Vacationing on the Shadow Side of Life

The Shadow Side...it's that place you thought you were meant to stay forever and ever

Nope. We are not meant to stay in the shadows. No way - we need the Light and we get it from the Sunny people who share our lives with us. Yet that is beside the point. As spiritual beings we were never meant to live and to camp on the Dark Side of Life forever, only to visit, and the people who we visit with are either meant to be there with us and learn, or are simply meant to be there with us to learn also as well as to teach us. When their lesson for us is finished and we have been taught something, and when they have learned from us what they are meant to, even if that  lesson is placing hurt on someone else, that is when our time with them in the shadows is done. It is at that point where all those emotions that we have or had when we were in their presence come into play for us, and that is when we are meant to ponder the things that we are feeling, rather than only going through the motions of emotion.

The Motions of Emotion

Whether it is that we need to learn to not hurt other people, or if we need to learn how to deal with our own hurt through them, the Shadow Side will always teach us what we need to learn, and the Shadow Side will never lie to us, and the Shadow Side is always very appealing to us especially while we are learning from it. When we learn from it is when the parts of our Spirit that we cannot deal with NOT looking at - the part that tells us that it is inviting us to play in the realms of the darkness, to visit where we have been, where we are comfortable, and where the most damage to our Souls come from- this is the purpose of our Shadow...so we can see, ever brighter than before, our own Light of Spirit.

The most damage to our souls comes from that place where we kept these people who we loved, who we trusted, who we have and had much in common with. On my end, I was given the keys to unlock the reason why I do not do certain things with certain people, and I found out dearly and through nothing more than my asking...actually my Soul asking, for that lesson in what it is that I do NOT need. This is where the majority of us has been these last few months, and in that time we have allowed the people who we most shared time with go their way and learn their lessons, and in my case, that lesson came in the form of someone who I share heritage with, who I dearly trusted, who I thought had my back...then the truth happened. I found out that they could not be trusted, and that it was not for more than what the ego wanted, and it came in the form of arrogance and hit me in the head, heart and soul like so many bricks through a window.

It hurt. They're gone. I learned. What did you learn? I am betting a WHOLE LOT, and that you just do not realize it yet, but it will come to you. It always does, the lessons we learn on the Path that only the Fire-Walkers know.

Like a ton of bricks

When we leave for retreat, go on vacation, we prepare ourselves for relaxation, not learning. Yet, in the time that it takes us to get to that point of where we are going, we find out that there was a lot of work that happened prior to our arriving at our destination. We go through the motions, are excited at the thing that is before us, and then we go on our way, and in this case we were on our way back from the Shadow Side of Life, on our way back from the longest time ever that anyone has spent at "The Resort of Learning," and we were served up with the most important lesson of all, and it was not that we could not trust someone else, but that we could trust anyone at all. The lesson came in the form that we could trust someone else, could put ourselves out there for their world to see, and did our part in the process of bringing the lesson to ourselves and when we did that, we learned more about us than we did about the people who taught us. This is as it is meant to be. Unless we know ourselves, how can we think that we will ever know other people?

Yup...that's right - while you were in the Shadows with these people, you learned more about you than you did about them. They were just who showed up and showed you who you are according to them, and my only thing to say about that is that when they showed up, you were not the same person who you are now, and in that time they were able to mesmerize you into believing what you would about THEM but not addressing that you existed. Of course, they KNOW you were alive, but to have learned from them what you have in the time that you did you see that you are now more polished and way more refined than you were prior to the discovery that what you went through sucked but was needed. 

What you lived through and made yours IS yours, because you can never NOT go through those things - you can never not have heard what you were told, and you can never not see what you saw, never not feel what you felt, and never not know the pain of the truths that they brought to you. You have learned about what it is like to hurt through another's actions, through another's ways of being, and in that shadow you saw yourself there, and while it might have appealed to you, throughout the time you were learning from them, you knew then like you know now that while they were awesome teachers, their time is over with.

I knew this when my Soul started screaming at me, that there were better things and better people in my life than the last teacher who hurt me BADLY did. I knew that in order for me to know who I am, that I needed to be in the awareness that was them that was also me, so that I could get through to my own Self the message that I am way better than the messes that I have encountered, that I no longer need to be that one person who is willing to give away the heart, the soul, the creative nature within, that those things are mine and mine alone and that it is MY option to trust others with it. NO ONE can say that what they went through was more harsh than this or that, because the truth in it all is that it is ALL harsh, but when is learning which is required by the Soul NOT harsh?

It is harsh because without the harshness there can be no way that we will see what is the more agreeable softness that is our truth. Without the harshness and without the nature of that pain and without those people who we grow in closeness with, we will not learn. Teachers, if we can recall back to the day when we had them in high school, are not meant to be soft. They are meant to be creative in the way that they teach us, and when talking of things that are of a creative and spiritual nature, it is our teachers of and in Spirit who come to us in the form of a friend, or a stranger who becomes a friend, and is they who give to us those lessons that we so dearly need and for the most part have chosen for a long, long time, NOT to see the similarities that are there from teachers who came to us from our past. They might have within them the idea that they are on the take, and this is the energy that they will bring with them and will hide from us, and this is the lesson that we will learn, and this, too, is the Fire-Walker's Path that we will be led by them on...and of course, this is the thing that mars us the most.

We are marred by their actions, by their lies and by the things that they bring to us in the form of those nasty little habits, those adorably magnetic temptations that bother us in our sleep and which bring to us that deliciousness that is the Flesh. The deliciousness that is the Flesh can be in the form of anything that is...I don't know...any one of the Biblical Seven Deadly Sins. Where it is that we need to hang back, these teachers bring to us the energy that is overdoing things. Where we need to stop hiding our selves, this is where these teachers will bring to us the energy that is exposing ourselves so that we can finally see what is there that others see that we are refusing to see. This is what it means to be tempted, in the most Biblical fashion, by the people who are brought to our lives through our Souls. We think we know what we need, and the people who come to us think they know what we need, too, and while they are in our awareness, it is our Soul that makes us see things that we need to see, but it is our Ego that makes us want what we know is not good for us or our growth.  They show up in the manner that is "friend," because of the need for the Ego to trust what the Soul already knows is the right thing, is the correct energy, and mostly, is the greatest most reliable teacher for us. In sticking with the idea that we have been vacationing on the Shadow Side of Life, these "friends" who visit our awareness can also be thought of as being our tour guide as we walk through this part of the Path, as we follow the Fire-Walker's Path.

Then one day, we actually "see" them...and what scares us so much as that we also see ourselves there as well. We see their Souls and we are affected by the sadness and the darkness there, by the idea that they have dragged their own selves through the flames of life but most surely have not bothered with the Path of the Fire-Walker. And it is vehemently, absolutely, completely important that we all take the walk of Fire, that we bother with the pain that is there, and most of all, that we realize that we were meant for the pain, meant for the lesson, meant for the thing that ate our lives for a little while and then regurgitated us with a newness that is foreign but at the same time, familiar.

The Shadow Side of Life can be thought of as being akin to Sin City, to the things we see happen and the things that insult our Souls, and most of all, the things that rocked our world. But unlike things happening in Sin City staying secret and staying there, the vacationing that we each do in the Shadows is not meant to be hidden but meant to be seen and known by the world and the renewed Soul who we each are - that is what is meant to be seen, and that is why we walk the Path of the Fire of Life....so that we can be refined by the Fire of Life and so that more than before, we can see who we have been and more than that, who we no longer are. We find that the difficulties we walked through made us sharper and more refined, much like the refinement that polishes diamonds in the rough which also go through the fire, through the cutting away by the jeweler's hand that which is no longer needed.

This is what our little vacation in and on the Shadow Side of Life has given us as the trinket, the souvenir that we did not realize was the thing which our Soul begged for....it begged for the Shadow, and the Shadow drew us out, told us its secrets, gave us what we needed, and then suddenly, we came back to our Selves, back to our purpose, and most of all, back to the reality which is in manifest for us, and by us.

Viva Las Shadow Side !!

I Love You All !
ROX

Camera Artistry by Randy Jay Braun

Please visit RandyJayBraun.com today !! 

Integrity -The Soul's Currency

No matter what, integrity is what matters most in matters of the Soul

We can think of things in this manner when we are thinking about how it is that we reciprocate our energies with others. It is an exchange, really, of integrity. Integrity is not just something that can be thought of as being an "aside," and by this it is meant that things that are optional we will know that they are optional, and things that are required will make themselves known as being so. Integrity is one of those things which will scream louder than a whole lot of other things and ways of being will ever, and it is because our level of integrity is sort of our guide, our gauge, if you will, for things that are either thought of as being "right" or "wrong", and it is the rightness or wrongness, not that we do to or with others, but the rightness or wrongness that includes our conscience and makes us know that there is a level of some sort of Spirit that we need to maintain in order to know that who we are depends, dearly, on our very level of integrity.

We hear about how important it is that people maintain their professional integrity, and this is fine and good and right, but what about our personal and Spiritual integrity, which is the energy which screams at us when we know within our soul that who we are and the choices we make our level of integrity dependent on that choice. When we set out to utilize the energy of other people and we have no intention of reciprocating even in some small way, this lessens our level of integrity. When we are willingly operating from an already low level of integrity and we hide this about ourselves, and then we go out into the great big world and start spreading our ilk to others, not even bothering with the emotional pain we will cause to them, let alone the rest of the energies that we give to them that are in manifest according to the intention set at the onset of the thought we had when thinking about things in a spiritual sort of way, this is when we create our own Karmic imbalance, a Karma Debt, if you will, and not only is it a Karma debt that we create when we are more willing to take and take without the thought of ever giving back, we create a whole new energy, not only within us, but also, outside of us, in the material world.

A Grand Sense of Mistrust

I know mistrust well, because there is a lot that I have to not trust a lot of people about. Mistrust is like a deficit, is like our being overdrawn in the bank. It is born from infractions to the Soul that either were given to us by someone else, or that we gave to someone else and ended up having to deal with the pain and the heartache that spawned from the action. Mistrust is brought to our lives through the lesser-than integrity-filled words and actions of others. We are taught how not to trust others by the way that they keep their word. True, some people will keep their word but at a minimum, and will honor their word so long as it is at a minimum cost of real trust to us. Then there are the others who give us the energy that we can trust them, that our hearts and souls are very well kept and that they have our best interest at heart, and all the while, all the time that they were giving us their words out of their mouths, and even though at some point and in some way we knew that somehow, something was not right. Then the day happens when  BANG! we are unhappy and disappointed that we were right about something being just not right. We are given the seeds of mistrust early on, and through the course of the events which arise we find that the thing that we thought was there in the beginning was all ego, was all on the outside and was a mask to cover up the rest of the truth about the person or people who we trusted. 

We find out that yes, what they brought to us was the truth, the good part, that is, and then slowly, over time, we are given the other side of the story, the side that we would have been happier just not knowing existed, and there soon after ensues the thing that we did not want to face which was the truth in manifest all along and was the thing that told us very early on that there was something just not quite right about the things that we have been told, that what we have been told, even though it might be the truth, is missing something...that something missing is the integrity. We place so much on what others tell us is the truth and it is because we know that when we are telling someone else the truth, that it is indeed the very truest truth. We go out into the world of misinformation and untruths, our truth worn on our sleeves like our hearts end up being, and then the ugliness that is the truth of someone who was not playing fairly to begin with, who was not upfront with their shadowy ways. It is the shadow side of life that sometimes, we are more drawn to, and it is with purpose that we are, because in the knowing of the Shadow side we also have the balance of the truth which is born of the integrity, or lack thereof, within us.

It is like being told you are meant to do something, then you do it, then suddenly, that which you were meant to do becomes more like a grocery store sample table - everyone wants some, the person giving away the samples is not someone who really knows what the hell they are talking about and all they really do know is that they really like this ...whatever it is...and why doesn't everyone just have a try at it?

Because not everyone is privy to the trying, and not everyone is possessed of the Soul which is rich with its own leaning toward integrity, that's why. Not everyone's intentions are good, and even though there are a lot of us who are very, very good in the Soul and filled with this Spirit rich with Integrity, there are many who are still sharing the air with us who are up to no good, and I have had a lot...LOT of experience with those who will say one thing with their mouths, but with their actions they are lying to us. There are a lot of people who are reading this right now who have gone through this sort of thing recently, and who, like me, are not so much at a loss for words as much as we all are at a loss, period. And dearly we are feeling these losses, because they were not just losses that we could handle, like losing a cell phone or 20 bucks. These are losses where the deficit is in the Soul of us, where the pain has caused us a no-turning-back sort of mindset, where who we meet from this day forward will automatically have to live, at least in a short-term way, in the energy that was given to us in return for our own integrity. Because someone else damages our sense of trust, those who will follow the ones who caused the ache will initially end up being tested and questioned and everything else that we would do if it is that we have learned not to trust.

Integrity is not something that can be bought, but surely it can be sold. When we operate from a place that is whole and is meant as what it is supposed to be - the Currency of the Soul- we find that more times than not we are met with others who are just as right in the soul as we are. But there are always going to be people on the planet with whom we share our lives, albeit temporarily, who will operate from the rawness that is the unrefined beforehand of what it is to live on the edge of right and wrong, moral and immoral, light and shadow. Our job is not to try to fix other peoples' sense of integrity, and it is not to teach them how to use theirs.

Our job is truly only to bring to the surface that which, in other people, can be called their level of integrity, or lack thereof.

I LOVE YOU ALL

ROX

Soul Search

Eventually comes the day when we have to go within and mean it

"Go within and mean it." I say these very words, or I type them, at least a dozen times a week. They are written for those who seek their own answers and who, for the life of them, refuse to address that it is not their mind or their bodies which initially ached, but their Soul that still does. If there is one thing that I am adept at, it is the inclination toward helping other people dive on into their very own Souls and look at what is there and find out for themselves why it is that they hurt so very much. Normally what is found there is so far removed from the truth of what they thought they would find that once it is that they can actually look at it and see it as the part of them that needs attention and healing that is not from an outside source they actually begin to accept the challenge which they also set up for their very selves.

I am no stranger to hurting, not virginal in the area of having one's heart broken, of having one's self be shaken to the very core middle of one's self, and always, there are people who come seeking the advice, not of a Sage, but of someone who simply has just been there in terms of knowing what to do with the ache which permeates both the body and the Soul. Always we know that there is someone else on the planet who can relate, but the problem is not finding them, but opening up to them when Spirit sends them in our direction. We can only see what is the outer part of them, and that is how we called them into being for the purpose of helping us get well in the Soul. At this time there are many people who are ailing in the Soul, and there are many people who are not seeing it, not addressing it, but the ones who are addressing it, who can see, this is for you guys. You know who you are, and these last few weeks I seem to have had a majority of people who have dirtied their Soul somehow, be it with negative thoughts or through the exchange of energies, no matter how that exchange happened, with someone else who is dirtier in the Soul than they know they are or are willing to believe they are.

A dirtied Soul is nothing to shake a stick at because it is also a cause for actual physical ailment, and no one who I know likes being physically ill, and most of the time, when we are ailing in the Soul, the body is not long to follow. This is not something that I made up, and it is not something that is not the truth. When we hang onto things which no longer serve us, we are who pays in ways that none of us could imagine we would have to, and make no mistake - if it feels like you are at some sort of deficit, and you feel rather spent, this is not a trick and I am not one to send detrimental energies to anyone...you are causing you to be sick. Think about it this way, it is easy for a negative person to get what they want from a group of people because they do not realize that they and all of their negative energies are projected outward to everyone. They infect the rest of their own world and the people who share it with them with that vibration. Everything that they have, you will also have if you are not careful with the way that you are tossing your soul around.

Not a lot of people know that this is one way how people get physically ill - by being around people who are negatively charged in the Soul. If you thought long enough about the last person who was in your own realm of energy and how dearly you were affected by that person's energy and the weight of it but you still chose to be within that thought, you are now infected. On the other hand, if you were with those sorts of people and then were around other, happier and right in the Soul types, you would find that the opposite effect would happen. You would find yourself lighted up in the Soul, and there would be no energy of physical effects whatsoever. It is like when children go to school with a cold - eventually all of the children come home sick. This same thing is what happens when we are around people who are up to no good, with people who cannot or refuse to be honest with people about who they are for real, namely themselves, with people who are whining about everything that is not right in their lives, and anyone else who tends to bring a malicious or negative energy to our awareness. I will not go so far as to say that you will not ever share company with people who exude negative energy - the world is a great big place and we are bound to come across them. It goes without saying, though, that it is in anyone's best interest to try to steer clear of people who are negatively energized.

Nothing good, really, other than a lesson, can come from it. Nothing good can from our partaking in things and activities with people who we know will drag us down into their energetic field. If we are not careful and we continue this madness, we find that we have either "muddied" the positively charged people in our lives and make them not want to be around us, or we end up alone because those good people in our lives who bring us positivity cannot continue to wash their own Souls from the crap that is brought by other people who are somehow finding their way, through others, to us.

Again, we cannot avoid them, at least not entirely. But we can learn not to derive from them anything other than a lesson. It is not easy, but anything worth anything at all rarely is.

The Soul gets a bit dirty from time to time

Our Souls are that which we truly are, and at the moment there are plenty of us who are sitting in hopes that what we see daily and how we feel about who we are in relation to the things that have transpired over these last few months is somehow going to make sense one day. And all of us has this thing about us, this..."one day"...thing, that makes us believe that we are meant for greatness, and that "one day" we will get there with a little bit of luck. To our chagrin, "one day" keeps getting put off and put off until we get to that point where the Soul requires us to be so that we are forced by our own hand and our own Self to meet up with our "one day." It's that thing we all know as Karma, and the more we dirty our Souls through other people, the more Karma we create for ourselves to have to cleanse and heal from.

It is this "one day" where we either are able to hash out what is living within us with someone else, or it is this same "one day" that we just decide that today is that "one day" where finally, we will begin the process of releasing what was so that what is can become what it is meant to through us. It is also this "one day" when we have to take the time to think that for the life of us, while we did not ask directly for all of this stuff that is now ours and must be cleared out, we called it into being by thinking about it, by trying hard to not focus on it, by doing everything that we could have OTHER than just not focusing on what might NOT happen for us.

We cloud ourselves with negative thoughts about us and they are thoughts which are brought to us from other people, and these thoughts, no matter what, affect us, and dearly so. It could be the transfer of energy from a person who likes their dirtied Soul. It could be in the form of our empathically reaching into someone else's awareness with or without their knowing, and feeling every bit of their energy and sometimes that energy is confused energy and that dirties the Soul. It could be anything that brings us the thought that we are not good enough, that what we have to offer to ourselves is somehow not as great as what is offered to someone else, even though it is the same thing. It can be in the ultimatums that we give to other people, and the only thought I can think about that is that if there needs to be an ultimatum made all bets are off because that is just more weighted energy that we need to clear and why? Because we expected others to do what we want them to do on our behalf without respect to what they need to learn and to go through.

Sometimes we need to hurt other people so that we, through their pain, can cleanse ourselves of the compulsion of hurting people, namely those who are close to us. If we see that we are going through the same things again and again, with the same sorts of people, it is wise for us to also look at the picture as wide and deep as we can and look there and see what it was that we needed from these things that hurt our Soul. We need to see there that sometimes, even in the hurt, even in the things that are represented by those we thought the world of but found ourselves to be somehow crushed by them, there is merit. There is something there that we need, even though the teacher who brought us the lesson might not realize that they taught us anything at all, because the truth of that is just like they hurt you, you brought to them the lesson that is hurting someone that they care about and no longer being trusted by them. It is all a circle. We reciprocate that which we are with that which we are not. While we might want to think that who we were we still somehow are, the truth is that who and what we were no longer fits our lives and has no room for the old us in this new part of life.

It is said that people come and go, but what is rarely said is that the reason they do so is because we have reciprocated the energies and the lessons that they would bring to us and now, even though their actions and words might have hurt us, we are stronger for having dealt with it and we are better and cleaner than we were prior to their bringing with them to our lives the fire which burns white hot and which sears us to the very core of us. This is what hurt does - it brings us the pain which is like salt in an already wounded Soul.

My first thought about this is that we just need to allow the pain, allow it so that it can cleanse us and show us our more polished, better able in the Soul, Self.

I Love You All
ROX

Beautiful Camera Artistry by my friend and Spirit Brother, Mr. Randy Jay Braun

Please visit his website at RandyJayBraun.com

Souls...they just Know Each Other

It is a simple recognition of the Soul...

"I feel like I have known you forever."  "I am so glad I met you because I feel like I know you already!"  "Somehow, we just click..."

No, these are not pick up lines. These are things that are said when we know someone without even knowing their name. This is not something that does not happen to us all, and it is not something that is as strange as you think it is. It is simply proof that the Soul is forever, that the reason that you seem to get along with some people better than others is because you have never NOT gotten along in Astral terms, and it is just time that you all knew that when you click with someone, no matter why or for the reason that you might believe it to be, it is not only those things but also because you were meant to meet up again in this lifetime.

I experience this phenomena ALWAYS, and always I am treated to the perfection that is the Soul on the level of the Soul with other Souls. Always, I am guided to those who are much like me. Always I am shown who I am through these people and sometimes, as Luck and Spirit would have it, I get to be with them permanently, and that is what this is about today. When we meet up with new people, it isn't that it is really new but that the meeting is. Sometimes, the newness does not go away and that is when it is the most energetically awesome thing that anyone goes through and experiences. That is when you know for sure that you have met up with your Soul Family. That is when you know where you belong and that is when the fun starts. I say that is when the fun starts because it is a time when you finally know what it is like to belong. It is a time when you know that you are home, in a sense, because the things that you talk about with these other Souls makes sense to you, makes sense to who you are, and just plain old makes sense.

This is not to say that you will not be at odds with them from time to time, but when that time and those times come, you will recall that you met up in this consciousness for a purpose and that it is that purpose in the Now that you met up, because you are not done with the mission that you and these other Souls are meant for. You have a specific mission, and Spirit has challenged us all to find out what that mission is, and when the time comes that we are to meet up with these other same Souls is when the mission begins.

We don't get to know the mission, either, because that is what we are meant to build together - this ... thing...that we are all meant to be a huge part of. We all have a mission, and in some cases that mission is a big one that we cannot undertake all on our own. My mission...my Tribal Mission...is to simply Be with these people in the capacity that I have been and will remain to stay as. When we meet up with our Soul Tribes, we know them because there is no weirdness, no feelings of "I need to get to know these people" and always there is that sense of "I don't know why I know you, but it is way cool because there is just something there that I cannot place my finger on, but it is there, and I am glad to know you...again..." and no, there needs to be NO kind of thought to the idea that what it was on the top of things and at first glance that THAT is the way that it will stay because like all other things, the reunification of Souls is a big deal, and it is a big deal because these are the people who we each are meant to be with. This...these similar Souls...is the Family which we all yearn for and want to go home to, and these are the people for whom we pine and even as things have changed, the sameness and the newness and that crispy white sheet feeling when you are with these people is incredible. It is like you get to meet up with them all for the first time, again and again, every time you meet.

The weirdness that is not really weird

I say a whole lot about my own weirdness. It is who I am and has always been a big part of me and until recently was not one of the biggest things in my life. While it is not the biggest thing, it is a pretty big thing because for a long while I felt stuck between having that feeling of being stuck and alone with no one to hang with to being inundated with similar Souls, all of the rock and roll sort and all who are just like I am....not perfect, but perfectly imperfect and totally okay with our imperfections. Sure, like in every family, there are misunderstandings and of course there will be differences, and sometimes those differences will cause us to have to be apart, so that we can reconvene on a level that is new, even as the Soul recognition is not new at all. The weirdness is a welcomed one, and one that lets us all know that we are so not alone, even when we feel like we might be.

The weirdness guides us so that we know who our Tribe is, and our weirdness makes it so that there is no mistaking that these people...these people who you know even though before you knew their names you knew who they were...these are your Tribe and they are yours, forever, because they have been your Tribe forever. Those with whom you hold the most counsel with, and those with whom you have the most in common, but not always who you share DNA or a marriage certificate with - these are your people, this is your Soul Tribe.

Cherish them like nothing else, because they are here and in your awareness because they are meant to be here. Love them as though you might not ever have known who you really are without them, even though you do know who you are, and because they are the mirror to who you are and what you see there is the Truth of you all. What you see in the faces of these people who are familiar strangers is you, is your Truth, is who and what you are and these are the people with whom you will spend much time with, and these are the people who will do the most for you and these are the people who will always, always be by your side, even if it is from far away. You will always know them, will always be them and you will always be a part of them, and they, a part of you. From the moment that you see them, meet them in this lifetime, you are not alone.

You were never alone, ever. You were merely and only waiting for the rest of your Tribe to be visible to you, and my best guess is that they showed up at the same time mine did...

And that time is called the right time....they all just showed up, right on time...

I Love You All !
ROX

RandyJayBraun.com

Strange Days are Change Days

If you can't quite wrap your head around something right now, don't worry, you are perfectly fine, I Promise...

I have been asked a whole lot lately to do a whole lot of different things, and one of those things is evacuating an area of negative energies, which I did not once, not twice, but three times today alone. The last one that I did today was for family, and it goes without saying that if there were anyone at all in this lifetime who totally deserves a whole lot of rest and relaxation right at this very moment in time, it would be my Soul Family.

You see, there is a lot of change happening to us all right now, and right now, and you all...ALL of you know who you are - yeah, I am talkin' to you guys, my fellow strange people and the very people who have captured not only my attention but my very Soul. I want you all to read what this says and take it to heart and absorb it (where?) all the way down to the Bones of The Soul. I say this to you all right now because right now that which seems like it is normal also seems like it is the most abnormal thing in the world, and the thoughts we are all thinking right at this time and all at the same time - those are the normal things that you think about anyway, and that those thoughts seem way more pronounced than they normally would are not different but are the very things that we each and all need to pay more attention to. Seriously, I would not be sitting here writing this if my own Soul did not say so, that it is time to put down the flag that is advocacy, and grab up the Maoli drum again and let everyone know that now is not the time to freak out, not at all.

In fact, the reason that you want to freak out is because you are not understanding your own thoughts. You are not understanding your own thoughts because basically, and this goes for me as well, you are not able to grasp on to what it is that you are thinking because it simply is not the way that you are used to thinking about those thoughts that you are thinking in the manner that you are now thinking about them. That which used to tell you one thing, well, it still tells you that but now there seems to be a back-story to it, a prelude to it all, if you will, and the scary part is NOT that we have been there before, but that we have been there before and when we saw it before we feared it because we recognized it with our actual eyes but NOT with the eyes of the Soul. If you want an example, I will give you mine.

So, here I was earlier, trying dearly to come up with some words that would make sense to me when I get a text from an old friend asking me how to cleanse her home. I tell her. She doesn't get it. I go over there. Still cannot seem to grasp the idea that what I was doing was simply symbolic, and told me that she didn't feel different than she had before I got there. I told her "oh honey...you need to wait and more, you need to let go of the thing that I showed up here to help you get rid of...stop thinking about it and be happy, dammit..." and away I went. All the while I am waiting for another friend who came to my house earlier and who was telling me about the crap that goes on in her life that is like my life and we talked about it and we helped each other and bang! It hits me that I have to do this same thing for her just not in her presence, so I do it. Then I have to leave to go to my cousin's house, and I told him this morning that I would be there today at some point and that when I show up I will be there, sage and abalone shell in hand, ready to cleanse his house. So I go, I cleanse, and he is good now, because he told me so.

ANYhow...

My thought about all this craziness is that we are in the middle of a very BIG transition at this time, and it is one that is pulling NO punches with ANY of us. We are being called to cleanse a whole LOT out of our lives, and for the very life of us, there are many, many of us who still cannot let go of things. We cannot let go of these things because we are so comfortable in the idea that we are finally adjusted to the last set of adjustments we had to go through and the hell if we are going to go through another set of them just because that is what Spirit tells us is going on whether we like it or not.

And yeah...hell yeah...it IS whether we like it or not, and it is that time of our lives in this, the New Age of Aquarius, that we are expected NOT to hang on to the things that make us mad or hurt us, and we are supposed to look at all these old situations for what they used to be and compare them to what they have become so that we can see how far we have come and how much we have changed and even that much isn't enough for us to be able to take a breather for a moment because every time we stop, we realize that, again, we are at the start of a new change, a new phase, and while we know we asked for all of this, we were not ready for it to happen so fast that we feel like we have hardly had a chance to catch up to ourselves.

We are at that critical point, guys...the one that tells us to move forward and grow and never mind the things that are going on in the past because there is nothing going on in the past. The things that were there are no longer there but in our memories, and now we see that we have come this far and we have done so much and it seems not to be like we have come as far as we have, but I am telling you that we have. I am telling you all that we have come a long, long way, and in that time we have seen ourselves as what we were and now what we are and we are Loving who we are because who we are is in FULL ON evolution. The ones who are not liking it at all are the ones who we can no longer pull along with us. It is not that we have to leave them behind, but more that they are choosing to stay there, and that is none of any of our business. We do not have the right nor the power to choose for others. This was a dear lesson that I learned these last three weeks, and that is that when someone has decided that there is nothing left for them that they will just give up.

And I don't know if anyone told you this about me specifically, but the phrase "give up" are not in use in my everyday vocabulary. I am sure that if I thought about it for a while, I would find out that that phrase was never really something that I have used, ever, because if that were the truth, well, I wouldn't be sitting here telling you all this stuff, because this is the stuff that I am meant to tell you about.

Yes, my friends, these are VERY strange days, but get used to liking them, because the strangeness that is Now is the foundation for what is to come.

Wish I could tell you all what that was, but I can't...how will you learn if I just tell you what you need and are meant to learn, right?

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight

I Love You All !
ROX

The Graduating Class of Aquarius...2013

It dawns on me that my son was meant to wait to Graduate...

I can't lie and say that when I realized that my son, Jeremy, was graduating late, not really, but just not with his friends,that I was not upset. Yet it was not his fault that he was just...I don't know - not ready yet. Somehow, because of everything that had gone on during his early years in high school, his emotional life, inner life, would not allow him.

There is truth to the idea that things like these which came into our lives, collectively, do so for a reason, and ALWAYS it is a VERY good reason. I know that the reason that my son was held back, not by his school life, but his life that seemed to go haywire at any given time, was so that he would graduate with a generation which I can sit here, almost tearfully, and give proper acknowledgement to this, the class which I have named and crowned the Graduating Class of Aquarius.

The Graduating Class of Aquarius

It was evidenced by the way these young people expressed themselves in their speeches that told me, for real even, that the Graduating Class of year 2013 is the very essence of the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

These are children with Souls. Parents whose children have graduated this year, I join you with my late Graduate, my oldest child, Jeremy, not for an adulthood that is sneaking up on him, but because these children...OUR children, are the very essence of the seed of Love, of Soul, of Community, and we are who planted it in them. We are the ones who taught them that it is far better to work toward something together than it will ever be all and totally on our own. Unlike our graduation, this was very soulful. This was the most beautiful night of Lokahi that I am glad to have been witness to.

The energy was impossibly Divine, abuzz with laughter and joy in abundance. We did not fail them, guys. We taught them what they needed to know, and collectively our generation's children have pulled through some of the most very difficult times in all of both of our generations have been witness to. I saw it in them, the spark of Love that was familiar but was also different. This was not what it was like way back when we were kids, when Bon Jovi was not classic rock, and when it was that the internet was a fantastical notion that we might be able to connect with other humans and reach out and share our lives with people who just this time last year, we did not know. This is the proof. Our kids are the proof.

We have managed to raise kids who are loving and supporting, and we have given them the keys to the proverbial kingdom in that, for the most part, almost all of us in our generation - we had to learn this from each other, because all of us hurt so very badly. We did it our way, and we did it our way the most loving way that we could have, and these children are who serve as our proof. These kids - they Love one another, and it is a family type love. It is the most Unconditional Aloha that I got to be part of, just like you guys did!!

They did it ! They did it in a time when doing lots of stuff is difficult. But, they did it.

They are excited, and they should be, because they are the epitome of the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius

Congratulations to the Global Graduating Class of 2013...The Class of Aquarius

I Love You All!!
(I Love You Jeremy !! Right on, kiddo! You did it!!)

ROX

Im-Possibilities

That which seems impossible to believe is actually the Truth of Us

It is impossible in the collective and unenlightened energy of the populace of humanity that that which seems like it does not fit will eventually fit, will eventually make sense, and that which we resist will continue to persist, and we are all being asked, without being actually asked, not if we like what we see or if we accept what we know to be the very truth of us, but instead, we are now being prompted to at least bother with the idea that right now, we need to do something with the things that we have learned.

There is nothing quite more beautiful than knowing for sure that the things that we see, the things that we want, the situations as they are are also building up to the things that we want and the things that we need. We might think we want something, but Spirit always and only gives us what we need, and always what we need is much, much better than what we want! And this is where the impossibility in our limited human type thinking makes us crazy for the things that bring us clarity. And clarity is something that we need, always because of the way that we humans are- basically clueless to our own symbols and signs. We like to resist, to judge, to question everything, namely when it is awesome, and namely when it is safe, and namely when we think we cannot have it.

We might resist something, but again, that which we need, and, believe it or not, AND want, those things are being shown to us right now, and right now we are doing our best to resist them, all of them, even though we know what is best for us. What is best for us is that we follow the lead of Spirit and not bother with the ego and not intend to be so stuck to an idea or an outcome that what we want and what we see in our minds that represents what we want may only be the conscious example of what it is that we are desirous of. While it is that people and things are the representation of our power to manifest, what we see there rarely is the thing that we actually need. I need a whole lot, and what my mind's eyes see - the impressions that come to mind, that is - are only symbolic and not absolute. Absoluteness only comes when we have the absolute manifestation of the thing that we want but always, the thing that represents it is totally different and usually way, way better than what it is or was that we thought about all along.

I get the question a lot, and more than that, I get a LOT of people who come to me for Soul fixin' services who all have that very same energy of "but that is not the one that I want...I want that one and only that one!" to which I must first take a deep breath, think quickly of what it is that I need to tell them, when really, the only thing that I know they are going to hear is that I told them "no." Yet that is not the issue here either. The issue is that no matter what, Spirit always knows better than we do, and the more that we insist on our knowing what we think we want, our believing that we know what is best for us (we do, but we need help with it) and the more that we resist the energies of that which we also know is better for us and more inclined to be the better idea all the way around - well, we resist it because very simply, change is scary, and especially change that is going to make us look a WHOLE lot better to everyone else. I know this monster, the one who does not like change, the one who likes to be comfy in the idea that where I am right now is good for me and while it is that I may not like where I live, the person who I am and the people who I choose to spend the most time with in general...it is all good, it is all meant and they are also all good and all meant.

The reason that we are afraid to look better to everyone else is because then we, at least at this time, are scared that we cannot live up to it. The thought at that point should only be that if Spirit it brought it, we got it, that it is ours, and that if it is ours, then obviously we must have the tools at this time in our learning to live up to it, no matter what it is. For a long time I feared being this person, this empowered woman, because I knew that I would have to live up to it. I knew that I would have to adjust me, period, from the top, down, and I knew that it would be a lot of work, but more than that, all along and yes, even and especially now, I realize that I was being made ready for it. I was being made ready for the thing that I wanted, and the thing that I wanted had always been part of me but I feared it, because really, I thought I was not good enough. I thought it was an option for me to be able to choose, but it isn't. It is not my choice anymore, because I chose a long time ago to do and be and feel better than I was only but a short six years ago, and dammit if I wasn't right and more than that, if it doesn't fit. And really...I like it.

I like that I was right in that what I grew into is so much more than what I asked for, and it is more because of the work that is involved with it and the work that is involved is on myself so that I could become what I aspired to and more, manifested into my own reality. Things fit now. People in my life fit better than they used to because I, eventually, accepted the idea that it was not they who were wrong, neither I who was wrong, but that I just did not do the work yet, at least enough of it, that is, so that I would fit into the role that I alone decided was the one that I wanted to live and to be and to have. I alone wanted to be empowered, but because of the abuses I'd suffered, I could only see the end result. The end result is not what mattered because I know now that it is not the end result but the work in getting to that point.

I know that I was correct in choosing the life that I now have, because very simply, it fits. It fits that I am a misfit, and it fits that I am strange. Yet, it also fits that I am this Loving person who is not scared of herself, not scared of the Love that she has for the rest of the world at large and more than anything else, I fit into the family which I chose to call "ohana," and which I know is mine. I know it is mine because I called them into being, and I called them into being into my life because I needed them as much as they needed me. I know I am right because if I were not, they would no longer be there, would no longer wonder about me when I have not contacted them in a few days. I know I am right because everything just plain old fits.

The way to know if you were right on the money is to ask yourself "Does it fit?" and more times than not, it will fit, regardless of who thinks what, who does what, who resists what...it will fit. Period. This is what I mean by "it's all good," and it is, almost that is, all good...there are still some leftovers, but for the most part, it's all good...all pono...

Most of it is all good, but the rest ???

The rest of that which is other than all good is what we are fixing now. The rest of the crap that we are going through right now is a clearing of the crap that we either do not want to let go of or accept (there's that comfort thing again) or is stuff that is new and scary to us and the crazy part is that the new and scary part of this all is TOTALLY what we asked for to come to our lives. We wanted to be challenged and we wanted to have new experiences and dammit if we also didn't want to hang on to all that was familiar to us. We hang onto the old like it is a comfortable old hat, and in keeping with the hat analogy I can only say that sometimes we would rather wear the old and tired and ratty hat when what we really need to do is learn to not wear the hat and allow our crowning glory of beauty be what is seen by all.

We would rather not have to endure the growth that comes with newness, even though we want dearly to be with the new things and just not have to look at the old. The old is easy to deal with , because that is all we have ever known. We want the new, but are scared of it. I know this one well, because it is new to be out and about in the world as a Woman of Spirit and NOT the retired pastor's oldest daughter. It is new to me to even think about the word "Shaman," but that, too, is yet another thing that at the moment, Spirit is gearing me up for. I am scared of my own creativity, afraid of the thing that tells me I can create a new life and fearful of that one thing that I have chased forever...success...not only in my ventures, but more, in the creating a new thought with people who are wanting a new thought, a new clue, but who, themselves are scared to death of it. We want the newness and the rebirth of things that we call into our midst, but for the life of us we are not aware of that which is ours in manifest, and that which is ours in manifest is the seed of the future, the thought of creation which lives within us all, and that one thing that brings about change to our lives.

We are more willing to live in the comfortable old when the new is beckoning us like flies to the purple light in a bugcatcher. We are more willing to not look at the things that scare us because the things that scare us are ours and ready and willing to be ours in the manner that we want them to, and it bespeaks our own power, our own miracle of manifesting that we can claim to, and we fear it dearly. In fact, we fear it so dearly that we do not realize that the thing we want so much is masked in the things that can go wrong, is cloaked in the darkness of "what if?" and is there and ours for the taking, and our issue is NOT that we do not know this, but that in our heads it is the Im-possibility that is ours. Remember - people in our awareness are the very mirrors to who we really are, either exactly we are the match or we are the match in opposition bringing the same velocity of energy in equal opposite to ours.

So basically, what I am saying here, in long form, that everything, no matter how impossible it may seem to be in your own thoughts, in your own energy and in your own mind, is EXACTLY as it needs to be at this moment in time, because at this moment in time we are all very much squarely in the throes of a Shift that has beat the crapola out of us all collectively and while it might seem like things are a little on the messy side, know now that no matter what, it is totally how it should be.

And yes, this madness will ensue and as it does, you will know more and more everyday that what you thought was the truth was really only a symbol of it and not what it is in manifest.

I Love You All !
ROX

We are almost there

Hang on, guys...we are almost there

So much has happened to us in so many ways just in the last few months and weeks that it is almost impossible for a whole lot of us to really think and more, to believe that indeed, we are almost there. We are almost "pau hana" with this weirdness and this craziness where things that make sense also do not make any sense at all. In the time that has passed, and it has been a lot longer than any one of us realizes it has been, we have changed a whole lot. Where it was that we had massive misunderstanding, while we still have a little confusion, and where it is that we seem to believe that what we have in front of us will not budge, it is budging and is doing so at a terrific speed. While our intentions are what they are, were what they were, became what they would, we did not see one thing, and that one thing is that we have made it as far as we have, and in that time we have found out a few things about who we each are in a Spiritually personal way.

A Spiritually Personal Way

There are things that happen in our lives that, when they happen, we are at a loss for words because what has happened is either too much and too painful for us to think about, or, conversely, it is so great that we cannot begin to think of it not being the reality that we have brought to ourselves. We are either worried that what we did is bringing the "other than good" to our awareness and that we did something wrong and so now God is punishing us, or, we are not wanting the beauty that has come to our lives to not be real and not be ours and not be all we want to believe it is and know that it is that we cannot look at it to believe that it is ours. I promise you - whatever it is that you are seeing and experiencing right now is the truth of you, is a lesson and a reward all at one time, and that it is your Kuleana, no, not only to learn from it, but more, to embrace it and to know it and love it and feel it and most of all, to trust it.

The way that we have all been taught is right and good is to not let our guard down, to be vigilant in sniffing out those who cannot be trusted and to avoid the things that hurt. This has robbed us all of the ability that we all have to being able to just Know who it is that we can trust, to know who is just like us in ways that we never thought about, to know, for sure, that we are whole, that we are the essence of our own Perfect Love.
We have been called upon by the Cosmos to give to the world, but in that giving we were not privy to much else than that giving, and in that giving we learned, or at least most of us did, that when we were doing this, we were learning. We were learning what it means to be the ultimate sacrifice, and we were learning our own limitations, and we were living in the energy that was ours alone and we were finding out that who we are is limitless.

We have always known that what we are meant to do is somewhere in between where we left off about five or six years ago, and where it is that we are headed is right there in front of us, but like the carrot on the stick and the horse which chases it we thought that it would be just that easy - we thought and believed that Spirit was finally going to just give us our way. When it was that we had to accept that no, this time will not be any different than was any other, we behaved like petulant children. We had tantrums, and we cried, and we lashed out and we whined about what we do not have. We looked at what we do have and eventually realized that it was us who brought to our lives, and that it was the moment in which we felt most vulnerable that we were at our very strongest. And this was not something that we wanted, at least not in the form that it came to us, but that more than anything else, was something that was well needed and well deserved by us.

Good or Other Than Good, Me, You - WE created it and brought it into reality

I am fond of saying it - and I am about to say it again...I said it, so deal with it. We brought everything to our lives that we see in them. Where we know that we have changes to make, we learned what they were through the trials and tests that came our way. When we looked to the sky, hands up like we were being held at gunpoint by our very own energy, and asked "Why me, God?" we got our answers, and our answers didn't look like our egos wanted them to. Our answers came to us in the manner that is one more thing to deal with, and our answers came in the form of a person who we loved and who did us wrong, and our answers became the lesson that we needed to get to the answer that we wanted. Our answers were never cut and dry and no way were they anything that we did not have to work toward getting to.

We create all that is in our lives. I have said it, written it, intuited it...it is the truth, and I like the truth, because the truth is that what we see is only our version of it. Where it is that we might think that someone else has it better, there is yet one other person on this planet who sees what you have, even though you refuse to see it yourself, and thinks that you have the world and more. We have been taught our whole lives to love the tangible things, even though those things cannot love us right back. We have been taught that if something has a price tag, that it has value, but no one ever said that with time things lose value, but that people and Love and Spirit never do. The thing that the entirety of us is up against is NOT who we are now, but what was, and those who are still living in what was are the ones who continue to permeate the world with the bigness that was when instead the bigness that we need right now from EVERYONE is NOT how many more toys any one person has more than another person, but really and only, how much of a material loss will we endure when it comes to the idea of having to choose - Spirit, or Material things?

Spirit - or Material Things?

Now is the time when the question of what it was that you really were asking for comes full force into play, because right now we are all able to see the wounds and right now we are able to feel the pain from the past and the present and we are worried for the future without a good enough reason to be OTHER than where we have been and what we have experienced and what we know is our truth.

If you thought that the material things in your life would make things better and make them stay that way, by now I am sure that you know otherwise. I am sure that you know that it is not now nor has it ever been anything in the material realm but that what you see and sense and know in this awareness is the absolute show of what is going on inside. Where it is that many have felt like they had accomplished something because they had....HAD...a lot of nice things and had...HAD a lot of great people in their lives the truth is that while those things were nice and while those things were the things that you thought would be the Soul's response to a request, the truth is that no, the things that came to you were the beginning of the learning, of the learning to live without them and the learning to be with only you and your soul.

We are made up of the tangible, but we live in the intangible nature of the things that we most dwell on and think about. We can feel the hurts that are given to us by anyone, and it is ours to fish through in the most tangible sort of way, but the reality is that our feelings, our thoughts, our moods, our everything, is in the intangible world. The intangible world scares people who have never had to deal with their own thoughts by means and measure of that which is tangible. This is where most addiction comes from, the idea that there is a tangible way to deal with the intangible world, and we would only be partially correct because we are the tangible nature of our own intangible world. We are the ones who bring the tangible to the intangible. We are who is responsible for the way that we think, feel and do things, and we are, that is, a lot of us are not, capable of dealing with the intangible things that affected others by what we needed and expected from and by them in the tangible world.

The tangible world has many people still believing that the things that we can see, feel and touch are what matter the most, but that is not the truth. The truth is that without what we are thinking, there is no tangible world and there is no judgment to be made on said tangibility because without our manifesting those things into the present we would not know what it is like to feel the way that we do about a thing that has materialized for us. Whether we want to believe it or not, we are who makes or breaks our lives, our hurts, our fears, our awareness, and it is not okay that we take it upon ourselves to tell other people how it is that THEY are the ones who brought this, that and the other to our lives. No, no, no...you see, when we see what we don't want, don't like, don't understand in our lives, we are more inclined to place responsibility of that weight of that knowing on the person who is representing that part of us and our thoughts, and it is SO not theirs that we see them as the thing to be blamed when in reality, we brought them to us.

We brought them to us in the form of asking Spirit to please teach us who we are. We brought our learning to ourselves, and well...what have we learned?

Seriously...ask yourself that question....what is it that you so dearly wanted to experience in your life and from that experience, what was it that you learned and what is it that stays with you now that you cannot stray from because you know, too, that it was the Soul's wish that you learn those things?

What is it, dearest darling Lovely Ones, that you called into being from your own intangible Greatness?

I Love You All
ROX

It is all in the past...

Sometimes, we don't understand our place, but I promise, it is not in the past.

While visiting with family yesterday, and in that time spent with those people I learned something about the nature of the past, and the nature of the past is that it has a grip like a vice if we let it stay that way. Yet, sometimes, even when we let it go, we find out that it is not our tightened fist keeping us saddled to times we don't emotionally need to be learning from anymore. Most of the time it is ourselves who keep us there, but sometimes, it is because we are stuck to a past unwillingly, and we remain there not on our own accord but instead, remain there in sacrifice to the thing that we would rather not do. Normally we won't do something in order to make things right for someone else. Yet there are some of us on the planet (where are all my Pisces', all my Cancers? Where you all at?) for whom self-sacrifice is part of our make up, and for the life of us we cannot help ourselves. We cannot help not wanting other people to have to go without, even if it means that we have to deal with a perceived loss.

Sacrifice is nothing to a lot of people, and lots of the times, we are sacrificing not for another reason than that we do not want someone else to hurt, and in that thought energy, we are more inclined to not hurt other people because we ourselves do not want to suffer the pain of having known that we hurt another person by our not sacrificing for them what we would not expect someone else to do. This is not to say that we do not do things for other people just because we want to, but more often than not we sacrifice for other people because we do not want to feel guilty for their hurt. Their hurt, unless we purposely hurt someone out of spite, is not our responsibility. Their hurt is theirs, and our hurt should not spawn from the sacrifices that are made on behalf of someone else each and every time we sacrifice. When that happens, we find ourselves confused, resentful, and not much fun at all.

Most of the time the hurts that are within us and placed there by other people are there because we expect that other people will understand our position about things. When we are less that willing to be truthful about how we feel about a thing, instantly we become part of the problem that we each have with letting go of the past. The thing about the past is that it is gone. The thing about the past is that whatever is there can no longer affect us unless we invite it in to do that. The thing about the past is that it happened, that we cannot change it, it is gone, and more than that, the thing about the past that not a lot of  us are willing to accept as the truth is that the past, the distant path especially, has no control over us. That's right - what has happened, happened, and what has happened, cannot not un-happen.

The past is the greatest reference collection that we have, because it is within our recollection that we find little snippets of where in our lives we learned our most important lessons. When we hang onto material things from the past, things that remind us of places, things, and mostly people and a time in our lives where there was not this great big hole called "personal losses," and worse than that, when we are allowing others to hang on to these things all in the name of keeping peace that is not really there because we are roiling from it all, we are to blame, and we are to blame for our hurt because we are not willing to give someone else a smaller and temporary hurt in exchange for the one that we know IS going to happen in but a matter of time. The hurt that will happen is not only theirs, but is ours, too, the moment that we choose to sacrifice what we know is best for all involved rather than giving in to not have to hurt someone who we know does not deserve the hurt right now. But this is when we have to think to ourselves that it is better that they hurt now for a moment than to have the entire group of souls hurting over the actions not taken.

The Collection of Memories that have no control over us

We bristle when we are trying to let go of the past, and it is like this NOT because we find that back there in the past we are more able to deal with things but because back there, for some people, it was nicer because we were not alone or we were able to deal with things when it seemed like things were better. The Now is when we need to be fully present and aware, and the Now is the most important time in our lives because the Now is right now. Too many of us relive the energies of the past and it is not on our own accord but is brought to us by people who, even as we care about them and they care about us, are finding it more important to hang on to the things that were rather than clearing out that mess to make way for a new and better way of being and doing and living our lives. Often times it is because we don't want to hurt another person by making them see that they cannot hang on to what is no longer there, that they cannot start to believe that other people will be the ones who hang on to their past memories for them, and it is not right that anyone would think that what we hang on to is somehow meant to have the same energy for another person.

We know that it is time to stop holding on to things when we start feeling the detriments that we thought we were done with because time has passed. The reality is that the moment that we were able to get over the idea that we were hurt or made angry was also the moment that we were able to let it all go. Problem is, no one told us this. No one told us that we could get over a thing simply by electing to no longer hurt or to no longer be affected by it. No one told us that when the people who someone else hangs to the material memory of also silently, through the things that they taught us as children, that it is time for us to take the reigns and be the ones to sacrifice the idea that they will be angry with us, that we will have hurt them, and it is all so that in the long run, we do not have to hurt or to go through the pain of their being angry that while we did not want to hurt them now and let it be short term and that allowing them to hurt later and larger and perhaps for many years.

When we are more willing save someone from being angry with us by our actions right now, we are operating from a place of fear. It is not the fear of anything in particular, but more is the fear of letting them down and their hurting by what we have done, and most of the time what we are planning to do is not from a vindictive place, and neither from a place where we intend on hurting someone else, but is rather from a place where we are trying to save them from longer and permanent hurt in the future. When we do things that we know are good for the people who are the closest to us and we have a hard choice to make, it is at that time that we need to look at what might happen if we do not opt for the fast and vaccination-to-a-baby minute of pain that we will suffer, versus the long run where everyone suffers from our inaction. Sometimes, copping to our not wanting to be involved is not the answer, and sometimes when we opt to do nothing at all it is worse than doing the wrong thing.

At least if we do something, and it is seemingly the 'wrong' thing, we are more compelled to continue failing each time we try until we find an agreeable solution. But if we do nothing, and allow things to remain the same, we make it so that the madness continues and when the madness continues we find ourselves in an endless circle of the thought that we should have changed things a long time ago. Don't do this to yourself, and don't do this to your loved ones, and don't do this to your own piece of mind, and don't do this to the people with whom you share your own awareness. Yes, the energies from the things which we allow to remain the same extend to the rest of the world and loans to the bigger energy. When we think about a thing in a negative manner, and we want to have the positive outcome there is an imbalance that happens that allows the thing that we don't want to remain with us.

Think about yourself the next time you are seeing that someone else needs your help. Yes, I said that right. When you are thinking about someone else needing your help versus you thinking that you want to make them happy no matter what, and even if it means that you have to allow them to continue their madness, no matter if that madness is a collection of thoughts and memories, or if that collection is a literal collection that brings to life the reality that is within, and that reality affects everyone who sees it, it is time then that we have to think about what is best for the person with whom we are contending the changes that they may not like and that we know is the right one to make, even though it is one that we know they will not like.

I promise, once you choose that, and once you do what is best for all as a whole, you will notice, too, that those who you cared about to the point of their detriment - they will see it as beneficial, too. You just have to trust them enough to trust that you have their best interests at heart.

With that much said...

I Love You All !!
ROX

Meditation is not one size fits all

You do not need to do things that are not according to who you are when you are meditating

A very dear friend of mine this morning posted to her Facebook wall that she did not know how to or rather, could not, meditate. And it was not for anything other than that she thought, because of her Sun Sign, that she was not able to stop her mind fast enough to get it done. Of course, it was within minutes that she posted something else that spoke the truth of her, and that truth of her is that indeed she knows that she CAN meditate.

When I read it I was a little amused by her thought, because I know this person well enough to know that she has great powers of concentration, and one has to have that power, and in her case it is because I also know that people with musical ability, namely those who sing, have to be able to concentrate their energies in one direction and toward one goal, and that one goal can be varied and can be in the form of singing in front of an audience, to recording an album, to rehearsal - no matter what, just as much as the instrumentalists in a musical ensemble have to focus, so, too, does the lead singer. Just like singing, or playing a musical instrument, or anything, really, which requires talent, heart and soul, a quieted mind and focus are what are needed for meditation.

A Quiet mind is not what you think it is

Because I know that I have the propensity toward having very, very scattered thoughts, I know, too, what it is to have to stop the mind chatter, to have to focus on one thing, and in my case, always that one thing is about how to contact "The Realm," also and better known as "The Astral Plane." In order to do that, it is required of a person to be able to focus their thoughts, their energies, their everything, at that moment, NOT toward an end result but toward the moment's energies, and at that time, for anyone, the moment's energies are all about being able to focus. This is what is meditation. Meditation, to a lot of people, seems like some weird, tree-hugger type activity that only people who know what the benefits of wheat germ milkshakes are all about (ewwwwww...I prefer chocolate, thank you much). This is not correct. While it is that many, many people do indeed meditate in the way that we see as typical, the truth is that anything that requires our focus, and anything that requires our energies toward gaining that focus - THAT is what is meditation.

By "a quiet mind," I mean that the chattering and the blah blah blah that is the conversation in our heads all the time is what we need. Now, yes, of course, having NO mental chatter is great, but it takes time, practice and focus. Meditation is about streamlining one's focus so that what it is that we require to have what we desire in life, be it an answer, a situation, even a miracle...meditation serves us with the ability to focus, not on the thing itself, but our thoughts about the thing that we are focused on. Once it is that we can focus on a thing, we find that it was because we were able to focus, NOT on the outcome, but on the things that were the energies that would help us get to that particular outcome or something better than what we have in our minds.

A quiet mind is a mind that has been quieted from all of the daily stuff that should not be permanently there, and is replaced by thoughts that are focused. The only way to train one's self toward this ability is to practice. Practicing is not something that we human beings like doing much, but when we can focus on the bettering of our own abilities, no matter what they are, or the bettering of who we are as a person, we find that once we have that focus which comes with our ability to quiet the extraneous thoughts caused by the nuttiness of everyday life and can quiet our minds to focus only on the thing at hand, life gets strangely beautiful.

I say it becomes strangely beautiful because the things that used to crowd our thoughts have been replaced by useful thoughts, nourishing thoughts, thoughts which are Divinely Focused and thoughts that are streamlined and thoughts which become a means to an end. The end is not only a materially realized end, but more than that, the end is more like our being proven as able to focus our Selves toward an energy that is helpful to our growth as Souls. As souls we are meant to be here to open ourselves up to others, to be able to see in them, ourselves, and are meant to carry out a mission and live through to our purpose. In order to do that, though, we have to have streamlined, positive thoughts. When we carry all these crazy thoughts and these limiting energies we find ourselves running around in circles. It is not until we have learned to quiet our chattering mind that this becomes a reality for anyone.

True, there are a lot of people who can and do meditate in the fashion that we all know as being meditation. Yet, there are people who are too fiery, who cannot keep still even when they are sleeping, and who need activity in order to clear their minds of the chattering that goes on there. Some people actually do well when the mind is actively becoming quiet, meaning that they know that the reason that they are in activity IS because that is how they do not realize that they are meditating. There are some who are reading this who are going to vehemently disagree with this, and to those people I must pose the question of who it is that made them the person who Spirit placed in charged of what is the "right" way to calm the Spirit and quiet the mind. Some people cannot cope with the quiet of an empty house, and those people are the very ones who will turn their stereo up as loud as it can go, something harsh and heavy pouring out of the speakers, and there they are, eyes closed, not bothered by the ear-shattering collision of screeching guitars mixed with a gravel-like voice. In fact, for those people, this is the only way that they can connect with their inner selves and to tell someone else that they are not meditating right is not even anywhere near cool. (To tell someone else that since it is not the way that you would do it is about as egotistical and arrogant as it gets because you have not yet mastered the way that you actually will flourish with meditation, and so now you have to tell other people that since it is not your way, it is the wrong way...shame on you, by the way...)

Your way, my way, their way, this way, that way...no way is there only one way...

Just like no two people are going to like everything the same, not one of us has the same level or skill to meditate as some others might. I know that I have a very active mind, that as a public speaker I am given to the idea that communication is the key to everything in our lives, and with that thought, I know that I am the only person who could possibly also know that in order to prepare for such a "gig" that I have to do what is right for me and that there is not another person whose method will help me. In that same light, my musical pals meditate in ways that are conducive to their own growth and their own skill level and their own comfort level. One musical friend goes to the gym and this is what he calls his meditation, and it totally fits who he is. Another friend, she takes off her shoes, walks barefoot in the grass, near water, usually, and then goes home and takes a seasalt or herbal bath, and it fits who she is. Yet, another friend gets his mind going and even though he is a musician, it is not just his music which connects him to his higher self, but also his ability to paint. Another friend is a mechanic, and his meditation time is simply sitting in front of the television with a beer, the remote, and his dog....and another friend who bartends finds that her own meditative thoughts arise when she is reading a book or practicing her Tarot cards.

And me?

I write. Sometimes, I draw. MANY MORE TIMES THAN NOT, I will dance hula, barefoot beneath the wide full moon, mp3 loud, like a Hawaiian Hula band, and dance until Great Spirit tells me that I am Pau Hana with it for the night, and yes, of course, I also meditate in the way that is most normally seen by the rest of the world, with candles burning, Power Objects in front of me, at least the ones which are applicable to the meditative prayers at hand...and all of it is right. Not one thing that I do in order to quiet the mind and organize the thoughts and streamline the focus and redirect the energy is wrong. There is no wrong way to meditate.

Meditation is yours, is as personal as your beliefs. If I were to sit here and tell people that they are not doing theirs the way that I do mine and that they should try it my way, I would be wrong, just like it is wrong when people force feed others their own Truths about belief...but that is another blog post for another time.

Meditation and focus and all of those things which require a quieted mind are all private and are just like that one thing that we each have within us that sets us apart from the rest of the crowd. Meditation is not different. Meditation is not "one om fits all," and meditation takes a bit of a creative nature about us, because it takes a creative person to be able to get into one's own mind and tell the chattering 13 year olds who are just boisterously excited to settle down and get their homework done...

...so yeah...settle down and get that homework done, everyone...and yes, it is just that easy. Quiet the mind from the chattering garbage and find out that really, it is but a matter of what suits you and NOT what you see that seems to be the perfect fit for everyone.

I Love You All !
ROX

To learn more about the area's ONLY Healing with Hula program, "Na Hula O Ka Wahine'ui," please visit The Sisterhood of the Soul's website at www.mapu70.wix.com/sisterhoodofthesoul. 

The original Southern Plantation Preacher Lady, Rev. Vel-Danielle Gambrell and her Kindred Souls of the South's Facebook page can be visited and "liked" by going to www.facebook.com/KindredSoulsOfTheSouth

For information or to set an appointment with either Rev. Roxanne Cottell or Rev. Vel-Danielle Gambrell please send an email to either of them here in facebook by going to:

Rev. Vel-Danielle Gambrell  : facebook.com/spiritfish

Rev. Roxanne K. Cottell : facebook.com/reverendroxie

To contact Rev. Roxanne Cottell (Reverend Roxie) please send an email to reverendroxie22@gmail.com