A Prayer for the Living

When I was in the 4th grade, my classmate was murdered. We were 10. His murderer was his 14-year-old neighbor. He lured my classmate into a field near their home, stabbed him 33 times, went home made a sandwich and watched TV.

I grew up in a really small town. The murderer was from an affluent family--the town doctor. Everyone knew everyone. I was friends with my classmate's sister. I also was friends with the murderer's sister.


Today, the murder is 41. Today he was granted parole.

In a few weeks, he could be walking the streets of the same small town. Should people be scared? He was considered not fit for release in 2010, so the last two years he was rehabilitated just enough more than the previous 26?

I'm really facing some strange emotions today. Questions about justice. Is a life worth only 28 years? Reformation and transformation in incarceration. How is someone who grew up in jail supposed to adjust to life on the outside? Two families lost there sons that day, so mostly I'm sad. For my classmate's family. For my classmates that had to experience something so scary and tragic and incomprehensible at such a young age. Sad for the murderers family and the elephant in the room that no one ever talked about. For the people I grew up with who have to relive that moment all over again.

Yes, I'm feeling sad for me too. Less than two months earlier I had had to deal with death for the first time. My mother had died. So within a span of two months I learned death was not always natural, death was not for the old. Death was something that could not only change my family and my life, but at 9 years old, I learned death could come for me.

That period in my life has had more effect on me I'm sure I will ever consciously be aware. My roller coaster of emotions I'm sure will continue for a few days as I process and remember. I'm still sad, but today to I say my prayers, for my classmate, for his family, for his murderer's family, for my community, and yes for the murderer, too. A prayer for those left behind to deal with death. A prayer for the living.

When Animal Totems Appear: Working with the Cougar

So, I continue processing the work I did with T. Thorn Coyle at the Self-Possession: Activating the "I AM" workshop she taught in DC the weekend before last. Needless to say working with these energies has been very powerful and the changes are real and immediate and sure to be ongoing for a long time.

During one working, we were given the opportunity to ask for information and guidance. So, I closed my eyes and and asked. The face of the cougar appeared before me. This happens to me a lot. Animal totems appear to give me information I need when I need it--both in meditation and the real world. And I must say, I prefer when animals like wild cats, tigers, and cobras appear in meditation because otherwise it would be a little strange and probably dangerous.

I have my personal totems that are with me all the time, but when a new animal appears, I pay attention. I meditate. I do my research. The cougar was reinforcing a message and bringing it home. I know what I need to do--my spiritual guides on this plane and the others have made it quite clear for some time. I've mentioned previously that I always have a problem with the "how" in both my mundane and magickal lives. Now, the cougar has appeared to show me how.

“If a cougar shows up in your life, it is time to learn about power. Test your own. Most young cougars learn how to use their power through trial and error. It strengthens them and hones their skills. When a cougar shows up as totem, much of the trial has been worked through. Now it is time to assert.

"People may not like your asserting. They may try and keep you in the category they have always kept you. You can choose to remain so, or you can stretch your muscles and show your capabilities. Those with the cougar medicine fall easily under attack, especially by those who have grown comfortable with the status quo and do not wish to truly see you grow. Remember that there will always be some who will not wish to see you come into your own power or will ever acknowledge that you have. If cougar has shown up, there is a choice to be made, and it should be made quickly and strongly. A cougar leaps at its opportunities."

--“Cougar” entry from Ted Andrews’ Animal Speak

I can see I've been through trials lately and I've also seen the resistance of others. They say encouraging words, but there back-handed comments and actions say other wise. But the cougar can show me how to deal with those too.

I also find it extremely interesting that my birth totem, the deer, is on the top of the cougar’s list of prey. This explains why exerting personal power is so difficult and terrifying for me. I’m so afraid I’m going to lose myself and everything I have. I am positive that when I step up and out, my shell will not only crack, I believe it will shatter into a gazillion pieces--flying far and wide. I also do not equate my actions of assertiveness as me being in my power, but of me just being a bitch or an asshole in a situation. Assertion is something I definitely need to learn, because a deer is really good at camouflage, its ability to blend into the tree line is its greatest defense mechanism. I hide behind my perceptions of how others will view me. Yes, I did say MY perceptions of how others will view me. I will own that. It’s totally mine. However powerful that lesson is, the true lesson is in how I integrate my powerful Cougar with my lively, gentle deer without harm to others and to my self.

“The deer is the cougar’s favorite prey…One of the qualities embodied by the deer is gentleness. For those with the cougar totem, remember that power can be asserted gently. There is strength and power in gentleness. It is also a reminder that there are times to be gentle and there are times to assert your power forcefully. This is part of what the cougar teaches.”

The second favorite prey of the cougar is also interesting. The porcupine, with all its quills.

“The cougar is one of the few animals that is capable of killing a porcupine without harm to itself… The cougar has developed the ability to flip the porcupine upon its back, exposing it vulnerable underside.” That’s powerful. I definitely can see people’s vulnerabilities and I currently do everything in my power to excuse and compensate for others--which doesn't do either one of us any good, and is more often to the detriment of my self. This about me not being harmed by others as I step into my power, and if I have to use their vulnerabilities to protect myself and my power before others can shoot their quills, then that's what I have to do. I'm not a megomaniac. I'm not going for world domination--though if it happens, it happens and I will do my best to rule fairly. Seriously, this power is about me and not others. When others make my power about them, that's when I need to defend myself.

Basically, the cougar is telling me, "It is time!" Time for me to stop being afraid of my power. To stop futzing around. To believe I have that power. To step up and be who I'm supposed to be.  The cougar has taught me how.  And I am doing it and it's working.

“The cougar teaches decisiveness in the use of personal power. When it attacks, it does not hesitate. When threatened, it goes for the most vulnerable place. The cougar can teach you how to bring your power and fill your heart with it in a manner that will enable you to take charge of your life. You will find you can use it to defend yourself or to attack—with equal effectiveness. Cougar teaches you how to take charge of your life and your circumstances most effectively.”

Okay. I can handle that! And if you can't, best you git out my way!

Kites: Celebrating the Power of Air

So this weekend, my family came to DC to see the cherry blossoms. As part of the National Cherry Blossom Festival there is also the Blossom Kite Festival. Being an air person, I was in total awe. It was so beautiful.

We first saw some of the kites as we sat on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial, my favorite memorial in DC, after walking under the cherry trees where the blossoms should have been, except for the fact that they bloomed early and we've had heavy winds this last week that blew them away. Oh, Air!!! Of course, only in DC would we have two concurrent festivals that celebrate Spring and the season of Air. One that celebrates you and one that celebrates something so delicate as to be destroyed by you.


Anyway, as we walked back from the tidal basin we could see more and more kites around the monument. As you got closer, they were everywhere along the mall. Some flying as high the top of the Washington Monument--55 stories up--some larger than a tractor trailer truck.


Hundreds of people were flying kites. From kite enthusiasts and competitors with trick kites doing fancy flying to parents teaching their kids how to fly a kite.

The kites came in all shapes and sizes--from bats, pterodactyls, and Angry Birds to flowers and leaves--in all the colors of the rainbow. Filling the sky with color and movement.
 
It was spectacular. I not only wanted to fly a kite, I kind of wanted to be a kite. So I'm just going to let the air carry me for a while. Let myself dip and soar and swirl, then maybe just float for a while, showing off my brilliant colors.

How to Be Big

So I did a workshop with the lovely and amazing T. Thorn Coyle this weekend. I’ve worked with her before, so I knew how powerful it would be. The workshop was titled, Self Possession: Activating the “I AM” so I knew how personal it would be. This is the first of I'm sure many posts resulting from this weekend.

A recurring theme in my spiritual and mundane work recently is that I need to step into my power. I know it. I’ve been told. The biggest problem I have in this life is the how. How do I step into my power? I knew the workshop was going to help. I also knew I wasn’t going to get a nice neat manual all packaged up all pretty. But I figured I’d get a clue. And I did. Several, actually. Repeatedly.

By the end, it was very clear what I had to do. But again, how? During one exercise, the very last one of the weekend, in fact (of course!!), the answer came. I need to be bigger. Okay. And how to do that?

Well, this is how I figure...so, in addition to making sure all my bodies are aligned, my mission is to figure out how to be big in all my bodies. Which is funny because now that I know this, I can see how these bodies of mine have been trying to take up more space on their own.

My physical body has been trying to get bigger, despite my efforts to exercise and eat well. Those doughnut cravings have been winning, and as much as my body wants to be “bigger” it’s losing. Because what I really need to be “bigger” in my physical body is to be healthy and strong. 

My etheric body holds the energy I need to do my everyday actions. I need to make sure this energy is as close to 100% as it can be. I need to make sure that this energy is MY energy and reflects only MY nature. I can see me thinning the herd of relationships that don't serve me and drain my energy and learning to say "no" a lot more to others and listening more to my instincts and saying "yes" to my self.

My auric body is the one body that can take this instruction literally—it just needs to just be bigger. I need to present myself to the world in my right size--whatever size I need to be in my power and the job DONE. I had started this practice at work a few weeks ago before going into a meeting or having to have a difficult conversation. Now, in addition to when I need it, every morning I take a few huge breaths and exhale and blow that body up, giving me room to move and making sure people can see me coming!!!

Finally, my divine soul needs to be brought down and integrated with my self. Bigger in this case means closer, more connected with my divine nature. I need to actively activate my I AM, so that I am closer to my self, my divine self--making my actions in harmony with the work my soul was put on this Earth to do. By doing this I will give myself some room to do MY work. 

Many of you know me and know that I get stuff done, I work hard, and I’m effective. However, I am not doing MY work--I’m feeding someone else and not me. From now on, I will be doing MY work and allowing it to feed MY power. No more favors, no more giving my self away for free.

It would have been fun to just make these changes and see how the world reacts, and I have a few stories already that I will share. However, I think it's important for all of us to find out what we need to be and figure out how to do it. I have the hardest time with the how. I know everyone is different, but I find it helps to hear how one takes this information from our spiritual life, interprets it, and integrates it. So, think about it, if you were told you needed to bigger, how would you make that happen? If not big, what do you need to be? What does that mean to you? How would you make it happen?

The Magickal Desk

Ha, so I know I promised more here, but this girl has been busy and since going back to work has been fighting cold after cold. Those germy humans, I tell ya! Speaking of going back to work, I was ever so slightly amused to find that my magickal work had crept into to my mundane work without me really planning it. I LOVE when that happens!!

My desk is an altar, of course! Makes sense, right?!?! But, I totally set it up as an altar without even knowing it! I did consciously cleanse and start building a prosperity altar. When I got the keys to my office, the first thing I did was get all salty on it--sea salt, black salt, Himalayan salt... First,  I cleansed it with sea salt--I would have loved to have saged it, but open flame, office, yeah... I then put a sachet of black salt on the edge of my desk facing the door to keep away negativity and bad neighbors (i.e., asshat bosses and co-workers), and brought in one of my Himilayan salt lamps. Being surrounded by computer equipment, I need to some refreshing negative ions, and it's just really cool. Black salt and Himalayan salt lamps are must haves for the magickal office worker, I swear.

Anyway, back to the desk as an altar.  Like I said I started putting together a prosperity altar. It's a work in progress but, as you will see, I have a lovely lucky bamboo plant that I added some green lodestones (yes, green lodestones, how perfect) and copper pennies. I love lodestones and use them often to bring me exactly what I need to get by in this world. I also always keep copper pennies around me for luck and offerings.

Today while I was sitting at my desk, I realized that the prosperity altar was in the North corner of my desk and I thought that was brilliant. Then, I looked around and realized I had organically created directional elements without even trying. To my right, I keep my pen and notebook, always open to blank page to readily jot down notes, reminders, action items, and ideas that just pop into my head. That just so happens to be in the East corner of my desk. To my left, and in the South, is where the Himalyan salt lamp resides. The light inside warms the rock and it glows a reddish-orange all day long. To the West is my was my big ol' water bottle on my big ol' fancy coaster, this morning, accompanied by a big ol' mug o' coffee, ah the sacred liquid of the working. And, of course, smack dab in the center of all this is me, the magickal worker bee, creating and manifesting for my company, which in turn supports me financially, so allowing me my ability to support my greater spiritual work.  

I have no doubt that magick created this employment opportunity for me and it looks like the magick is sticking around.

Re-emergence

In case you haven't noticed, it's been a little quiet around here. It's not that I haven't had much to say, it's that I have too much to say and I can't even being to keep up with the changes. As many of you know, I have been unemployed since August. You would think I would have had plenty of time to write blogs. Nope. Basically, after the Summer Solstice, as the days became shorter and the darkness grew I was called to my inner self to confront and be embraced by my own darkness. The universe opened up space for me to slow down and let me cut the necessary ties so I could go inward. That is where I stayed. I had time all to myself. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't comfortable, but in retrospect it was an amazing time of introspection and healing and release. I can say on spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical levels I am a stronger, very different person in every way--and getting more so every day. Being unemployed was a gift and just when I started to worry about things like, say, oh, the mortgage, the universe provided. And the universe continues to provide me with gifts, as it probably always did, but the richness of this experience is that I now can not only see them, but they are almost always exactly what I need.

With the return of the sun and the expansive energy I am being pulled outward and am reopening to the world. A fresh start. After Yule, I started applying for jobs and got a few offers and start work again this week. I embarked on a deeper spiritual path and am on my way. I also started getting more opportunities to personally, professionally, and spiritually to do the work that makes me stronger and doesn't wear away at me slowly. I already know that this will lead me to my great work of this lifetime (what ever that may be). Not everyone is blessed with this opportunity and I am grateful.

Tomorrow marks the Lunar New Year, what a great week to get things started. It will be anything but quiet around here. So, even if it's just a cross-post to some of my larger projects, I promise to keep you posted because this stuff is really gonna be cool. Already, I've got a lot to do...

• several ongoing freelance marketing projects (including one I'm so excited about I want to burst and can't wait to tell everyone when it's time).
• writing a new food blog, just started
• creating a new technology blog, coming soon
• editing a least two more volumes of The Anthology of Occult Wisdom for Datura Press
• writing for the DC Bureau of the Pagan News Collective (capitalwitch.com)
• starting spiritual studies at Reflections Mystery School
• resurrecting Baltimore Pagan Pride Day
• supporting my favorite Pagan projects like the New Alexandrian Library in Delaware and the newly opened Open Hearth Pagan Community Center in DC.
• going to the Sacred Space Conference in February and Between the Worlds in December

...and every single day finding joy in:

• being an obsessive dog mom
• creating more intimate and meaningful connections with people
• spending more time with my humongous, crazy-in-a-good-way Italian family
• getting fit and healthy
• creating a welcoming, loving, magickal home
• finding the love for myself that only I can provide
  

Oh, and that full-time job I start this week.

It's a lot but the wheels are already in motion on most of it and it's already feeding my body, mind, and spirit in ways I never knew possible. I am living in positive abundance and there is more where that came. I wish the same for all of you.

Current Life Regression

Many of us have experienced past life regression as a method of healing, spiritual knowledge, etc. I have been part of a group regression and I have gotten information about my past lives during certain readings. Apparently, I have been an a Abbess in several past lives and while that is interesting and if I think about it, it could explain some things, like knowing every responsorial in a Catholic mass with no education and limited exposure in this lifetime. Nice party trick, er sort of, but I'm not to sure what I can do with it in this lifetime.

For the past several months, I have been doing a sort of "current life" regression. Going backward to try and reevaluate experiences and information from my past to see what impact they had on me. Knowing what I know now, would it have had the same effect on me, would I have made the same choice? The answer in most cases is no, because I am ostensibly wiser and have more knowledge and experience to base my reaction. The value is in asking "why?" What would my reaction be now? What wounds need to be healed? How can this experience or knowledge serve me better?

Looking at my self and my life from a different angle has been quite eye-opening. I always claimed to be quite self-actualized and I am usually the first person to call me on my sh*t, but the change of perspective has been in an interesting journey so far--and I'm only just hitting the high school years (ey, ey, ey). I've noticed an immediate change in some of my perspectives and have been able to find forgiveness and healing where sometimes I didn't know there was a huge wound. I have recognized patterns and removed myself from relationships and situations that don't serve me. I've also been able to recognize and often relive the experiences I denied my self in my younger days because I was more worried about the societal over-culture and what I "should" do.

To that end, it's also been a joy to rediscover the part of me that was a free-spirit. You know before student loans, mortgages, and adult responsibility came to be. I still am the young woman who moved from a small town of a few thousand people to Manhattan not knowing anyone because...why not? I can get a job there, right? I am also the girl who went abroad to Australia and wound up spending six weeks backpacking by myself through the Outback and the along coast and Great Barrier Reef, sleeping in hostels and on overnight buses, just because I was there and it could be done.

One day I may have an opportunity to do a past live regression and it will be interesting to see what I learn, but for now I will stick to what I can learn from and change in this one.