear and no longer jumped at shadows on the ground that told him of trouble.  The trees whispered of his contempt for the weather and the seasons and hawk could see that he no longer regarded his ties to others. He no longer looked up to see the bigger picture of life and the web of All That Is.

Awi Usdi, Little Deer, nodded his head with its tiny antlers.  He had seen this himself.  Man hunted without saying prayers.  He was no longer grateful for the sacrifice his brothers made in giving their lives so he could eat and make clothes and repair his weapons.  He no longer sang the songs of gratitude and no longer apologized for the death of a cousin as was proper.  After listening to all the people, giving everyone their say, he rose to his feet and entered the center of the circle.

“I will talk to man,” he said.  “I will show him the right way to live and remind him of the balance of life.  I will show him that too many of us can trample his plans and too few can leave his belly hungry and his dreams of what has been.  I will show him that everything is connected and all of us are necessary.  He will learn that to be a man is to live in harmony and respect with all his relations.”  So he did and still does to this day.

To remind ourselves of this lesson of Little Deer, so that we never forget, we call him First Man and teach our boys and young men to live by his example.

Not having children of my own, I find that Christmas for me can take on a more adult activities than some.  Like the years that I spent Christmas with friends (also without children) and we started with breakfast and Mimosas and ended with dinner and Mimosas, eating our way through the day, sipping and being silly and watching Christmas cartoons and specials and whatever else struck our fancy.

However, other years I find that I revert back to being a kid myself.  Like the year I found that there was a compilation DVD of Scooby Doo Christmas episodes.  It was a must have (and only a couple of bucks) and my friends and I hooted and hollered and giggled through the whole dang thing while I cooked ‘roast beast’ and we settled in for an day of presents and fun.

Christmas is whatever you make of it.  For years I’ve been sharing Christmas with friends and it has been wonderful and a bit magical to have everyone bring something that is an iconic tradition from their family, from food items like gnocchi to Emmet Otter the Muppet special.  And making traditions of our own over time like the need to watch silly cartoons while cooking ‘roast beast’.  It’s good to keep the old and weave it into the new as long as it’s all done with love.

This year I’ve added a new Scooby Doo Christmas DVD to my collection.  Who knew he’d been around so long or made so many cartoons for the season?  And I’m working on adding to an old tradition from my family.  My aunt made me felted ornaments when I was tiny and I have loved them for as long as I can remember.  This year I’m making some of my own to add to the collection.  A small token of connection to my ancestors and to love that never truly fades.  What will your Christmas look like this year?

In the end, all historical evidence to the contrary, we are just as sacred as the sacred spaces we have explored.  This is the secret to consecration, not some mystical power, some Lemurian key, or left over alien DNA.  We are sacred and within us resides sacred space.  We do not need to seek it in some far away other where that is forever out of reach.  We do not need to mourn our separation from it or await some future time when we will return to it.  As spiritual beings we choose to live an embodied life knowing that the bodies we enter are built to support us by helping us forget aspects of our true nature, what would distract us from experiencing this life.  We are meant to live in this condensed form fully experiencing input from our senses, raw emotions in their glory and choice upon choice upon choice all without the hindrance of knowing what we were before and what we will again be after.  We are what we are and our connection to the numinous is eternal and ever present. It is what we utilize to consecrate sacred space, what we draw on to form altars, what we connect with to hear and feel the conversation with the numinous in religious sacred spaces and what awakens when we are in sacred places.  Practicing connection with “I Am,” standing still, centering the self, then stating the truth “I Am” allows you to connect fully and consciously with your soul.  It allows your sacred being to exist in harmony with your consciously lived self, reconnecting all of yourself in one place, making you fully present and fully sacred.

Being sacred doesn’t make us perfect, infallible, or even right, it makes us alive.  It allows us to open ourselves up to being.  It is what each of us experiences when we stay very still and say “I Am.”  That thought, feeling, emotion is our sacrality reaching out to the numinous.  And if we are still enough, open enough, joyous enough, wildly abandoned enough, we may hear it respond back in kind.

Being embodied is a challenge each day to stay fully present even when things may be painful or even overly joyful. One amazing aspect of being embodied, of having forgotten who we are, is forgetting that everything is connected.  We focus so much on ourselves and getting through our day that we don’t realize the impact that our choices make or the fact that we choose, in a split second, to allow something to impact us instead of shrugging it off.  As to free will, it can really be seen at work in this section of a soul book. Unexpected relationships are created, choices not planned or even expected impact whole relationship webs, and choices end relationships subtly or drastically through unintended consequences.  Many, many times I have seen the smallest thing resonate with others in remarkable ways and then they have the choice of doing something with it or not.

For example, in a dance class I was privileged to take with an instructor that I hold in high esteem, we were asked to share a thought about our dance process.  I said that to me it was an act of discovery using my own inner critical voice.  I have found over the years, not just in dance, but in my life in general, there are three categories of things I do in my day.  1) What I need to do.  2) What I have to do.  3) What I get to do.  Dance is most times a ‘get to’ and sometimes a ‘need to’.  As long as the majority of what I’m doing with my dance process stays in the ‘get to’ realm I’m doing it right and it’s life affirming and joyous for me.  When it becomes a ‘need to’ I stop for a moment and take stock of what is going on because something has gone out of balance.  Regardless of what my logical mind tries to tell me, my heart uses these three terms to navigate my world and they show up in the voice in my head telling me what is on the agenda for the day.  Explaining this, which to me is just me being my very ‘thinky’ self, created ‘aha’ moments all over the class which shone through their faces.  My talking about this in class may have been preplanned or not, but what they chose to do with that experience, is pure free will and no script or role, or preplanning can effect it. In the end we are the captain of our voyage and the responsibility for our course lies with us.

My heart and my prayers go out to the families of those who have been killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Being a soul mate is a role that souls may choose to play for each other in an embodied life.  In some cases soul group members choose to work together as married couples in an embodied life for a variety of reasons.  It may be that they have similar lessons to learn or goals to meet, that they work better as a team than independently, or that they are in agreement to provide lessons for each other that support their personal goals as well as creating a family environment, positive or negative, that supports the needs of souls embodying as their children or grandchildren. However, while it is a romantic notion to think that one person can be all things to another person and that that one person is a perfect match and only they can provide the other happiness, it just isn’t the case.  For each of us there are many options for intimate relationships of any nature we choose including marriage.  And while one or another may work better to meet our personal and professional and even soul/service goals, all are good choices and provide us a wide field of growth opportunities as well as happiness.  So not finding a soul mate doesn’t mean you can’t have partnership, love, joy and happiness.  And having a soul mate doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you will.  All relationships take effort and are full of choices, options, and opportunities.

My heart goes out to everyone affected by the Clackamas Town Center shootings yesterday afternoon.  To the families of the deceased including the shooter and to the young lady who is recovering from her injuries and her family, my prayers are with you during this difficult time. To all the patrons of the mall, I’m so sorry that this has happened to you.  And for all those employees, your heroic efforts helped save lives.  Thank you.

In order to talk about spiritual matters, well to talk about anything really, our logical left brains categorize things, make structure and meaning out of things, which has led us, along with hundreds of other influences, to talk about the soul and the body as separate entities.  Spiritual and religious teachings reinforce this by talking about the soul entering the body and leaving it for various reasons, talking about physical life being temporary, and how the various parts of a human (mind/soul/emotions) all influence the body, like it’s a small child that needs to be monitored at all times or a pet to cared for.

However, these are just thought constructs.  They are pictures in our minds, language structures that give us the ability to talk about them, not how they actually interrelate or interact at all.  Or more like a flickering shadow on the wall that only reflects a partial impression of their true nature.  Because the body isn’t a meat suit we put on when we’re born and shuck when we die. It is a part of us, a reflection of who we are, an integral part of the soul and everything about it is connected to who we truly are.  Sorry if that’s depressing for some, but it shouldn’t be.  It means that you have an amazing insight into what is going on in your life that you can use to help you navigate towards your best and highest good.

Your body reflects to you what is going on in the big picture of your life.  Having stomach troubles?  Regular heart burn could mean you’re constantly swallowing things that burn you up or you need to deal with.  Stop trying to just take it and stand up for yourself.  Ulcers?  What you’re doing is destroying your ability to receive the nutrients of life like joy and happiness and pleasure.  You are dwelling too much on what Martha Beck calls ‘dirty pain’.  It isn’t real, it hasn’t happened, it isn’t happening now, it’s worry in your head and in your body for something that may never occur.  Let it go and deal with what is in front of you.  Heal your ability to receive and you’ll stop the hurt.

And don’t take my word for it, the ancient medical arts from India and China know about these correspondences and utilize them for healing and Native cultures around the world know about holistic healing as well.  The body plays charades for our benefit trying, as a last-ditch resort, to get us to wake-up to what we are doing to ourselves, to our soul.  Our body reflects for us who we are and the results of our choices and our beliefs.  What is your body telling you?

I’m not sure why it’s not part of everyone’s regular practice, but somehow grounding and creating sacred space before doing meditation or ceremonial work got lost for quite a few spiritual practices and groups over the past couple of hundred years.  Students look at me funny when I say they need to get grounded before they work with the Akashics.  That’s something you do after, right?  Nope, before.  Because how can you truly focus and do your best work if you aren’t solidly in your body and aware of your self?  Grounding helps you get rid of all the ‘busyness’ of the day and all the thoughts buzzing around in your head about tomorrow.  It allows you to let go of the doingness of things and the worries about what hasn’t happened yet and what is to come.  It brings you into the present.

Sacred space is the other half of that coin.  Setting up a space where you can work is like starting the car engine before you decide to drive somewhere.  I mean, you could push the car with the driver side door open and steering with the wheel, but why would you bother putting that much effort into it to get nothing in return.  Make the car work for you.  Setting up sacred space allows you to work in the Akashics with the aided push of the world around you and in you.  You don’t have to use your own internal resources, you don’t have to struggle just to get there and stay there, at least as much as you would otherwise, and it does healing work for you while you are working.  Double your fun and your reward.

Setting up sacred space takes as many forms as there are spiritual practices.  You can form a space using salt or cornmeal or dry rice on the floor. You can make a room sacred space using incense or sage.  You can tone or drum a space an existing space or use prayer ties or prayer flags or stones to mark out a space.  Whatever method you use, use it regularly.  The more you consecrate it with use, the more facile you become at using sacred space and the more sacred the space becomes.  Like an athlete, the more you do something, the better you get at it.

So ground yourself to bring all the scattered bits of you back to your center and create sacred space to start the car so you can reach your destination in style and with ease.  And when you get back, you’ll feel refreshed and peaceful and rejuvenated instead of spacy and hyper and unable to function.  Because the point isn’t to ‘get out there’ but to bring back wisdom to live here.

Soul groups play a crucial role in the development of souls throughout their existence.  While each soul is unique and develops individually, it is also interconnected with the other members of its soul group and with its teacher in a living web of relationships that nurture and foster everyone involved.  Soul groups are formed within moments of souls being created. Shared experiences, perceptions, opinions, emotions, expectations and choices build a bond so solid it carries on throughout eternity and can be recognized even through the power of the human body to make us forget.  A soul group is like siblings who are also a group of best friends.  They share everything, tease often, pick fights, disagree, revel in each other’s successes and share the joys and sorrows of life.  All in a venue where communication is not just telepathic, but full immersion.  They don’t just see the tears; they feel the sorrow in its freshest state.  One’s smiles light up their being as well.  And through it all is a deep and abiding love.

Soul groups spend their time experiencing life.  People who talk about soul groups focus on lessons learned or not yet complete like life is a constant school where everyone is studying and learning in an endless lecture, but that is not the case.  Learning via lecture and classroom is great for learning facts and theories, for plowing through material, but it is only one educational tool and is useful for its specific task. Play and experience and joy and adventure and creation are also tools for helping souls explore who they really are and what they can become.  And having someone to share it with not only adds to the fun but adds perspective, provides then with a reflection in which to see themselves and all around them in a different way.  With soul groups each individual has not just one special person to share this with, but fourteen to thirty-nine of them, all with their own perspectives to share as well.  Part of experiencing life is also experiencing the other, coming to know others as well as the self, learning their skills, their tendencies, their likes, their failings and blind spots, learning them.  Empathy comes from experiencing their lives as part of the self.  True love is being honest when honesty is most called for and most unwelcome. Soul groups play together, learn together, grow together and work together for their own best and highest good and for those they interact with.  These deep relationships grow ever more connected through living embodied lives together.

Journey To Your Soul in the Akashic Records
Sun. Dec. 9, 2-5 pm, $30

New Renaissance Bookshop, Portland, OR
www.newrenbooks.com

Each of us knows there is a purpose to our lives and yet we can spend a lifetime trying to define what it is. The Akashic Records holds a record or book for every soul that has ever existed. That book is not only a history of everything the soul has ever done, but is also a guide to the purpose of that soul in this lifetime. Teri lifts the veil of secrecy on how to access your Soul Book in the Akashic Library, opens the door for you to explore beyond the Library walls, and introduces you to the wonderful beings waiting to guide you on your path.

Based on my online class Find Your Soul Purpose through the Akashics this workshop will allow you to meet your own personal animal guide, teach you how to navigate in the Akashics, and help you reach the Akashic Library where your Soul Book resides.  I will provide feedback and assistance to students during and after each guided meditation and we will delve into Akashic realms in real-time.  For those who have already taken my online class it will be a chance to work with the meditations more dynamically and I will provide modifications for advanced students so they can maximize their experience.

Registration is through New Renaissance Bookshop.  To register, click here: Register
If you are registering less than 48 hours before the event, please call the store to register: 503-224-4929.

Christmas is upon us.  Which means a raft of activities all this month leading up to the grand holiday itself.  Not only is there decorating and shopping and holiday parties and school events, plus church events and volunteering and charity work and that extra toy for the toy drive….Ok, that’s just one part of it.  Then there is the math of relationship evaluations.  Yep, it’s math and not just the economic kind.  Christmas has become a schizophrenic holiday in that, on the one hand it promotes the best actions and emotions from people helping us all strive for the best kind of society in the micro and macrocosm.  Yet it also causes us to look at our relationships, friendships, and family with the hardened mindset of a warrior going into battle.

There’s who is hosting Christmas afternoon, day, eve and that’s an algorithm that includes not only logistics but status in the hierarchy and relevance to the clan.  Then there is who gets invited to these events, which is another algorithm that includes the hot potato of getting that uncle/aunt/cousin who is awful and always ruins everything.  Then there are those who get a present sent to them and those who don’t.  Who gets just a card and who doesn’t even get a nice card but one you don’t particularly like but need to use up.  And meanwhile, the social armor is getting put on.  You’ll be in proximity with people you know, possibly too well, and any emotional drama that is going on right now will either be studiously avoided, therefore boiling under the surface and making things awkward for everyone, or erupt anyway making things even more difficult or awesome depending on how ludicrous the entire thing is and whether a food fight ensues.  Then there are the not so current issues that get aired every year which strike fear and cause nausea in the faint of heart.  Nothing says Christmas quite like being asked if you are ever getting married or are you just too shy to come out of the closet….*sigh*

Now, I know that many people don’t have all of that going on, not are as cynical as I’ve portrayed this, and yet I’m betting most of us recognize several facets of my description as the holiday they are gearing up for or are currently in full swing with.  So let me put this out there and see what you think:  What if we chose to do things differently? *gasp*

I know.  Take a minute and let that set in……*humming*…..*soft whistling while I wait*…..Ok, so here’s the thing.  I challenge you to challenge every single part of the holiday that you’ve traditionally done for all these years.  Every single one.  Start with Christmas cards.  Do you need to send them?  Do you need to send them to everyone you usually send them to?  Do you need to send the kind you usually send or do you want to do something different instead?  Just that one item should get you thinking.  It should start your brain pinging through not only the traditions but your identity that is connected with them.  Because we do identify with our Christmas traditions.  The negative ones as well as the positive.  And many times we have difficulty switching tracks if things aren’t going well.  We just go through the same thing over and over again.  So why not do it differently?  Instead of buying presents for your family, take that money and buy a trip to someone sunny for Jan/Feb/March?  Or someone cool if you’re in the Southern hemisphere?  It’s off-season and the rates are good.  You can put pictures of the trip into stockings with some smaller things that can be opened and then know you’re giving something you actually want and will use.  No need to go back to the store to exchange a trip to Mexico.

Think about the guest list this year.  Do you need to invite those people?  Do you want to invite other people?  Do you want to have a party at all?  Do you want to go at all?  These are things to ponder this year.  If you do want to go, do you need to act the same way you’ve always acted, doing the same things you’ve always done, or can you bring who you are right now or who you want to be to this year’s celebration?  If someone asks you the same old question, perhaps you can give them a different answer.  Perhaps a truthful one or one that wakes people up to the absurdity of it all.  Or perhaps you can play ‘selective deafness’ for this year.  Any question or comment you don’t want to deal with for whatever reason, you just don’t hear it.  Act as if it didn’t happen at all and keep on with the conversation.  Even if everyone is looking at you.  Silence and refusal to play are highly underrated tools of social communication.  But they work wonders.

Think about doing it differently this year.  Think about making this Christmas not just about traditions, but about you and who you truly are.  I’m pretty sure it would be spectacular.

“You don’t have to be a chicken to make an omelette.”  One of my more favorite quotes and very, very true.  There are many ways to learn and personal experience is only one of them.  But in a world that has moved from agrarian conservatism where tradition is survival because trying something new can get you killed and all those who depend on you to innovation is king and we need to have new experiences each day or life is not worth living, our own personal experience has taken on a heightened significance.  What went before is nice and pundits, historians, and academics can sift through it for meaning if they want.  What I know in myself is what counts, right?

But what you experience is boundaried by your own actions, your limitations, your social and geographic resources and the experiences given to you buy your family of origin and personal history.  Your own experience is by its very nature subjective and full of meaning and structure you have created through your own judgements and those of your family and peers.  And the crux of the matter is, what if what you know turns out to be wrong?

What if everything you have experienced has happened because you formed a judgement of how the world works, thinking it was truly the world and you were just reacting to it, when in fact the world and all its components was actually reacting to your actions, which are based on your misunderstanding of the world?  What if it’s not them, it really is you?  What if people are trying to get through to you what the world isn’t out to get you, you are setting yourself up to fail over and over to meet your expectation that the world is out to victimize you?  What if all those people who are telling you that you are wonderful are right? What if all the opportunities being brought to you are actually things you can do instead of a capricious universe teasing you with things that can never be?  What if you really do have the right stuff?  What if it can work out?  What if you marry this person they don’t cheat or steal or lie and in the end you are happy for a lifetime?

Until you challenge the judgements you have formed about ‘how life is’ you’ll never know.  Because your own experience which tells you that life is like ‘this’ and can’t ever change will cause you to seek out situations and make choices that confirm that over and over.  However, the one constant in the universe is change so it’s impossible that the world is unchanging the way your mind tells you it is.  So take a moment and challenge the assumptions, the judgements, the pillars that hold up your world.  Are they actually true even through you’ve experienced them that way ‘forever’?  Or are they just that way because that’s what you’ve come to expect?  What happens if you change what you know?  What happens if what you experience because something very different?  Who will you be then?

I’ve been there myself and I see it all the time in friends, acquaintances, and clients.  We want something so bad that we ignore all the facts and evidence around us that we aren’t going to get it and can’t have it.  And we seek out any piece of information that supports our desire to have it.  This mostly happens with relationships, but it can happen around pretty much anything.

Our desire for it and to have it ‘right now!’ is out of balance overwhelming common sense and social norms.  It keeps us from paying attention to our actions and to the reaction of others when we take those actions. It keeps us from paying attention to regular life events or responsibilities.  It takes away our ability to feel happiness or joy or anything other than lack and desire and the need to act.  We get a bit crazy.

We don’t believe the truth when it is put in front of us.  We don’t believe the situation, don’t admit to the facts, and keep creating this picture in our mind of what life is going to like when this thing happens or we get it.  What we don’t see is that getting it isn’t going to solve the problem and more than likely will make our lives very bad indeed.  There’s a reason it isn’t working out and we should be seeing it like a red neon sign saying “Stop! Don’t go any further!”  But we are blind so we just keep going.

This state is easy to see even from the inside once we get there.  When you are in it you know and can point to the fact that you are in it.  The problem is stopping the laser like focus you have on the object of your desire and putting that energy into looking at yourself.  But looking at yourself is the first step to stopping the train so you can get off.  The next step is to look beyond the desire or lack to find the real issue.  Because looking at the lack is what you’ve been doing.  And the resolution you’ve found for it is outside of yourself, something you need that is external to you that will resolve the problem.  And only that thing will do.  But that’s never the case.  Life is never that simple.  And the issue is rarely lack of something, but deeper, more truly emotional and raw and honest.  And in the end, that’s what this desire and lack is for.  To keep you from feeling and dealing with what is really going on.  It takes courage to do it, but stop the train and get off.  You’ll be a better person for it in the end.

Sacred places turn our assumptions on their heads.  In such places it is impressed upon us viscerally that the notion of people as owners of the land and shepherds of creatures is not the case.  Our temples and churches and monuments appear shallow echoes of timeless forms when contrasted with sacred places that have existed for millennia with very little change.  Our true place within the tapestry of life in the universe is set in perspective as we experience how small and insignificant we are at the same time we are reminded that we are an essential part of all that is unique and integral and indispensable.  Unlike man-made sacrality, no message is involved in the sacred places of the world. They speak volumes by saying nothing, gifting us with silence in which to hear our own hearts, our own message, and the beauty that is our true selves.  Whether terrifying or wondrous, sacred places allow to drop all social masks and roles and truly open ourselves to our own “I Am.”

Such sacred places confront our understanding of the natural world. If the geography is sacred of its own accord, if it exists with its own suchness apart from human interaction, then can it be a commodity to be owned or is it something else entirely?  Is it something to be respected like ourselves?  Our relationship with land, with Nature, and natural resources is challenged in the face of sacrality and we are forced to consider becoming partners in relationship with it instead of consumers.

America, like many other countries colonized by immigrants, is a nation of dueling cultural perspectives on sacrality and the sacred nature of nature in particular.  In the past 300 years America has acted with colonial fervor to replace the previous existing culture, the Native American tribes, and to exert control and ownership of the land, not through relationship with it, but as a lifeless resource to be commoditized and used.  As such it cannot be sacred in essence as sacrality would prevent it from being useful to the economy.  Therefore American majority culture assumes that there are no sacred places within its geography and all sacrality is to be created through function and by the religion or civil religion.

One great example of this is the overwhelming number of historical markers in every village, borough, town, country lane, and on every hillock and tree with any significance.  Being a relatively young country any evidence of human existence or endeavor is commemorated with a plaque, a turnout, and a place to reflect.  It is as if we are to believe that sacrality is the sole right and creation of humans, that no humans existed in North American prior to colonization (the Columbus Day and Thanksgiving national holidays not withstanding) and that sacrality must be created with fervor and tongue-in-cheek reverence.  But North America is full of sacred places honored by native peoples who entwined their cultures with the land, living in harmony with it for time immemorial.  Even though these sights have been claimed, in many cases, by the majority culture for various uses, they are still utilized and revered by their native populations who strive to continue to live with them in harmony and beauty.

When speaking about sacred places, many people confuse them with edifices that are exposed to the weather and whose originating cultures no longer exist in a form that utilizes or even remembers the function of the site.  Places such as Easter Island, Stonehenge, the Serpent Mound of Ohio, and the Cerne Abbas Giant of Dorset are seen as sacred because they have become part of the geography and are no longer claimed or used by the people who constructed them. The same can be said for various pyramid ruins of the Aztec and Mayan cultures in South America. People in recent times have granted them a mysterious sacrality due to the fact that while much is hinted at through their remains, little is known about them.  Researchers attempt to connect them with sacred places by seeking out ley lines, seeing the correspondences between the structures and astrological phenomena, and granting the peoples who conceived of them unique magical powers, heightened intelligence, and alchemical notions of physics.  But none of this changes the fact that these are, in actuality, religious sacred spaces, created by humans and formed to represent an understanding of the universe that has long since been forgotten.  Like churches, temples, mosques, and synagogues, these places are sacred in function.  They impress us with their age, reminding us of our desire to return to our ageless state and that the numinous too is eternal.  These echoes of eternity hold memories of their sacrality and continue to be imbued with it through new influxes of tourist and people who consecrate them anew through their actions and intentions.  These spaces, while powerful, inspiring, and beautiful are not sacred places.

Each soul has a genesis, a point of creation, a time of beginning.  One moment we are not and then we are. From that moment we begin the journey of our existence which is ‘to be’, to experience life, to learn, to become, for which there is no end.  Some have made the assumption that the creation of souls ended long ago at the time the world was created and that the number of souls is finite. However this is not the case.  Soul creation continues every moment of every day and the Universe is populated with souls in every stage of development all doing their best, failing and succeeding, reverting and evolving into the interconnectedness which is the numinous.

Most souls work with their teachers and within their soul group learning about the Universe through educational experiences in the Akashics.  Souls first learn what it means to be a soul such as the physics of how to exist within the interconnectedness of energy and thought. They must learn appropriate social interactions with each other, their teacher, and other beings, not only how to be appropriate, but what it feels like to hurt and be hurt and what to do to resolve hurts and conflicts.  Free will and choices, opinions and options are a large part of this instruction as being interconnected, telepathic, and empathic, knowing what others think and feel as they experience it, can lead to a desire to control or influence others.  In all situations power has its attractions, being vulnerable has its pitfalls, and regardless of form, all beings are fallible and constantly in the process of learning from their mistakes as much or more as from their successes.  When you are formless and yet all forms are available to you, the first lesson to be learned is not “can I,” but “should I.”  And as the essence of the Akashics is love and all actions taken lead us to love, the most relevant lesson is how to be, act, perceive, and give love.

Lessons also include learning about the Akashics, all that it encompasses, all that is strives to achieve, everything that is possible within it and all the opportunities available to soul groups and individuals.  Souls learn that to name a thing is to know a thing and knowing is an immense, all-encompassing experience which changes the knower eternally and only marginally includes intellectual or informational knowing such as we experience through traditional educational processes.  To name something is the culmination of a process that begins with a shifting of the soul’s consciousness out of their own form, using empathy to imitate or take on the form of the other, harmonizing their own senses, their own sense of self, into the other until they become the other, then returning to themselves with that experience and incorporating that knowledge in a way that is both humble and honors the suchness of the other. Naming is the final consecration that tells the universe, I know this thing for I am it and yet I am myself and it remains in all of its own power and glory.  We are more for the sharing and we share this with the all.

Each of us is a being of light.  We are unique individuals whose lives help create and sustain the wonder and the majesty that is the universe we know and all of it that we don’t.  Our existence is a fundamental part of everything and the numinous would be lessened if we did not exist.  An essential part of being sentient beings is our sovereignty over our own beingness.  We have the right to think, feel, act, and live how we choose.  Free will is a term I use to refer to this enormous gift.  It is something that guides all interactions between beings almost as much as the unconditional love that emanates from and connects all of us.

Free will is a very large consideration when working with a soul that is embodied.  The soul must be allowed to make its own choices, live its own successes and failures, and make mistakes, without the interference of its support team or teacher.  This is the reason why contracts between the parties are struck.  They set the boundaries for what support, help, and intervention is allowed during an embodied life and what can be offered.  While a healer or teacher or peer may want to intervene in a certain situation, they cannot do so without explicit permission from that soul.  The Embodied Life section of our soul book, in these cases, has the ability to act as our advocate giving permission for intervention and support up to a certain point.  This section of our soul book actively works on our behalf, retaining a level of sentience in order to, of its own accord, grant permission for additional support to be provided in certain instances.  Examples would be instances of people in traumatic situations such as car accidents, home invasions, or battles during war hearing voices that give them instructions on what to do or seeing people or angels who give them encouragement in order to survive when survival was improbable.  Another example would be the beings that appear in the midst of a terrible event such as a hand appearing to help a hiker who has slipped and is hanging on the side of a cliff. Without being pulled up they would have fallen, but when they have been rescued and they look to thank the Good Samaritan, no one is there.  Or the person who appears on the stairs of a high-rise on fire.  Smoke obscures their face, but they help the elderly and mothers with children down to safety, then disappear and no one seems to have actually seen them.  Without permission from our soul books these interventions would not be possible because they interfere with the boundaries of interactions we have set before embodying.  Most people do not wish to see or remember beings that are not corporeal during their embodiment but our soul books are able to hand out “hall passes” to support beings if the issue is critical as in these examples.

Something has happened that has hurt you to the core.  Someone who is close to you, someone you care about and who cares about you, or you suppose cares about you, has done something that has hurt you so much that you can’t think about anything else.  It’s like a knife you’ve been stabbed with and can’t reach to pull out.  It’s affecting your work, your other relationships, it’s taking up all of your personal time because you can’t focus on anything else.  It’s making you rethink relationships and how you live your life in general.  It’s life altering.  So what do you do?

That’s a judgement call that is unique to each situation because there is usually a lot that is connected to this, that is involved in it, and a lot of history, etc, etc, etc.  So it’s not cut and dried.  However, the one thing I know for sure is that something needs to happen because the situation can’t stay in this state forever without causing physical and emotional harm to this person.  They need to get some healing and resolution around this.  So how to go about that?

There seem to be two paths in general that can lead in that direction:  talking with the offending party or letting the whole matter drop.  Now option 1 can be handled in a myriad of ways.  It can be an angry confrontation, it can be a quiet sit down conversation, it can be a kind of intervention with other friends or family around as witnesses and on and on and on.  In this option the other person has the ability to give their opinion, their version of events, listen to the offended person, and take actions to help resolve the issue if they want, or continue the offense, or walk away from the situation, or end the relationship.  Or the hurt person could take actions to help resolve the issue, walk away from the situation at that point, or end the relationship, or escalate the problem what have you.

In option 2 the onus is on the injured party to do something that up to that point they haven’t been able to do.  And that is just ‘let it go’.  To do this with intent requires a huge expenditure of energy to change who they are.  It requires them to change their relationship with the other party consciously and without any change in their behavior.  It requires the person to change how they relate to that person, effects how they relate to other people, and can require them to fundamentally change how they see the world and themselves.  And it suggests that they need to forgive themselves and the other person for the transgression so that the emotional charge of it can be released.

Personally I tend to go with option 1 because, as scary and difficult as it is, it allows me to hear from the other person’s point of view, to see where I might have misconstrued or misunderstood actions and intent, and also to express myself, my truth and who I am both for that person’s benefit, to help the situation, and to support myself.  Because if I don’t have my own back, who will?  Now, not all situations call for this.  Sometimes it is the better part of valor just to suck it up and move on and I’ve done that too.  But when something truly injures me, when it is not some corporate or cultural injustice, but a one-on-one situation I tend to try to find a way to talk it through and work it out.  Because until I do it’s just my emotions and stories I’m telling in my head.  Until I at least try I can’t know what the best next steps are.  Not everyone goes that route.

And while I’m all for forgiveness, I tend to see forgiveness not as an emotional release or a ‘get out of jail free’ card, but a final step in a process that started with communication and understanding and empathy.  Forgiveness is not just about letting go of the incident, but of connecting the parties so that they understand what occurred and agree to take steps to prevent it from happening in the future.  Because forgiveness is useless if it’s just an eraser that erases the mistake while another is being made right in front of it.  That’s just a waste of eraser.  Why bother?  So is it courage to ‘just let it go’ and move on or is it cowardice?  Is confrontation worth the risk or will it just make it worse?  The devil is in the details and only the parties involved can truly know in any given situation.

We have been taught, throughout millennia, that beings, angels, spirits, and higher powers watch over us, peering down on us from some other plane or walk with us physically monitoring our every move.  And this is partially true.  We are monitored by our teachers and support team very closely.  But it is rarely done on the physical plane, because very little that is useful can be gleaned by them in this way without interacting with us directly which is rarely helpful and could actually cause irreparable harm depending on the soul.  Instead our soul books are available to our support team and teachers and the embodied life section actively supports their interaction not only by providing sentient up to date details on all aspects of our life, but also through projections for possible future actions and ramifications. Monitoring us in this way allows all vested parties to act in our best interest using the best means possible to achieve maximum positive results.  This does not mean that our prayers, cries, or desires are ignored.  It just means that the team has a resource to utilize that allows them to see the whole picture in a way we as embodied souls cannot and to act in our best interest.

Each of us is a being of light.  We are unique individuals whose lives help create and sustain the wonder and the majesty that is the universe we know and all that we don’t.  Our existence is a fundamental part of everything and the numinous would be lessened if we did not exist.  An essential part of being sentient beings is our sovereignty over our own beingness.  We have the right to think, feel, act, and live how we choose.  Free Will is a phrase I use to refer to this enormous gift.  It is something that guides all interactions between beings almost as much as the unconditional live that emanates from and connects all of us.

Free Will is a very large consideration when working with a soul that is embodied.  The soul must be allowed to make its own choices, live its own successes and failures, and make mistakes, without the interference of its support team or teacher.  This is the reason why contracts between the parties are struck.  They set the boundaries for what support, help, and intervention is allowed during an embodied life and what can be offered.  While a healer or teacher or peer may want to intervene in a certain situation, they cannot do so without explicit permission from that soul.  The Embodied Life section of our soul book, in these cases, has the ability to act as our advocate giving permission for intervention and support up to a certain point.  This section of our soul book actively works on our behalf, retaining a level of sentience in order to, of its own accord, grant permission for additional support to be provided in certain instances.  Examples would be instances of people in traumatic situations such as car accidents, home invasions, or battles during war hearing voices that give them instructions on what to do or seeing people or angels who give them encouragement in order to survive when survival was improbable.  Another example would be the beings that appear in the midst of a terrible event such as a hand appearing to help a hiker who has slipped and is hanging on the side of a cliff. Without being pulled up they would have fallen, but when they have been rescued and they look to thank the Good Samaritan, no one is there.  Or the person who appears on the stairs of a high-rise on fire.  Smoke obscures their face, but they help the elderly and mothers with children down to safety, then disappear and no one seems to have actually seen them.  Without permission from our soul books these interventions would not be possible because they interfere with the boundaries of interactions we have set before embodying.  Most people do not wish to see or remember beings that are not corporeal during their embodiment but our soul books are able to hand out “hall passes” to support beings if the issue is critical as in these examples.

This section of the soul book can and does take the initiative on our behalf as well.  When teachers, support staff, or soul group members are not aware of or are not responding strongly enough to a situation the Embodied Life section can and does reach out to them informing them of the situation in detail and making a formal request for action. This request may reach out beyond those individuals to others with specialties such as healers, architects, communications experts, creators who have intimate knowledge of an item, eco system, or creatures, or others as necessary.  These can be brought up to speed and asked to help the soul as the situation warrants and be granted permission to act.  For in the end no one knows the soul better than the soul itself and the soul book is an integral part of the soul.

So many times when people talk about sacred places what they mean are buildings or the remains of buildings or structures that human beings have made.  Usually for the purpose of connecting with the sacred or so we assume depending on the age of the structure.  We can’t really know with things like the Serpent Mound in Ohio or the Cerne Abbas Man in Dorset, England because the culture that produced them no longer exists and the myths or tales about them have disappeared. With ancient structures we attempt to figure out their meaning from what remains, but in the end we simply guess and put our own meanings on them, most often making them mysterious and hinting at sacred purposes stemming from impossible to discover secret societies or religious groups.

But the sacred is not owned, controlled by or even created by humans.  The structures and forms we create can connect with it bringing the sacred here into the physical, but as we are all the stuff of stars, everything is sacred and connecting with the numinous is not the sole purview of bipeds.  Sacred place can be found all around us in nature.  Groves, mountains, caverns, springs, rivers, lakes, fields, cliffs, all hold sacred spaces which are available to all creatures.  Such sacred spaces allow people the ability to access the numinous in the opposite perspective from religious structures.  Men, through buildings, monuments, and temples, attempt to convey the feeling of eternity, universality and the yearning for immortality through monumental structures soaring high above our heads built from seemingly indestructible materials.

Sacred places in nature allows us to truly feel this without the need for artifice or symbolism.  They also allow us to feel at once small and insignificant while being interconnected.  They allow us to drop the masks of society and culture, the structures that we live within to make sense of our reality, and to reset our boundaries to a more expansive level opening ourselves to possibilities, to wonder, to deep connection, and thoughts of our origins and new directions for living.  Sacred places give us the gift of insight into our beingness unobstructed by other’s opinions, message, or constructs.  It’s worth spending some time in a place without message in order to hear our own hearts.  We are, after all, made from the stuff of stars….

Many people are feeling that they are being called, that they have a sacred/spiritual calling and they are hearing that the time is now to start walking that path.  But what is it?  Some people know in general but don’t know how to get to the specifics, some people know it is something spiritual but don’t know what, and others have no idea and feel very confused and frustrated.  These are all just steps along the way.  I know it’s trite, but it’s true: it’s not about the goal, it’s about the journey.  Because in the end, there is no ‘one’ goal and you can’t know all the goals that you set in motion or helped people to achieve or supported through your own actions.  And who would want to?  That’s a lot of responsibility and stress for no reason. So walk each step of your path knowing that it is a win/win for everyone involved regardless of the ultimate outcome.

The Akashics can help you in the process in ways you might not realize are available to you. The Akashics can at times be very literal in its communications and so, if you put yourself in a light meditative state and ask to be shown your path, you will be provided with a place where you can walk a path that leads to enlightenment on the subject matter.  Sometimes this is a park like setting, sometimes a field with crops or wildflowers, other times its in the mountains or near a waterfall.  Of course the beach is always a welcome options.   It is always a place that provides the individual peace and happiness and allows them to relax.  This facilitates the communication.

When you see the path, follow it.  Most times you will reach a place where someone is waiting for you.  It is rarely your primary teacher, but instead is someone who is there specifically to guide you through your process of walking your own personal spiritual path.  They could be someone you recognize from this lifetime or they could be a figure you have never met before.  It doesn’t actually matter since they are there for your best and highest good. Sometimes the being won’t present itself as human at all.  It will appear as an animal guide with wisdom to share.  Or there may not be a being, but some object with written instructions or personal meaning for you.

Whatever occurs, this is your path and your place and you can go there as often as necessary to receive information, education, and support as you walk you path from mundane things like “How can I support myself while I do this?” to “What does it all mean?”  You are a creature of light, a spirit walking this world and as you walk your path the Universe is here to support you.

There seem to be three different ways in which people experience the Akashics. Meeting up with a guide/angel/higher being to be told some information/wisdom/lesson, wandering through a building/city/temple/garden that is fantastic like Wonderland but uninhabited, or going directly to some ‘dimension’ where things are so completely different from what we understand life to be, and yet completely familiar at that the time but indescribable upon return.  I know it may be a chicken/egg situation, but I’m still wondering whether this is because it’s what the person truly needs and it matches their skill set or because it’s what they expect from having been told about other’s experiences.  Which tells you a bit about me as well…wonder what I’m pondering while gazing out the window….now you know. 

The reason why I ponder this is because it seems very constrictive and limiting.  These are not the only experiences available in the Akashics nor necessarily the most valuable to have.  And they seem to presuppose that the person travelling there is a tourist or even a child wandering into places where they do not belong or they are interrupting the work of adults who do not wish to be bothered. Yet the Akashics is the home of all souls.  It is where we reside when we are not in bodies and we will return there upon our death.  We go there in our sleep weekly and maintain connection with it at all times.  Going there consciously is a skill that can be learned and utilized by all people so why limit the usefulness of the experience to asking others to tell you what you already have access to via your Soul Book?  Why limit your wanderings to uninhabited areas or areas that are rarely used?  There are great expanses of the Akashics are exist specifically for our education and support that we can access at any time and beings who reside there who are more than willing to work with us to help us with this mortal life.  They want to help us achieve our greatest potential including being the best physical being that we can be.

When seeking to reach the Akashics, I suggest that you not ask for your particular teacher or guide, but a guide or teacher or being that is best able to support you in the question or issue that you are working on.  And allow the Akashics to unfold before you without preconceived notions of what will appear.  You may end up in a grotto with a waterfall, in a cabin on the side of a hill, talking with a warrior on a battlefield, or sipping tea in a cozy cottage with a gentleman willing to tell you the tale of yourself.  Don’t struggle to figure out who these beings are to you, because they may not be related to you at all.  Not everyone is and not every being that is willing to help you is someone you have known in a previous life.  These may actually be beings that, unrelated to you, have your best interest at heart and simply want you to be you and be happy.

That’s something to give thanks for.

A bit of the Akashics on Earth

Much of my work with the Akashics and what I teach to my students is reconnecting with the Akashics by going there.  Through my energetic work with clients and guided meditations with students I journey to the Akashics and reexperience life there.  However, the goal of my work is to bring that experience, the knowledge and wisdom and learning here into this life and allow it to influence how we live.  Others do this as well through various means, one of which is to build labyrinths.  The labyrinth is a symbol of growth and balance, but also a conduit for Akashic energy and a means of traveling between states of being.  Used as a walking meditation a labyrinth can allow the walker to enter into a state where healing and attunement with the higher self is possible.  It allows for more direct interaction with the All that Is and to be able to receive guidance with from guides, angels, and other wisdom beings.

Walking a labyrinth with its spirals and turnings brings us into contact with ancient female energies, with an organic process of creation that allows us to see new opportunities and view things from a new perspective. It is a good way to come into harmony with changes that are occurring in the Universe and that are becoming more prevalent in the world as we near the end of this Dragon year, 2012.  I have recently found a website that allows you to locate labyrinths new you and I had no idea there were so very many available.  It is more than likely that there are more than two or three in your local area.  I recommend you check it out here:  http://labyrinthlocator.com/

I remember the conversations I had with fellow students when I was studying to become a Sign Language interpreter.  I was immersing myself in deaf culture by going to public events, but I also had deaf roommates and was invited to quite a few parties and social gathers that others weren’t and I ended up hanging out a bit with another student whose husband was deaf, just to do a bit of triage.  Because anyone who has attempted to learn about another language/culture will tell you, there is nothing more humbling because you say and do the funniest and most embarrassing things in public going through that process.  It’s like being a small child all over again, except you’re not.  And you blush a lot.

But to me it was worth it because language is not separate from culture.  They are inextricably linked.  Language allows us to communicate the meaning and structure of culture which forms culture and around and around we go.  So learning vocabulary in a book just doesn’t cut it.  And being an interpreter takes that just that much farther because you have to become fluent in not only that language/culture in general, but in a great deal of the specifics because you have to understand all the nuances of that language and culture to take the meaning (meta message, contextual clues, subtext) and put that into the other.

And that’s where the conversations come in.  Because many of the students I studied with just could not understand why I would bother. Not because they didn’t think what I was doing was important or that it was relevant, they just didn’t see that there was any difference or culture to explore.  I mean, what other perspective is there than American, which is what we all are, right?  And we all see things the same way because we all live in the same place, right?  It took two years and a lot of people’s patience and some confrontations between them and Deaf community members for them to get it.  Most of them.  Some of them just never did.  Because not all cultures are the same, thy don’t see things the same way, they don’t speak about them the same way, and they don’t necessarily hold the same values or weight things in the same way.  Which doesn’t make them bad or wrong, they are just different.

What it came down to was, as much as the students meant well and their hearts were in the right place, they didn’t know what they didn’t know.  And they would come away from a conversation with a Deaf person feeling embarrassed and frustrated and angry because they were criticized for something they didn’t know and would say “But how could I have known that?”  And on the one hand they were right to ask that, because we don’t know what we don’t know.  But on the other hand they were missing a critical point, they should have gone into the situation with the perspective that there were things they didn’t know and an open mind to find those things and learn them.  Instead of just going ahead with preconceived notions of the world they should have opened themselves up to the adventure of new learning and experiences.  Because once you know that you don’t know, you have the ability to learn.  And it hurts less when you do….

No one has everything they want.  Not only is that true, but its the fodder of movies, books, tv shows, politics, business, religion and so much more.  It doesn’t matter how many things you have, how much money you have, or how much success.  It doesn’t matter if you have been given everything you ever thought to want and are the most contented person alive.  You’ll still look on the world and want to solve poverty or war or hunger or the plight of the fuzzy wuzzies.  We’re human.  We always want something.

But many people are afraid to know what it is they want or afraid to attempt to get it, not because what they want is bad or dangerous or greedy, but because of all the things attached to it.  People aren’t scared of success, they are scared of how they will change once they are successful.  People aren’t scared of completing all their projects and not being busy, they are scared to hear the truth that is constantly screaming in their heads because being alone makes things quiet and they will be unable to avoid hearing what they know about themselves.

This time of year turns people’s minds to wanting.  Wanting more time, wanting peace, wanting money, wanting items, wanting all this to be over, wanting to not hear annoying Xmas music before Thanksgiving, wanting to enjoy one holiday at a time, wanting to know why people don’t see the irony of shopping Black Friday sales on Thanksgiving evening, the holiday meant for us to appreciate what we already have, wanting to spend just one holiday without having to do all the things we don’t want to do…..So this year, stop going through the motions, doing what you’ve always done, doing whats expected, and think about what you really want.  Make this season the time when you fulfill some of what you really want for yourself.  Peaceful Xmas?  Make it happen.  Thanksgiving without all the gluttony?  Go for it.  New Years in the Bahamas?  You betcha.

What is it that you want?  Are you able to even stop long enough to consider it?

Being Native American I know my perspective on sacred space is a bit different from the norm, but I’m still surprised by how many people think that Sacred Space is about buildings and man-made structures.  I went looking for examples of sacred outdoor space and found a whole book purporting to be about that, but it was actually about standing stones and stone structures and various constructed mounds in multiple countries…everything to do with man’s handiwork and nothing truly natural.  It’s as if, because these sites are open air and because the cultures that created them no longer exist, they have reverted to some holier, more sacred realm than those spaces that are still in use by their initial culture.   Because not knowing everything about a place makes it more special somehow.  And open to interpretation.  Whew!  Some of those interpretations…

Anyway, sacred spaces come into existence, have existed, without the interference or creativity of human kind.  They exist because they do for their own reasons that don’t have much if anything to do with us.  That we find them, are called to them, are able to interact with them is a blessing and a gift, not a right or a mission.  And how we interact with them is a reflection on us, a visible manifestation of who we are and how we perceive the world.  One thing in particular that I have noted is that American’s seem to value sacred spaces everywhere but in their own country.  Well, other than Sedona, AZ and as far as I can tell that is as much because of its economic value as a tourist attraction and ability to bring in people who will spend money on spiritual experiences and items as it is about the inherent sacrality of the area.

Most Americans find sacred space is only so if it is exotic.  If it is enough “other” that it is special and worth traveling to experience.  Sites in South America, in the UK, in Australia are all sacred, but sites such as the sacred mountains of the Navajo in the SW or Mt. Shasta in CA or the Bad Lands of South Dakota are considered property and resources to be used instead of the sacred space the have been for centuries to the peoples who lived with, on and around them.  America has created a mythos that there was nothing here before colonisation and that all history started at that point and everything of value or any sacrality was created at the inception of that period.  And this continues today.  Native American history is not considered American history and therefore their notions of sacred space is not a part of the civil religion of the country.

I hope that one day the sacred spaces of America come to be valued as much as those of other countries and other cultures.  That we can return to honoring the land we live on and working with it instead of ignoring it.

Sacred places in geography like Mt. Shasta, Ayers Rock (Uluru), Easter Island, Stone Henge, just to name a few, out live not only people but cultures and so their ‘meanings’ and usage change over time.  This is the natural state of beings and things that exist in linear time.  Change is the only true constant.  It is the kind of change that occurs which speaks to the spirituality and intent of the people who interact with these sites.  And it is the clash of perspectives that strikes me as most difficult to deal with and possibly the most damaging.

Aboriginal or Native cultures, in general, have a perspective of being just part of the ecosystem, not in control of it.  They attempt to leave a small footprint, literally and figuratively, they try to keep their interactions with the world (other human groups being the exception) harmonious and positive, and they revere various geographic formations as sacred such as springs, rivers, mountains, caves, trees and rock formations.  They see these as explicating the role of man in the world, as indicating human origins, and teaching lessons about right living.  The sites themselves are considered intrinsically spiritual or sacred and not to be disturbed.  Entire cultures have formed around the spirituality and understanding of the universe that incorporates the living by/with/on these sites and their appropriate use.

People from other cultures, mostly white western cultures, attempting to return to a more aboriginal form of spirituality, find their own personal path to the All that Is, connect to something more authentic, or seeking to find a more grounded and earth based spirituality to practice, have developed a plethora of practices and beliefs.  The less structured and more eclectic of these have been dubbed “New Age”, but seem to have found one element in common.  “New Age” practitioners, whether through naiveté or through western societies ingrained entitlement, utilize the colonialist notion of being able to take and use whatever they find regardless of and in the face of the culture it came from or what violence this does to the native culture.

Native Americans and First Nations struggle with this constantly while attempting to practice their spirituality.  A constant parade of non-native people feel that they have a right to attend ceremonies, sweat lodges, pipe ceremonies, teepees, without spending any amount of time learning about the culture, about the particular rules and expectations of the ceremony or whether their presence will even be appreciated.  Native people learn from early childhood what is necessary to honor the people and spirituality expressed in these ceremonies so as to be a positive participant.  Outsiders seem not to realize that they have walked into a different culture with different rules.  The most obvious being that white western culture requires direct eye contact during conversation and Native culture finds this not only insulting to the point of violence but a direct challenge that might require beatings or a knife!

Sacred sites are coopted in the same manner.  There is a percentage of ‘New Age’ practitioners that tour spiritual sites like vacation spots, seeking for the photo-op and an ‘experience’ but doing nothing to understand the local culture or people or finding out whether their presence there is welcome or damaging.  Ayers Rock is an example of this.  Several Aboriginal cultures are still present there and still utilizing the site in the ancient ways of their culture and the mountain is still an active sacred space to them.  However, even the literate and websites about the space note that ‘New Age’ groups have coopted the rock and Aboriginal spiritual concepts of ‘Dreamtime’ and now utilize the site as well.  Even the name shows colonialization.  It’s Aboriginal name is Uluru.  Ayers Rock was the name given by the white settlers who colonized the region.

Before trying to bring ‘peace to all men’ which has misogyny embedded right in the phrase, or trying to heal the entire planet or get in touch with something bigger, why not start where you are and look at the people around you, the cultures around, you the violence that may occur through your own best intentions.  Before trying to heal what others have done, look to what you are doing.  It may be that what you are doing or the way you are doing it is hurting others in a way that cannot be healed.  Sometimes the best thing to do is not just do something, but stand there.

I’ve had this conversation with friends, clients, and acquaintances far more times than I like to remember.  I bet you have too.  You’re talking, having tea or coffee or lunch and they start telling a story.  Now, it’s not fiction.  It’s their life as they are living it right now and it’s obviously bugging them and they need to talk about it.  And it’s an amazing puzzler for them because this just keeps happening to them over and over again or its remarkably similar to something that happened in their life when they were a kid or it reminds them of someone close to them or it’s just so random it doesn’t make any sense at all…..

But to you, not emotionally involved in the scenario, probably knowing only one or two of the characters if any and only glancingly, see the story unfolding like a TV show and can see the characters and the plot, the motivations and the underlying reasoning behind it all and all  you can think is “You’re working through your  (fill in blank) issues…”

They had a shitty relationship with their Dad and they struggle with their boss in the same way or their boss acts the same way forcing them to confront the same behaviors.  They had a terrible relationship with a sibling and they keep treating this other person like their sibling and don’t understand why things go wrong or they react oddly.  Rejected by the only woman in their life they have issues around committment and keep getting dumped or dumping women that try to stay.  The stories are endless, unique, and never-ending.  Because instead of dealing with the actual issue, people try to ignore it or ‘just move on’ thinking that it’s not a big thing when it’s actually a gaping wound in their life that they are constantly attempting to triage.  It’s like they’re professional runners who have had one shoe stolen.  They keep saying ‘it’s not a big deal’ and they keep running with only one shoe and then wonder why their timing is off, why they limp, their back and hips are in agony, their foot is constantly sore and bleeding, and why they seem to have become kleptomaniacs concerning shoes.   And they can’t seem to figure out why they are in trouble with the cops about shoe thefts in the area and why people look at them funny when they run.

I’m exaggerating, but you get the point.  The only one who doesn’t see that something needs to be healed is the person telling the story.  And they do know they need to heal the issue because it’s on their minds and pressing on them in their everyday life, but not in a way that is going to resolve the issue.  They are telling you about running with one shoe and complaining about the shoe theft charges.  So what do you do? No easy answer there.  Sometimes I point out that it’s an issue with having only one shoe.  And then suggest that shoe theft isn’t the answer.  It’s what got them into the mess in the first place.  Perhaps they should press charges against the person who stole their shoe in the first place or at least confront them.  They they will be able to deal with the only one shoe issue.  Either they can buy a new pair or run without shoes.  Both are viable options.  I can’t do much more than that and it’s up to them if they want to deal with the issue or not.  But sometimes I realize that telling them about the shoe issue is pointless.  They won’t be able to hear me so I just listen and let them walk out with only one shoe.  Hopefully listening is enough.   Maybe for Christmas I’ll get them a gift card to a shoe store…..

You can know what a person needs, but not be able to get them to accept it.  You can know what would resolve a person’s problem and not be able to fix it for them.  You can be ready and able to help, continue to provide help and support and love, and yet the person never seems to get ahead or get better or get what they need.   It can feel so confusing and frustrating and exhausting because nothing you do makes it better and yet they are always in need and if you could just give a bit more it would get them over the hump and then they would be ok.

But at some point hopefully it dawns on you that the issue is about you or about how much you give or do and it isn’t about finding the right solution, the fix, or the ‘help’ that will make it all better.  Because the person doesn’t want to get better.  We assume that people who aren’t doing well or who are struggling or who have a hard time want that to stop and want to get better.  And that if we help them things will get better and they will stand on their own two feet and become self-sufficient only marginally dysfunctional members of society like all the rest of us.  But there are people who don’t want that.  Whether that is because they have an addiction that is controlling their lives or they need to feel miserable to feel normal or their identities are wrapped up in being the victim…whatever it is, they work hard to keep their lives constantly in lack, in drama, and in need.  So no matter what you do, they are never going to get over that hump.  They don’t want to be only marginally dysfunctional so they aren’t going to be no matter what you do.

So what do you do when you realize that?  It’s complex because loving someone causes you to empathize with them and want them to be happy and healthy.  Which they aren’t and they don’t want.  But they seem to want and need your help.  What do you do when you realize that loving them has become repeated negative experiences that have developed into systemic abuse?  What happens when you realize that love is not enough?  That your love for them is not enough?

It’s something that families with members who deal with addictions face every day.  Because you can’t enable the addict, you can’t allow the abuse in your lives, yet you love the person and want to help them.  But many times the only kind of love that actually helps is to show them that you can’t and won’t share in the fallout from their behavior.  You are willing to demonstrate mildly dysfunctional yet healthy choices and boundaries and lifestyles by living your life without drama and abuse.  You are willing to demonstrate healthy love by not tolerating or supporting victimization for yourself or the rest of your family. Which is a very difficult, emotional, and life altering choice.  But it can also save multiple lives, yours, your family’s, and the addicts.  Because once they realize they have to deal with the consequences of their actions directly, they may find that it’s not worth it and make other choices.  They may actually move to get real help to resolve their issues.  And, because you love them, you can cheer them on.

Because it’s not that you don’t love them, it’s that sometimes love is not enough.

Religious sacred spaces seek to create structures which reflect or bring into physical existence their specific understanding of the cosmos.  Since ancient times religions have utilized monumental forms to create sacred space.  Mountainous structures and immense sculptures made from stones of the earth express the experience of yearning for the divine.  Long lasting materials show longing for the eternal. Religions build a microcosm of the universe and in so doing invite the divine to reside there in constant and timeless relationship with their members.  This sacred space becomes a means for members to experience communion with the ineffable, with divinity, and with each other, bringing their own “I am” into union with the numinous.  In entering religious sacred space each person removes themselves from the mundane and returns, if only for a moment, to the All That Is in a way that engages all of their senses and enfolds them in something larger than themselves.  Those who work with the Akashics will recognize this as a physical manifestation of the Temple of Life.   And as with monuments only the powerful and the wealthy have the ability to construct such edifices and paeans to the numinous so they contain message as well.  Ancient governments used them to create community, secure power, and deify their family line through all their descendants thus creating divinity on earth and another form of eternity.  Religions use them to consolidate and promote their own form of community as well as support manifestation of their espoused divine principles in the world.  Communities use them to create identity and proclaim their values and perspectives.

The properties of monuments, memorials, altars, and personal sacred space can be seen in religious spaces in the form of temples and churches. They create monumental space for community to enter into.  They provide aspects of the divine for individuals to experience through their size and grandeur.  They provide message in the art and iconography they display, teaching religious concepts, moral structures, and right action through religious language and pictorial art.  Statues of religious scenes such as the Pieta in St. Peters, statues of Hindu deities such as Ganesh, Russian Icons of Saints and the Madonna, stained glass windows in cathedrals depicting religious scenes all tell stories through symbology, forming meaning and message through placement within the structure. Each figure, color, posture, clothing item, gesture and decoration has meaning that tells us about an aspect of life, of divinity, and suggests ways in which we should strive to live.

But such edifices have no true meaning, no life, if they are not utilized by the community.  Like memorials these spaces are for people, for individuals to come together experiencing the numinous individually and sharing that experience together.  Like memorials the life of the sacred edifice is in its people.  It is what they bring to it which creates communication with the divine and builds relationship which affects all aspects of the divine.  Without devotion, without open hearted conversation within the structures, even if that be silent meditation or whispered prayer, the place is only a place.  It becomes nothing more than a building full of dust and echoes. And in homes, which to some spiritualities are the true religious sacred space, spirit abides.  If religion is not just a hobby, but a lifelong dedication, an identity and a personal practice, then the home becomes the heart of religion and therefore sacred.

“…landscapes of the holy (are) centers of inspiration where human consciousness is temporarily set free.  The experience of a sacred place and thus sacredness itself is re-entry into a state of wholeness – an introduction to your true origins.” –T.C. McLuhan

“Sacred place…is a construction of the imagination that affirms the independence of the holy.” — Belden C. Lane

“Divining the sacred in loca sacra, in other words, is essentially an initiation into sanctified space that is autonomic in its revelatory capacity.”  –T.C. McLuhan

“In actual fact, the place is never ‘chosen’ by man.  It is merely discovered by him…[T]he sacred place in some way or another reveals itself to him.” –Mircea Eliade

While it seems normal to compare the early life of a soul to the early childhood of human beings and parallels can be drawn between a souls’ life and the human maturation process, the same cannot be said for the time when souls take on vocations or careers.  This process neither works like nor begins in the ways in which it does in human life today for the majority of cultures.  A career or vocation can be entered into when the soul desires to do so, providing they are capable to take on the challenge it affords.  There is no marked time period or set goal that connotes a soul having reached “adulthood”, needs to find work, “get a job” or go out to become a contributing member of society.  Souls do not procreate sexually or asexually and therefore there is neither a shift away from self-development to caretaking roles through biological necessity nor a required move away from family of origin as represented by the soul group.  The soul group remains intact and does not gain new membership.  There is no graduation from a set educational agenda, no need to work in order to supply basic life requirements and there are no such things as jobs in the Akashics.  No one survives doing a job they hate just to subsist; all tasks are taken on willingly by the souls who choose them. So let’s set aside the normal paradigms, assumptions and comparisons as we look at what is listed in the fourth section of soul books, the section concerning careers.

First, as I mentioned in Lesson 4, education in the Akashics never ends and teachers agree to work with their soul group for all of eternity. Not just because of all the education possible, but because there is no certainty that the soul group will need to or ever achieve a state of being that no longer requires supervision.  That kind of individual autonomy, unlike in human society, is not required nor expected.  It is simply one opportunity among millions that a soul may choose, but with free will anything is possible.  And careers or vocations are not a mandatory stage of maturation or evolution. Each soul may choose them in their own time frame.  So for the teacher, at any given time a mixture of the soul group’s members could be in service while the remainder is not.

The accepting of a vocation or career can be presented in a myriad of ways depending on the soul, the teacher, and the situation.  A career or a vocation is a call to service.  It is an opportunity for the soul to use their gift, skills, and knowledge in an effort to help another soul(s) to achieve something.  It is a task taken on not for reward or gain, but the satisfaction of being in service to others, the pleasure of the task itself and for the betterment of all. Careers in the Akashics are not all consuming as they can be for embodied people.  Sacrificing the self for another or using a vocation to avoid social interactions or learning experiences is actively discouraged as it does violence to the one in service and causes negative repercussions for the soul group, the teacher, their guides, and those being served.  As all is love, careers are balanced with personal needs and growth, the needs of the soul group, and of others within the social sphere of the soul.

I had a student ask me a question about religion and belief concerning the Akashics.  They had been called to minister in a religion and had done so for decades and then, through experiences and events and thought, had found that they no longer believed what they had been teaching and speaking and so felt confused and betrayed and didn’t know what to think about their calling.  And they were struggling with feeling like they had been wrong and wasted years of their life and how would they be forgiven and what did this do to their Karma and what did the Akashics have to say about this.

The amount of preconceived notions and assumptions in the entire conversation made my head spin a bit.  What about living a spiritual life is a waste?  Having a calling and following it?  What about that is wrong or a mistake if you ‘harm none’?  (Let’s leave aside psychosis and serial killers and psychopaths for a moment, if you don’t mind.)  It seems that the assumption is that one path is ‘right’ and others are ‘wrong’ and so are our actions based on that assumption and what path we’re following.  Also there seems to be a preconceived notion that the Akashics is a place of judgement and authority, kinda power over, and that some kind of punishment or reckoning was being formulated there.  With Karma mixed into this.

So after settling my spinning head I tried to tease all this apart and start laying aside the assumptions and giving a different perspective on things.  First, I have found no evidence that there is only one right path to Spirit or that we need to travel a path to Spirit (insert whatever word you wish to use for the numinous or source or deity).  In working with the Akashics I have seen that religion and spirituality are just one experience among a multitude that helps us learn and grow and become on our own unique trajectory to becoming the best person/soul that we can be.  And that, the process of becoming, is the point, not how we get there, and everything we do is a teachable moment that helps us learn and develop and become.  Having a calling in one decade and moving on to something else another isn’t an indication of a mistake or a failure nor is it an indictment of one religion or spirituality over another.  It’s like rings in a tree, an indication of growth and change that reflects the environment the tree experienced and how it responded.

Does the Akashics see all this happening?  Yep.  Does it care?  Yes and no.  There’s no judgement involved, just love and support for the growth process.  Beings working within the Akashics may or may not be involved in helping the soul with this process, but the Akashics itself is not keeping score, not making judgements and not handing out punishments or rewards.  As for Karma, again, not a score sheet or a reckoning.  It’s about the learning process.  If you need to learn about something, you will have an opportunity to do so at some point in your existence.  It may be this lifetime, it may be another, and it’s not like putting a puppy’s nose in his pool of pee and saying “No! Bad dog!”.  It’s about growing as an individual.  Figuring out what you have to learn and doing the easy and hard and in between things to develop into more of your potential.  Which may mean suffering and may mean joy and hopefully, at some point means a bit of happiness.

Which has all been brought to mine by a recollection I had recently about some of my more memorable experiences with religious sacred space.  Looking back on it now it seems amazingly ironic and yet very symbolic of my life that I had my first experience of embodied sacrality and women’s spirituality in a Catholic church.  It was completely round with a round Holy water fount that was the size of a jacuzzi and had a bubbler in the middle so it seemed like a holy well out of Ireland.  The stations of the cross were bas relief plaques set into the concrete floor around the outer edge of the sanctuary so you walked them in a circle making the journey of spirituality eternal and unending in a good spiral way, to my experience, not a tormenting Purgatory way.  And the reliquary had a 5ft oil painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe with a kneeler and votive candle offerings.  Did I come away from my time at this church with the right message?  I don’t think there is a ‘right’ message.  I didn’t get a Catholic or even a truly Christian one so the message intended by the architect and the Church probably failed.  But I did get a message from the experience, one that has informed my life in positive ways.  That spirituality is experiential and has room for women in non-subordinate roles and allows for individuality and unique expression.  Go figure.

So before you starting trying to figure out the why’s, look to the assumptions and preconceived notions that are informing your perspectives. It’s all right to have one or two or more.  Everyone does.  But know what they are before you start giving yourself grieve or trying to act.  Until you know where you stand, you can’t move forward.  And the first question you might want to ask is, “Where do I think I need to be other than here?”

So much of our focus is on what we are being told and how much and trying to screen it out and get to the things we want to talk about or have anything to do with at all.  It becomes the two-sided coin information onslaught/embarrassment of information riches  that we have to struggle with each day.  And we sigh with longing at the people who choose not to watch TV or go to movies, but we ignore that they work for internet companies, have cell phones and tablets and spend just as much time connected as the rest of us.  The unplugged human being is swiftly becoming the Dodo and will fade into myth to become the Unicorn.  Which you have to be careful of because they are feisty as proven in recent horror movies.

So during the bombardment, while we’re ducking and weaving, fastforwarding and deleting, and complaining and unfriending, liking and tweeting we forget that we should be questioning.  And the most important question isn’t “what?” but “why?”.  Why are they telling me this?  Why are they telling it to me that way?  Why are they telling it to me at this time in connection with this?  These questions cut through the spin and the glitz and the speed and the hype.  They slow things down, they quiet the noise and they cause us to reflect and use our minds like detectives, not only on ‘them’ but on ourselves.

We are targeted each and every day because of who we are or who we are perceived to be.  Targeted by people who want to sell us things, who want to get something from us, who want to add us to their membership or influence our opinions.  They want to add our voice to theirs, make their numbers, or validate their perspective.  But that’s not what they tell us.  That’s not what they present because if they did we wouldn’t necessarily respond at all the way they want.  So they present what they are doing or wanting as something else.  And they do it in a way that isn’t necessarily confrontation or obvious.  It can be subtle.

And people will feel that it’s not fair and not right and shouldn’t happen….well, perhaps that’s true, but it happens everyday in every relationship and its called communication. Because you can’t tell me that you haven’t spun something to decrease the impact, to focus attention where you want it, or fibbed about your goal unless you are 3 years old or less.  Anyone older than that has transgressed in this way just to get an extra cookie.  So we should be expert in seeing others do it.  But are we?  Do we look past the message to see the meaning?  With relationships many times we do.  But with advertising, politics, organizations, non-profits, you name it we usually take them at their word.  We turn off our critical thinking.  And we really shouldn’t.

Just because there is a lot of information out there and we get bombarded everyday doesn’t give us an excuse to not think.  It doesn’t give us an excuse to not examine what is being said and why.  It doesn’t mean we can just blindly accept what is reported to us by friends, coworkers or the media.  We need to look at what is being reported, what isn’t, and ask that irritating question, Why?

“I’m not so afraid of losing something that I won’t try havin’ it” — Zoe Washburn Firefly

I love that quote and it resounds with me.  In a lesser form its the answer I give when people ask me how I can possibly go to events, concerts, plays, or even dinner by myself.  If I didn’t, I would have missed out on a huge portion of my life so far, and I’m not afraid of reaching out to get it.   A great many people feel exactly the opposite, however, and spend a huge amount of energy working to prevent themselves from enjoying things, trying things, or doing anything that might change their lives from dreariness and complacency. And they will tell you so if you ask.  If you ask, “I know you really want X and you know how to get it, so why don’t you?”  they will answer with all the reasons why attempting to have X will cause their life to change and they don’t want that.  And there is no guarantee of having X anyway so why bother.

What they are actually saying is they are afraid of happiness because if they once achieve happiness, they may lose it afterwards and that would be worse than having it in the first place.  So they need to not be happy.  They need to ‘make do’ and ‘put up with’ what they have, put their heads down and not try for something that would change the status quo.  This response is not to be confused with someone who has a quiet life and is truly happy doing what they do, which may seem boring or mundane or unspectacular.  One mans happiness is another man’s jail.  However, you can tell when someone is genuinely happy and when the are just going through the motions.  Happiness is like sunlight.  It brightens everything around it, warms and encourages everyone it comes into contact with (let’s leave deserts out of this simile for a moment) and can be felt even when it isn’t seen.  It’s life-giving and life affirming.  When someone is trying to act like they are satisfied with their life and are truly happy, you can tell its a mask because there is no sunlight in it.  It doesn’t warm anyone.  It’s going through the motions and there is something missing, something not quite right, an empty space that causes and echo when they speak.

Change and loss are part of life.  No way around that and now way to stop it.  It just is.  With that in mind, there is a choice to be made between taking the chance to be happy or attempting to avoid happiness to protect oneself.  It is possible to avoid the majority of happiness that comes your way, although there will be happy moments no matter what you do.  No one can completely control their environment so there’s no way to avoid moments of joy and contentment.  And in the end we are social creatures who need happiness once in a while, even if it is in limited and qualified amounts.  But what would happen if we turned this on its head?  What if we chose to strive for happiness?  Same rules apply, you can’t be 100% happy all the time.  You won’t have happiness on your speed dial and you will still need to be aware of your surroundings and the people in your life and deal with the daily ins and outs of life.  But wouldn’t it be better if you challenged yourself to try to reach for what you truly want? Or is it too scary to think about what you life would be like if you achieved it?

Personally, I think it would be exciting for everyone. As it is said in EM Forster’s “A Room with a View”:  ‘If miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting both for us and for her.’

Recently I’ve heard a lot about the different ways that people deal with emotional situations and the truth and change.  It seems that, while change is inevitable and healthy, people are afraid of it and want to avoid it, postpone it, or ignore it, sometimes at all costs.  And this interferes with the truth and it causes emotions to go from normal and healthy to “Holy Crap!”  Some of the salient points of these situations is not wanting to cause emotions, not wanting to make things worse, not feeling safe to say the truth because of how it will be taken, and not wanting to deal with the situation or even needing to control it.

So here’s the deal.  Change happens.  Organically or through an ‘act of God’ which violates the human warranty we change.  It is in how we change and how we respond during the changing process that molds the final outcome and what we have to work with when we get to the other side.  Speaking the truth about something can be hurtful to the receiving party or even to bystanders, but done with integrity and good boundaries it can lead to healing, reconciliation, and deeper relationship.  Or it can lead to the ending of a relationship that needed ending for a variety of reasons.  It’s short-term pain for long-term gain and why scary and anxiety making, it’s usually for the best.  Which is a grand generalization and each situation has its own unique constraints.  If your object is to save your marriage, coming clean about your most egregious affairs and flings while at a church couples retreat is probably not your best option.  Less said the better on that one…

What can cause long-term harm is holding back a truth that is actively on your mind or is affecting your relationship with another person. If you’re mad at them, unless you are an Oscar-worthy actor, they are going to know it and just not know why.  Which could lead to questions and to prevarication, hurt feelings, a deeper pit to dig your way out of, etc, etc.  Trying to keep the truth hidden, trying to control the message, or avoid hurting someone by keeping silent usually makes the issue much worse when it comes out and causes long-term damage that is sometimes hard to resolve.  And the starting point is usually “Why did you not tell me this?  Why did you wait so long?”  Never a good thing to have to explain because you rarely have good reasons…again with the hole digging.

You can’t stop changes from happening.  You are constantly changing, so are all your relationships as well as everyone around you, possibly in equal measure.  Trying to stop that or avoid that flies in the face of physics.  So I suggest that you start setting the boundary for yourself right now.  Things are going to change, so allow the change.  In fact, work with it to create something new that is healthy and proactive and reflects who you are becoming.  Speak your truth gently, compassionately, but with strength and integrity.  You’ll be doing everyone around you a favor and make yourself available to all kinds of new relationships and new opportunities.

Strong emotions cause strong reactions.  And for some reason, we seem to think that they are similar to diseases or illness and that we should do something to remedy them whether they are happening to us or to someone around us.  The urge to help, to console or to remediate things is natural and many times useful and necessary in a situation.  Calming down a hysterical person when that person is needed for some action or when their behavior might cause harm is a very good thing.  Helping someone come back to themselves when they are in a manic or depressive state improves quality of life and prevents harm from bad choices made in a moment of non-clarity.

However, every one of us will go through strong emotions multiple times in our life.  We’ll look at them as watershed moments that caused dramatic change in ourselves, in our relationships, and in the status of our lives.  Sometimes they are amazing such as the birth of a child, a wedding, an ecstatic experience, or the pure joy of the perfect evening that you thought would never happen to you.  Sometimes they are devastating such as a betrayal, the death of a loved one, the loss of a career, or a divorce.  What we do about these situations tells a great deal about our path and our process at that point in time and can be grist for the regret mill later on in life.  What we do in the moment with the emotions as they unfold, how we treat ourselves as we are feeling, defines us.

All extreme emotions are difficult to be in, make us feel altered and different from our normal lives.  They are liminal moments when the mundane is stripped away, when our ability to work with social masks and daily minutia is limited by the new priority of channeling massive resources into a feeling tsunami.  We are raw and exposed and vulnerable in ways we do not allow, possibly even ourselves, in our everyday lives.  And we are able to see aspects of ourselves which are normally hidden from the light of day.  And for most people, this experience is so uncomfortable, whether the emotions be positive or negative, that we attempt to stop the process as quickly as possible.  We negate it as momentary, we medicate it to ameliorate the affects, we seek out distraction and strive to restore order and normalcy.

But why do we fear these emotions?  What is so frightening inside us?  Why is it wrong to rage at injustice or feel love so intensely it has weight and texture?  These emotions don’t stay forever.  They surge and recede, just like the waves of the ocean.  They are here for a moment in time and then they are gone again leaving gifts or wreckage in their wake.  They are not preventable, but we can be prepared.  So what is to fear?  What if we allowed ourselves to fully feel in these moments?  Would we break apart?  Would we be forever altered into someone we don’t know?  Or would we become more of who we truly are?  Would we become more ourselves than we have ever been?  And what would our lives look like if we allowed that change and began living from our authentic selves?  How scary is it to be deeply and fully real, even for just a moment?

Very few people manage to be islands of isolation.  It takes a great deal of personal effort, skill, and geography to pull that off.  Not just because you need to be able to live off the grid, live off the land, and be fully self-sufficient in everything you could possibly need, but because we are visual beings and isolation requires that no one can even see you, because being seen is still interaction.

So for the majority of us, we live in relation to each other in one form or another and usually in a great many forms at any given time.  Which means that our lives impact others and theirs impact ours.  And with all of this interaction and interrelation going on plus all of the internal and external stimulation we get every minute of every day, with the only constant being change and change constantly being thrust upon us, we seek to make stability, structure, and meaning out of the things we have some control over such as our homes, our jobs, our vehicles, and those who are most important or ubiquitous to us.

It’s most often true that we know inside ourselves we are ever-changing creatures trying to surf through the day-to-day, but we see others as stable, static, and consistent and we note when others are not, regardless of seeing that as a positive or a negative.  It’s not rational, it’s just coping.  And healing throws a spanner into those works.  When we heal, we change.  Not just a little, but usually quite perceptibly and usually permanently.  And those changes effect others.  There’s no way around it and no way to predict what their reaction will be.  In unhealthy family situations someone getting help or getting healed can be a threat to the status quo.  It is not unusual for an alcoholic family to try to sabotage a members recovery, a co-dependant family member to resist the independence of their favorite person, or an abusive parent to try to prevent a child from gaining self-esteem.

Becoming healthy, however that occurs, challenges others.  Not only does it remind them that everyone else is changing just as they are or as they are trying to prevent in themselves, but it challenges them to examine their own life and start the healing process.  And a great many people do not want to heal whatever is going on with them.  Weird but true, many people create dysfunctional and unhealthy habits and lives to support their internal identity, to foster a situation that feeds a need, or to prevent something from happening that they cannot cope with.  And someone close to them getting healthy pushes all their ‘Warning: Danger’ buttons.  So they will reach out to try to prevent the healing or to push away the person who is getting healthy.

And sometimes someone’s dysfunction pushes others into health.  Being confronted with the facts that a person absolutely does not want to be healed and works strenuously to prevent it and to maintain their unhealthy lifestyle can be a wakeup call that helps those around them make other, different, healthy choices for themselves, perhaps for the first time.  In the medical profession there is an understanding that healing doesn’t always mean getting well or even surviving.  Sometimes it means letting go and letting the process move forward naturally.  And this can also be true of relationships.  Sometimes healing means knowing that the relationship has to change and may possibly need to end.  Because healing is relational and sometimes the healthiest thing to do is say “I can’t be in this relationship any more.”

I saw a tattoo today that was drawn to appear as if the skin were peeling away from a woman’s shoulder and underneath were written words.  And it really looked like her story was written under her skin.  We are the stories we tell ourselves, not just the stories we tell to each other.  We are the constant looping of meaning told over and over that forms our identity.  And those stories serve us in one way or another, but they don’t always sync up with reality and many times they just get in our way and can cause huge life issues.

Part of the issue is that the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, about situations that recur, about issues that we just ALWAYS seem to have is that they aren’t about logic and facts and left brain action items.  They can have facts and events in them, but they are truly about emotions.  They are strong and deeply felt emotions connected with self-worth and identity and our perspectives on life.  And they don’t change quickly, they aren’t affected by current events, in fact they alter our experience of what goes on around us so profoundly that we can seem delusional to those outside of us or seem to be so clearly confused as to not be rational.

Feelings of jealousy, of being less than others that we esteem or love, of being incapable of success in some or any endeavor can lead us to see the world in those terms.  So actions which in and of themselves are not connected with jealousy, are not meant to make us feel less than, that are supportive can seem the opposite.  Because of the stories in our head we need them to be so.  Someone who identifies with being a victim in social situations of any kind will act like a victim, not protect themselves from victimization, and will put themselves in situations where they can be victimized.  They won’t do so consciously, but with their world view, they won’t be able to do otherwise.  And if a situation arises where they are not a victim they will work to either see it as such or make that happen because that is their identity.   And no amount of self-help, logic, or common sense will help them resolve this issue until they start healing the emotions and the story that they have in their head.

The stories we tell can keep us in a constant state of flux or of stagnation. If the story we tell is that we don’t have the ability to choose or we don’t want to choose a course or a solution or a means of resolving a situation, then we have made a choice.  And the choice is to try to hold back water with our hands.  It is true that we are not moving.  We are physically going nowhere and taking no action to choose anything or resolve the matter.  However, we also trying to keep everything else around us from changing and moving on, which is impossible, and so our situation gets more dire, more chaotic and stagnant as we try valiantly to stay the way we are while everything around us shifts and changes and moves on and becomes. Meanwhile, all the options keep battering us from all sides and we ignore them trying to keep the water still.

Before pointing to external factors in life, look inside to the stories you are feeling about yourself.  What is the emotional identity you are carrying inside?  What is the ‘truth’ about you that identifies you.  What if that isn’t actually the truth?  What if that’s just a story you are clinging to?  What if you change that story? How terrifying is it to contemplate seeing yourself differently?  What if you made a little coffin and buried that story forever?  What new story could you write in your heart?

My friends and I sometimes joke about the men in our lives and how they measure on the present scale.  You know, for a holiday do they get you a power tool that is something they actually want, do they forget altogether, do they get something that makes no sense, do they do a ‘Hail Mary’ and tell you something they go you before was meant for this holiday or hand you something you know they just grabbed in desperation, or do they give you things that are surprising and wonderful.  Or just surprising.  Or do they compromise and get you something that you asked for.  Do you have to make a list.  Etc, etc, etc.

It’s no more fair than men talking about women being poor drivers.  It’s sexist and a generalization and only somewhat true some of the time.  However, it is something we do talk about and when it isn’t aggravating in the moment, it’s pretty funny.  But I also have female friends that admit they are bad at the “present thing”.  They don’t know what to get someone in any situation, not just the ‘socially I have to bring something to this event, what the heck should that be’ kinda thing.  I’m sure we’ve all experienced that at one time or another.  You get a gift that you either don’t know what it is or you don’t know why in the world someone would give it to you.  *sigh*  Hence the gift receipt and the popularity of gift cards.

And not everyone is going to be a officianado at gift giving.  Just like not everyone is going to be a famous tenor or drive race cars professionally.  But most people can at least produce a modicum of sound that resembles singing and a good deal of people know how to drive (safely or not).  So here’s something that I have found produces adequate to somewhat amazing results when dealing with the present thing.  Pay attention to the person receiving the gift.  Not at the time you’re giving it, but before that.  Pay attention to the things they like and they don’t like.  What do they do when they are actually doing something for themselves?  What do they collect?  What do they sigh over when they are out shopping or on Amazon or surfing the web?

Everything they do should point towards things that they like.  Listen to what they say when they are talking. I know revolutionary, but it’s true.  People do actually talk about the things they like or want or aspire towards.  Once you start listening, gifts start making themselves known to your brain. Seriously.  The ideas will start showing up. And don’t throw any ideas away because they seem too plain or not special enough.  The thing about gift giving is that it isn’t about what you want or what you think they should have or should like, but it’s about the other person.  And what is plain to you might be amazingly special to them.  And you know what the best part of the gift will be?  That you paid attention to them enough to know what to give them. Best holiday gift EVER.

Life is a daily delight/onslaught of input.  From the time we awake to the time we sleep our senses intake information at a high rate of speed.  And our brains seek to make meaning from it and to navigate it using the maps of relationships, needs, wants, requirements, and survival to build it into something we call “My Day”.  Part of how we do that without our brains leaking out of our ears is through roles and masks and socially appropriate stock responses. People may grumble about “Fine” as a response to “How are you today?” and say it’s not authentic or a brush off, but if we only have so much energy and saying what is really going on would cause chaos or make things worse or just waste energy that can be put to better use elsewhere, then “Fine” makes perfect sense and works…well…fine.

Moving through life in various social groups requires shifting from one role to another and relationships come in varying degrees and depths and so we are constantly evaluating what we can say, what we want to say, what we will say in any given moment to any given person and a lot of the drama and trauma in life is about what we should have said or done, what we could have said or done, and what we actually said and did and how we can fix it.  Because Lord knows we aren’t going to be able to take it back.  Once the bell is rung and alla that…

So with everything in balance, going well, we’re cruising along and getting where we want to be or at least getting along when something happens.  Bang!  Something stressful happens.   You hear about something that affects your job, you find out something about someone you love, you find out something about something you’ve worked hard on or really want and emotions become the priority and what you’re going to do about them becomes your focus.  Whether that’s hiding them from others, doing something to alleviate them, or dissolving into them, you have to focus on that.  Which is good, but it has a side effect.  I diverts attention and resources to your internal processes and away from the masks and the roles and the social niceties. Oh, in some cases there are social formalities to use, but for the most part everyone is uncomfortable with them.  Which has the effect of giving you the space you need to deal with the emotions and that works at times.

However, what usually happens in times of stress, is that the person experiencing the stress, the emotions, can’t focus on acting  the way they should or even focus on how they should act. All of that processing goes out the window.  And that’s when the truth comes out.  Stressed out people become truth machines if the situation pushes them hard enough.  Get into a knock down/drag out fight with someone and no matter what you or they do to ‘make up’ later, the truth is what came out in all its ugly glory.  You’ll see it shining in the air.  Whether it’s the truth that this really hurts, whether it is a truth that has never been spoken about each other or about the relationship or about people you’re connected with, aside from all the words that are spoken to releave pain and to hurt the other, the truth is in there.  And you’ll know it.  That bell can’t be unrung.

The same goes for a death in the family.  It’s the subject of many comedies and tragedies but the truth is that funerals bring together people who are related, at a time of stress, concerning things that are important to them…or not….and forces them to interact.  This can be loving and caring or it can be crazy or it can be amazingly insightful.  Or all of the above and much more besides.  But it will definitely bring out the truth like putting a slide under a microscope.

So if you want to truly know someone, watch how they act under stress.  Talk to them, offer your help and support.  You’ll see who they truly are. But here’s the key: once you see it, believe it.  Because most people choose not to and that lie told to yourself can haunt you for the rest of your life.

Nothing is more heart wrenching than leaving something undone until it is too late.  If there is something you really want to do, don’t worry about what other people will think, don’t worry about how to get it done, get rid of the box you’ve been thinking in and go out and do it.  10 years or 10 months or 10 days from now you won’t remember why you were worried about it.  You won’t even remember if you made a fool of yourself or if people disapproved.  But you will remember having done this thing which you wanted.  Your entire soul will glow from knowing that you care enough to take care of yourself, and that will show and flow to every person that you meet and everyone that you love.

If you love someone, let them know in words and deeds every day.  Because the grand gestures are….well….grand and alla that, but it’s the long-term, the accretion of love, the habituation of giving and receiving that builds a lifetime of memories and leads to happiness.  Happiness cannot be determined in any given moment.  Few and far between are the times when we stop long enough and are in the right frame of mind to say, “Oh, I’m happy.  This is happiness.”  All the other emotions moving on the spectrum keep us going day in and day out.  It is only at the end, looking back, that we can see we were happy because we worked each day to live the love and truth in our hearts.

So do everything you think you should, everything you can, and everything that calls to your heart and live with no regrets.  You will experience loss, you will feel the pain of grief, you will suffer through the ending of things.  But when those times come, you won’t have to grieve over what didn’t get done or what could have been.  You can cry the healing tears of ‘remember when’ instead….

Clients I work with all want to know, “What’s my purpose in life?”  and “Why am I here?”.   Sometimes the answers are really exciting and ‘sexy’ like, “You’re here to help heal small children” or “You’re here to learn this major lesson about love and family” or “You’re here to work in foreign countries bringing education and quality of life to orphans.”  However, sometimes the answer is just as important and amazing, but less sexy, like “You’re here to be present.”  Which always gets a ?????? response.

Here’s the thing.  One of the major issues in most industrialized countries at this time is the disconnect between men and pretty much everyone else.  That’s a generalization so let me explain.  Male paradigms right now pretty much fall into three major categories:  career driven-competitive-goes out and does stuff then comes home to sleep, gay, or romantic guy from chick flick who is sensitive and in touch with his emotions.  All of which are caricatures of real people and very extreme.  There are not  a lot of other role models out there.  In fact I just had a conversation where my friends and I noted that commercials for cleaning products have yet to use a male actor.  Being at home, caring for family, being connected and in relationship just isn’t a role model that we as a culture are supporting in the mainstream right now.

However, it is something that is happening quietly out there in the world.  I meeting more and more men who are beginning to speak up that they are none of those role models and either are happy family guys who balance work and family and person interests or that want to be and don’t know how.  To the latter I give them the not so sexy answer to who they are supposed to be:  be present.  You can’t be connected if you don’t listen. You don’t have to act, you don’t have to react, you just have to witness your family living its life.  How can you know what they like, want, and need if you’re not there?  Sometimes its hard for a man to not have some goal or something that needs fixing, some ‘thing’ to do.  But the thing to do with families is ‘be’.  Be who you are.  Like what you like and share that with them.  Show them you can be happy and allow them to share in that happiness.  And be ok if they don’t want to share that.  Welcome to relationships.

Have an opinion about things and share it, but don’t shove it.  Perhaps wait until you’re asked.  You might be amazed or at least surprised at the question(s) because they might be completely different from your assumptions or the stories you have playing in your head.  Create trust by being available.  It’s not enough to say “I’m here for you any time, just call me….”  Uh-uh.  Be there, right there in the moment so when they need you, all they have to do is turn around.  Be there so they can take in ‘this is what a man is, this is what a man does…’ even when they aren’t asking questions and aren’t in your face.  A dad is the guy the daughters judge other men by (for better or worse) and if he and she are lucky he’ll be the sounding board for her to figure guys out.  Sons will find themselves by measuring how much they are like and dislike their dad and their siblings, which like the tides, will ebb and flow.

The best gift you can give them is to be present.  You’ll never be perfect.  No one is.  But that also is a gift.  Because if you were, what a horrible standard to set for your family which will always fail to meet it.  Let them see your imperfections.  Let them see you apologize and mean it.  Let them see you try harder the next time.  Let them see you struggle.  And find joy.  Let them see you smile at the good and laugh at the ridiculous.  Let them know you.  With that light to guide them they’ll find their way….and so will you.

In writing about sacred space, I’ve been thinking about religious spaces.  And there are a lot of religious spaces to consider.  Just the number of temples in India boggles the mind, let alone the shrines, ashrams, and wandering mystics.  Or think about the number of churches in the Bible Belt in the states.  Heck, where I live we’re considered fairly non-religious yet there are churches ever 10 blocks or so.  I pass by several just going to get groceries each week.  There are more churches than schools, for goodness sake.  And the US is a fairly young country.  What about Europe where churches, cathedrals and basilicas are not only in use but also tourist destinations?  We’ll leave the Middle East out of it since war is ravaging their mosques at the moment…

So with all this sacred space not only in evidence but in use, where is all the sacrality in the world?  Where are all the results from this spirituality?  Where are the positive effects flowing out like water from their doorways?  Why is the world not a shining jewel of positiveness with all the energy being poured into these places?  And I keep coming back to the same issues I saw as a child, practical application.

As a child I was confused by Christian churches because they seemed to me to be a bunch of loose ends that ended up doing not much of anything.  They helped those who came to them, but not many in the regular community.  They talked to their own members, but not really to anyone outside except to ask them to come to church and believe as the church believed.  They set up a separate community unto themselves and made us/them judgements about everything outside their community instead of working with the larger community.  Now, I have to say I grew up in a small town and I was just one kid so I couldn’t see the bigger picture or see that these were only some examples of what churches are capable of.  But in looking at the situation today I still look, not for rhetoric about how we should think or with whom, but what positive things for the community as a whole is any religious community doing.  Are they practically applying the principles by which they purport to live or are they just talking amongst themselves on a regular schedule.

Nothing is black and white, or cut and dried, as it were.  No one religion is better than another as all paths lead back to the source, to the numinous in whatever form and with whatever name you wish to call it.  But I tend to side with those religions and with those practitioners that do more than congregate and do more than just teach what they believe.  Practical application of actions that can help people other than members of their own community, other than people who believe in the same thing and that have their own means of supporting themselves, makes the entire world better.  Helping, not for gain, but because there is need makes all of us stronger, healthier, more capable human beings.  And doing not just once to salve the conscience or to check mark “duty” off the list but as a way of life, as a habit that lasts a lifetime, that, I believe, is the true mark of a spiritual being.

That’s how sacred space spills out into the world and brings the shards of the Divine back into wholeness.  How will you be practical about your spiritual practice today?

I hear people talk about listening being an art form or a lost art.  *sigh*  I don’t actually see it as an art so much as a necessity of life.  Kinda like looking where you walk.  You can not do that and stub your toe, fall and break a bone, go off steep cliffs and die, walk into buildings…the list goes on and on.  Or, as Gallagher famously yelled for years “Look where your driving or drive where you’re looking!!!”  Listening, not just hearing, is a necessity of life if you decide to live in a way that keeps you from bashing into easily avoidable negative situations.  It can even improve things like relationships, jobs, educational experiences, even traffic stops for that matter.

And I would take listening even a bit further to the level of paying attention. In the past, say even just at the turn of the last century, stimulation from our surroundings was, compared to today, fairly limited.  Well within the scope of human beings to take in everything that was thrown our way and seek for more.  Life was filled with doing, not necessarily busy-ness, and we were at least trying to make sense of everything that came our way (to over simplify but not romanticise).  Now we live in an age where we are having to create and hone skills to filter all of the stimulus that comes our way.  Electronic, interpersonal, work, family, organizations, associations, media, schedules….our days are filled not just with what we need to survive as human beings, but with a morass of information, activities, and purchasing opportunities that are supposed to improve our lives and help us feel fulfilled.

The change from seeking interaction and stimulation to fending it off and wading through it has helped to create a numbing effect that keeps us from being able to put together incidents into some form of meaning.  We use habit to help us through all of this and unfortunately it has that problem of leading us to do the same thing over and over even though it doesn’t work.  And if we’re not paying attention we will fall into the trap of thinking that at some point there will be a different result.  A serving of insanity for everyone please, Garcon?  So, while it can be difficult, paying attention really shouldn’t be seen as a lost art, but as a necessity.  Listening to what is going on around you, as it were.  Making time each day to actually listen to what your kids are trying to say, making them feel heard, actually caring about what they are doing or not doing, liking or not liking, and not filling their days with scheduled events.  Let yourself be the biggest scheduled event they have on their schedule.  Hopefully you’re one of the things they love best in the world (at least until the teens and through their 20′s.  By their 30′s you’ll become a good person again, don’t worry.)

Same with your significant other.  They aren’t a staple of life, they are a precious gift, even when they annoy you the most or you’re having an argument or you a trying to refrain from doing something to them that will make you the next plot line on a police procedural.  That’s just a moment in time that will fade (if you don’t do any permanent damage to them.  That leaves scars)  So make time each day to actually listen to them.  Or pay attention.  A lot of who we are, what we mean, what we want to say is expressed in actions, not words.

Same with Spirit or the Universe.  If you keep doing the same thing and it doesn’t work.  Stop, drop, roll, then listen.  Not necessarily to the voices in your head.  Again, that insanity thing is something to watch out for.  But to all the things that are going on around you.  That job offer that you turned down because it wasn’t quite right, even though it’s actually perfect and its the third time it’s been offered to you.  That persistent woman who isn’t quite your thing, but keeps trying to be your friend when you need one the most.  That hobby you love but it will never lead anywhere, except that everyone says you’re an expert in it and you should write a book…..

Pay attention…listen to what is being said…your life is waiting for you to live it fully if you’d just stop filtering out the message.

I know quite a few people in my life that are either self-employed or are trying to start a business or just get a new job, something that makes sense for their life and that they can at least be satisfied with and be able to pay the bills.  However, they all struggle constantly and quite often the issue is where they are putting the effort.

I know it can be scary, but if you are going to own a business, be an artist, hunt for a job, you have to be visible.  You have to be available to other people.  And not in a wall flower kind of way.  Not in a “I guess if you really want to you can come see what I do” kinda way.  And not necessarily in a loud and brassy and annoying way either.  You don’t have to be the worst kind of car salesman to get people to notice you, but you do have to stand tall and be a bit proud of who you are and say “This is who I am.”

Here’s the thing.  When it comes to money, not having enough or not knowing where it is coming from can be terrifying.  It can cause us to freeze up and not be able to think or to do things that have short-term rewards and no long-term gains.  We can sabotage ourselves easily and quickly when we get into a “not enough” frame of mind.  And that can get connected to our self-worth and our self-image when we’re self-employed as artists, writers, dancers, musicians or when we’re looking for a new job therefore needing to advertise who we are and what we can do.  Money and identity, two huge hot buttons of fear for most people.

However, we can’t let that stop us from doing what is best for us and for our goals.  Don’t screen out opportunities because you’re sure the venue will work.  You won’t know until you try or at least scope it out.  And check to make sure the reason you are unsure about it is really about the venue and not about a fear or identity issue you are having.  Sometimes what is causing the fear is the fact that if you start working there or start vending there or get seen there it will propel your career faster than you think you should or can go.  But if that is where you want to go and the opportunity is there and you have everything you need, what is holding you back?  Fear?  Get past the fear.  Try and see what happens.  Being truly who you are publicly can’t hurt you more than you are already doing through fear and it can be amazing and take you places you’ve always wanted to go and some you didn’t know existed.

Don’t let fear of being seen keep you from your dreams.

I’ve heard that other writers and artists suffer through this as well.  There’s a point, somewhere in the middle of a project, where it feels like you’ve totally failed, you’re a failure, this is never going to work, you should scrap it and start over, you’re never going to make deadline, what was I thinking in even starting this whole thing….

And at some point you get past the middle. You start to see the end getting closer.  Things start to gel, to feel better, to look closer to finished project and the tide turns into, this is almost done.  Enthusiasm comes back as things change from slogging over and over to finishing and the tempo changes from doing to getting it out there.

Feeling the tide turning now, thank goodness.   And thanks to aspirin for making the migraine recede so I can get some work done….I’ll be glad to forget this middle part again.  I like to be surprised by it each time it happens….not.

Being a medium is a time honored tradition whose popularity ebbs and flows in popular culture. It was taken on by Spiritualism in Victorian times and became somewhat like video games are to us today. Entertainment that can become obsessive and or a lifestyle.  I recently watched an interesting HBO special on Lilydale which is a community that still practices Spiritualism (Think Christianity crossed with seances).  It’s a small town with 40 resident mediums who live, practice, and work through Spiritualism.  In talking about their history they point to Victorian times where mediums were the new ‘thing’ and because they worked 7 days a week and were in such demand, they became vaudvillian and a large number of con-artists and fakers got in on the money giving the process a bad name.

Today mediums are back in style, but with no one religion or spiritual underpinning.  Freedom of religion is at its peak in this regard as mediums come from a kaleidoscope of backgrounds and beliefs.  To my mind, choosing a medium to work with is like choosing a lawyer, a physician, or a contractor.  Don’t trust the advertising, check with past patients, look up reviews, ask around and see what people have to say who’ve experienced them.  And if that sounds good to you, go and work with them and trust your instincts, not their spin.  If something isn’t right, it’s not you, it’s them or the situation or something.  Don’t try to work it out, move on to another medium.  There’s plenty around at this point.

Meanwhile, there are quite a few groups and practitioners out there offering to do Akashic readings or to teach people how to do Akashic readings.  Which is all well and good, but to date I haven’t found more than a couple that actually do.  What I see is people trying to teach, haphazardly, is how to be a medium.  They gear it towards talking, not with the passed over, but with guides and teachers and ‘Masters’ who work in the Akashics (as if there is anywhere else they would be…) and who can give information about a specific person from an Akashic perspective.  Which to my mind is convoluted as far as getting the information and requires that people take on a skill they might not ever develop.

Not all people are mediums.  Being a medium requires that the physical human body be able to interact with other spiritual beings on this plane of existence.  And there are a plethora of ways in which a person might do this, but most have no idea about that and no clear means of figuring it out.  So the technical aspects of the process, being untaught and left to guess-work and innate ability, create an insurmountable hurdle for most people.  Then, if you can figure out the skills to do so, you’re supposed to ask another being to find the information you’re looking for, and then relay that to another person, creating a spiritual ‘telephone game’ process.  Leaving me with the question, “Why?”

Why create a lose/lose situation for everyone?  Is it because they have no concept that there is any other way or do they think that the more difficult something is the more awesome and spiritual it is?  Probably both and a lot of other reasons besides, I suppose.  As all people reach the Akashics without having to use mediumship, they do it through their sleep, I just don’t see any reason to mix the two together.  If you want to learn how to be a medium or work with a medium, that’s great.  They provide amazing insights and gifts, those who are actual skilled practitioners and not scam artists.  For the Akashics, there’s no need to be a medium to access it. You can do so directly and consciously using the skills you already have.  You’re already able to access who you truly are, all you need to do is reach for it.  Trust yourself. You’re already half way there.

Everyone grieves at some point in their lifetime.  In fact, it’s a common emotion with many different variations just like there are multitudinous types of sadness, happiness, or anger.  We can grieve the loss of a pet, a friend, an opportunity, a phase of life, a career, a toy, or a loved one, just to point out a few reasons.  But in our culture grieving in any meaningful way that affects daily life has become almost taboo.  Partly I believe because of TV and movies which focus on drama and heighten/shorten events for impact, people believe that grieving is like a rainstorm.  It happens in the moment, sweeps everything in its path, and then moves on leaving things changed but renewed.

Well, grieving isn’t a rainstorm.  Grieving is like healing from a serious injury.   There’s the initial event, the impact that causes the damage.  Then there’s the pain and the need for immediate care and support.  And those are the parts we focus on culturally.  We’re shown and subliminally taught that grieving should be about tears and ‘stiff upper lip’ and just keep on with life like normal. But grieving isn’t a short-term thing.  After the initial pain recedes, when the people recede and the trauma and support wane, there is then the long-term rehabilitation.  The emotions that come and go for seemingly random reasons.  The ghost pain when something occurs and you realize that how you would have handled it, the person you would have turned to for sharing, are no longer there and never coming back.  Learning to live differently step by step, day by day, on an emotional roller coaster because you don’t want to change, you have to change, you need to change for you, but you want to make the world stand still.

And the hardest part is that this process can go on for months or years.  Which is normal and not pathological.  In my culture, when a loved one passes away, ceremony is held after 7 days, allowing the family to do what needs to be done for the remains and deal with the trauma and to regather themselves enough to be around community.  The community mourns with them and a celebration of life for the deceased is celebrated.  And the community acknowledges in that ceremony that the family will be grieving for one year.  We say that the family holds that person’s spirit in their hands, grieving and loving and saying good-bye in their own way in their own time.  The community, during that year, acknowledges that the grieving process is going on for the family and so random weeping, bursts of anger, illogical behavior, and lots of solitude are expected and dealt with as compassionately as possible.

At the end of the year another ceremony is held. The community again acknowledges the departed, blesses the family, and the grieving period is ended.  regardless of specific ceremonies or procedures, it seems to me that we, as a culture, need to reinstitute this understanding of and support for the long-term grieving process.  That we need to allow for healthy vulnerability in this way and see it, not as weakness or pathology, but as healthy and healing.  That while being independent and self-sufficient are wonderful traits, it is in community and with the support of community that we find wholeness and grieving is part of that wholeness.

Souls are taught the difference between thought forms, creation, and conscious existence.  In a realm where thoughts are energy and therefore manifest as form, that dissolve once the thought has concluded and the thinker has moved on, a distinction has to be learned between temporary thought forms and existing forms which are unaffected by thought.  For example, souls can appear in forms that represent concepts or that aid communication such as when speaking to a newly reintegrating soul.  Beings that have already returned may take on the image of their most recent incarnation which is recognizable to their returning loved one.  This is not their true form and dissolves as soon as the need for recognition and reassurance is met. It is a thought and a feeling that recreates the loving bond between the individuals and changes as easily as the next thought occurs.  It is a temporary form that is not self-sustaining. Creating actual forms that retain matter, which fit into ecosystems, which are adequately adapted to consciousness, is quite a different process.

Those who journey consciously to the Akashics find the distinction between thought forms and conscious existing forms rather startling at times as they must become reacquainted with this form of existence.  Our teachers and guides utilize thought forms to help us understand message and to re-acclimate us to this kind of communication.  We are therefore most aware of the surprising familiarity of beings, items, and places that we experience there as they can be made to appear as recognizable beings and items from this life.  We also quickly become aware of our own changing skills at perception which makes what we experience have a dreamlike quality as images change, expand, fill in, morph, and become from visit to visit. Yet what can be most startling is the realization that the majority of what is being seen and experienced is not thought form, but consciously existing forms.  Architecture, geography, beings are not just there for us, but for all and all who journey there experience them.  The Akashic Library exists for all and while it is immense and therefore personal experiences of it may vary, it exists as a static structure available to all and its form and function do not change over time nor are they influenced by individuals who experience them.  The same can be said for the Temple of Life.

Free will exists for them as well and this is the learning that all souls take on as their first lesson in creation.  Created forms cannot be changed by thought.  Wishes do not truly create buildings and dreams do not change a being’s true nature.  Each being, each creation, has its own soul, its own suchness and lives by its own rules of becoming.  The act of creation, creating a new form, takes specialized skill and training that only some undertake to learn.  Animating that creation is the purview of souls as each of us is experiencing through the act of embodiment.  Each soul learns to differentiate between thought forms and consciously existing forms such as the Akashic Library and to discern the nature of creation.  And this is just a broad sampling of what general soul education entails.

The soul book for each individual records the social worker’s detailed decision making process, the teachers credentials and agreement to act as guide for the soul and information concerning the nature of the soul’s soul group at its inception including social orientation and general perspective. A group’s social orientation might be towards picking an interesting subject and working on it together, having one soul find something interesting and the others follow, or having all soul members seek out new subjects, learn them, and bring them back for further instruction.  General perspectives guide groups towards subject matters, specialties, and methods of interaction.  Some groups are analytical and like exploration and science, but not intimate personal interactions.  Others seek out social challenges which are emotionally charged and yet others work in harmony in order to act creatively and avoid difficult emotions. Social orientations and general perspectives lend internal structure to the soul group, creating community, common language, experience, and purpose.

The third section of most soul books is therefore a combination of historical record, diary, psychological profile, school record, work history, and personal accomplishment list.  It contains a full record of who the soul is, all that they have done and become and all that they strive to be within the Akashics. What is learned through embodied experiences or past lives and is reintegrated into the soul is not reiterated here as it is already recorded in detail through the first and second sections.  What is relevant here is the summary result showing the soul having become more, learned lessons, acquired skills, and accomplished tasks, adventures and relationships.  Living an embodied life as a human being or as any other creature is not the purpose of our existence or even a large part of who we are.  It is one type of experience, one means of being in a multitude of opportunities for learning and becoming.  Depending on the soul the amount of time spent in being embodied can be a very small percentage of its existence while experiences, lessons, and responsibilities in the Akashics can be the majority.  Being embodied in any form is a choice, and a challenge, not a requirement and some souls don’t avail themselves of it often while others use it frequently.

Most souls work with their teachers and within their soul group learning about the Universe through educational experiences in the Akashics.  Souls first learn what it means to be a soul such as the physics of how to exist within the interconnectedness of energy and thought. They must learn appropriate social interactions with each other, their teacher, and other beings, not only how to be appropriate, but what it feels like to hurt and be hurt and what to do to resolve hurts and conflicts.  Free will and choices, opinions and options are a large part of this instruction as being interconnected, telepathic, and empathic, knowing what others think and feel as they experience it, can lead to a desire to control or influence others.  In all situations power has its attractions, being vulnerable has its pitfalls, and regardless of form, all beings are fallible and constantly in the process of learning from their mistakes as much or more as from their successes.  When you are formless and yet all forms are available to you, the first lesson to be learned is not “can I,” but “should I.”  And as the essence of the Akashics is love and all actions taken lead us to love, the most relevant lesson is how to be, act, perceive, and give love.

Souls learn the culture of symbols.  Symbols are not just forms or concepts or a means of communication.  They are beings, entities in their own right with history and free will and abilities of their own.  Symbols can be used to create, to deconstruct, to educate, to facilitate travel and bridge worlds.  They are beings that operate in very different ways from those who choose bipedal or quadrupedal life forms.  They existed prior to humans and do not seek to experience life as embodied beings the way that others do.  They seek experience through fractilization and holography.  Each iteration of the symbol contains the whole of its being no matter how many times it is created or how many exist at any given moment.  And each iteration adds to the whole creating an ever larger, richer, more developed being.  Yet each individual iteration of the symbol is unique and exists within its own context, experiencing its own unique existence.  These beings live in harmony with us, support us, and work with us to create ever evolving harmonies that co-create the universe.

I’ve never been one to flinch from situations that were out of my comfort zone or to decide against doing something because it didn’t fit a social norm or because of what others thought about it.  Which, it’s brought to my attention repeatedly, is not how the majority of people live.  To which I always respond “Why?”.  Why don’t they live that way?  Why not follow your curiosity, your bliss, your desires?  Life is short and alla that.

Now I’m not saying I’m an adrenaline junky or that I’m even truly adventurous.  There are plenty of people who do much more than me, go further, dig deeper, and live amazing lives that are rich with experience and incredibly fulfilling.  Sometimes that makes me feel like I’m slacking, sometimes it encourages me to do the next thing I’m contemplating, and other times it makes me say “Thank you for doing that so I don’t have to.” 

But in my limited urban realm of existence where I forget that people live in their self-imposed boxes seeking out people and experiences that reflect their perspectives and world views, it surprises me to meet these people.  Especially when they are in shock at meeting an entire world that is living outside their box that they have never seen before.   I went to a terrific bellydance performance last night. It was Tribal Fusion and the performers were great and anywhere from seasoned professional performers and teachers, internationally known stars in the bellydance world, and students just beginning their performing career.  The styles were various, which was fun, and there was a mix of just about everything that is out there in the community right now.  However, for the couple sitting next to me, the real show was the crowd.

Bellydance culture brings people from all walks of life.  Musicians, dancers, punk, bohemian, middle-class suburbia and every other variable imaginable, most of whom were there last night.  The couple beside me were there to see a friend of hers who was just starting her performing career and so were new to the culture.  They spent quite a bit of time commenting on the crowd and the culture like they were tourists visiting a different county.  Which in some aspects they were.  They were seeing outside their own cultivated box in a way they had never done before.  And they were a bit amazed by it all.  Bellydancing (Bellydance Superstars being the exception) is not big venue, rock concert fare.  It’s small, intimate, mixing middle-eastern and western cultures with DIY crafting, techno-pop and live Lute music.

I was impressed that they didn’t go into shock and overload before the night was through and that we could actually hold conversations before the show and during intermission.  But through it all I just keep looking at them and seeing the boxes they had built around them from their need to perceive the world a certain way.  From a need to have some kind of control and mastery over their environment.  How much richer and more fulfilling would their lives be if they redefined the box?  Or just cut some more holes in it so they could see through to other possibilities? I guess it’s good they got a taste last night. Now, what new adventure can I get myself mixed up in….

I just finished reading a book, the most recent work from a teacher I have worked with and admire.  She’s a well respected academic who was a pivotal member of those women in the 60′s working in San Francisco reimagining spirituality and reconnecting with women’s embodied sense of the world and our place in it.  She’s got an amazingly insightful mind with tons of space for remembering every fact she comes across and making meaning from them in ways that continue to amaze me.

And I was really looking forward to this new work she had produced as I hadn’t worked with her for a while and it wasn’t the book I expected her to put out.  When I studied with her she was working on a book looking at spirituality as expressed by modernist artists and I helped her with some of that research.  But this book is about relational reality, something I’ve been studying in my off moments from the perspective of psychology and the research that has been going on for the past 40 years showing that the models for the healthy psychology of humans is actually the psychological make-up of men which doesn’t fit women.  So for 40 years women have been seen, as many have experienced, as broken or pathologized because they don’t fit this model.  A new model is emerging and the discussions are fascinating because they are moving from us/them and ‘separate but equal’ to interconnected or ‘relational’ and informing each other.  Neither needs to be wrong and both need each other.  The challenge is to see what that looks like in practice.

Ahem….anyway, like I said, I’ve been delving into that in my spare time.  As it’s something that has interested me for decades and is part of the Masters program I started a few years ago, I was excited to hear what my teacher had to say.  Unfortunately, I was sorely disappointed.  Not with what she had to say, which was eloquent as usual and full of facts and studies and research, but in how it was said.  Because the book, instead of looking at how we are relational, pointing out practical ways that we can become more relational, or seeing how our relational natures have grown and changed, was a wholesale condemnation of technology.  It was full of black and white thinking that was showed technology (cell phones, social media, video games, the internet, apple products) as bad and corrupting society from childhood on up and that only returning to a life without technology will allow us to become relational once again.

Not only this, but the tone of the book was harsh, ugly, didactic and unencouraging.  I kept flipping through pages trying to find something positive, practical, something that the reader to could do or would get them to engage with the material, but found nothing.  Sweeping proposals to change US school systems, remove technology, reinvent the healthcare system, change to Green Politics and become ecologically conscious in all of our actions made the book seem like a political stump speech and I’ve had enough of that this season.   What she proposed was impractical, a Luddite’s dream to return to a golden age that never was.  A cry to stop changing when our society is changing, not necessarily for the better, but changing nonetheless.  And all organisms must change to meet their own needs and fit into their environment.  This is the nature of life.  It’s relational.

Technology is not going away and I don’t believe that it needs to.  It is still in its infancy and we are still learning what that means for all of us as we continue to live and thrive.  It’s not evil any more than axes or curling irons are evil.  They are tools and we use them.  The outcomes can be deemed evil or good in relation to all the other forces in play and our sense of reality, which in itself changes moment to moment.  Black and white thinking, either/or choices, and the thought structures that try to make things into opposites is something that I hope one day will become the exception and not the rule because thinking relationally helps us break down those imposed divisions and work practically with all the options and opportunities in between the extremes.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

Hiding things from other people is something we do every day. We call it wearing mask or just plain old politeness.  Depends on if your perspective is getting what you want from other people or refraining from enlightening people with the truth, I suppose.  It’s part of everyday life, not something nefarious, necessarily.  However, hiding things from yourself is a much more difficult skill to learn and a difficult illusion to maintain.  And over time it causes damage that can be difficult to repair.

Children learn to hide things from people of authority such as parents, siblings, teachers, pastors, extended family, etc. because they need to fit in and be part of the social network around them.  We are social beings and need to be connected in order to be healthy.  However hiding these things can also be a matter of survival such as when one or both parents are addicted to substances which cause them to be abusive, when one or the other parent or relative is violent in some fashion, or when sexual orientation would make a living situation unbearable.

But this type of hiding is hiding from others, not hiding from the self.  Inside we know who we are and at some point that person gets leave to come out of hiding in some fashion and experience life.  That’s part of the joy of growing up which counter balances the difficulties of holding a job or dealing with other adults or situations which we find trying.  (Debt, taxes, in-laws, annual check-ups….)  Hiding from ourselves is a much more difficult thing because in some manner we always know who we truly are.  Even if it is just a subconscious inkling.  And why would we hide ourselves?  Why should we?

Well, unless we are in a physically dangerous situation, we shouldn’t.  But many times we make choices.  We choose someone or something over ourselves and so we remove the parts of ourselves that don’t fit with that someone or something so we can get what we think we want.  Relationships are about compromise, that’s just part of the deal and that’s healthy, but hiding yourself from yourself, that’s not compromise, that’s a lie that can be soul damaging.  And what causes this situation to manifest most often is fear.  Fear of loss, fear of the unknown, fear of ‘what if this is all there is’, fear that it will get worse not better.  Fear, fear, and more fear.  What if I don’t like who I truly am?  What if people don’t like me?  What if things change?  Change can be the most greatly feared thing of all.  As much as we are geared to want innovation, we don’t see personal change or change in situations as innovation.  We often react to them as if it is an invading army coming to destroy our ancestral lands and all our holding.  Don’t take me away from me because I’m all I have!

Well, most people who are hiding from themselves know that this is the case.  And they make a choice each moment of each day: stay as I am right now and keep things status quo or lift the veil and see who I really am and see what happens.  What are you hiding and are you hiding from it or hiding it from others?  What would happen if you quit hiding and put all that energy into support it?  Supporting yourself?  Who would you be if your greatest supporter ended up being you?

Life on earth teaches us that humans are the preeminent species.  Although there are carnivores that can take us down and the weather and other natural disasters have the ability to wipe us out in swathes, we manage through our analytical thinking and that opposable thumb to make our way and to have become the overwhelmingly dominant feature of the earth next to water, which doesn’t respond to nuclear deterrents.

And religions of the book reinforce this through the myth of the Garden of Eden and Adam/Eve.  That creation story as well as others tell us that we are the inheritor of God’s power and meant to be the ruler and caretaker of this place.  That there are a great man other spiritualities and religions who don’t see it that way doesn’t affect our behaviors much at this point.  Nor the majority view-point.

But this perspective is unique to this planet and not the case in the Akashics.  While bipeds of all kinds do dwell there and we are able to interact there with a bipedal perspective, the majority of living beings there are not human looking, nor do they think as humans or interact as humans.  And in reality, neither do we.  Being human is a role we choose to play for a short amount of time and to do so we are required to take on certain traits, work with certain restrictions and constraints, and ignore a great deal of our true nature.  We are actually beings of light who exist within the interconnected realm of the Akashics.  It is both form and energy field and so exists in both structures helping the Universe retain its harmony and functions while providing us a home where we can live and thrive.

There are beings which exist to help create life and to help it thrive.  There are beings which provide means of travel and communication between what we would consider greatly distant places.  There are beings which help union and communication between various dimensions of space-time.  There are beings which help form and support the Akashics and beings which help support the beingness of all the structures and beings in it from the planetary to the smallest particle.  There are beings which help create new souls, beings which help provide the means for things to change and grow and become.  There are those who support the endings of things and those who dream of what is to become so that it can become a reality.  There are specialists in all varieties of being that helps the whole maintain itself.  And while some of these beings interact with humans and can appear in human form, the majority of them do not.  They neither look like nor act like humans nor should they.  And they are as beautiful and loving and kind and strong as any of us, if not more so.

I have met many such beings in my travels within the Akashics and so I find it noteworthy and humorous when I read descriptions of the Akashics that are solely from the perspective of humans.  Such as the Akashics being one large building  filled with grand monuments of human forms in each room.  The Akashics is much more than just a building and I’ve yet to find any room within it that has statuary of this description, although that’s not to say it isn’t there.  I’ve barely scratched the surface of all that exists there.  I have found conservatories full of the most amazing flowers, rooms full of floor to ceiling windows and swimming pools connected to the outer water ways where swimming beings can come indoors and swim with us and vice versa.  I work in the Library, but also in the buildings where individual offices, meeting rooms, and work rooms exist.  But I also travel in the garden where teachers come to work with students.  I have flown over valleys where the seeds of existence are planted.  I have walked the primordial forest and sat on the mountain which houses the temples of those who fly.

It’s not just about bipeds and bipeds are no more and no less privileged or conscious than any other being.  To work with the Akashics is to open yourself up to more than is dreamed of in the philosophy of humans.  Which I believe is how it should be.

Once upon a time I was a college student working to get my undergraduate degree.  And during this mythical, magical time, I took a trip to Europe with my fellow students and one night, after 10 days of traveling, we ended up in a beer house in Munich.  And of course, hilarity, tall tales, and drunkenness ensued.  As well as theft since the school’s tradition was that anyone meeting back at that beer hall had to steal at least one beer stein…I doubled down…ahem…but that’s another story for another time…or not.

Anyway, during story telling and drinking I vaguely remember that I was saying things about stuff I needed to get to or wanted to do at some point.  And one of my friends, sometime later in the evening shoved me…I mean got my attention…and handed me one of the beer coasters and said “Ok, now you have no excuse. “  I looked at the coaster, which was a circle, and around the edge he had written “tuit” over and over and over.  He had literally given me ‘a round tuit’ so he was right.  I had to start doing these things now because I had gotten around to it.

Saying ‘some day’ or ‘I don’t know how I’m going to’ or ‘things just seem to get in the way’ can become a habit, can come to define us, can develop into the story we tell about our lives, or be the way we hide from the realities we don’t want to face.  We know exactly what we need to do, where we want to go, and what is in front of us, and we language that by telling others how we never actually get that done.  Well, I know it may sound trite, but instead of expending the energy talking about it, get up the courage to create your round tuit.  Decide to deal with the situation that is preventing you from getting where you want to be, even if that situation is your fear of success.  Take one step towards your goal.  Think outside the box.  Look at the structure you have made for yourself around the issue and think, is that really permanent or is something I made of paper and can take down myself?  What if all those things that are preventing me from getting where I want to be are within my own control?  What if I changed just one of them?  What if I changed my assumptions about these things being the only way things work?  What if I look for other options?

Here’s your round tuit.  Now go get it done.

A good storyteller is not just gifted in telling a tale, they cultivate a voice that people want to hear, a narrative that draws people in, and maintain a perspective that only peeks out at the audience from behind the curtains instead of blaring at them through a megaphone.  But it’s there all the same.  Because stories are only as good as the teller and for the tale to come alive the teller has to be invested in it. But like a good book, a story told has three parts, the author, the work itself, and it’s audience.  To come alive it must have all three so storytelling is as much about being heard, as it is about the storyteller.

Each person is a storyteller weaving meaning and message from the raw stuff of life.  We tell ourselves narratives about our own inner life, we tell others stories about ourselves, and we frame the Universe, our experiences and choices, through the perception of our world that we create through story.  Which can be rich and wonderful, dramatic and terrifying, cold and monochrome, full of opportunity, steeped in drudgery, or surrounded by treachery.  It’s all in the telling.  So while it may seem snooty, it’s really true that to a great extent we can change our lives by reframing our narrative.

Healing comes from releasing the stories that our families wove for us, if they no longer fit or contain facts that no longer prove true.  Wonder and magic can come from telling the stories we’ve kept inside for far too long.  Or speaking the unabridged version of stories for the first time.  And the awakening that comes from knowing that the stories you’ve been told forever are just that, stories, can free you from a lifetime of pain and regret.  It can also help at family gatherings and the holidays when you realize that your relatives have old stories stuck in their heads and that is their burden to carry, not your reality.  Choose not to let those stories inform your actions or your behaviors and you might seem then start to reframe their narrative, possibly for the better.

Try this exercise for yourself and see what stories you recognize.  Write your life story in one page (single spaced with no margins if you feel the need).  No bullet point over view, no listing of dry facts, really write your story.  What does that story become when you are limited as to length?  What patterns emerge?  Give your story to someone who doesn’t know you well, but whom you trust and see what they see in it.  I’ve done this myself so I can tell you, the story I wrote, which carried narratives I’ve had in my head for years, was exactly not what the reader found in it.  The stories they found, the perspectives they gave me were mind blowing and really helped me see things in a new and different way.

But the sacred is not only an internal thing between your soul and an unseen deity.  It is also your body and the world around you.  Prayer is not just thoughts in your head or words whispered in quiet corners.  It is the actions of your hands, the choices of your heart, and the places you walk every day, all created by Spirit and of Spirit. Your body is not a car for your brain to ride around in.  And it’s not some animal you have to tame that gets out of control.  Your Spirit, brain, emotions, and body can be seen as separate entities, but really they are all you and each is an equal part.  Your body and how it functions isn’t any less than your mind. What it does is just as prayerful as prayers said in your head. Spirit is not only somewhere in some imagined out there and inside you hidden from yourself, but in everything around you. Yep, everything.  I’m not saying you need to live trap spiders in your bathroom or feed the ants in your kitchen, but I am saying that everything partakes of the numinous in every moment of every day.  So cleaning your kitchen is an act of communion with the all and gardening really does get us closer to a state of grace and champagne really can ‘life your spirits’ and talking to your electronic devices makes more sense than you ever dreamed.

And not everyone has forgotten that.  Unlike the West, some cultures retain a sense of the physical union with Spirit.  Most indigenous cultures see no separation between what is divine and what is physical and have created a way of living their lives which incorporates and celebrates this. In North America the First Peoples or Native American, Inuit and Métis strive to revive their cultural practices and to reconnect with the land. Public Pow Wows are a good way to experience this first hand.  Pow Wows were developed by the First Peoples in modern times as a reaction to relocation and allow Natives of any tribe to gather in one place and experience community.  One way in which this is done is through dance.  Each element of the dance is a prayer in all its components, emotional, spiritual, and physical.  Every item of regalia a dancer wears is symbolic and hand crafted with prayerful intention and consecration. Wearing it is an act of union with the all and a statement of “I Am”.  The dancer takes responsibility for living up to the role of a dancer and keeping the regalia in a sacred manner.  Other members prepare the dance arena, consecrating it to sacred space for the entirety of the pow wow.  No one may enter or leave it without recognizing it as such and comporting themselves in a prayerful manner.  The drummers hold the drum as sacred, as the voices of their ancestors and of their Mother the Earth.  The drummers and the dancers act interconnectedly for without each other they are incomplete.  The drummers sing songs, brought to them by Spirit and practiced for months to achieve perfection.  Dancers enter the arena and become the prayers they hold in their hearts, dance to the drums’ voice, each movement honoring the seven generations past, the seven generations to come, and all living things in their connection to the all.  We have come from Spirit, we are of Spirit, and to Spirit we shall return.  I Am.

Grieving is a natural and healthy process of an embodied life.  Loss, change, death are all things we become embodied to experience in undiluted form as such things are rare and diffuse within the Akashics.  When everything is recorded and retained in Spirit, when everything is eternal and fully integrated and interconnected, strong emotions, lack, loss, and death are foreign concepts.  Part of being embodied is learning what these are first hand, how to deal with them when they occur, and becoming the wisdom that we gain form that experience. In current First World countries grieving has become something to avoid. Public grieving, ceremonies and displays are to be avoided unless they have some political value or serve some course or goal.  Celebration of life, honoring death, supporting each other through loss, creating new connection with the departed, celebrating change, these things have fallen away with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and modern medicine which sees death as a condition to be remedied or avoided and the body as a mechanism to be mended or replaced. This has made the transitioning process more attenuated for some souls and heightened the instances when souls linger to support and comfort those left behind.

Memorials are created through individuals or groups of citizens to create a means for publicly remembering individuals who have died.  Memorials are a means by which we publicly grieve over death and loss, mourn as a community, and continue the living connection between those who remain and those who have gone before us. Public cemeteries are set aside as sacred space for the remains of our ancestors and our beloveds creating a place where we can honor each individual for their suchness but also consider the larger issues symbolized in geography that enfolds the dead.  Public cemeteries, like forests or plains or wetlands, are self-contained geographical locations that speak to the eternal while acknowledging the ever-changing nature of all things.  Time lies heavy there with names and dates inscribed in stone juxtaposed with the transient beauty of flowers and grass.

Public memorials provide a means for the community, in its broadest definition, to connect with the embodied experience of their fellow citizens who are related to the deceased, to the fallen.  In an age where community is defined not just by physical location, but by technology choices, social networks, interest groups, economic states, career, nationality, education, language and culture, memorials help unite us, remind us of our similarities and our frailties and bring us together in shared purpose.

Memorials contain meaning without political message.  They are expressions of emotions, communication with loved ones, signs of respect and continuations of relationships declared in public and witnessed by community.  Most memorials, whether planned or spontaneous, illicit offerings from the participants.  Like with altars we place symbols of our selves, of our feelings, of our intent and message at the memorial thereby forming sacred space to honor and support our ongoing conversation with the deceased.  We care, we empathize, and we reach out in order to complete a circuit which has been abruptly broken.  Memorials are about individuals and their distinct feelings.

The second section of most soul books is a detailed account of each instance when an embodied life has ended and the soul reintegrates and returns to the Akashics.  Past life records do not include this information as it is not a part of the embodied experience.  People who help clients retrieve and relive past lives have at times been able to access this information and follow a soul through the reintegration process and back to the Akashics such as Michael Newton. But most follow the path of the past life to its conclusion at death and the soul’s release from physical form, finding the details of existence but leaving the reasons why and lessons learned a mystery.

The exit from the body and reintegration of spirit merits its own section as it is a process with great wisdom and accomplishment as the outcome. It is the piece of a lifetime most affected by free will. While births can be traumatic, ecstatic, and dramatic for all involved, they are highly scripted and managed events.  The soul has spent great care and effort to choose a life, work with teachers, guides, and peers to craft the lessons, challenges, and rewards within the life, made connections, contracts, and schedules with other souls, their own soul group, other soul groups, and charted out all the possibilities to be explored.  While free will plays a part even at the start of our lives, there are relatively few variables to contend with. Ending a life comes as the culmination of millions and millions of decisions and interactions with countless people, objects, and entities which influence us, even in a very short lifetime.  The exit plan may have been scripted or a surprise based on choices made by ourselves or others. What we experience at the end is unique to the individual and can impress on us an epitaph we carry as the meaning for that lifetime.  How we release from the life, how we take those experiences, who we have become and how we integrate that back into a full understanding of who we truly are is its own journey with its own beauty and majesty.

Souls are eternal and as much as love and betrayal can hurt and bullying can be deadly, they usually don’t leave scars on the soul.  We grow and become because of our experiences, both what we consider ‘bad’ and ‘good’, and we can learn much more at a faster rate from the ‘bad’, unfortunately.  Sand in an oyster is so irritating it makes a pearl to contain it.  Sometimes life is like that.

However, souls aren’t impervious to the effects of events in our lives.  If we aren’t fully experiencing our lives then we aren’t learning and growing and becoming.  But as with all activity, there is risk of harm.  You can get hurt just walking down the street or taking a shower.  In fact, the highest number of home injuries now occur in the bathroom, beating out the kitchen by a small margin.  So nowhere is safe and living an embodied life comes not only some assembly required, but without a safety net.

Souls can be damaged by prolonged violence or horrific acts such as torture or repeated rape.  Violent death occurs to every soul at some point if they choose to experience an embodied life and usually happens many times in a variety of manners, however this does not usually leave permanent damage on the soul, only lessons to work through either after the life has ended or through future lives.  Soul damage occurs through the inability for souls to leave a life that has become untenable or unsustainable such as life for a great majority of women in the Congo, survivors of the genocide in Darfur, victims of prolonged domestic violence or souls tortured to death after prolonged internment.

Souls traumatized in this manner must go through extensive healing in order to continue with their lives away from embodiment, at home in the Akashics.  Without healing they are unable to function and their pain and grief and anger radiate out from them like radioactivity.  Groups of healers bring them to a safe place where they can process what has happened in order to receive and live with the love that surrounds them.  Soul damage is most difficult to heal in that it prevents the soul from realizing that it is loved and it proceeds from and is made from love.

Soul damage is not a requirement of life, is not an experience that we seek out and is completely preventable.  The horrors that human beings inflict on each other are voluntary.  Let each of us in our own lives seek to help create a world where they do not exist and reach out a hand to help those who are experiencing them right now.

I am currently working on my second Akashic class for DailyOm.  It takes a much more in-depth look at soul books section by section and allows students to explore them.  At the moment I’m writing about the second section which I call “Re-integration”.  This is the record of what happens to a soul from the time of death to the time that it is fully reincorporated into the Akashics and into its totality.

Souls are too large to fit into a human body fully and there is no need for quite a bit of who we are to be here. In fact, having all of us in a body would prevent us from having the experiences we want so we choose what aspects of ourselves are coming here when we incarnate.  Past life records give us the information about the life we are reviewing up to the time of death, but no summary of why things happened, lessons learned, or how we integrated that information into ourselves.  The re-integration records do.

Each time we complete a life we go through a life review process.  Our teacher, our peers, and sometimes a council of elders help us figure out what happened, what it means, what we did great, what we could do better, and help us put it into context within ourselves and within the integrated oneness that is the Universe and the Akashics.  And then we go on with our lives because being in a body is just one step in a much larger process of learning and becoming.

I know that past life investigation is fascinating and it does truly give us insights into who we have been and therefore who we are.  But it can also leave us hanging or feeling incomplete.  Looking further into what we got out of that life can give us so much more.  Because our past lives don’t tell the whole story of who we are.

There is so much more to each of us than just our past.  I try to help my clients and my students focus on this because looking into the past is ingrained into our psyche both by psychology that wants to find the root cause of everything in our formative years and by spirituality which wants to find the root cause of everything in our past lives.  The past is great in that it informs our present.  It’s the base material that we build on either as a role model or a warning on what to do next.

But it’s just the beginning.  There is so much more to us than where we’ve been.  In working with students and their soul books I point out various other portions to explore beyond Past Lives.  There are all the records of how we transitioned from being embodied to being a fully participating member of our soul group again. This includes records of all the lessons we learned during each life.  We don’t have to guess what it all means, we worked it out once we got home and had it all written down.  There are records of what we do and learn when we are not living an embodied life.  Being in a body is a small portion of what we do and who we are.  Then there are the records of who we truly are as a soul, all the unique identifiers of our life, like a diary of our innermost being. There are the notes we left behind of what we intended to do and be while we are in this body.  And the intricate relationship map that shows all the connections and the opportunities and the possibilities for this time around.  And there is so very much more to be explored.

Being focused on the here and now is a very good thing because it allows you to fully participate in all the bounty that is available to you while keeping you from getting into car wrecks.  Paying attention to the past helps you to learn from it and not repeat the bad bits.  Putting some effort into learning who you really are apart from all of this can help you get the most out of your time here.  The past is just the beginning…

You know the phrase “Cut off your nose to spite your face”?  Basically it means reacting in a way that hurts you way more than it does the person you are aiming at and doing yourself harm in order to make a point.   This happens a lot in the heat of the moment when we don’t stop to think about it and we decide to ‘take a stand’ or ‘stand on principle’ to show someone something.  Most of the time it backfires as we end up the loser both with them and with ourselves.  Sometimes its easy to walk away from such situations, sometimes it’s not and sometimes it takes having to go back, apologize, and try things again in order to make it right.

Over the past few months I have seen some of this and just shake my head.  People have jobs that are paying the bills.  Some are in positions that are careers for them, others are in jobs that are actually making them better money than they have ever had before.  But all are making progress in their lives and beginning to reach personal goals.  Then the problems start.  Management or supervisors do something they don’t like.  Not to be too flippant, I was a corporate manager myself, but management will always do something or many somethings that employees don’t like.  It could be personality conflicts, management style issues, idiocy, edicts from upper management, or many other things.  And it could be a mixture of these ingredients which makes it even more fun.  But in any case, management will do something, sometimes daily, that makes employees have a more difficult time doing their job, enjoying their job, or being effective at their job.  So what to do?

There are three very basic, general responses to this situation:

A.  Stick it out, try to make things better or ignore it and just keep working.
B.  Stick it out while trying to find another job.
C.  Quit.

In this economy a lot of people will be choosing A & B.  Money trumps everything else when you have to put food on the table and you don’t have other options readily available.  And right now options aren’t readily available for a great many people.

However C is what I keep hearing about lately.  People choosing C, being loud and proud about why and then scrambling to figure life out.  Now, I can’t say this is not the best choice for a person depending on the situation since I myself have said “Take this job and shove it” and walked away.  I have used option C in a couple of instances and option B in another.  I have to say that option B feels much more smugly satisfying and financially sound, but option C was liberating as well and I don’t regret it.  The thing is, I ate canned beans for a while, bounced a couple of checks (ouch) and actually bought lottery tickets to see if I could make it to the end of the month.  The economy was fine then, I got a new job rather quickly and was on my feet within weeks.  Did my stance change anything at those organizations?  Not really.  It made a couple of ripples in a couple of people’s lives and was quickly forgotten.  Could I have done different things that would have made more lasting impacts and possibly changed things, yes.  I figured that out after the fact.  Lessons learned.  Do they make great stories at parties and gripe sessions at the pub? Yep. 

But now is just a tad different from then.  Jobs are hard come by, it’s an employer’s market, and prices are due to get even higher for so many things due to the drought this summer.  So why cut off your nose to spite your face right now?  I think it’s a clash between identity and reality.  Defining yourself through boundaries and morals and ethics and standards is great.  Standing up for your principles and for right action is appropriate.  Saying “I’m outta here because you suck!” feels wonderful and does make a splash.  And usually we get approbation and regard from our peers and friends for doing it.  But that doesn’t last.  So what have you become, what good have you created, what benefit to the universe, yourself and everyone else has come about by your taking a stand?  Time will tell but probably none.  So when you’re in a situation that you ‘just can’t take’ any more, think about what you’ll do when you put it down and what you can do to make it better right now other than cut off your nose.  Because you can take almost anything when you have to.  And the best revenge is success gained the right way through right action.

Like good boundaries, good expectations make good neighbors.  Because having an accurate expectation of what is going to happen in a given situation can help you sail through with aplomb, help you achieve something you want or can save a life.  Having inaccurate expectations sets you and pretty much everyone else up for failure.  Having no expectations can be helpful, depending on the situation, because it puts you in a space where you experience everything and can react in the moment.

Why does it matter?  Well, knowing that the ambulance and the police are going to arrive within a certain time frame can help you make decisions in the moment that can save your life.  But that’s not really what I’m trying to get at.  Where I see issues is really expectations connected to relationships.  Or expectations used to form or consolidate relationships.  For example, working with a car dealership.  Salespeople there know about relationships, reciprocity for example, and so try to form a relationship with you so they can have an edge in sales and price negotiation.  We won’t haggle much with a friend where we very well might be ruthless with a sales person.  So they set expectations, reciprocity, as soon as they can by offering you a ‘deal’, a rebate, a lower price, an extra warranty, what have you, so that you feel obligated to reciprocate by buying the car.

No one likes that process, the mildly coercive ‘slimy’ misuse of relationship mechanics.  That’s why care salespeople have such bad reputations.  But what about in our own lives?  What about our use of expectations?  Don’t we expect that when we do something for someone else they owe us?  At least that they should be friendlier towards us?  I mean, we did something that wasn’t for ourselves and that’s like money, if we give it out we deserve something in return, right?

No, not really.  In the realm of personal relationships, actions don’t necessarily change feelings or create debt.  And who would want a relationship which is built on the mathematics of owing?  I can’t imagine that going anywhere positive.  But most people struggle with this every day.  It’s not that they mean to, but they set out to do things with the intention of getting something back, either an improved relationship, the forming of a relationship, an I.O.U. for use later, or some kind of advantage.  Not in every action, not in ever relationship, but we have so many interactions throughout the day, there’s at least one interaction a day that falls into this category.  And if we go in with expectations of reward, we’re due for some disappointment, most often when we don’t inform the other party of our expectations.  And what if they don’t agree?  What if their motivations are different from ours?  What if something changes during or after the action?  Human beings are change machines and life is a very fluid thing….

Well, just because someone needs you in one moment doesn’t mean they will like you the next.  And just because you have some relevance to their life in this now doesn’t mean you will in their future.  And the one constant in the Universe is that nothing is certain.  So set your expectations accordingly.  Don’t do things because you think you’ll get something for it or if you do, make sure that expectation is clear before you start.  If you are going to have that expectation and you don’t feel comfortable voicing it to the other party, think again about doing what you’re thinking of doing.  It’s true, dance like people aren’t watching.  You’ll enjoy it a whole lot more and when people join in, you won’t have to check the balance sheet to see if you’re in debt to them.

As individuals we often think that our actions are small and ineffectual when measured against others who have power, against things that seem larger than us, stronger than us, or extremely incomprehensible.  Who are we, such insignificant people, to make any impact on anything?  Doesn’t it make sense that our lives are brief, our impact negligible, just as the tides wash away our footprints and weeds take over what land we attempt to own?  Aren’t we shown through every vagary of the weather, tornado, tsunami, draught, flood, hurricane, that we are nothing and easily swept aside? But each of us is part of the numinous, both unique from and yet interconnected and central to All that Is. Each action we take, each thought we harbor, each emotion we feel, each feeling we express, radiates from us like the tones of a chime.  They can be harmonious or discordant, but they ring out and everything they touch is affected!  And like grains of sand in a container each one added to the others, over time, fills the jar.  The deserts of Egypt used to be ocean!  Who you are is powerful and what you do is valuable and aids us all.  The wonder of it all is that we have the ability to choose what actions we take, the ability to control our thoughts, to some extent, and the ability to change our emotions,  which are powers very few other beings possess. Each of us has not only the ability but the opportunity to influence our surroundings everyday through who we are and what we do.  And the most readily available place to do so is your home.  It is the place you have consecrated to living your life.  And as all things are part of the Universe and interact with it, so your home has accepted you and lives with you in partnership.

Your home is a reflection of who you are in a great many ways.  Either formally or informally it has been consecrated to act in your best interest or your stated needs. It reflects the you of the moment by reacting to what you do in it and without.  It may glow with love even though it is shabby from the need for a bit of attention. It may be a showplace for all you have accomplished.  It may be the cramped space that keeps you safe and motivated to make it to the next step of your journey.  It may be comfortable and durable to survive the family of children and grandchildren whose laughter can be heard in every room.  It can be the fortress of solitude where you can retreat from a chaotic world.  It can be any and many of these things within a matter of days depending on your choices and the rhythm of your life. Whatever you bring to it, it reflects back to you.  Everything in your outer life reflects your inner becoming and if it doesn’t, you are uncomfortable and seek to change it or move to somewhere that does.  So who are you today?  And who do you want to be?

In working with my clients and with students I get asked questions about having a calling, about service or healing work, about individual paths and what people are ‘meant’ to do.  In orthodox religions there are structures in place with defined roles and boundaries that help people make choices about their spirituality, what activities or choices they want to make about participation in their religion, and what paths are open to them.  This is good in that it helps people find clarity and be able to navigate through these issues and provides them with language and social structures so they can talk about them or talk through them and figure things out as they go along.  On the negative it can be too restrictive and destructive like preventing women from being priests or the current issues between the Vatican and American Nuns.

However, for those who don’t belong to an orthodox religion these issues, these questions become more confusing and more weighty.  It can feel very isolating to have questions that no one knows how to answer or where there is no community which would even understand the question.  It can be confusing to have multiple sources using the same language to mean different and even contradictory things or have only orthodox systems to use as a structure for something that is in no way orthodox.  In working through these questions with clients and students, here is how I try to help clarify situations and give them a structure for understanding the different paths they might choose or be drawn to.

White Lighter:  This is someone with an aptitude or a gift that chooses to utilize that gift for their own spiritual benefit and those of others, others being all living things, animate and inanimate, not just humans.

Some misconceptions about this:  Everyone is a White Lighter.  Nope.  Some people are here to work through their own issues and play roles for others to work through theirs.  White Lighters add ‘service’ as part of their life and their path on top of that.  All White Lighters are healers. Nope.  Healers get the most press because they work publicly with other people, many are extroverts, and they tend to publish books, articles, and hold seminars.  A great proportion of service work isn’t public, has nothing to do with healing in the context of hands-on-healing with clients, and a lot of it is not labeled as service work at all.  Stealth can be an ally in a world of malls and commodities.

Being a White Lighter might mean you are an artist who puts spiritual energy into your art.  Or that you are a master gardener who works with local ecology trying to repair the land.  Or you are a geologist working with deep earth structures.  Or you travel to learn about different cultures and become a story-teller that learns the wisdom of the elders and passes it on.  There are as many ways to be a White Lighter as there are people.  There are just a great many of them here right now because we are very much in need on all fronts.

Having a Yearning:  Feeling that you have a path, that you need to find it, start doing it, are missing something is becoming more and more common.  Is this a calling, not necessarily.  Does it mean you need to spend 2 years in India with a guru in meditation?  Maybe.  Each path varies.  Usually not, though. Yearning means you are ready to start changing your life. You are ready to stop doing what you’ve always done and start doing what it is you really want and what you really need, which in the end, regardless of the specifics, is pretty much about being authentic.  So the yearning is to acknowledge your authenticity, whatever that looks like, and then start doing things that brings your life into harmony with your authentic self.  Easier said than done, I know, can be bewildering many times, and sounds like a straight line from point A to point Z.  No such thing.  Being authentic is a life long enterprise so the only goal really is to get started trying.  Don’t worry if what you try first doesn’t work for you.  Look at it as a way to strengthen your boundaries around knowing your authentic self.  If everything is yes, then how authentic are you being?  Pull out that skill you learned when you were 2, say “no” when you need to say “no” and don’t despair.  You will find what it is that makes you happy, that fulfills you, and gets you up in the morning.  And don’t worry if that changes.  You change so everything else will as well.  It’s what we do about that, feeling guilt, feeling stuck, staying silent, that causes the damage, not the change.

Having a calling:  ‘Many are called, few are chosen.”  Yup.  There are a lot of reasons for that and many people get that twisted around with power and control and heroics and sacrifice.  Which all really just people working through their stuff.  Unfortunately it can have drastic consequences to the individual and to everyone around them when it gets to this point.

Some misconceptions about this: Everyone with a calling needs to be either ascetic or clergy. Nope.  If you want to live in nothing but a loin cloth out in the desert somewhere existing on bugs and the dew drops on cactus, be my guest, but I don’t recommend it for the majority of us or the weak of heart.  Nor do you need to live in a cave on a mountainside, unless you really, really want to.  And you don’t need to take a vow of silence, although it can be an amazing meditation and eye opener about relationships, perspectives, and expectations.  Nor do you need to minister to your fellow human beings.  There’s a reason while we don’t like being ‘preached’ at and as most of us have learned, unsolicited advice can be so very, very annoying.

So what is a calling then?  It’s you and the Universe agreeing that you want to learn more, in whatever field or spirituality that you are working with, prefer, feel called to, about how the world works and how you work in it.  It usually starts with “Healer, heal thyself” or as the ancient saying goes “Know thyself”.  The most pertinent spiritual practice you will ever undertake is to figure out who you are.  Why do you feel, think and act the way you do?  What is working, what isn’t?  How do you fix what isn’t working?   From there it moves to learning more about the world, which you can now intake because you’ve cleared the way, cleared your eyes and your heart to really see what is there without all of your preconceived notions and unhealed wounds in the way.  Then you start applying what you learn to yourself and your life.  All of which happens within the context of you being around other people and so affects not only your personal situation, but everyone else, usually in a positive way.

Like losing weight and becoming healthy and fit, where you slowly reveal your body, shape it into new shapes and experience new ways of moving and being, so the process of answering the call can allow you to release the old and no longer necessary, heal the unhealed, and develop a new you.  This may include preaching, teaching, service work, travel, and healing others.  It may not.  Just because you are called doesn’t mean you will become a guru.

And just because you are called doesn’t mean you have to answer.  Sometimes the right thing to do when you are called is let the Voice Mail get it.  You can check on that message later when you’re ready.

When an activity is new or new to you it can be exciting an awkward and joyous and full of missteps and stepping back to take another run at it.  Forming a new government works pretty much the same way.  Take out the old government, not just the people but the roles that they played, decide on an entirely new form of government, then, while you’re defining roles and transitioning power, try to figure out how the governed works with all of this, get messaging out there, change an ancient and ingrained culture while you’re at it and please do it on a dime while everyone is watching.

Oh, and remember that there are a lot of governments, groups, ethnic groups, families, and religions that have a vested interest in what you do, what you don’t do, how you do it, and will take actions depending on this.  Don’t let that stop you, because lord knows it won’t stop them no matter what you do.  And meanwhile, the governed may or may not be involved in one or many or none of those interests and may be working for or against you at any point along the way.

Whew!  Ok, that’s a lot to deal with, and add into that Democracy which actively promotes people having a voice in the political process.  We know from experience that it’s hard to handle that.  It’s just a lot of a lot and it’s going on in real-time in the Middle East and in Northern Africa.  And just like all other democracies, each one is unique, develops from a mixture of organic popular interests and the politics of the powerful and that growth and change never stops happening.  To my knowledge no current full-fledged Democracy looks exactly like any other and while most of the time we have a semblance of playing nicely with each other, all you have to do is look at the European Union to see how difficult that is even for those who have done it for a while.

So Islāmic countries are trying to form Democratic countries.  Yay!  Will they look exactly like the US or Canada or Europe?  Nope.  Will they automatically become Christian?  Nope.  Will they have exactly the same values as other Democracies?  Nope.  But then again, none of us do so let’s not set the bar too high.  And meanwhile, our freedom of speech allows people in the US to voice opinions about Mohammed and Islam.  And their newly formed right to speak publicly means they have the right to say they really, really, really don’t like that.  And some groups are using the uproar to practice terrorism.  And some groups are apologizing for their actions and showing that they don’t blame all US citizens for the few who are exercising free speech to say something they don’t like.

And while all that is going on I applaud our government officials who take the high road, memorialize and honor the dead, honor those who are in harm’s way in the service of their country and support our efforts to resolve the situation and get us through this difficult time.  And I cringe at those government officials that who publicly utilize this time of morning to divide to make vituperative political statements and try to score media points for an election.  To them I say, Congratulations on exercising your right to free speech.  Now GROW UP!

Consecration is not a single act, although it is most often associated with the pomp and ceremony of initially opening a space.  Consecration is an ongoing process, an act repeated and reiterated through time building layers of dedication and actions like the rings of a tree, which grows in stature and majesty year on year.  Each act, each day in which we participate in connecting with sacred space as represented in a specific building, altar or room adds to the consecration of the space and deepens our connection to the Universe and its mystery.  This can be felt distinctly in churches that have stood for hundreds of years, in holy or pilgrimage sites, and in geographic areas where indigenous people have interacted with the Great Mystery for centuries.

As individuals we often think that our actions are small and ineffectual when measured against others who have power, against things that seem larger than us, stronger than us, or extremely incomprehensible.  Who are we, such insignificant people, to make any impact on anything?  Doesn’t it make sense that our lives are brief, our impact negligible, just as the tides wash away our footprints and weeds take over what land we attempt to own?  Aren’t we shown through every vagary of the weather, tornado, tsunami, draught, flood, hurricane, that we are nothing and easily swept aside? But each of us is part of the numinous, both unique from and yet interconnected and central to All that Is. Each action we take, each thought we harbor, each emotion we feel, each feeling we express, radiates from us like the tones of a chime.  They can be harmonious or discordant, but they ring out and everything they touch is affected!  And like grains of sand in a container each one added to the others, over time, fills the jar.  The deserts of Egypt used to be ocean!  Who you are is powerful and what you do is valuable and aids us all.  The wonder of it all is that we have the ability to choose what actions we take, the ability to control our thoughts, to some extent, and the ability to change our emotions,  which are powers very few other beings possess. Each of us has not only the ability but the opportunity to influence our surroundings everyday through who we are and what we do.  And the most readily available place to do so is your home.  It is the place you have consecrated to living your life.  And as all things are part of the Universe and interact with it, so your home has accepted you and lives with you in partnership.

“Identities and memories are not things we think about, but things we think with.” – John R. Gilles

I’ve been thinking a lot about memorials and monuments and public memory and political power through voice because of the new class I’m writing for DailyOm.com on Sacred Space.  There’s a lot to think about when you see monuments and memorials as sacred space in the same way that altars or religious sites are.  And they are, they are just a different kind of sacred.  That’s what I’ll be teaching on.

One thing for me that is quite striking is the difference between monuments which, by their nature of being large, made from art and architecture, and on public land are by their very nature political and statements made by the rich and those powerful enough to enlist the rich, and memorials which are the public statement of individuals feelings and experiences.  Monuments make statements meant to control public understanding of values and historical events, memorials celebrate the individual and their unique experience.

I believe this conflict is one large part of the political upheaval that occurred during the construction of the Viet Nam memorial.  The class between those that needed a political statement or thought that, because this was a monument, there would automatically be a political statement about the war, and the designers and supporters who wanted no statement and wanted to honor those who were fallen, those who were lost, and those who were left behind.  In the end I believe the power of this moment is demonstrably because it is a memorial.  It is a place where individuals go to remember their loved ones, reconnect with the past, with their community and family, where they can work on healing, and create a more positive future.

I also believe that this struggle continues in New York at Ground Zero.  The struggle between what people actually need, which is a memorial to connect, to grieve, and to build a new future, and the needs of the government, the rich, and the powerful, to make a statement, decide history, and control message through monument.  I worry that in the end the site will become like the statue of Ozymandias in Shelley’s poem.  A ruin whose message is not only meaningless but a warning to future civilizations.

In the meanwhile, I continue to be uncomfortable morning one part of an event significant to Americans while ignoring the other parts, the plane that was diverted and crashed, the Pentagon.  And I feel uncomfortable marking this day while ignoring so many others.  Darfur has had two years of peace talks and there might be hope for the people there.  Can we celebrate that victory and honor the dead?  Can we celebrate the healing that continues in Rwanda and their methods for creating that healing?  Can we honor their dead and remember?  What about the Serbia-Croatian war? Can we have a day that celebrates the Croatian Independence and honors those who died, those who were forever changed, and the progress that has been made and the struggles that continue?

In a land of power and plenty I have no problem with memorializing an event in our history that caused such devastation to so many people. I honor them and send my prayers and my blessings to each and every one.  But they are not alone in having experienced devastation and I do not wish to be involved in the politics that surround the event nor forget that there are others that also suffer and deserve our recognition and respect.  We in America are lucky to have lost so little and I count those blessings dear indeed.

It is common for me to hear from clients that what I’m telling them is not new news.  They have usually been to other spiritual practitioners,  energy workers, astrologers, tarot readers, and have been told the same thing over and over.  Which is validating for me personally, but leads me to the question, “Why do you keep asking the question?”  The other thing that I get rather frequently is, “Well, I think the real question for me is….”  And it’s great when they can put that question into words, maybe for the first time, so that they can look at it and work with it.

I lump these two experiences together because, for me, they seem to come out of the same issue, living life so busy and loud that we can’t hear our inner voice.  (Not the voices in our head, that’s a different discussion all together.  ) What we seem to value the least or be frightened of the most is hearing what is actually going on with us.  It’s much easier to live our lives that we have built with all of our logic and our social connections and our busy ‘doingness’ which is required of North Americans.  Buy something, go somewhere, do something…if we aren’t moving every second we aren’t doing it right.  Even on vacation we have to be almost frenetic in doing everything that we can to enjoy the moment.  No wonder we long for relaxation on a beach or at a spa somewhere.  We never sit still!

And all that busyness is noise that keeps us from hearing what is really going on.  It keeps us from hearing our own inner voice, keeps us from valuing it and allowing it to affect our reality in any significant way.  Because that inner voice may not agree with how we are living or what we are doing.  It may not use left brain logic to evaluate the pros and cons of a situation, may not value financial stability over other aspects of life, and may want to lead us into situations we don’t want to face or show us truths we can’t cope with.  So we keep busy, keep our lives noisy, and just keep doing what we’re doing.  But some part of us wants to be heard and so we ask the questions, seek guidance, and put ourselves in situations where we will be forced to confront ourselves.  When that happens we have a choice: keep doing what we’ve been doing just adding the experience or the advice to the mix or turn down the noise and truly listen.

Listening to our inner knowing is a radical act.  What do you know?

Communication is a tricky at the best of times.  We are using symbols, vocalizations, physical gestures, pictures or writing, to represent meaning in such a way as to impress that meaning on others.  It is up to the receiver to interpret those symbols and react to them accordingly.  And every living being has experiences, possibly daily, the results of this when it goes amazingly right and terribly wrong.  Just think about ordering fast food through a drive through if you need a ready example.  I once ordered a single breakfast sandwich through a drive through and when I pulled up at the window I had 6 pancake breakfasts!  Communication is never easy.

Complicating the process is the fact that when we communicate we not only attempt to represent meaning, but we are attempting to elicit a response from the receiver.  We are not objective in what we are trying to achieve.  We have goals and motivations and desires attached to the end result.  We see the extremes of this in advertising and politics which use all communication to further aims both overt and covert.  There’s a reason why subliminal advertising was legislated out of television ads, although you can see it running rampant in photo ads, most notably for alcohol.

So what happens if you ask a question or request something and you don’t get the response you want?  Scientists have been dealing with this for hundreds of years.  And in a way it’s a bit easier for them because for a great many of them the questions or requests they are making aren’t of living creatures or they are of living creatures that have a set pattern of behaviors and/or are slow to respond to stimulus.  So when they don’t get the response they want, they are pretty sure that the issue is with the experiment (ie. how they asked the question) and not a recalcitrant receiver.  And not getting the response they want can be a wonderful experience because a non-answer or a different answer is still an answer and can lead to revelations not expected when the question was asked. So what do they do?  Well, try again to see if they get the same result, but then they also do something else.  They ask the same question differently.

And this can be the hard part for most of us to deal with.  When we ask a question or make a request and we are emotionally invested in the outcome or even in the receiver, there can be a lot of emotions and meanings invested not only in the symbols we are using to communicate but also how we are presenting these symbols and when.  There can be a depth of meaning in the communication that is not evident to the receiver.  And so when we get a response that is not what we expected or needed, we may not realize that perhaps part or all of the reason for this is the way we asked and not the meaning of the request at all.  Asking a partner a very loaded question right as they walk into the door from having worked a long and hard day is going to be received differently from asking them after they have walked in, changed clothes, relaxed, eaten something and are attending to personal desires for conversation, entertainment or rest.  Asking a person something in public in front of people they respect or are connected with is different from asking them at home in private.

How we ask the question, what symbols we use, when we use them, and with what meanings make a huge difference in the responses we will receive.  Communication is a complex art form that takes patience and mental/emotional flexibility and the willingness to try and try again.  Because it really is as much about how you say it as what you are saying.

Modern society has changed our lives dramatically.  So much that we live under the illusion that climate doesn’t affect us and we don’t affect it.  That food has no source except a store or a restaurant and it is ever-present and plentiful. And that we can have safety and security, with random occurrences of harm or violence only happening to other people.  We live in a society where we think we have control over our environment, struggle, gripe, and wail at fate when we realize for one instant or another that we don’t and then go on with our lives striving with ever action to continue the fantasy, the illusion of stability.

Inside each of us we are a constant receptor of input.  Through our senses we receive and then use our brains to make sense of it all, make meaning, make patterns, and make judgements.  And that’s just so we can get up and make breakfast and coffee.  Our day is full of stimulation and over stimulation to which we act and react in constant movement.  We are an every churning maelström of action and change.  As such we attempt to control the world around us and make it hold still so that we can cope with our constant process.  We want people to stay the same, unless the change is something we have instigated and is to our advantage.  We want our circumstances to work that same way.  We want everything around us to fit what we need because we are surfing what is going on inside us.

But stability, unchangingness is an illusion.  While we are in process, so is everyone and everything around us.  We just can’t see it.  And just as much as we desire stability, so does everyone else.  So our changing, if it isn’t what they want, is a problem.  Yet we can’t stop it and neither can they.  Everything around us reacts to us, receives input from us, is affected by us in the same way we are by our surroundings. It’s all interconnected.  And that’s the fantastic and frightening part.  When you change it sends ripples of effect out into the world.  Butterfly wings and tornadoes and all that.  So we can choose to be afraid of that affect and try to keep everything as status quo as possible or we choose to drop the need for the illusion.  Because in reality, it is an illusion.  Nothing is truly stable.  The only stability is to be flexible enough to surf the change that is occurring all around you every day.  Drop the illusion and look around at how the world looks now.   It’s full of possibilities and challenges and your up for every one.

Most people think of totems or animal guides as a figurine you collect, pictures you post or hang, or designs on t-shirts.  Rarely does anyone actual….gasp…interact with an animal they are attracted to.  I mean, how many people actually go out to be close to an eagle or even out to see where they might fly?  Or think about being close to wolves other than at a zoo or even then?  How many of us think about getting close to a bear other than by video on YouTube or at the circus?  They are just images and we go on our merry way with life.

However, when you are working with the Akashics they become much more interactive and it can be shocking to the system when we’ve limited our contact to animals in such a way that we only see their pet or entertainment potential.  When working with animal guides in the Akashics we can be lead to have the full sensory experience of that being.  By that I mean that you can be thinking about it or seeing it beside you and the next thing you know, you are it.  For some people that is a seamless transition which brings a rush of recognition and joy in a new sense of how to interact with the world.  Running as a four-legged is a very different experience from doing so as a human.  Besides the speed available, the capabilities for jumping, sight, smell, sound while running are all a rush.

However, it can also be quite a shock.  I remember that it wasn’t until I worked with my four-legged totems several times that I had an aha moment that transformed some of my own internal processing.  For decades I had those ‘can’t run fast enough’ dreams in my sleep, but not only could I not run fast enough, I always found myself using my hands and arms to make myself go faster, as if my legs were too slow, and I always felt as if I was dragging myself up an incline.  I realized that I was, in my dream state, combining my need to run faster, therefore as a four-legged, with my humanness in the situation and so was trying to run on all fours as a person.    Still happens, but at least now I understand it and I use it as a key to become lucid in my dreaming.

The transition can be even more dramatic when we break out of this fixed notion about land based creatures.  Most people immediately associate their guides with land based mammals, but what happens when your main totem is a winged?  This can be even more dramatic as how they experience the world physically is much different from us.  As I’ve pointed out to students recently, if you maintain too much of a hold on your human concept of a body, you will get into funny situations because flying animals have no arms and no hands.  Yes, they have wings, but they don’t use those as appendages for gripping or standing on (other than bats, which are flying mammals).  Balancing on the ground because a completely different thing as a bird because your wings need to be used like a tightrope walker with a pole rather than as arms that counterbalance legs.  Head and put become two ends of the balance so using a tail, something we don’t usually have, become requirements.  And that’s just the logistics of standing!  Flying is a whole other enterprise and then there is the landing.  Let alone food……The concepts are endless.  If you let go of the human experience then becoming winged is effortless, but you have to open your mind wide and let go of expectations.

Being a swimmer can be one of the biggest transitions for people as it taps into our lizard brains need for self-preservation.  Water, for humans, is life-giving in the right situation (not salty, taken internally through the mouth, used as a caustic cleansing solution for wounds, in the right quantity) but can be deadly in quite a number as well.  We are unable to breathe it as an atmosphere, it’s weight can crush us, it can prevent us from receiving light, which we need to maintain our health both physical and mental, and it can freeze us or boil us if it’s at the wrong temp.  So just that part of being a swimmer can cause us to recoil from the element, let alone experiencing what it is to be a swimmer totem.  Again, releasing the human experience of water and allowing the experience of a swimmer to take precedence can lead to amazing discoveries of self and of the world around us.  Having experienced whale as an animal guide I find that not sweating the small stuff is much easier because everything really is small.    And the concept of time, of need, of reality being so very different when you can plunge to the limits of light within an ocean of connectivity I can switch off the screeching stress of a self-created now and slip into something much more eternal.  That helps me get through the day.

So, if you have the chance, if you are willing to open yourself to something more, try interacting more directly with your animal guides.  Let them lead you into new explorations of who you truly are.  I think you’ll find joy and peace and so much more in the process.

Ever had family or friends or a colleague who had an issue?  Well, a problem?  Yeah, in the corporate world it’s called a challenge, but I’m not feeling PC at the moment so let’s be pragmatic, shall we? Notice that everyone but them knows about the problem?  Can see what it’s doing to them?  The issues that it’s causing?  That it becomes the elephant in any room they are in?  I mean, it allows you to know ahead of time how they are going to react to something, but that also means they are boring at parties because you know how they are going to react.  And it means you choose not to tell them things or invite them to things because of how they’ll react.  And when they react differently it is usually a drama on both sides of the interaction that causes ripples for days.

And everyone thinks, even if they won’t speak up, that the person would have such a better life and it would be a relief for everyone if they just healed whatever the issue is.  I mean, there is only so much space for that elephant and everyone keeps having to clean up after it because this person won’t.  It takes so much energy just to keep up with all of this.  Why don’t they just put all that energy into healing the issue?  Good question.

All issues are unique and the reasons we don’t deal with them directly are legion.  So I don’t have one particular answer for you other than to reiterate the wisdom that has been out there for decades.  First, no one will heal an issue until they are ready to do it.  Until then they are teflon and any attempt to do it for them will fail and just become another episode in the drama.  Second, more than likely they won’t be able to heal it themselves.  If they could they would have done it already.  They will need help.  Don’t plan for it and don’t make judgements on what it should be or how it should work.  But if you care for the person or have to be around them, be prepared to help as much as you can when the call comes, if it comes.

In my life the issue is highlighted because people come to me looking for help.  They are looking for answers, for direction, for support.  It’s delightful when I’m supporting them by reiterating what they already know.  Basically I give them permission to know what they know and act on it.  Yay!  It’s challenging and rewarding to work with those who are willing to do the work and starting to figure things out and I’m able to give them options and support and help them know that they can know and they can trust themselves in the process.  It’s hardest when people walk in with an elephant or have an elephant stowed in their purse or wallet or backpack and during our work I discover it.  Sometimes they even display it proudly.  Usually I don’t know it’s an elephant until I point out that to reach their goal they need to deal with the issue, heal the hurt, work on their personal challenge.

What happens then is what I call the elaborate elephant dance.  It includes steps such as ‘No it couldn’t possibly be that’,'I don’t know what you’re talking about’, the crowd favorite ‘That’s not me!’ and the leaping ‘Anything but THAT!’   Partly I think this is fear, but also I believe it’s about identity.  Elephants, as exhausting as they are, requiring huge amounts of hard work to support them, become beloved parts of our identity that we can’t bear to lose.  If we aren’t supporting an elephant that who are we and what do we do?

And I would love to say that you HAVE to deal with them.  In my more human and exasperated moments I would love to whip out the fire and brimstone and talk about disaster falling upon the unhealed and all the negative consequences of not living a fully perfect life.  But it’s not true.  So I breath and step back.  Our lives our predicated on Free Will.  We can choose to live with elephants our entire lives and still be good people.  Will we have found the cure for cancer or resolved global warming, probably not.  But is that really on most people’s personal agenda anyway?  Nope.

Dealing with our own personal issues and failings is one of the hardest things we’ll do as human beings and one of the most humbling.  It’s great if we do it, but hopefully the world around us isn’t holding their collective breath, ’cause it could take a life time….or two before we get there..if we ever do.

Just like personal past or history or baggage, however you want to look at it, Past Lives inform our current existence.  We are what we have been and only have what we have created to work with in this life. So to a certain extent remembering where we have been, what we have done, what has happened to us, and what we learned from it is a very good thing.  If you’ve stubbed your toe on that concrete step once, you’re less likely to do it again.  And you’ll look at all steps just a little more cautiously and step a little bit higher until exhaustion, sleep deprivation, distraction, or partying causes your attention to go elsewhere.  And there’s another lesson learned, right?

If we didn’t learn those lessons from experience or didn’t remember them, we’d just keep stubbing our toes over and over again because our behavior wouldn’t change and the physics of our bodies and the step wouldn’t change either.  We would be toe stubbing fools shocked each time it happened and then going right on to do it all over again.  Viewing and reviewing past lives can help us in this by making the lessons we have learned from them conscious once again.  Or reinforce them if we do have them well in hand this time around.  They remind us of circumstances, of choices, of scenarios and how they played out so we can do things differently or even better this time around.  And it’s always nice to know why you feel or do or like or choose certain things.  Know Thyself is not just a rule to live by, it’s a great gift that can help so much in this crazy thing we call life.

The challenge is not to go back to living in the past.  The past should not be the present.  Just as it is not healthy to dwell on what we cannot change, obsess on what could have been, or bemoan what should never have happened, so trying to change what has occurred in a Past Life or taking on specifics and challenges from then can derail who you are now.  You are meant to live this life informed by who you have been, not turn back the clock and try to recreate what has already occurred.  Don’t dwell on the past, learn from it, acknowledge it, and then move forward to create today as best you can.

We are taught that prayer is about gratitude or asking for what we need.  Gratitude is a great way to be conscious about the wonders that occur in our lives every day and being grounded in the now of what we have and appreciating our lives in a healthy way.  Although it can be a struggle to keep that mindset when things are really difficult, it’s a good practice just like mindfulness practice in Buddhism.  Asking for what we need has been made amazingly problematic through the conflicting messages of being humble, not being greedy, being pro-active about stating our needs and setting boundaries, while asking our angels to provide everything from the best fortune cookie message to parking spots.

There are requests that are so specific that’s it’s amazing anyone actually answers them.  I want a pink polka dot pony to arrive on the Blue Moon of March…  Well, to quote Mal Reynolds,  “And I want to be the King of Londinium and wear a pointy hat.” Asking for help with every small matter is like remaining a small child forever.  It’s Peter Pan thinking.  It’s not that it’s not possible to get that kind of help or wrong to ask, but at some point, you might think about taking a bit more responsibility for your life and how it plays out.  In fact, although it’s a lot of work and not necessarily as playful, it can be amazing and wonderful if you put some effort into it.  We’re here to live our lives, not suffer and survive them.  Don’t like how things are going in your life, take action to change it, don’t ask your faery god-angel to wave their magic wand for every event that happens throughout your day.  Magic happens when we’re living authentically through our own efforts.  Everyone needs help once in a while, but that’s the key.  Once-in-a-while.

So being humble and not greedy can lead people to ask for things for everyone else but themselves, and hoping that the community and their family is doing the same.  And this assumes that what they are asking for is what the people need or want and in their best interest even though we don’t have insider knowledge about that person or their path.  So the one person we do know intimately, hopefully, is the one person we don’t pray for?  This one has never made much sense to me.  I’m not saying being humble is bad, I’m just saying that like anything else it can be taken to extremes.  Like being humble in a way that means you ask for something but are so very, very vague that no one can discern what you really want.  For example, ‘Please make my will Thy will’.  Okaaaayyyyy….well, Free Will means that no one can ‘make’ your will into anything.  That’s up to you.  So what are you actually asking for?  A sign that points the way to ‘Thy will’ that can help you figure it out?  A messenger that will spell it out for you?  Someone to tell you what to do?  That last one cancels out the Free Will so while it can and will happen, it’s less than likely that the message is from ‘Thy’, if you get my drift.

Ok, so you find the sweet spot between not asking for anything and asking for everything.  Excellent.  So what then?  Most people think that the help they get from ‘the other side’, whomever is answering the phone when you call, so to speak, is omniscient, knows your intent even if you don’t put it into any words at all, and has all of creation at their disposal to do whatever it is you are asking.  Right.  Because all of spirit are genii’s that can just magic everything.  Wish it were so and I’m sure they would as well, but it just ain’t.  Beings over there, like beings over here, can be fallible, can mistake the meaning from the message, and can have limited resources to work with in the situation as you have it set up.  So do you have to accept whatever you are given as the only response or answer?  Well, no.  There’s that Free Will thing again.  If you don’t succeed, be humble, be grateful, be respectful, but try, try again.  If you wanted unconditional love from a partner and you got gifted a Love Bird (with cage, a year’s worth of feed, and a subscription to your local newspaper) that’s Grrreaaat……um…however, you might want to try again.  Getting that response means you’re on the right track and your guidance is wanting to help, but you weren’t specific enough.  You might try adding the words ‘human’ and ‘single’ to your request and see if you get someone closer to the mark.  If you are asking for help getting a new vehicle and someone hands you a toy car….yup…try again.  Be more specific. Be grateful…but try again.

Being specific doesn’t mean being rude, asking for yourself doesn’t mean being greedy, and asking for help doesn’t make you needy.  It’s honest, it helps all of us by making you stronger and better able to succeed at being your best self, and it provides a great role model for those around you to see how interconnectivity and good communication can aid in creating a healthy spiritual life.

“But they say it should go like this…”  Somewhere there is a healthy balance between what others have experienced or say that things should be and what the individual experiences and needs.  Because in the end, each of us is unique and no one theory or practice or method is going to work for everyone.  I’ve hit up against this a few times recently and it is always such a shock to my clients that I thought it would be worth mentioning.

I first came across this when I started working with my elders concerning the use of stones.  In Western culture there is an assumption that black is related to earth, that it is heavy, pulls one downward, is not associated with good or enlightenment (light is part of that word) and keeps one from moving ‘upwards’.  Therefore all dark stones will, of course, be grounding and help in meditation and centering if you are needing to get out of the clouds, as it were.  However, this is an over generalization and an influence from religions of the Book which make up and down somehow related to good and bad respectively.  My elders pointed out that stones don’t care about these theories and assumptions and therefore ignore them as irrelevant.  Or in other words, not all dark stones are grounding so stop sitting on THAT!.    LOL  Obsidian is not a grounding stone, in fact is not a stone at all.  It’s glass.  However it is special to me and helps me in many ways, none of them grounding.  The same for Onyx and Hematite.  Not grounding.  They have their own properties and if used for trying to ground and sleep deeply, you’re in for a rude awakening, so to speak.  So leave the assumptions at the door and open yourself to your own experience.

This is the same for all the common tropes out there about spirituality.  For instance, grounding makes you able to think more clearly, settles energy, brings you down from that jittery over energized place, and makes you feel peaceful.  Well for a great many people it does that, but for others “nope”.  For those who are deeply attuned with Earth energy getting ‘grounded’ is how they get energized, how they work with their personal spirituality, and opens the door for their enlightenment.  For them they need to get down to get up and out.  They need to get still to move.  They move and are moved by mountains.    Another example is that almost all books in Western culture that talk about Chakras and the chakra system talk about it, not as a holistic system of sensory nodes that the body uses to maintain health and interact with its environment, but as a means to achieve enlightenment.  And to do so they specify that one work from the root chakra at the base of the spine and move upward until reaching the crown of the head and connecting with Divinity.  Great.  However, what if your need or your purpose is to manifest Divinity in physical form?  What if it is to bring enlightenment into the physical and the practical?  Well then, moving from top to bottom is how you would work with your Chakras, not bottom to top.  Bringing thought down into being means working from crown to feet, which is just as powerful an exercise and can manifest amazing feats of healing and social reform.

So it doesn’t matter what common knowledge tells you or what the experts say.  Listen to the techniques they offer, learn the skills to use the tools, but also listen to your inner wisdom and pay head to your own personal experience.  If what you do creates the opposite effect from what you are trying to achieve, you may not be doing it wrong. You are just doing it backwards.    Try turning it upside.  It might just make your world turn right side up.

I remember when I was first experiencing sweatlodge and listening to water pourers and elders talk about it.  Some come from what is deemed a warrior perspective: it needs to be hot, it needs to be difficult, you need to wrestle with your issues, be broken down, and then build yourself back up through getting through it, failing, succeeding, and cracking yourself open through hard work and overcoming your resistance to the process.  Others come from a healing perspective:  you’re going back to your essence, back into the womb, you need to be receptive and patient with yourself, really listen to everything including yourself, be honest, feel what you actually feel and leave judgement outside the door.

And I learned from everyone I worked with, continue to learn from every experience, and am honored each and every time I go into the lodge whether I’m pouring, fire tending, or a participant.  But what has always remained as the most striking piece of advice and insight about lodge was the elder that pointed this out.  Some of the most potent lessons you will ever learn may be outside the lodge.  So if you need to get out, get out.

Now, this seems completely opposite of the whole enterprise.  I mean, going to lodge is no small feat.  It takes about 24 hours of prep including appropriate hydration, getting potluck and gifting items prepped, packing your gear (with Native ceremonies there is ALWAYS gear), then getting there, changing into the gear, socializing with the fire tender and water pourer and other participants, getting into the right frame of mind (getting rid of all the ‘to-doing’ that got you there), then there is going into the lodge which rarely lasts less than 2 hours and can go more than 5, then finishing lodge, getting cleaned up and back into your regular clothes, eating the potluck, gifting the pourer and the fire tender and the lodge keeper if they are there.  I mean, if you are not only prepped but motivated and excited to go through this process (and who wouldn’t be), then what would motivate you to stop in the middle of this roller coaster and sit on the sidelines?

Well, it happens.  Because if you believe in the process and you’re actually paying attention to yourself and listening to what is going on around you, then you will notice when it gets ‘too hot’ even when no one else feels that way.  Not just uncomfortable.  Not the usual slightly queasy, ‘my blood sugar is dropping’ feeling that can happen from a sudden change in temperature, but too hot ‘my blood is boiling I’m going to become bacon’ feelings that set off every warning your body has. Seriously!  I can’t tell you how many times people have come with every intention of getting in there and ‘doing the work’ and then it immediately becomes too hot for them or they get sick and need to get out. Now, if they take the mindset of this being something they need to overcome, then they hang in there until the end, are miserable and sometimes actually get burned, get heat stroke, have to be medically treated and have serious after effects.  Those who, although confused and frustrated and sometimes angry, do get out, they have the most amazing experiences, ones that help them heal, get clear, lead them to insights that change their lives forever.

Sometimes we don’t need to overcome our fears or our ‘failings’ because they are doing what they are meant to do.  They are giving us messages we should listen to.  And if we listen to them we may start becoming the person we wanted to be all along, fear and all.

I find that most people who know they are working with the Akashics either focus on working in the Library where records are stored, for individuals, events and really everything or they focus on channeling information from guides, teachers, masters, and don’t get information about the Akashics itself.  Those few who do get information or experience the Akashics outside the Library either make pronouncements about it where you can hear the orchestra in the background swelling to tell you that this is the best and most important way to see it.  It’s the sound and feeling of an authority speaking from on high.  Even if they don’t speak in pronouncements, because so few people have experienced this for themselves, the information gains authority even when it is subjective and only one person’s experience.

So it’s not surprising that people experiencing the Akashics for the first time are surprised when it doesn’t look like what they expected or what they had heard about.  The Akashics is a large space.  Ok, I just heard a few of you gasp at the understatement.  It’s huge.  It’s cosmically huge.  It contains a record of everything in the Universe and everything that has happened to that everything and notes on all the possibilities that might arise from things that the everything might do in the future.  Plus things that the everything doesn’t realize exist because there are things behind the curtain helping to make it possible for the everything to exist and function as it does.  So bigger than the known and unknown Universe is kinda the size I’m talking about here.

That’s a concept that most philosophers, theoretical scientists, and theologians ponder for the majority of their lives so I’ll let you sit with it for a few moments to let it sink in.  While you’re doing that, let me add a couple more points.  The Library is just one structure in a much larger functional city which is only one city within the Akashics.  And as cities are constructs that are meant for humans to function in and there are a great many more creatures in the world and just us bipeds, there is a great deal more than just structures there.  I have some students that are beginning to explore outside in winged form and beginning to see other aspects.  I and my peers often visit garden mazes, open plains, mountains, valleys full of roses or forests full of primal forest.  And these are just some of the places available to you.

But first open your mind to ‘Universally Big’ and let the idea of ‘more than just bipeds exist here’ and see how that changes your perspective and your expectations.  Hopefully it inspires you to seek out your next adventure.  Or to take an aspirin for the headache and to sit with some daytime tv and tea.  Both are valid responses.  I’m going to go check on my tea…:)

It’s a common trope these days.  Without local community, with families spread apart geographically, schools over crowded, and our society becoming ‘global’ and electronically ‘social’ it is hard to find any standards for behavior other than what is presented in the ubiquitous an overwhelming advertising we are subjected to each minute.  So what is ‘normal’?  A better question really is ‘What has ever been ‘normal’?’ but no one thinks about that except historians and political scientists so I’ll ignore that I even mentioned it.

Normal is what we decide it is.  Simple as that.  Scientists and mathematicians are great at giving us the big picture and grounding things in facts and figures, but as well all have experienced, facts can be skewed and numbers can be manipulated.  In truth, normal is what we experience ourselves and what we agree on as a group, whatever group you belong to at any given moment.  So when a client or a student asks me, “Is this normal?” I usually ignore the question as stated and reframe it for them.  Because they don’t actually want statistics on whether it is normal, they want to know if they are ok or if something is wrong.  They want to know if they are doing it right, seeing it right, feeling it right, or if they have missed the mark, have something wrong with them, or need to do something different.

I therefore respond to what they are actually asking by putting their request in context.  I don’t have all the answers, I’m not omniscient and I’m not in their skin living their lives, but I usually have some information, and opinion or two, and sometimes even an insight that can help.  By giving them that, by responding to them and not withdrawing or being negative about their experience, I seem to be helping for community and therefore drawing the lines around ‘normal’.  Ironic, ain’t it.  By responding to an individual and supporting their unique experience I help create a collective and define a group norm.  Go figure.

So when you start questioning, “Is it normal…..?” stop and evaluate what you are actually saying.  It’s…ahem….normal to ask the question, but what do you really want?  What reassurance do you need?  What permission are you asking for?  Are you wanting to accept the experience and continue having it?  Are you wanting acknowledgement and help in healing it?  Are you wanting to find and build community around it?  Each day we create our own ‘normal’ through our choices and actions.  Don’t accept yours as a burden, celebrate it as an act of rejoicing!

Past lives can be fun or they can be dreary or they can be a bit horrifying.  People love to dig into them for a variety of reasons.  Some want to relive a glorious lifetime of wealth or fortune or fame.  Some want to know why they are fascinated by a certain topic or hobby or profession.  Others want to heal something they feel is a hold over from another life or to deal with a debt they feel they owe to someone.

Most people have lived hundreds of past lives and while they may never have been famous, there are a finite number of ‘famous’ people and a gazillion souls living lives, most have had fun or cool to hear about lives that make us feel less ordinary or mediocre.  It’s fun to relay things of that nature even if the specifics of the life don’t have a lot of relevance to the current life. What I find interesting in looking at past lives is that, as much as the experts talk about Karma and constantly living in order to work out issues and deal with debts, most people I read for aren’t doing that.  They don’t have the Sword of Damocles swinging over their head waiting for them to forget that they owe someone or that they have been horrible in a past life and forcing them to suffer in this one.

Some people have issues, memories that they carry over in their body or in their emotional body, which affect them now.  Fear of birds, memories of torture, the need to read and explore everything about the American Civil War, a dislike of Europe that is visceral and has no relation to the present as they’ve never been there.  These usually abate when the relevant life(ves) is found and explored.  It is usually a reminder of something that they don’t want to have happen again.  Like a token you wear to remind you not to date losers any more or to keep you from making hasty financial decisions, it is a reminder not to choose that path again. Annoying and sometimes debilitating in this life until it’s figured out.  But helpful in keeping you on the path you have chosen this time around.

Something I find fascinating about past lives is the patterns that they highlight.  Again, with hundreds to choose from, why is one life more important than another?  Sometimes they’re not.  Sometimes it’s the group as a whole that tells the story.  Like the person who chooses adventure each lifetime and having a relationship is secondary to that.  They only take one on if that person is going to adventure with them.  Or they take one on to see if they can keep themselves from adventuring and they do that over and over until they can see that the relationship is the adventure.  Or someone who chooses quiet family life over and over even though they have amazing skills and gifts.  Then they begin choosing more difficult lives of service and alternate between family lives and service over a period of time to build up positive experience.  The variations are fascinating and endlessly unique.

Just because you weren’t a world-renowned artist or political figure doesn’t mean that you are ordinary or bland.  Your past is a rich tapestry that has helped you develop into the being you are today.  Just don’t get sidelined trying to relive the past.  It’s the now that’s most important. You can always look back but you only have one chance at this now.

When we see athletes, talk about athletes, or watch them perform on TV, we are constantly reminded not only of their raw talent, but of the hard work that they put in to become the amazing performer that they are.  And even then there is no guarantee that on the day they will be able to accomplish what they hope for.  And we should take that lesson to heart in our own, mundane, lives, but we rarely do.  We expect either to fail, to be mediocre, not good enough or we expect perfection, over achievement and the spectacular no matter what the reality is.  Being good enough and seeing what we do for how amazing it actually is and feeling pleasure in it?  Not happening for most people. It’s like we have dismorphic vision when it comes to our own abilities.  Too many underdog stories and heroic TV shows and movies.

It can be even worse in a couple of areas of our lives.  Sex and working with the Akashics.  I know, most people wouldn’t lump those two things together.  First off, most people don’t know about the Akashics.  But if they do, then they usually separate it from ‘real’ life and sex is pretty real.  But bear with me for a moment.  Let’s focus on the people who do know about the Akashics, because if you’re reading this blog you probably have at least heard the word.  Now, let’s assume you’ve heard about sex.  I’m not making any further assumptions because it’s early in my morning and I need a bit more caffeine before I even go there.   With that said, here’s the deal.

For some reason most people in Western culture are either taught or assume that we will be savants when it comes to having sex the first time.  It will be like the best romance novel, the earth will move, bells will ring, birds will burst into spontaneous song and the world will be a better place.  I hope that happens for someone somewhere at some point. However, for the rest of the world, that’s not the case.  Like any skill, the first time we try it’s awkward, we make mistakes, and we probably don’t achieve our goal.  Or we only achieve a partial victory.  You get my drift.  It takes practice. Perhaps a lifetime of practice.    Just like an athlete we have to learn the basics, get in shape, learn our particular style, our good points and things we need to work on, etc.  Plus we should try to strive to be better each time, learn from our mistakes, and always seek to keep learning.

Which makes something so potentially fun sound like a lot of work.  Sorry about that.  It should be fun, fun, FUN.  Remember that.  Meanwhile, working the Akashics uses all the same principles.  Don’t assume that you’ll be a savant the first time out.  Allow yourself the concept that you will be awkward, that it’s all a learning experience, that you will need to become spiritually fit, that you don’t have all the answers and will have new experiences and much to learn.  It will take a great deal of practice to become proficient and then you’ll have to decide whether you want to be an athlete with it or not.  And meanwhile, you will have your own style, will need to figure out your good points and things you need to work on, etc.  Set your expectations accordingly.  Oh yeah, and it should be fun, fun, FUN!

Language is a funny thing.  And English a laugh riot.  Or as the saying goes “English doesn’t borrow from other languages.  English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.”  So when I and others talk about the Akashics, like everyone else who uses language, we pick the words and phrases that best get our point across most quickly and succinctly.  Which means we use words that pull from our listener concepts that they are familiar with and experiences that they have had.  But what many times doesn’t come across is that a lot of this talk is simile and metaphor.

Let me explain.  When people say they ‘see’ in the Akashics, they aren’t actually using eyes and getting visual stimulus they have to interpret such as we do with our physical eyes.  There are no eyelids to close that will block out what they are ‘seeing’.  They have pictures, stills or movies style, directly into their brain which the brain then interprets into meaning just as it would with images coming through the eyes.  Same with ‘hearing’.  No pictures, and pretty much no actual voice, but the language and meaning appears in the brain as if we had heard the conversation and we process it as such.  In our physical world we rely on our senses and they are a commonality among us, so much so that people without them are highly noticeable and considered disabled.  So it makes sense that we would use those terms to talk about experiences in the Akashics.  But the Akashics is not hear and we are not physical in the Akashics.  So the terms are really similes and shouldn’t be considered a 1:1 comparison.  There are many more ways to experience the Akashics than this and what you’re experiencing isn’t really sight or sound at all.

So too when talking about Soul Books.  It’s kinda like the Matrix.  “Do you believe that’s air your breathing?  In here?  Hmmm…”  Information is stored about a Soul.  As we are most familiar with book formats in this culture and because that format best suits the information being presented, the information appears as a book.  But it is not a book as we normally think a book should be.  It is a living symbol that changes and is created with every moment we live and every thought we hold and every action we take.  From the binding, to the material used to make the pages, to the writing, to the media presented within it, everything is symbolic.  Your soul book is not a ‘thing’ it is you, a part of your soul that remains in the Akashics when you come to be in a body.  Everything it shows you is you.

So the term book, is a loose translation, a metaphor for what it truly is, but it’s the best word we have to work with.  So too with ‘reading’ a Soul Book.  It’s more about experiencing it and being in conversation with it.  It responds to your requests and intent, and the material inside isn’t just words.  But even before you get there, you have to be able to ‘synch up’ with it.  You have to have the experience, the concentration, and the spiritual/physical/mental ‘muscles’ to be able to access it.  Most people, upon opening their soul books for the first time, if they haven’t prepped for it, just see beautiful but blazing light.  See what I just did there?  Explaining the experience just became like someone sitting in a library opening up their journal and finding a spotlight inside.  It’s not actually like that at all, but that’s the words we have to work with.

So set your expectations accordingly. Like smelling colors and hearing velvet your experience of the Akashics will be unique and working with your Soul Book will be an adventure for a lifetime.

It’s always a blast to find out what your animal guides, or totems, are or to be around when other people find theirs.  One person can be working with chicken in one aspect of their lives and with tiger in another.  People are complex and fascinating.  However, when I talk with people they speak as if knowing this information is the point.  Being able to say, ‘My animal guide is xxxxxxx!’ is basically all they think about.  And then they find out and they stand there like children who didn’t get what they wanted for Christmas and never ask to the obvious, ‘What do I do now?’

Animal guides aren’t something you ‘have’, they are an insight you have into your being and a relationship you have with someone who loves you unconditionally and wants to help you through this life.  Therefore knowing who they are is just the beginning.  Like any other relationship you have to go through all the steps: introductions, getting to know you smallish talk, finding things you have in common, doing things together, etc etc etc.  For some that means collecting items that represent that animal so they have them around all the time, possibly wearing things that represent the animal, (not necessarily wearing the animal.  Whale skin is slippery and would smell over time…) and possibly thinking about what this animal means and how it applies to their life.  Or just being happy to see it around all the time.

For others it is going out and working with actual animals.   Becoming a biologist and working with the animal you are called to is an honorable profession and helps you become in tune with them in a very direct way.  Still others create art concerning the animal or see them as a spiritual guide whom they pray to and seek guidance from concerning all important issues.  All of things are valid and I have experienced all of them to one extent or another including working with raptors at my local zoo as one of my animal guides is Golden Eagle and another is Osprey.

But there is another method that few know about or attempt and that is meditation.  There are meditations which can show you who your animal guide is and allow you to work with them, however if you truly wish to reach out to them, I believe clearing your mind and opening yourself up with the intention of meeting them will allow you to interact with them.  In fact, I believe Star Trek Voyager actually showed a space-tech version of this process in one of their Season 1 Episodes.  Just reason to appreciate Star Trek. 

Anyway, through meditation you can meet your animal guide, but again, what next?  That’s where I appreciate the meditation route because it allows the guide to interact with you in a deeper way than just through its regular habits and habitat.  It can actually speak to you if it wishes, lead you to various locations or experiences, answer questions that you may have, and like Virgil did for Dante in The Divine Comedy, it can lead you through adventures to find your true self and help you delve further into who you truly are.

Knowing who your animal guide is, well, that’s just the beginning of the story.  Let it be the start of an amazing adventure.  Learn everything you can about them physically.  Learn about their habitats and habits.  Learn about what they eat and why and what part they play in ecology.  Then see how that relates to your life.  Do you need to take on some of those traits or does it illuminate how you already operate in the world and why?  Do you need to tone it down or amp it up?  What wisdom do they have to teach you about you?  Don’t just sit around hoping that messages or inspiration will come.  Relationships require both parties to equally participate.  Meet them half way and your journey has already begun.

I have met quite a few channels or mediums, if you prefer, helping people to receive direct communication from their guides, angels, teachers, ascended masters, Uncle Phil, etc, etc.  And I have met quite a few students who have worked with teachers that are attempting to spread the knowledge of how to do this out into the world.  Which is great.  But in talking with these people I run against this one thing time and again that just irritates me as much as it makes me want to laugh.  For some reason, I gently but firmly point to the Victorian Spiritualists, Madame Blavatsky, and Edgar Cayce, everyone seems to think that on the other side of the veil spirits talk in Shakespearian or King James English.  And very convoluted versions of that at best, like listening to an issue debated in the House of Lords or something.  It’s hard to track, bends back on itself, repeats but it takes you a while to figure that out, and in most cases it takes so much energy to figure out what is said, by the time you get to the message its anti-climactic and you may be too tired to care.

Why in the Universe would spiritual beings who are attempting to help us, who know us best and intimately, who are not limited to individual human physicality and our means of knowing, use an outdated form or language to try to impart things which are of vital importance to us?  Are you kidding?  Why would they waste their energy and our attention?  That’s not to say that sometimes they might not have a valid reason for doing so, but why?  I feel the same about channels who say the spirit that is talking to them is doing so in a Cockney accent or Australian, or seemingly from some European country.  Are you kidding?  They can communication in a million different ways and aren’t limited to even vocal languaging.  So, other than the theatrics of it all, why would they do that?

I think they do it in response to our consciously or unconsciously  expressed desire to have it be so.  So basically we are giving the whole process more flare and more, supposed, validity by making it seem like a séance in some B movie, but we’re making it way harder than it has to be on ourselves to receive the actual information being imparted.  Because these beings want us to be happy and to improve our lives and help us live the life we can down here to experience.  They want us to be successful.  And to do that they are willing to communicate with us to give us advice and support.  How we are able to receive that information is just as much on us as it is on them.

Again, it reminds me of the blonde joke where the blonde refused to lift a finger to help herself with anything because God was going to make her the winner of the lottery.  As she was dying she asked God why he hadn’t done so and he told her directly “Buy a lottery ticket.”  Communication is a two-way street and we are required to participate fully.  Most people feel that this means ‘be open’, ‘listen harder’, ‘be more receptive’ and for some that is true.  But it also means be proactive in creating and expressing the means why which you wish to use for communication.  You want concrete signs, get out into nature or the public so you are around interactions where signs will occur.  Then strangers can talk to you with information that is exactly what you needed, that white bear can walk across the hiking trail right in front of you, and the burning bush might just burst into flame right when you need it.  Can’t happen if you aren’t near a bush and creosote bushes are better than some. Just sayin’.

If you want to ‘hear’ from your guides and teachers, ask them to provide information in English and provide them a means of ‘speaking with you’.  That can mean listening to music stations and paying attention to what is played.  Believe it or not, music has meaning and it is played to be listened to.  Try writing down your question and then, without thinking about it, start writing the answer.  You’ll be startled with what you get.  Try meditating so that you get quiet, then ask the question and wait for an answer.  Then don’t be surprised if you get one, but it sounds like you talking to yourself in your head.  What is the easiest mechanism for them to get a message across, your voice, your thoughts, and your idioms.  Because they are what you are most familiar with.  Why startle you with apparitions or visions of divinity when a simple, “Yep, you’re on the right track” will do?

And one other thing to keep in mind, treat your guides, teachers, angels, etc, with as much respect as you do your friends, family, lovers, and significant others.  You don’t expect the most important people in your life to read your mind or get your intent from your actions. You not only think and act, but communicate.  Please show the same courtesy to the spiritual team that is helping you through this embodied life.  Relying on, ‘they know what is in my heart and what I really mean’ abdicates your responsibility to live your life.  It makes you a passive participant in the relationship and gives them the job of doing all the heavy lifting.  Why should they?  Would you?  Communicate with them in words, in writing, in symbols, in semaphore if that’s your gig.  But express yourself clearly.  In doing so you clarify your thoughts by using your mind to put them into language, you dig through your emotions to find which ones are bedrock true (in that moment) and you create your reality by manifesting them through physical structures such as oral or written language.

By doing this you’ll be amazed at the amount of interaction you get and how much it can support your life and help you to flourish.

I am often asked if the information I teach about reading Soul Books is the same as I use when doing a reading for a client.  And, you’d think I’d have a slick answer for that after all this time, but I’m still flummoxed each and every time.  It’s not that the question is a bad one, just that it points to the fact that the person is new to the entire process and the answer will require a bit more information than they expect. 

What I am currently teaching, how to read your Soul Book in the Akashics, is the very basic tools necessary for you to start the process of working with Soul Books.  Through the meditations and practices in the class you build the physical ability, the muscles if you will, to focus your attention and process the information you will receive from your book and working with the Akashics.  Is this all there is to know about your Soul Book and how to work with it?  Nope.  Will I be teaching classes that delve further into this?  Yep.  Do these skills apply to reading other people’s Soul books, yes and no.

With that said, reading for others is a completely different thing than having the skills to read a book. Reading for others requires that you have done a lot of healing of your own stuff so that you can actually hear what is being requested of you and present it in the clearest most healthy way that the client can receive, which may not be any way that you would normally present it. You have to be able to listen to their guides, teachers, peers, and soul group while at the same time answering the client’s questions and trying to facilitate clear communication between all parties. And you have to go through their book, respectfully, without bias or prejudice to see what is actually there, find what it is they are asking about from the reams of information available, and present it in a good way.

So yes, to read someone’s Soul Book you must have built up the skills and the acumen to process the information in their book and my classes will give you that.  However, having those skills won’t give you the skills or the insight you need to be of service to others.  I when it comes to Soul Books I don’t recommend the ‘practice makes perfect’ approach of just diving in and trying it. The information you are reaching for it too critical and intimate as far as your friend or family member is concerned.  I know it sounds prosaic, but I recommend volunteering for an organization that allows you to work directly with people in need.  Hospice, battered women’s shelter, boys/girls club, homeless organizations, etc, etc.  You will get a crash course on how to set your own needs, wants, and biases aside there and be in service to others both from training and from practical experience.  And that’s invaluable stuff.

And above all, do not try to read the Soul Books of your children or your significant other.  Children under the age of 18 are far more in touch with who they truly are than adults as they haven’t fully forgotten where they came from.   And if they are carrying karma it hasn’t kicked in yet and telling them about it could cause all kinds of problems for them that they don’t need.  Let their guides and teachers deal with their soul and focus on being their parent.  And remember, no matter how healed, spiritual, non-jugemental and enlightened you become, you will never have enough distance or detachment to read cleanly for anyone you love that much.  You are far too invested in the outcome of the question to even pose it correctly.  Let family and lovers be such and leave their spiritual journey to them.

When working with the Akashics people get confused about how to act or not act and what all of this means.  In this world where everything is expressed or perceived in opposites and absolutes it can be difficult to understand interconnectivity and how to participate in an experience in an interactive way.  Which is why I use the term ‘conversation’ quite often.  Because this is something where we understand that two or more participants are interacting as equals to communicate ideas and experience each other for a moment in time.  This is the model for how one can best interact with the Akashics.

For example, when working with the Akashics it is recommended that you be r