I just love this picture that I totally snagged from the Audubon Society website. (Please go ahead and visit them and donate if you are able! They do so much good for our wildlife, conservation, and education). But I just had to! Look at the personality in these birds eyes!

One thing I notice is that each bird makes me feel a certain way. One looks surprised, one looks angry, one looks serios, one loving, one kind. One looks mad as hell.

None of those perceptions come from the birds though, do they? Birds don’t get mad or sad or happy or surprised. Those perceptions are all coming from me!!! And the birds are just innocently being, well, birds.

How many times a day do we see someone, a person, look at them and let ourselves think they are mad at us, or sad, or happy or worried? And well, they are just being. Not thinking of us or our feelings at all.

Personalization comes in all kinds of forms. And affects us in all kinds of ways. Owning our reactions to events can help our relationships grow. It places the responsibility of our interactions equally upon us and the people we are with. It makes things real.

Discernment is seeing things with our heart eye, without personalization. The best readers and mediums are able to do this, looking to Spirit for guidance and answers. We don’t become afraid of what we see which would be our own projected fears. And we don’t ascribe (assign) feelings we think a person is feeling onto them. We allow Spirit to speak unencumbered by our judgements. Any judgement or fear that you feel in a reading or from a reader is most likely from them! So be careful and search for the discerning medium. She or he wants to just tell you how it is!

I call to the medicine of the owl to give me discernment when I give my readings and to allow me to see Spirit in the light of truth. I ask that my projections and belief systems be removed. In life, I ask owl to help me to see what is truly before me, not what I wish to see or fear to see. This is a great practice, especially during times of vulnerability or distress. Try it out sometime and see how you feel!!!

Much Love

There are many ways to cleanse your energy field of hoocha, or denser energies. But where do these denser energies come from? Some might say this hoocha is other people’s negativity, and not want to be near those people. Some might think the energy may be the spiritual remnants of the dead. Negative energies I have heard them called.

What if I said energy is neither good nor bad except for our attachment to it?

In other words, what we attach to energy matters. Our perception of events, places, and people matters! Discerning whether denser energy comes from outside yourself or instead, comes from inside ourselves is really important to do. When cleansing, many of us don’t get it right because we are not considering that our reaction to something generates our own hoocha!! And we only focus on the thing outside ourselves that is making us “feel badly” or notice denser energies. When we are the creators of our own hoocha.

Hoocha, dense energy, is made by humans. It is created solely by us and our attachment to certain energies. It is often the manifestation of our unconscious biases and the silent belief systems that rule our lives when we should only be ruled by our hearts. That person on the street with the shopping basket and the disheveled appearance that creeps you out? I might feel compassion while someone else feels fear, someone else disgust… all of which is hoocha. Does that person I don’t even know really need cleansing? Have they done anything to me, about me, with me? Or do they simply exist? No. So how do I know they need cleansing? Well, maybe they look hungry, sad, disoriented, hurt. Yes, all hoocha for the experienced to cleanse and heal. But what about me? Do I need to cleanse my reaction? Absolutely.

The judgement in my reaction is going to affect my energy all day if I don’t. They were looking at me. I shudder. They are dirty. I shudder. They could be dangerous. I shudder.

Please insert any other person/situation.

We all have hidden, unconscious biases that trigger us to react in either positive or negative ways to everything. Our very existence is a series of actions and reactions. How we react is as much our action as it is a re-action.

To thoroughly cleanse the next time you sage, or perform hoocha mikhuy, or whatever your spiritual practice is, look within and reflect on what you need cleansed right now inside you.

Reflect on how your perception may be based on internal factors just as much as it based on external factors.

Take control of these reactions by offering this energy up to be cleared and see how amazing you feel!!

This New Moon in Libra is calling us to throw out any pre-made plans for relationship with ourselves or with others. It is a new moon of definite action and forward movement searching to achieve justice and balance.

There isn’t much we can say we do in this lifetime that does not involve relationship. From the passion of romance and friendship, to talking to ourselves, to feeling the void of loneliness, there is always someone else with us observing, listening, judging perhaps. But ideally not judging at all. We bring this observer everywhere we go. Connected, we feel the presence of the Divine. Disconnected, we hear the lies of the Critic within and speak only to those belief systems and projections that whisper in our ears of our own failures.

I have come to see that All of Life is a communication, a reciprocal relationship. Relationship includes the breath we breathe in and breathe out, sharing the gasses necessary for our survival and for the survival of the plant world. Without the plants we have no oxygen to breathe. Relationship also includes the invocations and words we speak to Spirit and long to hear from Spirit. Relationship is also the way we treat ourselves.

To those of you who long for answers, who long for a connection to the Divine, to the Spirit that flows through all things and to the spirits that may be your ancestors, What do you offer to Spirit in return? Many of us have been taught that “The gift” is a passively received talent bestowed upon us for unknown reasons. It is a privilege that others don’t have.

I challenge that idea. When we begin to think of ourselves as separate, as privileged, as gifted, we create separation for ourselves from others and separation from Spirit. Spiritual communication requires Spiritual Relationship! And it is important to consider how and with what we are creating that relationship.

Do you ask questions and expect Spirit to answer when you have no foundational relationship?

Do you choose paths to follow without consulting the advice of Spirit?

Do you ask for gifts without offering anything in exchange?

Treat your relationship with Spirit as you would any human relationship. Care for it. Nurture it. Offer it the best parts of yourself. Tell the Truth to it. Don’t take advantage of it or manipulate it.

Sometimes we find ourselves opening doorways and walking through them when we don’t want to. On the day these pictures were taken I was having an argument with the person I love more than anything. We both had some choices to make that day about holding our anger or letting it go. We might have both been a bit slower to come together than usual. When I am upset I usually turn to Spirit for guidance. I took a quick side hike by myself and offered to the energy of the beautiful Nusta (nature being) of the land. I spoke from my heart to Spirit, asking for guidance. Soon I rejoined my partner and my daughter and we walked together through what I have to describe as sacred land. As I began to hear and feel and sense a spiritual presence who spoke to me, my partner gazed off into the trees, later telling me he had seen a man in the woods that disappeared as quickly as he appeared. The Spirit stood tall and proud in my eyes, a Native American spirit of stature, nobility and grace. He spoke of justice for his people and the way this land was taken from them. He welcomed the help of any person, any color to help, and suggested that my family and I were way showers, igniters, leaders of the path to justice. He reminded me that it was braver for his people to accept defeat at the hands of the settlers and to endure what they have endured for centuries than it would have been to fight every battle and lose just to save face. The nobility and the sacrifice shone in his beautiful eyes. He spoke with urgency. He longed to be heard. He recounted many of his people’s struggles and I paused our entire hike to sit and listen, translating out loud for my young daughter who longs to serve Justice for all people.

I was gifted a message of cosmic proportions and of personal significance. Within his stories, I felt comfort, strength and power. A giving and receiving of love so powerful that a nation sacrificed their pride, their very existence, to save the last of their own. And I wept for the loss of valor and dignity and life that was taken from them. All he asked was that I share this story and continue to show other white people the way.

Within his story I was gifted a wisdom that served my teeny tiny problem too. I had been triggered by an argument that spoke to me of many old battles with unworthy partners. I sought to protect and to defend myself from an enemy that no longer existed. I saw at once that it would be braver for me to admit this vulnerability and to seek a truce than it would be to fight for my old stories with this beloved man.

I took some time with this new certainty that I must be brave and be soft in my response to what I considered an affront. I cherished and made offerings of rose petals to the Spirit of Metacom who spoke to me here. And I chose a pathway that connected me deeper to my love and to my new stories of love and growth and relationship. We were able to repair things to a condition that was better than before. Sort of like taking a row boat and adding a sail. (Why make things harder than they need to be after all?)

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