Posts filed under ‘faith’
Baby Baptism
I created a baptismal ritual for Henry that my partner helped me carry out under the full moon. I opened the circle with salt, sage and a knife, lit a candle and incense and read the following invocation/blessing/prayer, during which I baptized Henry with water, then blessed him with a crystal and lotus oil. I closed the circle by walking it 3x while ringing a bell to thank and dismiss the entities who attended us.
Baptism Ritual for Henry:
Hail to the Guardians of the Above, Below and Within, the Neteru of Egypt: Isis, Nepthys, Bast, Anubis, Osiris, Ptah, Khosu, Nekhbet-Mother-Mut, Set, Horus, Hathor, Khnum, Nut, Geb, and Ma’at. We ask that you evoke the power and potential of Henry’s spirit, that he may fulfill the Divine Plan and be a blessing to all he meets.
(Face North) Hail to the Guardians of the North who hold the foundations of the Earth. We ask the Earth to connect Henry with pas wisdom, with beauty, with peace, and with the season of change.
(Face East) Hail to the Guardians of the East, sender of the winds. We ask the Air to give Henry access to enlightened communication, words of power, music, poetry, and laughter.
(Face South) Hail to the Guardians of the South who hold the Sacred Flame. We ask that Fire to activate the power of protection, faith, confidence and courage within Henry’s life.
(Face West) Hail to the Guardians of the West, Keepers of the Seas. (Baptize) We ask the Waters to attune Henry to the divine energies of the multiverse: the Buddha Nature, the Christ Consciousness, Krishna Vision, the Violet Flame, Reiki, Yggdrasill, Luna, Gaia, and the Golden Light within which we all merge as ONE.
(Bless with lotus oil & quartz crystal)
May he find his voice,
May he speak his truth,
May he walk the spiral path of the soul warrior with love, compassion,
wisdom, courage, faith, patience and forgiveness for himself and others.
May we as his parents guide him from the enlightened perspective of our Higher Selves.
May we be transformed by the sacrifices we make into our Best Selves.
I ask the gods and goddesses, Bujddhas and bodhisattvas, Earth, stars, angels (Gabriel, Michael, Uriah the Healer and the rest), fairies (especially Princess Aquazephyr and Foxy’s family), Saint Germain, MAlachi and all enlightened beings to bless and lead us each day of our lives.
Amen, amen and amen.
So mote it be.
Understanding Life’s Challenges
Image via JonathanParker.org
I’m on Ross Bishop‘s email list, and today this was just what I needed to read. I hope you will find it as inspiring and encouraging as I did. (All words are his, but the emphasis is mine).
UNDERSTANDING LIFE
by Ross Bishop
One of the difficulties people have doing spiritual work is that even after all that has been shared with us, we have a poor understanding of what life is about. Put in the simplest terms, your spiritual development is not completed and you came to earth to move the process forward. Earth was created as a learning place for your growth and development.
Today when challenged, you are not able to hold the God Space. Instead you move into fear, feelings of inadequacy and self doubt. When things go wrong you blame yourself, others, get angry at God or the world for your troubles.
Although we rarely see life this way, our dilemmas are really opportunities for learning. The key is to shift our perspective from being a victim to becoming a student of life. A big part of the problem is that the learning system, although extremely effective, is painful and not entirely straightforward. The saving grace is that our conflicts, although unpleasant, can do no permanent damage.
Having free will does complicate matters. Because of free will, any changes you make must come from within, they cannot be given or taught. They must be experienced and accepted as your own personal truth. The most powerful way to help someone who has free will find the truth is to first convince them of its opposite. This may seem convoluted, but over time, faced with the growing conflict between false belief and the truth, there is nowhere else for a person to turn but to the truth. Because the choice is individual, when you make that shift, you will hold the truth more deeply than is possible by any other means. Learning in this way respects your free will and insures that your newfound truth will be unshakable.
Before you came to earth you were with The Creator. The limitations in your consciousness were not an issue, they could not create any difficulties there. However the moment you separated from The Creator to come here, the limitations of your consciousness were exposed. In addition, in order for the learning process on earth to work, you had to temporarily forget your connection to The Creator. Otherwise, nothing that happened here would have caused conflict for you to learn from.
Because of your inner uncertainty and vulnerability, when you left “heaven” you felt as though you had been cast out into the cold, uncaring vastness of The Universe. You concluded that you had been abandoned, unwanted, unworthy and unloved. None of that could be true, they were completely impossible, but your Misunderstanding was profound and deep. This was intended. Your feelings of unworthiness and unlovability would serve as the pivots around which your earthly learning experiences would evolve. They would form the foundation for the learning you needed.
Your limited consciousness was unable to grasp the greater truth of who you really were, and so you chose to believe you were flawed. And you have been working to resolve that Misunderstanding ever since. The beliefs that developed out of the separation have shaped and twisted every experience you have ever had. Responding to the energy of the Misunderstanding, The Universe creates situations to help you work through your false beliefs in a manageable context.
For example, we were all hurt in childhood. That is not accidental. It is a setup designed into the life process to trigger your inner uncertainties and create false beliefs. Remember that life on earth has been set up to convince you that you were unworthy, unlovable and even possibly damaged so that over time, you would reject those beliefs and embrace who and what you really are. The fact that this happens for every child on the planet should convince you that this is not some random, happenstancial occurrence. It is a planned and intended, integral part of your learning process. Any conflict between a belief and the truth must eventually be resolved for the truth. You can divert things for a while by living in your ego, but there is always a price for that.
Your childhood experiences would propel you into a lifetime of difficult experiences that would ultimately lead to an expanded consciousness. It is not a pleasant or enjoyable process, but healing your childhood wounds, learning to move beyond the ego and your beliefs and live in the truth, will help resolve your inner wounding and bring you closer to The God Space. From the human perspective, the learning process can seem uncaring and callous, but we need to remember that this is God’s agenda, not ours. God loves you, but will not be dissuaded from His plan if your ego gets dinged. Actually, the pain that comes from your ego being dented is a very important part of the learning process.
Most people get caught up in the struggle and fail or refuse to realize that while they are getting the stuffing kicked out of them, there is a far more significant process taking place. We feel hurt, remain victims, and rarely raise our heads high enough to get above the fray and witness the learning being asked of us. The change, by the way, is always about moving to greater compassion and the stuffing you lose isn’t real anyway. It is something we are better off without. It is when we paint ourselves into a corner and are faced with the either/or of “surrender or die” that most of us challenge and eventually surrender, our false and limiting beliefs.
Finding ways to trust in God’s guidance and make the “leap” to another way of believing, leaving your wounds and scars behind, requires finding the faith that if you leap, you won’t simply crash and burn or be left out in the cold. That is why, even though most of our connection to The Creator has been camouflaged, there always remains a chord of light to build faith on. We need to find something to trust, either a belief system or a teacher we can have confidence in to help us make the leap.
Your Misunderstandings profoundly affect everything you do.
***
To get on Ross’ e-mail list, visit his website.
Love Is My Guiding Force
"Wonder" by Alex Grey
“All lovingly unfolds through time and space
Life constantly transforms, but in essence nothing changes
There is nothing to fear, there is only love
I am one with the Universe and stars
Love is my guiding force.”
- Toni Carmine Salerno
Fairy Messages
The following are some of my recent drawings with messages I have received from the fairies during meditation over the past several weeks. I hope this lightens your heart as it did mine 
More play! More laughter! More dancing! More sunshine! Follow your bliss and we will bless you!
Beware kill-joys and closed minds. They act like candle snuffers for fairy light.
Remember that what is Unseen is more True than what is felt, seen and heart in the visible realm. Keep your focus on the Spirit and all will be well
.
Keep growing plants, drawing, dancing, playing and looking/listening for beautiful surprises from the Universe. This will help you.
We are always here for you. We will help in times of need.
Play! Be joyful!
Don’t forget to dance, delight in plants and animals and let your whimsy lead you. The more you do, the more we can play with you.
My Morning Prayer
Source, keep my channel clear.
Gaia, keep me balanced.
Spirit, lead me like a child in right thoughts, right words and right actions.
I invoke the love, wisdom and power of my higher consciousness to guide me in the plan,
To illuminate, inspire and clarify my mind,
To transform, transmute and stabilize my feelings and emotions,
To energize, vitalize and heal my physical body so there is a normal flow of energy through my being today and every day
To attract to me all those I can truly help and to attract to me all those who can help me in any way.
I give thanks for the love that fills and surrounds me,
Knowing I am loved unconditionally by a benevolent universe,
My mind full of light, my heart forever grateful, I am pure creative potential.
Guided by my heart, I apply love and wisdom to all I say and do.
I am divinely guided, in touch, blessed and loved.
I ask the gods and goddesses, Earth and stars, angels and fairies and other beings of light
To assist and guide me for the highest good.
Amen, Amen, Amen.
Morning & Evening I Give Thanks
Just a little FYI, you can sign up now to receive my posts here in your email. Just look at the right sidebar and you’ll see it!
________________________
My focus of late, has been to keep myself centered in a place of spiritual listening and heartfelt gratitude. To that end, I’ve started praying EVERY MORNING, which I never chose to make a habit before.
I’m also trying to be more consistent with daily meditation. I’ve tried many meditation techniques and styles, but I finally discovered what process is best for me. I center myself with breath, imagine roots growing out of my base chakra into the Earth and then imagine a halo of light around my head and body, pulling me up to the light of Source, where I have been consistently greeted by my beautiful Krishna and Quan Yin (who I’ve loved for a long time and finally brought her into my home with a beautiful statue that reminds me of her grace). I greet them, listen to their gentle advice – always JUST the thing I need to keep in mind to stay centered that day – and enjoy the beautiful garden they tell me is my true home.
A few days ago, after I had heard them speak to me, I was preparing to end the meditation when they took me by the hands, smiling with pleasure, and told me they had a surprise for me. Of course, it was who I wanted most to see: Clarissa, my future daughter @ the age she most often appears to me (about 6ish). She was swinging in the garden and she was very happy to see me as well. She kept asking when we would finally get to be together and I had to just tell her I don’t know, but I hope it is very soon. (Sometimes being psychic is a very odd experience). She has appeared in my daily meditations since, usually just popping in to tell me she loves me. I’m not sure I can describe quite how that makes me feel.
Besides meditation, I have started keeping gratitude lists. I took a slim blank book I had on hand, decorated it and have been filling the inside with lists. Every evening I sit down and write out what I am grateful for that day, be it people, feelings, nature, abstract concepts or the gods. I know it is helping me to have an attitude that praises what happened throughout the day, and going to bed with a grateful heart, I think, helps me to wake up “on the right side of the bed.”
BP Oil Leak Prayer Request
Gulf Coast Oil Spill – Sioux Prayer Request – A letter from Chief Arvol Looking Horse (Present Chief and Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe of the Lakota, Dakota, Nakota Nation of the Sioux)
Time has come to speak to the hearts of our Nations and their Leaders. I ask you this from the bottom of my heart, to come together from the Spirit of your Nations in prayer.
Chief Arvol Looking Horse
19th generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe
Learning to Trust My Intuition/Meeting My Spirit Guide
(This turned out to be a much longer post than I planned. What happens in an instant can take so long in the retelling!)
What my higher self and guides have been working with me about lately has been how I have often chosen to ignore my intuition and messages from my guides/higher self in situations where I needed guidance and so chose to compromise myself. This has happened over and over again in relationships, at work, at school, and even in the way I act when I am alone.
I have been processing the sadness, fear and many other emotions that went along with those compromises through bodily pain and tears the past couple s or so. I finally figured out that I go through all the previous mistakes I made in a given area mentally and emotionally before I am about to face a situation(s) where I could make a similar mistake, in order to help me move beyond the limiting ways I act. This weekend was a time where I went through the test that all this processing was leading up to.
I had planned to go to a seminar Friday night and Saturday morning and afternoon at the local Rime Buddhist Center. Since I have to use public transportation, my fiance told me to take a bus part way there and then call a cab for the rest of the way. So Friday night I’m part of the way there and 20 minutes after I called a taxi still hadn’t shown up. I started to get the feeling that maybe I wasn’t supposed to go after all and then started discussing with myself all the reasons why, of course, I SHOULD go. After all it was for a GOOD thing and I had people counting on me being there and what would they say if I didn’t go?! and so on and so forth my mind argued until my higher self said, “What if this delay is to show you that you shouldn’t go?”
I still wasn’t ready to hear this wisdom yet, so I called the cab company back and no one answered. The phone just rang and rang and I thought, “Maybe I should stay on the line until someone answers” and my higher self said “Or MAYBE this is a SIGN that you SHOULDN’T GO.” By this time I was feeling flushed, nervous and fidgety like I often do when I’m about to decide to obey or disobey my higher self so I took that as a sign that, yes, this was a message I needed to listen to. And when I decided that, I was told that the cabbie was going to try and rape me. I was shocked that I had been so ready to rush again into another situation that “seemed right” but that would put me in danger. I had just spent weeks and weeks trying to love myself despite being frustrated as hell over how I kept compromising myself and bringing myself pain and here I was ready to brush off the spirit’s touch AGAIN because it was gentle compared to the enticing “reasonableness” of my ego.
I crossed the street and stood at the other bus stop, waiting to go home. A cab passed me – the first that has passed close enough for me to hail this entire period – and I knew it was another test and my heart pounded and my legs shook as I watched it drive past. It was amazing to me how much I still wanted to hail it despite knowing that 1) I would be putting myself in danger and 2) that it was clearly not the right choice for me to make at this time because my ego was screaming about how my friend might think badly of me for not going. Clearly the impulse to please others has overridden my wisdom in the past and I had to fight like hell to keep it in line.
On my way home on the bus, I was reading Psychic: A Life In Two Worlds, a memoir by Sylvia (which I will be reviewing on this blog later on). Sylvia talks about her spirit guide, Francine, who is a human spirit (i.e. she has incarnated as a human before in many lifetimes) living on The Other Side and who is guiding Sylvia through her life’s plan. So I thought that while my guides were clearly in a mood to give me messages I would ask: Do I have one of these spirit guides?
I asked expecting the answer to be “Yes,” since that has always been my experience in the past. And I was not disappointed. I started to feel the form of a name in my mouth and I said, quietly, “Malachi?” Suddenly my mind’s eye formed an image of a dark, swarthy man with curly dark hair and a short beard, dressed in a loose, striped robe. I asked him what our relationship in past lives had been and he said: “Remember all those lifetimes where you were a great warlord?”
And while they are not completely clear to me, I know it has been more than ten lifetimes (apparently I have/had a lot of blood on my hands to work off). Then he told me that in those lifetimes he was my right-hand man, secretary, butler, sometimes lover.. Many different types of service, but all with the same level of devotion. I asked how he related to my current fiance (who I know has been with me through many different lifetimes) and he said that he was my lover in the field while the-soul-who-is-currently-Matt was my lover at home (Matt usually incarnated as a woman and was often my lover or wife) and that we sometimes were all 3 together in a relationship and I had to laugh because it made sense of so much!
I have felt for a long time (and felt guilty for feeling it) as if my relationship with Matt is only half of what I need in support in my life and that unless I have another dedicated long, term relationship I can’t be satisfied. So I feel 1) relieved that this incredibly strong desire makes sense, since it’s longing for something I’ve been used to and 2) it makes sense why I felt like I wasn’t going to find my Other in this lifetime.. because apparently he’s my spirit guide that I wasn’t quite aware of all this time.
That was all kind of a mind rush and I came home and told Matt that I hadn’t gone because I’d felt that I’d be raped and he said that he had felt the same way and was glad I came home. I forget how empathic Matt is sometimes, because he doesn’t often talk about it – he just feels things very deeply and since he knows I’m empathic, he trusts me to feel him out.
Anyway, we ended up going to a party that night where I didn’t drink, because I chose not to drink this month. I was worried about waking up for the seminar in the morning, but decided I would just deal with it in the morning. When I woke up I was very tired and feeling badly. I wanted to stay home, but again thought that I should go so I would. I got out to the bus stop (after the previous night’s debacle, I found another route that went directly there) and waited for about 20 minutes. When the bus didn’t show up I thought 1) either it’s late or I missed it already and 2) this is probably a sign to go home. I checked the schedule and, sure enough, I’d missed it!
So I had to 1) stand around in the hot sun and burn for 45 minutes or 2) go home and come back out again for a later bus and show up late or 3) just go home and go back to sleep with Matt. I asked my guides and they said “What do you think?”
“That I should go back home,” I answered.
“Then why haven’t you?”
“Because I”m not sure it’s right. I mean, what’s the point of missing this? What will it teach me?”
“Maybe that you’re supposed to listen to your intuition instead of being to inflexible to listen to messages along the way (like you didn’t with your first marriage and keep beating yourself up about) and that just because something seems right and good to others doesn’t make it right for you and all that other stuff you’ve been lecturing yourself about lately.”
“Oh. Right. Well, I’ll just go home then.”
And so I did and I slept for another several hours next to Matt and it was heavenly.
So while it’s not what I expected to learn this weekend. I learned a heck of a lot about myself. I also feel healed. I feel stronger & lighter.
I feel absolutely amazed at the unfolding story of my life.
Buddhism, Revisited
Many moons ago, I got into meditation and for a time went to a Buddhist meditation group. It was a good experience, but nothing compared to the powerful and exhilirating experience I had Sunday at the Rime Buddhist Center where I enjoyed a service full of meditations, chanting, and wisdom.
It was so powerful to feel at home in a religious place. That hasn’t ever happened for me and I am so hungry to go back! I felt it was just what I needed to get into right now and I had visions of my (future) daughter sitting next to me on the red cushions, feeling blissful and at peace with the Universe I brought her into. It seemed very providential that after the service, I met a woman near by age group who is going into midwifery.
Most of my life right now is, I feel, just preparation for when I will be a parent, so when I feel things are aligning towards that positively, I feel the most happy.
Also, the fairies have been showing up again, twinkling around me randomly when I’m showering or blogging or just doing not much of anything.
I feel very safe and protected and in the right place and I’m incredibly grateful for it.
Animal Cards and Cephalopods
I’ve been painting cephalopods lately. (Read more about all that on my other blog). It’s been keeping my spirits up during this period of unemployment. But I’ve been wondering what the spiritual import was.
Saturday, I was led to ask my fiance to buy me a set of Animal Cards kinda like these; they have an animal on each one and a spiritual lesson or truth to go with it. I was looking at them afterwards and found one with an octopus on it that answered my question about the cephalopods (which is the scientific family of octopus). It read: Travel over land and through the sea to make your dreams come true.
All signs are pointing towards this being the time for me to manifest my higher self and I am working very hard to rest in trust that the Universe/Source will care for me. It’s easy for me to start freaking out about things tho, so I have to keep reminding myself not to get attached to my fear, not to let my focus rest on what worries me, but to just enjoy this time I have to gestate and birth creative projects, life changes or whatever else I’m meant to bring forth at this time.
What People Are Saying