Are we failing new Pagans?

I witnessed something last weekend that terrified me.  This may sound somewhat dramatic but I felt overwhelmed by the energy in the room.  I went to the psychic fair.  Mostly we had a wonderful time, I had a great palm and tarot reading by Johanna and I found a beautiful new leather bound book to record my own sacred text and Spells (Grimoire). 

We decided to go listen to one of the speakers.  The talk we wanted to hear was on Aura photography.  I know what an Aura is and I know the significance, how to clear and expand it but it is not my field of study so finding out about how it is photographed and read sounded fascinating.  Well, that’s when things went wrong…

The speaker spent all of three minutes on Aura’s and then launched into talking about curses and vows and that is a subject I know something about.   If that had been what I signed up for no problem but it was not.  The speaker asked the people in the room to stand up and renounce any vows and curses that they may have made in this lifetime and others.  Typically this would not be a problem if you have explained the consequences and had people had time to work through the karmic repercussions of such an act, but none were.  It was simply, stand up and repeat after me...  That was eye opening and in my opinion reckless.

Then the audience started asking questions and that is when I became horrified. Some of the questions revealed that people have been using magic and ancient ways without any concept of the consequences of their actions.  They are dabbling with energies that they don’t comprehend or respect.  One of the attendees spoke of how she had used a voodoo doll and now was wondering if she should just burn it in an effort to reverse what she had done.  There was no understanding of the Rule of Three and First Do No Harm.  People are just going onto the internet and downloading stuff and doing it!  It is like a Pagan Porn fest out there!

So I ask the Old Guard, those of us who have stood at the gateway to the unknown and studied our Craft intensively, what do we do?  How do we reach more people and help them understand Magic the Ancient Ways and the Old Goddesses and Gods?  How do we teach the Old Ways in such a way that people respect and revere it?   We have to find ways to reach people and teach them about the Rule of Three and First Do No Harm.  It is wonderful that people are waking up but we need them to wake up in the light.  So let’s get out there and teach, guide and lead.  It is for us to do…

Love & Light

Are the happiest people really those who do for others?

For me this a very interesting idea and for the most part I believe it is true… for the most part.  When we are doing for others we feel connected and that makes us feel good about ourselves.  I am all for that but I think there are circumstances where it could become a burden.

I have personally struggled with the concept of being of service.  I have spent many hours being of service to my Shamanic community.  The concept is that when you are of service that give-away will be returned to you three fold.  Well I don’t always feel that way when I am standing outside in minus 10 Celsius mid-winter and everything I touch is frozen. However I know that it is worth it because I also feel connected to that community and I know that I am an integral part of it.  The same goes for when I stand with the Salvation Army Kettle in December offering my time to help raise funds to support those less fortunate than myself.

I feel that this type of altruism truly makes you feel happy, connected and allow you to feel deep gratitude.  Volunteering for the greater good of your community makes you smile. However I believe there can be a dark side to giving.  There is a different expectation when you are supporting people you don’t know and it can be quite different when you are doing for people you do know.

So many people have spoken to me about being depleted by doing for others.  They have given their all only to be left feeling used and taken advantage of.  At times the consequences can be quite devastating.  So why is it not the same? 

I think that there are a couple of reasons it isn’t the same when you are doing for people you know:

Expectations:

Often our personal relationships are complicated and we could be acting out of guilt or an attempt to manipulate.  We also want to feel as if we are getting something in return and that the other person appreciates all we do for them.  When we are always giving without receiving something in return there is a good chance that we will end up feeling resentful and that doesn’t make you feel happy.

Boundaries:

With the people we love we often don’t have healthy boundaries and we don’t always know how to create them.  It is usual for us to do things for these people and when we either can’t or no longer want to we don’t know how to draw the lines so that we can support ourselves and not end up feeling depleted.  Saying “NO” to the people we love is difficult for many.  Feeling depleted in any way, whether it is energetically or financially is so bad for us that the consequences can have a negative impact on our health.  When we realize this and start to build healthy boundaries there is always push-back form the people who were benefiting from our generousness and we end up feeling disappointed and miserable.  

So, how are we able to give to those we love and still feel happy and not like a martyr? In my opinion it can be done in the following ways:

• Create healthy boundaries so that you are not depleting yourself.  Decide what you will and will not do.  Communicate these boundaries clearly and from a place of neutrality and then stand your ground!  No good setting boundaries and then not honouring them.  Mixed signals are the worst especially if you had to battle to set those boundaries.
• Care for yourself and your health.  It should be obvious but it is not.  You can only help people when you are healthy and strong.   Remember when you travel they always tell you to put on your own oxygen mask before you help others – think about it.
• If you have expectations that have to be met by the other person – then don’t do it!  This is especially true if these are “unknown” expectations.  If you have not voiced what you need in return and want the other person to “magically” know – stop and look at your own motives.  Perhaps they are not as clear as you believe them to be.
• If you believe that the person you are doing something for will “owe” you something in return you should once again check you motives.  Are you trying to be manipulative?

The idea is not to discontinue giving but to do so with healthy boundaries and with known expectations so that everyone in the equation gets what they need, the feeling of being supported, appreciated and loved…

Love & Light!

Karma... Is it a Bitch?

Many of us, if not all, come into this life with Karma and we have one job to do and that is to heal that Karma so that we can Love unconditionally. 

I find it quite fascinating that people think that Karma is somehow going to do their dirty work for them. It grates on me when I see posts or hear people say “Karma is going to get so and so.”  It is a fact that there is a Law of Return in the Universe.  Even in the Bible we have “You reap what you sow” but Karma is not our personal judge and jury.

So why do we feel compelled to speak of Karma in this way?  I believe it is because of our own self-importance.  We are placing all the blame on the other rather than looking at our role in the situation.  Should we look into ourselves first we may discover that we allowed the perceived wrong to happen.  Does that make us partly to blame, absolutely and therefore it is important for us to take responsibility for our part. 

Karma is our teacher.  One could argue that wishing ill on a person that has done you wrong in some way is in effect doing intentional harm and therefore will incur your own Karma.  Would it not be better to understand how we allowed it to happen and then carry that lesson forward in order to not make the same mistake twice?

Every action has a reaction.  We can have good Karma as well when we act selflessly.  Paying it forward will solicit a positive return, it is the Law of the Universe – that is why the greatest rule I endeavour to live by is: “First Do No Harm”

Is Integrity Subjective?

For a couple of years I have been working with integrity and what it means to me.  I think for me it is being a person of your word.  Believing in something and then having the strength to stand up for that belief is integrity.  For many people integrity is the same as morality but I don’t feel it is.  You can have the morals of a pirate but still have integrity.  Where else would the saying “Honour among thieves” come from?

Perhaps another word for integrity is honour.  I feel that is the closest synonym as it speaks to the righteousness of a person.  What I do know for certain if that integrity means something different for everyone.  That is why we are often so disappointed in other people’s actions because we measure them against our own standards.

An example in my life is the time I lent money to a very old and good friend of mine.  He was having health issues and needed help.  When he asked he told me that he would pay me back in six weeks as soon as his commission was paid out.   Ignoring my intuition as well as my Mom’s words, “Never a borrower or a lender be” I went against my instincts and lent him the money.  I felt certain that I knew him well enough and that he would never let me down.  The main point that led me to going ahead was that I believed he had integrity.  I believed him to be a man of his word. 

I know that he sees himself as a man of staunch integrity.  So that leaves me to believe that his standard of integrity is different from mine.  That he obviously holds himself to a different code.  I was also working from my own understanding of integrity.  There have been times in my life when I have had to ask for help and I have always met my commitment within the time frame I said I would, so I expected him to do the same as he gave me his word.  My word is my integrity… his is not.

To add insult to injury, when after two or three years of waiting for the money to be paid back I started asking, he blocked and unfriended me.  I know I will probably never see that money and I have reconciled myself with that but I did learn a valuable lesson, not to trust that other people live their lives to the same code I do.

I don’t hold any grudges.  Life is too short for that but I have definitely changed the way I measure people.  So I ask the question… do you think integrity is subjective?

Love & Light

Roots and New Growth...

Twenty years ago I let go of everything I knew and loved and took my first steps into a brave new world. In the next year I broke everything and started from scratch. I worked hard, adjusted my attitude and my aggression, funny how I never noticed how aggressive South Africans were until I left.  I learnt early on that I didn’t have to deal with as much misogyny in Canada so I could use a softer power and still achieve what I wanted.  However I was still seen as a tough no-nonsense person and I thought of myself as quite understanding and accepting and I wondered why people thought the opposite. It comes down to making people responsible including myself, I am a no blame no excuses kind of gal, own it and move on, solve the problem don’t just talk about it.

Needless to say I thrived in Canada. I had just the right amount of grit and my South African work ethic allowed me to achieve everything I dreamed of. Then I hit a snag… I didn’t really belong and I missed home with all my heart. My sons were becoming more Canadian by the day. They were forgetting where they came from. I was struggling with the language I had spoken all my life, Afrikaans was feeling halted and heavy on my tongue. I could see my future clearly – soon more people who meant the world to me would be living in Canada as my son’s married and had children. I felt trapped in a future I wasn’t ready for.  Seems I didn’t plan it out properly.

So in my typical grab the bull by the horns way I took everyone including the dog back to South Africa. It didn’t take me long to realize that I didn’t belong there either. My family had got on well without me and I had effectively handed over the eldest daughter position to my younger sister. I had no place anywhere, I was rudderless. It was impossible for me to find a footing and I wondered why it was that the land of my birth rejected me.   My boys didn’t settle and after two years of floundering about I did the only thing I could and moved back to Canada.  It was easier this time but I knew my fate was sealed. Still there is a deep hunger in my heart for my people and the land of my people I only hide it better now.

One of the results of this back and forth game, in hindsight, is that I needed to do the healing work I have been working with for the past ten years.  Not only has my whole life changed but I have become a different person.  I don’t see life the same way at all anymore and I have ended up exactly where I should be. All my ideas about what is important in life have shifted. Now it could be that this knowledge comes with age anyway but this feels deeper.  With my usual precision and ruthlessness I have cut away and broken free of my past and my Karma by finding new ways to deal with situations.  Still a work in progress but I am getting there.  I have learnt that wanting makes you unhappy but if you can dream big and act with sobriety you can manifest all your dreams.

I know that many South African’s reading this might say that I am one of the lucky ones and that I am out of the quagmire that has become the political and social scape of my home. And yes, I have to say that I am, but does that make me miss my home less? No it doesn’t. However as I am a different person now I am going to find a way to make the absolute best of what I have and find a way to meet and fulfill the needs of my Soul.  Not sure what that looks like yet, but I am working on it….

Love & Light

Change...

Change is something we all fear yet it is all around us every day.  We only have to look to nature to see that it is constant.  The seasons go about their business quietly and calmly. 

Observe a tree for one year… Every cycle it gives up everything it has and goes inside itself.  It appears to be dead during the cold months of winter, there are no stirrings of life.   Then spring hits and the sap begins to flow unseen by the naked eye however if you lay your hand on the tree you can sense a quickening.  Before you know it the green buds appear and as if overnight the tree is in full bloom with flowers and leaves.  Then the summer stage with the fruit of its growth and labour with the final stage the slow decay as it once again goes within.

Our lives mirror this cycle.  There are times when we are at the top of the world and others when we feel as if the Universe has turned against us.  The interesting thing is that this is a cycle but it may not be recognizable.  With awareness of the twenty seven year Karmic wheel you will see how your life organically changes as you move through this wheel.

What is important here is to realize how you engaged in your life in each of these areas.  As an example if you didn’t heal unresolved issues in the completion of your fist Karmic walk at age 27 then you could have dragged that with you into the next cycle.  Or if between the ages of 15-18 you became unprincipled and ungoverned you could have built up a lot of patterns that require healing and so forth.  When studying this wheel you slowly start to realize where you might have created maladaptive patterns in order to deal with the traumas of your life.

If I pay attention to where I am right now, in my 3^rd Karmic cycle I am once again calibrating my Life Force.   I made the tough decisions in my final year, healed what I believed needed to be healed and now it is time to regroup.  However I am regrouping with a purpose and refuse to fall into self-pity because things have not gone my way, also staying clear of self-importance by not blaming anyone else and taking responsibility for my own choices. 

Sure change is tough but it happens every day, either in small measure or overwhelming.  We can’t fight it and sometimes the harder we hang on, the more misery we visit upon ourselves.  The best we can do is negotiate change with a positive attitude, healing and hope…

Love & Light

A Guide to finding your Soul's Age....

I have been noticing that the people who have embraced a spiritual lifestyle seem to be in competition about how “Old” their souls are.  Many of my clients ask me if I know the age of their Soul, so I thought it would be interesting to research and do a “Soul Age for Dummy’s” and believe me I feel like a dummy!  What I do know is that I know nothing...  

Many hours of research later I found that I have only scratched the very surface of this topic.  There is so much to learn and so much more involved than the age of your Soul.  Long periods of inner work has brought me to the conclusion that I am probably somewhere in on the second level of the Mature Soul stage.  It is complicated and difficult to understand the “levels” and “stages” within the levels, it boggles the mind actually ~ so that is why I asked my Soul. 

Here is my interpretation of the information I have gathered.  Have some fun with it to determine where you think you are. Keep in mind that it isn't really important, what is important is that you are doing the work you have come to do.

One of the first things to know is that each age has seven stages so you can be in one age for a very long time, centuries and countless lifetimes.  The Soul ages for the world’s population are bell shaped statistically.  If it were depicted on a graph it would look like this:

Infant Soul: These are the Souls that are just starting out on their journey.  Statistically there don’t seem to be many of these in our societies.  However one of the keys to these souls is that they are raw and primitive.  They don’t have the know-how to act within social norms and structures.  The things they do make no sense to us.  An example of an Infant soul may be a serial killer or a mother that murders her children.  They seem to lack any sense of the depth of what they have done and are completely without remorse. Often they are disconnected from society, can’t find their place in this world and don’t want to be here.

Baby Soul: These Souls are all about discipline and structure.  Now that they have made it through the seven stages of the Infant soul they are in need of serious structure.  From everything I have read religious fanatics are here, from the Taliban to the Deep South.  They crave a strong sense of belonging and the rules are fiercely obeyed and anyone who is not in agreement is just wrong and shunned.  They prefer to live in close-knit communities with like people.  Order is the word of the day.  Hitler is an example of a Baby soul running rampant and unchecked.

Young Soul: These Souls are ambitious, materialistic and highly driven.  I think these souls show up in our world all the time (and according to the graph above).  Everybody wants to be a hero!  Young souls are busy developing their own perspective and agenda, finding their own talents and their own way of seeing things and doing things.  It is “me against the world… and it is all about me”. These souls are competitive with themselves and others – they have a strong need to win.  Some well-known Young souls may be – Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy Elvis Presley.

Mature Soul: These Souls are about interconnections.  It is no longer only about what is going on out there in the world but also about what is going on “in here”.  At this stage souls are starting to develop a sense of the bigger picture they want to know what makes them tick.  It is important for them to see other perspectives and allow others the freedom that they themselves seek.  All black or white views start to shift and everything seems to be grey as there is a realization that there are perspectives upon perspectives.  The souls start to develop empathy of others and their plight.  Inner conflict is very common.  Where young souls tend to blame everyone else mature souls blame themselves first.  Tony Blair, Meryl Streep, Shakespeare and Van Gogh are examples of mature souls.

Old Soul: The final leg of the journey…  Old souls have a well-developed sense of interdependence and independence possibly from a very young age.  The best way to recognize them is their inner calm and their deliberate and slower communication.  They know why they are here and what they are doing.  There isn't a big attachment to materialism however they are still connected with this world and live life fully and engaged.  Some are here to teach.  There are people who believe they are old souls purely because they are not materialistic but my understanding is that, that is not how it works.  If you have issues with being physical then there is still some way to go.  Examples are, Alice Walker, The Dalai Lama and Morgan Freeman some suggest Clint Eastwood.

All this research brought me to the question – WHY?  Why do we choose to re-incarnate?  One of the best answers I found was:

“The goal of evolution is not to escape from the wretched physical plane, despite what many teach. The end of reincarnation is not some sort of reward for good behaviour. Human existence is not a prison, or a wheel of torment, from which only the most worthy gain liberation.

We incarnate because we want to and we choose to. We keep doing it precisely because we want to come to terms with it. We know that in each life we will probably spend several decades not remembering who we are, not remembering our eternal Home, buying into the illusion of separation, experiencing fear. This is the very stuff which inspires us to become more conscious.

Completion occurs when it matters not whether you are incarnate or discarnate: you see through the illusion and you always feel at Home”.

Once the soul has completed the final stage it no longer has a need to return.  It can become one with the source and unify with soul mates that are also complete or become spirit guides.  There are however exceptions.  Gandhi returned after completion to spark a cultural revolution.  Even rarer is the return of Souls such as Jesus and Buddha who returned to become the physical embodiment of divine love, pure consciousness and ultimate truth, a piece of the Tao in human form.   

References:

The Michael Teachings

The Michael Handbook

http://personalityspirituality.net/articles/the-michael-teachings/reincarnation-the-35-steps/stage-5-the-old-soul/