Blog

As humans, we all want to achieve and be successful. We want to gain that nod of approval from our parents, our peers, our bosses, our society. We yearn to hear the 'well done' - two words that many of us crave like a sugar high. So with that as the goal, we go through life looking for the big one, the big whatever our dreams led us to reach for, and in doing so and being only oriented towards hitting the jackpot, we miss the little teapots along our way.

I have missed many teapots myself and would have continued doing so if I did not realize that the greatest joys we can have, our most cherished moments were in the journey and not the destination. 

Let me tell you my story: 
I have had a curiosity about a property that was located on the outskirts of my small village for as long as I can remember. There was something about it. It drew me. It was a small white house, nestled under a hill. It was landscaped with fruit trees and large mahogany trees. The front fence line had a casuarina hedge that hid the house so that you had to position your head just so to have a clear view of it. I saw my name in lights across the front fascia board. It was to be mine.

Over time, as life happened to me, I soon forgot this dream and would only remember the little house whenever I happened to walk or drive by the location until, during a meditation session, an image of that house, the same house that I had dreamed about 40-plus years ago came fresh into my mind. Luckily I was at the point of my spiritual awakening where I knew it meant something and was worth pursuing. Some investigations led me to find out that my dream house was for sale. 

I had neither the money nor the credit to purchase it but that did not stop me from envisioning myself as its proud owner. I would daydream about it and have pleasant thoughts, I would daydream about it and have anxious moments - suppose someone buys it before I can, suppose I am never able to acquire it? Where would that amount of money come from? I would never make it by the meager efforts of my 9–5…..

I supposed myself into states of depression until I decided to stop. The Universe had heard my request; I was to believe that it was done.

The funny thing is that even though I let it go, it did not release me and little things started happening. Little teapots.

I met a real estate agent that firmly believes in the law of attraction, teapot. I got the opportunity to tour the property, teapot. I was able to vividly imagine myself in the kitchen and bedroom, painting on the balcony and doing yoga in the room I had already designated my quiet space, teapot. I knew an architect who would do a wonderful job in renovating this house, teapot. I got a discounted price from an appraiser, teapot.

I had all these small exhilarating moments that would have been lost if I had only continued looking at the end game.

My simple message is to look for the teapots, they may even come as little teacups but enjoy the journey to your manifestation knowing that the Universe has your back, your desires have been registered and the Forces are working on their realization.

“Do yourself the favour and get out of the way, you are slowing down progress to your ultimate success.”
This was the sage piece of advice that came to me during one of my daily moments of connecting with The One Consciousness in quiet meditation. The first time I heard it I was taken aback, who said that and what were they saying? This guidance was totally contrary to what I was taught to be true – work hard to be successful, by the sweat of my brow I was to eat bread, there is no reward without supreme effort and sacrifice….those were the words I expected to hear, not get out of the way! So like the all-knowing human that I was, I ignored good counsel and continued doing what I was doing, using the definition of madness as my mantra until I heard it again. Okay, this time I paused, perhaps there was something for me to examine here. Why the same message again? So like the smart-arse human I was, I decided to cut a deal, I will give up halfway, I will get one foot out of the way and watch to see what would happen. Of course, nothing much changed, at least not in the time frame that I had set to see obvious results, so I put my other foot back on the path and continued where I left off- going nowhere at high speed.

I think I was lucky to hear the message the third time, ‘get out of the way’. This time I stopped completed, coming to the realization that perhaps this was serious business and I ought to get out of the way before I was shoved out of the way. My mind went back to the beginning and the painful experiences that triggered my spiritual journey. I got the nudges to wake up but refused to take heed and the end result was a series of shock waves and happenstances that upended my life as I knew it, I had no intention of being the proud recipient of that treatment again.

I stopped and asked, “Are you talking to me?” There was a resounding chorus of yeses from universal forces. And so, like the only-learn-the-hard-way human I was, I made the decision to move aside, to get out of my own way so that success and happiness can truly be mine.

My story is not unique. I know you have experienced something similar. You have heard the voice, you have seen evidence of your efforting but like the human you are, like the humans we all are, we want to do it our way, and all we end up doing it achieving one royal fuck up.

When universal forces ask us to get out of the way, we get out of the way. Our job is done when we ask for it, when we actively visualize the becoming of it, and finally when we believe it is done. Once these steps are completed, we move aside and let the Universe deliver our requests to us.

Let us begin to unlearn all these false beliefs that we are the author and finisher of our fate. When we connect with source energy, tap into our intuition and follow instructions, we gain success at a rate that our human selves could not have dreamt to achieve on its own. The ones who achieve lasting success in their lifetime, those people that we look at with awe and envy, they did not do the human thing, they got out of the way on the first call.

Meditation is an activity that more of us are getting into. Whatever the reasons for our seeking out this practice is of little consequence, the most important thing is that we found it, started and we are well on our way to nowhere.

Meditation allows me to sit in the now, to connect with the greater part of who I am, and to be present. It asks me to put aside all of my troubles from yesterday and my fears of tomorrow and just sit.

I saw the look pass across your face, one of chagrin and a bit of pain because you have been doing this meditation thing for a while now and as far as you are concerned, it is not working. Your definition of 'not working' is the constant presence of thoughts - good thoughts and bad thoughts that pass by just because you have a thinking mind. On more than one occasion, you check out of the twenty minutes you had set for yourself because you were unable to relax, you were unable to still your thoughts, you did not connect to anything outside of your head. You failed. Frustration mounted. You are seriously thinking of putting aside this meditation thing.

Before you do, I would like to encourage you to try one other trick. I use the work trick because over time I learned that I needed a way to 'outsmart' the thinking mind, not that I was trying to stop it from doing what it does because I cannot, but that I was using that same thinking mind to work for me.

Here is what I do: Once I have settled into a nice comfortable position -  (comfort is key, you can never relax as long as the physical body is not experiencing ease), I relax from head to the toe with my eyes closed, allowing my breathing to settle down into a smooth, clean rhythm, and then I begin to notice my thoughts as they come rushing in. They were patiently waiting for this moment. Now that they had me all to themselves, they intended to hijack those same twenty minutes I had set aside to meditate. 

Thoughts of the chores I have to complete.
Thoughts of my children and how they are doing.
Thoughts of another day being unemployed.
Thoughts of my mother-in-law coming by for dinner that evening.
Thoughts of the state of our planet.
Thoughts of not meditating because I was having thoughts.

Empty random thoughts that attempt to unsettle the calm I was trying to broker…….
And now the trick: when each thought comes, I show gratitude for it;

I am grateful for a strong, sprightly body that can still perform my chores without pain.
Thankful for having children that love and respect themselves.
Happy that even though I am unemployed, my Maslow's pyramid is still quite full.
Pleasantly indebted to my mother-in-law for creating my marvelous spouse.
Appreciative that our planet is still supporting me, and awaiting my return to enjoy its beauty.
Pleased that I have thoughts, that my brain is functioning and my mind is still active.

And before I know it, that feeling of gratitude builds and courses through me, raising my vibration and separating my energy body from my physical body, and I am transported into the welcoming embrace of the One Consciousness. Here, thoughts are of no consequence, thoughts are not even noticed and it was not that they disappeared but that I had traveled to nowhere.

Despite the saying that words cannot begin to adequately describe many of our human emotions, there is one thing that words provide - comfort. There is a strange reassurance, a cathartic release when words are put to paper in an attempt to describe a feeling, be it love, hate, pain, despair, anger, loss, grief, happiness, or bliss. It is as if the words become wings and allow the emotions bubbling up inside, whatever they might be, positive or negative, to be released. Words provide the loud whooshing sounds that come about when a solid attempt is made to articulate the emotion.

For me, I have been struggling with that emotion called love, or what I think is love. We say we are in love when we feel happy with a person when being with that special someone makes us feel part of a whole when there is comfort and familiarity and some seeming level of reciprocation, great or small. We chalk it up to love. We sing we smile, we dance, we write about it. It is reflected in the sparkle in our eyes, the bounce in our step, the glow on our faces. We say it's love.

I do not know what I did to love, but love has been running away from me for as long as I can remember. I recall the first boy I was in love with, he was a shy one, even though I remain convinced that he had some feelings for me, he just took to the streets and went running. And this started the trend in my life, loves come, or so it appears, it hangs around a while and then runs away. It took a while before it dawned on me that love was not running but that I was chasing it away.

Many of us chase love away and then complain that we cannot find it. We despair that it did not come packaged just so. There was no big bow, it was not even gaily wrapped in festive paper. It came in a wet paper bag. It came tired and despondent, it came broken and torn, it came for help and for healing. We stare in disdain and declare that we did not sign up for that job. We are in the market for something flashier, richer, something that looked good and smelled good.

So we let go of the best thing that could have happened to us. We did not allow ourselves to see past the wrapping and notice the gem laying inside, warm, glowing, welcoming, giving, and loving.

And as time slowly passes, we are left sitting on the sidewalk of life, watching love running away from us while we shout behind it, "Where are you going? Come back with my happiness…."

I am mending a broken heart. Again. It has been broken three times by the same person. The band-aid from the second shatter was hardly off when it got broken again. You look at me in consternation and asked, “Why?” I have no answer. I am a fool for love and a fool when I am in love, making me twice the fool with experiences to share. Take notes.
1. Being a fool in love is beautiful
Being in love is one of the most beautiful human experiences that one can have. It provides for a connection that feels so viscerally real that we get lost in the emotion. We are happier. We feel good and we look the part. The sky is bluer, the birds sing sweeter and the air smells fresher. We feel whole and complete, part of the great universe when we are with this person. We see our being forever into forever. We can climb mountains together and travel to dark valleys as one. We are conquerors, lovers, friends. We are fools in love.
2. Being a fool in love hurts
Wait, what happened, why does the sky appear a little dull, did that bird’s song sound a bit off-key, what is that dank smell in the air? We are in the fall of love. We fell into it and now we are falling out. The ride was a beautiful, rough tumble that now has us puking all over ourselves from an upset stomach, a broken heart, our eyes so filled with tears that they can water the Gobi Desert. We cannot believe the us, the beautiful us, the forever us, been wiped away as if it never was. We are experiencing the low that followed the high. We were fools in love.
3. Being a fool in love is foolish but do it again.
Great pain allows for great joy. It is a basic law of nature, the ying-yang of our existence. How can we know love when we never knew hate, joy when we never experienced pain, bliss when there was no despair?
So when I experience the low blows of a love lost, when I run to the medicine cabinet for plasters for my broken heart, I do so knowing that I was brave enough to be foolish, human enough to love, and foolish enough to do it all over again.

Some time ago I asked one of my spirit guides about weight loss…..Okay, Stick a pin! You are asking, “spirit what?” For ease of understanding, you have my permission to replace ‘spirit guides’ with ‘subconscious mind’ or ‘intuition’ or any other word that makes you comfortable but the end result is the same.

So, let’s proceed with my tale.

She...ehem…is female and I am female so you know our conversations will eventually get around to body weight and men. My guide, Corinne is a herbalist and I met her over a year ago when she came to me in a dream. Have you met any of your guides or have you taken the time to connect with your subconscious mind, your intuition, that knowing part of you? If not, why not? You are missing out on one of the most powerful ways to get in contact with Source Energy.

Corinne is always dressed in long white cotton shifts and she has a strong, slim, lithe body shape and one evening during my meditation, I asked her what can I do to lose the 10 pounds of Corona pumpkin bread that have been hanging around my midsection. She did not answer right away. They almost never do, well unless they chose to.

Very early the next morning something woke me from my sleep. It was a voice, yet not a voice but I knew it was her. She told me to add lemon juice to my morning water (I usually drink about 4 glasses before my cup of herbal tea) and that I should add a sprig of rosemary to my herbal brew. I bolt right up out of bed. I had rosemary from my herb garden and a few lemons that Miss Gen Z (you have met her before) was threatening to turn into some lemonade. I followed my guide’s instructions and two weeks later, I slipped into an old work skirt that I had hidden in the back of my closet because it no longer fit me.

My experience may not be your experience. What I refer to as my spirit guide, you might call science or prior knowledge, what I chalk up to divine intervention, you may just accept as pure luck but it matters not. Those of us who believe are not here to convince you. We come to relate, to share, and to encourage a connection to the greater part of who we are.
But I promise you, the day you decide to tap in, your life will never be the same.

I am planning a BBQ Throw Down at Esoteric Gardens. The intention is to invite family and persons in my community to enjoy some good food and conversation. We plan to develop by then, a signature sauce and a flatbread that would reflect the essence of what we are trying to do — ‘healing people with food’. The condiments will be made from fresh herbs and spices grown right there in the garden and we are hoping that with every taste of the BBQ, persons will experience the energy healing vibrations of food.

One of the first things I plan to do is to produce a giant placard and put it next to the gate. On it, I would have lettered four simple words, ‘Lay Your Burdens Down’. I would be asking persons to do just that.

We allow ourselves to be too burdened by life’s problems. We take on our troubles, those of our children, our friends, and our neighbours, thinking that we can carry them all. All we end up doing is bearing a lot of pain and suffering, much of which is not our own. So when I ask persons to lay their burdens down, I wonder how many would comply? How many would look at the words and actually unpin their stresses and leave the bundle at the gate? I will assure them that they can pick them back up afterward if they chose to or leave them to be scooped up by Divine Forces and carried away like unwanted trash.

It is amazing the relief that would come about for that moment in time. It is the same sense of release felt during meditation where we concentrate on the now, leaving our past smouldering somewhere in the past and our future where it ought to be, in the future. Where I come from, our culture does not allow for persons to sit and meditate for a few minutes each day but I am betting on them understanding the phrase “Lay Your Burdens Down”. So I intend to start there, with something that is easy to wrap one’s head around. Their open invitation would be to place all burdens at the gate and accept the true healing that lies within.

Where do you go to lay down your burdens? What is your practice? How do you connect with the greater part of who you are?

If you do not, I invite you to find yourself a place. Create an imaginary boundary if you have to, and vow to yourself that every time you walk through the gate of your safe zone, you intend to lay your burdens at the entrance.

Do this as often as you can and I guarantee you that one day you will leave your quiet space, walk right past, forgetting to pick them back up.

The life of the creative can sometimes be difficult, like swinging on a pendulum, one time up, another time down, and even other times flat on the ground because the chain broke. There are occasions when ideas come like mosquitoes at dusk and others there is such a drought that questions start forming in the mind, “Why am I doing this? What is the objective of my writing, painting, drawing, sculpting, creating music? Where is this taking me? When will I see success, if ever?” And with the four W’s covered, we move onto another letter in the alphabet.

It is not easy being a creative person nor is it easy hiding one’s creativity for fear of whatever, rejection, failure, or even success. Many of us get so caught up in the highs and lows of what we do and share that when rejection comes, when failure comes, when the success does not come as quickly as we expect it, we get morose, sometimes even depressed and these feelings take us through that downward spiral of despair.

I say go with the flow in a detached way. When something good happens, it’s good, when something less than desirable happens, it’s still good. It is easier to say than to achieve, I know, I have been there. When I first writing my stories, they barely got a second glance. I posted a new piece every day and the only reads I got were those from my friends to whom I had sent a link. I reached a point where I wondered how much longer would I be able to continue speaking from my heart into the void. Then I got an inspiring thought from Ms. Gen Z, I am convinced that my spirit guides speak through her quite often.

If you do not know who Ms. Gen Z is, then please read about her here.

She said to me, “Mother….(I know that tone. Whenever she starts with Mother, I know she is parenting mode) why are you worried about today? You are creating a legacy. What you do and share now will be available forever, long after you die, people 100 years from now will still be able to search the internet and find your work.”

Brilliant Child.

That bit of advice was like a massive push for me and I went up, up, and away and my pendulum is still traveling upwards with no thought of its downward swing.
I would like the words of this Gen Z to be words for us to live by. For creatives out there, struggling to feel relevant now, to be heard now, to be successful now, I say keep on creating, keep on letting what is inside of you come out, keep on sharing your talent, no your tale, with the world, it will be there forever and ever into eternity.

I am unapologetically Caribbean. I was born and raised in the West Indies and still live here to this day. Quick geography lesson, the Caribbean proper is that land space, mostly comprised of relatively small islands, running from The Bahamas in the north, tucked just below the Florida Keys, to Suriname, part of the South American continent, in the south. This region is famous, among other things for sun, rum, and reggae music.

Talking about music, I am blessed to be living during a time when several musical legends became world-famous for their craft. There is, of course, the late great Robert Nester Marley of the ’70s and ’80s and then the modern-day musical Cinderella in the name of Robyn Rihanna Fenty. They were successful in putting the music and culture of the Caribbean center stage and on who’s shoulders young, (or not so young), up-and-coming fellow gifted Caribbean Islanders can stand. For a region minuscule in landmass and even tinier in population when compared to countries like India and the USA, we have brought blessings upon blessings upon blessings to countless souls through our music, our talents, and our creativity.

I did not intend for this post to be an Ode to the Caribbean and by now I would have expected have already seg-wayed into an inspirational or spiritual message. But be it as it may, I say Cheers to my country and to my region. We have long since Come in from the Cold.

So today, as I sit at my laptop, trying to make this message universal, trying to share some tidbit of knowledge or inspiration, I am flummoxed — there is nothing inside me but a strong pride for my region and for my people, a gratefulness to have been born in this time and space, and security in the knowledge that Every Little Thing is Gonna be Alright.

One Love.

I recently had a conversation with my Gen Z daughter. She is both a source of inspiration and consternation to me and I have written many stories about our chats, our strong debates, and our quiet moments. Today a conversation on happiness ensued. Welcome to our world:

Me, while putting together a large green vegetable salad in our tiny kitchen: "I am so happy, I don’t know why but I am feeling happy. This is the happiest I have been in the last few years."

Gen Z, on the couch, gorging on some Netflix-and-single chilling: "Really?"

Me: "Yes…..For no reason that I can put my finger on… The last time I remember feeling like this was when I used to work in my plant nursery, puttering around all day, with the sun on my skin and my hands deep in the soil."

Gen Z: "Oh really, so what about….O never mind for we will begin a huge debate and I am busy doing something."

Me, pushing the envelope, perhaps wanting to come out of my happiness bubble: "What were you going to say?"

Gen Z, sighing and turning towards me: "I was going to ask if you did not feel happy when you gave birth to me?"

Me, sighing louder than Gen Z: "That was different. Of course, I was happy. I was ecstatic. I looked at your tiny face, your 12 fingers, and 10 toes and felt blessed beyond measure."

(Yes she was born with 12 fingers, I was born with 11; we both still have the scars from the removal of the extras.)

Me, continuing: "The happiness I am referring to now is one that did not come from some grand event like your birth. I was not referring to the times when we are happy because something great happened in our lives, like a graduation, first job, first house, first car, first wedding…..I am talking about a happiness, the cause of which cannot really be determined. It starts somewhere deep in the belly and bubbles upwards and outwards, touching on all the parts of our physical and energy bodies, creating an unexplained sense of well-being……"

Gen Z, cutting me off, she had already detected my mounting that infamous soapbox: "Ok, Ok, Mother… I hear you…. I understand. I hope that one day I can find a sourceless source of happiness like yours."

I left the salad making and went to give her a quick hug. She eye-rolled me, turned away, and went back to her show, I went back to my cooking. The feeling stayed with me the entire day. I felt blessed and abundant. I was grateful. This type of happiness is the kind that money cannot buy nor can anyone steal from us. It stems from being satisfied in the now, grateful for our blessings, accepting of our trials, and giving thanks in it all.

My friend called me yesterday. It was a pleasant surprise since we do not communicate very often. Every once in a while we check in on each other to make sure that all is well and life continues to be bearable, even if not great. We knew each other from our university days when everything was everything and our friendship had withstood the test of many years. In order to protect the innocent, I am going to call him Warren, (actually Warren is his given name, so I guess he’s no innocent). So why did he call me? He was checking up on my emotional and mental well-being after reading a few of my blog stories. I gave a full belly laugh. It was the best laugh I had that day.

“So are you going through a phase or something?” Warren asked with concern in his voice. “You are writing about spirituality and things, …..so you okay nah*? You don’t sound like the person I know.”

I giggled. I remembered the person he knew. But that was so long ago. Are we to remain the same? What does that say about our growth and expansion?

“No, it is not a phase and I have never been better,” I assured him.

His voice remained somewhat doubtful but as our conversation progressed, he became less anxious and more relaxed. I assumed he had made the decision that I was A-OK. Well, I am A, B, and C OK. I have never been more OK in my life. I feel happy and contented, blessed, and fulfilled. I discovered the secret of being.

I am sure many of you can relate to this story. When we start on our path of awakening to who we really and why we came into this physical space at this time and in this place, a light goes on inside it and it shines so brightly that it gets noticed. It reminds me of a firefly. Have you ever seen a firefly’s light when it is pitch black? It cannot be hidden and so it draws other fireflies to it. So too does the light that emanates from us. It shines through what we do and what we say. It shows up in our words and our art. It manifests in our love and appreciation. It illuminates our world and that of others around us.

Those who knew us well and see the change may get concerned. Those who knew us not and see us are curiously drawn to whatever it is. You will hear the questions and see the stares.

So you okay, nah*?





* nah or nuh, colloquial expression used in the Caribbean to mean ‘or not’.

I went to my garden early this morning. I was hoping to pick my salad greens and bush tea leaves while the droplets from the early morning rain were still on the plants. It was supposed to be a quick pick and go. Today was Saturday and there was a lot of not to do. I did not see any monkeys in the nearby trees so I guessed they had beaten me to the ripe sugar apple and almost ripe avocado I was looking at from the evening before. I shrugged. So what? I will get another time.

Anyway, I remembered I had to check on a new Flamboyant tree that my friend had planted for me yesterday. He had built a sturdy pen around it to keep out some goats that nearby. I was pleased knowing that my plant would someday grow into a beautiful flowering tree. As I neared the spot I saw a couple of butterflies busy looking for the best plant to lay their eggs on. As I walked closer, my eyes widened in amazement, it was like an entire field of butterflies had landed on the nearby flowering weeds. They rose like a cloud, fluttering, and dancing when they realized my presence. I felt a part of it all, the beginning and the end, the now and the then. It was beautiful.

Some time ago I wrote about finding magic in the mundane.
This was magic.

Ode to the hummingbird — A poem


I watch you flit from flower to flower
I time your appearance by the morning sunlight.
You’re small in body,
But immense in majesty.
Your brilliantly lit plume
Of shades of blue
Sits atop your tiny head,
Fiercely Defiant.
As if to say, I have dominion over all I survey.
You say, flower be blessed by my presence.
I watch you and I learn that smallness is mental.

The soul and the spirit,
Willpower and self-confidence,
Determination and intuitiveness,
Persistence and perseverance,
Translates into a bigness
That cannot be defined or diminished
By the small physical space I occupy in the here and now.

And so I declare,
Life be blessed.
Universe be blessed.
All humanity be blessed
By my presence.

I spent part of my morning decluttering my tiny house. I had been thinking about it for a while but did not get around to it until a mouse decided to nibble through one of my window sieves and come inside in search of food. I was most annoyed. Now I had to repair a screen, find the mouse and check all the other windows to make sure their screens were intact. 
What botheration for a Sunday morning! 

So to kill two birds with one stone, I took the opportunity to begin the process of getting rid of stuff not used in a long time. I threw away old papers and books, old office supplies, old handbags, and shoes, and a few other items the memories of which I preferred not to entertain. I cleared out those spaces that did nothing more than took up space. It was cathartic. Though I did not finish the process on that day, I still felt like a burden was lifted from my shoulders just by this single dump fest.

As I sat down later in the evening with some tea and a wandering mind, I got to thinking, "what was the real benefit of the mouse invasion? What was the lesson to be learned and shared?" 

So now I ask, "what will be your mouse? What is going to have to be that trigger to get you to clear out the dark spaces in your life?"

Is that space your job?
Your partner?
Your friends?
Your childhood pain and trauma?
Your past mistakes?
Your lack mentality?
The list never ends. 

Let us graciously thank the mouse that moved in. It taking up residence was the catalyst that encouraged us to enter those spaces, to clear out the rubble, making room for our lighter, brighter, newly decluttered life. 



p.s. I caught the mouse two days later by way of a glue trap!

There are many times in our lives when we have to take two steps backward to move forward. These steps sometimes allow for healing from whatever trauma that resulted in us wanting to take that forward step in the first place.

A case in point is me. I have been trying to get over a breakup for a while now. It is not that I have not been trying but you see this thing called love, it has no respect for person, place, or thing. It will creep up on you like a thief in a cemetery and before you know it, you are shouting from the rooftop and singing at the moon, “love, love, beautiful love.”
in my case, the love grew, blossomed, and then expired, leaving me with a broken heart and shattered emotions. For a while, I refused to acknowledge that the last note of the song was sung. The choir had removed their robes and left the chapel.

I see you nodding your head in commiseration. You feel me. You understand. You have also done the heartbreak thing. You gave and received your fair share.
And like me, you decide to take the step forward into a new life, a new you, a new forever. But before you did, you paused, looked over your shoulder, and took two steps back. Not far back enough to go begging your former lover for redemption but far back enough to relive the bittersweet memories of the relationship.

You may have returned to your favourite restaurant or hiking trail.
You may have re-watched your favourite movies and cried long tears.
You may have relived the feel of her lips on yours.

It is all fine, all good.

Take the backward steps you need but use them as the accelerator for your onward, forward motion.

It has been raining basically non-stop for three days now. The weather report explained that a tropical wave was passing. It was not the wave that you grab a surfboard for, it was the kind that we usually welcome because it brings much-needed rain for many of our drought thirsty islands. Climate Change has done a number on us. A few years ago, for the first time in my island’s history, we had to put a water rationing programme in place. Many of us were shocked, taken off-guard. We always thought that we had water in abundant supply. Our Amerindian name is Liamuiga, if you please, which means ‘fertile land’. There were always deep, fertile soil to cultivate and regular rain to water our crops. We were blessed on this tiny island. Indeed, we were.

We have been having less and less rain and when it does fall, it comes with such intensity that in many cases, the end result is flooding in some areas and landslides in others. At one point, a multi-million-dollar house slipped along a steep slope causing enough damage to the property to make the insurer's eyes water.

So, as I sit at my bedroom window in the dark, watching the rain fall, the Christmas palms swaying gently in the breeze, the blossoms of the ubiquitous yellow bell shrub dancing and bobbing to the sound of the raindrops, I felt a peace, a calm that I ought not to be feeling given the chaos that seems to be unfolding around us. But it was there nevertheless. It was a deep-seated feeling of well-being and gratitude and a belief that things are unfolding as they should.

The Universe never makes mistakes. When we are faced with troubles, there is a lesson there for growth. When we are faced with moments of joy, there is a lesson there for thanksgiving. We take life as it comes, the good times, the bad times, and those times in between.

We show gratitude.
We accept our blessing with grace.
We say thanks for the rain.

The Universe always answers our questions whenever we ask. The key is in being able to detect when an answer comes. I think this the part that has been difficult for many of us. We are not good readers of the signs and synchronicities, so with heads looking up towards the sky, we wait for the sound of trumpets, the heavens to open, and for abundance to pour down on us like confetti. It does not work like that. Universal Forces are not on show; they are not here for our entertainment. They speak to us softly, while quietly leading us along the path to where we need to go but we have to be ready to hear.

I have always been a poor listener and am just now developing my skills in improved listening. I am a talker. I talk a lot, too much. I think I was born talking. I remember my school reports always had ‘talks too much’ in the column for the teacher’s comments. Over time, I have come to realize is that to hear Universal Forces, I had to be silent, I could not be talking and listening at the same time. This type of multitasking proved ineffective. Now I realize that it is amazing when we do sit down to listen, the answers that are provided.

Let me tell you a story:

I have been trying to grow my online business for a while now. My hope is that most of the proceeds from sales of my products will support the work of Esoteric Garden’s and Lizzie’s Nest. My ultimate goal is to help persons to find themselves through food, meditation, and seeking spirituality and I do not want persons in need to have to pay for any of the services we provide, ergo our online store.

You know that you are on your path when things start happening for you as if someone was waving a magic wand and there has been some wand-waving for the past year or so as we attempted to get Lizzie’s nest off the ground. We have now reached the point of trying to generate more traffic to our site. I asked the Universe about it, I am no marketing expert, so how were we going to support our work?

The funny thing is that Divine Intelligence knows what we need even before we do and I have been noticing that guidance comes long before I actually see what is to be done about it. It’s like my actions are on delay. I ask. The answer comes. I look at the answer and exclaim, “what in goodness’ name is that?” I ask again. The answer comes again. I look at the answer again and say. “ahh, why didn’t you show me this before?” The Universe smiles.

This can and does happen to all of us but we have to be open to guidance. We have to be ready to act. We have to be brave and bold. We have to trust. We have to have faith and believe. We have to have that knowing that things are always working out for us.

We have to listen.

I learn a lot from my Gen X daughter. Every once in a while she comes up with a nugget of wisdom that makes me pause and reflect. She has been saying something for a while that surely reflects the thinking of persons her age and busy people in general. She would hit me with the: ‘ain’t nobody got time for that.’

And I agree with her especially when it comes to reading. As much as many of us enjoy reading, on a given day there can be so much material to consume in one’s news feed and reading list that ain’t nobody got time for long-drawn-out pieces that circle around the point like an airplane trying to land in a thick fog.

I confess that I would scroll through the articles in my reading list and check for two things, first the title, and then the reading time. If the headline grabs me and the length is 4 minutes or less, I take a read. If it is over my self-imposed time limit, then there must be something about that story that I really, really, well really, want to know about for me to click on it.

People, as interested as they might be in what you have to say, just do not have the time to wind their way through your musings as you take your dear time getting to the crux of the matter.

There is a saying that goes, ‘out of the mouths of babes and sucklings comes forth truth’, so if you are aspiring for your writings to be read by busy people, or even some lazy people, perhaps it's time to dial back on the musings and be more ruthless in the editing, ’cause ain’t nobody got time for that.

I wrote a few days ago about reacquainting myself with the love I had for jazz music. My Gen Xer heard what I was playing and asked, “What elevator music is that?” It was meant to be derisive, for, after all, it was not to her taste.
I simply responded, “what is elevator music to some, is stairway music to heaven for others.” She was not impressed by my smartness so it was a shrug and an eye-roll and she huffed away. Lucky me, I was back to my undisturbed happy space.

Have you identified your stairway to heaven? What do you do that puts you in that feel-good place? Because you know, once in that space, only good things can happen to you. There is no chance to experience negative emotions because you have, in that present moment, raised your vibrations so high to where neither thieves nor robbers can find and steal.
As you ride the elevator called life, what music is piping through your speakers?



If you enjoyed this article and would like to read more, please consider following me and subscribing to our email list. We share news on our happenings and happenstances.

I meditate and then sit down to write my blog, whatever the message, that’s the message for that day. Most times the words come out quickly on the page. They flow and then end, all by themselves. I then leave them to gel a while I find something else to do. Sometime later I go back to the piece and by the time I edit and post, I would have forgotten almost everything.

For me, I almost never go back to blogs I have written. I do not feel the need but on the rare occasions that I do, I almost always ask myself, “Did I write that?”
There are times in life when we are guided to say and do things as if some force outside ourselves is controlling the action.

We deliver messages.
We share our life stories.
We expose our hurts and pains and healings.
We come into ourselves and discover our connection to that One Consciousness.
We do it through art, music, dance, speech, writings.

Some may call it our talent, I call it our tale.

We create,
We are part of a process that is not for us or by us but comes through us.

I usually meditate before I begin writing. It gives me an opportunity to connect to my spirit guides and get messages that turn into pieces of work that I can then share with my reading audience. If you have read these first two lines and went, “what the mother…”, let me put it in another less esoteric form: I sit quietly and tap into my creative side for ideas to write as a blog post.

So back to the story.
I have just started writing on Medium and been reading the works of fellow writers, most of whom I have been impressed by to the point of being quite intimidated. This led me to ask myself if I was sure that I am supposed to be in this space.

Having reached the point where I have gotten a few followers, this has now begun to colour my thoughts, influencing the topics I am wanting to write about. I found myself asking new questions that I never asked before. “Would this be a good topic? Do you think this would be understood? Is this too far out there? Would persons resonate with my talking about growing up on a tiny Caribbean island? Should I use the headline analyzer app? What about your spelling, should I not write ‘neighbor’ instead of ‘neighbour’? Who cares about your spiritual awakening, nobody wants to be preached at.” I even began my meditation with half-formed ideas of what would be a good piece to interest my medium readers. Fortunately, my spirit guides have been indulging me. They understood that being in a new space, I was as excited as a puppy that they have been allowing me some free rein in what I formulate, write, and share.

Well, not this morning.

I got side-eyed by Elijah. He is the one who usually passes ideas to me. I knew what that look meant. It was telling me that I was straying from my purpose. My writing was not about me but about my sharing the experience of spirituality and spirituality awakening. Follower or no follower, fan, or no fan, even if a fan turns into an air conditioner, I had a job to do.
I humbly took heed. I was guilty as charged. Having read so many pieces by other medium writers, I saw all of the well-curated images (I did not even know what was Unsplash) that went with their articles. I saw the catchy headlines and play on words. I saw the quotes from great minds, dead and alive. I saw how they sometimes used these sage words to support an idea or probably to increase the length of a piece. It all seemed to be working for them, so why not give it a try? I was just about to start searching google for some as well and that was when I got the eye!

So I remain the humble scribe, the chastised child, with the clear knowing that there will be those who would understand what I say, those who would be merely curious about what I write about, and those who would benefit from the experiences I share.

I have been charged to continue in my authenticity, writing the messages as given to me, baring my soul, exposing my weaknesses, and sharing my joys and my pain as I try to reach as many as possible.



If you find what I write about is of interest to you, please consider following me on Medium @trudiepalmer. I upload new stories every day.

I grew up in a time and space where singers like Gregory Isaacs and Bob Marley rules the airwaves.
I can never hear one of their songs without going back to my childhood, growing up poor in an economically depressed community (so called by the sociologists), each parent looking at their child and praying for a way out for them.

So this one morning, when I heard Jamaican superstar, Gregory Isaac’s “I don’t wanna be lonely tonight” blasting from the speakers of a passing car, I was thrown back to that time in my life.

My upbringing was poor but I had a vivid imagination and I loved books. They were my solace and kept me from many lonely nights and days. Those days were bittersweet. The bitterness was from the feeling of lack that everyone seemed to embody. For many families, there was never enough to go around. If you had school shoes, perhaps you did not have a school bag. If there was meat in your food, there was nothing to drink. The sweetness came from the pure simplicity of life.

My mother and stepfather ensured that my brother and I never went hungry. We had a garden and raised sheep or chickens or rabbits. There was food. There were clothes, at least a couple of dresses and pants and there was shelter. What else was there to want, really?

This was growing up in the ’70s and ‘80s on a small Caribbean Island.

Sometimes we get the opportunity to go full circle. We grow up and get the chance to look at the lives we are living and we realize it still has remained bittersweet.
The bitter coming from the low-grade feeling of unhappiness that pervades even though we have all the material possession we want, the sweet from a deep-seated knowledge that we don’t have to be lonely tonight or any other night.

We have ourselves, our inner being, our angels, guides, and ancestors. We have Source Energy. We have life, and hope and our dreams.

What else is there to want, really?

I am going to throw the popular adage of life and lemons on its head by encouraging us to suck on those lemons instead of making lemonade.
Life is life and life would not be lived if we did not get tossed a few lemons now and again. Sometimes we get them quite infrequently, other times it feels like we are standing in the middle of a citrus orchard, being bombarded from left to right with one problem or the other.

How quickly can we make lemonade, really? When tossed the lemon, we need a knife, a squeezer, sugar, water, and a pitcher to hold it in, plus some essence and Angostura Bitters, if you, like me would be making it Caribbean style.

There are times when we need to just sit and suck on them. Take the juice and pulp into our mouths, pucker at the sour taste and swallow. We know the role that vitamin C plays in keeping our cells healthy.

“Lemons are high in vitamin C, folate, potassium, flavonoids and compounds called limonins,” said Alissa Rumsey, a New York City-based registered dietitian, certified strength and conditioning specialist and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.”
(Source Livescience.com)

So we get all of that without the added sugar!
How can we translate this into building spiritual immunity? We look at lemons as the vicissitudes of life, the problems big and small that come our way. We get to decide how we deal with these problems.
Do we rant and rave about how unfair life is?
Do we run around helplessly looking for solutions in all the wrong places?
Do we curse the gods and die?

Or do we decide this time to suck on those lemons?

We face the pain, the trauma, the upheavals and dig deep and connect to the Source within us that is always there, ready to comfort and to reassure us that things are always working out for us even when it absolutely does not appear to be the case.

When we suck on those lemons we boost our spiritual immunity. Pain makes us connect, makes us realize that there is something greater than us.
Sometimes it leads to our spiritual awakening, other times it stimulates us to do more and be more, without the added sugar.

I did not understand the meaning of a single clap by a reader of one of my Medium posts until I actually got my first one. It felt good. No, it felt great. It was tremendous! I whatsapped my friend, The Advisor, (I have spoken about her before), and said, “I got my first clap.” She sent back a few more via our Whatsapp chat but those did not really count so much. ( smile)

I think it was the mere fact that validation came from someone I did not know from Adam. I never thought I needed this boost until I actually got it.

I do not write eye-catching articles like ‘How to make a million dollars in 6 months” or “How to increase your following 1000x in 2 weeks”.

I write stories that can be quite esoteric, taking you a bit for a walk on what some may consider ‘the strange side’.

I write about spirituality, and meditation, and universal forces, and the law of attraction, and spirit guides, and ancestors, and death, and no death and speaking with persons who have died, and life in the 3-D, and God or Jah-Jah or however you have named him or her or it, and about our being gods ourselves.

I write about childhood trauma, and pain, and love, (well not so much about love) and gratitude, and the becoming of things, and the ego-self, and astrology, and nature and the earth, and overcoming fear, and sex, and orgasms.

I write about stuff that some can relate to and others not so much.

So when I get that single clap from the reader, or a thumbs up or a like, I am grateful. Grateful that someone understood what I wrote, that they were able to resonate with my words. That they felt me. That they were blessed, encouraged, or empowered.

A single clap is a loaded weapon of inspiration.


If you find what I write about is of interest to you, please follow me and clap only when you feel like it.

Sometimes I think the Universe treats us like Job. If you do not know, let me give you the tea on Job. He was a man in the bible who was being tested by God and was met with many trials and tribulations over an extended period of time to the point that one day his friends and family told him, “why don’t you curse God and die?” Job refused and for that God blessed several times over. I am not religious but I grew up in a Christian Society hence my knowledge of Job’s drama.

Many of us go through life being Jobs. Outside of being tested every single day in one form or the other by some other human or the other, we are tested by the Universe to see how well we stack up when put to stand on the Gratitude-O-Meter.

We are all manifestors. Some of us do it unconsciously when we ask for things through our hopes, wishes, and desires, and others of us directly use the Universal Law of Attraction to bring things towards us. The Universe always listens and responds and sometimes it does it in so subtle a way that if we do not catch it, we will miss it.

Let me tell you my story in a few sentences. I have been asking Source Energy for four basic things:
1. A better paying job.
2. A nicer home.
3. The opportunity to share my talent with a wide audience.
4. Someone to share it all with.

I mean, looking at these requests, they are nothing out of the ordinary, quite modest as a matter of fact and so, being one an active manifestor, I went about it in a methodical way. I meditated. I did the shadow work. I raised my vibrations. I showed gratitude and I followed the trail of synchronicities whenever they appeared.

And soon it was not long before (well perhaps, in my 3-D timing it was a bit long) I started to see smaller versions of the things I was asking for appearing in my life. I was happy. But being the human that I am, as soon as it started working, I began to feel the fear that I might get stuck in the small things and never realize my wilder dreams. I was in a conundrum. “Suppose I showed too much pleasure in the little things, would it stop the big things? Would the Universe think that ‘oh, she is happy and satisfied, let’s move on to the next person’? Would I miss out on fulfilling my grander desires?”

I went back to step one. I meditated and asked for clarity. And I got it by realizing that I was to continue being happy in the little things, continue showing contentment and gratitude, continue helping and serving people, continue raising my vibration and being positive and the big things will come.

And so, this is what I have been doing, I did a Job. I decided not to curse the Universe and die. Instead, I offered praise and showed gratitude and now I am living my best life.

What is your Gratitude-O-Meter saying?
How is the Universe responding to your dreams, wishes, and desires?
Is it only giving you a hint and a taste of what is in store for you or even better, have you already arrived at the big things? Congratulations!

If you are like me, in the stage of becoming, join our support group.
Let us continue to encourage each other.
Let us be thankful and grateful each day for the little things.
Let us continue looking to the horizon for the big things.
Let us be like Job.

And I assure you that soon, very soon, things will get bigly.

Our body has an amazing ability to heal itself. There is this power capable of effecting healing on the physical, energetic, and ethereal levels if only we are willing to open up to its existence.

My physical body is not what it used to be, as with many of us. Age does a number on it but since it was not meant to last forever, the natural senescence process, like leaves in the autumn, results in a slow return of the physical body to its earth elements. For many people, this comes with a fear stemming from a lack of understanding of the process. We did not come here to stay. We are to grow old and die if we are lucky. We have to prepare mentally and emotionally for this transition and sweeping the thought of it under the proverbial rug does nothing for neither our peace of mind nor our ability to get the best out of this instrument as we can.

Somewhere deep inside of all of us lies our healing source, some call it the subconscious mind, some call it the intuition or the inner self. However named, it is the powerhouse that runs our system.

It knows everything that there is to know about us, about things concerning us, and about things around us. It stores the memories of our past lives. It is a databank of information that we can tap into for health and healing among other things. It contains the template of our physical body. It knows everything about us down the last DNA strand and is capable of repairing and renewing those parts that get hurt while being tossed about in this physical plane.

So why then do so many of us not turn to our own internal healing mechanism?
Why do we not look inside first before we start chasing something on the outside?
Who knows you best, who knows your mind, body, and soul best?

We live in Excusatopia so we have answers, err….. excuses as to why we swallow that pill before we ask for healing, why we refuse to trust the power that lies within us, why we listen to The Man before we listen to our bodies.

I am not saying not to seek medical help when we feel that we need it.
I am not saying forsake all forms of medicine.
I am not saying not to listen to the advice from persons taught in those fix-it institutions.

All I am saying is that we ask within first. We touch base within on a regular basis. We listen to the still voice that guides us right every time. And we follow its instructions.

It may say take this herb, it may say rest a while, it may say change your diet, it may say reduce stresses in your life, it may say go see The Man.

But be rest assured that when our intuition, our subconscious, that still voice speaks, it does it from a place of full knowing, always with our best interest at heart.

Moon, Jupiter, and Saturn formed a triangle in the night sky some weeks ago and that was more than enough reason to get excited. I mean, the planet of abundance, meeting with the planet that has the title of the taskmaster of the zodiac, both tagged the planet of emotions and our intuition. If we have been doing to work that Saturn demands to clear past karma and create good karma then it the bounty that Jupiter always brings.

So that evening, when I saw for myself what the astronomers were talking about, I felt the power and the promise since I have been doing the work to pay off past karma. It has not been easy but knowing that Saturn always rewards hard work, kept me going.

So when the maker of the law and the enforcer of the law meet for a conversation, what will they talk about regarding you?

Have you been doing the inner work and the outer work since inner is naturally followed by outer?

Will Jupiter say bless her, give him what he deserves?

Or would Saturn have to pass a message on to Moon saying, ‘go tell her she has more tasks to perform?’

How did the triangle formed way up in the sky work out for you?

Have you ever injured a body part and during the healing process you injure it again? So you ended up opening up a sore spot that might have just been on the verge of becoming whole again? This happened to me recently. The body part was my heart. I got my heart broken and before it was fully recovered, the narcissist broke it again.
Sometimes as much as we try to resist falling for a person, the heart wants what it wants, does what it wants, and then leaves us with the emotional pain and turmoil when things go south.

I was never adept at the love thing and I have written about it many times before. My heart missed the lesson on how to sustain romantic love. So when the realization was that this type of love is a big deal, and not having developed the skills needed to maneuver in such a space, it struggled, trying to adapt to the proclivities of love affairs and not doing a good job if it.

What about you? Are you one of those lucky persons who have long mastered the art of love? And you are able to sustain your romantic love relationship for years, keeping it happy and healthy? Well pray, send a note to this heart of mine, it needs some lessons.

Or are you like me, where the love thing has been an uphill battle, where your heart rules your head and gets you in a shit-load of trouble every time? You fall in love in the blink of an eye, believing that this time, this is the one, your twin flame, your soulmate, your gift from the gods, and you get all wrapped up in the emotion of it until you end up broken, lost and alone when, as they say, the fickle finger of fate points your way?

Knowing is half the battle won! We are aware of our strengths and conscious of our weaknesses which allows us to do the work, to prepare, and to be ready when the heart decides to do its thing. I am not saying shut love out. I would never say that. We need love to survive and to thrive, to be fulfilled as humans in this 3-D plane. And so we would have learned by having gone through the process of doing the ‘me’ thing, self-love, self-value, putting me so high on a pedestal that when the heart decides to do its shit all over again and get itself hurt in the process, the me, the you, the I, the part of self that is connected to Source Energy holds steady and strong, wrapping us in a cocoon of protection that prevents injury to our emotional and energy bodies.

So dear heart, do what you do, go break yourself all over again.

This time we will be ready.

A lot has been happening for me. I think a lot has been happening for all of us.

There seems to be a rapid acceleration towards something big and many of us are not sure what it is so during times like these when the energy is as it is, it helps to practise meditation with a spirit of gratitude.
Go deep and find the stillness under all the rubble of an active mind and an overactive imagination and breathe.

I have been trying to manifest some big things. They have been a while in coming and this has sent my patience muscles into overdrive. But now, like the 155 mph winds of Atlantic season hurricanes, they are rushing towards me and now I am feeling overwhelmed. I laughingly told myself just a few days ago to be careful what you ask the Universe for because you will get it, and you will get it in abundance.

That is why we have to be aware of what we attach our thoughts to. When we think that jewels are going to rain down on us, they will and when we think that empty piss pots will be part of our next thunderstorm, they will.

I invite you to begin your practice in a spirit of gratitude. Meditation itself quells the storms in our lives and gratitude opens us up for even more blessings.

I guarantee that it’s a better deal than any green eggs and ham combo.

There are some persons who suffer terribly from FOMO. They always want to ensure that they are in the know and on the cutting edge of the latest of everything. They are looking for something, perhaps validation, perhaps true knowing, or perhaps just some excitement in their lives. So the new train ride is on the spirituality tram. I am not saying that persons are not awakening to a greater consciousness since I am a testament to the searching and finding and wanting to know more but what I find interesting is the need of some to call themselves enlightened. They may be lit up, since meditation does give you a glow but enlightened, that is mere ego talking.

One of the things that serious meditation does is to endow the meditator with some psychic abilities. Things start happening for which there is no 3-D explanation. A person may become claircognizant, clairaudient, or some other clair and after the initial shock of the discovery, Ego steps up to the plate and the talk of enlightenment begins to echo inside their heads.
I believe that there are enlightened beings on this planet but we may never know because they do not consider themselves enlightened. There is no need to say anything when there is nothing to be said. They consider what has happened to them as being freely available to any seeker. According to a popular phrase that people use on my island, “nutten a kip here” which means nothing special is happening.

So for the folks that who may have gotten one or two flashes of insight and beheld the kingdom of the Universe, I say congratulations. I say relax. There is still a long way to go.

Keep on seeking.
Keep on transcending the Ego-mind.
Keep on believing.
Keep on being guided by Universal Forces.
Keep on communing with the Divine.

And when enlightenment comes, it would be like ‘nutten a kip here’.

I have been reading Joseph Murphy’s The Power of the Subconscious Mind and Other Stories. It’s been over a year now and I have still not completed 50%. Mind you, it is not that the book is not well-written and the topic interesting, on the contrary, it is fascinating to me but I still have not finished it after an entire year. Me, an avid reader from as long as I can remember, why has this been the case?

I do not know when it happened, but somewhere along the line, it seems like a decision was made for me to meditate more and read less. I have to say ‘made for me’ since I do not recall consciously making it.

I see many persons on popular information sharing platforms asking questions about things of the metaphysical and spiritual. Everybody wants to know for sure. As humans, we only feel comfortable with full confirmation. Any shade of grey is anathema for us. And so we read to know, we read to understand and we read for wisdom.

But I recommend that we meditate more and read less.

When we sit, or lie, or walk in meditation, we get the opportunity to connect to the greater part of who we are. The source of our creativity, intuition, inner knowing, and connectedness lives in that part of us that meditation hooks us up to.

Meditation allows us to have a first-hand experience of the things others write about. We can read and not understand, but when we experience all is known.

So I invite you to take fifteen of those minutes that you spend rabidly exploring the pages of someone else’s experience and use those minutes to experience your own experience.

I was in the kitchen elbow deep in some pumpkin bread mix when my GenZ daughter decided to entertain me with some throwback music. She offered to look for songs from way back, songs that I should know. I eye-rolled the child because she still asks me if there were cars and electricity when I was young. I have given up trying to explain to her that not even my grandmother was born during the dark ages. She selected a song from Boyz II Men, It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday. It was a song from 1991. Well, now my eyes were doing a double-barreled, backward tumble. 1991, throwback, really?

As I listened to the lyrics, I could not help but think of the many things that I have found hard to say goodbye to. Recently, the main one has been how my thinking of life and the afterlife as I understood it to be, has evolved and changed.

I got a rude awakening that led to the retriggering of my spiritual awakening and I have still not settled down into my new life. During the process, I regained my long-forgotten ability to hear and communicate with past persons. Many times, so wanting to be the old me, I dismiss them as my imagination. But when I see unfolding in the physical the things they would have communicating with me, I know that that bell has since been rung and there is no unhearing it.

What things from yesterday have you been finding it difficult to say goodbye to?

Perhaps it may not something as earthshattering as having to look at life as you once knew it in a completely different light but it could be smaller things though no less insignificant.

A past relationship?
An ancient slight?
Regret?
Some childhood fear?
A lack mentality?

All of these things can have us holding on to our yesterdays. They rob us of living in the present and looking with glorious anticipation towards the future. They even prevent us from looking at the past with a clear vision, understanding it for what it was, a process that taught us lessons that we learned from, and now move on, taking forward the wisdom gained and leaving behind the hurt and the pain.

So, here’s my throwback song for you, Andrea Bocelli’s 1995 “Time to say Goodbye.”

Do you ever have those experiences when you know something is coming and you know what it is because you have been manifesting it for a while and you can taste it on the tip of your tongue but you just can’t see it or touch it as yet? Your other four senses are going crazy like a male dog during mating season but you have to wait for it, with your level of anxiousness building to such a height that you figure you will burst if asked to wait one more minute?

I have been feeling like this lately and I’m being driven to madness in anticipation. These things I have been manifesting for a while are coming. They are just there, millimeters away from my fingers but not close enough to grab.

Several weeks have passed and I came to the realization that continuing in this vein was not going to work, anxiousness will lead to anxiety and then to stress, and we know what stress does to the body so I thought it best to make a conscious decision to release these feelings into the Universe and let what is greater than me handle it.

Talk about laying down burdens! I actually felt a physical release when it was done.

What burden have you been carrying, believing that you are bigger, stronger, wiser than Universal Forces and that you can handle it with your 3-D self?

How has it been working out for you? I bet, like me, not very well.

We get so caught up in the trappings of this life that we forget that we are visitors to this time-space reality, just for a short moment and then we are gone like a puff of wind.
If not done before, when we merge with Source Energy, reuniting with the greater part of who we are, it is then that our burdens are released.

Why wait until then when we can do it right now?
Why suffer and struggle and worry and wonder when Source Intelligence has all the answers to our questions, the desires of our hearts, and the sweet taste of honey for our lips?

Lay your burdens down right here, right now.

Meditate. Pray. Release. Be happy.

I stopped to buy some mangoes from a lady who was selling on the side of the road. It was not usual to have mangoes so readily available this time of the year and so I took advantage of their late abundance by eating at least one every day. The weather was overcast, it had been raining for almost two days on and off so she was anxious to make a few quick sales and return to her home. I knew this by the size of the parcels, they were larger than normal. Good for me and other mango lovers.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guy coming down the road. He lived on the streets and had some mental issues that I am sure a good shaman, with the help of spirits, would have been able to heal. He has never spoken to me before even though it appears that I emit a signal that attracts persons like him. I often get approached for money or whatever else I could offer.

So imagine my surprise when he said “gyul”. I looked at him to make sure he was referring to me. He called me ‘gyul’ (girl). I smiled. I could not recall the last time someone addressed me as ‘gyul’. With my hair streaked with grey and my wrinkles becoming more prominent, being called gyul was indeed a compliment, so yah! to my diet, exercise, and meditation regime.

“What do you want?” I asked him. He took my response to mean that I was willing to engage him in a conversation so he crossed the street and came closer to me.

“What do you want?” I repeated. He did nothing but mumbled. It was either that he did not know what he wanted or he was afraid to say for fear of being rejected.

I looked in his eyes. They were filled with confusion and pain. The energy that emanated from him was one of needing a reprieve, a release from his 3-D suffering. Whatever demon had decided to make his mind its home had wreaked havoc on his physical and emotional body.

“Do you want money?” I asked.

The lady selling the mangoes stood by watching our exchange. She wanted to remain uninvolved. She had mangoes to sell and a home to return to.

“Yeah,” he said and began scratching his head. He did not want me to ask him what he wanted money to buy. He did not want me to offer him any mangoes. He was interested in something else.

“Okay”, I replied. “Come with me”.

We walked to my car, I found my purse and gave him some money. He took it, mumbled something, and walked rapidly away.

I watched him and then jumped into my car and drove off. I did not really feel any pity for him. I was just glad that I was there at the time to help him out with some change. We all have our demons to fight. Some of us do it better than others.

Whether it’s the demon of drugs and alcohol.
Of envy and jealousy,
Of fear,
Of laziness,
Of greed,
Of lust,
Of anger,

Whatever they might be, to fight them we must.

We may be a bit stronger than my mumbling friend in that we do not lose our minds entirely in the process and end up living on the streets but if we succumb to the clutches of our personal demons, we end up suffering, standing on the wayside of life begging for a reprieve.

So say with me, “Demons begone! Happy Life come forth!”

There is a great conspiracy surrounding each of us. It involves Universal Forces and our Soul. They are out to get us and the sooner we know about it, the easier our lives will become. Their aim is to take us along the path of least resistance to finding our true purpose of why we came into this physical plane at this time.

Do you ever experience times when you are on a mission and everything just seems to be working out, as if the heavens parted and smiled on you, crowning you lucky person for a day? And there are other times that you want something or want to do something so badly but you come up against roadblock after roadblock to the point that you get so frustrated, you look up into the sky to see if a ‘no’ is written there?

It’s all about the conspiracy.

There are things we want to do and there are things that our soul wants to have done. Many times they do not match and this causes roadblocks in our lives. But when they do, there is no stopping you.

I have been trying to share my writing with as wide an audience as possible. The going has been slow but I know that a break-through will come. I have been getting just enough encouragement from Source Energy to keep me going.

A few months ago, I was moved to subscribe to this online platform that publishes the work of writers and a thought came to me, “why not publish your writings as well?” I eye-rolled it away. I imagined all the problems involved in signing up to be a contributor, having to submit an initial piece for approval, and on and on. I was already busy and did not have time for that. So I ignored the urge until one evening I was meditating and asking my spirit guides and universal forces for assistance in growing my reading audience. They did not answer me right away but at the end of the meditation I checked my phone and an article from the same site popped out at me, they were looking for writers to share articles on the same topics as I do. My eyes opened wide. I have visited this site daily for months and never noticed it before. I decided to sign up and I am not joking when I tell you it was the easiest thing I have ever done in a long time. I shook my head and smiled, when universal forces are conspiring for you, all resistance disappears. Things just happen and we are left mouth agape. I do not know where this new opportunity to share my work will lead but I am excited nevertheless.

Let Universal Forces work for you. Stop the efforting and start enjoying the unfolding of miracles in your life. It may not always be a walk in the park but be rest assured you will always get the guidance you need to let you know you are on the right path.

I think we suffer from a dis-ease of wanting everything now and we get disheartened when it does not happen just so.

Turn Dis-ease into Sunday morning.
Turn Efforting into effort-less.
Turn enjoyment into greater joy.

Embrace the conspiracy.

Was there ever a time (like during the great lockdown of 2020) when you finally made up your mind to do that thing? Yes, that thing that has been deep inside you to accomplish from as long as you can remember but you just never got around to starting it, for whatever reason? And I am sure, if you are anything like me, you are armed with a long list of why-it-would-not-be-successful ready to share with anyone who would dare challenge you on fulfilling that dream you had.

World or personal events provided you with the time to think and reflect and now you have a clearer understanding of what was important in your life and what you wanted your legacy to be. You felt it to your liver bone, as we say in the Caribbean. No, the liver does not have a bone but it is a colourful turn of phrase to show how deeply the feeling is felt. You took the first step into the unknown, the unknown only being so to your physical self because your soul already knew its purpose here.

It was a shaky step but a step in the right direction nevertheless. You felt the excitement starting to build up inside you. You were giving birth to that thing, that idea that you anticipate would be revolutionary.

The song,
The book,
The recipe,
The piece of art,
The wooden sculpture,
The line of computer code,
The YouTube channel,
The box of scented candles, herbs and oils,

Whatever the idea was, you started it and then began with your 3-D timestamping.

Something should happen by x time, you should have y number of likes and your audience should be z in six months. And it did not happen like that. After writing for six months, you still only got the 6 reads and the 1 like from your friends and that family member. And even though the passion was still burning, you began to feel a hint of discouragement because it was not as you envisioned it. The You-self, the Ego self, with its grand plans of overnight success and world fame began to feel deflated.

But why give up now that you are almost there?

Don’t you wake up each morning with a fire in your belly and an overwhelming urge to do something great today?

Don’t you meditate and set your intentions for alignment and success?

Don’t you have that deep knowing, the same bone in the liver that was there from the beginning?

So why give up now?

Success is right there, reach out and touch it, taste its sweet nectar on your tongue.
Close your eyes.
Breathe and believe.

It is done.

It can sometimes be quite nerve-racking when we have to take a leap of faith and do something new. We look to the horizons replete with newness. We see the possibilities and we see the rewards that lie in store for us but then we look down and see the abyss we have to cross and so we step back, shaking with fear, too scared to take that first step.

Now, there is (or I should say was) a friendly spirit that occupies a space that I frequent. I have to say he is friendly because though he has never spoken to me, he always lets me know he is around. I found out from other sources that he has been in this space since 1896. I do not know why he has refused to cross over but one day I decided to ask him.
The feeling I got from him was one of uncertainly and fear. He was nervous about crossing that abyss for fear of falling into what he perceived as hell. My spirit guides and I stood with him at the edge of the platform that separates one dimension from the other and we looked over there. It was full of bright yellow light. Everything looked warm and welcoming. It was clear that the occupants Over There were having the time of their lives but my friend kept looking down. He only saw the deep crevasse that was between him and his best post-life rewards.

As we stood, we saw something coming towards us, it looked like a tunnel of light moving quickly and soon it parked right in front of us and a door opened. We looked at him. He looked at us. He looked at the open door. He looked down and took a step back. I gave him a small tap on his shoulder and said, “go”. I could see he was trying to make up his mind. Should he take this train to his new home or should he let fear consume him, causing him to miss out on an opportunity that might not come again for another hundred years? He took one hesitant small shuffle forward. Then another. Then another and he stepped onto the floor of the tunnel. He turned around, looked at us, looked at me, smiled thank you, and started running. The door closed behind him and whatever it was receded and then disappeared. He was gone. He was home.

How many of us are like my friendly ghost? We are scared shitless to take the first shuffle towards something better. I am not even talking about a step, worse a leap, but a mere shuffle forwards. We stand on the edge and look at what could be ours if only we were brave enough. It is not that our current situation is all that good but we are so grounded in trepidation that our legs refused to propel us forward.

What are we fearful of?
Failure?
That we will be laughed at, mocked, or ridiculed?
Failure?
And if we fail, so what?

We will always feel better for trying and failing than for not trying at all because we would have learned something. We would have grown and expanded. We would have added to the cosmic flow. We would have lived.

I would like to introduce you to Corinne. I have known her personally for about a year but she knew me even before I came into this time-space reality as me. She one of my spirit guides and unbeknownst to me, she has been guiding me along a path of food, health, plant medicine, and healing for as long as I can remember. Sometimes we do things that we have no clue as to why we did it and then later when the pieces of the puzzle fall into place and we see the picture revealed before us, we are amazed and awed that we are part of this cosmic unfolding.

There is nothing really special about me. I came into this physical plane on a tiny island in the Caribbean into a community that was economically and socially depressed. Growing up felt normal because it was all I ever knew until one day I heard teachers whispering about me in the staff room and I then realized that they were surprised at my 'brightness' because nothing much was expected of children who came from my community, especially the females. Luckily, I have an exalted Mars conjunct Rahu in the second house of my birth chart so my tongue has been my weapon of choice and still continues to be.

So what does this have to do with Corinne?

I was trying to make the connection of being quite ordinary but still being able to live an extraordinary life.

It starts with asking the question, “who am I?” and if you are really interested in finding the answer, you will get to know your true self, not the one that has been created by your parents and society in an effort to get you to fit into a mould of what I good person ought to be, but the true you.

The you that is a spirit having a human experience; The you that came here to experience something exceptional with the assistance of a spiritual team that is patiently waiting for you to welcome it into your existence; The you that knows ultimately the return is to the greater part of who you are, as part of Source Energy, merging with the cosmic flow and becoming one again.

I have written several times in these blog posts that when you are a high vibsing person, it is very important that you guard your energy against people coming to siphon it off, leaving you depleted. The thing is that we all have that innate ability to be high vibzing, perhaps not every day in every moment but definitely more often than we currently do.

I had a recent experience with a de-energizer who came nicely wrapped in shiny birthday paper. The light and the shine caught my eye and I felt myself getting sucked into the rhetoric until, wham! One manipulative tentacle appeared and I quickly did a ‘block and delete’. I have been the willing victim of manipulation for so long from so many persons that I am quick to recognize it.

Manipulators and other energy mongers are not good for our spirits. They come and take and leave us emotionally exhausted and having to do the work all over again to raise our vibrations. When you are vibzing high, you become a magnet to low vibzing people. It is like you have this antenna that sends out signals that attract them, like animals and pheromones.

It is up to us to decide who we allow ourselves to hang around with, and more so, with whom we share our energy or else our surroundings turn into Transylvania City.

Guard your energy.
Guard it well.
From the well-cloaked vampire bat.
That will send you straight to hell.

I am not this body and you are not that body and if anyone tells you anything different, do not believe them. We took a borrow of this shape and form to come into this consciousness to experience life on this earth plane. It was like putting on a scuba diving suit with its accouterments to experience life underwater but for some reason, we were led to believe that we are only this and this was all that we were.

We are spirits having an earthly experience. We came here for various reasons, to fulfill what is popularly referred to as our soul’s purpose. Upon arrival, we forget what it was and some of us spend an entire lifetime trying to find it, others of us find it early and are able to live happy fulfilled lives and still others of us get so caught up in the playground of life on earth that we don’t even bother to try and it. The death bed then becomes the place of reckoning and it is there that we begin to question why we came.

I had a cosmic kiss today. The stars aligned and the moment was replete with magic and music. I experience the explosion of the god within me colliding in the cosmos with Universal Source Energy, the God without. I felt the fire and saw the light. I unzipped my scuba suit and merged as one with Source. The energy that was created could have powered earth for a few lifetimes.

We are all assured of this experience as long as we acknowledge and accept the god within us. As long as we are willing to align ourselves with the energy of the Universe. As long as we believe that we are not this body, we are simply spiritual beings making a pit stop on a planet called earth. Then and only then does the pucker up begins.

Some experience this through meditation, some through creating art, music, poetry, writing, some through connecting with nature, some through sleep.

But I assure you that once you taste those lips of Source Intelligence, you will never be the same. You will be walking around with a smile and a glow that people would not understand and all that they will ask you is who is the new man or woman.

Don’t you just love it when you see your manifestations lining up? You walk around with a silly smile on your face and people keep wondering that is wrong with you? This has been happening to me recently. I can be the poster child for Colgate! Well, not so much a child but a slightly greyer and more wrinkled version of my younger self.

It is amazing when you can stand by and look at Universal Forces working on your behalf. They produce they result in stages; like watching a play, one scene after the next bringing the story to life, each building on the previous one to create the drama.

The thing is that you cannot be impatient with the process. You cannot rush it. You have to enjoy each stage as it manifests, all while expecting the next scene to appear. It feels like looking into a kaleidoscope and seeing your dreams taking form.

It is nothing short of orgasmic.

This is an easy way to tell if you are in alignment with the Universe; when you see the moves on the chessboard of life and you can understand them, knowing that they leading up to checkmate. Ultimate Manifestation. It is nothing short of orgasmic, but then I said that already.

The word grace has been so mixed up with religious connotations that whenever many of us hear it, it conjures up images of the cross of Calvary, being saved by grace, and other religious iterations and images. For persons who decided to take the path less traveled, the one that leads to a oneness with the Divine without a telephone line, attaining grace is enlightenment.

I have read many questions from persons asking about enlightenment and how can one achieve it. I suspect that to them it is the gift at the end of the tunnel of seeking. They emerge surrounded by a bright halo and sense of being anointed and entitled.

The path to grace is a different road. It is a road powered by belief and paved by life’s happenings. It is worn and well-trod by the many who have gone before us. It is littered with tears of regrets of the past as well as burdens that have been left at the wayside. It is lit by hope, love, and charity.

The road to grace has no end as long as we are still in these physical bodies. There is no finish line, but a path filled with the continuous effort of us trying to be the best we can be.
Let the seekers amongst us stop seeking enlightenment and seek grace instead, clear the brambles and get on its path.

The way of grace leads us home.

It wasn’t until recently I really experienced the true power of being in the now. I had woken earlier than I needed to and was lying in my bed thinking about my astral travels the night before. I think I met the person that I am may spend a great deal of my remaining time in this physical plane with but that story is for another time, another blog posting.

Anyway, I took that free time to enjoy some early morning meditation. My mind was clear and my vibration was high so it was easy for me to settle into my pose and allow my body to relax. Soon after I entered a space, it felt different, special. It was an expansive space. It felt powerful. I felt myself out of my body, hovering slightly above my prone physical form and experiencing what I can only describe as Now. There was no past to regret nor no future to fear. It was just being there, or here rather.

Many gurus and teachers have extolled the virtues of being in the now in their books. They have described the importance of this state to our experiencing first-hand the power that lies in being present. The authors try to put into words something that cannot really be described. It needs to be experienced.

I would not know how and where to begin to give instructions to anyone on how to be in the now.

Perhaps it comes from a knowing, or a seeking or a being, I am clueless. All I can say is that now is beautiful, now is powerful, now is that cord that connects our soul to the universe bringing an awareness that defies words.

A few days ago an old school mate of mine messaged me saying that he loved my writing. I was pleasantly surprised. I did not even know that he read my blogs except for those few times when I first started writing and I asked him for comments. He did respond, directing me to several typos in one of my posts. I thanked him and made the corrections. Now, in retrospect, I should have asked him what was it that he loved about my writings.

Was it that the posts are quite short and can be read in under a minute?
Was it the topic, of everyday spirituality?
Was it that I always start ed off with a story or anecdote that dovetailed into a spiritual lesson I learned or a message I wanted to share?
Was it my skillful (tongue in cheek) use of the English Language?
It may be a combination of all of the above.

I was reading a blog post written by someone on Medium, I do not recall the author’s name but he was talking about how to get people to read your blogs. One of the most important points he gave was to ‘always have a story’ and I agreed with him. People love a good story, that is why fairy tales and fables have withstood the test of times.

Then the length of the post is also important. We lead busy lives, busy doing a lot of what needs not to be done but we feel justified in the doing. This means we do not have time to read anything that will take up too much time. Reading is probably the one thing we cannot multitask. We are either reading or not, unlike watching tv or listening to a podcast. Reading requires undivided attention for the full understanding and for this reason, I keep my posts short, most times under one minute. You read and you go onto the next best thing in your life.
Myself, I read a lot and I admit that I always look for the story in the story and then at the length of the piece. So often, I read the beginning, skip to the middle, taking in the jist of it and then moving onto the conclusion. I apologize to those writers who painstaking write, then check and recheck only for people like me skip around in the piece. I guess to avoid our work being used as a piece of gym equipment, we ought to write, get to the point, and not waste time with words.

It becomes particularly difficult when we speak about the topic of spirituality. Writers, like myself, we try to explain, using words, something that can only be experienced, and in the midst of it all, we lose the reader. The ideas being shared, in some cases really reach for the ‘out there’ because honestly, there is where the truth lies. Unfortunately, words are not the most adequate space ship to get to there.

The final reason I believe that people read my posts is for my colourful use of language. There are many times when I write and then go back and ask myself, ‘now where did that come from?’

I enjoy sharing my thoughts and ideas under the guise of well-written prose. I am happy and contented with where this process has taken me and every day I continue to reach for more.

If you have read so far into the post, then there must be a reason for it.

Is it one of the above or do you have a reason for your own?

If so, please do tell.

I listen to my fair share of Abraham Hicks. This was one of the videos that, a few months ago, popped into my YouTube. I have written an earlier blog that praised the mastery of YouTube. The first one, I listened for a few minutes then clicked it off, I wasn’t getting it. I did not know who Abraham was nor did I understand why a woman whose name was apparently Esther, was speaking about herself in the third person.

A few months later another video popped back up and this time I listened to the entire 12 minutes and I got it.
I thought, ‘where were you all my life?’ But I knew that if she had appeared 5 years ago, even 2 years ago, I would have laughed and scoffed at what was being said while thinking there were more persons out that should be in.

Anyway, I have grown to understand the teachings of Abraham, and if you do not know who Abraham Hicks is, please do yourself the favour and google him.

Abraham likes to encourage us to enjoy the journey to the manifestation. Initially I never quite got what he was saying. I am a get-there-get-it-done-want-it-now personality and I am sure that many of you are as well. So imagine my consternation that I am being asked to enjoy the getting there!

I must stop to smell the flowers en route to It.
I am to create happy memories as align myself to receiving the blessings of the universe.
I am to be happy in the now.
In the now? I prefer to be happier in the then.

Change is difficult and changing a deeply ingrained belief is even more difficult. But I realized that if I wanted a different outcome to my circumstances, I needed to do something differently. And so I decided to give the teachings of Abraham a try. My life has changed, not from just the teaching of Abraham but from a plethora of teachers, and gurus, and lessons, and experiences, and dreams and revelations. The journey has been just short of the heavens opening up and saying “Here I am”.

I would like you to share in this experience.

Thank you for reading and supporting my work.

I share Abraham’s words, ‘find the manifestation that you would like to have and enjoy the ride to it’.

I find myself listening to a lot of happy jazz music lately. This is a pleasant surprise because it gives me an indication of my emotional bearing and how am I vibsing. I used to listen to a lot of jazz when I was younger and life was less complicated. It was my go-to, feel-good, I-am-happy music but as life happened, there was less and less to feel good about and so the one thing that uplifted me, I allow myself to be cut off from because, me? human me? why should I be happy?

But for some reason, some jazz music came up in my YouTube feed and I clicked on it. It was awesome. It took me back to a better place. I felt there and still here. It was like the then and the now met in a beautiful symphony.
If you notice, your YouTube feed is like the Law of Attraction, the more you put your attention on something, the more of it you get.

The question I am going to ask today is what has been showing up in your feed?

Are you getting video after video of blessing and abundance, of peace and joy, of love and beautiful relationships?

Or are you the recipient of something else?

If you are not enjoying the sweet jazz music of a wonderful life, then you need to stop, do the search, click on a different video, and restart your feed on a positive feel.

Some things we see as totally inconceivable for us to achieve. We feel that if it goes against the laws of the universe as we understand them to be, it cannot be done. Like turning stone to bread. Is it possible to hold a belief so strong that we turn it into what we want it to become?

I used to have some of these it-is-not-possible thoughts. I am a scientist by training and a logical thinker by upbringing. I was made to understand from a very early age that if it was impossible, it is impossible and the more far-fetched the idea, the more unattainable it was. But luckily, there was always a part of me, a spark within, perhaps the god in me that encouraged a belief in the opposite, that anything was realizable, anything was achievable.

What are some of the stones in your life that you continue to believe cannot be turned into bread?

A mansion on the hill, from a shack in the valley?
A state of the art vehicle from a two-wheel unicycle?
A loving and caring partner from a dent in your pillow?
A job from no job?
A family from a hopeful egg?

Whatever the stone, it can be turned into bread, if you accept that Universal Forces are ready, willing, and waiting at your quarry site to do your bidding.

Change impossible to highly probable, believe and achieve.

I got my marching orders this morning. They were simple really, Feed. Heal. Reach. Teach. All this started with a 3 am visitor. I do not know what is with 3 am and visits from the other side but messages that come at 3 am are ones you do not ignore.
Are you one of those awakened or half-awakened-getting-there souls that have regular contact with the spirit world, ancestors, guides, the Divine? I am sure you will agree with me that sometimes making these connections can be taxing on our limited human understanding and we tend to question ourselves as to whether the whole damn thing is real or not. I have given up on wondering. The way things fall in place in my life cannot be by chance and if it is, I want to be on any side that can bring about happenstances like those I encounter.

So back to my visitor. I got up to use the bathroom. It is not like before when you can sleep all night without having to take a midnight water break. Smartly, I refused to open my eyes for my trip, I did not want any distractions since I planned to go right back to sleep. No such luck.

As I repositioned myself under the warm comforter, trying to settle myself back into sleep mode, I felt something. It was an energy, a new one. I never felt it before and it made me a bit nervous. It was a hesitant but still curious energy. It reminded me of those times when you were little and your mother sent you by someone, say a neighbour, to deliver something and you have never been to the neighbour’s house. You do not know if the neighbour will be welcoming or not but you have to complete the errand or face the disapproval of your mother. You dared not go back saying that you were scared to go inside the house. So you enter hesitantly, unsure, curious but still with a hint of bravery. That was the energy I felt.
Then I saw a long white dress coming towards me and I cried out for Greg, he is my protector spirit guide. He has nice muscles and has saved me from more than one situations in the spirit world. I stood behind him and peered closely at what was coming towards me. I saw a lamp, like those that were used before we had electricity. You had to hold a handle and walk with it in front of you, inside could be a candle burning or a wick with oil or whatever. The lamp swung nervously, searching, and then noticed us. I heard a female’s voice. She said that she came to tell me that I have been at this awakening thing for longer than I realized and that the time when I was sick for almost a year with my doctor being unable to say what was wrong was the beginning of the process. That piece of information startled me because I remember being sick over 15 years ago and my doctor had no clue as to the problem. He had no remedies and told me to rest. After several months, taking this and that, one morning I just woke up feeling well. It was a strange time.

My past flashed before me and I saw my second call to awaken as that time when I left my marriage abruptly and went “underground” for three years.

My third, and perhaps my final call came when I had to face the devastation of losing the opportunity to a job that I wanted since I was a teenager and a lover that I wanted for almost as long. That was enough. I became more earnest in my search and the process has brought me to this day.

Having delivered her message, she exchanged a smile with Greg and left. I could not sleep afterward. I felt nervous and excited. I felt like the pieces had fallen into place, I was being welcomed into Wokedom.

So you can imagine that the thought of my morning meditation engendered a feeling of excitement within me. I knew the topic was in some way going to touch on my 3 am visit. As soon as I sat and settled myself, I felt the energy of being in a court of some sort, as if I was going to be judged. My spirit guides were on one side and my ancestors on another and I stood in the middle in front of a table when four grim-faced beings sat. I knew that my fate was being decided. Everyone was tense until one of them broke into a smile, and said, “congratulations, you passed.”

I was on to the next level in the game.

My visitor, she never told me her name, stood off to the side behind the table of judges, she smiled and winked at me.

One judge gave me a plate with some instructions: Feed. Heal. Reach. Teach.

Message taken, action required.

I am pleased that you have chosen to join me on this journey.

My sleep was interrupted by the movements of very large trucks at 12 am in the morning. It appeared that they were taking some kind of material from a nearby rock quarry to the port to be loaded onto a barge and transported to a neighbouring island. They choose these times because the traffic is usually light and it's easier to drive unobstructed. But when your bedroom is less than thirty feet from heavy moving trucks at 12 am in the morning, you are in for a rough time. The trucks worked until close to 3 am and I laid awake the entire time, not being able to fall back to sleep. I had two choices, I could be miserable and complain and curse the living daylights out of those drivers who thought it a good idea to move heavy material at that time of the morning preventing good citizens like myself from getting well-needed rest, or I could decide to grin and bear it, knowing that in a few hours they would be done and I might be able to get an hour or two of shuteye before it was time to get up to prepare for work. I took the former choice and I cursed and vowed never to ever live so close to a major road again. I sent a desire into the universe, I wanted to move and I wanted to move now.

Sometimes when we are on our spiritual journey, we feel that we have to be more than human. But the thing is we are here having this human experience and we will encounter situations that upset us. What to do? Do we Ummm our way into a better feeling place, hoping that the thing that was causing us stress would have disappeared by the end of our 20-minute session, or do we let the human in us come out? Sometimes we let out the human.

I unleashed my humanness as the trucks drove by. Each change of gear, each groan of the engine, each screech of the well-worn-and-needing-to-be-replaced tyres caused my desire to grow reflecting a preference for a new home that fit into the life I wanted for myself. If the message was not heard clearly enough by Universal Forces before, they heard it last night.
And so my job is half done, now I need to put myself into that place that allows me to be the recipient of my wish.

When circumstances cause us to rage against how unfair life can be, when we send our longings, our hopes for change, and our requests for something better into the Universe, we can be assured that the message is received and Forces are already working on it.

So, as I stood in the early morning air, about two hours after my situationship with those trucks, I looked up into the sky and was met with the sight of a beautiful crescent moon and Venus in a tight hug.

I smiled. I said thank you. I knew it was done.

I planted some pumpkin seedlings about two and a half months ago, smack dab in the middle of the summer’s heat. Since there was little rain, they had to be kept alive by daily hand watering. They wanted to grow and produce but it was obvious that it was a struggle for them. Then the beautiful butterflies came en mass. And of course, they laid eggs on every bush in my garden including these pumpkin vines. Then the struggle became really real. My five plants, down from six, were now at war against heat and worms. There were times when their leaves looked like lace handkerchiefs atop spindly stalks. This led me to spray several homemade concoctions of neem leaves, garlic, and cayenne pepper which did little to stem the ravenous march of hungry caterpillars. Finally, I had to apply an organic insecticide given to me by a fellow gardener. This brought some relief.
Soon, as with the circle of life, the butterflies died and the October rains began to fall. My pumpkin vines’ growth spurt took off like an athlete seeing the tape across the finish line. They spread all over the garden resulting in my attempting to train them.
It was “do not run here, get off that okra plant, you cannot go through the fence, please give the sweet potato vines a little space to grow as well..…” This happened for about ten days until I gave up. I decided to let them be, let them grow, let them produce.

Same as our thoughts during meditation. We cannot not have thoughts, it is what the mind does, its function is to produce thoughts and ideas non-stop. So when we sit to meditate, we are told to stop our thoughts or control our thoughts or quiet our thoughts or whatever similar instruction that some experts in the medical, I mean meditative field gives.

I say let your thoughts be.

Let them come and go, let them take up all the space, grow, expand, and produce fruit.

Just sit and watch them knowing that you will soon reap the benefits.

I always meditate before writing my blog and having spoken about this before, persons who follow my stories will be familiar with the way I get topics to prepare and share. This morning I finished my meditative session a bit disconcerted with my guides. I already had an idea that I felt would be good to write about and so, as usual, I asked for their approval and I got a ‘No, write on this instead”. I was to write about activating the eighth house in one’s birth chart. I am not an astrologist. The only astrology I know is what I would have read about and what I came into this life knowing. I have Ketu or the south node of the moon in my eighth house which means in my previous life I was probably deeply involved in things of this house. I argued that there were excellent astrologers on YouTube and elsewhere who would be able to give a much better explanation on the eighth house and things pertaining to it. I was met with a series of side glances and a wall of silence, so here goes…

The eighth house is known as a mysterious house. It controls all things hidden, dark, underground, things that we do not want other people to know about ourselves, our proclivities, and our foibles. It has to do with other people’s money, inheritances, sex, death, debt, and taxes. It is the house of personal transformation, of rebirth. It is one of the three karmic houses in astrology so planets in the eighth house give us an indication of the areas where we have to pay our karmic dues.

Persons with an auspicious eighth house, like me, are very much interested in things unknown, of the occult, metaphysical and esoteric. And when Ketu is in one’s eighth house, it brings with it the spiritual side of unknowing. It is associated with psychic abilities, kundalini rising, and other gifts that are useful as one seeks a deeper connection with the Divine.

The eighth house is activated when we acknowledge the power that it contains. It comes alive when we are able to deal with our personal issues and heal past pains.

We access the magic of the eight when we have understood the magic within ourselves.

I was having a WhatsApp chat with a friend of mine. We are somewhat on the same spiritual path though in my case, I use a bit more of my intuition and a little less of my logic while he is the opposite. We remain good friends. So this morning I was commenting to him that I am staying in a thankful mood. His response was, “gratefulness is powerful”. He knew what he was talking about. I agreed and added, “ and it’s the key to the universe”.

The thought came to me that the key to our personal universe is being shaped by the gratefulness we show each day of our lives.

We all possess a treasure trove within us, filled with offerings of great abundance, health, wealth, and happiness. Every morning we wake, it beckons us to unlock its door and reap its treasures. What is keeping us from these blessings? It’s the key. It is needed to unlock the portal. We each came into this time and space with a blank key. We are to, by our words and deeds create the engravings that will make this key work for us.

How grateful are we with what we have?
How often do we give thanks for the small things?
How willing have we been to share what we have with others, even if it’s a smile and a kind word?

Each act, each good deed creates a groove in our key.
Look at your key.
How are its markings?

Is it still empty and blank or is it now filled with vignettes, etchings, created by gratitude, by caring, and by a deep love for yourself and others?

Look at your key, look at your life.
How are the markings?

I joined a group of nuns in a global prayer event this morning, something I usually participate in whenever they are organized. It is a time filled with positive, high-vibing, healing energy. You leave those sessions feeling renewed and reinvigorated. Today’s was extra special though, there was just something different in the air. The energy was intense before I joined the circle, it felt electric.

As I closed my eyes, I saw nuns circling a globe while holding hands. We were all bowed in prayer to the Divine. The sky cracked open and this intense white light came down on all of us. It encircled us and then whipped the ocean waters into a light blue foam that spun around us, making me think of clothes in a washing machine and the soap and suds cleaning their dirty load.

The foam then rose to the heavens, spun upwards and went away. I felt the tears run down my cheek. I was overwhelmed by this awesome event and I remain grateful for opportunities like these to join with others who have been working on raising universal vibrations and consciousness. My experience with my fellow nuns in the circle has assured me that we have been washed and now are ready to out and do the work.

So you there,

Get washed.

Get Busy.

I look forward to my meditative sessions with quiet anticipation. I never know what would be the outcome but I enter that space with an open heart and a willing mind. I meditate twice a day, sometimes more depending on what I have going on or how Spirit moves me. Sessions are never long, 30 minutes, sometimes 40, 45, according to the experience that was set to be delivered to me. I sit on a chair or lie in my bed. I tried the on-the-floor-crossed-legged-Instagram pose but that did not work out too well. So I stay with what my physical body is comfortable with.

I have heard persons write that nothing happens when they meditate and I often wonder what they were expecting to happen. For me, sometimes ‘nothing’ happens and other times it culminates in one huge orgasmic bliss, too much for my mind and body to contain resulting in my being catapulted back into the present.

This morning was one of those. I felt it coming even before I sat down in my chair. It was already building up in my energy body and slowly coursing its way upwards. Usually, my mind takes a while to settle down, it sifts and sorts through plans and thoughts until it realizes that now is not the best time and place for its constant activity. But this morning it quickly relaxed and settled into the session.

Sometimes meditation feels like communing with an old friend,
And there are times when it feels like stern guidance from a teacher or guru,
Other times it simply connects me to the greater part of who I am,
On occasions, persons from the other side pay me a visit bringing messages or just to say hello.

And there are those times when it blisses me out, filling me with a sensation that is so orgasmic that I explode inside. I feel the reverberations in my entire being, coming like aftershocks after a tension releasing earthquake.

Remember, each time we sit to meditate and we feel that there is ‘nothing’, there is always something.

Perhaps the 'nothing' is preparing us to be able to accept the times when the ‘something’ is so wonderful that our physical bodies cannot handle it.

Accept the nothing, wait for the something.

I started a community vegetable garden in the middle of summer and it was a struggle to keep it going. Living in the tropics with long days, high heat indices, and little to no rain at this time of the year, starting a kitchen garden then was a trip down insanity lane. But it was something I have been if-ing and but-ing about for a while so when I finally got the area fenced and the garden beds prepared, putting in seedlings was naturally the next step. I have always had this strong attachment to the earth. There was something mysterious about it as the source of both life and death. We need it to grow food so that we can eat to live and when we die we ask it to accept our earthly bodies and transform it in a way that contributes to the cycle of life.

As usual, I digressed. So, keeping those plants alive had been a struggle until the rain started to fall, and then, oh what a transformation! Everything is blooming now, bees are busy from flower to flower, pumpkin vines are running as if to catch up with lost time, sweet pepper plants are blossoming, birds are singing, caterpillars are feasting on newly emerged leaves and life is good, all as a result of the rain. The heavens opened up and showered us with its blessings.

This leads me to ask, how are you blooming?
Have you allowed the Universe to rain on you?
Have you given up the struggle of barely getting by on a little hand watering now and again?
Have you accepted that your gifts were set aside just for you even before you came into this physical existence?
Are you opening up and accepting the showers of abundance in your life after perhaps, a prolonged drought?

If not, why not?

Change is not always a bad thing. Sometimes we are called to make changes that are small, manageable, and basically pain-free, and other times, changes are so impactful that they completely alter life as we know it. The year 2020 has not been an easy one for many of us. The kinks in our amours were exposed, our vulnerabilities were laid bare and we began to understand that continuing to live the way we did was not in our best interest. We had to change.

For those of us who lost jobs, we had to find some other means of supporting ourselves and our families.
For those of us who got sick and recovered, we had to realize that there is much to be grateful for.
For those of us who lost loved ones, we had to acknowledge that death was as part of the process of life as living was.

But whatever the change we had to make, hopefully, we were able to learn the lessons sent to be taught.

Change ushers in growth and development.
Change increases resilience.
Change augers well for more change,

So let us embrace change, learn the lessons, expand our awareness and so open ourselves to higher levels of consciousness.

I always meditate before I write my blogs. Most times I have no idea what topic will bubble up to the surface but sometimes I go into my quiet time with an idea that I figure would be a good one to share. On occasion, I get the ‘go-ahead’, other times I get the ‘no, write on this one’. Today was a little of both.

Last evening, I was speaking to a family member and was telling her that I expect my next source of income to be three times as much as my current stream. She has no idea what my now income is but she figured that anything three times as much as whatever it is now must be asking a lot. Her eyes widened. I have large eight-house-Ketu eyes and hers rival mine so you can imagine the saucers that appeared on her face. She opened her mouth, closed it, re-opened it, and said, “I know you crazy from long time.” Her response was not shocking though a bit disappointing, not the calling me crazy part, that I have grown long accustomed to, it was the disbelief that not just me, but that anyone can increase their source of revenue by so much. How can we, on this small planet called earth, look up into the night sky, see and experience the vastness of the universe and believe that we cannot have as much of whatever we want? How can we perceive something as less than when we see a universe so abundantly full of our wishes, dreams, and desires, just waiting for us to line up and receive them?

I felt that this was a timely topic to blog on, “Believe, Expect and Receive the Blessings of the Universe.”

So back to my meditative consultative process; I was speaking about receiving topics from my guides so as I sat down, I asked if sharing the experience with my family member was a good one. There was no answer for a while. Other things came up, (some of which I will talk about in future blog posts if they resurface again) until I asked the direct question to the guide who helps me with writing and I got the response, “On Demand”. I was puzzled, it was not a phrase I use often and so, perhaps not something that should have popped into my head. But It was clear to me that my posting should include the idea of something being on demand.

Once I sat down to write, I turned to the dictionary for some clarity and found that according to the Cambridge online, when something was ‘on-demand’, it was available when a customer wants or asks for it.

I smiled and said thank you. The message to share was clear and simple and dovetailed into my initial idea perfectly. My hearing the phrase ‘On Demand” was them telling me that the abundance of the Universe was on-demand, whenever we choose to ask for it. I got my confirmation.

I do not make these things up, I simply write and share.

Just when we thought we had dealt with our personal issues and had successfully healed our broken inner child, something pops right back up in our faces. In my case, it was in the form of a vivid dream, complete with colour, sound, and special effects.

For me, it surrounded a deep-seated fear of abandonment and I have written about dealing with this type of anxiety in one of my earlier posts. So imagine my surprise when one very vivid dream around 3 am in the morning, woke me up in a cold sweat. One thing with vivid dreaming is that it does not bring messages in parables, it hits you live and direct with whatever the message needing to be delivered. My interpretation from this was that I have not completed the shadow work. Somewhere deep inside that fear is still active and it resurfaces whenever in my daily living, I am faced with a situation that may end in my being abandoned.

Many of us face the fear of abandonment and it manifests itself in our relationships or lack thereof. We either cannot keep a relationship going or we avoid them, anticipating that the end will result in some unpleasantness for us. We get stuck in a loop, constantly reliving those deeply buried memories of our father leaving us, or perhaps never owning us, our friends, and later our partners, all checking out at times when we needed them most. We go through life sending out satellite messages that shout ‘please leave me’ and we know what the law of attraction does, it gives us what we focus upon, every time.

So how do we deal with our fears? For me it is fear of abandonment, for you, it might be fear of something else but we all have them.

Do we let them paralyze us, and so preventing us from living our best lives? Or do we face them like warriors and conquer them? And if they are of the seven-headed variety, do we chop heads off one by one until we are free?

Let us continue working our way through pain, hurt, fear, and trauma, using prayer and meditation as tools to achieve ultimate success.

It is wonderful to be blogging about love. Not very often am I asked to write on love, instead, most topics surround the dark and heavy. Something must be blowing in the wind!

I’m sure each of us can recall that first tickle of romantic love, teasing our senses like a light morning breeze causing us to smile and relax into the feeling. It feels good. Being in love and being loved is probably the highest of human emotions that we can experience in the 3-D. It seems to connect us to something deeper, far inside, into places that, the disillusioned ones have locked away and swallowed the key. But we would be liars if we say the feeling isn’t phenomenal.

Love is beautiful when we find someone to share it with, who understands and accepts us for who we are, scars and all.

Unfortunately, there are not many of us capable of offering that kind of love. Love for us is hot and heavy and temporary. So we miss the light breeze on our neck and the tingle in our belly. I have been both a victim and perpetrator of this act. It stemmed from the wanting it now, unwilling to wait for the breeze.

Let the winds of love blow into your life, removing the cobwebs of the past and imaginary fears of the future.

Connect to the deeper part of you through this love experience.

Feel and explore.

Love and let love love you back.

I sat down to write my blog today without a ready topic. My morning mediation devolved into a meeting with my family, those now residing over there. They had a few messages for me, along with some instructions for me to carry out. I have learned to no longer ask how will it get done, my job is to say ok and get about to doing it, many times not knowing the how nor the when, nor even sometimes the why.

I know I come off as quite weird to people who hear me talk like this. Some just look at me wide-eyed in either disbelief, fascination, or a mixture of both. My grandmother first came to visit me when she had just crossed over into non-physical. We, or at least I did not have a pleasant interaction with her and she has never returned until last year. But by this time, I was in a different time and space and was so able to appreciate the connection she had been offering forty plus years ago. My, how my life might have been different! Would I have made so many of the mistakes I had? Probably, because I was never a listener to sound advice.

How many of us allow our ‘strangeness’ to show? Deciding to let little or none of what people say bother us, but living our lives and embracing our gifts, whatever they might be?
It is only when we accept who we truly are inside that are we allowed to lead happy lives. Any other iteration of our imagination results in a hopelessness and despair, a frantic searching for, like two mongooses in a cage.

Best we save ourselves the added stress and embrace who and what we are and came here to experience and in so doing, begin to feel the pride and delight of universal forces conspiring to bless us abundantly.

Today is my birthday and I got a nice bag as a gift from someone who means the world to me. I cannot say I was totally surprised because I did say I would have liked a new bag but actually receiving it was still quite the experience. It may seem strange to you but I never get presents for my birthday. I think the last time someone gave me a gift and said ‘happy birthday’ was over twenty years ago.

I did as I have seen people do when accepting a gift; smiled, exchanged a hug, said thank you, and took it. I placed it on my bed and stared at the package as if it was going to explode at any minute. It felt strange. I felt strange. It dawned on me that I really had not learned the art of acceptance.

I asked myself, how will I be able to welcome the blessings of the Universe, the abundance that it offers when I have not learned to receive good things when they appear in my reality?

How many of us are guilty of this?

We give with our hearts but we cannot accept anything in return; we feel undeserving.
We feel that we should not benefit from anything that comes easy to us. If there is no fight nor struggle, then an announcement of something good happening must be fake news.
We look the gift horse in the mouth, we count its teeth and examine its tongue before we can begin to believe that the Universe always has our backs.

Practise asking for, expecting, and accepting.

We are deserving of its gifts.
We are worthy of its love.

It’s already done.

I passed just in time to see a bus driver getting a ticket from a police officer. He must have committed some traffic violations that deemed it necessary and Mr. Bus Man was not happy about it. It was not even 7 am and the officer was always on her beat, with a ticket book and pen ready to catch persons who dare contravene the law. I myself, just a few weeks ago had gotten a ticket for not having my driver’s license with me while driving so in my head I was commiserating with the driver. Getting tickets is annoying and the fees can add up quickly if one does not pay them one time.

Observing this exchange got me to thinking. How many tickets do we rack up daily for committing some offense against ourselves?

We rack up our ticket count when we are not thankful and gracious for what we have.

We deserve a ticket when we walk around with a lack mentality, when the Universe abounds with blessings for us but we are not open to receiving them.

We definitely ought to be ticketed when we think less of ourselves, when we fall short and still kick ourselves in the process.

A ticket is justified when we refuse to love ourselves as much as we love others, when loving ourselves first is key to being able to give love to someone else.

And if you are like me, you earn a ticket every time you do not guard your energy from energy vampires and hate mongers who constantly spew negative vibes, tainting your spirit and lowering your own vibrations.

One, two, three, four, five tickets as easy as that.

Stop increasing the coffers of ungratefulness, self-abuse, jealousy, and lack. We did not come here to spend our spiritual currency on these things.

We came to love, to give, to receive, to experience, and to love just a little bit more.

Pay up your past tickets and vow, “no more.”

A friend of mine asked me to borrow some money and I said no. This was phenomenal for me because I never say no, especially to him. I am a yes person, always trying to find ways to turn a no into a yes just to make someone happy or moreover, to get them to like me or to keep on liking me. And of course, it has not been working out for me at all so when I was able to tell my friend no, with a power and conviction that came from inside of me, I knew that I was healed. I had gotten over whatever past life trauma that turned me into a yes person in this lifetime, I had become valuable to myself, I had begun to love the me that I am.

There are some who would resonate with this message and others not so much so because they never have a problem saying no. For them, no is on speed dial and they can press that button without blinking; they have press one for no and press two for no.

But for those like me, we understand that the struggle is real. We give in and say yes when we know that no is the better choice of word for us. We allow our personal spaces to be invaded and our boundaries crossed. We cultivate a ‘just say yes’ mentality, accepting that as part of us but still feeling weak and angry whenever we say yes but mean no.

So when the weak among us do the shadow work, finding and eradicating that part that makes feeling less than our best selves our default position, you can then understand when I used the term ‘phenomenal’ to describe that two-letter word ‘no’.

And so, as often said by that TV evangelist, I encourage you to “say it like you mean it”
“No”.
Say it loud and long, “Nooooooooo.”
Say it from the deepest part of you, “Noooo.”

My! Saying NO feels great.

I was first in line to use the ATM this morning and was quite pleased with myself. As I searched for my card, a young man came up behind me. He was grumbling and fretting about having deposited a check a few days ago and not seeing the credit on his account. It was his weekly wage and he needed the money. He was giving off quite a bit of negative energy and I was sure he was planning something murderous in his head if he went to check again and there were no funds.
I slipped through the door of the kiosk and quickly completed my transaction then turned and held the door for him to enter. As he approached, very quietly I said to the guy, “go to the machine with a positive vibration, believe and expect your money to be there.” He laughed out loud when he heard what I said. I saw a change come over his face and his energy shifted to the positive. I knew then and there his money would be in that machine waiting for him.
So many times we allow negative feelings to ruin things for us. This young man did not know whether his money was going to be available or not but he had already psyched himself up for the worse. Why not the opposite? Why not put the positive instead of the negative thought in our minds? I mean, think about it, which do you think will grow and manifest? Of course, it will be the one that was planted.

I am not saying that negative thoughts will never come. We are living a challenging 3-D experience, many of us, so we have grown to expect moments of doubt, fear, uncertainty to come upon us. There is no escaping these human emotions. But the key lies in what we think, what we say to ourselves, and what we do when they appear. We get to decide to either water, tend and allow them to grow or uproot them, and plant positive thoughts instead.

And I say if there is nothing positive that can be thought of in a given situation, then think nothing at all.

I came out of my meditation session today with the realization that this was it. It was time for the Big Leap and I was full of trepidation. I was not ready to take the next step but Spirit was nudging me along. I literally shrugged and pushed back against the energy that was coaxing me forward. But deep down inside I knew there was no more fighting it.

Have there ever been times in your life when you feel the pull towards something or the push away from something and your initial reaction is one of resistance?

You know what you ought to do but you are busy ought- notting your way through the process until you are dragged by Universal forces, kicking and screaming to the inevitable. At this point, it can get really rough and ends with being brought to your knees and made to understand that even though there is free will, doing what is best for you is always the best thing to do.

I have decided to act now that it is just a gentle prod. I cannot take the alternative.

What about you?
Are you going to act on the nudge or do you prefer to wait for the dropkick to the chest, getting a few broken ribs and a cracked sternum in the process?

I say go with the nudge and save on the bandages.

Our subconscious mind is extremely powerful, much more than we realize. It records and stores information and sends it back to the conscious mind when needed for processing and action. It is said that once an idea is conceived and executed in the mind, then the hardest part of the job is complete. Making it a reality, something that can be detected with the five senses becomes as easy as Sunday morning.

Creative persons understand the service the subconscious mind provides in assisting them with their work, be it a piece of art, a poem, a dance, or even a blog post. Once you open up to the power of the subconscious, creativity becomes like a turned-on tap, pouring ideas into your head faster than you can put them together in the physical. Another part of us that is an ally in the creative process is our intuition. Though there are some who refer to the subconscious mind and intuitive mind as one and the same, whether it is so or not, it matters little, they are all tools to help us to create.

I have never considered myself a creative person. I can neither sing nor dance. When young, I did some short story writing in school, a mandatory part of the English syllabus. I have always written poetry whenever I got a broken heart which means there are quite a few proses, now carpeting the path taking me through life.

Today I paint and produce daily blog posts stemming from my being connected to the greater part of who I am. I would have never been able to be successful at these new undertakings had I not engaged the power of my subconscious mind, my intuitive mind, the places through which ideas come, through meditation and being.

Tap in and get turned on
To do,
To design,
To generate,
To originate.

And most importantly to share what you create with others.

Have you, like me been looking for love in all the wrong places? Spending time, effort, and money chasing that elusive shadow? Looking for that feeling that we figured was going to make us whole and complete? Not finding, or finding it for a short time and then losing it again because it was not what we thought it ought to be? Looking for something that all the time was right under our noses?

I have been guilty of all of the above searching. I looked for love to replace the love I never got from my father. I looked for love to make me feel like a woman. I even looked for love to make me feel worthy of existing. And each time I failed to find it. You know why? It was because I was looking for something outside of me. All the love that I needed was within me all along, there for the offering, begging me to take it and I could not see it.

We spend a lot of time looking for love outside ourselves. We search the highway and the byway, the hills, and the gutters, hoping that this thing called love would one-day peek-a-boo us so we can grab it, put it into a bag and ride off into the sunset with it.

The love we are looking for is within all of us. Self-love. I am not speaking of selfish love, but a genuine love and respect for oneself, so powerful that we would never do anything that is not in our best interest.

We will not engage in self-destructive behavior because we love ourselves too much.
We will refuse to partake in activities that don’t make us feel good.
We will leave friends and families that sap our energy, lowering our vibrations and causing us to feel negative emotions.

We would have put a new value on ourselves, one that neither money, nor power, nor prestige, nor sex can buy.
We would have found true love,

Self-love.

We came into this life with two things in our arsenal, free will, and a moral compass. These are all the tools we need to guide our experiences on the earth plane. Before coming here, we knew what we planned to accomplish, what lessons we wanted to learn, or what contributions we hoped to make towards the development of humankind but once our soul entered a physical body and was born, free will takes charge. We forget the details of our soul contract and as a result, we navigate our way through life, hoping that at the end of it all, we would have achieved our earthly objectives.

And it is not easy. The dualities of living on Planet Earth makes life hard. The ups and downs, ins and outs sometimes cause us to get caught up on the wrong side of rightness.

This is where our moral compass gets turned on. Innate in all of us is a sense of right and wrong and we get to decide whether to use this tool or pull our free will card and happily do as we please without concern for our fellow man or even for ourselves.

At the end of the day, we get to choose.
We can choose love over hate,
Happiness over despair,
Pleasure over pain,
Right over wrong,

But choose we must.

Have you ever had the experience of just being busy with life when something causes you to pause, look and yourself and your eyes get all misty for no reason that you can seriously put your finger on; the brightening of eyes, not coming from grief or sorrow but from a deep sense of wellbeing and a joy unspeakable? unspeakable because you cannot explain it?

I felt that way this morning as I was getting ready for work. I was in the mirror engaging in my daily challenge of coaxing my left eyebrow to look like the right when I felt this wellspring of emotion coursing through me, starting from my gut and moving through my body, culminating in the manifestation of tears. I found joy in the sameness, nothing on the outside of me had changed but there was this feeling of wellness, dare I call it bliss, that came over me.

We all have moments like these. Joy in the in spite ofs.
Our family is the same,
Our house, our job, our lover is the same.
But there is something about that sameness that brings with it a deep sense of happiness.

I am not even sure if happiness is the right word, it feels deeper that than.
It feels like a bubbling well of knowingness and acceptance of what is.
Do you see why I wrote in my earlier words of ‘joy unspeakable’? I can hardly describe it.

Each of us can have this experience, every day, several times a day.

It is inside us, waiting to be invited to express itself.

Let it out,
Let it flow,
Let it encompass us,
Let it be.

For many of us, it is difficult to forgive others for wrongs they might have done to us and it is even more difficult for us to forgive ourselves for wrongs that we do to us. Forgiving is part of living. We are all spirits in a strange place engaging in the strange experience of life on earth so mistakes will be made, we will hurt people and people will hurt us.

I have difficulty in forgiving persons, especially those I hold close when they do things that hurt and betray me. I am working on it but it is proving to be not the easiest task to complete. And even though I have grown to understand through meditation and seeking that things happen the way they do because I had engaged in soul contracts with these persons and we had a prior agreement before we came into this physical plane, it is still a strenuous undertaking.

Someone once told me that forgiveness was for the one forgiving, not for the forgiven and he was absolutely correct. The act of forgiving creates space within us. Space that we can fill with positive vibrations, with love, with peace, with happiness. Is this not a better option? Or do we prefer the hate and bitterness mixed in with anger and hurt?

If we look at practicing forgiveness as being for us and not the other person, it demonstrates the love and care we have for ourselves.
It shows that we understand the karmic ties to persons and events.
That we have a clear knowing that our visit here is to live and grow and love and experience.
That to forgive is to forget into forever.

Forgive. Forget. Forever.

The weather has been extremely hot lately. The report warned that light winds and relatively high humidity will allow for the heat index to rise to excessive levels resulting in dangerously hot conditions. The choice of such strong language was warning enough, we were in for a scorcher of a time, and with little to no wind to wick moisture away, swimming in sweat might prove to be a new activity for many. Our zephyrs are named the North East Trades Winds. Songs have been written and sung about them. They have saved many of us from some stroke-filled days and miserable nights.
So now everyone is hot, fans are flying out the stores and the AC technicians are working overtime installing and servicing units. And all the talk is about how hot and uncomfortable it is.

There are other times in our lives when we become quite hot and uncomfortable. When we follow the ego-mind and do things that are not in our best interest.

We hate ourselves and we hate others.
We are jealous and envious.
We commit murder in our minds.
And stir up dis-ease in our bodies.

And this makes us hot and uncomfortable because it does not feel good.

We did not come here for that.

We came to fulfill the promise of being our best selves, to live and let live, and to know when to let go.

The northeast trades in our lives are to keep us in love, happiness, peace, and joy.

Chase the heat away and let the breezes blow.

Blessings in the form of small miracles follow us around every day giving us the opportunity to decide whether to accept them or not. There are many of us who feel undeserving so as a consequence, we let our tiny blessings pass us by.

I had two small miracles happen to me recently. I will not go into the great detail but sufficed to say that one involved a cell phone with a cracked screen and water. The phone was drowning for over an hour and it did not stop working. Mind you, it is not one of those fire, water, and bulletproof phones available nowadays. It is a simple smartphone that I have had for a few years. It was not supposed to survive its ordeal and come out working still.

The other was seeing food multiply before my very eyes, resulting in being more than enough to feed everyone at a family event I was responsible for hosting. Funnily, the night before as I was doing the pre-preparation, I told my helper that we may end up with a 5-loaves-and-3-small-fishes story tomorrow. It ended up being such an event. I knew that my ancestors were in the midst and they assisted in that one.

What small miracle have you had recently?
What has happened to you, that you have not been able to explain in any logical way, try as you might?
What simple blessing have you received that caused you to thank your ancestors, spirit guides, and the Divine from the bottom of your heart?

The little ones are segwaying into the bigger ones.

Those that make us say OMG.
OMG.
OMG.

Blessings in the form of small miracles follow us around every day giving us the opportunity to decide whether to accept them or not. There are many of us who feel undeserving so as a consequence, we let our tiny blessings pass us by.

I had two small miracles happen to me recently. I will not go into the great detail but sufficed to say that one involved a cell phone with a cracked screen and water. The phone was drowning for over an hour and it did not stop working. Mind you, it is not one of those fire, water, and bulletproof phones available nowadays. It is a simple smartphone that I have had for a few years. It was not supposed to survive its ordeal and come out working still.

The other was seeing food multiply before my very eyes, resulting in being more than enough to feed everyone at a family event I was responsible for hosting. Funnily, the night before as I was doing the pre-preparation, I told my helper that we may end up with a 5-loaves-and-3-small-fishes story tomorrow. It ended up being such an event. I knew that my ancestors were in the midst and they assisted in that one.

What small miracle have you had recently?
What has happened to you, that you have not been able to explain in any logical way, try as you might?
What simple blessing have you received that caused you to thank your ancestors, spirit guides, and the Divine from the bottom of your heart?

The little ones are segwaying into the bigger ones.

Those that make us say OMG.
OMG.
OMG.

Where does imagination stop and true intuition begin? I have asked myself this very question many times. I doubted my ability to discern. And was ready to believe that it was just all craziness. This continued for several months with me receiving the messages and having the conversations with myself. Sometimes quite loudly.

I got the answer one day. It came very subtly. That is one of the tricks of the Universe. It does not come with ringing bells and flashing bulbs. It is stealthy and delivers its message to you cat-woman like.
The response was that it is all the same once you are aligned to Source Intelligence. The energy and messages are transferred during that time of alignment in the form of imagination, ideas, thoughts, or even pictures. Clear and vivid, subtle but still sharp.

This, therefore, means that looking for intuitive messages outside of being spiritually aligned is like hoping to make a call when there is no cell signal.

To get from a misaligned position is not the hardest job in the world, as a matter of fact, it is the easiest job because all you have to do is to sit and do nothing.
Start by sitting and doing nothing, every day, for as long as you can bear your doing-nothingness.

Before long, you will begin to look forward to these times as you sit and feel the power of Source Energy beginning to wrap itself around you, showering you will pure positive energy. Everything just flows after that, into one beautiful imagination-filled kaleidoscope of wonderfulness.

The nothingness becomes bliss.
The Imagination becomes the umbilical to Source.
And there is no crazy here.

Last evening, I stayed in my garden even after it had gotten dark. It’s one of my favourite times of the day because it allows me to get further in touch with myself, the part that connects me to Source Intelligence.

I speak to the plants, the soil, the water, and the air. I even speak to the butterflies and caterpillars, the earthworms, and the grasshoppers, thanking them for the role they all play in the cycle of life and for allowing me to do my part and so sharing in the process.

This night I saw a firefly. It may not sound important enough to report but nowadays you do not see fireflies often. It may be that we have removed ourselves so far from nature and all things natural that the space we occupy is not visited by fireflies. It flashed its light, once, twice, as it beckoned to a potential mate. Mr. Fire Fly soon disappeared into the bushes since entertaining me was not on his evening to-do list.
I felt a sudden rush of gratitude starting in my lower belly and radiated upwards filling me with a sense of well-being and contentment.

It is a feeling you will never get from a bottle or a pill.
You will never get it from having the best job, or house or car.
You will never get it from winning a million dollars.

It doesn’t come from the material.
It comes from an acceptance of where you are in life.
It comes from being grateful for the little things.
It comes from being satisfied in the now.

The Universe speaks to us in many different ways, one of which is through signs and synchronicities; like this morning, I went outside to feed my dogs and say a one-dollar coin on my doormat. It was lying heads up, showing the image of Queen Elizabeth II. The members of our currency union were all former British colonies and so images of the queen can still be found on all of our coins and dollar bills. My grandmother’s name was Elizabeth and she has been visiting me quite often with instructions and guidance on things I ought to do. The coin was a message from her which I understood clearly. I smiled, said thank you, and picked it up.

Our logical mind prefers to come up with a better reason as to why we may encounter synchronicities and sometimes there are logical explanations for them but there are other times when the intuitive part of us says that it is more than a mere coincidence. Whether we accept or dismiss the message, it is up to us but we should not then say that our prayers go unanswered or our wishes not granted.

Having the view that ‘if it’s not grand, then it’s not it’ causes us to miss out on the many little blessings that life bestows on us, the pennies along our path that eventually leads to the abundance that we seek.

I invite us to look for the signs, accept their meanings, and expect the blessings.

We have all done stupid things in our life. The brilliant ones among us have done it and even those of us who are a few q’s short on the intelligence measure have also done some stupid things. I am therefore no exception and I have done a lot, things that when I look back on them cause a whole gamut of emotions to run through me; pain, shame, dismay, self-loathing, and even amazement at my ludicrousness.

How do we deal with these memories?

My simple mantra is to feel and release, feel and release, feel and release until there is nothing left to feel.

But no. We do something stupid and want to relive the sufferation resulting from our actions ad infinitum. We have to punish ourselves by recalling it every time and them going through the corresponding emotional turmoil.

The feeling part is the easier part of the process. We berate ourselves and lower our vibrations which does nothing but to continue our downward spiral into despair. And from the bottom of that pit, it is sometimes hard to climb back out. So our best bet is to not go there in the first place.

I admit it can be difficult to release something and it may take years of going back and forth but once we have truly let it go, it won’t ever come back.

Feel it and release it.

The Universe works in a way that may seem mysterious to us but is simple, really. It operates on the premise that when you give a little, you receive a lot in return. The ROI is far greater than any other investment portfolio you might hold.

So why don’t we benefit from the abundance that the universe constantly offers? It is simple, really. We do not give, not even the little bit that is required. I recall writing about giving a man the last mango I had. Mango, hands down, is my favourite fruit, and given that it was nearing the end of the season, I knew that they were going to be scarce as quality field-grown MJ during a drought. Lo and behold, the very next week I visited someone’s farm and there were at least a half dozen mango trees, all with fruit. Talk about ROI!.

This may seem insignificant to you, what is a mango? What is getting a bag of mangoes?

But the rule still stands. Give a little, give it from a good place, expecting nothing in return, and see how the Universe blesses you.
Every time.

For Mature Audiences Only. This is the tag line for a 3 am radio talk show I have been planning in my head. I do not know if it will ever materialize past my thoughts but I find the idea fascinating. I know that the first thought that comes to mind when we think of 3 am and mature audiences is something along the line of sex. Our human mind naturally gravitates towards that. This show will be different. It will be centered around all things metaphysical and spiritual. There is no doubt that to even begin having discussions on ideas deemed esoteric in nature would require a mature and open audience.

We will be looking for an audience that is willing to accept that there is more than what religion offers. That perhaps, religion being manmade, was not even designed to feed the deeply spiritual part of us, the part that connects us to Source Intelligence.

We will be looking for an audience that understands there are many things that science can explain but there are many more than it cannot. And so be willing to dig into the deep recesses of the subconscious, either through meditation or dreams and explore the many astral planes that one may encounter.

We will be looking for an audience that shares in the belief that death is simply a rite of passage. It allows us the shed the heavy, physical part of us that we hold onto for dear life and return home to Source and even come back in another time and space if we choose to.

So how many persons, caught by the hook would stay when they feel the resonance in the conversations?

One, two, perhaps three brave souls?

I made a big breakthrough today. I said fuck it and meant it. It was not something that came easy for me because I am a people pleaser, always believing that I should say or do whatever it takes to make someone else happy even to my detriment. This stemmed from childhood and the belief that I had to earn the love and attention of those around me by pleasing them. I carried this with me for a long time and was the beneficiary of the bad and the very bad because of it. There are some persons with built-in antennas for the people pleaser and they hone in and take advantage of our inability to say no.

Well, I had enough of the people, places, and things that were not serving my higher purpose and so I let them have it. I think I saw my spirit guides smiling when I made that declaration within myself.

Sometimes in life, we just have to say fuck it, or whatever milder version of the word that you prefer to use.

It makes us neither bad nor uncaring; we just had enough of whatever was being dished out to us.
No more guilt a l’orange.
No more remorse au gratin.
And definitely no more shame with a bouillabaisse sauce.

If you find that you have to say fuck it to grow,
Fuck it to release yourself from negative people,
Fuck it to become a better you,
Fuck it to connect to your divine purpose,

Well then so be it, Fuck it!

Mine the pleasure from the little things and watch the big things come. I said this to a friend last week. She felt stagnant. She felt like she was not reaching her purpose in life quickly enough. She felt disheartened. She was depressed. I bit my lower lip because I was ready to forcefully remind her all the good things that have been happening in her life, of the blessings that she did not expect, of the broad smiles from the Universe, and she was sitting bitching away on this one thing that had not manifested for her as yet.

She eye-rolled me. “You and your crock,” was her added response to my simple bit of advice. “I am not in the mood for any hocus-focus.”

Well, my friend is going to be feeling this way for a while.

I thought to myself, how often we are so busy looking for the big thing that we miss the pleasures that can be had from the little thing? And I am starting tiny here.

The car that stopped to let you cross the street.
The co-worker who gave you an extra broad smile with his morning greeting.
The taste of the cinnamon spice in your coffee.
The honeyed pleasure of your morning tea.
The wave of the butterfly as it passed by.
The seeing the puddle at the last minute.
I can go on and on talking about the little things that can bring us pleasure in our daily lives.
The pleasures we tend to ignore as being unimportant because they are not grand enough.

“Mine the pleasures from the little things and watch the big things come”.

I was awakened from a pleasant dream by the sound of excited chatter and peals of laughter. It was coming from my neighbour’s place and since it was way past the time I’d normally be out of bed, there was no real reason to feel disturbed plus I needed to be up and moving anyway. I continued to hear him talk. Though I could not decipher the words, they felt filled with pleasure and anticipation. His laughter added to the beautiful mix and before long I was chuckling along with him to whatever the news was. He was in good energy and I got touched by it.

I have written about energy vibrations before and the need to protect ours and avoid being around situations that make kindle out of us. This sometimes happens unknowingly but there are other times when it is done with deliberate intent to siphon off the good vibrations that we appear to produce effortlessly.

The persons look at us and wonder what is the secret? They think that there is some quick fix and in 30 days or less, they can look, and be and act like us.

Actually, they can, if willing to go through the process that leads to their awakening. There is no Beyonce-ing this one.

We used to wake up battered and torn;
Bleeding and crying;
Wishing that it would end, the dark night of the soul.

With time and work and effort, and a little more work and a tad more effort, we wake up a new being, all washed and haloed. The energy we give off becomes palpable causing people to become attracted to us. They see the glow, feel the warmth, and experience the love.

It’s all energy.

Do you remember those days when you were little and would head to the playground to have some fun on the swings, seesaws, and rocking horses? The seesaw was my favorite but for some reason, when we go there it was almost always broken. Once repaired though, I would encourage my cousin to seesaw with me. It needs at least two persons for the see to saw and the weight has to be fairly equally balanced. You never want your seat to hit the ground because that could turn out to be quite painful. When everything is balanced, you can then enjoy the movement of the seesaw, riding its waves and troughs.

Sometimes life feels like a seesaw. And there is no equanimity in its ups and downs. The ups become periods when we are so scared anticipating the down that we do not enjoy them and then the downs are down. We feel depressed and disheartened. And heaven forbid that during a down the seat actually hits the ground, we feel the pain ricocheting through our entire world, further preventing us from even seeing the up from that position.

But you know, the seesaw always rises back up as long as there is an equal balancing force on the other end.

Many of us, we do not allow ourselves to feel the counterbalancing weight of Universal Energy, pressing down from the other side and encouraging us to rise again. We stop ourselves from experiencing the love that coaxes us to look up, lift our feet off the ground, and trust that all will be well. The universe has our backs. Always.

So as we ride the seesaw of life, let us accept and embrace life’s vicissitudes. When we are up, we revel in the up and do not think of the down but live in the joyous moments of uptitude.

When life causes us to experience the down moments, we rest in the knowledge that we do not have to stay down for too long; that we are loved and protected; that our down moments are only to heighten the pleasures that come from our up moments.

All we need to do is to look to the opposite side and feel the force of Source Energy as it gently raises us every time.

Coming out of the shadows into the light can be a distressing experience for many, especially those of us who have spent the majority of our lives hiding in the dark. It’s safe, warm, and comfortable there so why leave?

Why expose ourselves to ridicule and verbal abuse when we decide to voice our thoughts and feelings on subjects that the masses are not comfortable with; subjects that may cause them to question their long-held beliefs on ideas like religion, spirituality, and all things esoteric and metaphysical? Sometimes we tell ourselves it is best to keep our thoughts to ourselves and let the masses go.

But there is a pull on people like us. Do you feel the awakening? The desire to come out of the darkness and show your light?

And have you like me, been resisting it for fear of whatever?
Of being laughed at?
Of being called crazy?
Of being labeled a witch or perhaps a bitch?

I feel you. And I understand. But I invite you to join me and let us do this together.

For me, it has been difficult. But we can do it one step at a time. We will expect and prepare for the backlash, the negativity, the misunderstandings, the persons disappointed in us as they like to say, the…the..the… but each day makes us stronger and bolder.

The list of reasons not to come out will remain forever long but nothing feels more blissful than a warm sun shining lovingly on your face.

I got touched by a ray yesterday.

You?

“I’m going to sleep on it,” my friend said yesterday in response to an issue she was having that was becoming more and more entangled in her mind creating utter frustration for her. I smiled to myself as I heard her words for I knew that the answer was going to come with such force and clarity that she would be unable to deny the power that comes from ‘sleeping on it’.

I sleep a lot. I look forward to sleep like the work-weary looks forward to Friday. My dreams are vivid and many times hold messages for me. Some I remember on waking; others are stored somewhere in my subconscious to be retrieved when needed.

We say it often. I’m going to sleep on it.

Do we use the phrase as a cop-out or are we guided to do just that by our intuitive self, our subconscious self, the part of us that knows the answer is there even before we asked the question?

There is power in sleep. Not just the renewal and rejuvenation it provides to the physical body, but the opportunities it provides for our astral bodies to explore, to experience, and to find answers to problems that plague us during our waking hours. Sleep allows us to connect to our ancestors, our guides, to the Divine, and to receive messages that we may not be open to receiving when we are busy with the doing.
Many of us do not get enough sleep. We are over-occupied. Too stressed. Too caught up in what we consider real life that sleep becomes a concept.

When we go to sleep looking for solutions, they come. Perhaps not in the way we prefer but we get a response nevertheless. It is always the answer that best facilitates our divine purpose.

I invite you to look to sleep for answers to your most vexing problems. Tap into the power that is given to us through dreams and visions.

When you don’t know it in the here and now, sleep on it.

There are two topics that I do not enjoy blogging about so whenever I sit to meditate and I get the inspiration from my guides to write on one of them, I get all emotional. I try to resist but always end up following the message as led. The topics are sex and death. Today we talk about sex, maybe tomorrow it will be on death. Who knows? Perhaps though, these two are more closely related than we realize. Sex sometimes results in death, ‘le petit mort' as referred to by the French and death results in the release from the flesh, like a butterfly rising from pupae, freeing our bound soul to return home, which I believe will be as orgasmic an experience as le petit mort.

I have digressed. Sex. What about sex?
I have made a personal decision to give up unfulfilling sexual relationships and I mean this both literally and figuratively. I have had intimate experiences of both types. It messes with my energy, leaves me wanting more, knowing that what I want more of cannot be provided by the partner in my bed. So along with the many other things I have given up in my life of lates, sex is through the window until I am able to find someone whom I can connect with on a physical, mental and spiritual plane. Given that I have a debilitated Venus in my astrological birth chart, I am not betting on this at all.

This leads me to ask, what unfulfilling thing in your life have you been thinking to toss through the window?

A job that makes you cringe every Monday morning and have you wishing it was Friday?
A partner whom you have outgrown but feel that you are stuck with until death do you part?
Friends, who are not just vibsing the way you are now, with the parties, drinking and smoking no longer giving you that high?
Family members, energy vampires?

It is often hard to give up on things that we have grown accustomed to even though they are no longer satisfying. The giving up is like taking a giant leap to the moon for many.
But I promise you, once you take that step, not for mankind but for yourself, you become a new cosmonaut.

Anticipation. This word has a delicious ring to it. There is a feeling that arises as we wait in anticipation for something that we know is coming and we can feel it right there. It is like a slow fizz that increases in power as the pressure builds up. It is orgasmic even.

I have been waiting in anticipation for something. It feels huge. I do not know what it is but the feeling that the wait engenders tells me that it is going to be something I have been asking the Universe for, for some time.

Sometimes we grow impatient as we wait. “Where is this thing, when is it coming?”

I invite us not to concentrate on the absence of it but to relish the becoming of it. Envision it as already happened. Revel in the emotion and enjoy the build-up to that final crescendo of the manifested it.

My spirit guides sent me on a Quora reading spree this morning. Lately, they have not been using any subtlety in sending me these synchronicities. I already realize their aim is to get me out of my comfort zone and I am scared. It was not enough that I began sharing my ‘artwork’ on the internet, then the writing of daily blogs on topics that I know will bring me under close examination and subsequent ridicule but guides and ancestors knew this, so they were hot on the button as soon I began talking to them about my fears.

Really, what do we have to be scared of in this life?

Okay, I already see the look of incredulous disbelief on your face that I am asking such a question. Now you are opening your mouth to start your well-rehearsed list. Before you begin, I would like you to pause for a moment. Think. Ask yourself, “what is it that is below all of my perceived fears?” We have been discussing this for a long time so we know where to find the answer.

Identify your ‘it’ and know that now 90% of the battle has been won since this then creates the space that allows for a connection to Source Intelligence. And so we begin the work of removing the real source of fear from our lives.

What is your real fear?

Stop. Think. Ask yourself.

Do you know that feeling? The one you get when you open your window or door first thing in the morning, step onto your verandah, and get greeted by a cool breeze that brushes your cheek, your lips, your bare knees, and then your toes?
During moments like these, the English vocabulary is weighed in the balance and found wanting.

You are able to experience this is because you are feeling a sense of gratitude.
For life,
For the love of self and others,
For just being in the here and now,

I enjoy writing blogs on gratitude. It lightens the load from having to talk about heavier topics like death and being dead and living and still being dead. The second one is worse.

So share with me in giving thanks, my friend.

Every day and always.

Meditation provides us with an opportunity to connect with our Inner Self and receive intuitive messages that is some way, shape, or form were sent to help us to navigate this physical plane. Our Inner Being is always wanting to talk to us, to show us, and guide us on our way. When we meditate often, the connection becomes alive and vibrant and we are able to discern what is intuition from what is just our wishful thinking manifesting from our ego minds. Intuition feels different. It seems to come from the gut and travels up to the part of our brain that accepts the information and translates it into something we can understand.

For me, I get many messages thought meditation. Some are very personal and others more general. Some I act upon; others I leave until I get a kick from the Universe.
So this morning, during my meditation I was clearly told that I was to meet a Leo who would be rich AF. I actually saw the letters AF in my mind’s eye and it startled me. I am not looking to meet anyone. There are not enough hours in my day to do what I have to do much less meet and get to know a new person. My grandmother, she crossed over into non-physical many moons ago was not pleased by my apparent resistance. It was not until recently I was able to re-establish a connection with her and she has remained as prickly as per my vague recollection of her. She actually remarked, “still the same, bright and dumb”. I was duly chastised.

When I asked Elijah, my spirit guide who sends me messages for my blogs, about what was I to write about today; should I talk about this Leo? Isn’t it too personal? Who cares about my meeting any Leo man? He smiled, he always does. He is very wise and I depend on him totally for my creative thoughts. “Everyone can relate to the idea of ‘messages through meditation’,” he air quoted me.

So what about you?
Do you trust your intuition for messages?
Do you act on them or do you hit the ignore button?
Do you, like me, argue with your entire spiritual team over the information knowing full well that they are always right?
Do you end up on the wrong side of right when you don’t act?
Aren’t you tired yet?
So, you are stubborn like me?

Well, I think our best bet, based on the way things have been going these days, is perhaps to simply trust and let go.

I was on my way home a few days ago and as I neared my village, there ahead of me on the road was this tractor with an attached cart filled with garden debris being taken to the landfill. The traffic was moving quickly in the other lane making it difficult to overtake so my best bet was to drive behind it until I reached my turn off. There were two men, the driver and with him, another gentleman sitting on a makeshift seat on top of the cart. They bounced along at what to them was a jiggy pace but for the vehicles that were rapidly lining up behind me, it was a turtle’s crawl. And these days people are impatient. They drive fast and overtake recklessly, all in a hurry to get nowhere quickly.
So here was me, second in the motorcade behind these two kings. I felt their energy that is why I referred to them as kings. They were happy, rich, and peaceful, and it appeared there was no other place else that they’d rather be than driving their tractor filled with debris to the landfill.
The positive dancing energy emanating from them, wafting upwards and outwards to their loyal subjects following closely behind, created magic to the moment. I was fortunate to catch a whiff of it and it left me enraptured.

How often do we allow ourselves to get caught up in the magic of the mundane? Are we so busy looking for a choir of angels to appear from the sky trumpeting the Hallelujah Chorus that we miss the joys in the simple things?

The first fresh breath of air in the morning as it enters our rested bodies,
The smell of our coffee percolating on the stove, enticing us to take that first sip,
The purr of our car engine’s as it promised no trouble today,
The morning’s greeting coming from a stranger’s lip.

The feel of our office chair that is now well-formed to the shape of our buttocks,
Or the kiss of a cool wind under sweaty armpits as we work outdoors in the sun,
The glimpse of a rainbow as it arched the sky just so,
The happy laughter of children, using the last days of summer for fun.

There is mystery in the mundane,
Magic in the ordinary,
No need to look far to experience it,
It’s all around already.

It has been a while since one of my meditation sessions ending with me being washed in tears.
I have had many of those in the past, hot tears,
of pain,
of regret,
of having to release childhood trauma,
of believing that I am to please everyone,
of accepting that I had to leave people behind,
of knowing that dogma and tradition had to be set free and that my own path to walk was opening for me.

Today, these tears were different. They were not hot, but warm. They poured down my face, wetting my shirt and soaking into my skin giving me my second shower for the morning.
But what was it that caused them?

I saw an army of what looked like soldiers standing in front of me. Their arms were crossed and it was clear that they meant business. In the front were my spirit guides, in the next row I saw the familiar faces of my some of ancestors, and behind them all shone this bright light, a light I had experienced before. It was warm, loving, accepting, and all-encompassing. I recognized it and the tears started to flow. That light was Source Energy, the whole from which a part of me came into this physical plane to experience life in the 3-D. I knew then that everything was going to be ok, that I was on the right path to fulfilling my soul’s contract.

My ancestors and guides smiled. They beckoned me to go forth, they actually said it, “Go Forth,”.

I was paralyzed. I was being asked to go forth and could not move.

After what seemed like an eternity, I opened my eyes and stood up. The new me stood up. The old me was left sitting in the chair.

When you believe in the power of the Universe, ninety-five percent of the work is done for you is done. When you believe that things are always working out for you, that you are a great manifester, and that an ever-expanding and abundant universe is just waiting for you to tap into and get turned on, the other five percent is attained. So why then are we not living our best lives? Is it that we fail to believe, or that we believe sometimes and not other times? And how has that been working out for you?

Even before I learned the mechanics of the law of attraction and manifestation, I always had this belief that I could get anything I really wanted. Note I said anything and not anyone. The Universe will never go against the free will of another individual which means we cannot manifest someone into our lives against her will. Its perhaps better to manifest someone with the qualities you are looking for and not decide to ask the Universe for Mary, Jane, or Sue. It will never happen.

For the many of us non-believers, I invite you to simply try it. Start with something small.
For example, I manifested a parking spot in the heart of my capital city on a workday during peak hours. If you are familiar with my town, this is akin to finding gold coins in the street. Sometimes even the places that offer paid parking are filled. So, this day I was returning to town and needed a space to park. I started to envision in my mind a nice, easy-to-get-in-near-to-my-office spot. I banished negative thoughts because if what we think is what we get, then negative thoughts will produce negative results. I began to ask the Universe to send me this parking spot. I got myself caught up in the emotions of having found a space, the way I would feel, the sense of satisfaction of not having to drive around for minutes looking for a spot, I even engage my subconscious mind for further assistance, then jumped into my car and headed to town. As I turned the corner onto a street that was usually filled with traffic, I spied a spot. I slowed down and decided to cross the lane to enter it when I heard a shrill horn of an impatient driver behind me. I smiled and continued driving. I drove around the block and returned and the spot was still there, waiting.

This may seem simple to you. “What is getting a parking space?” you might ask.

My answer is, begin with the little things, feel the power and satisfaction of knowing that things are always working out for you, and then move onto the bigger things. Once the little things begin appearing when you manifest them, and you continue to be in the right vibrational space, then to manifest a nice house, or a fancy car, or even a great relationship would be like finding a parking space.

I do not sit down in front of my laptop and ask myself, “so what are we blogging about today?” I always meditate first and wait for the message to come to me. Sometimes I get several but one always seems more urgent than the others. Other times I get nothing except the instruction to ‘just start typing’. Now and again, I am asked to write on topics that are quite out there and under normal circumstances would have landed me a visit to the place with padded walls but at the end of the day, I always write on what I am instructed.

So today we speak about meditation and I was quite happy because it’s one of my favourite topics to blog about.

Earlier as I sat for meditation, thoughts came, fast and furious at first until they quieted down to a mere trickle. I felt the connection to my Inner Self and was able to lock in for the duration of time I had set for the session.

There are some folks who complain that they cannot meditate, they do not feel anything, their mind keeps wandering, they cannot still their thoughts. It leaves them feeling more stressed and frustrated than before they sit to attempt meditation and so, before long they give up the practice completely.

I say to these persons, just sit. Find a comfortable seat and sit.

The thoughts will come, let them come.
The body will itch, let it itch.
The nose will decide that this is the best time to sneeze, let the nose do what it does and you just sit.
Soon all the thoughts will pass, the itches will be scratched and the nose will be sneezed out all while you remain seated.

There is a place inside of you where, if you stay long enough, you eventually feel a connection. For me, I feel it somewhere between my navel and my last pair of ribs. Some call it the solar plexus chakra, the seat of our intuition.

That place is a place of stillness and peace. Like the mighty lighthouse, it shines its light through all the turbulences of our stormy lives, guiding us home. It emanates love and connectivity to the One Consciousness. You will know it when you feel it.

So, find a seat and get comfortable and let the love unfold.

I have been thinking about a product that could make me millions. I am going to manufacture orgasms in a can. Yes. I have not decided on the name but surely something catchy will come to me….Orgasmo….Organic Orgasms…Orgasishms…my creative juices are on a low simmer.

Who would be my target audience?

I have decided that anyone believing that is possible to can an orgasm and would like one, or two... or ten; persons who are always looking for the next new thing, suffering from severe FOMO; and the merely curious, are fair game.

How can an idea as preposterous as this work?
What happens when you pop the lid and you get as much fizz as a three-day-old ginger ale? You would feel cheated and demand your money back, right?

There are some ideas that need to stay just that, an idea. It is not everything that can be packaged and sold even if there might be a market for it.

So when I read about classes for astral travel for persons unable to travel at this time because of the restrictions resulting from the pandemic, I say, there goes an orgasm in a can

Two friends that I respect and hold in high esteem recently laughed at my dreams. Their laughter said a lot. It said, “look at crazy Sheila again, believing in some fantasy, something that will never happen, ha-ha”. My initial response was disbelief, then it turned to anger, then disappointment then nothing. The emotions moved quickly and soon I was back in my default calm position, well semi-calm position, we are being honest here, I am mostly semi-calm.

Many would agree with me that it is often the people whom you think care about you and want to see you succeed, turn around and attempt to piss on your dreams. (I guess I’m not as calm as I thought I was). That is why it is sometimes best to tell no one of your plans. They bring their self-defeating, low vibsing energy into your space to laugh at you.

You cannot stop people from laughing at your aspirations.
You cannot stop people from ridiculing your dreams.
You cannot stop people from being themselves.

What you can stop is feeling less than your better self.
What you can stop is allowing inklings of doubt to creep in.
What you can stop is being around these people.

I invite you to grab your teacup, coffee mug or water bottle and trod on

This year 2020 has been a tough one for many of us. We were rudely awakened to our mortality. For others, it awakened us to our spirituality. 2020 provided us the opportunity to go within and to reflect on our lives. As part of the process, we are then able to clear out the debris from the past along with our fears of the future, so allowing us to relax in the present.
I was speaking with a young lady a few days ago and she remarked that I had a glow to my skin and was curious to know what products I was using. I smiled when she made the comment. It was not the first time someone said that to me in recent weeks and though I felt flattered to a certain extent and was tempted to say, Milani, I smiled at her and replied, “its 2020”. She did not understand and looked at me quizzically as if to determine whether I was joking or there was a meaning that she missed. For some reason, she thought better about pursuing the topic and so we switched to talking about something else.

I was the beneficiaries of one of the gifts that this year offered, the opportunity to relax into the present moment.

I went deep within,
past the traumas of my childhood,
the chips on my shoulders,
the tears in my heart,
the fears for my future,

I entered that mind shaft and found a cache of pure gold.

So the glow she saw emanating from my skin was gold dust.

Have you ever had one of those moments when you wanted something so badly that you could taste it? But it still remained out of reach? It’s just there but not quite there yet?

I had that experience earlier today. I needed some assistance in getting a structure erected to serve as Lizzie’s Nest Soup Kitchen. I knew that achieving this was going to put me directly on the path to fulfilling my soul’s purpose, so I was rearing to move ahead.

With a retrograde Saturn in my birth chart, this lifetime is a do-over and I have no choice but to get it right this time and with my North Node is in my second house, I am on my own with this one; I was not to expect assistance from anyone. Part of my work and fulfilling my karma was being self-sufficient and independent.

From quite young I understood that my purpose in life was to revolve around food, healing, and service. The idea was to use food to heal the physical, which in one way or the other would redound upwards to the emotional and spiritual. But there was always one block after the next and everything achieved came with tremendous effort and I was really tired of the efforting. Realizing that the sand was moving rapidly through the hourglass and with me having so much to do in order to get somewhere from here, I sat down and burst into tears. Frustration does that to me every time!

Through the tears, I felt the presence of my ancestors and spirit guides comforting me and telling me that it will be okay and that things will work out. I was so caught up in my feelings of lack and despair, I did not even want to hear them.

Why could it not have been easier?
What was the reason for all the suffering and frustration?
Why, why why.

I knew I had to calm down to hear the answers but the emotions ran deep.

As you read this post, I feel your nod of agreement. You feel me. You know what it is to desire, not for yourself but for others and you still are not successful in getting that want satisfied. You cry to the Universe, “but it’s not even for me, “

And the Universe responds with an ‘everything is going to be ok’.

So softly.
So assuredly.
That you almost miss it.

Have you ever had one of those nights, filled with so many different dreams that kept coming and coming, creating a whole commingled mess that caused you to wake up feeling confused and disoriented? You know there is a message in there somewhere but you cannot seem to be able to figure it out? And as a result, it’s like you are holding a ball of tangled strings that every time you pull on one to find an end, you end up making the ball tighter?

I had such a night recently and I found myself, during the day, going back to these dreams trying to decipher them. It was to no avail. I finally passed the job over to my subconscious mind, asking it for assistance since I knew it was more than able to solve my dream riddles.

Why do we even dream? The literature is replete with suppositions as to the whys and the wherefores.

We dream to connect our astral body to the astral world. Here we get to interact with our spirit guides, ancestors, angels, and other members of the spiritual realm. It is one of the easiest ways to make contact since during sleep we have no resistance to what, if we look through the lenses of the physical realm, we may not understand and can explain. During sleep, we become accepting of all possibilities.

For many of us, our ancestors use this opportunity to speak with us and send messages. Some of these we remember on awakening, others we don’t but everything is stored in our subconscious mind and during meditation or any quiet time, we are able to access the information.

The real deal is when we make a direct connection with Source Intelligence, we then get to know what this life is about.

We see living for what it is.
We understand that we are spirits having a human experience.
We accept the immortal part of us.
We realize that this plane is not our home.
We know that one day we will return to be part of this cosmic energy.

We dream, we live, we yearn and we wait.

I passed a parked hearse on my way to work today. The proprietor had written on the back of the vehicle the words ‘Last Ride’. I smiled to myself, finding it funny that he had such a sense of humour on what was considered such a morbid topic, death. It’s not like anyone could disagree with the man but the more sensitive ones among us might not see the light side of it.

We do not understand death, not many of us have died and came back to life so we see the process as something to fear, to be sad about, with many so grieve stricken that they sink into a deep depressive state as they mourn the passing of their loved one.

I have never died and was returned to life nor have I ever had a near-death experience that I can recall, but through meditation, I was able to discover that the process of crossing over from this physical plane to the next is one of the most beautiful experiences the soul can have. Its returning Home. We sing the song ‘…. this world is not my home; I’m just a-passing through...’ So since we know that we are all passing through, why all the debilitating grief, the weeping, the wailing when we lose a loved one?

Perhaps if we can experience what happens when we cross over to the other side, if we can get a glimpse of our real home, we will realize that it’s much better than where we are at present. How many stories have we read about persons dying and having had a taste of the other side, only to report that they did not want to come back?

I will share my personal experience, my glimpse of Home. It was during a meditative session, very early in the morning. I cannot recall what triggered it but I found myself in the most beautiful place. It glowed yellow. Do you remember those screw or push bulbs we used to have long ago, before the age of energy-saving-LED-bright-like-high-noon ones? They used to come in different colours and yellow was one. When turned on in a dark room, it gave off a warm mystical glow. That was the glow that I experienced. There was a female standing waiting to greet me. I guess she was one of my ancestors. Short like me, slim with very long hair that looked like dreadlocks and she radiated this love. This warm, encompassing, otherworldly type love that I had never experienced before. She smiled at me and I just cried and cried. I was whole and at home. Time went by slowly, or so it felt, and when I returned to myself, I was surprised to feel real tears wetting my cheeks.

It was blissful. To this day, I cannot recall the experience without my eyes filling with happy tears.

I was grateful for the experience. It taught me that death was nothing to fear. It was a beautiful thing. Like the freeing of a butterfly from its cocoon, it releases us to Home.

My friend Ali and I share strong disagreement on the topic of religion and spirituality. I do not even know why we argue because it’s like debating over which taste better, mangoes or pineapples. They are not comparable. He is still caught up in the dogma that was handed down to him by his cultural circumstances while I have since left those beliefs behind in an attempt to forge my own path and make my own personal connection to Divine Source. He accuses me, unfairly, of not knowing who, by his definition, God is, and even went as far as to say he is concerned about my Soul. My what? Who gave him that burden to carry? Pray tell.

I see Ali as living in constant fear of a death that may catch him ill-prepared to meet his master. To me, he is like someone dangling over a pit of fire that, on his departure from this physical plane will results in his life's cords being cut and him falling into eternal damnation. He keeps chasing for a connection that is outside of himself. He keeps hoping that the books and the building, the wine and the bread, the fear and the reverence will get him what he seeks.

I am sure that there is an Ali in your life. Refusing to see what is directly under his nose. Looking outside for what is inside. Unhappy. Unfulfilled. Yearning to be saved.

You get angry and then saddened because you know that you have to leave Ali to find his own way.
You cannot clear the path for him.
You cannot argue anymore.

You simply hope that he gets it before it gets him.

I have always been an impatient person. I get antsy when I have to wait in a line be it at the supermarket, the bank, even in traffic, I would occupy myself by fretting over how much longer would I have to wait. All this was before I discovered the art of meditation. Now I see any wait as a time to go within.

Now when I see that I may have a little wait, I join the queue and begin to deepen my breath and relax my body. The sensation is amazing. You can actually feel yourself sinking into yourself like you are being cradled within a floating cushion of warm welcoming air. Your mind expands and your physical body unburdens itself and before you know it, the cashier is beckoning you to approach the counter.

I am sure that many of you can relate to what I am saying, the impatience, the constant rush to get to the next place so that we can rush from there as well; the disquiet in the mind leading to tension in the body and we are all familiar with what happens at this point. We become stressed. We are so busy heading to nowhere fast that we miss the opportunity to discover the most beautiful gift lodged inside ourselves, that of being quiet, getting still, and going within.

The next time you feel the need to put getting there and getting it done into overdrive and you get impatient with everyone else around you who is not busy enough, not moving fast enough, not clearing space because you are coming through, I encourage you to pause, feel for the calm that is always within and change your pace to a slow rush.

Whenever we desire something that seems to be taking too long to come, this is what you have to do: simply imagine yourself where you want to be. If you are like me, with Neptune in your twelfth house, you can easily ace an assignment like this.

You dream it,
You meditate on it,
You see it,
You feel it,
You become it.

Your becoming one with it can happen with and without assistance from the planetary placements in your chart. It is all about the attitude you adopt and the mindset you create.

Do you see yourself as a strong manifester, easily bringing the thoughts and ideas from the astral realm into your physical existence?

Or are you like those who believe that not possessing a single creative bone in their body, they cannot even begin to imagine?

Everything starts with the first step.
So step up and step out into the realm where dreams come true.
Starting with the imagination.

I have this friend. These past few months, our relationship has gotten a bit strained but I am hoping to rekindle it to be how it once was. He has always been good to me. He allowed me space to be myself while watching me grow and develop into the person I am today and I always saw him as being on my side, helping me to work things out, to fix my errors, and to set things right. So you would understand that given that our relationship is not as close as it used to be, I am bothered by it. You know my friend since he might be yours as well. He has been good to many of us. His name is Mr. Time.

Nowadays, Mr. Time has taken on the role of nipping at my heels in a not-so-nice way, telling me that he will not be around forever and I still have so much to get done. He is asking me to up the ante and to reach for more, to move more rapidly towards fulfilling my soul’s purpose given that the vessel that houses my soul is a borrowed one and that too will not be around forever. It is already to beginning to show some wear and tear and though I have been trying to keep it in excellent shape, it was just never meant for immortality.

How has Mr. Time been with you?

Has he been asking you to rest and relax, that you are ahead of schedule and you can now take a break?

Or has been at your heels, nipping away like a rabid dog, sometimes climbing onto your back when there is a need, telling you that you have been too complacent?

Too afraid to move on,
Too shy to speak up,
Too mired in the Ego self that you have forgotten your Soul self,

Mr. Time, for the most part, is good to us. He is patient, kind, and understanding but the minute he goes exits that friend zone and he turns up the ticking of his clock, you know that there are no more time outs.

Have you ever had a friend, a family member, a lover, someone who means a lot to you and you see them doing the wrong thing, going along the wrong path, hell-bent to nowhere and you offer advice that you know would be helpful but they will not listen to you, worse yet take it? When this happens, it is painful. It feels like you have the remedy and the sick patient refuses the cure and continue to suffer.

I have a friend. He suffers from bouts of depression, sometimes lasting for months and when they occur, things can get really dark. When I do not see or hear from him for a while, I would teasingly ask him if he ‘went underground’. He usually smiles wryly and answers in the affirmative. My friend is closing in on midlife and has never been married, has no children, and has never been in a relationship longer than five years. He sees himself and strong and independent, not needing anyone in his life. He has some narcissistic tendencies that, on occasion, have gotten him in trouble with his relationships.

You see, my friend has his South Node/ Ketu in his first house and he continues to live in the past. The first house is about self, believing in oneself, thinking that there is no great need for anyone else. This means then, that his North Node/Rahu in his seventh house, the House of Partnership. With this house, there is a shift away from oneself towards another. The aim here is to relate and corporate, to form strong bonds and unite. A person with his North Node in the seventh house achieves his soul purpose when he assumes the role of one for the many and not one for the self and so is able to live the life he chose when he entered this earthly realm. My friend knows this because I have told him so on many occasions. He brushed the information away and has continued to live a life much less than what he came here to experience.

My heart aches for him.

I recently invited him to share a cup of coffee with me.

I will try one more time.

I am still not comfortable speaking about some of the things that appear to me during my meditative sessions, especially when these things are hard to rationalize with the logical mind. Meditation increases a person’s intuitive and psychic abilities. Whether one wishes to build on these gifts that we all have mind you, depends on the person.

Increased intuition comes about after we have done the preparatory work, meaning having gone through the process of the dark night of the soul; the cleaning out and clearing up of the cobwebs of our past that entangle the subconscious mind and prevent for a clear and strong connection.

I am no psychic. I cannot predict anything. I get messages now and again mostly from persons on their way out of this physical plane or persons who have crossed over who for some reason feel like I am a good candidate to carry a message. Most of the messages I do not bother to relate; I feel it is not in my place. Nobody asked me anything and using my local dialect, I would be “quite fass wid meself” telling people what they had no interest in hearing.

My latest visitor has been a little girl, around 5 or 6 years, judged from the fact that she has no front teeth. Her hair is long and neatly coming into two long ponytails and she is wearing a nice orange dress that flows into yellow at the hemline. She has huge wistful eyes and she looks at me and smiles but appears someone sad as if she is missing someone. From her initial visit, I figured she was connected to someone of the work crew that is currently repairing the back fence between my yard and my neighbour’s. I do not know the people from adam and we do not even speak the same language. So why did this little girl choose me to deliver a message that she is missing her loved one? For them to look at me like I had suddenly grown horns? They may even pack up and leave without finishing the job!

It is tough when things like these happen and if she is a persistent one, I would not be able to get her out of my psyche. I have had to deliver messages to some of my relatives and if I were them, I would have called the doctor lady who gives injections to crazy folks.

The thing is, many of us do not know what our metaphysical gifts are and when we tap into them through meditation, they are then revealed. We just have to know beforehand the possibilities and prepare for the inevitable.

Not even session that we sit that something mystical will be revealed. Many times it is a quiet, beautiful, experience that leaves us feeling relaxed and calm, in touch with our Higher Selves and Universal Consciousness. Other times it can get quite turbulent.

Just remember support is always available from our spirit guides, our ancestors, and the Divine. When the pressure gets too great, tap into them when we want to tap out.

Open your mind and believe in what you think of as impossible,
Open your eyes and see the unfolding,
Open your heart and feel the goodness of it coming,
Open your mouth and speak it into being.

Sometimes we are afraid to speak our desires into being. We know what we want, we also know what we do not want but we are still not brave enough to ask for it but will only come when you get the courage to say it and believe it.

If you feel that what you want is too big, too great, too much for your undeserving self then speak something less grand into being and experience the power of universal forces when they gather around you to grant your desires.

Since I was small, I have always admired a particular house that I felt drawn to for reasons I could not explain. Whenever I was in the vicinity, I would always look at it through the fence and I guess, unknowing to me, I sent out my desires to the Universe but I never once dared speaking it into being. I was a poor girl from a poor community and many persons considered that my greatest prospect was going to be getting pregnant by sixteen and then living a life of struggle. Who was I to ask for such grandeur of the Universe? I am not a little girl anymore, the property is now for sale and I am speaking it into being.

Is there anything in your life that you have desired strongly but have been afraid to speak into being?
How has it been working out for you?
How much longer are you going to be looking through the fence with the cat dangling off your tongue?

Believe in the power of the Universe.
Believe that you can be or have anything you desire.

Believe and Speak.
Believe and Expect.
Believe and Receive.

Have you ever been deep in meditation when a thought enters your subconscious mind from seemingly nowhere and it was so brilliant that you jumped up to write it down? One of the things that meditation and quieting the mind does is that it presents us with thoughts that, if acted upon can change lives.

I have a friend who has been unemployed for a while because of the coronavirus pandemic. He worked in one of the most hard-hit sectors, tourism and since then has been aimlessly trying to find a new purpose. He knew he did not want to go back into the hotel business but was unsure as to what he could do instead. I told him that needed to find his calling through developing whatever talents he was blessed with. My friend is an eight house Pisces sun, his ascendant is in Cancer and he has an exalted Moon. Based on those alone, it is obvious that he is all about emotions and being empathetic and highly intuitive, I have scolded him on many occasion for ‘wasting’ his gifts.

So one evening during my meditation a thought came to me. It was three simple words and I knew right away they were for him: ‘A Helping Hand’ and the picture was that of a business card. It made complete sense since he flourishes whenever allowed to help people so why not create a business, loving what he does?

Often times the Universe works in this way. We get flashes of thoughts that once acted upon can help us to find our soul purpose. It may not come like a lightning bolt from the heavens, but it might just be the seed of an idea. A seed, planted and watered can grow into a mighty tree.

So take the time to sit and quiet your mind; go within and listen for the seeds of thoughts that your Higher Self sends your way. It may be for you, it may be for someone close to you, but when asked, the Universe always answers, always.

Many of us can feel when the Universe is about to bless us with something we have been desiring for a long time. In our energy, we feel it coming, anticipation gets heightened and excitement rises. But the ultimate is that when we begin to feel the emotion of the thing even before the thing comes, that’s when we really know it’s for real.

I know there are people who will wonder how can you feel the emotion from the thing before it manifests in your 3-D? I used to wonder the same thing myself until I began to realize that is how it works. I compare in to being happy and thankful when there is little and being happy and thankful when there is a lot. When the happy and the thankful remain steady, that’s when the blessings begin raining down.

How happy and thankful have you been lately?
Happy to be alive and loved?
Thankful for your job and the food on your table?
Happy to be part of the right here, right now?
Thankful for the experience of life, the good, the bad, and the really bad?

If you have not been happy and thankful, well you still have time to get on board this caravan to abundance which only drives up and stops for you when you are happy and thankful. You can start by looking for the little things.

A smile from a stranger,
Some garden veggies from your neighbour;
The feel of sand through your toes,
The warm sun on your noes;

The eyes to enjoy nature,
The blessings from the Creator;
That hot cup of tea,
And just being allowed to be.

Where I come from, most things esoteric and metaphysical, are not viewed very positively. Our colonial past ingrained in us the belief that the magic, (or what I would like to describe as the enhanced understanding of the workings of the Universe) possessed by our ancestors wicked and evil, to the point where the practice of what we refer to as Obeah, continues to be illegal on our law books to this day. I am not saying that practitioners of dark magic, in whatever form they choose, have not done some evil shit, causing pain, suffering and in some cases death to other people but we have limited our view of the metaphysical to simply the dark side and have refused to acknowledge and accept the duality of it all.

I am fascinated by all things esoteric and metaphysical. I am interested in knowing the origin of the universe and am not limiting myself to the test tubes and Bunsen burners that are offered as knowledge in our schools.

A Mind space that connects to the universe, so vast and unexplored for the most parts, must have some secrets that it is willing to spill:

On the idea of astral traveling and vivid dreaming,
On the practice of meditation that connects oneself in oneness to Universal Consciousness,
On the exploration and mining of our dreams and visions,
On the use of herbal plants and medicines for healing,
On the sharing of creativity through art, music, words, and dance,
On the belief that we are pure energy and that energy can make dis-energy whole again,
On the knowledge already given the sages, shamans, prophets, and astrologists who teach and warn;

It’s all there to explore with the Inner and Upper Minds as long as we do not narrow our view to a 2- inch diameter porthole and lose out on seeing and experiencing the great expanse of it all.

A young female colleague and I were talking about the state of Politics in our country. She is highly dedicated to the development of our island state and I have admired her over the years as she keeps striving to become the best she can be. Where I come from, women do not usually get entangled in politics. We are strong supporters, we are activists, we are community organizers but very few of us actually take up the challenge of running for office. But with our having such a strongly matriarchal society, and with more and more women becoming highly educated and financially independent, it was only a matter of time before more of us began entering the political arena.

I can very much relate to the idea of Politics in its purest form. I believe in serving people. I have Saturn retrograde in my sixth house and a stellium in my tenth, I came into this physical plane to be a servant. So I said to my friend, “You know, we do not need more Politicians in Politics, we need more people who care about people.” She understood me. We were vibsing. I felt and responded to her positive energy and wished her well in a new highly visible role she had taken on in the political sphere.

Can there be a connection between Politics with Spirituality? Can we even mention these two words in the same sentence? Yes, a good example is Ghandi; he was spiritual and a highly successful politician at the same time.

When we think of Spirituality, we think of an all-encompassing unity, universal love, and soul consciousness. Imagine if we can incorporate this view into our Politics!

When we speak about Spirituality, (not religion) we talk about suppression of the Ego Mind which then enhances our ability to truly serve people.

We understand that the power, and sometimes the money that comes with Politics is of little importance to our spiritual life and cannot affect our connection to Source Energy.

We understand that intuition and the inner guidance that being of a Spiritual mind engenders, are assets in any game of politics.

We understand the concept of universal abundance and the ability of the universe to provide for us which helps us to provide for others.

We understand service, the premise behind Politics.

For me, the only part of my name that has remained constant over time has been my first name. My last name changed from one to the other for various reasons: being born out of wedlock, then given a name that I had no legal claim to, then given my grandmother’s last name, then given my first husband’s last name, then a legally changed double-barrel name, then a new last name from a second marriage, then a reversion to an old name, then two last names without the hyphen. I tell people, just call me by my first name, or better yet, call me whatever you wish, as long as you are referring to me, I will answer; it’s only a name and where I’m going, I don’t plan to take it with me.

When it comes to religion and spirituality, we sometimes get hung up on the name as well. What should we refer to him, her, it?

I say it does not matter. As long as we send out the call, we will always get an answer.

It is Universal Consciousness,

She is I Am,

He is God,

We are Divine Energy.

The morning felt good. There was something in the air that had me eagerly reaching for my meditation chair. Yes, I am a chair meditator, and sometimes, quelle horreur! I meditate in my bed as well.
I made an early discovery that meditating on hard surfaces was not for me. On trying it initially, I spent more time concentrating on the aches and pains of having my body on a hard floor than enjoying the meditative process.

Many of us have tried meditation and we look at other practitioners sitting with erect spines on highly polished wooden floors or on large rocks facing expansive bodies of water and we admire and marvel and think that that represents a true meditator. I beg to disagree.

A true meditator is one who can get quiet and go within using whatever means to get there. Some people are able to get into contact with their Higher Selves through walking, or gardening, or knitting, or even washing dishes.

There is no right or wrong in this thing, it’s personal. Do whatever that allows for the connection to Self.

So, yes, I grab my favourite chair, turn it just so to face the rising sun and I sit. With the cushions feeling so delicious under my bottom, I set my intention and slowly sink into bliss with a smile on my face.

Every day I read about persons asking about meditation and how to do it. They share their frustration at not being able to ‘get it right’ because they cannot stop their thoughts. So instead of sitting and becoming quiet, emptying their minds and experiencing whatever they figure they should be experiencing, they end up with thoughts about work, their partner, their neighbour’s dog, their children, the economy, unemployment, the pandemic and…and as a consequence, no peace is felt. Then, upset and anxious, they see their ‘failed’ process as another thing they did not manage to get right.

I believe that there is no wrong or right when it comes to many things in life and meditation is one of them. Being unable to control our thoughts during meditation is not a sign of failure, it is a sign that we have a working mind. One of the things I encourage is to feel the space between. There are spaces between our breaths and spaces between our thoughts. Grab onto these and feel the quiet. At first, the space may only last a few seconds but eventually, it lengthens until almost an entire meditative session can be spent with little or no thought. I have not reached there as yet but I know it is possible. I have experienced my spaces lengthening and I relish the feeling, the quietness, the sinking into or rising up out these spaces.

On days when the spaces are short because mind is busy working overtime, I accept that is being the practice for the day and what was good for me at that time. When spaces are long, I experience the orgasmic bliss of it and accept that as being what was necessary for me to experience at that time.

Life is already full of judgments- being judged and judging others so we do not need to add our meditation practice to the pile.

Sit, if you want to, close your eyes and feel the calm.
Relish the spaces of no thought when they come.
Enjoy the marvel of the human mind whenever it decides to take charge.

It is always good, always.

Have you ever had one of those meditative sessions where you feel like you were made a member of the Transformers Crew? Do you remember the sound that those robots made when they were transforming, the cling, clang, lock, lock, lock? That is exactly how I felt during my morning meditation. I had locked onto Source.

After setting my intention, I settled down in my chair. At first, there was nothing special going on, my monkey mind was wreaking its usual havoc as I tried to settle into some quietness but as usual, I never let it know that any attention is being paid to it and after being ‘ignored’ for a few minutes, it settles down to be in quiet union with my Higher Self.
The breath felt special this morning, there was a sweetness to it and the space between each one felt like it was connecting to something powerful.

And then the energy started to rise. It traced a path from the base of my spine up through the energy channels to my head and settled there. I felt a heaviness and the only description that I could come up with was that of wearing a heavy hat. Perhaps I was crowned, I do not know but I felt the swirling of the energy inside my head as if it was seeking release but it did not exit. It settled down and then slowly subsided.

I do not know what was happening but I have learned to take each meditative session as they come, intentions set or not. Sometimes a sitting is heavy, energetic, and powerful; sometimes it is quiet and ecstatic and other times when my ego mind has the upper hand, the session devolves into thoughts and more thoughts that would not go away. I accept all as necessary and good.

One of the things that discourage many of us from meditation is that we feel like we were unable to quiet our minds.
We feel a failure and so we stop when we really should be continuing, knowing that there will come a time when all thought will go away and we will be sitting in bliss, locked in, transformer-style with our Source.

As I scrolled through my Quora feed this morning I came across a most interesting article. The author was writing about the fish sign as being the luckiest sign on one’s palm. It indicated success, good luck, spiritual name and fame, and lots of wealth. I became curious so I went searching my palms for this fish symbol and I found two, one in each palm! All excited, I went digging for more articles on palmistry. As I started checking the information, I discovered that what I thought were two fish symbols, were actually called ‘islands’ because they were not perfectly formed and these islands were in no way an indicator of future success. I laughed out loud. That was just my luck; but I did come across a large triangle symbol, that according to an article, was a sign that I had an increased chance of winning a lottery at some point in my life. So lotto here I come!

The abundance of the Universe is available to all of us even if there is neither fish nor triangle symbol in our palm. We can all be abundantly rich.

Abundance means different things to different people. For some it means excellent health and a good family, for others, it is signified by great physical wealth and good living and for another group, it might simply be peace of mind.

Unfortunately, many of us are not willing to take what is being offered. We figure there must be some trick because gaining abundance should not be so easy and accessible. We were taught that success and wealth had to come from years of hard work and by the sweat of our brows, we shall eat bread. Mind you, I am not saying that the Universe might not send you down a path of hard work to get to its blessings but we have to be willing to tap in and follow the trail that leads us to where we want to be.


So I invite you to tap in, sit quietly and connect to Source Energy and all of the blessings of the universe, fish and all, shall be yours.

My young cousin just started his first job. He was happy to be making his ‘own money’ as he referred to it. I smiled when he told me this, but I was not going to be the one to let him know that his money is never his own. It goes to the butcher, the baker, and the banker. If you are lucky, you may see the back of the dollar bills as they quickly leave your hand.

Anyway, this day, he saw me and started to wave excitedly, he was trying to catch my attention.
“Look,” he exclaimed proudly, “I have my first bank card!”

I peered at the card trying to read what was on it. It said Prepaid Credit Card. A what? What is a prepaid credit card? My too-early-in-the morning brain was not doing its normal happy chugging, but that sounded like an oxymoron to me.
He explained that having the card means he is able to purchase items from the internet, as long as he topped up the card with cash beforehand. But doesn’t a credit card mean that you can use it and then pay at a later date?
I was confused but what flashed across my mind as he continued to explain the benefits of having such a card, was a sense of gratitude that the Universe will never offer us a prepaid credit card.

We come into this existence with our money bags full to running over. We come with abundant blessings and grace. We know that Source is always available for free top-ups whenever we ask and there is a never-ending supply of all that we need and want, we get to choose.

What we get is exactly what we ask Source Intelligence for, the good, the bad, and the indifferent, as my mother likes to say.

So what not ask for all good things?

Why not ask for abundance and blessings?

We do not have to top up anything and there is no pay-back period.

There is no oxymoron, its simply ‘ask and it shall be given unto you’

No fine print
No tricky clause
No prepaid credit
No tricks, no gimmicks

Just goodness and mercy all the days of our lives!

I usually sit in quiet meditation for at least fifteen minutes before I begin writing my daily blog post. It is a time when I go within, seeking any messages that Spirit might have for me and also avail myself of any creative inspirations. This morning I got a message to write about funerals and I protested loudly. I had written quite a bit about death and dying in the recent past and was really looking forward to blogging about lighter topics. But Spirit had spoken and who am I not to obey?

So what about funerals? I have not been to one in quite a while, I avoid them as much as possible. As a disclaimer, I have only ever been to Christian funerals so I do not know what is done in other religions. I know though, that some indigenous tribes see death as from its positive aspects and have a big feast to celebrate the life of the departed. They are assured that there is one other soul that has their backs in the heavenly realm.

The funerals I have been to in the past have always involved weeping and mourning. People are distraught that their loved one is no longer with them and they show their raw emotions through their tears.

But the part I most detest is the preaching that makes up the larger part of the service. There are some preachers who take advantage of a captive audience and create for themselves bully pulpits. They preach fire and brimstone on the living, shouting threats, and making unfounded declarations; people were going to burn in the depths of hell if there was no repentance of sins. Almost always, by the time the talk of fire and burning begins, I exit stage left, leaving the bad vibes and negative energy behind.

I see death as a celebration of the life the soul lived while here. The body, the earthly cloaking has done its job and is discarded like a pair of old shoes. The soul, journey completed, now has the privilege of returning back to Home, to the non-physical.

There is no fire, nor is there any burning, only peace and love, and bliss.

Besides making you feel more peaceful and calm, meditation gets your glow on. Along with rest, water, exercise, diet, and for some, good sex, it plays an integral role in producing a beautiful complexion. You begin to glow from within and it reflects through your skin, no makeup needed.
Meditation does something else and persons should be aware of it before getting too deeply into the practice. It can enhance one’s psychic abilities and things of a metaphysical nature become common occurrences in the meditator’s life.

I did not know about this when I first started meditating. After a series of traumatic events in my life, I had started to question my existence and wanted to know what was I here to do, if to just live, and then die. This seeking turned out to be an experience that led me to meditation. This practice was successful in helping to fulfill my need to connect to the Universe and Divine Intelligence and I have been meditating every day for at least 30 minutes.

Over time, one of the things I noticed on an esoteric level was that my dreams became more vivid and prophetic; I felt things and I knew things that I could not explain but for me, the hardest part of this process has been my re-awakened connection with persons, especially ones that I know or knew who had begun their journey from physical to non-physical or those that were already over there. It reached the point that whenever I tell my friend Judii that I had a dream last night, her next words were, “oh boy…!”

It made me very uncomfortable and I have been unwilling to accept this part of myself.
I meditate and dream and talk with persons here and over there, all wanting to give me some message or the other. Once my good friend Melda, she is over there, asked me if I was coming. I told her not yet. It was quite freaky.

My story is not unique. Many persons, known as mediums, provide a service to grieving relatives, by connecting to past loved ones and exchanging messages from one side to the next. It has been said to be quite comforting to those experiencing the loss of someone close to them.

Myself, I am still very shy about passing messages and until now have only talked about this to family and a few friends. Between my dreams and my meditation, I am quite busy in the astral world and it has turned out to be quite a fascinating place to hang out.

Mind you, it is not everyone who takes up a meditation practice develops nor am I asking that you believe what I have written here but for sure, once you begin meditating, you will become more sensitive and intuitive; to what level? That depends on you.

Interested?

This morning I left home for work earlier than usual. It just happened that I was ready before my usual departure time so I decided to take advantage of the early start to my day.
Some recent rain had washed the roads clean and the grassy verge was looking quite pleased with its early morning blessing. It was a beautiful day to be alive. Clouds hung a bit low but they were non- threatening, they had done their job and were ready to move on; their various shapes and shades of white coloured the sky with a calming hue.

About halfway through the drive, the sun started to send its rays out. It was ready to start its own day and being king, was broking no interference from any neither cloud nor rain. I groped for my sunshades and slipped them over my eyes and what I saw made me catch my breath. The sun’s early morning rays and the remaining clouds had formed a massive halo with a double rainbow! The colours of the rainbow shone brilliantly and seemed to stretch from one expanse of the sky to another. They cut through the halo itself causing a shimmering of light that appeared like jewels falling from the sky. They danced before my eyes as if to the beat of a heavenly drum. I slowed my car and felt washed in the light. A rush of gratitude coursed through me and I was caught up in the moment, extremely happy to be part of something that felt so special.

That feeling of gratitude stayed with me and it encouraged my blog post for today. I am counting my blessings and naming them one by one.

The big ones, the little ones.
The ones that I think I created for myself and those that the Universe created for me.
The breath of life and my acceptance of its circle.
The love of close friends and family that is not often spoken but always felt.
The acceptance of myself with my deep wounds and poorly healed scars.
The knowledge that the Universe always has my back.
The belief that things are always working out for me.
The assurance that it is already done.

Anything can give rise to feelings of gratitude, mine was a dancing double rainbow.

What triggered your feelings of gratitude today?

I got a massage a couple of days ago and given it does not take much to cause me to bliss out, I blissed out. This masseur was excellent. He had strong hands and arms and was able to get deep into my tired and aching muscles. By the time he was finished with me, I had astral traveled to the far end of the Universe and back. He shared his skill and his energy with me, a good, positive, high-vibing energy that ultimately made the experience extraordinary.

You see this energy-sharing thing, it ought not to be taken lightly. We are all energy beings and as a consequence, we absorb the energy of whomsoever that is around us; the energy of our friend, coworker, and lover all commingles with our own and can affect us in a positive or negative way depending on how these persons are vibsing. If they are vibsing high, like my masseur was, then we benefit positively from the interaction, if they are low-vibing, energy vampires, then the experience will not turn out very good for us.

We ourselves have to be careful about how we are vibsing. We also give off the energy that we generate from within which means that when we are feeling less than our best selves, when we feel negative emotions, when our energy atoms are not bouncing around at their usual high frequency, we share this energy with those around us.
As Spirits having a human experience, we do experience low-vibing energy from time to time, we either give it off or receive it from someone and this can sometimes knock us off our path. The good thing is that we get to decide for how long we remain a part of this type of energy vortex. It can grow quite powerful and before we know it, we are flailing about in a bottomless pit of negative emotion, trying to find a way out.

We, therefore, need to guard our energy and protect ourselves from people, places, and things that cause us to feel disconnected from the Source. We are responsible for how we feel and whenever the feelin’ ain’t right, we let go and look for the feeling that feels right.

I got played this morning by a friend. She wanted me to do something that I really would have had to go out of my way to get done. I wasn’t feeling in the mood to go out of my way; it was a public holiday and I wanted to simply write my blog, see if I can finish a painting I had started but seemed to be going nowhere fast, and tend to my garden. (a storm had recently passed and with the rain it brought, a lot of weeds had grown up between my plants. These needed to be removed before the next storm.)
So you can imagine my consternation when it dawned on me that I agreed to meet a request that was not going to fit into my plan for the day! This person has been playing me for a long time and I seem to get caught every time.

I sighed, mentally shifted my schedule, and settled down to getting my blog started.

There is a part of us that is a practiced manipulator. It has been with us as long as we have been around and being quicker, sharper, and brighter, it knows us better than we know ourselves and unfortunately, it tricks us almost every time. It’s large and in charge, takes no prisoners and does whatever it has to do to win. I am talking about the Ego Mind. It coerces us to modify our plans so that its desires can be met.
We sigh, mentally shift our schedules and settle down for the drama to emerge.

It helps when we see the manipulator’s game before it’s played so that we can prepare ourselves beforehand. This we achieve by prayer and meditation, by connecting to our Divine Source and Guidance, and having our, ‘sorrys I will not do it” ready to hand out.

And so we say:
Sorry I will not be unhappy,
Sorry I will not harbour negative energy, vibrations,
Sorry, I will not re-awakening my traumatized inner child,
Sorry, I will hold no grudge for my neighbour,
Sorry, I will not betray my friend or lover,
Sorry, I will not be less than my best self,

Sorry.

“Good morning and how are you?” asked my friend Samuel.
“I am doing excellently,” I responded.
“Wow, I wish I could get some of that,” he said, with a bit of envy in his voice.
“It is free and abundantly available, you just have to reach for it,” was my response.
Samuel looked at me, I guess trying to figure out what I was on, and hesitantly said, “Ok”.
It was a missed opportunity for Samuel since he was not brave enough to ask, “ how can I reach for it?” Or perhaps he knew but chose not to reach but whatever his reason for feeling less than excellent, I would invite him to change it.

Good feeling thoughts lead to better feeling thoughts and before you know it, you are feeling excellent and showing it.
But it starts with the good feeling thought.
It starts with the gratitude thought.
It starts with the things-are-always-working-out-for-me thought.

One good feeling thought leads into the next and before you know it, things are working out for you. Your manifestation skills get lit and you are amazed at what started with a single good-feeling thought.

I used to get nervous when things were working out for me. I am the kind of person who lived waiting for the next shoe to fall and what I eventually realized was that I was robbing myself of the benefit of the good feeling thought. Instead of reveling in the thought and the manifestation, I shrunk away, thereby diminishing what could have turned into something great.
Now I am a different person. I reach for thoughts that feel good and I wrap myself in the feeling of the thought and like magic, another thought comes and then another and then before I know it I am all blissed out, in such a state of euphoria that when someone asked me how am I doing, I can respond ‘excellently’.

I invite you to make “doing excellently” your response as well, reach for the thought that feels good.

I woke around 2:55 am to the sound of a loud rumbling in my backyard. For a few seconds, I was disoriented, wondering what was going on outside. I have five small dogs that do get a bit rambunctious sometimes but this sound was different; all my dogs put together could not create a sound like that.
Then it dawned on me, my neighbour’s dog was in the yard and creating havoc. I was royally pissed. For one thing, it was 3 am in the morning and for the second thing, I had to go outside and chase it back over the fence.

Shoeless, I grabbed a broom and went looking for my nemesis. Dogs smell and hear very well so it was back over the fence long before I was able to give it two broomsticks. I frowned, cursed my neighbour under my breath, remaining in the shadows a while to see if it would return.

After taking some deep breaths, something drew my eye heavenward. It was the biggest, most beautiful moon I had seen in a long time, royally flanked by two golden stars that I suspect were Saturn and Jupiter. I had read about being able to see them with the naked eye in the night sky earlier. I was awestruck. I felt the moon's energy pulling and enveloping me. My energetic body responded, and prana rose from my bare toes up to my crown; I felt like I was shot out into the universe to connect with the cosmos.

Talk about a serendipitous moment! If that dog had not caused me to come outside, I would have never had such an experience. I soon forgot about why I was brought out from my warm bed, I became so caught up in the moment, reveling in the connection of my energy mingling with that of the moon.

Let us look for the connections to moments that otherwise would, as my mother like to say, “want us to sin our souls”

Who knows?

That neighbour’s dog digging up your newly planted kitchen garden at 4 in the morning might be the exact time that Spirit has a message to share with you.

My yoga teacher talked about prana yesterday in my YouTube Yoga Camp Video class. (I wrote about starting yoga at the beginning of the pandemic and since then I have taken to it like a pig to mud.) So, prana, what is prana?
Prana is energy,
It can neither be seen nor measured, it can only be felt;
It is detected by our subtle body which is our energetic body;
It is the vibration between two atoms and can also be referred to as our aura;
Our aura is simply the visual form of our prana energy.

So we give off prana energy and we also absorb it from others which means when negative, low-vibing people come around us, we are at risk of absorbing their energy and end up becoming like them. But once we enter on the path to that leads to our finding ourselves and we connect with Source Energy, this awakening process gives us no other option but to start vibrating at a higher level and as a consequence, those lower-vibrating persons, places and things are pushed outside our energy field and are then left on the wayside.

Where I live, we used to have a lot of annual festivals to celebrate events and what we did was to simply tag the phrase ‘o-Rama’ at the end of a word and have a new festival named and described. So we had our Village-o-Rama, Sugarcane-o-Rama, Fried-Fish-o-Rama and many more o-Ramas. These occasions usually signaled fun, food, music, and an overall happy time for the festival-goer.
A connection to Source Energy, high-vibing persons, yoga and meditation, are the ingredients that feed into my own festival that I have dubbed Prana-o-Rama. Here I am allowed to absorb, to expand, to heal, to grow, and to share all the while becoming an even better version of myself.

I invite you to take the time, put together the necessary elements to stage your own Prana-o-Rama, and then sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

While meditating a few days ago, I got a download. If you currently think the way I used to then you would figure that it had something to do with the transfer or copying of data from one computer to another via the internet. There were no computers nor internet involved, but simply the language used to explain certain happenings in the spiritual or metaphysical field. I remember when I first started reading and exploring, I found that I did not understand anything. The language was foreign and no matter the teacher, there was still something lacking in the transfer of knowledge from their pen or lips to my eyes, ears, and brain; something was missing in the ethers.

I then slowly began to realize that if I continue trying to merely understand the language of the communication, I would never get it, it was something that needed to be experienced for it to make sense. Only then was I able to see why words were not enough and would never be enough.

So my download, it felt like a transfer of an energy wave into my head that settled in my gut. It usually comes with a feeling that I can only explain as similar to the downward moving of a fast-moving roller coaster at the point where your stomach feels like it was left at the top. A message usually follows a download or sometimes it is just a feeling, a new knowing of something you did not know before. My best downloads are those that bring me unexplained happiness and peace that course through me like a rushing stream, leaving a tingle and a shine along the way.

I would like to encourage fellow seekers, those that may have just started their journey not get frustrated in any initial lack of understanding.

There are many things that we have to learn,
many things we have to unlearn,
many things we will experience
many things we won’t experience,
many things we will get done,
and many things that will remain undone.

Experience your awakening one download at a time and enjoy the process.

“The Storm is over now
And I can see the sunshine
I feel Heaven, yeah
Come on and set me free “
R. Kelly, 2001

This blog post is not going to debate the rights and wrongs of Mr. R. Kelly but simply to share the lyrics from one of his songs that, despite the weaknesses of the man, remain true, strong, and powerful.

I live in a section of the globe that is prone to storms at certain times of the year. We have grown to expect, accept, and prepare for them and have designated an entire six months of the calendar year to their visitations. From June to November, we refer to that time as the Hurricane Season. We had our first storm of the 2020 season recently and it came with some much-needed rain. It blew in and blew out and was soon gone. We collectively breathed a sigh of relief and chorused, “ the storm is over now” or more aptly ‘this storm is over now’ since surely, another one will come along before the end of the season.

We face storms in our lives. It is an expectation since we live in the 3-D and part of growing and expanding involves experiencing upheavals; how we deal with them is another matter.

We can do the ego-minded thing of ranting and railing at the Universe, cursing and crying foul, feeling sorry for ourselves and blaming everyone from the system to fate and bad luck or we can do the complete opposite.

We can get quiet and go within.
We can connect to our inner strength and reach out to Universal Intelligence for comfort and guidance.
We can look for the sunshine.
We can feel heaven.
We can free ourselves.

Abraham Hicks and other teachers on the law of attraction like to talk about a practitioner needing to feel the emotion of the manifestation before it actually occurs in physical form and I could never understand how that was possible until a few weeks ago.

There are tons of requests I have sent out into the Universe; for good health, happiness, abundance in all its forms, but there is one thing in particular that I believe is necessary for me to fulfill my life’s purpose and I have done all of the practices recommended to receive it to no avail. The last thing left for me to do was to finally believe that this law of attraction thing is a bunch of crap but I was missing one key thing. I was reaching for the manifestation of the thing that I wanted so much that I was not allowing myself to experience the emotions of having it before it came.
Well actually, I thought I was. I visualized myself feeling the surprise, the joy, the overcoming with tears; I tell you, I have been working at it! Nothing, or at least not the way I wanted it to be. It was not coming as one big bang but as little trickles or crumbs.

A small manifestation here,
An opportunity there,
The meeting up with the right person here,
The little thoughts turning to things there,

This went on for some time until one day, perhaps triggered by a thump from my Spirit Guide, I finally figured it out. This was what teachers like Abraham were talking about; I was to feel the emotion of manifestation before it came, enjoy the journey, revel in the crumbs and the short flashes of insight that led to other things, do not look for the big pie all at once but enjoy each slice as it comes. This leads to the emotion, the same emotions that will be felt when the heavens open up with a ta-daa.

I invite you not do as I did, but instead use the shortcut method.

Enjoy the feel of the thing before you see the thing,
Revel in the emotions of the manifestation to come,
Wrap yourself in the pleasurable feelings of your thoughts turning to things,
Be sincere in your happiness,
Believe that it is already done,

And so doing, you give the Universe no choice but to drop that thing right into your waiting lap.

Living on an island, completely surrounded by a warm tropical ocean has many advantages, one of them being the ease at which you can go diving and snorkeling when the mood hits. I was never interested in going into the seawater past my shoulders as I never had a strong affinity for ocean and waves and sand and sea creatures. I actually learned to snorkel because of my job. It took me some time to build up the courage, I was not a strong swimmer and I hated getting my dreadlocks wet.

So the first time I was able to see underwater, all snorkeled, masked, and flippered up, I was amazed. I had been missing out on one of the most beautiful experiences life underwater had to offer all this time. There beneath the ocean was an entirely new world to explore, brilliantly coloured fish and other sea dwellers went about their way, idyllically, unconcerned about what was happening above water. I had to dive deep to see, experience, and understand.

Meditation allows us to dive deep; to be able to cross the barrier from conscious to subconscious, and connect and explore. We will be amazed by the beauty that lies beneath; a world that for the most part, lies unconcerned with what is happening in the conscious realm, the domain of the mind, and the ego.

I invite us to be willing to explore that space.

Dip our toes and test the temperature and once it’s at the correct degree Fahrenheit, we don our mask, snorkel, and flippers and dive in.

I woke up this morning with a full-blown case of Monday Morning Blues and then, to make matters worse I did not have enough time to meditate for as long as I usually do since blues or not, I was late in waking and had to get up and prepare for work.

It feels like death and destruction is rampant, everywhere you turn there is news of someone you know that has died or some disaster, natural or manmade has occurred and for a person who stopped listening to the news for a few years now, if I am still hearing things, then the noise level must be very high.
You can feel the energy of people, depressed, stressed, despondent, unhappy and it emanates from them and wraps around out you like three-day-old cabbage soup. You then end up feeling just like the energies that you are absorbing.

So this morning I decided to wear my summer shades. The frame is shiny pink and the lenses are rose-tinted, giving everything I look at, a nice, welcoming glow. I needed the reassurance today that everything was going to be as I saw them and not as they wanted to be seen.

We all need to have a pair of rose-tinted glasses so that when things around seem to be going downhill in a square barrel, we pop on our shades and view them differently. I mean, given the things are already going downhill anyway, our best bet to change how we view the result at the bottom.

What good that can come out of this situation?
What lesson can I learn?
How can this challenge help me to be a better person?

By the time we begin searching for answers to questions like these, we are well on our way to experiencing a different outcome and before you know it, the view from your spit-shine rosy lenses is nirvanic.

My family was having a meeting and summoned me to attend. I was nervous as I did not know what to expect. It was not like any regular meeting where the family gathers together to eat, fight, cry, and love, it was one called for by my departed relatives. My grandmother, the matriarch, gathered with all of her children and grandchildren who were with her in the non-physical. They were welcoming new members, my two cousins who had recently crossed over. Everyone seemed quite excited, well except me, I did not feel like being there.

After the loud chatter subsided, she looked at me and said, “Well, my child, your work is now beginning”. She tasked me with the responsibility of helping the younger members of my extended family in finding their soul purpose.

I was shocked, I wasn’t expecting such a responsibility and the first thing I blurted was that I did not have the resources for such a job.

They all sighed loudly and my cousin, the newest entrant, smiled, looked at me, and promised that she would be responsible for helping me to fulfill our ancestors' wishes.
I felt like they were a bit disappointed in me because they knew I should have known better, I was being prepared for this moment for some time now.

How many times have I written about the abundant blessings of the universe and our only having to ask, align ourselves, and take advantage of the opportunities as they turn up?

When we discover our soul purpose and begin moving towards it, it is then that things begin to line up for us. Often we sit and marvel at the unfolding, seeing thoughts turn to things right before our eyes, and now here I was, at such an important family gathering and only managed to be my human self, channeling my lack mentality, breaking down and chatting crap.

And as in life, many of us know what we ought to do to be happy and abundant.

We have read all the books and watched all the videos,
We have established a meditative practice and gone on many retreats,
We have mastered the art of prayer and fasting,
We have communed with our ancestors and spirit guides,
We have made the connection of our Inner Being to Universal Source,

But when we are placed under the spotlight, we crack and chat crap.

I admit this spotlight was a bit unusual, it is not every day that we are summoned by our deceased relatives and given such a huge responsibility, but still.

Have you ever been summoned and tasked? How hot was the seat?

I recently saw an old friend whom I had not seen in a while. He gave me a broad grin, (no hug) and exclaimed, “My, don’t you look rich!”

I laughed and responded, “What you are seeing is not the result of having more money…”

He cut me off with a nod of the head and knowing wink, “Ooooh, I get you, something else is making you look the way you do, it’s not money, its….”

I just walked off, I knew what he was going to say and I also knew he would not have believed anything I explained.

But I admit it. I do feel rich. I feel wealthy and abundant, blessed, and bountiful and it has nothing to do with men or money.

How do you explain to your friends when they give you the my-don’t-you-look-rich stare that it is not what they are thinking? Are you going to tell them that you made a connection on a deeply spiritual level that lit the divine spark in you?

How are you going to tell then that you meditate every day?

That you have shifted your self-defeating beliefs to a strong faith in the power of Universal Energy?

That it had nothing to do with finding Jesus, (he was not lost) or a new partner or a new anything, except that you found a new attitude?

How do you explain that people, places, and things, no longer serving your higher good were left at the wayside?

How do you explain that you went deep, did the work, found your purpose, and are on your path?

I urge you, don’t waste your time, save your breath for your yoga session. They will not understand until there is a willingness to acknowledge the stirring of that questioning feeling within them, calling them to seek answers that explain their existence and what they came here to experience.

As long there is a positive response to this self-examination, and they do to work and stay the course, you will be the one looking at them, winking, and saying, “My, don’t you look rich!”

I was directed to write about love today and was not pleased about it. If we are talking about that romantic boy-meets-girl love, I am the last person to tackle this subject; my report card shows an F.
My experiences in this department are more in the what-not-to-do section. So perhaps I can share ten things on what not to do.

1. Do not expect to truly fall in love if you have not fallen in love with yourself.

2. Do not assume because you love someone that they love you back.

3. Do not marry for anything but true love; not money, not status, not children.

4. Do not carry your heart on your sleeve all the time.

5. Do not give up on finding true love.

6. Do not love someone who told you they cannot ‘love you like that’.

7. Do not continue loving someone who does not love you back.

8. Do not fall in love with a narcissist.

9. Do not treat love like a new toy.

10. Do not love someone who feels like they do not deserve love.

Romantic love is the most abhorrent thing when it is unrequited. It is the next worse thing to separation from oneself.

Romantic love is the most beautiful thing when genuinely shared between two people. It is the next best thing to love from the Divine.

Why is it that some of us who believe that we have the Divine on speed dial think we can use that knowledge as justification to support our intolerances?

We use the name of God as a right to declare ourselves judge, jury, and executioner. Anything that is not pleasing in our eyes is fodder for our judginess. And we sanction our behavior by declaring, “he or she or they will have to tell God about that when the time comes!” And so, in our flowing robes and combed out perukes, we use our gavel as our stamp of disapproval.

I myself have written in previous blog posts about my struggles with passing judgment and labeling people as good or evil based on whatever colours my perception of them.

But as we strive to become better versions of ourselves, we change, we grow, we evolve, all the while reminding ourselves that we are a work in progress and the first step begins with the acknowledgment of our humanness.

Reconciling the human part of us can be challenging. We have to accept ourselves when we cast judgment on others.

When we are jealous and envious of others;

When we think ill and wish bad on others;

When we are disapproving and critical of others;

We accept all of us.
The God in us and the human in us.

And when we open our mouths to decide someone else’s wrong or right, perhaps we can pause to own up to our humanness and be grateful that the God in us is always there, ready to bring out the Good in us.

Have you ever seen or heard a word and gathered meaning from it based on the context only to find out later that your interpretation of the word was wrong? This happened to me with the word ‘hospice’. For some reason, I believed that a hospice was a place where people who could afford it, go to rest and recuperate from sickness. The word conjured up for me, the image of a quiet cottage by the sea where the occupant was allowed to heal and get better in peace and solitude. I found out long after that it really was care or a care facility that provided comfort to a terminally ill patient until death which was usually in six months or less. My definition of hospice was a much better one.

Perhaps it does provide rest and recuperation, not for the body but for the soul. Perhaps it is a time when the divine spark us flickers but is not put out. The soul uses the opportunity to thank the body for its service and prepares to return to the Universal Consciousness from whence it came. I think it is an exciting time, not for the family that has to go through the pain of losing a loved one nor for the ego-mind that soon realizes that its job is near complete but for the soul that is finally allowed to release the trappings of this low-energy physical body. The body, I think is ambivalent; it came to do a job, it did it to the best of its ability and is now moving on to be part of the earth and continue its role in the cycle of life.

When we look at it dispassionately, death is like butchering a pig, the only thing that is lost is its squeal.

The squeal here is the ego-mind and for many of us, it did quite a bit of squealing in its time. It squealed when it created the fear in us; it squealed when it fostered intolerance and hatred; it squealed when it demanded that we lead lives that gave into a lesser version of our best selves; it squealed when it encouraged our lack mentality; It squealed all the way to the slaughterhouse…..OK stick a pin!

As I re-read what I had written, I was shocked to see that I wrote about the process of dying as being exciting for the soul and comparing something as traumatic as death to a pig and its lost squeal. I figure that some may view it as quite insensitive, so I sent the draft to a friend of mine, the one that I have named the Advisor in previous blog posts, and asked for comments.

She was quite disturbed, having recently lost someone in hospice care and still feeling the pain of the loss. She could not understand why I would use the word ‘exciting’ to describe the dying process and asked about how could the soul be ready to leave, abandoning the vessel that made it a being?

My response was simply that the reference to an ‘exciting time’ was for the soul as it prepares to exit the trappings of a physical body, no longer needing to stay in something that had already served its purpose, somewhat like a beautiful butterfly exiting the tough skin of the pupa.

Her comment was, “that’s the reality I guess but it’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Not so much, they come coated now.



See a previous blog post on a similar topic: fineartmerica.com/blogs/lets-talk-about-death.html

Anxiety hits all of us from time to time. It is unavoidable, we live in a tension-filled world and since we cannot just check out and check in when the mood hits us, we have to learn to deal with our moments of disquietude. Me, I have this spot in my back, an old gym injury, that acts as my tension meter; it tightens and squeezes whenever I am feeling overly tense or anxious as if to ask, “Hey what’s going on here, what are you stressing about?” By the time it starts talking, I am at the stage where I am shouting at it to just shut up.

During times like these, sitting quietly is the last thing we want to do but it’s the best thing we can do for ourselves. We figure that with an already overactive mind, fueled by our disturbing thoughts, any attempts to sit and be still will be futile and this is where we are wrong.

We begin to get quiet and bring our focus more on the potential solutions and less on the many problems we face. And of course, the mind will run wild, it has limitless space, a bunch of worrying thoughts and vivid imagination, all ingredients for the creation of anxiety-laden mess.

But I invite us to persist and sit through it, watch the thoughts come and go, some we will engage even before we realize what we are doing, others we will let pass by. It may take a while but the benefits of this time you give to yourself are tremendous. The mind will eventually get tired, like a toddler after a sugar high; tormenting you becomes less thrilling, and it will quiet. The only thing for us to do is to be willing to sit it out.

Sit it out.

Believe me when I say that meditation makes you glow. I first noticed the changes to my skin quite by chance. I was at a conference and while using the hotel’s bathroom mirror to reapply my lipstick, I notice a slight glow around my face. My first thought was ‘nice lighting’ since there was nothing else I could ascribe it to. Adequate water, exercise, proper diet, sleep, regular visits to my favourite facialist were all things I have been doing on the regular but there was never any glow before now. In trying to recall, the only change I had made to my physical lifestyle was a deepening of my meditative practice. So could it be that?

I went to google and there I found a number of articles, most based on conducted research, that spoke about this glow that meditation provides. Several of the papers explained the benefits of meditation from a physiological perspective and went into details about blood flow and skin and epidermal layer and capillaries; I read and smiled.

I had an added answer.

Regular meditation connects you to yourself. The process allows for that divine spark in all of us to be lit. It is there, it has always been there but being in this challenging physical plane has successfully snuffed it out. We live in constant fight mode, always some challenge to overcome, some battle to win, someone to conquer or outsmart, everything is competition since as they say, only the strongest survive.

But once we begin to understand that universal abundance is here for all of us to have a share of, that our purpose on earth is to experience life and be happy, to find love and to live, to sit in quiet meditation and do nothing, we will begin to notice that glow.

Meditate, get your glow on!

I woke up this morning feeling fine even though I was up past 12:30 am following Adrienne, on one of her yoga flow Youtube videos. Lucky for me it concentrated a lot on the breath so I was quite ready for bed by the end of the session. Sleep is an important part of my life and I protect my right to it fiercely, that exalted mars in my chart works overtime in this department.
So after what for me, amounted to be very few hours resting, I soon felt the morning sun kissing my eyelids through a slit in the bedroom curtain while whispering to me, “Wake up, love, it’s a new day; It’s a new day for you to feel blessed; it’s a new day for you to show gratitude and love. It is a new day, another purpose for alignment, another purpose to feel and appreciate life’s force in you. Wake up my child and accept the blessings of the universe.”

As you woke this morning, with the sun’s early rays kissing you that very same way, did you hear its whisper too?

One of my favourite inspirational teachers is Abraham Hicks. I found his teachings on Youtube some time ago and I have been an avid listener since then but not before I had to get over my initial feeling of here-we-go-again, another one, with another message. My story to Abraham and Esther is quite similar to the story my friend, Alex told me about the ‘Art of catching Gar’.

The garfish or garpike is found in many of the world’s oceans and seas including the Caribbean and is usually caught during the summer months. So for a short time of the year, you will find fried gar in almost every village shop. From around mid-morning, you can buy your fried gar and johnnycakes with some Caribbean hot sauce on the side.

“What does this have to do with Abraham Hicks?” you begin to wonder but bear with me, I will bring it together, I could not resist plugging a little of our Caribbean food culture into the mix.

So back to Alex’s story; he is an avid land fisherman, meaning he fish from on the sandy shore or from any outcropping found near the shore overlooking the seawater. He is afraid of going on small boats but you will never know since Alex always has the tallest tales about his fishing adventures. This one he told me is true, he says.

One morning he planned to go fishing. He had time on his hand since he was not working owing to the corona situation and all hotels on the island are closed. He was a greeter at a local establishment and has been out of work for over four months but looking at Alex you would never guess he was unemployed and struggling to make ends meet. Whenever he sees you, he always gives you the biggest, most genuine smile. With large, straight white teeth against smooth skin, tanned to a beautiful dark brown under the hot Caribbean sun, Alex made the perfect greeter. When he shakes your hand and smiles are you, you feel like your vacation has just begun.

So he grabbed his fishing line, a small cooler, hat, and gloves and drove off to his favorite spot, some rocks under a craggy cliff along the southernmost tip of the island. He was planning on some fried gar for his evening meal. Alex settled into his spot while glancing across the ocean, looking for a sign of his prey. There was a school of small fry with two larger fish following them. It was a good sign, fish was in the area and so gar was out there. He quickly put several hooks on the end of his line, added his bait, and did what he called his famous ‘twist and long-throw’, quickly setting his line in the water and settled in for the wait.

Fishing is a waiting game but today he did not have to wait for long, he felt a tug. Alex’s eyes lit up, not even two minutes had passed and he already had a bite. He saw the long shiny body of what he reported was the biggest, fattest, longest gar he ever saw in his life. It danced in the water, lifting its head and staring at him with a hint of mockery in its eyes as if to say, “Not today, partner."

Alex knew gar, he says that they are one of the most intelligent fish in the water, they are not caught easily, they will play and play but never swallow the hook. You had to be patient and give them line to run. Alex had the time and he had the line.

The fish acted as if it knew it was a great catch. It swam and danced, tugged at the line and then let it go, it played with Alex and Alex played back. He just continued to give it line. Alex said the fish swam out to nearly as far as the neigbouring island, (which was almost three miles away, mind you) and came back. It frolicked and played but it was clear that it was hungry for what was on the bait but was not trusting. It seemed like the bait had to prove itself worthy of being swallowed. The fish was easily twenty pounds which was huge for a garpike. Alex would have food for days.

Suddenly there was a high pitch scream and loud splash and Alex was off the rocks and in the water. The fish had pulled Alex into the sea and was heading out into deep water with him still holding onto his line. As Alex reported the story, firstly he did not know how his head was not cracked opened when he fell off the rock, and secondly, he did not know how he did not reach the next island that day while being pulled by the fish! He claimed to have grabbed into a piece of reef, and with the fishing line still in hand, braced himself and waited.
He said he felt the swallow, the bait was in, the hook was down and he was able to reel in his catch. My friend said he never understood why it did not fight to come in, it was like it said, “ok, you got me, you win, take the prize”.

Alex, pulling the fish, soon made it to the nearshore, and soon as he felt the safety of solid ground under his feet, he turned to look at his catch. It was the most beautiful fish he had ever caught; this made him smile broadly.

The most amazing part of the story was when he said that the fish turned its head, looked at him, winked, and returned the smile. My friend Alex swears on the graves of his ancestors that the story is true.

This was my experience with Abraham Hicks and Esther’s teachings. I recall first seeing a video on YouTube, at a time when I was doing some serious searching and going through a traumatic awakening experience. After listening to a few seconds, I clicked to something else. I was not convinced of what I was hearing. A few weeks later, another video popped into my feed and again I clicked off after listening for a little while. I was not interested in another story by another guru.

I was the child that at nine years old, cover my ears at church because the message just did not resonate with me. Mind you, I am not saying anything is wrong with the message of Christ. I believe he was a great leader and teacher and any belief that has a major tenet, loving your brother as yourself, must have some truth in it.

But it was not to be my story.

There was something else for me to follow that was going to speak to the me in me, my inner self, that divine part that connects me to the greater than me that is a part of me.
I was the fish, playing with the bait, testing, and trying to determine whether it was worthy of the swallow. The next time an Abraham video appeared in my feed, I listened for more than a few minutes, I listened all nine minutes and five seconds of it and that was it.

The teachings of Abraham and Esther have contributed greatly to my spiritual renewal process. Those three guys who created this YouTube service were part of a master plan, though they might not have known it at the time.

How else would persons like me, living on tiny islands in the middle of great seas, be afforded the opportunity to get hooked by Abraham?

“….but do you know how much I did for her?” That phrase sends the speaker down a slippery slope of pain and disappointment. Expectations. That one belief we often have that, unfortunately, colours many relationships blue.
Why do we set ourselves up for disillusionment by having expectations of people?
I recall one of my high school teachers refer to it as ‘reciprocal altruism’ – I do for you and you do for me thus allowing the earth to continue spinning on its axis. But when the hand that was to wash the other hand opts out of laundry day, we are utterly dismayed, devastated even and so we shout out in a voice laced with regret and agony, “… but do you know how much I did for him?”
The advice to ourselves is to do, give without expectation and no harm will be caused. It may be quite difficult to accomplish since we often judge others by our own standards but it’s worth practicing for our long term peace of mind and wellbeing.

Quite a few of us have had the experience of reading across the screen of an ATM machine a message like this: ‘sorry, but there are insufficient funds to complete this transaction.’ Perhaps we were expecting funds that were late in arriving or maybe we were just hoping for a miracle, somewhere, somehow funds moved into our account as a free gift. Alas, for some of us, no such funds appear out of the big pot in the sky and landing in our savings account; we had to either work, beg, borrow, or steal it. The thing is all of these are the hard way of going about getting our share of the abundance available to us from the Universe.

How about simply asking and then aligning ourselves to receive?

Unfortunately, the fly in the soup is our inability or unwillingness to align ourselves to abundance. We scoff at the notion of something being so simple and so real that we refuse to go through the process of getting in the right position where the money will flow to us.
It is not that difficult.
We have to believe that it will happen and then further believe that it has already happened and go about life as if it has. We do not think lack, we do not think want, we do not think about where is it.
We believe that it is already here for us.

Let us remember that the Universe gives back to us whatever energies we are radiating. So imagine, going around thinking that we never have, we are always in lack, we have poor health, we cannot keep our lover, we have ungrateful children, our bosses are the worse, nobody cares about us, and on and on. What do we think we are going to get back from the Universe, the opposite of our vibrations? It does not work that way.

I am not saying to be unrealistic.
I am not saying to do not work and strive.
I am not saying to ostrich it.

What I am saying is to simply believe in the power of the Universe.

Believe that we came here to experience all that living in the 3-D has to offer.
Believe that we can have and be whatever we want. We tell children the same thing all the time but for some reason, when we begin the adulting thing, the having and the being is seen as unrealistic.

I encourage us to reach for the beliefs that feel good.

When we feel good, we look good.
When we look good, we act good.
When we act good, good follow us.

It’s a simple law of the Universe.

Have you ever had that passenger that asked to be dropped off exactly, right in front, one steps from the entrance of their desired location and you are sitting behind the wheel, looking at the time and the traffic, and realizing that just by satisfying that wish, you were going to be twenty minutes late for your own appointment? I’m sure every driver can relate and I sense the simultaneous furrowing of brows as you pause to recall your own recent experience with that person.

This morning was my turn. My fuse was already short since I missed my early morning meditation session, so when the passenger I was giving a lift insisted on being let out right in front of her workplace, on a morning when I was already short on time, I looked at her and said in a very annoyed voice, “just jump out here”.
To my consternation, she looked and me and replied, “but it’s just there, just drive up a little bit more.”

I had no choice. I could not very well open the door and push her out so I gritted my teeth and drove up to her preferred let-off spot. She got out, smiled, and thanked me. I was not feeling gracious enough to say you’re welcome but I did it anyway and quickly sped off.

As I drove, I asked myself the questions why was I so annoyed? Did I feel taken advantage of? Was it that I felt the passenger was being particularly unreasonable? What happened to Zen me?

By the time I pulled up to my office building I knew why. I had gotten knocked off-balanced by such a seemingly simple act and it was because I did not start my morning right.

Meditation lengthens the fuse. It helps to maintain a calmness that, if we are lucky, carries us through the day. Little things are no bother and big things are little bother.

Whenever you are confronted with that passenger in your life, a lengthened fuse, grown through quiet meditation can be your salvation.

Messages come to me early in the morning as I prepare for work. I laughingly refer to that time as my Message-through-Makeup session. Often, I am simply minding my own business, trying to get my left brow to somewhat resemble its right cousin when a message pops into my head that sends my eyebrow pencil off on its own path. A grimace shows on my face when it’s a hard message or a smile when it’s light and positive.

On this particular morning, I was told to let a frenemy of mine know, (the story behind the frenemy is for another blog post) that he ought to apologize for things he had done in his past that affected both himself and his family on a very deep, cut-needed-forty-stitches level.

That message resulted in a grimace, a grumble, and two badly drawn on eyebrows. I did not see why I had to be the delivered of such a message. It was sure to solidify my place in the frenemy corner as he would not take my interfering with his unhappiness lightly.
What was made clear to me was that he had to apologize to himself first and foremost, or else his life would be always troubled.

I reluctantly mumbled an agreement to be the bad-news bringer and then went on to thinking about how many of us also needed to apologize to ourselves for things we have done.

We carry around the guilt of our past acts like coffins on our backs, done, dead but not buried. We berate ourselves with all of the shudda-wudda-cuddas that do little more but to stress the mind and cause illness in the body.

Holding onto our past mistakes, whether great or small, do not contribute in any way to helping us be the best versions of ourselves and to be and do and have what we came into this human body and this physical plane for.

Perhaps it’s time for an apology, from us to us.

Pulling up in my favorite parking spot, I immediately heard the familiar strains of music coming from my favourite trumpeter-on-the-square. I recognized the song, an old Christian hymn, and though I have forgotten most of the words, the line that was being played carried the lyrics “ I‘m tired, I’m weak, I’m worn.” I shook my head at the synchronicity since I was actually feeling tired, weak, and worn. We take on human form to live in this physical plane and there are times when our mental and emotional bodies just feel out of it. And often, just for added measure, our physical bodies join the play, setting the stage for pain at all levels.

There is no escaping feeling like this. It is just what living is. We cannot be happy-go-lucky, Mr. and Miss. Positivity all the time; things happen, life happens and sometimes the things happening in life conspire to made us feel less than our best selves.

The money didn’t come, the job didn’t come, the lover didn’t come and we become mental and emotional wrecks, tired, weak, and worn.

Times like these we have to stop, be still, and listen. Listen to our Inner Being calling us home to ourselves, letting us know that we are forever loved, cared for and cherished; reminding us of the sheer abundance that is waiting on us to accept, if only we faithfully believe; encouraging us to abandon our doubts and fears, knowing full well that the Universe has our backs every time and that there is no reason to feel the way we do.

We have learned that we ought not to allow these feelings room to root or else before long, we become magnets for all of the other tired, weak, and worn bodies around us. Instead, we acknowledge our feelings and then simply reach for those thoughts that make us feel good.

The money didn’t come but a bag of garden produce from our neighbour came.
The job didn’t come but time to work on the business idea we always toyed with came.
The lover didn’t come but self-love came.

Little feel-good thoughts, the glass-half-full way of thinking beats a tired, weak, and worn body every time.

You cannot grow a garden without having to weed; they go together, there is no escape. This one morning, the weather was overcast so I figured it was a good time to do some gardening. The sun was not out and there was a stiff cooling breeze that was sure to make the somewhat tedious task of hand weeding pleasant enough. I got out my garden shovel and a small bucket to dump the weeds in as I pull them out from between my herbal plants and seasonings.

You know they always say that you have found your calling if there was something you would do even if you were not paid for it? Gardening and growing food were mine; at Esoteric Gardens, my job was planter, waterer, weeder, and harvester-in-chief.

Anyway, this day I was getting in the groove and moving along the row of basil seedlings, I was alternating between two yogic poses, a squat and a front fold. At some point, I don’t recall when, I felt a letting-go. It was as if I had entered a deep meditation and became one with everything that was with there being no separation between Source Energy and my Higher Self.

Sometime later the thought came to me, “Why not offer Garden Therapy Classes?” We can do this and that. We can commune and connect. We can meet our Inner Being and Spirit Guides, we can….we can…I was getting swept away in the idea.
“Who would sign up for classes in garden therapy?” mocked my ego-mind. I was waiting for it; always ready to ridicule, yet never offering a valid suggestion for a better plan.




I tell you, what I felt at that moment was so overwhelming that for once I am ignoring Chief Critique and Naysayer and am heading off to prepare my ad.
Look out for it, it will read something like this:

Coming Soon

Garden Therapy Classes
Required tools: Gloves, a small garden fork, and the willingness to Let Go.

To sign up: contact us @ 669-1101

It was weekend so the garden helper was not going to be in early. I had to, therefore, go water some new rosemary and basil seedlings we had planted the day earlier in the week. The garden looked like it slept well; the monkeys had already come and had their fill of ripe mangoes and the regular red-breasted birds flit from tree to tree looking for a morning meal.
It felt good. I felt good.
The energy was strong, that of the big trees and even the little plants in our herbal garden patch bobbed and weaved in the early morning breeze.
I felt good. Life was good.

You know how they say that we attract what we give off and that the Universe is always conspiring to give us more of whatever our current vibrations and thoughts are? Well, intuition told me to look up. I raised my head and looked up into a large tamarind tree that my aunt had planted. It was in full bloom, the shy white, pink and maroon blossoms hid between the leaves and branches, the bees may soon be visiting. I hardly notice the tree next to it, it was a guava plant, tall and gangly, with few leaves and zero fruit. I have been asking it what’s going on for some time now. It has not yet told me what it needs but a suspect a trim and some more rainfall will do the trick. But I digress, on the lowest branch of the guava tree perched a hummingbird. It was beautiful. It was black with teal and turquoise feathers on its head and along its upper back and if it wasn’t still, I would not have noticed its beauty. You know hummingbirds, they are always moving from flower to flower, wings going 100 miles per hour, always busy, always in motion.

That tiny bird was showing me the beauty that can be found in stillness. I smiled and said thank you.

I was planning a busy day, and checking the garden was just the first thing on my list but that message made me change my mind. I found a comfortable seat under one of the mango trees and I sat, perched on the bench like the hummingbird was on the branch. And I was still.

I invite you, as you go about your day, pause once in a while to remember the hummingbird, remember that there is beauty in stillness and remember you will never notice it unless you be still.

So, quit flipping your tiny wings and be still!

A few afternoons ago I was working in Esoteric Gardens when a lady passed by and asked if there were any fruits for sale (she had spied some on a table near the fence). I smiled and responded no but she was welcomed to a few of what we had already picked. A helper in the garden quickly offered to get her a plastic bag. My response was. “No, let her take what her hands can carry.”
My reason for this was two-fold. Firstly, I prefer and promote the use of reusable bags to plastics and secondly, the lady would have taken most if not all of the fruits, not leaving for someone else. Us humans, we often let our lack mentality dominate our true nature of giving and sharing. She happily filled both hands, and tucking a couple more in her shirt, smiled, said thanks, and left. I laughed out loud because I knew she would have taken more than her hands could carry.

Sometimes we just need to simply take what our hands can carry, whether it is good, as in free fruits or bad, as in trouble and worries. Elders in my community liked to say, “take little and live long”.

Take just a little of life’s stress and problems.
Not pack life’s difficulties and anxieties on our shoulders and backs and still tuck some in the front of our shirt for good measure.

Take just a little and leave the rest for the Universe.

I am sure we each can recall in vivid detail the moment we faced down our bully. If you have never had to deal with a bully, then your life has been charmed, silver-spooned, and butter breaded in abundance.

Being short and skinny for a good part of my life, (the skinniness disappeared as I neared the end of my 20’s, the shortness stayed) I have had my share of bullies. I guess I looked easy to beat upon. I made up for my stature by having an exalted Mars and a loud mouth, short and aggressive in speech. A neighbour, whom I have known all my life, used to colloquially refer to me as a ‘warbeen’. A warbeen was trouble and not to be trifled with.

The age of social media has taken bullying to another level. We read about persons going as far as committing suicide because of online bullying. Keyboard courage reigns and the bully has a new platform to denigrate and belittle its prey for no reason other than that it can. The bully never acts in isolation, a choir of cheerleaders, like spectators at a dogfight, support and cheer it on. But we know, like a law of life, the bully always meets its match.

What about the other bullies in our lives, not those that we meet in our physical environment but those that battle us from the inside?

The bully of fear and trauma
The bully of weakness and wastefulness
The bully of depression and repression
The bully of lack mentality and non-belief
The bully of pride and ego

They tear at us, breaking down our defenses, making us less than who we are capable of being, yet cowering from a fight, we refuse to acknowledge them. These bullies, before long, take over our lives, causing bad health and problems, making us less abundant that we could be, less creative, less loving, less being.

As we recall the time when we faced down the bully in the streets and the sense of pride and power it brought us, so too must we face the bullies inside us and vanquish them once and for all.

He gave a slight nudge with the elbow while gesticulating for me look at his phone. I glanced across and on the screen was a post from the twitter feed he was scrolling through. The writer was proudly declaring ‘celebrating fifteen years of celibacy’.

He looked at me and grimaced, “I would have never managed that, better I be dead.”

Nodding in agreement, I realized that I would not have made it to fifteen months, much less fifteen years. The longest time I have been celibate in my entire adult life was six long, torturous months; not so much from the lack of physical connection with another human being during that time but from the awakening and dark night of the soul process that I was going through which made the urge to connect at that level, undesirable. This person, seemingly by choice, (since it was a celebration), defied Maslow’s theory for fifteen years and was sharing his or her accomplishment with the world. Bravo!

The post got me to thinking about spiritual celibacy and how so many of us, myself included, have been spiritually celibate for a long time, much longer than the fifteen years so proudly declared by the tweeter. We have, for whatever reason, not been connecting on a spiritual level with our Higher Selves. We remain unfulfilled, not understanding why. It is simply because we keep looking for that connection, that we fail to realize is a spiritual one, in all the wrong places. We search for it at the bar, in the church, in our lover’s bed; we look for the feeling through gains of money and power but come up empty every time. The more we dig, the less satisfied we become.

How much longer are we going to proudly declare that spiritual celibacy reigns in our lives?
That we have chosen to abstain from the divine connection offered by our Inner Being?
That the orgasmic rush that is felt when one meets Source Energy through meditation is undesired?
That the basic need to be one with The One we deny ourselves?

I invite us to end our self-imposed drought.
Come, connect, feel the pleasure.

Turned the key in the ignition, I ready to head out to work, I had a lot to do and was already late. As the engine revved and then settled down into a low purr, some hauntingly beautiful strains of music came through the car radio; it was from a song that I did not remember uploading to my music folder, “A change gonna come” by Otis Redding. I try to be always tuned to my surroundings and the way the music and his voice washed over me, creating a stillness and calm that made my being hurried to head to the 9-5 inconsequential, I understood that there was a message for me and one to share.

Oh, how so many of us hate change! It disrupts our nice, normal, boring pattern of life and living. It sometimes creates great upheaval that adds to our stress load. It brings about level of uncertainty that again adds to our stress load. So for a great many of us, change is not a welcomed visitor.

And there are others like me who revel in change. We get restless being in the same place doing the same thing. We feel that life is passing us by since we came into this physical existence with a long list of people to meet and things to do. We equate change with some level of not knowing but we believe it will all work out in the end. We exude a disgusting positivity that those same-same hoarders detest.

Change inevitably comes to all of us but how to embrace it depends on us.

Do we welcome it, anticipating the pot of gold that lies at the end of the process?
Or do we protest and fight, anticipating the lump of coal that lies at the end of it all?

Since we know that change comes as long as life continues, which do you prefer?
Gold or Coal?

Have you ever gone through one of those periods in your life where you just feel good for no particular reason? You just feel good for feeling good? You experience a sensation so strong bubbling up in your chest and into your headspace like the first tickling fizz of a cold carbonated beverage on a hot day?

For several weeks now, I have been experiencing this sensation. Mind you, it is not that everything is going great in my life. I experience contrast like everyone else since none of us are immune to life’s challenges; surviving and thriving during a global pandemic is not the easiest thing for us humans right now.

So how do we maintain and sustain this bubbly feeling in our heart and headspace, this sense of positivity and believing that everything is going to be ok?
We show gratitude!

For the things we have and for the things we don’t have.

For our ability to rise each morning, consciously drawing in the breath of life that sustains us.

For our family or the persons in our lives that we consider family.

For the fact that most, if not all of our basic physiological needs are being met.

For our jobs, even though we sometimes feel less than satisfied.

For our ability to love and receive love in return.

For us being capable of appreciating the vastness of the universe and the power of its Source.


When we make practicing gratitude part of who we are, then we are sure to feel the fizz.

If you are, like me, one of those persons who put off doing a lot of things to the weekend, then you can relate to the early rising on Saturday and go-go-go until Sunday evening when you then begin to think about plans for the following weekend.
One of the things I enjoy doing on the weekend is looking at any half-written blogs or blog post ideas from the week, and sorting them to determine those that may develop into a story those based on their content, that will never see the light of day. So imagine the consternation that mushroomed into alarm then sheer horror when I opened the folder that housed my completed blogs and blogs-in-process to see the words ‘empty folder’ staring at me from the computer screen. I had lost every single piece of work, months of tortuous story-telling, and the sharing of things about myself that I have never acknowledged until it stared back at me from the pages of the blog, all gone. I searched and searched but as the secrets whispered to a trusted friend, they had all disappeared.

A day later, I was still thinking about how and why my posts simply disappeared. Perhaps it was a message to move on and change the story being told because if you are, like me, one of those persons who can get stuck in a narrative, beating it through to multiple deaths, then you understand it can be a blessing from the Universe when things are made to simply disappear.

What are the things in our lives that we need to let simply disappear?
The things we are holding onto, even though the narrative needs to change?
The people we feel we need when they have long since stopped wanting us?
The baggage and burdens of our past that we carry like a first prize?
The situations that do not serve our highest good but we seem to fall back into?

Here’s hoping that the Universe will do us the favour and simply make them disappear so that all we see when we look at the screen of life will be ‘empty folder’.

Something woke me from my sleep,.....so what else is new right? It was a sensation coming from my subconscious self. I stirred and pulled myself fully awake, the feeling was unfamiliar and so of course I wanted to decode it.

The only words I can use to describe the emotion was one of gratitude and well-being. It is not that I do not show gratitude every day given that I have a lot to be grateful for, but this time, there was a feeling of gratitude that did not come from my effort. The only example I can think is being good because you knew there was a prize at the end of the day as opposed to being good because that is who you are and what you do and you do not know how to be any different. This means that if I bring this analogy to be about myself, it means that up until this time, I was only mouthing gratitude; I was looking for some reward for my being grateful, like being thankful for what you have while saying, “See, Universe, I am being grateful so give me more.”

How many of us are truly grateful or just go through the motion of showing gratitude; lip-servicing our gratitude practice and missing out on the true emotion?
We cannot fool the Universe, so when we speak the words with our mouths but there is no match up to our Higher Self, we end up missing out on our gifts and blessings.

Perhaps we can leave the lip-service for when we have to placate the Ego and allow ourselves the true feeling of feeling gratitude.

I was awoken at 3:05 am, about 20 minutes earlier than the time my body normally stirs. My program is to head to the bathroom and then engage in some quiet meditation. This has become a ritual for me, both the need for a bathroom break and the need to connect to my Higher Self and the Divine.

For a moment I was unsure as to what woke me. There was not the usual bustle of traffic even at this time of the morning. The roosters were silent, perhaps deciding on a sleep-in. The dogs on the porch were not engaged in their usual rambunctious behavior chasing shadows around the yard. It was perfectly still.

So what woke me?

The realization was quite surprising.

It was the smell of clean, fresh, pure air wafting under my door and up to my nose. Until this time, I never noticed the rareness of this scent. The sensation was so strange that it drew my body awake. My nose reacted first, then my lungs expanded and drank it in, all the while wondering what manner of sorcery was being visited upon them.
I slowly stretched and took in several large beautiful breaths, filling both lungs with clean air, expanding my chest cavity to capture one of the few things on earth that is still abundant and free. Now Mother Nature had upped the ante by providing it unpolluted and pure. She reminded me of her goodness and capability to provide if only us humans cooperate.

Eventually, I returned to my normal programming and subsequently had one of the most orgasmic meditations ever.

Samahdi.

Giving thanks always came easy for me because I knew I had a lot to be grateful for.

Life was not exactly a bed of roses growing up in the ’70s and ’80s in a community labeled by the sociologists and developmentalists as being 'economically depressed'.

Books were an escape from the reality of being poor since imagination had no boundaries and always welcomed me.
And so I took advantage of this gift and created in my mind, a life for myself as I would like it to be.

It was a good life.
So whenever reality trailed its bitter tongue upside my face, I retreated to my good life.

Now grown, I still retreat within.
Not to escape a bad life but to meet up with my Higher Self and Spiritual Team as they support and guide me on my way to nirvana.

Whatever your circumstances, within always welcome.

Since the birth of her last child, my friend Judith has not been in a serious relationship. “ Too much stress,” she declared, “all I want is a little orgasm now and again.” I smiled when she told me that, I felt her. Many of us try to avoid the entanglement and often emotional pain involved in close intimate relationships so we settle for the satisfaction of no-strings-attached sex, hoping to be provided with a ‘little orgasm now and again’.

I am no different from many women, I have had my issues with relationships, sex, and orgasms with my share of hang-ups and misconceptions. And to make matters worse, living in a society where a woman dares not openly explore her sexuality for fear of being called from a Squeng to a Jaggerbat, and the many other names in between, I kept my counsel, trying to be a ‘good person’ by doing the marriage thing, the family thing and the monogamy thing but sex and a little orgasm now and again has always been important to me.
Part of the process of seeking ways to connect to my Inner Being and the Divine, I came across the practice of meditation. For a time, I followed a guided meditative practice conducted by my favourite Buddhist monk, Ajahn Brahm and on one particular day, as part of his dharma talk, he spoke about ‘meditation being better than sex’. This piqued my interest since I had never found any other similar experience that offered the ecstasy and physical release that a ‘little orgasm’ did.

I admit, I did not believe him until it happened to me but remember it like yesterday. I was in meditation when I started feeling a familiar stirring somewhere deep inside my mind. I knew that I wasn’t having sex but I was experiencing the physical emotions of an orgasm. It went on for what felt like minutes. I rode wave after wave of ecstatic bliss that did not peak and crash as regular orgasms do, but rose and then gently subsided. You can bet that I did not complete the session that day, I was so awe-struck.

I would not advise anyone to engage in a meditative practice solely to have an “an orgasm better than sex” experience because it will never happen, no matter how hard one tries. We ought to enter our practice with no expectations except to commune with our Higher Self and Source Energy.

When phenomenal things happen as part of our practice, then it is phenomenal, when nothing, as determined by our ego-mind happens, it is still phenomenal.

But it’s really better than sex, really.

Beads of sweat popped out on my forehead and bile rose in my throat when I realized that I am to write about relationships, and they were specific romantic relationships. My spirit guides chose the wrong human for this job. Twice divorced and not even in a current relationship, I was not equipped to tackle a topic like this. “We’ve got you,” they said, so Folks here goes!

I do not intend for this blog post to be about my romantic life or moreso, my lack of romantic life. I want it to be about energy and attraction.

Way back in science class, we learned about magnetism and the rule was that like poles repel and unlike poles attract, and in some relationships, from the outside looking in, it appears that this rule holds as well. We often say, “they are so different from each other, how did they get married and have stayed together for so long?” Perhaps this is a case of opposites attracting or better yet, we can say that these two persons were in vibrational alignment. They were vibrating at the same frequency and were able to come together as a perfect match.

I hear my female friends say all the time, “I cannot find a good man, it seems that I always attract bums and losers” and I say to them it is because the vibrational frequency we give off draws these so-called bums and losers to us. We cannot attract what we are not ourselves. In other words, we cannot attract the perfect loving man when we ourselves are not somewhat perfect and loving. We attract bums and losers because we are bums and losers. This may sound harsh and I can already feel the condemnation ringing out but let’s think about it. We produce and emit a vibrational frequency, like pheromones that say, “I do not love myself, I do not feel that I am worthy to be in a beautiful relationship, I have daddy issues, I do not trust men, I hate people who are in wonderful relationships, I feel that I have to have a man or a woman to be complete, so choose me, because we are a match” and so here comes Mr. Bum or Ms. Loser.

And the opposite is true when we love ourselves and others, when we feel worthy of the best, when we acknowledge and accept that we are perfect and whole without a romantic companion, when we understand that we do not have to settle for less, when we are not desperately seeking, trying to find the person who will give us that child, or that sense of well-being or that social status, we vibrate on a different frequency. Bums and Losers are not tuned into our frequency so they will pass us by, looking for their vibrational match.

It took me a while to understand this myself, that I attract what I am a vibrational match for. So therefore I had to raise my vibration and switch my frequency. It was not easy and I am not even completely switched over since every once in a while, when my vibrations are low, I bump into a bum.

But I encourage us all, and together as we continue to raise our vibrations and connect with our Higher Selves, we come to understand that our vibrational match is out there somewhere and the higher we vibe, the easier we will find our tribe.

My Spirit Guides asked that I introduce them to my online community of readers, it came as a very clear request during my morning meditation session. I glibly asked if they wanted to send me on a trip down Paddy Wagon Lane and they all burst out laughing, even Elijah who is usually more serious and stoic. Meeting and communing with your spirit guides, or let me use the word ‘Intuition’ for the faint of heart, or for those not interesting in ‘paddy wagonning’ with me, is one of the best relationships you can ever cultivate in this physical plane.

I met most of my guides during meditation, except for Corinne who came as part of a lucid dream I had. She is the only female in the bunch and is a herbalist and my healing guide. My other guides came one by one, as I needed them and they have all stayed. Their arrival is marked by a rush of energy that travels from the legs up to the heart and crown chakra areas., I now understand the general premise behind the saying that a person ‘possessed by a spirit’ but in the case of spirit guides, there is no possession. They have to be invited and they never take over or dominate you in any way. They allow you to live and perform your roles in the 3-D. Any spirit that does not permit this is another spirit altogether, I met Erin this way and I had to ask my guides to escort her from our presence after a couple of weeks into her visit, another blog story for another day.

We invite in our spirit guides to assist us in areas of our lives where we feel that we need additional support and guidance. When I struggled with meditation, Eugene came, and just before I started writing blogs, Elijah came. Greg rides a motorcycle and loves to dress in leather, he is my protector guide. The guide that has me, for the most part, upbeat and positive is Michael. Michael was my first guide and the one I developed a close relationship with and is the life of my party. I speak to them collectively most times unless there is a specific question I need to ask then I address a particular guide.

If you find that this post has piqued your curiosity, then why not meet your own guides? They are waiting to be invited in to be a part of your spiritual journey and quiet meditation is the easiest way to meet them. They will not come until you are ready and they will never overstay their welcome.

I promise you, once you meet your guides, you will never ask them to leave.

Is there an art to the process of awakening?
Is the awakening process even an art?
Does it require special skills or knowledge to achieve?
A topic like this can be blogged about to death and may still be never adequately addressed.
Why? Because of the uniqueness of the process. Like the whorls in our fingerprints, what will work for us is designed solely for us.
Some of us answer the call of the universe by responding to the gentle knocking on the door of our Inner Being while others of us wait for the bitch slap.
But in one form or another, at some stage of our soul’s journey, we respond even if it is at the very end of this incarnation.

Yabba Pot lifestyle?

What is that? Question asked with wide curious eyes.

A Yabba pot is an earthenware cooking utensil used to for making Ital Food. It is made from local clay and fired in a kiln until it is baked and ready for use.
Ital Food? What is that? Eyes even wider, brimming with interest.

Ital food is the name that Rastafarians use to describe their way of cooking. Everything earthical, no meat, lots of coconut milk and no salt unless it came naturally from the grun provisions
Grun provisions? Now what is that? Eyes really popping now.

But hey, I know what is Rastafarian- Bob Marley and Reggae music. Eyes smugly smiling.

Just as we use natural herbs and spices to boost our immune systems, so should we take remedies to boost our spirituality.
Some people had the great fortune of growing up in societies where the herbal doctor or medicine man was king.
In retrospect, I call it being fortunate because when nothing from the pharmacy provides the cure, mother nature steps in, quietly showing us the way, if we would listen.
The herbal medicine business is now annually in the billions of dollars. People are waking up to the realization that the cure has always been out there and everything we ever needed to live happy, healthy lives was always available to us.
So what about remedies to boost our spiritual immunity?
We stop.
We get silent.
We listen.
We heal.
We strengthen.
We expand.
We get boosted.

One reader of my blog commented that my writing “ is quite light for such important issues”


I felt quite flattered. It was like I achieved my objective. It is supposed to be light. Life is supposed to be happy and light.
We humans make things complicated; as if to say, it wasn’t hard or difficult, then something must be wrong. Then we wonder, where did we go wrong along our life’s path? This has been too easy. Something is not right. And so we go searching for what we did wrong that made our life light.

Who says that life is not supposed to be light? And that writing about life and meditation and spirituality and seeking and oneness and the universe and connection to our Inner Being and the Divine is not supposed to be light?

Why is it when we are happy, we feel light?
When we are in love, we feel light?

Because light is the new heavy.

So how can we keep our human bodies strong and healthy?
Not with the objective to feed the mind, the same mind that sometimes keeps us away from communion with our Inner Being.
Not to keep the ego alive so that it can continue to block our spiritual ascension.
But to keep this vessel that houses our soul, well enough to enable the achievement of its soul purpose here in the 3-D.

We have the brew; Just for you; In the form of a tea; That’s all-natural, you see.
The silly rhyme just came from nowhere.

Mother Nature provides all that we need to be well. Hippocrates stated a long time ago that we ought to keep the medicines in their pots and heal the people with food.

And the food for these times are herbal teas:
One part rosemary,
Two parts lemongrass,
One part sage,
Two parts garlic
One part ginger
Two parts basil.

Use herbs fresh or dried.
Bring water to boil and add herbs and spices. Turn off heat and let it steep for 5 minutes.
Add a few drops of honey, the blessing of bees.

Wrap your fingers around the warm mug, sip, and enjoy.

Your spiritual team is always on call.
In your darkest hour or in the midst of your most ecstatic moment.

Us humans, we give too much credit to our ego- selves, ultimately to our 3-D selves.
We believe that total responsibility lies with us
And so, total power lies with us.

How much power do this dying body and screaming ego really have in helping us to get to our ultimate goal of reconnecting with the Divine?
Absolutely none.
Their only job is to help us navigate in this plane. Any other journey we intend to make, they have to be left behind.

Our spiritual team holds the roadmap, they are our Siris, our Alexas,
Plug into them and see what a difference the journey makes.

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi was described as a writer of ecstatic poems. He was Persian and lived over 800 years ago and his works are resonating more in this 21C than perhaps any other time in human history. Why are we resonating with the words of Rumi now more than ever?
Perhaps one of the possible answers lies in the way his poems are described, as being ecstatic.

Dare I say we are now, more so than ever, allowing ourselves to feel and express overwhelming happiness as the word ecstatic so defines?
Are many of us, now going forth boldly, speaking our truth? Releasing ourselves from the shackles of organized religion and setting our Inner Beings free to be the us we came here to experience?

Are many of us now releasing ourselves from the isms and schisms, a term coined and popularized by another great poet, Robert Nesta Marley, and embracing the lovers we were meant to be?

Are many of us now seeing the Light, making the connections with the Divine Creator and our Divine Selves, and for the first time allowing the scales to fall from our eyes and from our hearts and embracing the words of Rumi by having our souls become gold when touched by the Beloved?

Sit down and be quiet was the phrase that, until now was often directed at children.
Sitting still and being quiet seemed an impossibility given their short attention spans and boundless energy sources.

Now, this instruction goes out to us adults. We are being encouraged to sit still and be quiet.
This is a war between the ego-mind and itself. And it is protesting loudly, wreaking havoc on our thoughts which lead to havoc on our bodies. And the ego-mind rings out a chorus:
We do not do “sit still”. We do not do “be quiet”. We do not follow instructions. We run this town.
And so this town is running down, being wrecked by mind-numbing anxiety and paralyzing fear.

So, please, sit still and be quiet.
Breathe deeply from the bottom of your diaphragm and do the 6-3-4.
Breathe in for 6 counts, hold it for 3 counts and let it out slowly for 4 counts. Rinse and Repeat.

And before you know it, you will be doing the quiet and feeling the calm.

The yellow light that many seekers have spoken about is as real as the sun’s rays on one’s upturned face after a shower of tropical rain.

You do not know that the light is coming. You sit to quiet your mind and meet your Inner Being, just like the other five dozen times and you start your meditation. Then there arises a shimmer in the distance that starts out quite faint and then expands upwards and outwards. It approaches slowly with a warmth that feels all-enveloping, all-encompassing, all-loving, all-accepting.
It cradles you and you hear, “all is well, you are loved”. You feel the tears trickling down your face. You revel in the feeling, a feeling that you have never felt from another human. It is good. You are loved. The human language does not even have the words to adequately describe it.

For anyone who has seen this light and felt this love, life never returns to being the same.

The call came and you answered.

Welcome to woke.

Us humans, we seek validation from other humans. And the bigger the issue is to our lives, the more we seek out validation.

So being human, when I was thinking about ways to share my work with a broader audience, I sought out validation.

One afternoon while having lunch with a friend of mine whom I knew for a very long time, I tried to explained to him what I wanted to do with the rest of my life and how I felt it would serve humankind. He listened and then said. “That is very esoteric. “I latched onto the word. Esoteric. I conjured up pictures of mystery, wonder, knowing, discovering, learning and I felt that ah-ha moment. This was the word that encapsulated my idea.

Us humans, we seek validation from other humans.

So during another conversation with a fellow seeker, I mentioned to him my liking of the word 'Esoteric' for this idea I had in my head. He is a thinker, sometimes I think too much. He asked in his thinking voice (it was via a WhatsApp chat but I am familiar with his thinking voice), “Don’t you think that that word alone is going to exclude many persons from even seeking and engaging in what you are trying to do"?

I smiled. He is so smart. I told him that I am betting on the natural curiosity of us humans. We see the word and just sheer curiosity alone will make us take a second look and that is all I would need, that second look.
My plan was to capture the imagination and draw those curious enough into a world of seeking, mediation, creativity, food, spirituality, and the wonders of plant medicine and healing.

Voilà Esoteric Gardens and Lizzie’s Nest!

The struggle was real.
We are at the Rebirth
Peaceful, thankful, forever grateful.

The last battle was with The Mind, a formidable opponent indeed. We bow in respect.
It knows us better than we know us; our weaknesses and our other weaknesses.
And plays a no-holds-barred battle. It often engages the body to help it. And the body willingly betrays us to the mind. No loyalty, giving credence to the flesh being weak.

But you see this Fifth Dimension Being that we are in the becoming?

Well, Mind Lost.

I am so High.

I carve out sixty minutes of the one thousand, four hundred and forty assigned on the daily for my meditation practice; a tiny fraction when you consider the tremendous benefits that accrue from this act.

I spend the rest of the day on a high, a natural high;
Similar to the runner’s high but I didn’t run anywhere;
Similar to the smoker’s high but I didn’t smoke anything.
Similar to the young lover’s high, but I didn’t meet up with Ludus.

It’s a different kind of high.
One that does not come from the without but from the within.
Making it all the more real and lasting.
Bridging the connection between my Inner Being and the Divine, with the result being this high.

I want to stay high.

Why.

Us Humans, we are very good at one thing, beating up on ourselves when things do not go the way we feel that they should have. And alas, we take this thinking into our meditative space. We feel that every time we sit down to meditate, it should be one rapturous session.

We should see the stars, even during the day.

We should travel through the cosmos in swirls of purples and pinks.

We should have no thoughts, our minds becoming a beautiful vacuous space.

We should have mind orgasms because we heard that they were better than sex.

We should see the light.

We should, we should.

And when none of these shoulds happen we get out the big stick and we beat up on ourselves. We feel that it was a wasted session because we had the should nots.

We should not have had all these thoughts.

We should not have had to wrestle with feelings and emotions.

We should not have heard the mosquito buzzing near our ear.

We should not have felt our butt aching and our back and shoulders tensing up.

We should not have mercifully wanted it to end.

We should not, we should not.

Us Humans, We need to forget the shoulds and the should nots when we sit to meditate.
Just see each visit to that space as a good one.

No, not just a good one, but an excellent one.

He rushed into her little shop, all hot and flustered, waving his checkbook and a fistful of dollars, shouting “I want answers now”.

She did not even look up but continued adding that last bit of yellow acrylic paint to the bright sun that dominated her canvas.

He continued to shout, pacing the floor and waving his arms, “I want answers, don’t you hear me? I have money, I can pay.”

A few more seconds passed while she peered at her painting, putting another dab here and there and then finally raised her eyes towards the man who had so vehemently invaded her quiet, until then, peaceful space.

Her eyes were large, luminous, piercing in a kindly way. She looked at his brows beaded with water droplets, the large sweat stains under both his armpits, turning his light blue shirt dark in those areas and she thought to herself, “that is a good shade of blue for a stormy sea”.

He became quiet and stared into her eyes as if expecting that the answers to his questions would move from her to him on some energetic wavelength.

She recognized him as quite a successful businessman from a nearby community. He had made his money in heavy equipment and construction and was known to be one that always got what he wanted now. He did not have much formal education but had learned that by hard work, cunning, and the right political affiliations, he could get what he desired from life.

She exuded an envious calm and a peace that the businessman wish he could steal. He took a deep breath, lowered his arms to his sides, and calming repeated, “I would like some answers, can you help me please?”

She smiled. It was a nice smile. It was the smile of a woman who had fought her demons and conquered them. The smile of a woman who lived in the present moment where neither past nor future was of any importance. The smile of a woman who appeared to have discovered the secret of the universe.

“I do not know your questions but I know the answers,” she said softly, “come with me. “

She took up a large cushion from under the counter and gave it to him and lithely walked out of the shop towards the larger building in the near distance. She was dressed in a long white cotton kimono, flecked with yellow and blue paint. Her salt and pepper dreadlocks were casually wrapped on the top of her head. She had the body of someone who practiced yoga, smooth, fluid, and assured.

The man trudged behind her. She listened to his breathing. It had calmed considerably as he began to feel the peace of the place. Once they reached the house, she opened the door and led him to a large open room. It had a highly polished wooden floor, with several yoga mats and colourful cushions adorning one corner. Several of her paintings were on the walls. Indoor plants, along with a few statues of the ascended masters made up the calming décor.

He stood in the entrance, took one deep breath, and let it out with a loud whoosh. He felt it. He felt the presence of Himself. He felt a calm that he had never experienced in his 57 years on this earth.

She gestured for him to close the door and to put the cushion on the floor. She went to retrieve one for herself and invited him to sit.

He struggled to sit but finally made it onto the seat. She touched him lightly on the shoulder and whispered softly, “Let us find those answers.”

Have you ever been having a vivid dream, in deep conversation with a relative or friend only to exclaim a few minutes later, “Hey why are you talking to me, you are dead?”

This has happened to me several times and I am sure this has also happened to many persons reading this post.

I can recount stories of visits from past family members, former work colleagues, neighbours, and even one lady I knew but never spoke to when she was alive. And each time I end the meet-up with “Hey why are you talking to me, you are dead”.

Perhaps I should stop it and if you do it as well, perhaps you should stop it. They come bringing a message, but instead of in a bottle, it is in our dreams. They know it is the easiest way to reach us without us freaking out.
I have been asking my Inner Being and my Spiritual Team for some time now on ways to increase the reach of my blog post to share the work of Esoteric Gardens and Lizzie's Nest and one night I got a visit from my relative's adopted son who had died from gun violence. He was excitedly jabbering away, telling me that he came to give me advice as to how I can market my business idea. I was amused because, in the lifetime that I knew him, he was a gangsta and drug dealer. And now he was back to tell me how I ought to promote something that, to me was completely opposite to the role he played in his recent past life.

I listened a few minutes and then exclaimed, "Hey, why are you talking to me, you are dead!"

I missed the message.

Do I blog for likes?
I unabashedly admit to it; yes, I do

I bare my soul for likes.

I expose myself to ridicule for likes.

I risk being called unbalanced for likes.

I speak of meditation and divine connection for likes.

I advocate connection to one’s Inner Being for likes.

I encourage facing one’s shadow side for likes.

I say that I listen to my intuition for likes.

I admit to speaking with my spirit guides for likes.

I raise my vibrations for likes.

Likes that come about when the divine light within me aligns with that of the Universe.

Not those from the 3-D.

When we think of meditation, we think of quieting the mind, as much as we can, and finding that calm and stillness within that allows us rendezvous with our Inner Being and the Divine. The literature abounds with the benefits of such a reunion.

But is there any benefit of meditation to the physical body? The flesh and blood that has the all-important job of cradling our eternal soul?

Yes, there is.

Meditation does wonders for the physical body but before you start to imagine your body morphing into a pretzel on a hard floor, hear me out.
Meditation is not supposed to be painful on the body, so make yourself comfortable on the floor, a chair, a cushion, five cushions, in bed, wherever. But comfort is key.

Begin to feel your body relax as you slowing breath in and out; even if you do not pay attention to the breathing in and out, it does not matter because your body will do it anyway.
Feel the body relax from the big toe to that last bit of hair on your crown.

Once fully relaxed, the magic begins.

"Wait," you say. “I have thoughts. I have lots of thoughts. They are forcing themselves into my calm.” Let the thoughts be. They will come and they will go. Sometimes you will engage them, other times you won’t. Let the thoughts be.
Feel your body respond to the calm even though thoughts are racing around like a toddler on a sugar high. Feel all there is to feel. Feel the beauty of the moment.

The body heals itself when allowed. If we believe that we are energy, then when the body is relaxed, energy moves to areas needing care and healing and begins the work of self-healing.

Relax and let the magic continue.

Let the peace that passes all understanding move through you and around you.

Let the energy within and the energy without heal you.

Let the thoughts be,

Huh?
Thoughts?
What thoughts?

Gotcha!

Spirituality connects you to the Divine by your own experience. There is no prescription nor is there a 12-step programme. There is no 'Spirituality in 30 days' or your money back. It is a journey with the aim to find, accept, and embody your true spiritual nature.

Spirituality is personal.

Paths are diverse, though merge to a common point, the experience of connection to the Divine. Choose a single path or a combination of paths, whatever is necessary for a given time and space. Just know that there is no exact road nor a single experience. If you find your connection on a yoga mat or deep inside a silent forest, just trod.

Spirituality is personal.

I chose my main path to spirituality through the metaphysical world. Perhaps it was because my south node was in my eighth house, thereby explaining my fascination with astrology and things esoteric. Perhaps it was because this idea felt most right to me.

Spirituality is personal.

Interestingly, the beginning point on the spiritual path most often is not the ending point and time brings changes and adjustments to satisfy the soul on its journey. Now my path is becoming more heart and mind based, with some earth and a touch body. It is like putting together a giant pizza with all of my favourite toppings.

Anyone offering you an already built pizza, burn it to a crisp, and put together your own pan. My green peppers, onions, and mushroom may be your pepperoni, extra cheese, and pineapple, spirituality is personal.

I jumped to Judgment.
It was so reflexive, taking little effort. We have been cultured into jumping to judgment. We always know better, can do better, and ultimately believe ourselves better than our fellow human beings. The ego in its splendor encourages us to hear or see, criticize, and then pass judgment.

More than half of the time the ego is not even in full knowing, so the half-arsed snapshot that is sent to the analytical part of the brain is quickly scanned and judged upon.

I am guilty of this more often than I would like to admit given my efforts of trying to walk a spiritual path. I have to relearn, every day, of the oneness that is us.

I had a neighbour who was an alcoholic and whenever he was filled with spirit, he expounded on everything, things he knew, and things he only had an idea about.
He would see me and start talking. Whenever I asked him, “well how do you know that?”, he would smile through his alcoholic haze and reply, “people don’t logicate.”

Logi- what? Is that even a word? I asked him to explain what he meant by ‘logicate’ and over time I understood him to mean that us humans do not use logic and discernment when thinking and speaking. We judge with our heads and not with their hearts and many times the result is harsh and unfair.

So as we go through our day, let us make the effort to think before we jump.
Let us think with the heart.
Let us remember our oneness and solidarity in spirit.
Let us be the Divine within us.
Let us love.

I sit on a warm blanket on my cold bedroom floor, surrounded by acrylic paint, brushes, and paper. A small laptop rests on the side just in case I am inspired to prose or some other written piece.

I hear the birds outside welcoming the new day. I listened to some sheep and goats bleating in the distance awaiting their morning feed.

I smell the fresh scent of my herbal brew, some lemongrass and basil with a touch of ginger and garlic. It wafted from my tiny kitchen, up under my nose, more pleasant than the coffee I was once a slave to.

It felt so good.

There was a freedom that came from acceptance and peace.

An acceptance that came from a knowing.

A peace that came from a connection to the Divine.

That assured me, quietly and lovingly, that all is well.

Who do you think you are?
Running round leaving scars…Christina Perri, 2011 (songstress)

As soon as you begin the process of awakening to yourself, you will hear those words. I guarantee you, either silent as a rising pimple in the morning or as loud as an angry wave crashing against the innocent shore. And the speaker of those words will surprise you.

Spiritual awakening, as referenced in an earlier blog post, is one that can be fraught with many stressful moments and anyone proclaiming it to be a walk in the park is a liar. Awakening or the art of awakening involves the realization and consequent acceptance of another dimension of reality outside the ego-self or the I.

The initial signs are common and most persons would experience several; for example, a feeling of being drawn to nature and wanting to be in nature, increased compassion and empathy for self and others, a feeling of inner peace and renewed consciousness, a feeling of being more authentic, true to oneself and a pulling away from negativity and negative people. In short, the status quo shifts and life as you know it changes.

Be warned, with this shift comes the who-do-you-think-you-are voice. It is the voice of the ego-mind that sees itself being destroyed, it’s power structure demolished leaving it naked and afraid. And so it lashes back, hitting below the belt, attacking relentlessly, knowing exactly where to hit because after all, it knows us better than we know ourselves. It has been the king of this body castle for a long time. This onslaught may continue until the seeker feels certain his near future involves donning a straitjacket. The ego-mind, sometimes referred to as the Lower Self, by believers of Taoism, is convinced that it runs the town and will continue to do so as long as the breath of life courses through its human body. The idea is that the body is here to serve not the soul but the self. The thing is, awakening starves the ego, preventing it from partaking in its regular buffet of base pleasure, fear, judgment, belief that one is separate from the whole.
Awakening seeks not to kill the ego since a little bit of ego is necessary for living fully in the material plane but it makes the ego understand and accept it is no longer in charge.

So fear, no more
Hate, anger and jealousy, no more
Bad relationships, no more
Lack of confidence, no more
Crippling beliefs that serve no purpose, no more
The sense of separateness, no more

The ego has been shackled.

So who do I think I am?

The Inner Being, always there, quietly waiting for this moment, in perfect alignment with the Divine.

I am the I am that I am.

You can hear both frustration and desperation in the voices that call for “things to go back to normal”.
At first, I nodded understandingly because I felt the fear and uncertainty in the words. Though I wasn’t willing to empathize, I was human enough to be sympathetic. Then the cries grew louder and more insistent, “we hope that things go back to normal.”

Sympathy went through the window.

Why should things go back to normal when we have been assiduously destroying the planet like a god-given right?

Why should things go back to normal when we take to hating our brothers and sisters for no other reason than the belief that we are better?

Why should things go back to normal when we have been consuming more than we need just because it is there and available?

Why should things go back to normal when for us normal was being miserable and unhappy, stress-out, and unfulfilled?

Why should things go back to normal when we have been living lives below our divine potential?

So please, let things not go back to normal.

Let us change for the better.
Let us grow.
Let us learn to love again
Let us learn to genuinely laugh again
Let us care for the only home we will ever have, whether or civilization is developed on Mars.
Let us connect more with our Inner Being through prayer and mediation

Let us be what we came here to be.

It is funny how the “water and dry well story’ replays so many times in our lives.
If you are not familiar with this story or have never experienced missing the water only after the well went dry, then you are no ordinary human.

These days, for most of us, freedom or lack thereof is both the water and the well. We have been stripped of our ability to live as we normally would and we are missing it.

We miss walking in nature, looking at it in full bloom, sneezing from the pollen in the air, well perhaps not the sneezing part since the result may be a full-on side-eye.
We miss going to work, chatting idly with colleagues when we should be more productive. We even miss our supervisors and bosses.
We miss going to church. For once in our lives, we miss hearing the Pastor drone on and on, preaching fire and brimstone on the wicked sinner. We would not mind being that sinner in the pew.

But within all the missing and wanting, lies a perfect opportunity.
The ability to get still and quiet and listen in on a conversation between our inner being and the Divine. We will marvel at the words being exchanged and the feeling of peace, comfort, and love that is shared.

Then we will realize that we are missing nothing.

The avid shopper in all of us enjoys special promotions, the idea of getting something we want, not necessarily need, at a price less than the original price or some other offer combination that leads us to believe that we got a deal. We go through life shopping for deals.

Deals on love that brings toxic relationships.
Deals on happiness that comes from the without and not the within.
Deals on peace that is short-lived and illusory.
Deals on understanding that we try not to understand.
Deals on wisdom that was not gained from experiences.

There comes a time when the deals are no more. We find ourselves at Superstore Rock Bottom and there we stand, with open wallets and empty bags, looking for the familiar sign. We search and find a single flashing neon light - “Special Promotion”. The avid shopper in us stirs, pavlovian-like.

Awakening to one’s true nature is on special, one that has been running all our lives, though many do not notice. Everything is on sale for zero dollars, free.

Free understanding of self
Free knowing
Free inner peace
Free self-healing
Free clearing of past traumas
Free intuitive skills
Free connection to nature
Free releasing of negative emotions
Free shifting of values towards the spiritual
Free awareness
Free love
Free ticket for our homecoming
Free and lasting connection to the Divine.

Finally, the smart shopper in us takes advantage of this promotion of a lifetime.

All roads lead to Om- Ram Dass
I don’t care how you get here, get here if you can – Brenda Russell, 1988 American Singer

At the end of the meditative session, you feel connected.

To your Higher Being,
To Spirit,
To God,
To the Divine.

However you name it, whatever you call it, it is good.

Some people use mantras, some use breathing techniques, some use music, some use pure silence, some use guided meditation, some use a monotonous sound in the room.

Some use prayer, some use chanting, some use walking, some use yoga, some use driving, some use washing dishes, some use knitting….you get my drift.

The purpose is to preoccupy the mind so that the awareness is allowed to unfold. These techniques collect the energies of the mind and bring them to a concentrated point, making space for the connection to one’s Higher Self.

So it does not matter.

Really, it does not matter.

Just get there.

Meditation is found in the space between.

Our thoughts

Our breaths

Our actions

Our pauses

Our getting there

Our knowing

Our dances between the ego and soul

It’s also the space between

Our short comings
Our humanness
Our failures
Our base urges
Our fears
Our fears

Oh.

I said our fears already. My bad.

It is that space that is always welcoming, willing to assist us on our journey to being better versions of ourselves.

“I cry just a little when I think of letting go” Brenda Russell, 1988 (American Singer/Songwriter)

Let go.

You can do it. It won’t hurt one bit.

Stop thinking and do it.

Easy words.
Letting go is hard.

I recall my experience with letting go. It was during a meditation session. I went in very deep and I felt myself on the edge of an abyss-like dark hole. I did not know if there was a bottom or even if I would be able to climb back out. Sadhguru, the Indian author and yogi, once said that the best hole is one without a bottom but that is easy for him to say when the seeker, like me was unsure, nervous, and fearful.

Well, I did not let go, I carefully backed away from the edge and retreated quietly into myself. Not that day.

As time passed, I continued meditating and sometime after found myself in the very same position, on the edge of the abyss. I was still nervous but less fearful since I had taken the time to grow in my practice. I went from a simple two-minute torture session to a thirty, sometimes forty minutes of beautiful expansive awareness through connecting to my Higher Self. So this time I was ready, I said a prayer, took a deep breath, and let go.

I jumped but I did not fall, I flew.

Let go,
You can do it, it won’t hurt one bit.
Take it from one who flew.

Us humans, we are busy being busy, running after the transient things of this world because we figure that they will give us pleasure and happiness, look how happy Mr. Jones is, we say. He has been chasing everything that moved in this plane of reality. He chased money, power, women, status and he appears quite content, happy even. So don’t you dare tell me that happiness cannot be had this way.

As time passes, we achieve our goals, so now we have it all. All that Mr. Jones has and more. Now to rest awhile and savour the happiness that was promised. Alas, there is nothing to savour except the acrid taste of regret and disillusionment. We wasted so many years chasing the proverbial bag and it contained no happy, not even half an ounce.

The money lost its lustre.
The women lost their looks.
The status gave stress and the power was short-lived.
Money. Women. Men, for the chasing sisters. Status. Power.

The only thing left to do is to weep for the loss of our beliefs. We cry tears of blood and shout to the heavens, accusing it of betrayal. There was a promise that was not fulfilled.
So now what to do?

We glance at the clock of time and realize we have a few good years left. So we embark on the real search to find ourselves and discover the true meaning of our lives. What was it we came here to do? Why did our soul choose this physical body, this time and this space?

And so my friend, the journey begins. It will be the hardest one ever but the most fulfilling.

Welcome.

Leave me alone and let me grow and thrive and discover my own brand of spirituality.
Let me feel my own connections to the Divine.
I want neither your help nor your advice, let me be.
Though I appreciate your concern for my soul, my soul is just fine but I can hear yours crying out for the same freedom that I have found.

So, side-eye my oracle cards, my plant altar, and my meditative practices.
I do not ask you to understand, not do I care if you do.

Laugh when I speak about third eye-opening and trusting my intuition.
I do not ask you to understand, not do I care if you do.

Shake your head when I marvel at the energy of the moon and my connection to the universe.
I do not ask you to understand, not do I care if you do.

Pray for me when I say I am the god within.
I do not ask you to understand, not do I care if you do.

Billie Paul summed it up when he sang, “You go your way, and I go mine” but I’m not meeting you tomorrow nor the next day, sorry.

We bury our inner child deep, citing no time for play, no time for adventures, no time for fun. So now trapped, caught in our own small spaces, we have no more excuses.

Mind lost.

The invitation from our Inner Being is to make the connection to our inner child. Go seek out the things that we loved as children and get to doing.
Remember when life was for living, happy and carefree; when a simple pleasure was watching an ant trail taking food its nest or observing a bee nestling in an open flower searching for nectar.

All before so-called adulting came to play.
All before the ego took control of the us within.
All before we ceased listening to our higher self and spiritual team.

As we sit at home during the day, locked away from the unseen and hardly understood, we feel the stirring for that connection like a flower slowing unfurling to the warmth of the sun’s kiss.

That, my friend, is the blossoming of the Inner Child.

Let her play.

I saw an Instagram promotion some time ago that advertised astral travel tours. I was amazed that everything comes down to the dollar.
So the idea is that for the curious, not necessarily true seekers of the light, the opportunity exists for astral travel. Pay your $299.99 and tour the universe, no money-back guarantee. I guess the natural curiosity we possess as humans make us interested in knowing what lies beyond our limited consciousness and so a market is created.

For a better price, let me assist you with your astral travel tour. All I ask is for some time and patience.

We begin by sitting or lying, whichever is most comfortable, and begin the process of quieting our minds for the experience. This may take many trials since the mind is not easily quieted. Remember I spoke about time and patience. We sit for a few minutes each day and concentrate on our breathing having relaxed our physical bodies as much as we can, starting with the toes up to the crown of the head. This is called mindful meditation by many. During the process thoughts come and go, some we engage, some we simply watch but we notice our engagement and we notice our watching. After each wandering session, we go back to the breath feeling it move in and out our lungs with no effort, no help at all. This can go on for many weeks, sometimes many months during which time other things begin to happen. We find ourselves more calm, more intuitive, more at peace with ourselves and our circumstances and ultimately more connected to our Higher Self. The thought of astral travel becomes a vague memory, until it happens.

We remember what we came for.

For some it happens quietly. For others like me it, you feel the rush of energy like a freight train tearing up the tracks at 200 mph. It starts somewhere in the toes and moves up through the body. The energy, a mixture of sound and light continues until it reaches the crown. The feeling is like a thousand sticks of dynamite exploding inside the head. There is brilliant white and yellow light, sometimes turning mauve or purple accompanied by a tremendous roaring sound. You then feel yourself lift off from the body, not unlike watching a space ship launch, the same expenditure of energy and power that precedes a smooth ascent.

The travel begins, explore, enjoy, return before waking.

Health Officials are doubling down on the message of healthy lifestyles for healthy lives, well healthy lifestyles to build immunity to the coronavirus. This is their immediate hope. Start doing these things now to be strong enough for the body’s war on the virus. So they speak about balanced healthy diets including the recommended daily allowances of fruits and vegetables, drinking water throughout the day, regular exercise, stop smoking and using alcohol, adequate sleep, and managing stress to keep its level to a minimum.

For the uninitiated into self-care, this seems like a tall order.

They are asking many to do an entire 360 in 30 days or less, the time that experts say is needed to break a habit or adopt a new one. They are asking for miracles some feel.
Everything begins with a single step. I recommend stepping into a meditative practice and I promise that everything else will begin to fall into place.

There is no miracle cure, all of our problems will not be solved through meditation but it will do more good than many of the other activities we engage in on the daily.

Calmness reduces stress.

Tick one off the to-do list.

We start to connect with our bodies on an emotional and mental level and we begin to listen to it. We will hear it softly asking for the things it needs to be healthy and strong. Over time we are unable to ignore the entreaties. The next step is that things start to fall away by themselves: the need to drink and smoke excessively along with our craving for foods that are unhealthy. The body begins to balance itself, something that it was capable of doing all along.

We listen to our bodies so we rest when it asks and we exercise when it asks.
We begin to marvel at the utter genius that went into our creation.

We feel the change.

We are the change.

Meditation changes.

Have you ever gotten up one morning after a dream-filled night feeling like the universe has your back and is conspiring to bring reassurance that things are always working out for you?

Upon waking, the actual dreams themselves are a vague memory, sometimes no memory exists at all but the feeling remains, this “I am with you, I have you, you do not need to worry, your problems are being solved” feeling that cannot be explained, simply accepted?

For some of us, this feeling is every day, for others, it’s once in a while and for the least attuned to their inner workings and intuitive selves, it comes once in a lifetime. I say to you whenever it comes, firstly show gratitude, then take the reins to this sensation and ride off to success, abundance, answered prayers, solved problems, deep peace, comfort, knowingness, and joy.

Every morning for a few weeks now, a morning shower sweetly kisses the dawn, gently and lovingly. The connection speaks by saying,
Let me rain down on you covering you with my blessings.
Let me cleanse your mind as you begin a new day, washing away the yesterdays and their problems.
Let me remind you of the eternal goodness of the Universe.
Let me remind you to just be.

But us humans, we do not like the rain. It dampens our plans, interrupts our flow; we have so much to do and now we will just get wet.
We see the rain as getting us wet.
We see the sunshine as burning us up.
We see the trees and plants as making us rake leaves.
We see nature’s animals as disturbances, too many bats, rats, and centipedes.
We even see ourselves as a bother to us.

And then we wonder why we are stressed, why our energetic selves are unbalanced, why our inner child is still hurting.

The thing is, we continue trying to satisfy a part of us that is never satisfied, the ego and in so doing we strangle our connection to our inner God.

We damp down on our intuition.
We block the connection to our Inner Being.
We refuse to listen to our angels and spirit guides.

We live in a fantasy that we call reality, unhappy, and unfulfilled.

Then we blame it on the rain.

Every morning at about 3 am he begins to make himself known. I do not know if he is the alpha male or simply the official village timekeeper but Mr. Rooster starts to crow and one by one the other roosters in the village join in the chorus so that by 4:30 or so, there is an entire flock of birds encouraging us to rise, shine, and welcome the new day.

And what a beautiful song that is, the sound of nature by its own timing reminding us that we are an important part of the whole!

Early in the morning, if you wake to the sound of the rooster, it is a perfect time to allow your mind to quiet itself, if it chooses to, and engage in a short meditation. This simple practice largely determines the kind of day you will experience.

Will you calm and peaceful or rushed and stressful?
Will you have found the solutions to problems or still harping over things?
Will you be happy in the present or feeling guilty about the past while simultaneously worrying about the future, stressing the body, and irritating the soul?

I encourage you to wake with the rooster.

Rise, shine, get down on your mat, and welcome the new day.

Have you ever been meditating, enjoying your connection to your Higher Self, not wanting for the session to be over because of the deep sense of well being you are experiencing when from your subconscious, out pops your inner child?

This happened to me recently. I have been meditating a while and over many sessions, I met with my inner child and made attempts to heal wounds from childhood and young adulthood that were traumatizing me on a subconscious level, causing me to manifest these same experiences repeatedly. During those times, many of my meditative sessions ended in warm tears coursing down my cheeks. They call it the dark night of the soul. For me, there were many dark days and nights. It felt like going through a cleansing process, preceded by events that asked me to face my fears and make them powerless.

I read that some people take up meditation as a practice but quit later because of this journey, the facing of fears. It is not an easy one. All of our childhood monsters come out of the closet and terrorize us until we make them powerless by realizing that these thoughts, fears, feelings are not us, the real us, the pure spirit of our Inner Being, but events of our human experience that we agreed on before incarnating in this plane. They were meant to happen to allow for the growth of our souls, so permitting us to fully experience what we came here for.

So back to my story, I was meditating recently and she appeared. She always appears shy and hesitant, large luminous eyes staring back at me, silently inviting me to explore and deal with whatever needed healing. I was surprised to see her since I figured I had already fixed my inner child wounds. She appeared silently, eyes a bit sad, and stared at me, silently invited me to look within and heal. I was afraid. I did not want to find another layer of wounds that needed healing. Burying and continuing life works quite well thank you very much.

Eventually, after building up some courage and delved deeper into my subconscious, I began to explore this new layer. It turned out to be an old layer that I had never quite fixed. It contained pain that stemmed from the belief that I was never loved; it was the trauma that came from abuse in its many forms: physical, emotional, and sexual; it was the fear that I was never enough; it was the lack of self-confidence and daddy issues. My emotional scars were rubbed raw again. The deeper I went, the more crap I found. It was like floating through dark space being bombarded by space debris.

I never time my meditation sessions with a clock, I usually set the intention that I will meditate for 20, 30, 40 minutes, and each time the session ends around the time set. I have always marveled at that. This was one time when I was glad I had set an intention of 20 minutes and soon I was out and glad to be out. I opened my eyes and felt the wetness on my cheeks.

Another session, another opportunity to heal.

Heal on.

If your situation is similar to mine, you are loving this corona season. I woke quite early and gave a quick prayer of gratitude for the new day and instead of preparing for my early morning meditation session, I took the opportunity to burrow deeper under my sheets. Life smelled good.

It was the second morning of our 3-day country-wide lock-down and I was blissed out. There was no noise. There was hardly any movement outside. The crickets had finished their singing from the night before and the birds had not quite started their morning song. The roosters had done their wake up job and were out foraging for food. It was just that perfect moment in time and space when I could just be.

And boy did I be!

I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the moment. I was being allowed to be.

With being comes a sense of calm,
With being comes peace and understanding,
With being comes acceptance and a quiet joy,
With being comes that connection to our Higher Selves.

I smiled, thanking the Universe, that in the midst of such a turmoil, I am allowed to be.

No one knows exactly why we dream and many have posited reasons as to the purpose of dreaming. The popular magazine Psychology Today, in an article described dreams among other definitions, as a form of consciousness that unites past, present, and future in processing information from the first two, and preparing for the third. I particularly like this explanation. It pleases me to think of my dreams as processing important information that can serve me as I maneuver in the physical plane.

So are you a dreamer, a dreamer in the sleep state or waking state? People with a strong Neptune in their astrological chart are dreamers and having Neptune in your twelfth house is even more potent for dreaming and the ability to distill meaning from dreams.

On occasions, you have a dream, so vivid and so real that it wakes you up and cause you to spend time trying to figure out the meaning. We know that most times dreams cannot be taken literally. For example, a few nights ago, I had a dream about trying to swim in a dirty pool and for the life of me, I could not understand why I would even want to stick my toe in such a place. I do not even like swimming pools, worse a dirty one. The dream was so vivid that I woke with a start. Luckily, I immediately knew the meaning of the dream and I was not pleased. I had earlier asked my 5-D helpers for answers to a problem I was experiencing and they send me one in my dreams. I was so distraught that I politely asked them if they would be so kind as to make answers less traumatic the next time around.

So dreaming is important for answers to problems, to shift through the rubble of our daily lives, and come up with solutions that we may not have thought about in the waking state.

Dreaming connects us to our Higher Selves, when during sleep the barrier being removed so that communication can flow freely.

Dreaming puts us in touch with our ancestors and other departed souls who may want to communicate a message to us that we would have otherwise resisted.

Keeping a dream diary is a good idea. Upon waking, record your dreams. Sometimes you may not remember the exact dream but you recall the emotions that were stirred up from the dream. Try translating them into words as well. If writing is difficult, make a dream tape. Over time, go back to these recordings and you will be surprised as to how the interpretations and answers become clear.

Rockers say ‘rock on’

Dreamers say ‘dream on’

If attempting to sit and meditate is stressing you out, please stop. The practice of meditation is not supposed to be stressful. The awakening process might be, but not meditation.

And you may ask, what is the difference? We will discuss that in a different post, but today we speak about stressful meditation.
Meditation should be stress-empty so please stop if it is stress-full.

Many of us humans, we are seeking enlightening, or the idea of what we think enlightenment is and so we believe that meditation is going to do the job and the longer and harder we meditate, the greater our chances for enlightenment.

We decide we want to be psychics, so we seek meditation.
We decide we want to be intuitives, so we seek meditation.
We decide we want to develop some superpower, so we seek meditation.
We decide we want to be manifesters of great abundance, so we seek meditation.

Can we just decide to meditate simply to be and allow for the becoming in its own time? We may then discover the becoming that we need.

We be-come quiet.
We be-come peaceful and happy.
We be-come loving and giving.
We be-come healed and whole.
We be-come the receivers of pure infinite love when we rendezvous with Source Energy, God, The Creator, The Divine, whatever our name for that which connects to our Inner Being to the Light.

So if your meditative practice is stressing you out, stop what you are doing and just be.

Us humans have been searching for God for as long as we have existed.

Rumi said, “I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God.”
How many of us are willing to be like Rumi?

Firstly, to do a serious search and secondly, to accept the result of our search?
Dare we be so blasphemous to say we our search for God resulted in ourselves being found and we are God and God is us? The God within merging with the God without in one fluid seamless act of beautiful creation?

Be mindful that awakening to the God within is not easy. The part of the journey that crosses the dark night of the soul is not for the faint of heart. It is patrolled my many monsters.
The monster of worthlessness.
The monster of fear, jealousy and envy. This one is a trifecta.
The monster of childhood wounds.
The monster of relationships that no longer serves us.
The monster of false teachings.
The monster of our non-becoming.
The monster of status quo.
The monster of loss.

Are we willing to do the investigation and find the God within?

Add a little honey to it, for pure love.
And maybe a pinch of spice, some nutmeg or bay leaf for giving and share
A dash cayenne for that hint of fire to bring it all together,
Recipe done; the soul is ready to rumble.

The experts say that our souls come back to the 3D to experience certain things that are unavailability in the 5D.
The beautiful dance of duality,
The pleasure of being in a physical body,
The tastes, touches, loves, and pain.
The joys and the sex, and the joys of sex.
All alluring to the Soul that looks longingly from the upper plane down to the lower plane.
And so it returns.

To experience all these and more, to clear some bad karma and create some good karma.
To love fully and wholeheartedly, the entire humanity that contributes to the experience of being in the Third Dimension.

I do not refer to myself as a skilled meditator, trial and error have led me to a routine that has been working for me and which I would like to share with you.

When I lie to meditate, yes I lie on my back, I make sure that my body is straight with my hands touching or clasped lightly across the chest with my head and neck are in line with my spine for optimum energy flow. I refer to this as my ‘meditation pose’.

I remember when I first started meditating, I did the recommended sit up straight with hands and feet a certain way, eyes closed, breathing deeply to om my way into the practice. I was unsuccessful. First and foremost, it was uncomfortable sitting in that position for even five minutes, my entire body ached and my bobblehead was just too heavy for my neck. I realized that if I were to continue with this meditation thing, I had to be comfortable, my physical body had to be comfortable. Body at ease puts the mind at ease and I felt no qualms about changing to a more comfortable position when I read how the Buddha meditated on the largest pile of grass he could find. If the Buddha understood the importance of being comfortable during meditation, well the novice like me should take a blade from his pile.

You may think ‘what if I fall asleep?’ and I say, ‘so what if you fall asleep? You were probably tired and you did what was kind for your body at the time, body at ease, mind at ease. After a good night’s sleep, morning meditation would be even more beneficial.
You can try experimenting with different poses, just make sure that the one you choose is not the one that the mind and body associates with sleep and you are on your well to meditation nirvana.
And do not be fooled, lying down for meditation takes you to states of great relaxation and bliss. The meditator is still able to achieve the intentions set for his or her practice. (We can talk about setting intentions before meditation in another post.) I experience my first mystical experience this way, a connection that I will never forget, so I know it works and works well.

Do not let anyone tell you that you have to do it this way or that way, do it your way.

Have you ever had something made you so angry and upset that it knocked you off your Zen cushion? Well in my case it will be my Zen soapbox since I talk about meditation and the beauty of the practice so much.
I got knocked off mine recently and I fell so hard that I felt the reverberation through my body. I was devastated and my ego-mind took the opportunity to deride me by slyly commenting, “look at Ms. Zen, she got a dose of reality, she human y’all”.

This happens to all of us as we travel the path. Meditation keeps us grounded and provides solace and helps us to deal with the challenges we encounter on the daily. So when you feel anger to the core that you get knocked off your cushion, it can be quite disheartening.
When we meditate, we try to make the resultant sensation, the feeling of peace and universal love last the entire day. Sometimes it is easy to do, other times not.
Some like to say, “The Devil made me sin my soul”. There was no devil involved and the soul cannot sin but on a certain level, I understand the sentiment being shared, something disturbed their peace and disrupted their alignment with their Higher Self.

What do we do when this happens?
Do we let the anger consume us until we hardly recognize ourselves or do we breathe, slowly and deeply?
Do we decide that this path is not for us since we ‘failed’ or do we breathe, slowly and deeply?
Do we berate ourselves and curse our humanness or do we breathe, slowly and deeply?

We breathe slowly and deeply and soon the peace that passes all understanding envelopes us in its warmth and love.
We take up our cushion, dust it off, tuck it under our arm, and continue our journey.

In my case, I looked at my soapbox, decided it needed some repair, and left it by the wayside.
I am now in the market for a cushion.

It is a strange feeling when your dreams turn out later to be premonitions of the future. It sometimes makes you want to not fall asleep. I find that more often than not, I am having dreams of this sort. I trace it back to when I started my daily meditation practice. I guess it may seem cool to some, “oh you can tell the future, you can predict happenings.” I cannot tell the future. I cannot predict anything. I do not decide what I dream about and I would be a false prophet if I lead you to believe otherwise.

I have always been a dreamer, even if I take a half-hour nap in the middle of the afternoon, I enter the dreamscape. I decided some time ago to start a dream journal, attempting to record the dreams that I remember, those that were most vivid and seemingly held some meaning. My journal is almost full.


The literature speaks of dreaming serving as a warning or as reassurance. Some even believe that we time travel in our dreams either into the past or the future. Others see dreams as communication with our Higher Selves and spirit guides either assuring us that we are on the right path or warning us to course correct. The times when we dream about our friends and families or events, I think they serve to allow us to offer advice and comfort when needed.

For example, recently, before a sick relative died, I had a dream of him smiling and waving goodbye to me. I asked him where he was going, he did not answer but the grin on his face made me realize it had to be someplace good. When he died about three months later, I was able to offer comfort to my family, reassuring them that he was in a good place. A similar experience occurred when a neighbour went into the non-physical after years of fighting cancer and two nights after her death I had a dream where I saw a choir of angels welcoming her home. The music was loud and the light was very bright and everyone was celebrating as if a hero had returned from a long, hard-fought war. Having this dream allowed me to relate what I saw to her family member and I am sure that it brought comfort to them.

I do not see these experiences as super extraordinary but simply a tool to help me along my spiritual path by allowing me to be a source of comfort to people and I am further blessed by it.

The Universe gives us what we need at the right time. It may not be in our time but it’s still the right time.

I remember as a little girl, I got this idea of praying for money, asking God to give me money. I never received a response but that did not stop me. I continued to ask. Coming from a poor family, I guess I wanted God to understand that I had a real need for money, my own money in my hand, not money given to me through my parents who were responsible for my care. I wanted my own money.
One day, I recall going to school and not having any lunch. I do not know why it happened since I always remembered my mother packing a lunch flask daily with what we refer to as “pot food”, meaning food that came from the kitchen pot. We refer to pot food as food that was cooked in a home kitchen. It was flavourful most times, and usually quite filling.
Anyway, this day I had no lunch. It was lunchtime. I was hungry and knew I had three more hours before school let out. I was desperate so I went for a walk and made my way towards a bakery near my school. Some lucky children were able to go there to purchase their lunch daily but not me, I was never given lunch money so I simply stood near a wall on the opposite side of the street, looking at the bakery and wishing I could go inside and buy something to eat.
Then something inside my head, I guess we call it intuition nowadays, told me to look down and there in a crack of the stone wall was 25 cents, just like it was waiting for me to pick it up. I was shocked and elated at the same time. I did not even stop to think that God had finally answered my prayer for money. I took the coin and ran to the bakery and got a coconut rock bun for lunch. It was the sweetest bun I had even eaten and I still remember it today.

So now, whenever I ask the Universe for something, I know it will come in divine timing. It is not when I want it, which is always NOW but when the Universe sees it fit to give it to me. I believe in the Law of Attraction and in believing in this law, I also believe that things we want to attract come to us, not in our time but according to universal timing.

We ask, affirm, trust, and then let go.

When is empty beautiful?
When it’s the space experienced through meditation.

For many persons engaging in a meditative practice, one aims is to experience that beautiful space - where thoughts cease and there remains just the empty quietness allowing for the subconscious to rise and expand. I compare it to the opening of a beautiful flower, from a tiny bud to full bloom with this full bloom being the space for the subconscious.

For some, reaching this state is not an easy feat. The ego-mind is asked to take a back seat for a while and be quiet. The ego-mind does not like to be quieted and the more one tries to actively quiet it, the more resistance it puts up until the meditator concedes to it in frustration.

I came upon a trick some time ago that helps me to get into that space using less time, I cut a deal. I allow the ego-mind to roam as far and as wide as it pleases. I allow it to chatter away. I allow it to do what the mind does, think, plan, and be in charge, and in return, I carve one small space where I meet up with my Higher Self through my subconscious mind. I settle in with that little space and feel quiet and peaceful even as the mind goes ten miles a minute. Here is where the trick is, once the mind realizes that it can do as it pleases, the fun ceases. It does not enjoy it anymore and it simply slips away and my subconscious is allowed to expand and revel in the entire space. It works every time.

I have read many times where the writer explains how to meditate by saying, “stop the wandering thoughts”. They never explain how because they cannot. The mind will do what the mind does. There is no stopping of thought by the person until the mind itself chooses to.

So for me, mind has not caught on to this trick as yet and I hope it doesn’t in the near future.

Congratulations, you have successfully auditioned for the supporting role in the next blockbuster movie, The Horse and Pony Show, starring The Ego Mind.

You smile broadly. You worked so hard for this role. All those years of acting classes, even going as far as pursuing a degree in Acting and Life Skills, graduating in the first 1% of your class and now you have landed your first major role. You are ready to take the world by storm.
“Ok,” you tell yourself, “It is not the lead role but it is a start, before long you will be starring in your own movies and you will be great.”

Little do you know is that the Ego Mind will never give over its position to you, try as you might, it will be a fight to the end. The Ego Mind has always been in charge. It was born to rule, to command, to lead, and you, the real you, the you that connects to your Inner Being and Higher Self was supposed to follow. Always.

So imagine when you begin to awaken onto yourself, when you start to feel the first stirrings of what am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose? What is my true role in this life? Am I to follow or am I to lead?

Trouble starts. The process of awakening begins. The Ego Mind rushes from its dressing room, makeup half on with its elaborate costume training behind it, the trappings of living in the 3-D, demanding to know what manner of sorcery has begotten this D-rated actor? How dare you, the true you, the you that has direct to connection to Source and Source Energy, decide to question the status quo?
“This Horse and Pony Show continues to the end,” declares the Ego Mind. “You do not have a say, you do as you are told, I am lead actor, director, and producer here, careful you do not get fired!”

You decide to call its bluff.

“Fire me, please” you whisper softly.

We know what the seven main chakras are: root, sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye, and crown and we know what the functions of these chakras in our energy body.

Let us start this conversation by agreeing on a couple of things, well even if we do not agree, we can have a common understanding for the purpose of this article.
We agree that we are comprised of energy and that every cell in our body radiates energy.
We agree that there are different channels found in specific points of that body, called chakras, through which energy flows in and out in a constant stream.
We agree that these chakra points are not physical but are aspects of consciousness and that they interact with the physical and energy body through our body systems.

Dr. Laura Berman, in an article found on the website Consciouslifestylemag.com spoke about ‘Balancing your energy body: a complete guide to chakra healing’. She did an excellent job of explaining something that for some may be a bit esoteric but nevertheless quite real.

Our chakra centers, like the stomata cells in plant leaves, open and close as a defense and protective mechanism. Whenever we feel tense or anxious about something, we feel the chakra associated with that part of the body experiencing the stress, and then like a well-timed automatic system, we feel it in our physical and energy body. So imagine years of pain and trauma that cause tensions throughout our physical and energy bodies!

The traumatic experience of childhood, whether it stemmed from the belief that we were never quite loved and cared for; the scars from years of physical, emotional or sexual abuse; the unrequited love affairs that we never healed from; the societal pressures on women dissuading us from exploring our sexuality; the feelings of insecurity, co-dependence, and fear of rejection and abandonment; the being told to sit down and shut up; the list goes on and on.

For some of us, if we were able to take a scan of the energy body, we will find blockages from the root to the crown manifesting in emotional and physical pain. Me, I recognize the familiar tension in my shoulder and chest whenever I am in a situation where my heart is affected negatively. Others, it may be elsewhere about the body.

My suggestion is that we use this quarantine as a period for great energy healing.

May we use the simple tool that meditation provides to begin the process of clearing out those blockages, starting at the root and ending at the crown. Believe me when I say you will feel the difference. You will feel the energy shifts that culminate in a palpable release that tells you the healing process was successful.

Since we have the time, let’s use it wisely and from the root to the crown, heal for 2020.

Meditation fans the flame within us so that it merges with the larger universal flame of the Divine.

I should make it clear that meditation is any method that one uses to connect to the Divine.
If it is organized religion, so be it.
If it is walking in nature, (which is a good one, by the way), so be it.
If it is doing mindless chores like washing dishes, so be it.

There is no wrong or right way to connect with Infinite Source and the sooner we acknowledge this to be the case, the further along our path we can walk.

The aim is to connect and sustain that connection through daily practice. I have a friend who does walking meditation. He will not call it meditation but it is. I asked him once, “Why do you like to walk in nature, outside of the health benefits that it confers?” and he thoughtfully replied, “to get myself out of myself.”

As much as he tried he could not find the words to offer a better explanation but I understood what he meant. He had found a practice that allowed him to make that connection.

What activities do you engage in to free yourself from yourself?

Let’s talk about love.
On their Magical Mystery Tour music catalog in 1967, the Beetles recorded a song that they titled ‘All you need is Love’. What kinda love were they talking about?
Venus is the planet of love and was named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. She is known to be the hottest planet in our solar system. Her surface is covered by volcanoes, some of which are still active with long canals showing active lava flows. From an astrological viewpoint, Venus is known to confer love or material wealth, sometimes even both.

So what happens when Venus is a strong planet in your chart, perhaps exalted, your ascendant lord, or maybe your atmakaraka? Does that mean you get love or wealth or love and wealth? Do you see her effects in your life? For someone with a strong Venus, she is my Atmakaraka, I have been asking her for years, “what have you done for me lately?’ Her association with love was not working for me. Twice divorced and not in the least bit wealthy, I had her set for the butcher’s block.

Then I came upon the tea. Venus was asking me to love myself first and foremost. She warned me that I would never receive the love I seek until I am able to be that love to myself.
How many of us are seeking love outside ourselves, not filling our cup first before offering love to someone else?

We blame Venus for our current loveless situation. We blame our childhood, our traumatic past, the toxic relationships we keep in our lives, our children. We blame everyone but ourselves. Perhaps we feel undeserving, perhaps we were never taught to love, perhaps we held the belief that self-love was narcissistic and so we go through life attempting to offer love from an empty cup. We fail every time and then restart the cycle of blame.

Some of us boldly declare “I love myself”. But do we really?
Have we taken the time to deal with and heal our childhood wounds, our daddy issues?
Have we done the self-analysis and come upon the reasons why we remain in toxic ass relationships looking for a way but not really looking?
Do we wonder why that new car or hot chick is not enhancing our happiness, why we are so miserable?

Venus only gives when we are willing to receive and the love she gives first and foremost is self-love.

Each morning I meditate and wait on some inspiration for my daily blog. Some days I am able to write two or three pieces and other days, nothing. Either that I got caught up from early in the daily grind or I was feeling no inspiration. Today was a day when I was not feeling anything. I woke early enough, I was able to meditate before the quietness of the morning was taken away by the traffic and the movement of people going about their business, before I heard the horn of the bread bus or the bleating of the goats across the road, before my five dogs began their rambunctious early morning play, trying to wake me for their kibbles, but there was no inspiration. I usually get a word, a phrase, or an idea on which I am able to put together something coherent enough to share. Nothing came.

I sat with the laptop hoping that words will come to me. I even began writing a piece on ‘knowing our shadow side’ but it will not flow. My shadow side was coming out I guess because I started to feel my self-confidence slipping. I am not a very confident person to begin with. It took a lot from me to even begin to share my art and my thoughts with an audience that I do not even know. I am fearful of harsh, nonconstructive criticism and am very much doubtful of my capacities to paint or write something that will resonate and be of benefit to some other living soul.

As I continued to feel nothing, I put the computer away and went about my morning chores, hoping that inspiration will come with time. Later, I decided to write on “Feeling nothing, when creative inspiration evades.”
I smiled at the topic and felt a stirring of something inside.

Less than ten minutes later, I had the making of a piece. But you know, we all go through periods when we feel nothing.
No creativity.
No zest for life;
Periods of listlessness and vague unhappiness;
Periods of depression, feeling unloved, and unworthy.

And it is okay as long as we experience these feelings knowing that this too shall pass.

Tomorrow becomes another day to live and love, to fight, win, and lose and to be grateful and happy for the life we have.

Let’s talk about death. I am no expert on the subject but since none of us are, perhaps as we share and discuss ideas, a thought may come of either me or you that allows for some clarity on something that is considered dark, morbid, foreboding and hardly ever discussed except during rants from the pulpit or along the corridors that house the sick and dying.

We avoid attending funerals as they make us face our own mortality and though cultures like mine revere the dead and engage in what I consider elaborate ceremonies as part of the burial process, thinking about death and dying still is a difficult process. I have always marveled at the respect the dead body gets. Traffic is made to stop or to take other routes so that the hearse can slowly wind its way to the cemetery. Persons wear black to mourn the passing, showing reverence to an empty body when many times during life that same body was disrespected and disregarded by the same ones now showing reverence. And then, let’s not begin to discuss the fighting and acrimony that ensues afterward when the worldly property of that once-living person has to be shared. Family fangs come out! Remembrance and reverence are kicked through the door and the true nature is laid bare.

But I digress, I came to this space to talk about death, not the machinations of the living.

Death must be a beautiful experience. There is the shedding of the shackles of the physical body, allowing for the soul and the spirit to return home. The only losses during this transformation are the corporal body and the ego-mind, good riddance to both. The soul is that part of us that emerged from non-physical to the physical to experience life on earth and each soul takes on the body and the circumstance to allow for its experience. The spirit is that part of us that connects us to the Divine. When I speak about us being part of God and being Gods ourselves, this is what I refer to. The God within us acts as the rudder for our soul, guiding it each day to achieve its mission. Mind you, this does not happen without a fight from the physical body ably guided by the ego-mind both of which want to engage in its own living. This explains why sometimes we live conflicted lives; when we engage in activities that do not feel right but we feint ignorance because it does not fit what the ego-mind wants and demands of us. So we dance the dance of the mind and the soul, sometimes going towards the wishes of the soul and sometimes to those of the ego-mind making this the famous tango of duality.

Which is more satisfying? Which produces a deep-seated peace and joy that we can hardly explain, the steps that lead us to the urges of the mind or those of the soul? Once we can honestly answer, for ourselves, these questions, half the battle of living in the 3D is won.

We know what we want, what feels good, what makes us happy so the next step is to move more determinedly towards that. The crossing of the morass that is sometimes involved in moving towards that will be fodder for another blog post, we were talking about death in this one.

So as we die each day, let each step towards death be a step closer towards us achieving the desires of our soul.

Let us ensure as we begin the joyful journey of crossing from physical back to non-physical, to home, that the trip is one of pure satisfaction and bliss and that the only crying at our funeral will be those crying for themselves and not for us.

I am going to start typing without a clear topic and see where Spirit leads me. The last time I did, I was able to produce an entire blogpost in under ten minutes that turned out to be not bad at all. So let’s see what happens, hopefully there will be some success without me getting on my soapbox or rambling without a clear goal.

What does it mean to get on one’s soapbox anyway? According to Wikipedia, in the past, a soapbox was literally used to stand on when a person wished to make a speech and needed to elevate himself to attract a desired audience. Nowadays, we use the term to refer to someone who considers himself an expert on a particular topic and uses his gift, or otherwise, of speech to forcefully present himself to an audience, and getting on one’s soapbox suggests a know-it-all. The person is not encouraging a conversation but expounding on a given topic, disallowing any comments or interactions from the audience. He expects rapt attention with a hint of awe.

I mount my soapbox at times especially on issues that I am passionate about. I use my blog-post to dominate a conversation where I am the speaker and the reader is the listener, devouring my words while nodding in agreement. Oh, how rarefied is the air at the top of my box!

Many times as I dig into my third paragraph, just warming up, something stops me and reminds me that I am having a conversation with an audience, I am speaking with them and not at them. So I slow down, adjust my tone, gingerly step down from my box and kindly ask, “so what you do want to talk about today?”

Do you remember when life was simple and just believing alone was enough for manifestation, when we were faith-filled enough to expect and accept the power of the subconscious mind to supply our needs, both on the spiritual and material planes?
Ah, for the simple life!

Some time ago I started reading a book by Joseph Murphy, The Power of your Subconscious Mind, and Other Works and I did not complete it because I found it too simple to be true. I was living life in the daily grind and like everyone else, I was caught up in the false belief that nothing happened so simply and so easily by harnessing the power of the subconscious. Like many of us, I had unlearnt all the things I knew as a child, how quickly happiness came, the beauty of simple things, the ease in believing and receiving, the miracles that surrounded me in nature, the joy of living. I unlearnt the beauty of allowing myself to go to that place where I was able to connect the god within to Universal Source energy.

As with many of us, life happened, the daily grind made pulp of our wishes and dreams, our imaginations, our beliefs, our beingness, and ultimately our happiness. Then came the tiredness, the stress, the disillusionment, the unhappiness, and ultimately the sickness to our physical bodies.

For those with the vague memory of life as we knew it before it happened to us, we turn inward, searching for what once was. Well actually, the smart ones of us turn inward while the smart-arsed ones of us turn outward to worldly pleasures that provide only fleeting satisfaction and no lasting happiness.

Now we go Inward to the power of the subconscious mind, to soothe and heal, to reinvigorate our faith and trust in ourselves and our reason for being here, to restore our happy place that never left but was just buried under the rubble of the happened life.

Hills and Mountains are barriers, to climb, to get over, to conquer so that we can move onto the next range of hills and mountains.

If only at the top of each hill or mountain, we pause to admire the view before we rush on.

Look at the wide expanse, enjoy the fresh air.

Sink lovingly into that sense of achievement and enjoyment.

We stay in the present moment, taking the time to meditate in the here and now.

We do not think of the next set of challenges
We do not think whether we can repeat this feat
We do not think of tomorrow

For we know it never comes.
This moment is all that we have to live, experience, and enjoy.

I read an article a few days ago with a headline, “Millions of Indian Labourers forced to walk hundreds of miles home…” and the second thought that came to mind (the first one being the pain and strain on the physical and mental body that this coronavirus has caused) was ‘if only more people would walk home!”.

My reference to ‘home’ was that energetic space where our souls feel most comfortable, loved, and secured, very 4th house-like, home.
The path that takes each of us to home is unique, mine may be littered with large potholes while others may have paths paved with gold. Our path is determined by our past karma along with the life that was to be experienced in this incarnation.

There is help along the path to home.
We have our Inner Being and Higher Self.
We have our angel and spirit guides,
We have Source Intelligence itself.

We connect with our helpers through quiet mediation.

And there is help along this path as well.
We have walking in nature and observing,
We have silent prayer and fasting.
We have sitting still and listening.

So where ever the path, whatever the means, there is always a way to get home.

Making our way through the confusing times of our lives often brings even more confusion. The end result for the poor in spirit is depression, maybe drugs and alcohol abuse, overeating, mindless sex, whatever we think can dampen the resultant pain stemming from this confusion. And for sure, these are some confusing times.

The times when I feel spiritually poor, I feel the pressure and tension that tell things are not well on the inside, no matter how I try to make it appear on the outside. We all experience it from time to time, but when it occurs, do we turn to our familiar vice, or have we grown past the need for one?

Us Humans, we abhor pain, be it mental or emotional. We did not come here for that, so we think. We came to be happy, we came into a reality that is full of duality and expect no contrast. Really?

We grow through pain and suffering. We gain experience and develop wisdom – that is why I say that a man who never feels pain is stunted emotionally and mentally barren.

I would be first to admit that sometimes extreme difficulties cause us to cry out to the Universe, asking why? Why me? Why now? When will it end?

The Universe always responds, lovingly, kindly.

Shhhhsh!

Be quiet, listen.

I was rushing. There had a lot to get done and I needed to get to the ATM first. As I approached the one that I knew would most likely be working, I saw the Corona queue and realized that I would have a bit of a wait.
So there I was, six feet from my nearest neighbour, of course, mask on, gloves on, waiting in line. When it was my turn, the lady before me held the door open with her shoulder so that I could squeeze through. We ended up in kissing distance of each other as a result of this maneuver but it was ok, not so? Masks on, gloves on, they say.

As I inserted my card in the slot, a message flashed across the screen, “Out of Service”. I gave a loud sign, knowing the feeling of frustration was going to start coursing through my body. I decided, 'not today', and took a few deep calming breaths. It was not the end of the world.

I exited the ATM kiosk with those words stuck in my mind’s eye, “Out of Service”. It reminded me that we have a lot to be thankful for. When has Source Energy ever given us an “Out of Service” message when we approach for guidance and assistance? If we are honest with ourselves, the answer would be ‘never’.
We may get a ‘please wait a few seconds while we process your transaction’, but we never get ‘insufficient funds’ nor ‘out of service’ or even worse, ‘dispenser malfunction’.

The answer from Source is always one that is loving and encouraging, providing hope in our darkest hour, reassuring us that through our sincere connections with the Divine, we are always provided service.

Astrology has always fascinated me. For as long as I can remember, there was always this keen interest in knowing what my horoscope said. I think it stemmed from my mother having magazines and newspapers around with those sun sign articles and being a curious child and avid reader, my exploration began.

I have noticed that whenever I am uncertain about something or have a major event in my life that I needed some guidance on, I sought out astrology. This means that whenever things were going well in my life, and I felt successful and abundant, I put astrology and horoscopes on the back burner. I bet this sounds familiar to many of us! It may not be astrology, it may be family or friends or prayer or our version of God. When things are well, we seek no guidance, but when the proverbial shit hits the fan, we run looking for solace where ever we believe it can be found. For me, it has been a combination of spirituality and astrology.

According to LiveScience.com, astrology originated around 2400 years ago in Babylon, where Babylonians developed their own form of astrology which eventually became popular in Egypt. It was later spread across the Mediterranean and was further adopted by the Greeks. Eventually, the science of astrology made its way to virtually all corners of the earth. As with many other things, it’s an “I believe or I do not believe” so there is no trying to convince anyone here as to its veracity.

We were all born with certain planetary combinations that act like the pieces on a chessboard, how we move these pieces are ultimately determined by us.

If I have Rahu or the North Node conjunct my moon, I know for certain that my emotions will be always up and down, with it being so down at times, that it can lead to depression and at the extreme, some mental health issues may develop. Armed with this knowledge, I already have the battle half won. I know I ought to take care of my mental health. I know that I have to find a cause to channel my passion and serve others, thus making a contribution to society.

If I find in my chart that my Neptune is in my 12th house, I know that I will have tendencies to dream a lot, I may be very creative but many times I am not even in this plane. I, therefore, know with a planetary placement like this, I have to be careful of any drug and alcohol intake because of my propensity to use these vices to further facilitate my escape and we all are aware of the end result of drug and alcohol abuse.

Say, for example, I have a stellium of planets in my 10th house, I am aware that career will be important to me. I am interested in making a positive mark on society. Work and family will many times be at odds and family may suffer as a result. This makes me know from the onset that if I wish to have a family, I have to put in the extra effort to make sure it is not neglected or I will lose family to work and the seeking of fame.

A debilitated Venus tells me that I will have issues with relationships, especially those that are most intimate in nature but a Venus that is debilitated can also provide me with great material abundance, meaning what a benefic planet like Venus takes away in the form of love and relationships, it compensates for in the form of material wealth.

So I see astrology as a working document for our lives. It does not determine our future but it gives us a first draft that we can modify as we maneuver through this physical plane.

There is a natural interest in astral travel. I wrote about it in an earlier blog post and will expand a little more on it here. Please note that when I write about astral travel or astral projection, I write from my personal experiences, and perhaps your method of projecting may be different from mine but as long as a positive end result is achieved, it’s all good.

It is not like I can go to bed and decide that ‘oh I’m going to do some astral traveling tonight”; just like how we cannot decide what we will dream about when we go to sleep, neither can we decide, to a large extent, if and when we astral travel.
For me, it happens mostly when I go to sleep early enough and then wake, typically around 3 am. I engage in some meditation for about 30 minutes or so which may or may not result in me being able to quiet my mind, but which seems to prepare for any trip that may happen.

The positioning of the body is important. I usually lie on the side and relax my body entirely, allowing my mind to enter a semi-wake state. Then I wait. If thoughts come, they come, if they don’t, they don’t, I do nothing but watch them.

After a few minutes, you begin to feel the energy shifting. It starts in your toes and travels up to the crown. There is no mistaking the sensation. It is powerful and heavy and the physical body enters a state of paralysis. The first time this happened to me, I panicked and lost it. The next time I decided to let go, I was gone. There is this rush of energy, an energy so strong that sometimes you feel the need to brace for its onslaught. It courses up your body as a powerful force and rushes to your crown. I always experience a bright blinding light and very loud noise; it literally feels like a train rushing along its track. When the energy enters the crown, the light energy may change colour from yellow to white to purple to blue to fiery orange. In my last experience, I saw a ring of blazing fire encompassing my entire crown area. Then the lift off is experienced; similar to the feeling of a plane at the point when the wheels leave the tarmac. You then float away to wherever the travels are for that night.

One of the things that I did recently was that just before ‘lift off’, I set the intention of where I wanted to go. I ended up in that exact place.

We will continue this in a future blogpost.

Stay tuned for astral travel 3.0

Our Souls came into the physical with already agreed upon and signed contracts. The details were hammered out and parties were in agreement. We then performed the dive into a pre-selected physical body to experience the dualities of living in this plane. The thing is, for most of us, once we passed through that birth canal or were plucked from our mother’s womb through a c- section, all memory of our contractual obligations are lost to us except what is imprinted on our soul’s DNA to be experienced.

Living in the physical is not easy for many. The constant push and pull, the fight to survive, thrive and experience is relentless. Often times we feel to just cash in, check out and move on.
Suppose we can remember exactly what we came here to experience, would that make living less challenging? Some refer to it as ‘finding one’s soul purpose’. I do not know if it is as much ‘finding’ as ‘remembering’. But how can we remember?

Traumatic childhoods may be soul contracts with the people we chose to be our parents.
Being born as a starving child in a developing country could possibly be our contract with someone who came into this lifetime to experience the sharing of love and compassion.
Being a member of a race that faces constant discrimination may the experience we came here for; to suffer, and perhaps die so as to assist in finding solutions to race relations.
Being afflicted with a serious disease that causes us to return to the non- physical early may be our soul contract with persons in the medical and research fields to advance the work of science, finding cures for diseases.

Perhaps we simply came here to eat, drink and be merry but when we are suffering in the physical, not knowing that we are fulfilling our soul’s contract, it is not pleasant and people like me, writing like this are not looked upon favourably.

I remember once I gave one of our popular street persons a few dollars, telling him to get some breakfast. He was surprised and delighted and thanked me profusely. I replied, “no, thank you.” He looked at me with sad intelligent eyes and said, “not I am supposed to thank you, you gave me money.”
I simply responded, “I am thanking you for giving me the opportunity to give.” In that second, I knew he got it. He smiled and hobbled down the street towards his favourite cigarette shop.

That was our soul’s contract, him to receive and me to give. I do not know what other contracts his soul might have signed that has him living on the streets begging food and that is not really my concern. Once his contracts are fulfilled, he would move into the non-physical, and be welcomed for a job well done.

Are you one of those persons nervous when entering the dreamscape because you know that when you dream they turn out to be prophetic?

I find that whenever dreams come after a meditative session, they invariably turn out to be true in some form or the other.

For those of us who experience this on the regular, we know the angst that exists when we experience a dream and know that we should tell the person about it but cannot figure out how without alarming them or causing worry. Sometimes we see visions that are equally vivid and telling but decide to keep it to ourselves. Do we owe it to the other person to tell them about what was seen?

My astrological sign in Tropical Astrology is Libra. This means that I am always weighing and balancing, looking for the right mix that allows me to warn without scaring or suggest without preaching. Some messages I decide are absolutely not my business to disclose and so I zip my lips.

My dreams range from the happy and exciting, like knowing that friend will tell me she is pregnant, to the extreme of death and dying.

What I have found in my dreams where persons come to say goodbye is that they are happy. I have never seen a sad waver. I always see them at their best selves- young, happy, smiling, and content. It’s like the process of returning to the non-physical makes them whole again.

Unfortunately, as part of the dying process, a family is left to mourn.

Personally, I see death as not a time to mourn but to celebrate the departure of that soul. Whenever we mourn, we make the process about us. Some else’s death is not about us, our time will come soon enough and we can then star in that show.

Do you ever know something without knowing how you know it, but you just, as they say, ‘feel it to your bones?’ This knowing is referred to in some circles as “clear knowing’ or ‘claircognizance’. I woke up this morning just knowing that something I manifested was going to happen. There was this sense of calm knowing, a feeling of finality even, no excitement, no rush of pleasure, just an ‘ok, I expected this’.

There are many of us who have always known things but could never figure out how we knew them. I am not talking about the mundane, like knowing the answers on an exam or some fun fact, I speak about a deep knowing that did not come from study or some previous knowledge. Some may say that perhaps it was from previous knowledge gleaned from one of our past lives, who knows?

I have always recalled that time when I was about 11 or 12, I had to return home from school to retrieve a book that I had forgotten that I needed for the afternoon session because it contained my Spanish homework. I had to walk. I had no money for the bus and my home being just about 2 miles away, make the midday trek bearable. I decided to take a shortcut that would have taken a few minutes off the walk. About halfway there, I met a lady from my village who was also on her way home. We walked together for a while until I stopped under a mango tree, looking for ripe fruit. She went ahead and even though I started walking a few minutes later, I never caught up with her. I remember stopping a second time to play on an old mattress that we usually use as a trampoline. I eventually made my way home and as I entered my gate, I started to feel this sense of foreboding. It was strong and dark and I felt its weight on me. The feeling was so distracting that I even cut my hand on the louver glass window as I tried to open door to get inside. I have a scar to this day. I did not know what was happening, I did not know what was going to happen but I just knew something was wrong, terribly wrong. Some minutes past and I soon heard shouting and screaming and for some reason this caused the feeling to dissipate. I figured whatever was to be, happened. The same lady who I was walking home with some minutes ago had been shot and killed by her estranged husband. He attempted to kill himself but was unsuccessful. This whole tragedy was a 3-year wonder because things like this just never happened on my island.

I did not know how I knew but I knew.

I admit, it is not like I have always trusted my feelings. Many times I feel the warning but shrug it off and have always had to end up living with the consequences. I grew into the belief that ‘if I cannot see it, feel it, touch it, hear it or smell it, then it must not be real’.

Years later, the Universe has taken me back full circle. I have been reborn into believing, into trusting my intuition, into understanding and accepting that clear knowing is real.

So as nowadays, when I experience a sense of clear knowing, I simply accept that I know.

I have seen many a question online where persons have been asking how to become enlightened or how does one know that he or she is enlightened. I find that most of the responses to these queries have been clear enough for a topic that is quite esoteric. In this post, I add my take on this conversation on becoming enlightened.

My no-pun-intended contribution to this discussion is that if a person wishes to become enlightened, then the simple thing to do is to plug into Source Energy. I already know the follow-up question, ….…’ so how does one plug into Source Energy?’ Luckily this is the easiest part of the entire process.

We plug into Source Energy when we love ourselves.

We Plug into Source Energy when we love our neighbour as ourselves.

We plug into Source Energy when we see ourselves in each other.

We plug into Source Energy when we willingly help our brother.

We plug into Source Energy when we quiet our minds and connect.

We plug into Source Energy when we honestly seek to make that connection.

We plug into Source Energy when we raise our vibration.

We plug into Source Energy when we listen to our intuition.

We plug into Source Energy when we accept the blessings of the Universe.

We plug into Source Energy when we unplug from the things that have been preventing us from plugging in.

I came into 2020 with this urge to make some further changes to my lifestyle and one of them was beginning a yoga practice. I did not know where that urge came from, there was no rational explanation but given how my life had been going in 2019, I no longer bothered to question what was rational or what was not anymore.

So January 2020, there was this itch. I could not find a teacher so I let it rest. (I live on a tiny island in the Caribbean Sea where yoga is not a ‘thing’). But the urge remained as if my intuition was telling me that I was going to need this sometime in the future. And, like many persons, I follow my intuition only sometimes, and the rest times I follow my head. I did not try very hard to find an instructor.

From 2019 into 2020, I had begun seeing many things falling away from me; coffee for one, a beverage that for the past 5 years or more had been my mainstay, along with other extremely delicious indulgences. I reached the point where I felt I had no choice; I just listened to my body and obeyed. And surprising, the letting go was not painful. Meditation and seeking became my main activities.

And then March 2020 arrived with its usual bluster and braggadociousness but this time with an extra surprise.

The atmosphere and energy changed. Persons like myself who are empathetic began to feel the energies of persons around, the anxiousness, the uncertainty, and the fear. As much as I tried, for as long as possible to avoid connecting with these energies, I could not maintain it and like a sponge, I began to absorb it all. I reach the point where I was feeling all the symptoms of the collective and my physical body reacted negatively. I knew I had to do something to protect myself or end up sickening myself.

And then, a soft still voice inside of me said, ‘yoga’.
I answered back, ‘yoga?’
It said, ‘yoga’

I grabbed a towel, turned on YouTube, and found an online course for beginners. I fought my way through the twenty-minute session and had the best night's sleep afterward.

Yoga.

My country voted recently in general elections amidst a state of emergency and a global pandemic and lockdown. The work of the people has to continue even through challenging situations. So too, must the work of our Inner Being, despite any outward manifestations things being different.

We should take time to pause and connect so that we can grow in our spiritual practice, allowing for the connections we need to foster that sense of beingness which is key to our feeling fulfilled in this plane.

Many of us search our entire lives for that thing to make us feel whole and still turn up empty-handed. We were searching in all the wrong places. Do you know the saying that what we look for is sometimes right under our noses? This is a perfect case of that. Our Inner Being is right there, knowing what we want and making what we want available to us, if only we were aware.

That is why the time to pause and be quiet is so important. The stillness allows for the expansion needed for the connection. That connection satisfies us on a spiritual level and since we are spirits having a human experience, feeding the spirit, feeds our entire being and this is manifested right down to our physical well-being.
As part of the process of waking up to who we really are, many of us report things falling away. The very things we thought we needed for sustenance just slip away and surprisingly we hardly notice. Most likely, they were feeding the ego, lowering our vibration, and causing poor connections with our Inner Being.

So if you have to vote in the near future, vote for this connection.
Vote for it expanding and deepening.
Vote for it strengthening and solidifying
Vote for it growing and loving.

Vote for your Inner Being.

‘It does not matter what they say, you know who you are, what you came here for, and how you intend to get it done.’
I gave this bit of advice to a friend of mine who told me something someone said about him that was not very nice. I felt his anger and deep-seated resentment that people use the tongue to be so cruel. I was simply re-affirming with him what he already knew.

You see, our Inner Being knows everything. It knows why we reincarnated into this plane at this time and location. It knows what we came to experience; it knows the contrasts or challenges we will face and it knows the solutions to all of our problems. We simply have to ‘tune eeen’ as we say colloquially. I remember a popular local deejay used to start his show with a song that said, ‘ tune eeen to the good times supermix scene…tune eeen’.

I wanted my friend to ‘tune eeen’ and tune out the naysayers who use their life experiences as a frame of reference to talk about, advise, warn, and invoke fear in others.
Him tuning in would have really revealed a ‘good times supermix scene’; his Inner Being communing with Divine Energy, creating such beautiful melding into the nothingness that what else could have mattered?

So if you have ever caught the brunt of a tongue that made you feel less than who you are, I invite you to ‘tune eeen’ so that you can tune out.

I am suffering from Bloggers Block. My process is quite simple. I sit for quiet meditation intending to connect to my Inner Being and receive any messages that I can share through a blog post. I usually get a word, a phrase, or an idea that I am later able to flesh out into a few paragraphs and share online.

Today it felt like I got no real messages. I do not know if I did not meditate long enough, or I did not go deep enough or stray thoughts were too disruptive, but the only idea I got was Bloggers Block, so I figured this was to be the topic for today’s post.

What do we do when we have blocks in our lives, when we feel the whole world is against us and we are fighting a losing battle?

The first thing that many of us do is to start the blame game. The first victim is the Self. Poor Self. It gets blamed for everything- the good, the bad, and the indifferent. Once we feel that we have chastised and berated ourselves enough, much to the chagrin of our Inner Being, we move on to the others. Here we have a whole smorgasbord to choose from. We start with our parents, for not loving us the way that they should have, for not giving us the things we needed to grow and thrive and be successful in life. We then move on to blame our partners, our children, our bosses, our politicians, our society.

We successfully find many reasons to explain why our current situation is the way it is. We decide that everyone should shoulder some of the blame for whatever is currently blocking us.

Our partner causes our misery. We are in a bad love situation but refuse to leave because we fear that anything else would be no better. Or even worse, we go apoplectic at the mere thought of ending up alone.

Our children cause our pain, suffering, and high blood pressure. They have not done enough to please us since they are busy pleasing themselves.

Our bosses, oh how we love to hate our bosses and we blame them for our low wages, our financial blocks, and our inability to advance economically.

Our politicians, they did not help to solve our problems. “They did nothing for me,” is a phrase I hear a lot, so it makes sense to put some blame there.

And then to make sure we capture everyone, we spread a wide net and blame our society for everything else that is wrong with us.

If there is any strength for a third round in the blame game, we then center our gaze on the Devil and on God. We accuse the devil for being a bad man and for causing us whatever pain and suffering being experienced and then we blame whomsoever we call upon as God, for forsaking us in our time of want.

Imagine the exhaustion at the end of it all!

And how did it make you feel?

Whenever we are experiencing some blockage in our lives, be it health, mental, emotional, creative, financial, whatever the perceived block is, I advise us to Stop, Sit, Get Quiet and Listen. The answer invariably comes.

Blogger’s Block, what blogger’s block?

Some people are convinced that the Law of Attraction is some New Age belief that whatever we think about brings the corresponding experiences into our lives; so positive thoughts bring positive experiences and negative thoughts bring negative experiences. This so-called law of attraction is further believed to be based on the supposition that we, as well as our thoughts, are pure energy and since like energy attracts like energy, we can use this law to improve our circumstances, be it in the area of health, wealth or interpersonal relationships.

Interestingly, many of us are do not hold these new age beliefs but quite often use the Law of Attraction without even realizing it. We do it when we are hopeful, when we think positively, aiming for the best outcome; when we make a wish on a shooting star or at a wishing well, and even when we pray, asking and believing that our God will deliver.

I am a firm believer in the idea that our thoughts are energy and like a magnet, we attract the manifestation of these thoughts into our experiences.

Some months ago, I was reading an article on the Law of Attraction and the writer was inviting readers to perform a simple experiment of thinking about and then bringing pennies into their physical existence. She went on to share that she had done the same and the number of pennies she saw in the space of a week, it was like pennies were falling from heaven. Of course, I decided to run the experiment, I am a scientist after all. My choice was ten-cent pieces or dimes. Pennies were taken out of our monetary system some time ago so I was not going to push the universe to deliver something that would have taken some re-creation. For about three or four days, I saw dimes in the street, on the floor, in nooks and crannies, on the steps leading to my office, in my car, even in my garden. Dimes were everywhere and it felt like they were placed for me to find them. I just shook my head in amazement and I admit that the thought crossed my mind: "were these coins always around and I never noticed or was this was the law of attraction at work?"

This morning I was guided to write about pennies from heaven. Soon after the thought of ‘pennies from heaven’, I had a second more vivid thought that reminded me of my ‘dime experiment’. The thought kept on unfurling and made me ask myself, “if you were able to bring dimes into existence by a mere thought, why have you not thought about the wads of cash you need for your Foundation?” I felt my eyes grow to saucers. I have never thought of using my experience to manifest the funds needed to invest in a business that could then support the work of Lizzie’s Nest. I knew that if the Universe was able to bring me the dimes created by my thoughts, then manifesting any needed cash would be no different.

I sat quietly and contemplated the message.

You may be wanting to manifest something into your life: be good health, a new and improved relationship, a new job or wads of cash; I invite you to sit quietly, contemplate this message and let the energy of your thoughts surprise and delight as you move towards the abundance you desire and deserve.

There is extreme pain and a feeling of utter despair when that lovely well-raised child brings home the proverbial Bad Boy to meet the parents. The parent is left feeling that their child will eventually get the bitter end of any stick that is wielded as part of this love process. But as an avid observer of the human condition, I cheekily ask, “Don’t bad boys need love too?”

The same can be said of our Ego and our Inner Being. Our Inner Being, the part of us that is non-physical and knows what we came into this to existence to be and to experience even before we knew ourselves is that parent. Our ego, the self-identified 'I am' is the bad boy.

Our ego came as part of us and is supposed to assist in navigating life in this plane. It helps to create our desire and encourages us to go after our dreams. It urges us to seek fulfillment from things. It uses its power of seduction, of manipulation, of coercion, of aggression, of fear, whatever it needs to get to its objective. But like that shadow planet from Vedic Astrology, Rahu, it is never satisfied so it pushes for more, sometimes to the point of leaving us as a beaten, broken-down discarded wreck with nothing more to do than to seek out the parent for that unconditional love that is always offered.


Our Inner Being never rejects us, no matter what we do, no matter our state of return. It soothes and heals, mending that broken part of us, welcoming us back to ourselves.
So should we love that bad boy, that ego, that self-declared lord and ruler of this physical body? I say a resounding yes.

After the pain,
After the trauma,
After the dark nights,
After the tears,
After the defeats,
After the death of ourselves.

We rise like a phoenix to the true knowledge of our Inner Being and its connection to Source Energy and proudly display our battle scars.

Welcome home, my prodigal daughter.

One of my favourite poses in yoga is the Happy Baby Pose. I figure the reason is that it feels so familiar and natural. Perhaps somewhere buried in my subconscious, there is a connection of the feeling that this pose engenders to my Inner Being.

Our Inner Being always wants to connect with us. It patiently waits, giving us a nudge now and again, informing us of its presence offering guidance, unconditional love, and the avenue to connect with the Universal Source of everything.

Our Inner Being encourages us to sit and be quiet. It does not ask for much time, 20, 30 minutes of tuning into vibrations and making the connection. I do not know if we have a fear of sitting or a fear of being quiet or perhaps the fear is the fear of what we may hear when we quiet our monkey mind. There should be no fear, it may seem frightful in the beginning but the reward at the end is worth it. I have always advocated if you cannot sit then lie down, if you cannot lie down, walk in nature, if that is not possible then go wash dishes, garden, listen to music, take a long drive, any activity that allows you to tune into the inside, explore and listen. The key here is the listening, not so much the doing. Just whatever you are doing make sure it allows for the listening.

When that connection is made by us finding that quiet space in our mind, even if just for a few seconds at a time and our vibrations are raised and we lock into that connection with our Inner Being, we feel a positive shift. It is subtle and powerful at the same time. We feel part of something bigger than ourselves, we connect with Source Energy. We meet the God within; some Inner Beings do cartwheels, mine does the Happy Baby Pose.

I invite you to try it. You need no special tools and the only requirement is a little of your time that will allow you to reap a bountiful harvest.

And at the end of the day, whether it be cartwheels, high kicks, quiet bliss, or the happy baby pose, the satisfaction of your Inner Being is priceless.

As I sit down to write my hundredth consecutive piece for my blog, I feel moved to share my experience with the laughing donkey. Those of us who believe that dreams are symbolic, prophetic and help us solve problems using the power of the subconscious mind, will find this post relatable.

About eight or nine months ago, I had a dream, which is nothing strange to me, I dream all the time, I am one of those persons who even if I take a 10-minute nap, I enter the dreamscape and I have shared many of my dreams and their revelations in past blog posts. In this dream, I met a donkey. He was a nice one and when he saw me he started grinning. He had nice teeth, his oral care programme was on fleek and he kept using his head to make me aware of a square wicker basket that was hanging from a tree. I curiously went close to the basket and looked inside. In it was a fancy legal pad and a pencil. I looked at the donkey and asked, “What is this for, what am I do to with a pad and pencil?”
Obviously it was for writing but my confusion stemmed from the fact that I had not been writing anything and it was not even something in my thoughts to do. I figured that the donkey got his supplies mixed up and instead should have shown me a canvas and a set of paints. I was in the middle of my spiritual awakening and I had been using art to chronicle the process. Mind you, I have never painted before but I found that I was drawn to putting acrylic on paper. I did not even call it art since the stuff I produced looked and felt nothing like art but more like me scripting using paint. I woke confused so I went searching for answers.

I scoured the internet, looking for the meaning of dreaming about a ‘laughing donkey’. One dream dictionary gave a general description of dreaming about a donkey, symbolizing humility, honor, stubbornness, burdens, endurance, and loyalty but to see a laughing donkey in one’s dream meant that the person will be laughed at, ridiculed or insulted by someone in public. So in tying the two interpretations, I understood that at some point, something I may write will be laughed at by the public.
I let it go because I had no intention of writing anything. I just continued with my ‘art’ until I was finally led to sharing it publicly. (How this came about is for another blog post, but sufficed to say, the universe and our spirit guides are amazing!)

I created a webpage to display my work and I shared the link with a friend of mine. She is the friend I called “The Advisor”, always having some advice to give whether or not it was asked for. She encouraged, no she advised me to write a blog to accompany my artwork and share it on the same site. I rolled my eyes, not impressed, as usual. Didn’t she realize that I was trying to be a painter, not a writer?

Then came the global pandemic, and with the months of lockdowns and curfews, I found myself with time on my hands so I attempted to write a single post. I did not know what I was going to write about but I allowed myself to be led by Spirit. This morning, during my meditation, the dream of the laughing donkey came back to me. It took me nine months and one hundred blog posts to understand the meaning of the dream.

Given the esoteric nature of my blog posts, and acknowledging that there will be many who would never understand my writings and may decide to insult and ridicule even when their Inner Being isn’t going along for the ride, I stand with my dream donkey and continue to share my experiences, hoping to encourage the awakening process in others.

The Medicine Woman has returned. The literature uses many adjectives trying to define her and many times words are not enough. She is described as the healer, the wise woman, the visionary, the seer, the intuitive, the sexual priestess, possessing the attributes that make her the archetype of the woman now needed in our modern society.

She was here before but was never really accepted because she challenged the status quo and so she was persecuted and ostracized from society. She was branded a witch, an obeah woman, and accused of using her occult knowledge and power for the dark side.

Like with everything else, power can be used for good or for evil, that is why free will exists. The politician can use his power to develop his people or he can use it to enrich himself. The priest can use his power to minister to his congregation or he can use it molest small boys. The lover can use her power to love her partner or she can it to manipulate and destroy him. The medicine woman can use her power to love and to heal or she can use it for evil. Any power that we possess comes with the realization we are responsible for how it is used.

The Modern Medicine Woman is the woman rising like a phoenix from the ashes of what once was. She comes bringing the knowledge to heal and to comfort, to listen and to guide, to foretell, and to forewarn. This ability was embedded in her DNA, passed down through generations and because of its power, was never able to be extinguished or lost.

I call on the woman who feels the pull of this vibration in herself to hold no fear but to be brave, accept her calling and fulfill her soul’s purpose.

Be that mother,
That teacher,
That counselor,
That therapist,
That energy healer,
That reiki master,
That herbalist,
That master gardener,
That intuitive seer,
That astrologer,
That tarot reader,
That psychic,
That dancer,
That painter,
That goddess lover,

That medicine woman.

When you look at me, what do you see? Yes. Look as if for the first time, long and deep. I won’t flinch under your stare.

Do you see my skin, burnt to a dark brown under the hot African sun?

Or do you see my pale body, so pale that it reddens before it tans, if it ever does?

Do you see my eyes slanting upwards as if reaching towards the heavens?

Or do you see my strong nose, sharply arched, bridge proud?

Do you see my hair, long and straight, always seeming to be flat and over oiled?

Or do you see my yellow undertone, hinting at some ancestral liver damage?

Tell me, what do you see?

Can you see past all of this and really look at me?

And see me as you, as us?

As one consciousness, created by Divine Intelligence for a divine purpose?

If you cannot see past the outward appearance, then my heart yearns that it be so.

So you can experience the fullness of the connection to Source,

Deeply.

Sometimes all we need is that little hint of a satisfying thought to expand into great happiness and a sense of wellbeing. Many of us sit waiting for the big moment; the mansion on the hill, the latest model sports car, the high power job, the winning lotto ticket, the new boat, the awesome lover, fifteen-minute of social media fame, the…..the….the….. that we fail to notice the little hints of pleasure that the Universe sends our way.

For a long time, I was guilty of simply waiting for that big thing. I had developed an intimate relationship with the corner I kept looking around. I kept telling myself, I knew it was coming, I knew I had asked the Divine Source for many things, some little, some great and given that the law of attraction had already lined them up for me, they were on their way but in the meantime, what do I do? Do I sit and wait and complain that the Universe was moving too slowly? Do I give up and say that nothing good ever comes my way anyway so why bother? Do I fret and stress, staring angrily when others seem to be getting all of their desires fulfilled? Mind you, I am one of those persons who have never even won a marble at a fair, so it’s not like I should have had much faith in the universe coming through for me on the big things.

Over time, while sitting and waiting, I learned something and it has served me well. It was the ability to experience a satisfying thought and to hold it, allowing it to grow and expand into an entire blissed-out moment. I advise you that whenever you get one, grab it, and enjoy the anticipation of a great event.

Whenever you feel a cool breeze wafting around your hot neck,

Whenever you see the bright smile on a small child’s face,

Whenever you get to throw your tired body onto clean crisp, cool bed sheets,

Whenever you hear the sincere ring in a simple ‘thank you’,

Whenever you taste that hint of spice in a well-cooked meal,

Whenever you experience the warm embrace of your lover,

Whenever you witness the kaleidoscope of colour cast by the setting sun,

Whenever you pause to be grateful for life,

Whenever you walk along the shoreline feeling the gentle waves lap at your toes,

Whenever you connect with your Inner Being through meditation,

These are the small moments that the Divine Source blesses us with. They act like paving stones, preparing us for that big event in our lives. Don’t wait, just hoping to leap to it, enjoy each step along the way.

We possess all that we need to live full happy lives in this physical plane. We did not come here ill-equipped. Divine Intelligence gave us the necessary skills and tools needed for our experience here. What we need to find out is what is our experience to be? I am not talking about the infamous question that we ask children, “what do you want to become when you grow up?”. That question is ego-based and that response also is ego-based.

The more apt question is “what did you come here to experience?”
How many of us can answer that question? What do you know to be your soul’s purpose? Ask yourself, then look for a soul-based response.

Having never truly answered this question means that we have been living ego-centric lives all this time. The ego is like an untamed animal, beautiful and wild. It is powerful and can be quite demanding, believing that we came here to please it. And it is never satisfied. It is after the material, hell-bent on accruing it all. Our first lesson is one that teaches us power is key. Look how we quickly learn that there was power in our cry. Crying resulted in us being fed and comforted, demanding love and care.

Then as we grow into adults, we learn that to survive and to seemingly thrive in this material plane we needed to have free access to money and possessions. We turn back to what we knew, the power of power, and this time the power is in the accumulation of money and possessions. In and of itself, the desire for and the having of money and possessions is not a bad thing; my concern lies with those of us who have never really figured out that lasting satisfaction does not lie in things. This causes us to live in perpetual wanting, creating energy imbalances in the physical body and disrupting our mental and emotional well-being.

Perhaps we have it backward. We first answer what is it that we came here to experience at the soul level and then we allow the ego to run free in achieving this goal. Let it do its job by fulfilling the purpose of the soul. There is no doubt as to the satisfaction that will result from this synergy.

Deep, full, long-lasting, satisfaction.

Things are always working out for me.
Things are always working out for me.
Things are always working out for me.
Now that you have read it several times, I would like you, in the words of a popular television evangelist, “say it like you mean it”. Things are always working out for me.

We need to understand that thoughts turn to vibrations and vibrations turn to things so if you believe that things are always working out for us, the Universe has no choice but to allow them.

I had an experience recently where I wanted something badly. It was not going to bring me any personal gain per se, except for the pleasure of seeing smiles on people’s faces and try as I might, it did not seem like it was going to fructify. For weeks, I used my over-active mind trying to come up with the possible solutions to allow me to get this thing done but nothing as working out. It seemed like I was met by obstacle after obstacle and the more I depended on myself for the answers, the fewer answers I got until one day I said, “enough!”. I turned to the Universe in sheer frustration and exhaustion and declared, “I am putting this in your hands”. Immediately I felt the response of the Source Intelligence, laughingly telling me, “we were waiting for you to quit, but my! Were you determined!”

I was not amused. I was upset with myself because I knew better, there was an easier way. I simply had to believe that things are always working out for me and trust the Universe will bring what I need towards me.

So my job became easy, I believed.

I am not joking when I tell you that after I did this, things started moving. People began coming towards me, bringing the assistance I needed and before my very eyes, I began to see my dream taking shape. I stood in utter amazement.

I sent my head to my heart and offered a heartfelt prayer of gratitude.

Let this be your story, “things are always working out for me!"
And say it like you mean it.

The fear of abandonment, for many of us, is very real. We live in the belief that whomsoever we love or need (sometimes we make it one and the same) will eventually leave us. The mere thought of such a situation causes a familiar tightening in the chest and throat area as we prepare to manipulate our way back into our loved one’s good graces.

Being born with Jupiter in my twelfth house, I came into this existence with fear of abandonment issues. It is said that persons born with Jupiter in this placement felt a distance and a sense of abandonment since in the womb, so twelfth house Jupiters like me have this fear amplified. Twinned to this fear is the need to please everyone. We try to make people we meet like us and end up being distraught when we fail at it. After all, we were trying to achieve the impossible. Perhaps it goes back to us believing that if we can make everyone love, or even like us, then the fear of being abandoned lessens since at least one will end up joining us for the long ride. Resultantly, we attract narcissists into our lives or end up in very early marriages that more often than not, turn out to be disasters. We live, not knowing why our relationships do not work out even when we give and give so much, all the while trying to quell the fear that we have not yet recognized.

The lucky ones figure it out sooner than later and others perhaps after two or three failed marriages and countless disastrous relationships. Many times it is one of these relationships, perhaps the one that we gave the most of ourselves to but ended in failure that pulls the trigger.

Slowly, as part of an awakening process, we come to the realization that we ought not to harbor the fear of abandonment. We get to know our Inner Being and discovers that it never leaves us, never forsakes us, and only wants the best for us. As the relationship with our Higher Selves grows, and as we do the required shadow work, that fear lessens and eventually disappears.

We meet our Inner Being through quiet thought or meditation or prayer or chanting, it does not matter, since the connection is all that we seek, allowing for the things that do not serve us to fall away be they people, or habits or beliefs.

This separation then creates the space for our connection to Source Energy, where there exists another level of attachment that makes our initial fear of abandonment by lowly mortals feel like child’s play!

So whenever you hear someone say, “I don’t need anyone, I have myself”, if that ‘myself’ is the ‘I-self’ that person has found the source of everlasting love.

The contractor took one look at the flooring and declared, “it will all have to be torn down and rebuilt!”
I blinked and looked at the flooring, it looked ok to me, just a little sag and a little rot here and there but it was sturdy enough to hold out for a few more months, perhaps if luck was on my side, another year. “Are you sure?” I questioned, “Can’t you just do a quick repair?”
“Sure, I can do a quick repair,” he replied, “but in two months you will be calling me again to do another quick repair. The only beneficiary of a series of quick repairs would be your wallet, lightened of its load.”
I grimaced and sighed, realizing I had hired a comedian for a contractor, I responded, “Ok, give me a full estimate to replace the foundation from wood to wall.”

Looking at the floor again, it didn’t look too bad but the gentleman explained that despite the nice look of the top, beneath, the floorboards were eaten away by termites, annoying little insects, sometimes hard to see but showed the results of their work proudly. The final analysis was that I needed to change to something solid and lasting like concrete.

Many times in life we come to the realization that we need to change from rotting floorboards to something solid and lasting in our lives. We hem and we haw, looking at and seeing the floor as ‘not so bad’, telling ourselves that we can still ‘work with it’ and get a few more years out of it even when it has been rotting away from the underneath for months, maybe years.
What are your rotting floorboards?

Bad habits?

Unhealthy lifestyles?

Toxic relationships?

Energy-draining frenemies?

An unfulfilling job?

A stress-filled body?

Are we going to replace the foundation or wait until we fall through the floor?

It seems like everywhere you turn, someone is hating on you. Co-workers, people you thought of as friends, sometimes family members, even random persons on social media. You figure that they are wanting your shine, that is all it is, energy vampires wanting your shine.

Little do these hate-mongers know is that your shine is free for all. They are welcome to tune into the same vibrations and get some shine. It doesn’t run out not does it tarnish. There is more than enough to go around.

The question is how do you turn haters into shiners themselves? How do you get them to tap into their share of abundance that is waiting for them since they entered this physical plane?
How about simply telling them your story? How you found what you found and that their share is waiting?
The worse that can happen is that they label you crazy and decide to show pity on you rather than hate you.

The best thing that can happen is that they listen and decide to try the formula for themselves.

And as we know, they can begin by asking the big questions, why are they here and what did they come for. The answers will come and once one is willing to be led by the truths revealed in the answers, the journey into self-discovery and ultimately into self-love has begun.

Once they start loving on themselves, there is no time to hate anyone else.
Once they start connecting with their Inner Self, there is no space for.
Once they discover and experience the vastness of the universe,
where love and abundance abounds,
where there is more than enough for all,
where fulfilled desires lead to the fulfilling of more desires,

Your haters become the new cadre of lovers and lighters, raising the vibrations of the planet and accelerating what is now a rapidly expanding global awakening process.

There is this gentleman who plays his trumpet every morning in the town square. My office is quite close so I am able to enjoy his playing, sometimes religious hymns, sometimes patriotic music, clearly, he plays what he likes. I can feel the energy flowing through his music, I feel it entering my energy field, causing my spirit to soar. It is a good way to start the workday.

One Friday morning, I was swirling in the vortex, my vibration was high and I was feeling like something good was going to happen to me. I arrived at work and a few minutes later began hearing the trumpet. It felt closer than usual so I decided to take a walk outside to see if I could meet the player. I spied him under a tent, concentrating on playing his notes. I walked up quietly and stood, listening to the music and feeling myself being carried away by the energy he was giving off. His brow was beaded with sweat and his cheeks puffed out and he tried his best to play a perfect piece. It was not perfect, he made a few mistakes but it was the most beautiful piece of trumpet playing I ever heard. I knew in that moment that the ‘good thing that was going to happen to me today’ was meeting this guy.

I introduced myself when he was done and thanked him for his music. His eyes lit up and he explained to me that music was his life. He was retired and was so happy to be alive and free that he had no choice but to show it. He said to me, “People think that I am crazy for coming here every morning to play my horn, but I am not. I am happy. I am blessed and I am giving thanks.”

His energy was like that of a young child, pure, innocent, and exuberant. It washed over me, enveloping me in its stream, I was grateful for the experience.

As I walked back to my office, I thought of how many times we do not allow ourselves to feel happy and blessed. We get so caught up in life in this physical plane that we forget that we are spirits having a human experience and we ought not to take it so seriously.

We should stop and listen to the music, feel the energy of an old soul, envelop ourselves in the goodness of the universe, and give thanks.

I read a book, ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ many years ago and whenever I recalled the main character of the novel, it negatively affects my mood. The book described the journey of a pilgrim, carrying a burden of sin and guilt and whatever else, and with the passing years, the burden grew heavier. It was strapped to his back, and I, in my simple pre-teen mind could not understand why he was unable to release himself from the load. In the last section of the novel, the man was eventually able to free himself but after so many pages absorbing the negative energy, I was unable to celebrate his happy ending

To this day, whenever I see my friends and family being burdened, I remember that guy in The Pilgrim’s Progress and one particular friend of mine gets the gold on this one. If his sixth cousin once removed ex-husband’s grandmother is sick and he finds about it, he adds the stress and worry of it to the burdens he already carries. As you might have guessed, the coronavirus pandemic has not been treating him well.

Why do we carry problems from the past and those we anticipate for the future around with us like a heavy sack on our backs?
Why are we unable to rid ourselves of past guilt and fear?
Why do we make every body’s problem our own?
Why do we even welcome into our lives, the people that drain our energy and leave us burdened while they skip away, happy and lighthearted?

And for goodness sake, why do we worry about the future so much? I once asked a co-worker of mine this question and her response was “because we don’t know what could happen.”

I have my share of worrisome times, whenever my energy is low, (most times from giving it to someone else, not leaving enough for myself) worry rushes into my present moment and proceeds to aggressively destabilize me and before I know it, I have strapped back on my burden.

It is easy to say, just release the burdens but I say it fully sensing your derision. “life causes me to be stressed, you say, “shouldn’t I plan for the future, shouldn’t I live up to my responsibilities?”

My response is always “no, yes, yes but with no worry, no stress.”

Every once in a while we get caught up in thoughts that do not serve our higher good and when we allow such thoughts we ask ourselves the same questions.
Why do I encourage these thoughts?
Why do I allow myself to be swept away by feelings that serve me no good purpose?
Why do I cause pain and unhappiness to myself?

Our vulnerability indices peak, leave us feeling less than our best selves.

For me, when unwelcome thoughts come, thoughts that I know will lower my vibrations and send me into a funk, I try to head them off. The times when I am unsuccessful because they were too strong or came too fast, I retreat within and I try to honestly determine the root cause of my pain. And the funny thing with thoughts that do not serve us is that they do not simply pass through, they come looking for fertile soil to land on, germinate and send down strong roots. They come to stay.

And so, during the process, we fall back into the familiar fear-hole.
We feel less grounded.
Our childhood traumas resurface.
We recall our past bad deeds and determine that karma is a bitch.
We wallow in self-pity and wrap ourselves in a cloak of self-disgust.

Which does nothing at all for making us feel better.
Our vibrations stay low.
Our energy refuses to build.
We feel sick in spirit.
And in this state, our thoughts grow into giant trees of bad thoughts.
And the longer we stay like this, the more we attract more of what we feel.
It appears like a never-ending cycle of bad thoughts and feelings attracting more bad thoughts and feelings.

I say to myself every time, and I say to you, “The key is to not fall into the hole in the first place but reach for the thoughts that make us feel good, as insignificant as they may be.”
And use them to fan the flames of better thoughts, eventually getting a bonfire of good thoughts blazing.
Bad thought tree, what tree?

Fire burns wood every time.

A few days ago a friend said to me, “I do not see what you believe, being any different from those persons who believe in organized religion.” I stood mouth open and for a moment shocked that she may be right. What about my process of seeking and believing is different from those who turn to religion? Maybe on a deep level, it is all the same, we are all looking for a connection with Universal Intelligence or God, as some may be quick to correct me. The thing is we will never know for sure until the moment we pass into non-physical, so to even engage her on this topic would be like spinning top in mud, so I answered, “You may be correct,”.

We are all seekers, we came into this life to fulfill our soul purpose and along the way, we are all trying to get back the connection to Source Energy that we lost as we grew out of childhood. We get so caught up in the isms and schisms of living, as sung by the great sage Bob Marley, that our connection to Universal Source is severed. We can look at Universal Consciousness as our energy source and we need to be plugged in to be able to fulfill our mandate. And so we look for different ways to plug in. Some seek this connection by accepting a set of given dogmas nicely packaged and named religion, some decide to branch out on their own, seeking their connection to Source Energy their way. I am of the latter, but there is nothing wrong with the former.

At the end of it all, as long as we are plugged into Source, and we are able to fulfill our soul’s purpose, then there is no argument, no debate, no questioning, no doubt.

Many Paths, One Source.

The other day an article caught my eye, it was about writers and their constant fear of running out of subject material. I smiled slightly as I remember sharing that fear. I am not a professional writer, I write because I like it and because I think I have something of worth to say to someone. Every morning, I have been able to post a piece, be it good or bad and I do not anticipate running out of material, perhaps out of steam but not out of things to write about.

Mind you, it is not like I get up every morning with a topic swirling in my head, I use my morning meditative session to provide me with the seed of an idea to write about. It may be something that kept turning up in my thoughts, perhaps from something I read or experienced during my day; it may be something that just popped into my mind during the session, or it may be an idea that came after my meditation is complete. Sometimes it is the simplest thought but other times it is an idea so complex that I roll my eyes and ask “So how do you expect me to explain that in a blog?” And if you are anything like me, you like it clear and simple.
Who wants to read a topic and at the end of it be more confused than before you began to read? Simple words and concepts explained simply are best for simple minds like mine and so I write for like minds.

There are days when I can write two or three short articles and there are times when I can only manage one. I just roll with it, knowing that I will never run out of things to write about. I suspect my meditation practice holds the key since, during meditation, I am locked into Universal Energy, the source from which all things flow.

As I read the article, I noticed that the writer, in giving tips on how to ‘not run out of writing material’ did not offer meditation as a way of locking into a never-ending creative stream of topics. I invite you to look at people as great as Einstein, he meditated before he began work and what did he create?

So if you are feeling the urge to become more creative, be it as a painter, writer, singer, or carpenter, tap into Source Intelligence and you will be amazed by what comes out of your creative process.

I think we do people interested in meditation as part of a spiritual practice a great disservice when we tell them from the get-go that they have to ‘quiet the mind’ or ‘still their thoughts’. Quiet what mind? How is that possible? We have heard it said many times that the mind is a powerful thing; it has the power to heal and to destroy, to create from nothing, to connect with our subconscious selves and even to expand to the far reaches of the universe so how can we quiet such a powerhouse through meditation?

So let us not even go there and for those of us who advocate that one ‘quiets the mind”, perhaps we should explain the process differently.

I would like to propose that we begin to encourage seekers to “look for the Eye”. I see the mind like a hurricane (called typhoons or cyclones in different parts of the world). There are the areas of highly destructive winds and rain that rage, causing rampant destruction to kit and kind and then there is the calm spot referred to as the ‘eye’. Here everything settles down. There is a quiet, a peace that is passed. Many people use this time to venture from their shelters to observe the damage.

I invite you to find the Eye in your meditative practice. Or perhaps we can say find the ‘I’, the idea remains the same. Find the quiet spot in your practice where you can sit and observe your thoughts swirling around, sometimes like a massive hurricane, powerfully persistent. But you sit from your I, observing these thoughts and doing nothing. Here is where you find your peace, your moment of calm during meditation. Do not let thoughts bother you. Let them come and stay, invite them in and watch then do the hurricane dance. Remain in the I and as time passes, the space that the I occupies grows and you begin to feel the expansion in your awareness. The whipping winds and driving rain of the mind quieten over time, just like the hurricane, but with you remaining in that peaceful I.

This may not happen right away, it may take many weeks or months, and for some of us even years but we benefit from sitting in the eye. That I is always there and easily found because it finds us.

Forget about thoughts, sit in your I, and observe.

The Subconscious mind is our powerhouse. It possesses the ability to heal. You can access your own healing power through your subconscious as long as you are willing to put aside what you know and look at other realms of possibilities.
Mind you, I am not saying that we should forsake our medical practitioners, throw away our prescription meds and stop taking our annual medical exams, all I saying is that we have the ability to add to our healing capabilities by engaging the mind.

The process is quite simple and better done daily because it is easier to heal at the energy level than after whatever is challenging us has moved into its physical manifestation. Self-healing involves sitting or lying down and becoming quiet. And I know the choruses of “I cannot meditate” will being to ring out but all I am saying is that we get into a comfortable position, whatever that may be and just be quiet. Listen to the thoughts that rattle around our heads and do not engage with them. Let them run free and like a small child, they will soon get tired and settle down. Next, we bring awareness to our physical body, taking our time to tap into each part of us, listening, feeling, understanding what is needed to be done to feel whole. We start from our toes up to our heads. We feel the outside and the inside, meaning we concentrate on our legs, hips, arms, shoulders, etcetera and then we go inside to our colon, uterus, liver, kidneys, lungs, heart, and so on, all the while moving slowing, feeling and listening.
The thing that will surprise you is that the body will begin to tell you what it needs. When you concentrate on an area of the body that may be sore or may be acting out of sorts for whatever reason, that part feels the focus and the shift of energy towards it and it will speak to you. Your kidneys may say I am being starved of water, your lungs may ask for some fresher air or the heart, for a bit more exercise; the stomach may ask for more natural foods.

Once we continue this practice, we will begin to feel the urge to do things that the body desires. There is no push, it is like a gradual awakening to this amazing temple that houses the God within us.

Mindfulness meditation as this is popularly called is an easy way of getting in tune, allowing our energy levels to rise so we can then tap into our subconscious for that healing power. Over time, we develop this new intimate relationship with our bodies, understanding that it is here to serve the purpose of the soul and so we naturally fall into the habit of taking better care of it.

We came into this existence with a prenuptial agreement with the Universe. We agreed before we entered this physical body, on the things that we intend to achieve here on earth. It was signed and sealed between the soul and the Divine.

The soul knew there would be limitations. Firstly, it will be bound inside an earthly body, of relatively low energy and prone to rapid aging and decay. Secondly, the issue of free will and the ego will be a subject for many long discussions. The soul knew that free will and the ego-mind were going to be challenging to the realization of its purpose with the ego being the largest influencer on free will. As we have discussed in many blog posts, the ego wants what it wants and may the soul and sometimes the body be damned, it was not going to bend to the will of anything.

So us, the non-human part of us, the part of us that wanted this experience, chose the right circumstances that would be most effective in achieving the goals we agreed upon.

We chose the afflicted body if we were about teaching compassion and love in others, if we were tasked with advancing our planet’s knowledge base in research and healing, or perhaps we wanted a short stay, just for the adventure of being here.

We chose our skin colour and our socio-economic situations because we wanted the experience that the circumstance offered.

Perhaps we chose wealth and power because we wanted to contribute to the betterment of humanity by the sharing of resources or perhaps we chose it, just for the fun of it. It was a new experience for us. We came here to experiment and experience so if we were a beggar in our former life, we chose to be a king in this one.

The Universe expands with our many experiences and Source Energy is able to experience this expansion through us.
Let us not be so quick to judge another’s circumstances. We never know what was contained in their prenup.

Where you one of those shy kids who had to be told to “speak up”?
For fear of being wrong or being ridiculed, we decide not to speak.
And so we grow into adults still not willing to speak our truth. Our ego selves have us dumbed down, serving us the win for the ineffective speaking competition.

I am a classic. My ego-self took the gold for me. I got the trophy and displayed it proudly until with time it lost its shine, becoming dull and dusty. Silence and fear made a home of it and turned out the be the only beneficiaries of my ego’s gift.

One day something inside stirred.
A stretch, a yawn, and a wiggling of my proverbial toes.

It was time to wake up, to awaken.

To take back my power of speech and speak my truth.

I’m speaking.

Merriam Webster defines gracious as characterized by charm, good taste, generosity of spirit and the tasteful leisure of wealth and good breeding. I like all of these adjectives but I am particularly drawn to being generous of spirit. How can we be more generous of spirit?

Spirit is always knowing what best for us, what we need moreso that what we want and it knows that our being generous at this time is what we need.

We are generous of spirit when we give and when we share.

When we listen and when we offer compassion.

When we cry with those who are crying and laugh with those who are merry.

When we show love and give love.

When we allow ourselves to be who we naturally are,

Living, loving, happy spirits.

I am getting married and am brimming with excitement. The engagement is official and it will be a grand affair.
I am currently getting to know my partner better,
the dark side,
the shadow side,
jealous side,
the critical side,
the self-debasing side,
the lack-of-confidence side,
the hurt-inner-child side,
the daddy issues side,
the timid side,
the insecure side,
the energy vampire side,
the boring side,
the fearful side,
the hateful side,
I have to reconcile all of these side,
To be able to love and honour,
In sickness and in health.

Because we will never part.
Getting to know me, so that I can happily marry me, has not been at all easy.

We know a llot of things. We know what the seven main chakras are: root, sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, third eye and crown and we know what the functions of these chakras in our energy body.

Let us start this conversation by agreeing on a few points, well even if we do not agree, we can have a common understanding for the purpose of this article.

We agree that we are comprised of energy and that every cell in our body radiate energy.
We agree that there are different channels found in specific points of that body, called chakras, through which energy flows in and out in a constant stream.
We agree that these chakra points are not physical but are aspects of consciousness and interact with the physical and energy body through our endocrine and nervous systems with each chakra linked to one of our endocrine glands and a particular group of nerves so assigning them importance in healing.

Dr. Laura Berman, in an article found on the website Consciouslifestylemag.com spoke about ‘Balancing your energy body: a complete guide to chakra healing’. She did an excellent job of explaining something that for some may be a bit esoteric but nevertheless quite real.
Our chakra centers, like the stomata cells in plant leaves, open and close as a defense and protective mechanism. Whenever we feel tense or anxious about something, we feel the chakra associated with that part of the body experiencing the stress, and then like a well-timed automatic system, we feel it in our physical and energy body. So imagine years of pain and trauma that cause the tensions throughout our physical and energy bodies!

The traumatic experience of childhood, whether it stemmed from the belief that we were never quite loved and cared for or for some of us, the scars from years of physical, emotional or sexual abuse; the unrequited love affairs that we never healed from; the societal pressures on women dissuading us from exploring our sexuality; the feelings of insecurity, co-dependence and fear of rejection and abandonment; the being told to sit down and shut up; the list goes on and on.

For some of us, if we were able to take a scan of the energy body, we will find blockages from the root to the crown manifesting in emotional and physical pain. For me, I recognize the familiar tension in my shoulder and chest whenever I am put in a situation where my heart is affected negatively. For others, it may be elsewhere about the body.

My suggestion is that we use this quarantine as a period for great energy healing. May we use the simple tool that meditation provides to begin the process of clearing out those blockages, starting at the root and ending at the crown. Believe me when I say you will feel the difference. You will feel the energy shifts that culminate in a palpable release that lets you know the healing process was successful. It sometimes takes many sessions and even when we feel the healing was completed, later we realize it was not because the familiar fear and tension returns, perhaps less intense but it returns nevertheless to be healed anew.

Since we have the time, let’s use it wisely and from the root to the crown, heal for 2020.

Can we simply define renew as re-new?

Re-born?

Re-birth?

Re-cover?

Re-affirm?

Re-live?

Re-awake?

Re-start?

Re-kindle?

Re-charge?

Re-up?

Re-send?

Re-ward?

Burn yuh sage to welcome a new day
Burn yuh sage to chase bad energy away
Burn yuh sage to raise your vibration
Burh yuh sage to aid in your ascension
Burn yuh sage to calm your stress
Burn yuh sage, it provides redress
Burh yuh sage for aromatherapy
Burn yuh sage for divine energy
Burn yuh sage, it’s here to uplift
Burn yuh sage because it’s Nature’s gift.

Never a feeling like this
Have I ever experienced this intense pleasure?
Ever?
From the nothingness?
Nothing to ascribe it to
But a deep, sweet, empty fullness
Inexplicable excitement
Excruciating bliss
That makes even my shivers orgasm.

The " sorry, but someone else was selected" came by email.
The " I think we should take a break" came sitting around the kitchen table.
The sinking in of this double dose of devastation came a few days later.
Then the desperate search for answers began.
And led me, self named "Scribe using Acrylics", to this place, Esoteric Gardens and Lizzie's Nest.