Ghost Hunting Part Two – The Ghost That Followed Us Home

The tour guide was only half kidding when she said “We aren’t responsible if any of the ghosts follow you home.”  It brought back memories of The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland.  I could almost hear the sonorous tones of the heavy male narrator’s voice from the ghostly Disney ride override the tour guide uttering the same phrase.  She added cheerily, “but if they do, please call us, we’d love to come investigate!”

No need, the ghostly lady in the back seat wasn’t the first to hitch a ride with us, and I’m sure she won’t be the last.  I can see and talk to the dead, and help them cross the veil to the other side if they are earthbound.  Hub and I were almost home when she made her presence known.  Thin, willowy, but too heavily scarred by sorrow to be called beautiful, the dead lady kept looking longingly at my husband from where she perched behind him in the car.  “My husband?  Where is my husband, and my baby?”  She asked repeatedly.  She was confused, didn’t understand how she was suddenly in this strange carriage, didn’t completely understand she was dead, and far out of her own time.

It took a little effort to get her attention, she was fixated on Hub, mistaking him for her long dead husband.  I reached out, snapping my fingers in front of her face and calling sharply to her.  When I got her to finally look at and respond to me, I got her story in an instant.  Husband and baby both sickened and died.  She wasn’t sure of what, just showed them to me as feverish and coughing.  She answered “Marie” when I asked her name, but kept reaching toward Hub with her insubstantial hands.  Her pain was a tangible presence in the car, she’d died of a broken heart.

“He’s not your husband.  He’s mine.  Your husband and baby are dead, and you are too.”  She turned big, pale eyes to me, uncomprehending.  “You are dead.  You’re a ghost, stuck here on the earthplane.”  I told her.  By this time we had arrived home.  Hub got out of the car, leaving me alone in it after he parked it in the garage.  Just me and the ghost.  Outside the car door, my chickens began to stir and cluck uneasily in their darkened henhouse.  It felt dark and heavy in the garage, as if the lights weren’t bright enough.

“I miss them so.”  She whispered.  “Why can’t I find them?  How did I get here?”  She was full of questions.  I don’t know how other mediums communicate with spirits, but I find it easier and truer if I stick to emotions and images with minimal words.  I show them what I mean.  So you’ll have to forgive me for translating some of those images, emotions and thoughts into sentences.  It makes an easier read and description of something that is sometimes difficult to transpose into words.

I also work very closely with my guides and guardian spirits.  I ask them to come close and aid the spirits I work with, easing their transition across the veil to home.  There in my garage, sitting in my car, I called in my guides and asked them to help locate this woman’s loved ones on the other side.  Marie continued to stare around the car and darkened garage, she was starting to get frightened and tune me out.  “Where did the man go?  Is that my husband?”  She continued to fixate on Hub.

“Hey, Marie.  I need you to listen to me for just a moment.”

“No.”  Indignant.  She didn’t want to listen to some random woman, she wanted to find her family.  I could understand that, but she wasn’t going to find them at my house.  “Why should I listen to you?”  Disbelief, scorn.  She sneered.

“I can try to help you find them, Marie.”  Again she turned those big, pale eyes on me.  Anger showed in them.  “You don’t know my husband.  I don’t know you.  Where am I?”  She was starting to get agitated, the atmosphere in the car darkened more, and it was hard to see out the windows.

When the spirits get upset, the only answer to their fear or anger is love.  I powered up my heart chakra, and offered her pure spiritual love.  I showed her I held only compassion for her and real desire to help.  “I want to help you, I want to try, and my guides want to help you too.”  Her expression of anger slowly melted, as she took in that I meant what I said, and that I wasn’t affected by her anger.

In Reiki II, my class learned a technique called the Bridge of Light.  It is a spiritual energy bridge offered to one who is about to die, or to spirits who have not yet crossed over.  For the dead, and the dying it eases their transition, and connects them with loved ones already on the other side of the veil.  I showed Marie the bridge, and offered the energy to her.  I offered her additional Reiki energy to help her heal her psychic wounds, and to help her retrieve the parts of her soul that she’d lost along the way.

Anger and mistrust dissolved.  “Truly?”  She was afraid to hope.

“Yes.”  I told her.  “And my guides mean it too.”  Marie touched the Bridge of Light with one foot, and her whole being lit up.  She took two steps, and smiled tentatively.  Her lips stretched wider as she followed the path laid out on the Bridge, aided by her own guiding spirits who met her and welcomed her before she’d traveled halfway across.  Her spirit lit brightly as the missing parts of her soul flew home to join her as she fully crossed the veil.

With an nearly audible pop, the atmosphere in the garage lightened.  It had a bright and sparkly feel, and the hens uttered soft coos as they settled back into sleep.  Marie blew me a light kiss and a thank-you as she joined her family on the other side.  I smiled and got out of the car.

“Everything okay?”  Hub asked as he threw the ball for our Lab to chase.  It glows in the dark, so she can find it at night.  I took a deep breath and looked around our yard, then back into the garage.  No ghosts.

“Everything’s just fine.”  I told him.

I’m pretty sure Marie was hiding in this room on the tour.

 

Wild And Weird, But What Happened To The Mayan Apocalypse?

Oh the best laid plans…you know the end of that quote.  I had all these plans to get so much writing done on my time off!  Blog posts queued up, WIP work, but darn reality anyway, threw me for a huge loop.

On the 19th, I woke up early to blood spattered all over the downstairs.  No kidding.  It wasn’t exactly a bloodbath, but someone had a big problem.  My 13 year-old male kitty, Jasper, had a ruptured abscess.

I know, ick!  He’d given no sign of having any issues, so it was a complete surprise to me.  I had a crisis and a meltdown.  I thought it was something way worse and I was convinced I was going to have to put him to sleep.  I cried a lot, then my brain kicked back into gear and I was able to get Jasper a little more cleaned up and a better idea of what was going on.  By the time Hub got home from work to help me get him to the vet’s, I had stopped crying hysterically calmed down, and figured out that maybe it wasn’t as bad as I had originally thought.  Note to self:  It’s better to think things through before going straight to “He’s gonna die!”

Kitty came home from the vet’s that night, and I said many grateful prayers while I watched over him.  He was pretty weak the first couple days, and it’s a good thing I did have time off.  He wouldn’t eat or drink on his own.  He would drink water if I gave it to him in sips from a syringe.  He nibbled delicately at the baby food that I presented to him on a spoon, but would turn his head away after a bare half-teaspoonful.  Which meant I was spending an awful lot of time on the floor of my bathroom to keep him hydrated and fed.

Sleeping is what he’s best at.

Now we’re in the home stretch, and he is well on his way to a full recovery.  Yay!  Stitches come out Wednesday and my two weeks of keeping Jasper isolated from the rest of the animals can finally end.  His brother, Sage stands outside and paws at the door, missing his wrassling buddy.  Sister Magic, on the other hand, has appropriated Jasper’s favorite sleeping spot in his absence.  It will be good to finally be able to get things back to quasi-normal.

Then, it was the holidays.  Meh.  I just was not that into them this year, the commercialism seemed overdone and tacky.  I wasn’t even sure I would put up a tree, I was in such a bah humbug mood.  But Jasper on the mend seemed like the best present I could ask for, and I began to feel a bit more celebratory.  So when Hub put up the tree on the 20th, I put up the ornaments.

I did end up decorating the tree once Hub put it up.  Can you find Han Solo and Gene Simmons?

Then, there was visiting with the grandkids.  Let’s just say, I never knew how much fun it was to run and scream and race through the house wielding an inflatable sword while chasing down a three year-old.  It got better when youngest grandson would abruptly slide to a halt and reverse course to dash after me, screaming just as loud.  I let him catch me and beat me up with his own inflatable weapon… a mallet with who on it?  Thor of course!  Joy!  I haven’t had so much fun since I was a kid!  Writing anything was a distant second to running and playing with small children I haven’t seen in months.

But what about that Mayan Apocalypse?  Big Nothing? Or…?

Oh Mayan Apocalypse, you were hyped and feared, but where were you?  No asteroid slammed into the Earth, no massive pole shift rearranged the continents and, to my utter disappointment, no aliens appeared in the skies above.  Worst of all, NO zombies!  So what was it all about?

It doesn’t matter what everyone else said.  In short, the Mayans said this was the end of one age and the start of another.  Sure other ages had ended in cataclysms, but this one was different.  This one was about a spiritual change.  You can read about it yourself, in this interview with a Mayan Elder.

There were lots and lots of expectations and predictions about this date.  What was I expecting to happen though?  Nothing so Earth-shattering.  But I wanted to observe the solstice and the galactic alignment as a sacred day, so I took the 21st off.  (And I wanted to be home, just in case there were zombies!)

The winter solstice is a time of rebirth, renewal and sparking the sacred fire of creativity, and I treated it as such.  I did a little something that day of everything I want to achieve in the coming year; writing, gardening, eating better and exercising, taking better care of myself and opening myself to greater spiritual growth.

It worked.  I felt the shift within, and I felt my meditations, my awareness step up to a new level.  I felt that influx of energy from the universe and knew that everything I wanted was within my reach.  More, I realized that the only one holding me back was…me.

I’m not saying I’m suddenly this perfectly aligned, spiritual being.  Ha!  The one thing about this date that got left out of all the hype:  December 21st marked the shift, the end of one age and the start of the next.  It was never about instant enlightenment or instant change, but about one cycle ending and another one beginning.  ‘Beginning’ being the operative word in that sentence.  We are at the very start of something wonderful, but all change comes with a measure of chaos and upheaval.  This next cycle is about raising our consciousness, about tapping into all those wonderful abilities that are latent or sporadic and bringing them fully to fruition.   We have a very long way to go, but I feel confident we can all get there.

I found this meme making the rounds on Facebook:

I take great joy and hope from watching old, outdated systems of thought and behavior die away to be replaced gradually with ones involving more humane treatment of our ecosystems and ourselves, greater awareness of Spirit, and greater realization of just how powerful we really are.

How did it go for you?

Weird Weekend – Between Lives

This weekend, I am thrilled to have a guest post on SJ Driscoll’s blog, Come Sit By My Fire.  She’s hosting a series on life changes called Being Between.

I’ve written about one of the biggest transitions in my life, leaving the job I loved at the San Diego Zoo to move to Seattle and become a nurse, Between Lives?  Don’t Micromanage The Universe?

Make sure you check out Charis Maloy’s piece on how she juggles multiple roles and plans for future happiness.  Lena Corazon talks about learning to love the spaces between and shares her poetry, and Louise Behiel describes keeping her sanity when it feels like she’s between a rock and a hard place.  These ladies stories are all inspiring, you won’t want to miss them!

Thank you to SJ Driscoll for hosting the Being Between series.

Weird Weekend – Paranormal And Technology

I’m not a ghost hunter, and I confess I have a hard time watching paranormal investigative shows.  It seems like all you get is a bunch of people running around either shrieking, or saying  “Did you see/hear that?”  Conversely, I do enjoy scanning YouTube for clips put up by the multitude of paranormal investigation groups around the country.  Something entirely different, in my opinion.  These are groups devoted (for the most part) to serious study of, and recording, paranormal phenomena, and are not for-profit or ratings driven.

I have not been out with an official ‘ghost-hunting’ group; I get plenty of encounters on my own, but I have to confess to a curiosity and desire to travel with one of these groups.  They have a lot of gadgets and devices that can record, measure and otherwise detect paranormal activity.  I have no idea how these work.  Something that seems to be on the rise though is photos of ghosts where nothing is seen to the human eye.

I found this collection on YouTube:

The advent of security cameras, both motion-sensitive and continuous record, has brought us videos of objects moving, flashing lights, and unexplained shadows while establishments are closed, locked and unoccupied by the living.  Like this example of a ‘ghostly head’:

I particularly like this one, from Hampton Court Palace.  They even talk about him on their website, they’ve nicknamed him ‘Skeletor.’

Creepiness, right?  Or just a tour guide in period costume?  I think it interesting that the Palace website is vague about exactly what it is.  According to the website, however, this is a fairly active area for ghosts in general, with public and staff reporting sightings or encounters.

Sometimes they move things, as in this rather dizzying video posted by Mass Most Haunted of their investigation at the Lizzie Borden House.

Could they be faked?  Sure.  Could some of them be genuine?  I think so.  I leave it to you to determine which you find the most plausible.

I’m not much with a video camera, but something I’ve always wanted to try is EVP.  EVP stand for Electronic Voice Phenomena.  In short, you take a recording device, ask questions and then hear voices on the playback.  It used to be done with reel-to-reel and cassettes, but now digital voice recorders are used, also they are heard on playback from video recordings..

These were captured at the Chapel on the Hill in Sedona, Arizona.

Have you done any ghost hunting?  Have you ever captured something weird on video or in a picture that you didn’t see when you were recording?  What’s your scariest encounter?

Weird Weekend – Reincarnation

 

That word conjures up a lot, doesn’t it?  Have you ever discussed, or considered that you may have lived a life, or many lives before?  Some are vehemently opposed to it, for religious, non-religious or scientific reasons.  Some believe it’s a lie of the devil.    Others point to the fact that there are more people alive today than in the past.  Their rationale follows; if we’re living over and over again, why would population numbers rise?

The question is often framed as:  Do you believe is reincarnation?  Or:  Is reincarnation real?  Very loaded questions.  If you ask the first, well, the answer is predicated upon the belief system of the person being asked.  A devout Christian will likely answer in the negative.  A Buddhist will give you an absolute affirmative.  Both are following spiritual belief systems, both have very different views of what happens to a soul after physical death of the body it inhabits.

Similarly the question of ‘real’ is going to depend on the views of the person answering.  To someone who thinks the concept of the soul is nonsense, or just superstition, asking if reincarnation is ‘real’ will only gain you rolled eyes and perhaps a snort of derision.  People who only consider scientifically verifiable facts as ‘real’ are unlikely to spend much time pondering the reality of the soul, or it’s disposition after death.

What if ‘belief’ was not necessary?  What if this world that we think of as ‘reality’ is only a stage for learning life lessons?  What if ‘real life’ is really on the other side of physical death?

I was listening to the September 11, 2012 podcast of Coast to Coast AM recently.  The guest that night was Rich Martini, an author and filmmaker who has looked at past-life regression cases and the experiences people have between lives.  He has a film and a book called Flipside, where he interviews hypnotherapists trained by Dr. Michael Newton and examines their cases.  Dr. Newton developed the Life Between Lives hypnotherapy method to help people access their soul memory.

After regressing 7000 people, a number of consistencies arose in the stories of what happens after death.  A meeting with loved ones and spirit guides who comprise your soul group, a review of the life just lived, planning the next life to be lived, and making agreements with the others in the soul group on who is going to play what parts in the upcoming incarnation.

Mr. Martini frequently used the analogy that life on earth is like performing a play on a stage.  Everyone in your life has a role to act out; as in a well-plotted story, the villain has a purpose as much as the good guy, who frequently learns a valuable lesson through the conflict.  Who plays the good guy and who plays the villain is something that is predetermined before birth in the between life stage, and roles are often swapped in multiple lives.  We are given the stage, but not a script.

So many other questions arise.  What about good and evil?  Why do some people do bad things?  Why, if we ‘choose’ this life, would bad things happen in it?  The answer is 42 (thank you, Douglas Adams, where ever you are now).  The answer makes no sense, because you don’t really understand the question.  It can be very hard for those of us on this side of the veil to understand why bad things happen, however once on the other side, these reasons become clear.  We only really understand when we are between lives.

Personally, I have had a past life regression that had a dramatic impact on me.  I went with a friend one day, about twenty years ago to a group regression session.  A little background:  since I was a little girl (like 3 or 4 years old) I had this horrible fear of dying in a submarine.  I had recurring dreams about it.  On my first visit to Disneyland I flat refused to get on the Submarine Voyage until my parents pointed out the submarine never actually submerged.  I can still remember tearfully asking, “It never goes under water?”  Only that reassurance convinced me it was okay to get on the ride.

Fast forward to my past life regression.  I found myself in a German U-boat that was sinking fast from a near miss.  The crew was in utter chaos, shouts in German, blaring alarms and flickering, fading lights filled my vision.  Nothing could stop our descent to the bottom, and soon we were in pitch black.  The hull crumpled after we hit bottom, we had enough time to realize we were all going to die.  My last thought was of my wife and son, left behind, and I could see them waving goodbye to me.  It was at this point the group leader brought us out of the regression, and I was still in the midst of dying and remembering my family.  To put it simply, I lost it.  I sat up, crying, sobbing and hysterical.  I brought the whole group to a standstill, the leader had to come over to help me, and my friend was looking at me like I’d grown a second head.  I know you don’t know me, but I don’t get hysterical.  You can’t, when you’re working with animals that might kill you.  I don’t have panic attacks, and I certainly don’t break down in front of groups, I hate having that sort of attention directed at me.  Yet, there I was in full meltdown.  Fortunately, the group leader was experienced enough to help me out, and I calmed down.

I have never had a submarine dream since.   I can look at submarines now without feeling short of breath, where previously, just seeing them in pictures or a movie would make me feel like walls were closing in and I couldn’t take a deep breath.  That whole irrational phobia has simply evaporated.

Was I once a German sailor on a lost U-boat?  I would love to take another regression and see if I can find out more details.  Do you think you have lived previous lives?  Are you interested in finding out more?  Have you had a past life regression session?  Check out Wikipedia for a really good article with lots of links about real research into past lives, and regression therapy.

Weird Weekend – Ancient Megalithic Cultures

Sure, you know about the Egyptian pyramids.

http://www.travlang.com/blog/pyramids-of-giza-a-landmark-in-the-history-of-architecture/

And you know about Stonehenge.

We marvel at these giant structures and wonder at the mystery of their construction.  There is controversy regarding when they were built.  Have you ever been to an ancient site?  I’ve been to Stonehenge, and even amidst the touristy trappings you can still feel the mystery and energy of the place.  It’s been called a calendar, an observatory and even a pen for sheep.

We wonder who built these places, and how?  How were such giant blocks moved by people whose only power source was their own muscle?  In the case of the pyramids, the blocks are so finely shaped and fitted that for the most part you still cannot fit a knife between.  Are these sites anomalies?  Did the local population just get really lucky and sort of figure it out and throw it together?

Most people have heard of the pyramids and Stonehenge, but have you heard of Puma Punku in Bolivia?  It is part of the Tiwanaku complex, for which there is limited data.  Dating for this site places it anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 to 36,000 years old.

Do those precise corners and perfect circles look like they were cut by hand with stone tools?  Local legends about Puma Punku say it is the place where the world was created.

Or how about Malta?  The temples on these little islands in the Mediterranean are dated by mainstream archeologists to 5,000 years ago and are considered the oldest free-standing megalithic sites on the planet.

What do these sites, located around the globe, have in common?  They’re all built with really big rocks.  Big rocks that have been shaped and fitted with a precision that is difficult to achieve today.  These blocks are so huge that modern cranes would have difficulty picking them up.

The other commonality is their amazingly accurate orientation, to the cardinal points as well as aligning with astronomical events.  Solstice markers are generally found at the temple sites.  Monitoring the skies is a long and painstaking endeavor.  To be able to monitor celestial events, and then translate that knowledge into gigantic stone buildings is not a feat of a hunter/gather level of development.  It requires precision in observation as well as construction.  It requires an advanced knowledge base and level of development.

But the question of when these places were built remains controversial.  Increasing evidence though is surfacing to show that they are much, much older than is commonly thought.   Accepted theories on the progress of civilization have us in a fairly steady upward march, placing us at the pinnacle of everything that has ever been known.  To suggest an advanced technological civilization in ancient history was dismissed as fantasy.  Yet the anomalies of these mysterious sites continue to confound us.

It is horribly difficult to date these sites.  Radiocarbon dating does not work unless you have something organic.  Other radiometric dating done on the stones themselves would only tell us when the rock was formed, not when it was dressed or placed.  So to date the temples we have to look at what surrounds the rocks, or what is under them, which would tell you when the stone was laid down.  So far as I know, no one has tried to move one of these megaliths to get to what’s directly under.

But how do you know if the organic material you’re sampling is really the oldest?  This question is not always satisfactorily answered, and yet it is still the main source of dating of these ancient megalithic structures.  So mainstream theory remained that humans didn’t start to organize into cities until about 6,500 years ago, in Sumer.

Enter Gobekli Tepi, and the modern archeological world is stunned.  Gobekli Tepe is located in Anatolia, Turkey, and it is dated to 9,000 to 12,000 years ago.  That date was reached by radiocarbon dating, so why is it more acceptable than others?  Because Gobekli Tepi was not discovered until 1964, up until then it was thought to be just a hill, until a survey showed otherwise.  So any organic material left at the bottom of the structures uncovered so far had to have been buried when Gobekli Tepe was.  I find it humorous that the Wikipedia article says it was built by hunter/gathers.

 

Other megalithic sites around the world.

Easter Island

Baalbeck, Lebanon. Estimated to weigh 1,200 tons. Just for comparison, average weight of the blocks making up the pyramids, 50 tons.

Lore Lindu National Park, Sulawesi

Somewhere along the way, we lost part of our history.  A big part.  These ancient sites that circle the globe offer us only an enigmatic snapshot of the ancient world, a distant past more than 10,000 years ago.  In light of the evidence uncovered at Gobekli Tepe, it is time to revise our historical timeline.  Some time in the past, a civilization existed that was capable of picking up and moving huge stone blocks with ease.  A civilization that was global in scope, or multiple civilizations with similar skill sets.

What’s missing?  The development of this civilization.  Currently there is no archeological data that demonstrates the rise of these cities, or the skills to build on such a grand scale.  It is as if these sites appeared suddenly on the earth, and this only adds to their mystery.  Recently, an underground chamber was discovered at Puma Punku using ground penetrating radar.  Could we be close to getting some of the questions surrounding this site answered?

Have you been to one of these mysterious places?  What was your experience?

I really love to hear from you!  Please share your thoughts.

Weird Weekend – Reiki, Is It For Real?

Two years ago I completed my Reiki Master Teacher training.  Reiki has been a journey that has quite literally transformed my life.  I am a better person because of it; I view people with far more compassion, I am kinder to myself, and I have level of contentment that I had not thought possible.  Yeah, really, it’s that good.

In this post, I wrote about what Reiki is, but the bigger question people want to know is, does it really work?  Ask someone who’s had Reiki, and you’ll probably get an enthusiastic ‘Yes!’  The most commonly reported effect of Reiki is relaxation; which everyone needs more of!  Our western society today is one that is driven by stress…we speak of needing caffeine (to speed us up), deadlines, gym, angry customers or bosses, after school stuff for the kids, not to mention paying the bills, keeping a roof over our heads and, especially in today’s economy, getting and keeping a good job.  We go, go, go, nonstop from the moment we crawl out from under the covers bounce out of bed till we drop our heads back onto our pillows late at night.

This is not normal.  This is not healthy.  If you think differently, you’re fooling yourself.  The whole body needs to be cared for; not only the physical, but the mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of our life require tending and nurturing.  We all need ‘down time’ or ‘me time.’  That is, we all need time to recharge and re-energize ourselves; we need to de-stress, to relax and to connect with the divine within.  There are many, many paths to this, Reiki is only one.

But does it work?  This is what most people want to know before they shell out hard earned cash for someone to lay hands on and say that healing energy is channeled through them.  I mean, can you think of any more woo-woo statement than that?

So, can its effects be measured?  In this study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Reiki was found to improve outcomes in patients after a heart attack.  This article discusses how Reiki produced measurable physiologic changes associated with relaxation and stress reduction.  This last article is not Reiki focused, but discusses how distant healing techniques produced statistically significant improvement in outcomes for AIDS patients.

In case you don’t follow the links, I’ll let you know that these are not blog posts, or opinion pieces in popular literature.  These are clinical trials published in peer reviewed journals.  Do they “prove” Reiki works?  Absolutely and conclusively?  No.  Do they demonstrate that Reiki, and other complementary spiritual healing techniques are worthy of further study?  Unequivocally, yes.

Reiki is not a magic bullet, it is an adjunct therapy.  It does not ‘heal’ or ‘cure’ the recipient, but it is doing something to facilitate improved health in those who receive it.  For those who are looking for a gentle, non-drug alternative to increasing their well-being, Reiki is a sound choice.

Here’s hoping you find that which helps you heal.

I really love hearing from you!  Drop me a comment, tell me of your Reiki experiences, let me know what you think.

P.S.  All pictures are under copyright to me.  Please ask permission before use.  Thank you!

Weird Weekend – Surgery And Spirituality

 

I had surgery, a hysterectomy, on Wednesday.  Everything went well, I’m healing nicely.  I want to send out huge thank you’s to all who offered prayers, good thoughts and healing vibes.  I firmly believe you all helped me get through something that was, if not very dangerous, very stressful, and I am grateful to each of you.  In the grand scheme of things, this wasn’t earth-shatteringly important, but it did cause me some worry and anxiety, and it was a good lesson in how to cope.

I’m basically a healthy person, and surgery was last on my list of desirable options.  Even though I work in healthcare, and understand intellectually that these procedures are safe and routine, the thought of surrendering myself to nurses and doctors I didn’t know freaked me right the f*** out was unsettling.  I’m a Type A, something of a control freak and letting someone I barely know cut me open, while someone else I don’t know at all keeps me asleep and alive was not emotionally easy to accept.  I spent most of the last month or so fretting.  Yeah, it wasn’t very helpful.  My mind knew that I’d be fine, I had no huge risk factors, but my emotions and fear-driven lizard brain were all screaming “You’re gonna DIE!”  Sometimes calming the internal lizard can be like trying to put out a volcano with a teacup a little challenging.

You’re all familiar with phrases like ‘give it up to God’ or ‘let it go’ or even ‘you create your own reality’ right?  There are any number of self-help books, gurus and websites who tell us that the universe will give us what we want, we only have to ask.  Have you ever read someone’s glowing report of how ‘the universe provided this’ or ‘I prayed and got my answer.’  But, how do we ask?

I had worked myself into a bit of a state.  “What if they find something really wrong down there, something they’re not expecting?  What if something goes wrong during the anesthesia?  What if I have a stroke, or a heart attack?  What if I die on the table?”  Seriously, I thought every one of those things and more.  I was worried about bad things happening during the surgery, and after; wound infections, internal bleeding, you know, sometimes having too much medical knowledge is too much.  I was so nervous I would cry when no one was around, I worried, I even thought about cancelling my surgery.  I stopped meditating, and that only made things worse.  I reached a point where I just wanted everything to stop, I needed to make the right decision, but I just didn’t know what that decision was anymore.  To cut or not to cut?  Surgery would help, would likely cure what I had going on, but there was no guarantee it would fix everything.

And then, one day when I was scrolling through Facebook, I saw a couple inspirational pictures.  The gist of the messages were ‘you create your own existence.’  Something clicked within me.  “Huh,” I thought, “if ever I needed to be able to create my existence, it’s right now.”  Then, I heard my spirit guide.  “You can do this.”  She told me.

“Do what?  Create my existence?  That would be awesome, because I’m sure not liking how I feel lately.”  I answered.

“Then, change it.”  She said.  “Here’s how.”  She showed me; it was beautifully simply and incredibly hard; she summed up in one word, Trust.

What is it you truly desire?  What reality would you create if you could?

I needed a perfect surgery and recovery, I needed for everything to go smoothly and easily, but I was expending far more time and energy worrying about, and visualizing everything that could go wrong, and being afraid.

The universe (or God, or whatever label you prefer) listens to us every moment of every day.  This one point is key:  The universe is always listening to you.  Always.  Now think about the day-to-day chatter that runs through your brain; what phrases do you tell yourself over and over?  What does the universe hear you saying about yourself?

What was I asking the universe for?  What was I telling it I wanted?  Fear, pain, anxiety.  I started asking for it months before my surgery, and it gave me exactly what I was asking for:  more fear, more worries, more stress.  Again, not very helpful.  As my spirit guide said, I had to change it.  It would take a conscious effort of will.

I took some time to rearrange my thoughts and tell the universe how I really wanted my surgery to go.  I pulled out everything I had in my spiritual bag of tricks and put it into play.  I smudged, I meditated, I spoke with my spirit guides and I poured Reiki over the whole process.  The message I got back from my spirit guides was:  “This will show you that ‘it’ really works, you really do create your reality.  You can do this, but you have to Trust.  Trust that this will really work, Trust that you can make this happen.  You have to let go of all that fear and anxiety, and replace it with love and trust.”

When asking the universe for something, it helps to keep it short and simple.  I adopted “Uncomplicated surgery and recovery” as my intention.  I said it out loud, I visualized it in meditation, and I offered Reiki to it, frequently.  If I found my thoughts creeping back to the negative, I brought them back into line by restating my intention.  Even if you’re not a Reiki practitioner, you can meditate on and visualize the outcome that you want, the energy will get where it needs to go.  When stating your intention, always keep it in the present, in the now.  Instead of using “I will xxx” or “When…” phrase your request to the universe as if it already exists.  In my meditations, I always say,  “I am a best-selling author” never “I will be a best-selling author.”

Here’s the trickiest part:  You have to let go of the outcome.  Yes, you’ve spent all that time visualizing and asking and meditating, it seems counter-intuitive to then just ‘let go.’  We want what we want, or we wouldn’t expend the effort to try and bring it about.  But if you get attached to the outcome, you start to attach definitions and restrictions.  The more defined and detailed your outcome is, the more desire and want you attach to it, the less likely it is to manifest.

Think of it this way:  I needed my uterus removed, but it would have been really stupid for me to try to tell the surgeon where to make the incisions, or how to operate.  Even though I have a nursing degree, and a fair amount of medical knowledge, how helpful would it have been if I’d insisted the anesthesiologist only use one drug, or that he could only start an IV in that vein, never this other one?  When you ask the universe for something, then try and tell it how to give it to you, it’s like trying to tell a surgeon how to operate on you.  It just doesn’t work.  You ask, then get out of the way and let the universe do it’s job; don’t try and micromanage!

I did everything I could on my end to ensure that surgery would go well; I started making better choices about my eating and exercise habits.  I rejoined the gym, and was pleasantly surprised to find that, although I’d added quite a few extra pounds, I could still do a good 45-50 minutes of cardio.  In the process, I lost 6 pounds!  Yeah!  If I worried, I repeated my intention, and I consciously made the time to offer Reiki daily.  In the end, though, I just had to Trust, I had to let go of my control and allow the surgical team to do it’s job to bring about my ideal outcome.  My stress level dropped amazingly, and I felt calmer, clearer and started to look forward to ‘the big day’ and how good everything would turn out.

Day of the surgery, and I feel the stress creep back in.  It’s harder to find my calm, and I’m a little snippy with the admit nurse.  I take a few moments to center, and I apologize.  She was gracious and compassionate; blessings on her!  I have a few quiet moments, so I ask my spirit guides to be near and they tell me “We’ve been here all along.”  Their loving presence is comforting, and I relax.  I smile and joke with the nurses and doctors.  My surgery was robot-assisted, and no one got my jokes about being operated on by Toasters.  How could it be there was not one Battlestar Galactica fan on my surgical team?  Tragic.  Hub rolled his eyes at me.  “Give it up, hon,” He advised.

Not the robot that operated on me.

Then, it was time.  The drugs started to flow and out I went.  My last thoughts were “I trust that everything will work out for the best, and I accept whatever happens.”  I woke up in recovery, I had wonderful care from excellent nurses, and I was home by 8:30 Wednesday night.  As I fell asleep that night, safe in my own bed, my guides said, “Now do you believe us?”

It really does work.  Try it for yourself!  You’ll probably be surprised.  Remember:  Simple is best, and don’t try and imagine what the process looks like.  Imagine the finished product and let the universe work out the details.

Reality check?  I realize that everything likely would have gone off just fine, even without all my spiritual practices.  I AM healthy, but my mental state…oh my!  If nothing else, my meditating gave me calm acceptance, and it certainly lowered my stress, which decreases the hormones associated with stress, which reduces tissue damage and inflammation.  Lots and lots of scientific evidence supporting this, as well as personal experience that demonstrates attitude is key to recovery.

Do you want to know the weirdest part of this whole experience?  The pregnancy test.  Even after I told them my husband was ‘fixed’ years ago, and asked, were they aware the surgery was to remove the baby incubator?  Yes, go pee in this cup so we can make sure you’re not pregnant, or we’ll cancel your surgery.  I guess the universe has a sense of humor too.

What have you asked the universe for?  What kind of answer did you get?

 

Meditation and stress reduction

More research on benefits of meditation

Venus Transit, Astrological Associations And Current Events

From this website: http://www.lunarplanner.com/HCpages/Venus.html

I’m really not much for astrology.  I say that only because I haven’t taken the time to really study it.  I have seen some really interesting correlations between personality and sun sign, but I don’t really know how well current stellar occurrences correlate with current events.  I’ve heard more than one astrologer state; “I predicted that because of xyz.”  However, I haven’t taken the time to follow up and find out if they were correct.

However, current events in the sky have had me pondering the whole question of astrology.  A couple weeks ago I wrote about the annular eclipse we had the ‘super moon’ before that, and of course we have the big alignment of our sun with the center of the Milky Way at the winter solstice on December 21^st, 2012.  Now this week, we have another unusual astronomical phenomena, and it’s also a relatively rare one.

June 5^th to June 6^th, 2012, the planet Venus will cross the face of the sun.  The last time she did this was June 8^th, 2004.  I say relatively rare because this particular event always occurs in pairs about 8 years apart, every 120 years.

It started me wondering again, if maybe the Mayans weren’t on to something with their calendar.  I don’t really buy into the doom-and-gloom apocalyptic aspect that some ascribe to this.  Because the Mayans never said the world was going to end, they said it was the end of an age.  Which also means the start of a new one.

I find it intriguing that in this particular year, which was so significant to a culture that had intricate knowledge of star movements, and the passage of time would have such a large number of unusual celestial events occurring within it, each one with it’s own distinct significance.

I’m not sure what that means, but in browsing through some different websites that describe what the astrological significance of this Venus transit means I found out that these transits tend to signify an expansion of consciousness, are generally marked by shifts in communication and commerce.  For example in the 1519-1526 transit, Magellan’s travels demonstrated that the Earth was a globe, and not flat.  From 1631-1639 national mail service was established in Denmark, and the 1874 pairing brought about the telephone.

Currently, we have seen the rapid expansion of the Internet and the advent of the smart phone.  People now have a whole new way of connecting and communicating.  We’ve all seen the results of this new, near instantaneous communication in the news.  Now, with global banking and currency systems trembling, some financial experts are suggesting new financial systems need to be explored.  This is apparently related to the fact that these transits occur during either the sign of Gemini or Sagittarius.

However, Venus is named for the Roman goddess of love, and so love in all it’s aspects will also be affected, as well as relationships.

I’m actually kind of excited to see how it all plays out.  If you’d like to check out the websites I read through, visit them here:

http://www.theastrologypage.com/Archives/transit_of_venus.htm

http://www.astrologywithgovinda.com/past-articles/Venus-Transits-Divine-Feminine.htm

Wild Wednesday – Taming The Wild Garden

A gardener’s work is never done, but even if you let things slide you can still reclaim what you’ve neglected.  I certainly neglected a corner of my garden.  It looked awful; scruffy and overgrown with weeds and grass.

This is half-way tamed.

See how long and luxurious that grass is back behind my grape and trellis?  Now picture that grass spreading all the way across the rest of the picture, surrounding the grapes and filling in wherever there’s dirt.  That’s what I started with, this is about half-way done with getting rid of the grass and weeds.

Have you ever pulled out a thick carpet of healthy grass by hand?  It’s not easy, I definitely got my workout today!  But what to do with all that grass?

Wild Wednesday Chicken Tip:

You can feed your weeds to your chickens, as long as you haven’t used any pesticides or weedkiller around them.  Hub and I call it ‘giving them some chicken salad.’  Okay, maybe that’s only funny to us.  Anyway, chickens love dandelions and grass, luckily two things I have in abundance.  They best part is you don’t even have to knock all the dirt off the roots, they love to scratch through it for bugs!

Araucana chick playing queen of the hill.

It took me all day, but I managed to transform my cluttered, scruffy neglected garden corner into this:

I had stared at that corner for weeks thinking, I gotta do something about that, but wasn’t sure what.  Aside from the obvious need to remove the overgrown sea of grass, I wanted to make it a useable space, but I didn’t know what I wanted there.  I was dealing with other projects, and because I wasn’t ready to do anything with the raised bed in that part of the garden either, I just sort of shrugged my shoulders at it.

As I tugged on grass, sifted the rocks out of the dirt, and carried each and every one of those pavers, it occurred to me that gardening is good for a number of things.

It teaches me that it’s okay to prioritize things.  That corner could have grown quietly for another week or two if need be, and had gone to the wild side while I took care of more critical projects.  Did the heavens fall from my neglect?  Heavens no!  One of the best lessons I ever learned was that perfection is not necessary.  I learned to let go of the obsessive perfectionism of my youth, and it’s done wonders for my stress level.

It keeps me active and physically fit.

It gets me outside, closer to nature.  I’ve learned to appreciate the movements of the seasons, and it gives me a deep sense of spiritual satisfaction to take my garden through the yearly cycle.  Gardening is a very spiritual experience for me, the physical activity is fairly routine, and this frees my mind to practice certain meditative techniques.

I take time to appreciate the beauty surrounding me, and say a little prayer of gratitude.  Does that sound cheesy?  Take a few moments with the flowers in my garden and see if you still feel the same.

I’m kind of into purple and pink, and it shows in a lot of my flower choices.

Gardening also teaches me patience.  Somethings are really worth the wait, the time and the care you put into them.  Even if you don’t get immediate dividends, the waiting itself can be a positive experience.

For example, I started an asparagus bed.

That’s not very exciting at all, is it?  Asparagus is best started as a crown, every little mound there contains one of these little beauties:

Kind looks like one of those face-hugger beasties from Alien, doesn’t it?  I’m lucky to live in a place where asparagus will grow like a weed…once it’s established, which is the tricky part.  You can see I’ve dug down (well to be honest, loving Hub dug the bed for me) made little mounds and lovingly placed each crown on it’s own little pillow of dirt and compost.

Cover them up, water and watch them put up little spears, adding more dirt as they grow upwards until the whole bed is filled in at the end of summer.  I’ll watch them put up little spears, which will turn into little ferny things, waiting for the bed to establish itself.  During that time, I’ll still have to maintain them, keeping their bed weed-free and watered.  I’ll do this for the next three years, only then can I enjoy my delicious, home-grown asparagus.  No, that’s not a typo…three years until I can harvest.  Once that bed is established though, it will produce for up to 30 years.  It’s a good thing Hub and I love asparagus, huh?

One of the best things my garden has taught me, is the value of delayed gratification.  It’s helped me develop my patience and, as odd as it sounds, an appreciation for waiting.  Think about that.  We all spend, or waste, time waiting…in line, at a stoplight.  Do you spend your time building your irritation, and focusing on how tense you are?  What if instead you gave yourself permission to let go of your anger and frustration?  Give yourself permission to take one or two deep breaths, and relax.  Focus on something you’re grateful for…your kids, your husband, your dog, your health, the list goes on, instead of concentrating on how angry you are to be sitting in traffic.

Try this a few times and see if it doesn’t put you in a better frame of mind.  I’m really curious to hear how it works for you!  Please drop me a comment and tell me if you found sitting at stoplights or standing in line a little more bearable if you take a few seconds to breathe, and relax.