Belief

Tower is Crumbling once again

How is it my life seems to have so many dramatic turning points? Nothing is a smooth transition! I like to think this is because I'm the kind of person who loves change and loves to embrace a challenge.  Unfortunately, it is also extremely stressful!

Let me give you a basic rundown:  I'm running out of time and resources to live the life I currently am.  My family has been generously taking care of me over the last 6 years since I first got ill, and while I've been thrilled at the way my career has been unfolding it is still not enough, material wise, to allow me to support myself while I am ill. I have a deadline to get out of the house I am currently in, and am at the bottom of the barrel, financially.  My loving and doting boyfriend has offered with great joy to host me... however... he lives 5000+ miles away, in Germany.  Were he anywhere in the US or Canada, I'd hop right on over, but Germany gives me pause.. it is SO FAR AWAY and so very very different.

SO I have a few options for moving forward with my life, most of which are big catalysts for change, the biggest one being to move to Germany.  A month or two ago I spoke to my psychic and he advised me to stay in Denver while I continue to develop my career, and then in a couple years, he said, he could see me in Europe.  However, as time goes by, hopping over to Germany sounds more and more appealing.

I did a Goddess Circle spread to see if I could get any big yes' or no's toward a big old move to another country.

1. The talents offered (or the foundation of this question) is 6M Love.  This isn't surprising because I'll be moving to be with someone who loves me, and it is the quintessential card for Choice, especially when lover is involved.
2. Support for this query is the Queen of Wands, the same fiery mother that came to Matt and myself during our Valentine's reading when we asked what our strength together was.  The support and passion will help us get through the nitty gritty details of something as complicated as an international move.
3. People who surround you right now: Prince of Cups, my card for Matt, the Prince who invites a potion for love. That's not surprising.
4. Ways others encourage and support you is the Queen of Swords. This reminds me of my sister who was the one who said to me yesterday "If I was you, I would move to Germany." My sister is the personification of intellect and measured choices. She is based in practicality and I was surprised and delighted when she said this, and when she did that's when I realized maybe this is something I could actually do.
5. The opportunities of the moment: Ace of Cups... another support for Love. Diving guidance in inspiration. If there was a leap of faith anywhere, this is the card. This is the time for me to use my intuition and feelings and listen to the muses.
6. Hopes and Concerns 8M (In this deck it is Justice), not surprising my concerns and stress come from de-tangling the details of immigration, travel, how to do everything lawfully and not feel like I'm running away from any obligations here.
7. Higher Purpose of this query/journey: 9 of Pentacles, finding the life I desire that is comfortable, beautiful, full of love and joy, bountiful, and beneficial to all parties included.
8. Guidance for the near future: Queen of Cups... Feel the joy, beauty and grace in this situation. You are blessed. Live up to your highest artistic and loving standards!

Three Queens.. I need to be the Queen and ruler of my own life!

Well I think this reading is a giant YES reading, but I still have so many questions and trepidation. I'm sure it will all be figured out in time.

I JUST NEED TO BREATHE and do my very best moving forward.

If any of you reading this feel like offering guidance, I will gladly accept it!

My brand of spirituality...

http://lydiaxstitch.deviantart.com/

A little background: My dad was raised by a depression-era orthodox Christian community. My grandfather was a preacher, and from what I understand, a very loveless man.  My dad was taught to have constant guilt, fear, not to question, and to dedicate his life to ideals that made no sense to him. He seperated himself from the church when he was 13, but even when I was growing up we received mail at Christmas from his former Christian community condemning us to an eternity in hell, because we did not go to church on Sundays. In addition to this, there was a phase in my teen years where my peers would go to "Bible Study" and spend the night licking peanut butter off each others' faces and going away for co-ed ski trips which always led to coming back after Christmas break to hear of all the hook ups that happened over their Christian holiday (not that there is anything WRONG with peanut butter licking and hook ups, FUN! But then they came back calling ME the heathen....) So for me, religion had always been thoroughly confusing, hypocritical, mean, demeaning, disgusting, and hurtful.  My parents raised us to be charitable and kind, open minded and loving, and yet we were still the ones being pegged as "Evil".

I have always, however, been a very spiritual person. I have a big imagination, and have held on to a bit of that child-like wonder about the world, which has served me extremely well.  I have experienced some major hardships in the last 7 years, including my mom suffering severe brain damage, and then myself falling very ill 6 years ago and still working on recovery.  In that time, I found the teachings of the Dalai Lama to be extremely helpful, like a big warm hug that lit up places in my heart that had been quiet for a long time (a feeling I know that can be related to those who "find Jesus", in a real, authentic sense).   And here is the rest that I explained to my boyfriend:

I know seeing  a prayer can be easily confused with religion, but it is not religious.  While for a long time the words God and Jesus etc were like bad words to me, they have come to have new meaning for me, in a non-religious sense. Now they represent things just like Martin Luther King Jr, or George Washington, or Ghandi, or Mother Teresa or even Steve Jobs... I mean Jesus especially, and God is the spirit of those people that made them so damn good at what they did. 


I believe we have powers way beyond our understanding, and that the universe (literally) functions on many levels we can't measure with numbers for now, and in mysterious ways that we can. For example... a group of scientists set up a bunch of computers around the world which generated random sequences of numbers.  They would watch the data and saw that after a major event, like 9/11 attacks, and the Japanese earthquake/Tsunami, the computer stopped generating random numbers, and instead, generated sequences of non-random numbers. Group Think, including group meditation, (and prayer) can literally change the sequence of events, the order of randomness, and in turn, molecular organization, even at an atomic level.

Meditation, for example, is practiced by millions of people all over the world who aren't even spiritual. This is because it has major proven health and psychological benefits journaled by the medical field and science.  Meditation literally regenerates the brain, creating new grey matter, and eliminating dead matter.  It also LITERALLY re-sets the body systems, so they reset, even if just for a moment, to their normal and most optimal functioning levels.

I think religions can be harmful group systems, but they are all based on this awareness of something bigger than ourselves. They're aware of community and the power of people in numbers. The human species would never have survived the ages without community, because we're pretty wimpy creatures.  In order for a community to function, certain beliefs and rules had to be created to ensure some sort of cooperation and peace. We're now at an age where that is being tested to the other spectrum of the pendulum, where it is becoming absolutely essential to accept ALL beliefs and ways of being, otherwise our world is going to go up in a nuclear war! BOO!

Not all religious practitioners function on a dangerous level, I have seen a lot of people really thrive in a religious community, but spiritual power can also be tempting to misuse and to judge others, and at it's worse, find cause for ending their existence.

I have a whole book of prayers I have written, wishes and affirmations for myself, for my life, and for the world as a whole. Cultivating peace and desires is very much all about setting goals and intentions, and that is what my prayers are.  When you start out the day looking for all things red, you see a lot of red in your day. When you start your day off with reminders of gratitude, love, and peace, you life is filled up more with those things.  It's the primal part of our brain that goes hunting for the right food.  When you go to the store and there is a shelf of 100 different kinds of shampoo, your brain hones in and locks in on "your brand" because it is an efficient way of "hunting". Otherwise your brain is using a hell of a lot of energy to try to figure out what to get (why it is so overwhelming to shop in a foreign country or to shop for a new way of eating). So there is a lot in your life that you never even see because you are honed in on one set of ideas.  I find that "spirituality" opens my mind up to a lot of possibilities I never even dreamed of, and makes me even more aware of other opportunities, more creativity, more ways of solving problems.

 I don't believe there is a man in the sky conducting our whims and tragedies, but I do believe in a reality that we do not understand, I believe very strongly that precisely because we are human beings, we are not possibly capable of ever truly understanding the full possibilities of everything that goes on in the universe.  We are just one little spec of the giant and infinite happenings going on just outside our atmosphere, and I respect that hugeness. 

My beliefs also stem from great literature, even fairy tales, because I really believe that metaphors are a really really powerful way to explain ideas that we are total knuckleheads at trying to explain with our own words.  Lord of the Rings, for example, is a perfect metaphor for our internal battles with our own personal evils, and a tale for finding our own personal courage.  Anime has been a really great find for me too, because especially Miyazaki, explores a lot of spiritual aspects that we're too afraid to explore in America because of how "weird" or "politically incorrect" it could be. Miyazaki is obsessed with nature, and the power in nature, and the power of spirit and personal strength.  That is just one ideal that has been kind of squashed out from western thinking because it "opposes" ideas of a feared and all-powerful Christian God which a lot of numb-skulls still think is a useful way of seeing the world. (Not that all Christians are this way, certainly not! Many Christians DO find their spirit and love in nature.)

 My way of believing and thinking I believe is the ACTUAL reality, because we are beings powerful beyond our imagination, and this is my way of harnessing that power, if even a little bit.

P.S. If you are at all interested in starting a meditation practice, no spiritual or religious interest necessary! Good for your health, creativity, concentration, sign up for 21 days of free guided meditations through the Chopra Center... the first day was yesterday, but you have access to all 21 days throughout the event. Enjoy!!!
( link : http://www.chopracentermeditation.com/bestsellers/MEDITATION_WINTER_2012/register.asp )

Couples Reading on Valentine's Day

Matt and I did a reading together today, to get the flow of our current relationship situation and how we can best take advantage of these magical early stages of our relationship. So enlightening! And really, this gilded tarot is really growing on me. The images are making me feel so much better now. What a supportive and sneaky and joyful deck this is.

In setting up a reading for yourself, for a client, or as a couple, the easiest thing is just to come up with some questions that are relevant to your current situation and how you'd like to move forward. I found that 10 questions would be plenty to cover all the areas I was curious about! I asked Matt if he agreed on the topics and he did and we moved forward, interpreting one card at a time.

1. Our spirit of love (overall theme): 19M The Sun (HOW LOVELY!), joy, light, spirit
2. Matt's role: 10 of Cups .. to come home to pure contentment
3. My role: 7 of Pentacles ... to patiently tend the bounty until it is time for harvest
4. Where we can grow: King of Swords ... not sure about this one, we already are very strong in communication and intellectual stimulation, but confidence might be an issue.
5. How we support each other: 8M Strength (perfect!)
6. How we test each other : 4 of Pentacles (this was a little confusing to us, though it feels quite obvious to me that figuring out our financial situations in order to be together is at the forefront...)
7. What is our strength as a couple? : Queen of Wands... inspiration, passion, fire, excitement... as my energy healer said "your heart is exploding!!"
8. What I teach Matt: 2M The High Priestess ... intuition, non-logical thinking... magical thinking, endless possibilities.
9. What Matt teaches me: 12M The Hanged Man ... acting like a fool is great when you're coming from your own truth, we may not fit into the typical societal norms (each of us individually or as a couple), but we're acting from our own truth and not afraid to show it.
10. Future Prospects: 2 of Pentacles... if my dreamboard for the universe had a card, it would be this one, to balance with joy all aspects of life.. work, fun, intellect, emotion, spirit, physical being and richness... and to gain strength from it.  I hope this means that Matt and I will have a fulfilled and balanced and joyful and magical life together.

A Course in LOVE

I have been studying A Course in Miracles (slowly.. this book is freaking enormous), and how quaint and appropriate that I've now fallen on Chapter 6, Lessons in Love, just a day before Valentine's Day. It probably doesn't have a lot to do with romantic love, but I'm sure it corresponds quite nicely to Marianne Williamson's Enchanted Love, which I am now almost finished with. The lessons that Marianne is teaching me through her interpretations of A Course in Miracles towards relationships just fills me with a big "YES" of recognition and truth.  Let's stay in the light! Let's stay in the ecstasy! Let's stay in the glory!
I love that Chapter 6 corresponds to the 6 card in the Tarot.. The Lovers.

"When two hearts join in ecstasy and rapture, an army of light ascends and the world is brought closer to heaven. Literally.  The beloved's hand on us, like a baby's hand, holds power that is straight from God. Heaven is, in metaphysical terms, the experience of our oneness. The world is a holographic universe, with every piece containing the whole. An enchanted love between any two people is a blessing on the entire world."

How lovely.

I love this painting from http://martanael.deviantart.com/ .

A Squirrel's Prayer

Conscious Transformation Reading

I'm in a "growth spurt" of transformation, and struggling with ideas about work, money, and my physical energy.  Though I know it is neurotic, and a negative belief pattern that holds no real truth, somewhere deep in my brain is this nagging belief that in order to be prosperous I have to sacrifice something (joy, moral compass, energy/physical health) in return.  I am trying to rid myself of this belief and am using this reading in order to inspire me to let go and release into the next stage of my life, which is fast approaching (I can feel it!).
I've hit rock bottom, financially, but physically my health is still improving, and my spirit continues to grow and transform and go through the layers of pain and freedom.

1. Where am I stuck? The Knight of Wands shows me I'm struggling with confidence and inspiration.  I'm lacking in my ability to feel my personal power (so much red! passion! energy!), while I await a great big adventure and a bold, brash new life.
2. Where is life trying to take me? The Ace of Swords tells me I'm moving into (or trying to) a stage of life where intellect, communication, and clarity are hallmarks of my functioning. Truth, Powerful Truth, is trying to make its way into my life.
3. How can I release and move forward? The 7 of Wands tells me I'm sort of cornered by thoughts, or interpretations of peoples actions or attitudes, that diminish my confidence. Conviction will carry me through, and I should not give up my firm beliefs, but stand my ground as I wait this out.
4. What is life trying to teach me? The 2 of Wands shows me that there is a fork in the road, and I need to make a decision, but not with logic, with intuition. The physical world isn't making much sense and I need to use my gut and inner voice to move me forward.
5. Further Advice? The Knight of Cups boisterously reminds me to ENJOY! Embrace romance, love, and pure celebration! Don't get down and serious about this, life is here to enjoy, and this is all for you.
6. Outcome: The 2 of Pentacles shows me what I so yearn for : ease and magic in the juggling of all aspects of life.  I long so much to be strengthened by life, inspired by my work and joy, and to move forward with ease and balance.

Stay tuned, the next few months are going to be bumpy.  I have already labeled this next part of my life "Going through the Fires", and see exactly how this reading supports that.  Don't worry, I have a little bubble of joy around me, protecting me as I make my way through.