Like Dad

I was reminiscing about what my mother and grandmother taught me (Wrapping the Garden), but during the process failed to give my dad his due. If I was behaviorally similar to anyone—including my cliff-jumper Aries personality, it was to him—a fellow Aries.  My mother jokingly swore I was his actual birth-child because we were so similar in attitude and demeanor.

From him I learned that nothing is impossible if you dive in head-first and just get after it; and of course he thought that I could do whatever he could do. And since he thought he could do just about anything that he put his mind to doing, I believed that I could do it also—and still do.

My dad was a workhorse. Working two jobs or sixteen-hour work days was not unusual from the time I joined the family until he eventually passed due to pancreatic cancer in his eighties. If he wasn’t driving or fixing his grain trucks, or part-time farming, or even playing men’s Dad’s Club basketball in his ‘50’s, he was showing me how to catch and throw a softball or a basketball and he attended my softball games—even as an assistant coach for a couple years.

In the fix-it shop, as a young kid I was his third-arm: his go-fer—his tool hander—his shingle cutter—his tractor chauffeur for grain and hay wagons—his yard mow-er—his seed-corn sack toter—his “hold this steady”er for welding large items—his “whatever I need when I’m under this car, hand it to me” person.

In other words, I was the family’s only child who tried to meet everyone’s needs—both mom’s and dad’s.

But from hanging with dad who tended to view me as “his assistant” rather than as a little girl you had to be so careful with, I learned carpentry, mechanics, roofing, plumbing (sort of), farming, and how to bounce around in his big trucks when he went on grain runs around the state.

He opened a ‘mechanical repair and gas station’ when I was away at college; and then I became his ‘holidays and summer help’ to pump gas, sell snacks and write up the work orders for all fix-it clients—even replaced a few spark plugs and did oil changes for him during that time. He and I worked Thanksgivings and Christmases, even New Year’s Day to give the rest of his staff the day off, so I never had to wonder what I’d be doing on those holidays away from school. I’d be working with dad.

When I graduated, I told him I’d work full-time for him for two years to repay him for helping me pay for college so I didn’t have to rack up big debt. Then I became his Assistant Manager of the business and handled the books also as mom’s health was deteriorating by then.

He was basically a good-natured guy—tried to help his lower-income clients, and always treated everyone fairly and with integrity.  We argued occasionally as two strong-willed Aries working together will, but overall we worked well together as long as I remembered who was the ultimate boss in the matter; but even then, we were more like co-partners in the mechanical/gas-station endeavor than as the ‘protective father/delicate daughter’.  He valued my opinion on business matters, even if he didn’t take it.

So for ALL of us, when we contemplate WHO we are as individuals, there are many factors for us to consider: some are inherited, some are learned from our family environments, and some we may have initiated ourselves from a deep-seated longing to inquire and discover more about the world around us—as we were always trying to determine HOW we fit into that strange and somewhat perplexing mass of humanity that we inhabit, along with HOW we fit into Nature’s plan for supporting our continued existence here.

Without a doubt, life isn’t easy, nor is it without complications and complexities when family units are concerned.

Just keep this in mind: We are WHO we are for many reasons. But we can BE whoever we wish to BE primarily through our personal determination to be that person.

So BE determined.

It’s Been Strange

Sometimes I wonder what makes this time—this particular age of humanity—any different than other periods.  With our own limited-longevity perspectives, it is hard to compare other more distant time periods to our current age.  We only have historical inscribed-stone artifacts or scrolls or ancient tomes to review for that comparison, and since we weren’t around during those specific time periods to personally experience them, it’s hard to truly glean the significance of each era’s actual advancements.

Attention spans are so short these days. The electronic age has ‘instant-ized’ every aspect of our information dispersal; and what was once considered unthinkable, like world-wide face-to-face communication either on your desktop or in the palm of your hand, has become so blasé that we take our “knowing” what’s currently happening on the other side of the world for granted.  There is no time lag between two communicators across thousands of miles of ocean. It’s astounding.

But when we compare humanity’s existence/advancements to all the phases and ages of Earth’s evolvement, we humans are microscopic in that spiral of time. Hominids, bi-pedal human-shaped mammals appeared only 1.5 million years ago, with recognizable ‘humanity’ itself listed as near 200,000 years old.

But the earliest evidence of some type of human community or to a form of human civilization can be traced to only 50,000 years ago. And the larger recognized civilizations like the Egyptians, Chinese, Meso and South Americans, Africans, Indus, Greek and Mesopotamians are only around 6,000 years ago.

The ages of humankind as we know it are based on the tools used to eke out existence in a harsh world geared toward survival of the strongest and smartest among living creatures during each epoch period. So to that end we recognize the advancing ages of human development, such as: Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Industrial Age, the current Electronics/Information Age; and we are about to enter the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Age.

What all of these Ages of Humanity have in common is that they aren’t so much a set time period specific as they are collective-consciousness advancement defined. As human consciousness increases, so does the level of faster technical advancement; and as the world population expands, so does the interactivity and sharing of those advancements which leads to ever-faster species’ technical  skills advancement.

Even in my lifetime, (moving from radio) with television to electronics to space exploration to lunar landing to International Space Station to computers to cell phones to heart transplants to joint replacements to DNA genetic modifications to robotic surgeries to Artificial Intelligence to Facetime conferencing with people on the other side of the world; that’s a lot of change in a few decades of existence.  

My dad used to talk about his Ford Model A’s engine that he, a young-buck then, took apart in the morning and had ready to run by afternoon for a date.  My current vehicle is so computerized, it tells me when the air pressure is low on a single tire, and the engine automatically shifts from running on 8 cylinders to 4 cylinders as needed depending on the decreased engine load to save gasoline.  No way could my dad were he alive, or most folks that I know, work on a modern car engine without computer diagnostics and specialized equipment. My vehicle uses synthetic oil—not even a real petroleum product, and electric vehicles are fast replacing gas-burners with every passing year.

All of this advancement in the course of a lifetime is mind-boggling.

So when I lament that “It’s been strange,” trying to gain some perspective on the speed of human consciousness progression in today’s world, I start to wonder what a year from now will be like—or five years—or a decade from this date; and then I wonder more so how the human species will adapt and adjust to its increasing dependence on Artificial Intelligence until AI decides that humans are irrelevant to its most efficient operation and are simply too out-dated to maintain them.

Seriously folks, there may not be another ‘human age’ after that. Pleasant thought isn’t it?

Responding to an ‘Initiation’ Crisis

“You never know what you are made of until you must face your greatest fears head-on.” 

***

Different modalities or belief systems often talk about “initiations” as being the point where a young person is suddenly confronted by the sometimes cruel or grueling complexity of life itself. Many ‘coming of age’ stories talk about an adolescent’s passage into adulthood through some character-defining struggle they must face, either through making a difficult decision for themselves, or they must survive a dangerous and possibly life-threatening situation now presented to them.

In the practice of shamanism, most ‘initiations’ are like that. They are called ‘tests of Spirit’.  You often don’t even realize that you are in an initiation until, as I mentioned in a previous post called “Relearning“, whatever you always did in your life that once worked so well for you, now doesn’t; and whatever you try to ‘fix it’ with, falls flat—or makes the situation worse.

Spirit-initiations are meant to be a ‘shift point’ for your life where you are stopped in your tracks and forced to change your perspective, your attitude, and your life direction. That is their basic purpose—a shake up to your internal make-up. It can be like getting hit in the face with a tire iron. (And sometimes just as painful.)  You stop, shake your head, look around, and say, “OMG! What just happened to my life?”

And true Spirit-initiations are never to be taken lightly. You learn quickly that you are not in charge of what is happening. So pay attention to every aspect of the experience and above all else—watch your attitude. In true Spirit-initiations, if you don’t confront them with respect and a willingness to learn the error of your previous ways, you may get slapped down even harder, because in shamanism everything is alive and everything is connected to everything else. Consciousness is that vast ocean in which you swim; and there are lots of different forms of conscious awareness in that ocean—some you can’t even begin to imagine; but when all those other ‘awarenesses’ are suddenly redirected toward you, there is no place for you to hide to escape their penetrating focus. When Spirit has you in Its sights, you are the sole target of Its intentions.

That’s the basics of a shaman initiation—it’s a test from Spirit to see what you are made of when your life suddenly goes to hell and you can’t figure out WHY or HOW to change the situation for the better. Because for some unknown to you reason, it has suddenly become your new Spirit-assigned “task” to face down whatever demons, both real and imagined, that are blocking your life’s forward progression; and you don’t have a choice in the matter. Seriously, initiations can literally be life-threatening at their worst.

To shamans, an ‘initiation’ is the insurmountable obstacle appearing in your daily passage—the unexpected crisis point that strains your emotional/psychological resiliency—the seemingly unavoidable mine field you must cross to merely progress further along your normal life’s path.

From my own shamanic experiences I can easily say that INITIATIONS are truly awful tests of your determination, your stamina and endurance, and your mental resiliency. Sometimes the physical characteristics of a Spirit test are the least challenging aspect you will face; while the psychological/emotional/mental toughness parts are the hardest to withstand. Those experiences can shatter what you once considered REALITY; and that in itself can be destabilizing.

The worst parts of my own major shaman-initiation lasted years; and even now—fifteen years later, I am still dealing with residues of the horrible experience. (Hard-heads get hard lessons.) So never underestimate the severity or longevity of a true Spirit-initiation. You simply have to ride it out without crumbling to pieces under the pressure. You must learn how to SURVIVE onslaughts from the UNKNOWN, and make them your learning experiences, not your breaking point.

Joseph Campbell described this process of initiation in religious mythology as “The Hero’s Journey” (from WIKI):

“In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero’s journey, or the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.”

***

That’s actually the whole point of ‘initiations’: They are meant to transform your life. Who you have evolved into because of surviving the initiation, is far from who you were prior to it. You were once soft dough to be molded and shaped in whatever form; and now after surviving the oven’s blast furnace, you are crusty bread that matches the last form that held you.

While it’s pretty hard to think of a crisis as an ‘opportunity’ to discover the most intimate details about who you are and why you exist, that is what a crisis provides—an initiation into self-discovery of what it takes for you to survive for as long as you need to do it.

It’s a true test of your character and your determination to endure the worst of the worst, and to learn humility during the process. It’s a way to face down your worst fears—which is probably why it exists.

Evolution in Action

As an energy empath I can tell you that these solar/cosmic energies coming in now (primarily through August, but also starting out September) are off-the-charts powerful. They are buzzy, frizzly, and electrifying.  As they flood throughout my energy field I’m lucky to get 2-3 hours of sleep a night because my body is just sizzling with energy.

And yes, because of the excess energies in your body you can get a lot of work done etc., but you also can’t shut down your mind at night from the most annoying revisiting memories of your life long past.

As aggravating as that might be for restful sleep, I also know that it is necessary to clear out the old charged energy-packets of emotions from childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood to free our neurological pathways for higher frequency transmissions to come—in other words, we’re making space available for holding ever-higher frequencies of consciousness than we could hold prior to the space clearing.

I know also that when I start feeling intense increases of energy-at-large that it’s likely I’m not the only one feeling it, so I was interested to see what energy intuitive Lee Harris had to say about the monthly energies we are experiencing.  You can hear it for yourself below.

***

Here is the link:  https://www.leeharrisenergy.com/sept-2023-eu

“SEPTEMBER ENERGY UPDATE from Lee Harris

Themes for the month:

(Timestamps included for your easy reference in revisiting individual themes)   

  • Breakthroughs and Bouncebacks. (01:35)
  • Fracturing the old reality becomes personal – reinventing YOU from the inside.(04:07)
  • Confusion is part of the speed of change. (9:00)
  • Are you Re-patterning OR in a Holding Pattern? (10:21)
  • Ancient Sensory Wisdom returning – experienced through the psychic senses and the body. (12:33)
  • Clearly seeing the vibrations and emotions in the narratives we are being given on global and personal schools. (17:21)
  • Can you ALLOW it to be Earth School? (20:45)”

Wrapping the Garden

I must admit this picture did make me chuckle, and while I don’t think it personally applies (others might) I can certainly relate to its inference. I’m not Methuselah, but I’ve been around long enough to know the workings of the world myself by now.

Anyway, it’s late August here—nearing fall in the northern hemisphere, and gardens are still plugging away producing the essentials for a long winter’s abundance before the first killing frost in early October.

As a kid I can remember the immensity of my parent’s orchards and gardens on two acres filled with fruits, berries, nuts, and all possible vegetables that were then processed for long-term storage by them (and me eventually) in our kitchen. My grandmother had the greenest of thumbs, and under her tutelage my mother and I learned to can, freeze, pickle, and cold-store everything we grew on our own lands so we always had food to eat during the coldest of months ahead.

My parents and grandmother had gone through the Great Depression of the 1930’s, also World War II where growing Victory Gardens was encouraged to stem national food shortages, and to help support your family and neighbors. I arrived later in their lives (adopted) so that they were more financially stable and emotionally solid in dealing with the world at large by then, but they also knew what it took to survive the toughest of circumstances as they were battle-hardened from their own life experiences.

So from my parents and grandmother’s training I learned the importance of self-reliance and self-determination. You didn’t wait around for someone else to do your work for you or help you with your tasks—you just DID them. Don’t whine—just DO. Strong work ethics always kept food on the table so get off your rear and get it DONE now. That was probably their greatest gift to me, and no doubt where I learned to be so self-sufficient.

On our current 10-acre property, my spouse and I still garden which means we can, freeze, and pickle a variety of crops and even cold-store butternut squash in the basement for months. Old habits die hard and serve you well if they advance your longevity. There is nothing like pulling out a quart of stewed tomatoes or Bread and Butter pickles or frozen green beans, corn, and beets mid-February that you picked yourself from your own garden. And since I like to cook, it really isn’t work to create a meal with whatever we were blessed to harvest during the heat of summer. It is actually very satisfying to do so.

This leads me to the eventual point of all this reminiscing: We are who we are for many reasons—some genetic, some ingrained, some later-learned. I can’t link my genetics to my parents and grandmother, but I can link my strong sense of independence and self-determination to the lessons that they taught me—to how they showed me to be—in other words, how they showed me ‘to be like them.’

That is the legacy we can offer those who come after us—to be the model of how to live and love and treat one another. To show others by our simply doing and being.

You don’t have to grow “older and crankier” to claim your space here now—you can claim it by ‘good example’ just as easily—by being generous and compassionate—loving and giving. It’s the same amount of effort.

If you want to be of importance to this world, then BE THE CHANGE you want to see around you. Let future gardeners harvest fruits from trees of your ‘good intentions’ planted long before their time—offer them ‘the best of humanity’ intentionally planted now by YOU.

Give them future sustenance from your hard-earned wisdom and the depth of your experiences. Show them. Teach them. Mold them to be hardy souls who stand strongly for their freedoms and independence. But show them also what it takes to get along well with others—then to reiterate to others later what they in turn learned and lived.

Above all else, show them how to share their abundance and to sincerely care for others besides themselves.

In other words, you don’t have to get crusty with age—you can get creative instead.

The Akasha

Alberto Villoldo was pushing a new book or course, and just sent out a newsletter that really explained the ‘cosmic energy environment at large’ better than he had previously, so I’ll lift a few sentences from that to share here:

“…Clearly the indigenous people of the area (Amazon) knew something about health that we Westerners didn’t know. What was their secret? I returned home with an empty backpack, but with something I thought more valuable—insights from the Amazon healers who had taken me under their wing.

I learned that there were two magical ingredients to health: The first could only be found in the invisible matrix of the universe—what I call Oneness. The second was the plants that promote health, yet do not treat specific disease. (He lists turmeric and resveratrol that are Nrf2 activators, but I’m focused on the Oneness field in this post.)

The ancients knew all about the invisible world. In the Hindu Vedas it’s referred to as akasha, or the vastness of space; the field of wisdom that is the foundation of the cosmos. While Western science holds that the cosmos is made up of dead energy and matter, indigenous peoples consider the cosmos a living, intelligent field they know as Spirit. …”

***

Now why does this matter to us?

It matters because the akasha—the living, intelligent field of all possibility is where all acquired information, experience, emotions, and knowledge is stored. I personally believe it is first stored through our High Selves—our accumulative database of all lifetimes and learning environments for each individual; and then all High Selves are networked into Spirit itself—the greater overall field of Oneness.  And we can tap directly into Oneness if we access it through our High Self.

So when psychics say they are “reading your akashic records,” they mean they are tapping into the database of your experiences, emotions, and learning through all lifetimes of your existence in whatever form you inhabited, and in whatever state of being you might have experienced it—physical or non-physical etc..   

When shamans or energy workers in general (like REIKI) work on someone, they are not so much dealing with the person’s physical body as they are working in the energy field and the surrounding energy matrix of that person. The energy matrix is layered like an onion with specific functions per layer.

I think according to Barbara Brennan, the 5th layer out from the body is the blueprint layer from which physicality is projected, so often to heal or change some aspect of the physical body one goes to the ‘blueprint layer’ first to detect where a problem has arisen.  Here is an explanatory quote from Wiki:

“(Brennan’s book) Hands of Light: A Guide to Healing Through the Human Energy Field, is considered a “classic”[10] in the field of spiritual healing, with reputedly over one million copies in print in 22 languages. Brennan claimed to receive intuitive information about her clients during sessions, and to see repetitive patterns in the energy fields of her clients indicating common roots underlying their difficulties.[6] Brennan’s books contain drawings of auras and energy fields, and descriptions of how human energy fields interact with each other. She popularized a seven-layer model of the energy field, each layer being structured of differing frequencies and kinds of energy and performing different functions.[citation needed] Brennan viewed the chakras as transformers that receive and process universal energy, as well as enabling expression and healthy functioning of the individual’s own consciousness and psycho-physical make-up. She was best known for taking a methodical approach to energy healing.[6]

Brennan created a type of energy healing techniques that she called ‘full spectrum healing’ to work on the seven layers of the human energy field or auras.[4] Brennan claimed that the technique she called spiritual surgery works on the fifth level of the human energy field using the power of a spirit surgeon. …” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Brennan#Ideas_and_theories )

***

Hands of Light is a great book; and it explained energy layers and healing problems in the energy field to me better than my own REIKI teachers ever did, so I give credit where credit is due. And I also suggest that students in my REIKI classes buy her book to better understand how what we are doing In REIKI actually works.

What I found during my years of using shamanic, REIKI, or even hypnosis techniques to help clients in some way was that each specialty area had a slightly different focus. Each used different tactics and methods to reach similar positive results, and each was basically working in the energy matrix—even hypnosis—to achieve the same goals.

We are all a part of the Oneness—the akasha—Spirit. So when you decide to ‘manifest’ something into your life, you are tapping into that same ‘field of all possibilities’ to bring it into your consciousness.

All is energy—all is frequency—all is possible.  Hold the intention for manifestation strongly and purely, and then raise your personal frequency to match your intention, and it will eventually appear.

It’s not woo-woo thinking. It’s an actual phenomenon we don’t fully understand yet. But we will, because it works.

Enlightenment on a Stick

Hey it is county and state FAIR season where dusty fairground aisles, so over-crowded with multi-food vendors, are hawking everything edible skewered on wooden sticks (and likely deep-fried to boot) for your epicurean exploration.

And since I won’t be attending that precarious gastronomic adventure this year, I notice it has generously come to me instead in the form of ‘food for the soul and the mind,’ rather than for my more delicate stomach.

From my decade-ago shaman apprenticeship friends offering their own class version of Peruvian shamanism complete with a visiting Peruvian shaman guest teacher in temporary local residence; to Alberto Villoldo’s online Shamanic Class offer of “Time Masters: The Practice of Infinity; Revealing the Wisdom of the Jaguar Priests” (for $700 no less!!!); to an email from a friend who was a disciple of the female yogic saint Sri Anandamaya Ma—Mother of Bliss (1896-1982), who offers a new book of translations of Ma’s holy satsangs (“a gathering in the truth”) and conversations—or basically it’s a book of her teachings from 1960 through 1981; to Alicia Power online offering weekly high-frequency transmissions to help raise your personal energy vibe into the higher realms of bliss consciousness (and I’m sorry that I missed this last one); to a couple intuitive-empath/astrologers who describe the month’s current energy environment and predict this month’s likelihood for challenges or easy rides, personally and collectively.

It’s been a veritable cornucopia of“enlightened” clickable choices lately.

And just to note here that even though I am poking a bit of fun at what I’m currently receiving in my email, I am also very thankful that the world has shifted high enough for these options to now appear there.

 A few years ago, those email invitations for raising your awareness and consciousness would have been few and far between, so I think we are collectively progressing higher in species awareness in general, even though you’d never know it if you watched the national news channels.

If anything, it gives me hope for a better tomorrow for all of us.

So enjoy your summer fare, both physically and otherwise, and if you are looking for something hopefully digestible on a stick, you have many options available right now.  

Cycles and Patterns

The more days that accumulate behind me, the more patterns in my life I can discern.  

I recognize that like the image above, our life spans flow not in neat straight lines from the moment of birth to our eventual demise, but instead they flow in spirals slowly circling round us like the earth annually revolving around the sun.

Our timelines, while moving constantly forward away from this moment and the next, are also continually cycling back near to where we once began to allow a more educated perspective shift for the next revolution around our limited existence here.

The effect of this perpetual spiraling allows for an increased awareness perspective that permits us to observe ourselves slowly evolving through each growth experience, along with the hopeful goal of gaining greater understanding of our capabilities and limitations while we are encased in this restrictive human vessel.

Example being: If you made a noticeable mistake in a previous unpleasant experience, then when a similar experience again presents itself before you, you now have the advantage of your past action’s memory to reconsider its effectiveness or lack thereof; and you can use that hard-gained knowledge to make a better decision moving forward in THIS current situation—rather than simply repeating the same mistake a second time. 

That’s great isn’t it?  To get a second chance to get it right.   Well maybe it is, because while yes, we all have that ‘learn-ability from past mistakes’ advantage if we use it, learning from our past mistakes is not broadly utilized individually or collectively.

And that is one of our largest problems both as self-aware, evolving beings and as a progressing society in general.  To an overwhelming degree we, individually and collectively, just keep making the same mistakes over and over except with different people and in slightly different environments.  

Unfortunately it often takes a lot of cycling back around a few additional times into similar situations or experiences before we comprehend ‘the lesson’ from them so we can then move forward to a new learning opportunity and to gain even greater awareness of ourselves and our primary intentions.

Or as Yoda might have quipped: “Creatures of habit are ye. Dense and slow to comprehend ye be.”

So as age and time play-out in your life, stop for a just moment or two and sit yourself down intentionally to witness both where you’ve been against where you currently are; and if you don’t like what you see before you in your present life, then take an entirely NEW path forward away from your comfort zone—away from your standard behavior patterns—away from your self-imposed restrictions—and breathe NEW air in a very different environment with better intentions for increasing your knowledge-base and mental acuity.

Observe, assess, reflect before you auto-react, and then walk a different way from this day forward. Be a different person. Shift your perspective on life and yourself and on everything around you, so the next time all those years hurry past and you eventually reevaluate where you are, you can say with certainty, “Yes, I evolved.” And know that it is true.

The Power Is Within You

Evidently Savonn is in a more expressive philosophical phase lately that aligns closely to my own beliefs.  I’ve been following him for a few years, but he hadn’t previously shared these sentiments quite as eloquently as he is doing so currently. And because he is saying it all so well and providing another perspective beyond my own opinions, I’ll share another of his postings here for others to also see. 

Now compare these statements below to the previous post-share here from once evangelical Jim Palmer (“Harmful Beliefs”).  Pretty similar, aren’t they. They are two very different people, different backgrounds and personal journeys.  And yet they both arrived at the same conclusion.  “The Power is within YOU.”

***

“The problem I see a lot of people having is they’re approaching their Spiritual Journey through the lens of “Christianity” and you have to reconcile that by letting that go. You are God whether you want to accept it or not but you feel guilty, afraid and weird saying it because you were told it was blasphemous. You were taught that so you’d be controlled by FEAR. All that Source is who YOU ARE, and you have the potential to experience it all while being in the body. You can’t do both because of the contradictions of foundational truth that exists on each side.

One says God is outside of you—you are born in sin and have to be born again to receive the blessings of God. Bad things happen to you because you sin and through your sins you invite satan into your life. You are only worthy of a Gods love if you follow conditions.

The other says you are a unique replication of Source, expressed out of love made into a Soul having a human experience. You’re a powerful co-creator with the Universe. All that is, ever was and will be, lives within you. You have capacities, capabilities, gifts available to you waiting to be expressed through your being. You are the messiah, the healer, the gift giver and bringer of light—it’s all within you; and no other force, deity, entity anywhere in all of existence is more powerful than you. It’s through your belief, thinking and feeling nature that you activate the power within you. The Light of the Creator lives within you, and there’s no place where it isn’t except for the shadows of illusion you believe are real.

The power is within you.”

Spirit Medium Savonn Champelle

www.savonnchampelle.com

Shedding the Costume

Lots of pure truth in this statement below.  He also offers ‘spiritual readings’ if you are interested.

 “…Before we are our bodies and constructs we adhere to and live from, we are energy first. We are pieces of God incarnated into a body. When you accept this as truth and live from this… you can learn to attract what you want and live in flow. You are the source to what blocks you and the source to your freedom & flow. It’s not the govt, a group of people, or society… it’s within you.

Unfortunately we let what’s outside of us: our parents, family, religion the govt, the media, false narratives, racial & gender constructs, sexual constructs, ‘reptilians’ etc. infiltrate our minds and the subconscious takes this in as truth and gives this to us as a reality. So we don’t know we are the ones creating it until we start to question everything, and wake up from the matrix. What you think is real isn’t? We’re all manipulated into thinking this, but it’s a lie. The sooner you let go of your attachment to labels, identity, and form that’s when you’ll find your true joy, happiness, sovereignty and freedom.

I’m attracted to and drawn to people by their light and frequency not race, gender or their physical temple that’s always secondary. It’s Soul to Soul connection and my mind is no longer in the way of what I’m attracted to. Why be defined by a human label as opposed to the infinite light that I AM? There’s nothing and no one more powerful than you, but you don’t believe it and still think the God you’re praying to is a Man up in the sky when it’s an all knowing all powerful presence that has no gender, race or rules to follow living inside of you.

You are governed by the laws of your own consciousness, and the hell that exists is one of your own beliefs. You are just light that’s all… everything else is a costume.”

Spirit Medium Savonn Champelle

www.savonnchampelle.com

Small Victories

Hadn’t thought about it much until this morning when noting my own small victory that in itself seemed nearly insignificant until I compared it to what had become a too frequent occurrence to ignore.

We all have these inconspicuous ‘small victories’ daily but we are usually too focused on the day’s larger issues and requirements that we push those lesser daily challenges aside as ‘no big deal’ and plow forward to the next necessary task at hand.

But for one short moment maybe we should stop and acknowledge that ‘small victories’ are what keeps us going when the world at times seems too much for us to carry by ourselves.

Small victories are the decent night’s sleep for the frequent insomniac, or the fruitfully full inhalation of life-giving oxygen for the asthmatic or chronic lung congestion patient, or a moment’s appreciation by the semi-depressed person for the lilting robin’s song at daybreak that gives a fleeting sense of joy if allowed.

Small victories are happily witnessing the successful struggles of your physically or mentally challenged child mastering the smallest task like walking a few steps or eating a few bites, or even offering you a reciprocal smile when you wonder if even that is too much to hope for from them.

Small victories are the parent with dementia suddenly coming out of the perpetual mental fog and momentarily recognizing who you are and what you meant to them both then and now.

Small victories by their very presence are the optimist’s evidence that God, in whatever form, does exist, and the pessimist’s new doubt in their long-standing theory that every bad turn of events is preordained to happen to them.

Small victories, despite their ephemeral nature, keep us going when the going gets really tough and we are so darn tired of the near constant turmoil everywhere we look.

But the thing is, you really have to watch for them—those small victories—because without acknowledging all the usual minor life challenges in and of themselves, you might completely miss suddenly being victorious over them.

I think this ‘acknowledgement’ of successfully navigating LIFE’s daily gauntlet is the precursor to tackling the tougher challenges we will inevitably face; because without savoring those occasional ‘small victories’ both mentally and bodily, how do we know that we stand a solid chance against a greater foe or a tougher situation?

Without some evidence of our true self-determination and confidence in our own psychological stamina, how do we even attempt to face down the larger dragons in our life?

We do so by recognizing and celebrating our winning those smaller tests of character strength, because they are the ones that have successfully prepared us for those larger LIFE challenges ahead.

Harmful Beliefs

Ran across this lengthy explanation/exposition on the shadow side of religious beliefs from Jim Palmer, a former evangelical megachurch pastor who no longer subscribes to the same doctrine that he once did. Just for noting my own opinions on the subject matter, anything that I STRONGLY agree to in his comments I will bold.

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“ Jim Palmer

As you know, I once was an evangelical megachurch pastor and my pastoral career stretched over many years. Eventually, I could no longer teach Christian doctrine with a good conscience and realized this teaching was not truly changing people’s lives… and so I walked away from the whole enchilada.

Below are 14 things that the misguided religious establishment doesn’t want you to know. Speaking for myself and my personal experience, I was not able to see or admit these things to myself. I truly got into ministry initially because I wanted to make a difference and help people, and I relied upon the belief-system I learned as the proper framework to achieve this. It took a lot of post-religion reflection to see the ways this belief-system was hurting people.

I offer the below list in hopes that you might disentangle yourself from harmful beliefs and attitudes impacting your life.

14 things the misguided religious establishment doesn’t want you to know:

1. Toxic religion is rooted in fear, especially fear about the afterlife. It leverages the false doctrine of hell to win converts and demand holiness. The fear of God’s disapproval, rejection, abandonment and punishment is another hallmark of toxic religion.

2. Clergy have no innate authority. Holding a church leadership position or having a theological degree does not imbue a person with special divine authority or superiority. The terms “anointed”, “called”, or “chosen” or titles such as “pastor”, “priest”, “bishop”, “elder”, “evangelist” or “apostle” do not confer any innate authority on an individual or group.

3. We hold sacred what we are taught to hold sacred, which is why what is sacred to one community is not sacred to another.

4. The stories in our sacred books aren’t history, nor were they meant to be. The authors of these books weren’t historians but writers of historical fiction: they used history (or pseudo history) as a context or pretext for their own ideas. Reading sacred texts as history may yield some nuggets of the past, but the real gold is in seeing these stories as myth and parable, and trying to unpack the possible meanings these parables and myths may hold.

5. Prayer doesn’t work the way you think it does. You can’t bribe God, or change God’s mind through obedience, devotion, or groveling. The underlying theistic premises of prayer are untenable.

6. Anything you claim to know about God, even the notion that there is a God, is a projection of your psyche. What you say about God—who God is, what God cares about, who God rewards, and who God punishes—says nothing about God and everything about you. If you believe in an unconditionally loving God, you probably value unconditional love. If you believe in a God who divides people into chosen and not chosen, believers and infidels, saved and damned, high cast or low caste, etc. you are likely someone who divides people into in–groups and out–groups with you and your group as the quintessential in-group. God may or may not exist, but your idea of God mirrors yourself and your values.

7. Nobody is born Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Catholic, Protestant, etc. People are born human and are slowly conditioned by narratives of race, religion, gender, nationality, etc. to be less than human.

8. Theology isn’t the free search for truth, but rather a defense of an already held position. Theology is really apologetics, explaining why a belief is true rather than seeking out the truth in and of itself. All theological reasoning is circular, inevitably “proving” the truth of its own presupposition.

9. Becoming more religious cannot save us. Religion is a human invention reflecting the best and worst of humanity; becoming more religious will simply allow us to perpetuate compassion and cruelty in the name of religion. Because religion always carries the danger of fanaticism, becoming more religious may only heighten the risk of us becoming more fanatical.

10. Becoming less religious cannot save us. In fact, being against religion can become it’s own fanaticism. Becoming less religious will simply force us to perpetuate compassion and cruelty in the name of something else. Secular societies that actively suppress religion have proven no more just or compassionate than religious societies that suppress secularism or free thought. This is because neither religion nor the lack of religion solely nullifies our human potential to act out of ego, greed, fear, hostility, and hatred.

11. A healthy religion is one that helps us own and integrate the shadow side of human nature for the good of person and planet, something few clergy are trained to do. Clergy are trained to promote the religion they represent. They are apologists not liberators. If you want to be more just, compassionate, and loving, you must do the personal work within yourself, and free yourself from the conditions that lock you into injustice, cruelty, and hate, and this means you have to free yourself from all your narratives, including those you call “religious.”

12. Religious leaders claims that their particular understanding and interpretation of their sacred books should be universally accepted. Religious leaders often say, “My authority is the Bible.” It would be more accurate for them to say, “My authority is what they taught me at seminary the Bible means.” People start with flawed or false presuppositions about what the Bible is, such as: the Bible was meant to present a coherent theology about God or is a piece of doctrinal exposition; the Bible is the inerrant, infallible and sole message/”Word” of God to the world; the Bible is a blueprint for daily living. Too often religious leaders make God about having “correct theology.” There are a lot of unhappy, broken, hurting, suffering, depressed, lonely people in church with church-approved theology.

13. If your livelihood depends on the success of your church as an organization, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that you will mostly define and reward Christianity as participation in church structures and programs. Christian living is mostly a decentralized reality or way of life, not a centralized or program-dependent phenomenon. Church attendance, tithing, membership, service, and devoted participation, become the hallmarks of Christian maturity.

14. You are capable of guiding your own spiritual path from the inside out and don’t need to be told what to do. You naturally have the ability, capacity, tools and skills to guide and direct your life meaningfully, ethically and effectively. Through the use of your fundamental human faculties such as critical thinking, empathy, reason, conscience and intuition, you can capably lead your life. You have the choice to cultivate a spirituality that doesn’t require you to be inadequate, powerless, weak, and lacking, but one that empowers you toward strength, vitality, wholeness, and the fulfillment of your highest potentialities and possibilities.

Jim Palmer “

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