Spirit is speaking. To all of us. Each of us has different receptors, and a different frame of reference, for those energies and messages. The blessing in this is if we can talk about our experiences we can learn something from each other and all of our understanding is expanded.

Last week, Bill Maher Did battle with the world of Marvel fandom over Stan Lee’s contribution to society. Two positions were expressed in this dustup:

• The flawed and conflicted heroes in these stories demonstrate qualities of heroism, integrity, and courage and provide models and inspiration for the Hero’s Journey, just like any other myth.
• The comic books and movies are merely diversions for children and once we grow up, we don’t need them anymore as we turn to more “Adult” sources of inspiration.

This was a conversation that had no redeeming value for me, because like most matters of personal preference, there are three answers to the opinions expressed:  I agree, I see it differently, or I don’t care. A much better response to something expressed by thousands of people that seems foolish to one is for the one to be curious. Why do all those people feel this way?

The “be adults” position seems to stem from the belief that once we are educated, grown, and responsible we no longer need myths, though we tolerate [spoiler alert] Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. Now, you may argue that as adults we do that for the sake of the children. Uh huh. How sad were you when your kids realized the truth? Kind of took the magic out of life a little bit, didn’t it? And I know adult couples who enjoy going to Disney World without the kids. It’s OK to enjoy joy and wonder where you find it.

Many of us believe in magic as a matter of course and can relate to the old gods as avatars of certain powers, or in some cases historical figures who became bigger than life. As myth, as woman or man, or as Supernatural being, they are models for understanding metaphysical and psychological concepts.

Whether Thor is illustrated and discussed in a book by Joseph Campbell or Neil Gaiman or in a comic book or movie by Stan Lee, he still represents applied Power and integrity – the ability to focus and direct immense energy toward a purpose worthy of who you are.
A few years go, I found myself in a conversation about the four Reiki symbols. Some folks were saying they are just ideas that teach how to channel the energy and after that, they are not needed anymore. Others use them during Reiki sessions to balance energy and send certain healing intentions to the person on the table. And some believe that these symbols, like the Germanic Runes, are the concept that they represent – that they are portals to the archetypal energy. So like Guides, Angels, and other helping Spirits, these symbols have consciousness and the power to support us.

And so it is with the forms of divination we consult. Of the hundreds of Oracle and Tarot decks, you probably own a few. Why those? They were attractive to you for some reason. If you are Runecaster, your resonance with those symbols allows Spirit to communicate with you. If you are a journeyer, the entities, animals, and symbols that you encounter have personal meaning for you, based on your question.

So when we encounter our symbols as omens or messages from Spirit, we are hearing the answer to questions that face us. That’s the purpose of divination.

But symbols can also support manifestation and healing by the way we use and arrange them, charge them with intention, and stay focused on that intention through the symbol. Whether you learned bout Thor in a Marvel comic or A scholarly work on the gods, you can use symbols associated with Thor – a lightning bolt, a hammer – to empower your intentions.
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Reclaiming Your Sacred Path leads you to find what ideas, myths, experiences, and symbols hold meaning for you and the sources you find have truth for you, and to make them part of your life to bring energy and joy to your journey.

A couple of Saturdays ago, like most mornings, I consulted the Mystical Shaman Oracle. A one-card reading for myself to guide my day. I was shown the Vision Quest card. And the instruction was to “keep seeking until insight is gained. Go out in nature and ask for wisdom.”

I perform divination to guide my day and at significant moments in the year like my birthday or Samhain. And if you ask, it’s always a good idea to listen to the answer. So I went to Earth Sanctuary here on Whidbey Island to get out in nature, as the oracle suggested. I had in mind to walk the labyrinth, walk the Medicine Wheel, and visit the Cottonwood Stone Circle.

There was a little voice at the back of my mind saying today was not the day to do the Medicine wheel. But I had made a plan and so I was set on doing it.

I have been on the main path so many times I don’t need to see the signs anymore, so I made a left at the first junction expecting to arrive at the Medicine Wheel. After walking about twice as long as I remembered it, I realized I had turned too soon and ended up on the “middle path” which I had not walked before. I decided to go with it and see where it would lead me, figuring the little voice was right. About halfway up, there was a sign that said “Detour – Muddy trail ahead! To avoid mud, take this detour.” Since I didn’t know where I was going, I chose the detour – but realized after I passed the spot of the detour there were three choices – turn back, take the detour, or engage with the mud. That felt familiar. How many times have I backed off, or bypassed, rather than engage with my inner mud.

Each option has natural consequences. Backing off is rarely an option, though being stuck is certainly always there for the taking. Engaging with the Shadow is essential for our growth. Bypassing usually just postpones the inevitable, but even that at least keeps us in motion and there will be lessons ahead that perhaps we can successfully learn to make us stronger when the mud we bypassed confronts us again.

The middle trail led to a place I had forgotten about -  the Infinity Tower, which represents the cosmic axis, the joining of earth and heaven.

So during this walk, I attended to the Oracle’s message and opened myself to my surroundings – the croaking frog, the cool air, the filtered light, the beautiful mixed tree canopy, and the peace. Here is what I heard.
“Your vision for your Sacred Path is a declaration. You commit to the purpose you will serve, the principles and values that will guide you, and the practices and disciplines that will sustain you. It is not a picture of the end of your path because the choices and decisions you make ensure that the ending is in flux. You change the future each time you face a crossroad and choose, so the end is not determined.

And when the need is there, a sign will appear pointing you in the direction of your intention. You and only you must choose –which way to turn at the crossroads, the companions and resources you will take on your journey. It’s when you get moving and travel your path that Spirit can support you.”

The purpose you will serve is the one that you and your Guides, Angels, and Higher Self agreed to before you entered this lifetime. Careful consideration and divination to retrieve the essence of what you believe it to be is essential to be at peace with your journey. As you go inward you are looking for those things that have always resonated for you. Using Divination, pathworking, and journey work, you can come to a decision about what feels right to you. And you can affirm that purpose.

The principles and values that will guide you are reflected in the things for which you will take a stand. Will you trade instant gratification for a sense of integrity? Is kindness toward and service to others paramount in your life? Is your soul mission reflected in the growth and development of your children and grandchildren? For what would you risk everything?  These values allow you to develop guiding principles, the guardrails for your life journey.

The practices and disciplines you choose to sustain you are those things that make you feel closer to Deity, help you plumb the depths of your unconscious to discover what is true for you, and make continual progress in mindfulness.

Once you have a vision, you have established your North Star. It is your principle means of navigation – deciding if you are on or off course in your Spiritual journey. Your guiding principles allow you to set personal boundaries and choices about what you will accept in your life, and the means to edit what gets in. Your disciplines and practices are the means for the journey inward.

You may know the actual North Star as Polaris, and you would be right. But according to Wikipedia, due to the precession of the equinoxes, a different star occupies that place in the remote past and the distant future. 3,000 years ago, the star Thuban in the constellation of Draco occupied the place of the North Star.

Similarly, your soul purpose will seem immutable when you reclaim your sacred path. But last time you were here, you were following a different star. And next time, you will again. 
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   Reclaiming Your Sacred Path Podcast

On December 6, I will be talking with Laura Tempest Zakaroff, "artist, author, blogger, designer, artist and Witch to name a few." Please check out her website, http://www.lauratempestzakroff.com/ . We'll  discuss her work and her book, Sigil Witchery:  A Witch's Guide to Crafting Magic Symbols.

Please plan to join us at 6:00 PM Pacific/ 8:00 PM Central/9:00 PM Eastern time. Here is the link to the show:
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  http://tobtr.com/11088187

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I’ve been lucid dreaming and doing pathworking quite a bit in the last couple of weeks, and I received an insight about a subject we discuss a lot – that we are here by choice, we came with a purpose, and our task in this life is to reclaim that purpose and walk our life path according to our plan for our soul’s evolution.

You know – or should – that you are a Spiritual being having a physical experience. Our eternal souls never die, though our bodies and minds are in a continuous cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth.  We didn’t necessarily ask for everything that happens to us and the consequences of those things, but everything that happens to us and that we initiate in the world of form contains a lesson that will contribute to the evolution of our souls.

Between death and rebirth we make an agreement with ourselves, our Higher Self, our ancestors perhaps, and Spirit Guides. After reviewing what we did in the lifetime we just left, including the lessons we learned and the ones we bypassed or didn’t quite complete, which we may need to repeat,  we come to agreements about our focus for the next life.  What purpose will we serve, what lessons will most contribute to our soul evolution? And once we decide the Soul mission, we consider who will come with us. With whom do we have unfinished business? With whom would we best engage in the lifetime to come? And how can we contribute to others’ growth?
If that’s all true, great Divine plan! Why don’t we remember after we’re born?

This is the Great Forgetting. It is the reason I place so much emphasis on creating your life path vision in Reclaiming Your Sacred Path workshops and individual work. Some explain it as a consequence of the trauma of the birth process and the undeveloped brain capacity of the infant. The delay between arrival and the development of at least pre-adolescent cognitive ability means we lose conscious awareness of those agreements.  Plus, we undergo intensive training from birth to cognition. We learn that parents and other adults are to be trusted, that institutions must be respected, and we are given an explanation for how we got here and what we’re supposed to do to live as a human being. And all of that must be obeyed, or there are consequences, which instills fear, and the inevitable mistakes and violations induce guilt.

A Course in Miracles states that the great forgetting was caused by the development of the ego.  When God’s creation asked one little, insane question – What would it be like to be separate from God? – All of existence as we know it sprang into being in our collective imagination and the rest is literally history. In this cosmology, the ego blasts us with guilt for having “killed” or abandoned God, and fear of what his wrath will do to us if he finds us.

And so we play a game with God in this scenario – “If I don’t look at you, you can’t see me,” like an ostrich “hiding” with its head in the sand. Everybody knows you’re here, dude.

So the Great forgetting is the result of guilt and fear. Whichever cosmology you prefer, you receive clues – significant number combinations that consistently appear, omens, coincidences, déjà vu experiences, instances of telepathy, intuitive knowing, spectral visitations. All of these are messages from our higher selves, rapping on the door of our awareness, to awaken to the splendor of what we really are.

We actually experience simulations of the great forgetting very frequently in our mundane lives, which I think of as little forgettings – dreams we half remember or forget after waking, the inability to remember all the details of a Shamanic Journey or visualization/pathworking. This made me wonder if we have trouble remaining in the “Alpha” state of astral travel and dreamwork because of the echo of fear in our minds that reentering our true Spiritual state however briefly will expose us to the God we have disobeyed or cause us to abandon our human training. So we forget, and are then we’re safe for the moment.

I think the key to the great remembering – recovering your soul purpose so you can walk your sacred path – may be to stop ourselves from allowing those lessons to slip away. This is the value of journaling. When we journal our psychic and super-conscious experiences we are writing a letter to our “lower” self – the physical, mental, and psychological being we act as in this life -  from the perspective of our higher selves. Our true wizard nature informs our muggle selves that there is more to us than meets the eye. Our lower self may report what happens, but our higher self knows what it means. If we journal both, it helps us raise our level of awareness and make progress in the same way that regular exercise gradually increases our fitness levels, making us capable of more.

But we are not here to just observe, or spend our lives in the dreamtime or introspection. to learn the lessons we came here to learn, we have to engage, learn to be in this world but not of It as the Bahai’ writings put it. This does not mean not to care, become a new-age bliss bunny and pretend all is well when it’s not. That is spiritual bypassing. We must respond to what confronts us in our lives and answer it with Spirit. Our lessons are learned through engagement – in our devotions, engagement with Deity; In our Magic, with the Spirits who support us. Our guidance comes from within, our higher selves communing with Spirit. Our lessons come from our work, our relationships, how we spend our time and attention, and the way we manage our physical and psychological well being.
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Mindful of our true nature, we can choose to create, act, and respond to what confronts us for the highest good of ourselves and others. This is the result of resuming Your Sacred Healing Journey.
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Reclaiming Your Sacred Path is back on the air on Pagans Tonight Radio Network  on Blog Talk Radio every first and third Thursdays of the month at 9PM Eastern time/8PM Central time/6PM Pacific time. Please join me, or listen to the podcast later! Here is the link to the next show, with Dr. Dennis Dossett, discussing Conscious Living on November 15:

http://tobtr.com/11066227
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The true energy of business is the incredible power and brilliance of the human spirit.

Every outcome, dollar of profit, increase in the dividend, and innovative solution to a complex problem is the result of human effort.

Maybe you are an individual employee, or sole proprietor running your own business, or in charge of a unit of an organization that employs you. Maybe you’re a senior leader, or a consultant to one, and to achieve results, you need to get the best from a group of motivated, engaged and productive people. Whether or not to expend that effort is a choice, and that choice comes from within.

Every human being is wired to be productive. We come with an operating system that includes perception, the ability to channel those perceptions into an intention to make something happen, and the capacity to draw on the one energy of the Universe to achieve our personal version of greatness.

The decision to bring that level of potency, creativity, and power to our work is a personal choice  – whether at home or in an office, in a field or in a factory or a skyscraper, raising children, raising money for a non-profit, or raising corporate profits.

The important thing is that you have a vision for how you contribute to the world, you know the values you serve, and you are willing to do the disciplined work of building your skills and knowledge so you can make that contribution.

That is the external expression of your sacred path.

​The internal path we travel, through our aspirations, our shadow, and our relationship to Spirit, requires us to address where we are in relation to our dreams, identify what’s stopping us, envision what’s possible, and find within ourselves the strengths and the power to bring those possibilities to life.

There is one power in the universe. And we are using it every day. Every time you focus and direct your energy toward the completion of a task or the achievement of a goal, you are calling upon this one energy. And it will respond to your requests.

We are surrounded by and living in this energy. And as long as we allow it to flow through us, to operate in our lives, we can feel whole and productive, set priorities, and get everything done. But when things are out of balance and we keep pushing and driving relying on our own reserves, we become depleted, exhausted, burnt out, sick, injured, unable to continue.

And for many, the first response is to believe we can’t change our lives. We blame our stressors and see them as inevitable. So we find our nurturing and comfort through medication, addictions, and diversions. But the truth is we each have access to an inexhaustible supply of power to manifest what matters most to us in our lives if we choose to do so -first, by taking accountability for our choices; second, by getting into action toward manifesting what we want; and third, by calling upon that energy to support our decisions for our highest good and the highest good of those around us.

Many of us have developed great skill in tuning in to the emotional state of others. We call ourselves empaths.

Being able to identify your own emotional state, and sense the emotional state of another person before you speak or act, is called emotional intelligence, and is a good thing.

However, when we take on the emotional state of others, we are at the mercy of who is around us. If we are too open to others’ criticism, we will wilt in its presence. If we are dependent on others’ positive feedback to validate us, then when they turn their attention elsewhere we will settle into our default state of self-perception. If we feel inadequate without validation, that is the state we will fall into. The key to maintaining our balance is to recognize and maintain our own autonomy and power.

Dr. Masaru Emoto work showed that the molecular structure of water can be affected by positive and negative messages, harmonious and discordant music. Negativity and discord cause molecular distortion. Positivity and harmony cause the development of beautiful crystalline structure. We also know this works with plants, how could we think that a diet of unrelenting negativity would not affect humans, causing whole groups to adopt a fearful perspective and attack others in response?

Sound familiar?

Here are two strategies that are available to us to maintain our own autonomy and emotional well-being in the face of energy coming at us from without:

• Self-love, knowledge and appreciation – not narcissism, a true and genuine accounting of both our strengths and the shadow work still before us, loving ourselves for what we have accomplished and for our ability to learn the lessons before us.
• Clear and healthy boundaries.

Four things will allow us to maintain healthy boundaries by helping us filter out things which are not in our highest good, and let in things that are.

• Creating a clear vision of the life you want, not just defining what you don’t want
• Knowing and doing your best to live the values and principles that define integrity to you, To me, those values should be consistent with the principle , “Do as you will, but harm none – including yourself.”
• Learning to recognize the two voices in your head - your inner critic, who keeps the inventory of your errors and “failures,” and your inner coach, who reminds you of all you’ve accomplished and your ability to work your way out of whatever you have gotten yourself into.
• A plan for learning, growth, creating positive change, and maintaining your resilience

We will be able to let in those things we judge to be in our highest good and release or refuse to admit those that are not if we can create these four conditions in our minds and use them in solving problems and making decisions.

I walked Green Lake in Seattle today, and saw my first baby ducks. I was very happy and  loudly said "Baby Ducks!" which clearly shows that my Soul retrieval took since one of the parts to return was my enthusiastic inner child.  My next comment was, "We need more ducks." Wasn't sure where that came from, I just loved those little ducks.

As a totem or power animal, Duck represents living in the moment, a focus on relationship and family, and a mystical quality of moving between the realms by being able to travel in air and water, and on land 

This week, I found myself thinking about themes of rebirth because Tuesday was the Pagan holiday of Beltane - a festival day celebrating growth and new beginnings.

This is one of the two times in the Pagan calendar – the other being Samhain, or Halloween in popular culture – when we believe the veil is thin between the worlds, and good times for divination and devotion and connecting with the Ancestors.

It's easy to see why Beltane is about rebirth – the sun is strengthening, the woods and fields are greening, and the energy is all about fertility and growth. There are many rites of passage that create a form of rebirth – initiations of all kinds provide a fresh start. Many spiritual disciplines have three levels, some more – and each level is complete with an initiation, which introduces us to the cosmos as a changed being.  Changed, but not new.

Each new beginning, we are building on what we have learned in the passage before.

Our experiences shape us – and change our capability for learning and growth. Which is why your sacred path is only yours. Your path leads to the same place as all other paths - we are all going Home - but the route is determined by your past experience and lessons learned.

So at Beltane, we have a new Spring time – but the trees don’t start over – they will add a ring in the coming months, and grow a little bigger. And so will we. Through experience and study, we'll grow in capability toward the fulfillment of our sacred purpose.

We'll put on a layer of experience and growth. So w have not come full circle, rather we have reached the same compass point in our spiral of growth.

Our life experiences shape us – and when you envision and follow your own sacred path it allows you to do choose the best growth experience  for you, like a Bonsai expert trims in just the right places, allowing for the best growth for the tree.

We may look at our lives and see what is missing, what has perhaps passed us by, or has not yet been accomplished, but in this Springtime, please look at all you have achieved, what all you have been through has taught you and those around you, and the blessings you have – including how the seeds of your effort in the past year are now sprouting, greening, and becoming because of the energy, care and love you have put into them.

I wish for you to walk your sacred path with wisdom, strength, and joy this year. Because we need way more ducks.

The evidence is all around us – Spring is, well, in the process of Springing, and everything is waking up. In one short week we will celebrate Beltane – May Day – the festival of fertility and growth and new beginnings.

What are you launching this Springtime? What lessons have you brought forward into new plans and hopes and dreams?

The power of our manifestation is related to the power of our preparation. We have generated new initiatives, aspirations, and intentions based on work we have done in the dark half of the year to review the past for lessons for the future. Hopefully, we have released what no longer served us, cleaned out our physical and metaphorical closets, and have energy and capacity for what’s to come.

A couple of weeks ago, I began to see that for a long time my path had become a process of reacting to what happens, using divination and manifestation of various kinds to explore and address these things, and then reflect on how well or poorly I had done so. I began to realize that many of the issues and dramas that used to recur in my life have abated. I take that as a good sign. At the moment, I don’t have to respond, react, and assess my responses and reactions based on my desire to walk my path with integrity.

I felt good about that, and then went inward to ask myself how things are going. And I found decisions yet to be made and less than ideal conditions, and that each of those things had a history. So even though the drama has abated for now, I continue to peel the layers of the Shadow, as do we all, and I engaged with a Shamanic practitioner for a soul retrieval for myself.

I will say that things are shifting. It was a powerful experience, one that continues to unfold in new ways of thinking, new ways of feeling, and choices being made. Because every choice we make sets a new wheel in motion.

We talk about the light and dark halves of year as times for action and reflection, and that is the Solar view, the medium picture – the big picture is our life time view, with occurrences like our 30-year Saturn returns, and other things related to the slower planets. But there is also the shorter story of the cycles of the Moon.

At the New Moon, governed by the Maiden Goddess of creativity and joy, we set new intentions for growth and manifestation. At the Full Moon, governed by the Mother Goddess, we send gratitude for what we have received and the fruits of our work. In the Waning Moon, governed by the Crone Goddess, we apply our psychic and intuitive abilities to clearing what must be released in preparation for the next cycle of growth.

And it occurred to me that the annual Solar cycle, predominantly about yang, projective outward-focused energy is about making things happen and putting things away when we’re done, sharpening our tools for the next round. The monthly Lunar cycle, predominantly about yin, is the inward-focused receptive, reflective energy that helps us consult our hearts and intuition for what is in our highest good.

In the learning cycle of Thought (divination), action (manifestation) and reflection (healing),  reflection is the phase of both year and month when we take stock of what we have learned to fuel our intentions for growth. And all of it, every inward and outer experience, is about the continued evolution of our immortal souls.

I want to thank my friend Justice Bartlett for completing my thoughts about this post by sharing her Luna Moth experience on Facebook – the Luna Moth was the Spirit messenger who joined me in my Soul Retrieval. Either everything is a coincidence, or nothing is a coincidence.  I choose the latter.

When you achieve your dreams, it’s not so much what you get, it’s who you have become in achieving them. – Henry david Thoreau

 
“So…my Spirit will come to you without shame.”

If we made the journey today, would we arrive at our meeting with the Holy Mystery without shame? Or are we still carrying it with us?

When someone compliment you on an achievement, a trait or characteristics they admire in you, or tells you how glad they are that you are in their life, where do your eyes go?

If you’re like me, your ego wants to pull them down, so you can hear the contrary script running under the surface of your thoughts, a script written by the experiences, beliefs, mistakes, and self-judgment that reside in our shadow that are the cause of our shame. Too painful to look at, too powerful to ignore.

Shame we need to drop to meet our Creator with straight eyes.

Because when we meet our Holy Mystery, we are going to hear the truth about ourselves.  We are going to be told that we are blessed beyond every measure, that we are loved beyond any need to atone.

Every life experience serves as a lesson for the growth of our souls and an opportunity to choose love – the voice of our Higher Selves -  or retreat to the fear of the ego.  We always have the choice to remember who we truly are – to embrace the messages from those who appreciate us, and from our Creator.

Your Higher Self is there to empower you and encourage you to move forward. Your ego’s job is to stop you from leaving your comfort zone. And it is merciless in the memories it will dredge up – the things you most regret doing or saying and the chances you most regret not taking.

Chief Yellow Lark’s prayer affected me deeply the first time I heard it. I felt the words “May I walk in beauty” explode in my heart, creating a longing for connection and a feeling of expansive love for creation. It made me listen to the wind as the voice of the Creator, to see each leaf and rock and creature as a messenger of Spirit, and it taught me that my only foe is my fear of embracing my shadow.  

It also made me think about who the real teachers are. Spirit is the teacher, all of creation and all of life is the classroom, and we have three instructors always available to us –

• Our higher selves who know our purpose in this life and can guide us to the best path to take;
• Our hearts, which are our Spiritual GPS – as Abraham continually remind us, if something feels wrong it is. If something feels right, consider it and consult the third teacher
• Our frontal lobe, our cognitive ability – our discernment. If something sounds too good to be true, or we feel the energetic exchange is unequal, it probably is.

And as A Course in Miracles tells us, a Miracle (a change in perception, aka learning) is performed by one who temporarily has more for one who temporarily has less. Our fourth teacher is each other.
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Many have written that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. All of these teachers – Spirit, our Higher Selves, our Hearts, our minds, and each other – stand ready. We just have to straighten our eyes so we can perceive and receive the love and support that is already surrounding us. Embrace the shadow, and look over its shoulder at the beauty that surrounds us.