In the dark of the year

I endeavour to conduct my professional life in a way that’s in keeping with my values of respecting the time, energy and intelligence of my clients as well as a belief that what we practice in the world will return to us threefold. This is called the ‘law of threefold return’.

Experience tells me that word of mouth is the best form of publicity for the sorts of services I offer. If my clients value the service I provide, they talk about it to their friends, family and colleagues. I have always believed that the best form of promotion is the recommendation of a person who has had first-hand experience - especially when it comes to something as personal as counseling and coaching and readings.

No junk-mail from me!
What this means to you is that I deliberately avoid bombarding you with advertising and promotions, reserving gently informative emails for the rare occasions when I have a special offer. Instead, I try to remain true to the same spirit of service that drives my practice, by posting my blog and hoping that the subjects I write about will be of use to my clientele, past, present and future. Further, I hope that the blog will keep you thinking about your emotional and spiritual health, and of course that you will think of me when and if you decide that you would like some professional support.

It’s getting darker out there
Which leads me to the ‘dark of the year’ which is already upon us. This is the time of year when we become more ‘inner’, and paradoxically, when we are often the most busy in our whirlwind outer lives. In honour of your ‘inner self’, I encourage you to plan some time during the dark of the year to slow down and shine some light on the places in your soul that need a little gentle attention, or even a major clear-out.

A better world is on the horizon
I am feeling encouraged by the outcome of the US presidential election because I think that it represents a freedom cry that will rally those of us who are weary of our current dysfunctional global systems and give us hope that we can actually change things for the better. There are those who say that this present time is similar to the 60’s with Martin Luther King and the huge levels of social change afoot at that time, but I believe that we have come even further than that, and that we are within sight of the land of which he dreamed. Not that we’re there yet, but we have it within our scope!

To get to our long-dreamed-of place of equality, peace and prosperity for all, we are each going to have to reach deep within our souls, encourage our best selves to come out, and make our own unique contributions. Now is not the time for the sort of cynicism that protects us from disappointment, no matter how many times we’ve had our hopes dashed in the past. We’re in the final lap of the race and we need to harness what’s left of our courage and pull out all the stops.

I believe that every single one of us makes a difference and that the time to make that difference is NOW. There’s a wonderful book by Dr. Seuss, his last one, called Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, given to me by a very dear friend many years ago. I find it a constant source of inspiration. It talks about the courage it takes to walk into the unknown. It says the following about being scared to go on:

But on you will go
though the weather be foul.
On you will go
though your enemies prowl.
On you will go
though the Hakken-Kraks howl.
Onward up many
a frightening creek,
though your arms may get sore
and your sneakers may leak.

At the end of the book, he asks if we will succeed and his answer is:

Yes! You will indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)
KID YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!

Take the plunge!
What mountain do you need to move? Or do you have a dear friend, or colleague who is struggling with mountain ‘removal’? I will shamelessly promote myself here as a great person to help with mountains - when you get to the point of wanting to identify yours, or if you’re actually ready to roll up your sleeves and get to work - I’m your woman! So today I’d like to leave you with that thought... Make a plan, take a step, commit yourself. We can move mountains, but it takes personal courage. We can do it!

Information/energy and change

Channeled Message Number 8

Lucca: Are you coming through from a different level than the other messages I’ve posted on my blog?

Channeled Message: Yes, indeed. We are of a ‘higher’ level than you spoke through last time. We are of a different ‘department’ and a slightly ‘higher level’, although that does not translate as ‘more important’ as it would on Earth. ‘Here’, as you refer to it, we are non-temporal and non-spacial. When you make a request and have a certain intent, one that matches with what we are able to provide for you, we are ‘connected’ and can ‘elucidate’ for you as you require.

Dear Ones:

... Imagine a reservoir that holds the waters collected from the many streams of your higher geographic regions. You have dams that hold back the water and let it through as it is needed. The need is partly driven by the water available from natural sources and partly by the needs of the communities served by the reservoir.

This analogy suits our purposes for this message. All of you form the ‘community’ that is ‘served’ by the ‘water’ supply. The ‘water’ is the energy/information that 'serves' to elucidate all of you as you struggle to make sense of the developing events in your world. Energy and information are the same thing to us. Energy is a vibration that moves the cells in your individual and collective energy fields so that you can ‘remember’ what you came into this particular incarnation to learn and create.

As you have a greater desire to understand, your personal vibration contains your intention and we pick it up. This is instantaneous and happens constantly in your day-to-day lives. Some of you have agreed to come to Earth to aid in the transmission of this information/energy and it is you who open the sluices on the ‘dam’ and allow the information/energy to pass out of the reservoir and into the river. Each individual also has the ability to receive the information directly but many of you do not believe you can.

As information/energy, the metaphorical ‘water’ passes into the river and heads downstream, where it eventually comes through the pipes and taps into your individual consciousnesses. Each individual’s ‘tap’ is different and so you will each receive and process the information/energy in the way that works best for you. For some of you this will be in the form of dreams, daydreams, or inspiration. For others, you will read it on the Internet, in a book, magazine or journal, or even watch it or listen to it. Still others will hear it directly from another person who receives it in one of these ways. No way is better than any other.

The information/energy will affect your life according to what you need and every person has different needs according to their agreement as a soul. No matter who you are, you have a purpose. Some of you have yet to become consciously aware of what your purpose is. For instance, some of you are teachers, others are healers, some are communicators/messengers, and some are artists, etc.

Differences & similarities
In your Earth world, many of you are conditioned to be comparative, competitive and critical. Although these qualities can have their uses, in Earth's current, rapidly changing circumstances, these qualities can hinder your ability to value your own processes and needs, and focus instead on how you compare to others.

We say to you that no individual is ‘better’ or more ‘valuable’ than any other. Not even great leaders. No way of drinking ‘water’ is better than any other and no purpose is ‘higher’. You are all different and designed to be so. Your collective strength is in your infinite number of differences as well as your infinite number of similarities. These weave the fabric of human existence and you are often blinded to one, at the expense of the other.

Change
As you read this, Earth is engaged in a process of transition from one vibrational level to another. It has reached a point where you can now see the changes more clearly than you have been able to in the past but you have been moving in this direction for a long time. The way in which you experience of this vibrational change depends on why you are here. If your life purpose is to participate in the change, you will go with it. If you are here to experience resisting the change, that is what you will be drawn to do. Neither is better - just different.

The majority of the souls on the planet have come for this experience of the shift. But - and this is important to understand - ‘reality’ can encompass both outcomes; change to a ‘higher’ level of vibration and a continuation on the same level. There will be a migration of souls depending on their choice. Some of you will go to the station and take the train and others of you will see it off.

That is a question for which you are all creating a collective answer. You are experimenting with unity and duality. They can dance together or there can be conflict as one is the focus at the expense of an understanding of the place and value of the other.

Unity & duality
You can understand duality and unity as being within your self, your community, the planet and the Universe. You call these playing fields the microcosm and the macrocosm. You are an individual and a member of the global community at the same time. You think and you contribute to the global body of knowledge at the same time. You are both a drop of water and a part of the ocean.

These analogies might seem vague and frustrating to some of you and yet they are the best way for us to pass on information/energy. You will each interpret in your own way and thus find in the analogies what you need. Each of you will respond to the vibration of this message and use it in the way that best suits your purpose. Seeming synchronicities in your life can be the very best ways for you to discover your own truth, and your unique creativity is a way for you to make use of it by integrating it into your life.

There will be more on this subject but this is enough for one message.
Greetings and peace

It’s time for change

I hope you’ll excuse my not channeling this week, and the length of today’s blog. I was really inspired by the political happenings in the US this week and it seems to me that there is a spirit of hope suffusing the continent.

I was watching parts of the US Democratic National Convention on television this past week and not because I have ever considered myself an especially political animal. I had the sense that I was watching an event of historical importance. The last time I had this feeling was when I stayed up very late to watch a man walk on the moon.

Hope springs
To me, what’s happening in the US isn’t about Democrats or Republicans; rather, it is about the end of the old and the beginning of the new. When Obama first showed up on the political radar of the US, I was dubious about his ability to overcome the corrupt political machinery that is politics today - in every country. I had been feeling overwhelmed with hopelessness.

Alienation
The husband of a friend of mine is a German politician. Four years ago I was visiting them in Germany and he and I were left at the dinner table one evening while the rest of the family cleared up the kitchen. I found myself telling him that I had had very little to do with politics in my adult life, and that it wasn’t because I didn’t care or that I was lazy, but because I felt betrayed, alienated by the system and hopeless.

The political system doesn’t feel transparent to me. There seems to be massive levels of corruption and arrogance, and little that goes on after the election promises have been made seems to bare much resemblance to what the people around me care about. He looked at me. I think he heard me but he didn’t say anything. I don’t know if what I said made an impression on him. But it might have. He was, in my world, the first politician I had ever been able to talk to, face-to-face.

Someone might be listening ...finally
Judging by what Obama said in his speech in acceptance of the Democratic party’s nomination, he and his party are listening. I think that’s why he’s getting so much support, even from traditional Republicans and Independents. I don’t think we’re all being snowed yet again - I fervently hope not!

Maybe this is when critical mass becomes so important. It takes the final straw to get enough public feeling - and it was feeling that I saw being expressed in that huge stadium in Denver - to counteract the arrogance of the power brokers in the existing American electoral system. Paying lipservice to what people want and then going your own sweet way once you get into office, and blatantly rigging ballot-counting, and lying to the whole world in order to go to war, and taking away citizens' guaranteed rights and freedoms, can only last until enough people wake up and say, “Hey, wait a minute. You’re not listening to us and you’re supposed to be representing us”.

I met a local Whitehorse politician and his family at a social gathering when I was up there in May and I had the feeling that he was and is listening. I hadn’t expected it and was encouraged to believe that maybe something is changing in modern politics. I felt, in my heart, that he has a sense of integrity.

Re-empowerment
We’re only impotent as long as we believe we are. Once we take our power back and realise that the people who vote outnumber the people who pay for candidates’ campaigns, we might exercise our power by using it. I say ‘we’ very deliberately because, although I am not an American, I am under no illusion that their economic system doesn’t run ours and those of the rest of the world. I believe that we are all watching the Americans turn their system around and will be empowered by it - enough to demand the same at home.

Dominoes
I am optimistic enough to believe that political change can come. There are mutterings about a Canadian federal election this fall and it seems to me that Harper, our current Prime Minister for those of you readers who are not Canadian, has been sleeping very close to Bush’s cronies; something that I find very worrying indeed. I’m not impressed by the current opposition either.

Obama, who seems to be a different kind of political animal, appeared to come out of the woodwork, so-to-speak. He was there in the Senate, but not an obvious candidate for president. I hope the same is possible in Canada. Maybe we don’t necessarily need a leader with a lot of political experience, as long as the person is smart enough to surround herself or himself with quality advice and information and has the ability to make tough decisions, defend them and follow them through. We need leadership and communication instead of familiarity with toeing the line of the power brokers in our nation’s capital.

Hard work and sacrifice
I heard Obama say in his speech that every citizen was going to have to participate and that the changes weren’t going to be easy, for him or the public. I think people balk at making sacrifices when they don’t trust their leaders; when it looks like the leaders aren’t sacrificing at least as much as they are. That’s when they feel cheated, duped.

Personally, I’m not looking for the easy route. I’m looking for the route that makes sense in the long run. I’m just tired of flip-flopping governments, and parties, blaming the other party every time someone proposes a course of action that means we might have to make some sacrifices in the short term for some pay-offs in the long term. I don’t want empty rhetoric; I want sanity.

Democracy ... endings and beginnings
I believe this US election is the beginning of the fall of the old empire, which will mean the beginning of a new era of involvement and responsibility. Enough of us will model the behaviour required to make it work, encouraging others to believe that it’s possible to have real representation in governance.

I think that the principles behind democracy are sound even though they have never been fairly applied. Our economic and sociological power structures have got in the way. Maybe the Greeks and Romans weren’t enlightened enough to be more inclusive but we have no excuse. We have the past to teach us what happens when we don’t look after all of our society equally.

We’ve had inequality when land ownership was a criterion, and sex, and race, and language, and still money. It’s time to sort out the unfair influence and corruption of Money-as-God, and get on with applying the original principles of participative democracy.

Teaching involvement and responsibility
In my opinion, our kids need to see citizenship at work in their everyday lives, in all its complexity. I’m clear that for most of us, our political education hasn’t been thorough enough, at home or in school. Our society can teach and model citizenship and prepare kids to be active citizens. Young adults should be outraged at any infringement on their rights and privileges as citizens. They should expect to be consulted and to vote. Voting should be a rite of passage; more so than learning to drive. It’s as important as physical exercise and good eating habits. The welfare of our country, and indeed the world, depends on it. They don’t all have to become politicians but they need to learn how to be informed on the issues that affect their lives, and know how to hold their political representatives accountable for their promises and decisions. Politics isn’t about any outside ‘them’; it’s about ‘us’.

I hope this election has the makings of a peaceful revolution.

Love is all there is

Channeled Message Number 7

Dear Ones:

When you seek the divine and your connection with the divine, you are seeking to participate in the love that makes up the fabric of the Universe. At present, many people on Earth are experimenting with meditation for the first time, or are returning to it after a time away. Many of you want to know what to look for that will tell you when it’s ‘working’, or how you will know that you have been successful.

Let us explain to you that there is not just one ‘right’ way to meditate. Meditation is a practice which allows you to shift your focus from the hubbub of your everyday life to the inner quiet that is the centre of your being. This is a place where you ‘just are’, a place of ‘allowing’. When you connect with this place, you come into contact with the part of yourself which has no beginning or end, that has no sense of time at all. It is in perfect balance. It does not need, desire or promote. It allows you to attend to your ‘being-ness’.

All of your spiritual belief systems have words for this, including suggested practices, histories and wisdom, accumulated over time and designed to help believers to connect to themselves and to the abundant love that makes up the Universe. Keep in mind that these are aids and not prescriptions. Use them if they help but don’t feel that you are meditating incorrectly if your way is different.

You will know you are doing what you need to when the state you reach helps you to feel loved and loving. If quieting your worldly inner chatter is difficult, as it often is in your busy world, you can try giving the love that you would like to feel. Participate.

Many of you can reach a state similar to that of ‘meditation’ when you do things that make you happy and use your talents. This could be playing an instrument, being in nature as you are when taking a walk or gardening. It might be dancing, painting, flying or even cooking. If this is done in a group, you might experience the delight of being in harmony with others - or you might be alone. It doesn’t have to be a life-altering feat, but this state of equilibrium will alter your life.

Having said that you can be doing something, we caution here that it is not necessary for you to do anything. When you pass a person on the street, or sit beside them on the bus, someone who catches your attention, for whatever reason, send that person a loving thought. Appreciate them as fellow beings in the Universe. Know that they too have their part to play and that they play it to the best of their ability at any given time, just as you do.

When your heart and mind are full of loving thoughts, peace and appreciation, there is little if any room left over for fear. Fear is what causes constriction of your energy flow, hoarding of resources, suspicion of motives and the collapse of economies. It makes you want to run faster, do more, have more and share less. It makes you nervous, irritable and out of sorts, and more likely to look for solutions outside of yourself. In this fearful state, you tend to forget that you have your own answers to your own questions and that you don’t need to give your power away or make deals to get what you need - which is love.

You could call ‘loving’ a state of grace, which is essentially what you enter when you’re meditating. No matter whether you’re in a taxi cab or a Buddhist temple, when you’re in a state of grace, you’ll find it easier to make sense of life, love yourself and everyone else, and have enough time and resources to do what needs to be done.

Peace

Here's a link to a weekly photo by Neil Wakeling in Scotland. I just love his photos and he always has an inspiring quote to go with the picture.

Tuning into the transition process

Channeled Message Number 6

Dear Ones:

We ask you to remember that you are not alone. The sun comes up on your day and you release those of us who have been with you in the night. This has always been so, but lately it is even more so, as we come closer to the time of recognition. You may ask, ‘recognition of what?’. Recognition of who you are, each and every one of you, and therefore recognition of who everyone else is in your world; each in their own splendor and in their own right. From where we sit, in the world of energy that is beyond most of your ‘normal vision’, we see you each as the most effervescent, joyful and uniquely talented beings. You/we were all made that way. The difference between us and you is that we have awareness of this and you are just coming to this awareness now.

The shift
These are changing times for you and you can feel it. Messages are being sent to mediums and those of you who are open to the knowledge, in order that you may pass it along to everyone you know who needs it. We who have committed to helping you, sit on the other side of an energy shift. We say it is a shift because once you know it is there, and have the ability to see from our perspective, it doesn’t exist for you any longer. It is a shift in perspective.

What is physically happening is that you are increasing your level of vibration. Many of you on the Earth plane have been able to do this temporarily, for instance during meditation, but you are now moving your awareness and energy to a level where you can live in it instead of just visiting. If you are not one of the 'helpers, then you are in the process of being helped. In which case, it is equally important for you to know what is happening.

How it feels
The reason we are telling you this today, through Lucca, is that you will be feeling the effects of the energy shift and many of you will not know what it is, or if you do, you won’t know what to do with it when it becomes uncomfortable. Lack of knowledge often results in fear and we wish you to be as free of fear as we can help you to be.

As she writes this, Lucca is feeling some of what we describe. This is in order that she will understand it herself. She does not usually feel the discomfort because she spends part of her time (for ‘time’, you may read ‘attention’, as it is not really time as you understand the term) in our realm and part in yours. She is one of the many beings on the earth at this time who are helping you to make the transition as gracefully as possible.

Not the first time
She, and many of you who are reading this, have already made a transition such as this in Earth’s history. We could have said ‘unrecorded history’, for you won’t have found records of the transition that you would recognize as such, but the events were indeed recorded. The records are in a form that you do not yet know how to access in the ways of which you are aware at this time. In the case of those of you who have already experienced what we describe, you are here to both help and experience, this raising of consciousness (energy levels), on a mass scale. The hope, which is virtually a certainty at this point, is that planet Earth will be able to participate in what is variously called the ‘Inter-Galactic Federation’, as a full member.

For example
Imagine, if you will, that you have decided you would like to join an organization to which you have not belonged before. You have heard about it and have decided that this is a group that may share your values and aspirations. Just to be sure, you reach out to the group and ask if you can attend a meeting or two. The group considers your request and invites you to attend as a guest, showing you around and answering your questions; helping you to experience anything that will help you to make your choice more easily.

Because this group operates in another dimension (energy level), you can only visit with their assistance. You will also need the group’s assistance to remember your experience, once you return to your normal world. Your memories cross the divide in the form of dreams, inspiration, art, and intuition.

If your visit confirms your original desire to join, you will again approach the group and ask if you may begin the process of becoming a member. This is a group which is open to all, but you will not immediately be ready to participate fully. You must learn the history, operating paradigms and philosophies. This is similar in your terms to becoming a citizen in a new country. In short, we have to teach you how to be here.

It is not a matter of ‘sneaking across the border’ because you literally cannot survive in our ‘energy field’ unaided, if you do not know how to vibrate at our rate. Each being vibrates according to what they do, how they see, how they think and how open they are to love, faith and trust. Anything that does not vibrate fast enough (high enough) will fall out of synch and snap back into the old level. There is no expulsion process; there is just ‘the fall’. If you choose, you can try again.

On our side, we wish your whole planet to be able to make this move permanently. This means eradicating fear. Fear does not exist as a state of being for us. But that topic is for another message!

Adapting to the Earth
For those of you who operate in our world as well as yours, you have had to adapt to living on planet Earth, some of you have worked at this over many lifetimes. You had to become an Earth citizen and make the appropriate adjustments to Earth’s existing energy levels. You will often have felt that you didn’t/don’t really belong, or that there is something just beyond your grasp. You may have dreams that don’t make sense when you awake. You may have a clear knowing that there is a way of living that is peaceful and full of grace, where conflicts are resolved without violence and where love, health and sharing are the norm. This is because you already know these ways of being.

Symptoms
If you have felt any of the following :

• frustration at being ‘stuck’ at a level that feels overly simplistic;
• as though you are feeling emotions that aren’t yours but you don’t know where they originate;
• that ‘something’ is just around the corner but you don’t know what it might be or how to prepare for it;
• disbelief and sadness at the levels of deception and manipulation that are coming to light on the world stage;
• a growing awareness of the numbers of physical ailments that seem to be systemic rather than specific, and for which the medical profession has no ready answer;
• discomfort in the work/profession you have chosen but not knowing what to do instead;
  
• at a loss as to what to do with children’s expectations of the world in which they live - suspecting that they may inherently know something you don't ...

... then you are already tuning in to and experiencing the transition process between your current dimension and the one that is opening to you. To return to the analogy of joining a new organization, when you have been oriented and helped to prepare to make the transition, you will be given the choice about whether you still want to join. Joining means committing to our creed and agreeing to live within it and participate in our governance, for in the Inter-Galactic Federation, everyone is lovingly held responsible for their choices and their actions.

Loving guidance
Please know that the planet Earth is being lovingly and firmly guided through the transition process between the three-dimensional world in which you now live, and being a newly initiated member of the next dimension - a fledgling member - and that you will be given all the necessary assistance in order to become a successful and flourishing member of the Federation. The time is near.

Peace

Focus on what you want

Channeled Message Number 5

Dear Ones:

Humanity is beginning to manifest what it focuses its attention on. The vibration of the earth is increasing which means that everything is happening faster. Add to this the increases in your personal vibration level, which is the result of your individual learning, and you have an increased ability to manifest.

Your responsibility is to make sure you are clear about what you want and that you try to stay positive. Fear about present situations, or about future undesired scenarios, will focus your energy on what you DON’T want instead of what you DO want. Now is the time to trust your inner knowing. Don't worry about whether what it says is realistic or reasonable.

Are you not sure which of the thoughts or messages whirling around inside your head are helpful to you? Here are a few pointers ...

Your inner knowing, or intuition, or gut feel, or Higher Self, speaks to you in positive language. It doesn’t threaten. It doesn’t give dire warnings. It doesn’t give you ‘tests’. It isn’t cruel or impatient. On the contrary; your inner knowing is kind but firm. It is patient, although it can be abrupt at times. It is supportive and loving. Although it may produce thoughts, inner knowing doesn’t originate in the head but in the heart.

You might ask whether you can talk to this inner knowing. Indeed you can. Every thought you have is received and responded to, but the more conscious you are of this thinking/desiring process, and the clearer you can be about your requests, the more positive will be your experience of your life. Your requests for information, or for help, will be answered in the best way for you, and at the best time, and this may not fit with your conscious schedule of wanting it right now.

Therefore, ask for what you want, and then move on with your day. Trust that all is well and will be well, and remain curious and alert. You will get what you need at exactly the right time. Be ready for it when it comes and don’t send something away before you consider whether what you’re rejecting might be what you asked for, but in an unexpected package or from an unexpected source.

Peace

Re-choose each day

Channeled Message Number 4

Dear Ones:

Humanity is feeling overwhelmed at this point in what you collectively refer to as ‘time’. We remind you:

As you think, so are you.

Your fears are very much to do with time. You fear what will happen to you in your ‘future’, if you do not do/say/take care of certain things in your ‘present’. Let us explain to you that there is no ‘past/present/future’; there is only ‘now’. If you ‘choose’ to be afraid now, then that is what you create for your past/present/future. You must ask yourselves if what you are doing/saying/being right now is what you would like to create in your life, no matter what the time reference.

If you don’t like the way your life is today, then change your behaviour right now - not tomorrow, or this evening. Put down the chocolate or the cigarette or the beer. Move your body by taking a walk, even if it is only around the house or the block. Do something that is what you do want. This is more powerful than any resolutions you may make about what you will do tomorrow or next week.

Procrastination is a way of missing your life. You have power right now. If you are afraid, then do something that gives you concrete proof that you are not your fear. Change your experience, even if what you do is small. Act as though each day is a lifetime. When you arise each morning, you are new, and when you retire you are passing into the space between experiences, where you can recharge your energy and gain a fresh perspective, so that you can arise again, new, the next day. You have a film called Groundhog Day that deals with this very theme.

Many people say at the end of their lives, “If I only knew when I was young what I know now, I would make different choices.” Consider that each day you know something that you didn’t know the day before. Thus you have the opportunity to re-choose each day and make yourself again. No matter if your changes to your life are big or small, everything matters. You can enjoy the you that you create each day.

What reality would you like to create for yourself today?

Peace

Consider that you are a pearl

Channeled Message Number 3

Consider that you are a pearl - perfect in every way, even if you are not an orb without blemish. Everyone is perfect, even in their imperfection. You do not look at a gnarled tree and see it as less than perfect and so should you not look at yourselves and see anything less than the miraculous pearls that you are.

Does this mean that you should cease to ‘improve’? Indeed not. But look at it as experimenting with your reality instead of correcting what is ‘wrong’. Considering yourselves as flawed and in need of correction sets you up with negative energy. You will tend to punish yourselves if you do not ‘succeed’ or give up hope if you don’t accomplish what you had anticipated. You are beginning to understand that ‘stern taskmasters’ do not get the desired lasting results.

Instead you can look to your guides, in body and out-of-body, for nurturing, love and the compassionate holding of the boundaries of your experience. If not for a boundary between what is and what you can become, you would not recognize change. The best teacher doesn’t beat you if you experiment. Instead the teacher shows you what happened this time and offers alternatives that could produce different outcomes. The choice is always yours.

It is our intent to empower you to fully explore your own potential, with the proviso that it is NOT NECESSARY. You are still a pearl, even if you don’t ‘do’ anything. It is our observation though, that on a soul level, even ‘doing nothing’ is actually 'doing something’. A passive choice is still a choice and must be honoured as such.

It is the nature of the soul to experience itself in relation to itself and others. This is the unique opportunity of duality. Do you go to a fair and not experience the atmosphere or the rides? If you so, why go at all? If you were to block it out and ‘do nothing’ while you are there, that is in itself an interesting choice!

In conclusion, please regard yourselves with lively curiosity instead of stern expectation and disappointment. The more you can do this, the closer you will come to seeing yourselves with the compassion and delight with which we see you.

Peace

Beginning your day

It seems that there is another channeled message for us today. I am always grateful when one is available and send my thanks out to all of you who are drawing this information to you and allowing me to be the conduit, especially since I benefit from it as much as you do! Here is message No.2 ...

Setting your day in motion

How you start your day is similar to the way in which a book starts. The author has to set the scene and get you interested. If this isn't done well, then you can't follow the story or you just put the book down. Today is as every other day in that you always choose how you will begin and how you will interpret what you see and experience, before you return to sleep again.

Take a few moments when you start your day to calm your mind and ground yourself. Stretch and drink water. Feed yourself or look after creating healthy food for when you will eat it later on. Are you left with any feelings or images from your dreams of the previous night? If so, imagine them into your day, especially if you have requested help with anything, or if you have prayed before retiring the night before.

Many of you will be tempted to jump out of bed and run into the day. This leaves part of your 'self' behind instead of ensuring that all of who you are is fully present. There are disciplines in the world that refer to this as mindfulness. Bring your attention to what you want to be and create and learn in the day ahead, and set your intention for how you would like this to come about. This will also help you if you are dreading your day and therefore procrastinating getting out of bed.

Try to imagine that you can’t run out of time as you know it. Tell yourself that you will have the time to accomplish everything that needs to be done in the day. (needs to be done!) Many of you will try to accomplish things that don’t need to be done - things that do not support your higher purpose.

The Universe tries to help you to edit out what is not necessary for your soul's growth. Know that you will always find the time for what you want most. It is what you will attract. Be ready for us to help you by providing the opportunities you seek during your day, and then take advantage of them with a smile in your heart.

Peace

Channeled message - Dark Corners

There are times when I write from what I’ve been thinking about during the week, or what has been going on in my life, or the lives of people with whom I’ve come into contact. There are other times when I sit at my keyboard and write what is channeled to me. Today is one of the times for channeling.

The information I channel comes from a group of entities. More than 20 years ago, I asked them who ‘they’ were. They explained that they speak in one voice; this being the ‘I’, or ‘we’ that they use in their messages. They refer to themselves as entities whose collective intention is to help me, and us, with our spiritual development along the paths we have chosen as individual souls and as a human collective on earth. Depending on the subject matter and the intended audience, the individual entities who comprise the group will change - as will the number of entities.

Here is their channeled message, for the first time here on my blog...

It is Time to Look in the Dark Corners

It’s time for all of you on this ‘little blue planet’ to have a good, long look in the dark corners of your psyches, and thoroughly examine what you find there. You all have these corners. Some of you have made forays into this shadowy world already and have had a stab at dealing with what is there. Others of you are aware of its existence through your peripheral vision only. You knew you would need to look one day but you hoped you could get away with ignoring it for a little while longer. And finally there are those of you who would like to think this corner isn’t there at all. I suspect those people are not likely to be reading this blog!

We assure you that the support you need to deal with what you find in these dark corners is always available at exactly the right moment. You might find that it doesn’t come from where you expected, but that should not be a deterrent. Be open to accepting help from wherever you find it. It will ‘feel right’ and that is all you need to know. Fear is the only enemy to your healing and you need not be afraid if you can trust that you have all the help you will need.

As you look at the world around you, you will be aware of many chaotic and challenging situations facing everyone; for individuals and for large and small groups, including nations. This is because a metaphorical ‘jack hammer’ is being applied to the fabric of your social, economic, physical(including geological) and energetic systems. In order to walk forward into a more sustainable, peaceful system, you will have to set yourselves free from the old one. This is easier if the old systems have been loosened up so that you're not trying to break free with a solid piece of concrete sitting on top of your life.

You have been seeing your lives through the lenses of specific belief systems. Many of these are so accepted that you don’t even know you hold them - they have become invisible. It is time for you to test these beliefs and see if they still apply. You believe in what you see as the rules of life and you use them to negotiate your way along your paths; indeed this is a system that has worked for the duration of your recorded history.

Your cultural upbringing has taught you some of these rules, For example, you believe that a certain set of behaviours will garner a particular set of consequences - sometimes so much so that you haven’t personally tested them. And you have extrapolated other rules from your personal experience. A simple example of this might be that you believe that if you challenge your partner, he/she will leave you, or you might see yourself as a cruel and unsupportive person.

Looking into the dark corners of your psyche will require that you be brave enough to review the rules of the fabric of your life. You’re going to have to say to yourselves, “This isn’t working. I don’t like this outcome. So maybe I can reassess why I’ve been seeing my life the way I have, or doing things the way I have.”
Let us say clearly that for the moment you can allow yourselves not to have to do anything. Just look. Be on the look-out for tools that can help you - books, films, support groups, overheard conversations, interviews, blogs, formal and informal studies, and even novels. We want to emphasize that you do not have to feel you are risking life and limb. Take small steps - but take them just the same!

The group of entities that represents the ‘we’ of our message to you is comprised of all the guides and highest-level over-souls for every one of you who will read this blog. Rest assured that you are being seen and spoken to directly. Time and space are not what you believe them to be and energy always attracts like energy. As Lucca has been fond of saying for years, there is no such thing as coincidence.

Peace

This week - ladies who search

For about seven years, I have been doing mini-readings for a delightful group of women here in Vancouver. Some of you have been to these sessions but for the benefit of those of you who have not, this week I thought I'd tell you a little about how it works.

Short readings let you try it out
In this particular case, my longest running group of this kind, one of the women hosts the evening and her friends come along for the socializing, hors d'oeuvres or take-out food, as well as to have a mini-reading done. In this case, I work in another room and the ladies come in to see me one at a time. We do 20-30 minute sessions, depending on how many are attending. There is a limit to how long my voice holds out so I can usually only do a maximum of 9 20-minute readings in an evening.

Group synergy
In other cases, I have done each person in the group with everyone else present in a circle. The disadvantage to this whole-group approach is the lack of privacy but the advantage is that the whole group gets the benefit of the wisdom imparted to the others in the group, as well as what is directed to each person specifically. When I do the whole group together like this, I find that there is a group synergy, and often a theme that is particularly helpful to everyone. No one is alone with their joys, sorrows or challenges and group members tend to be supportive of one another, even if they have never met before.

In a group setting, how 'public' does it have to be?
Some participants are concerned that sensitive information could be revealed in front of the rest of the group and they may feel this isn't appropriate. I've noticed that the phrasing of this sort of information tends to be such that only the person who is meant to understand will know what I mean. If the person chooses to share it with the rest of the group afterwards, they can, but they don't have to reveal anything if they don't feel comfortable. Participants are amazed at how much other people's messages mean to them.

Not sure you want to try it?
Sometimes there are new members at these group sessions and they aren't sure about whether they want to have a reading. When I do individual readings in another room, newcomers have until the end of the evening to decide. Some like being able to hear the people who go before them as they relate their experience and reactions. If they like what they hear, they may opt in. If they don't, there's no pressure. It has also happened that some folks come for the socializing and don't want a reading at all. That has always been fine with me. It has been my experience that some people will come back several times before they feel the urge to have a reading themselves, or they may never. It has to be the right place and the right time.

Seeing a group picture
Group sessions can be particularly interesting and useful when I do them with people who are part of a team or organization. I can often see patterns in the behaviour of the group that have not been articulated before. Bringing these to the attention of the group can do amazing things to validate the efforts of the individual group members and to resolve blocks or issues within the group that may have been preventing them from performing optimally.

For example...
I did such a reading for a working team in a municipal office in Sweden. One team member was seen as the nay-sayer in the group. He was described as raining on everyone's parade. In his eyes, he was the voice of caution and the only one who was willing to point out the pitfalls of projects that could sometimes seem overly optimistic. By the end of the reading, the group felt able to express their frustration with what they saw as unnecessary negativity and he, in turn, was able to express how thankless and alienating it was for him to be the lone voice of dissent. By the end of the reading, they were able to agree that the group would take over some of his cautionary role so that he wouldn't always have to be the one who pointed out the pitfalls of new ideas. I was able to intuitively reveal the problem that no one else had dared voice for fear that they would be misunderstood.

Mini-readings can give you a chance to taste what it feels like to work with me. Many people book a longer session at a later date where they have a full hour to themselves and can go into more detail. It's an gentle way to sample the goods, so-to-speak! If anyone is interested in booking a group, or wants more information about how the process of a group reading works, please feel free to get in touch and ask me for more information.

What are we really doing here?

I mentioned last week what I think I'm doing with my life and now I come to think about it, it's a question I hear a lot when I'm doing readings:

What's my purpose in life? How do I find it? And how will I know when I've got it right?

I refer to this as finding our 'purpose string', just because the phrase has a nice ring to it. I was talking to a friend the other day who says that when you're doing 'the right thing', it feels right, whether it's your job, volunteer work, or a hobby. You lose yourself in it and time seems to disappear. So how come we don't all feel that way?

I've struggled with it too. Sometimes I try to march myself up a path that isn't the right one. I can report that when I do that, it's always a hard slog. But I have to admit that doing what feels 'right' isn't always easy either. It's just that when it's 'right', I feel it's worth the hard work. It seems to be a 'gut feel' sort of thing.

How do I describe a 'gut feel'? Sometimes it's easier to describe what DOESN'T feel right. Then we can compare it to how it has felt in the past when we were doing something that felt good. And if our heads don't recognize the difference, our bodies usually object pretty loudly to the 'wrong' thing. One person I know said that he had ulcers. Another said it was migraines. Still another described insomnia.

My body doesn't usually get as confused as my head - my gut, in particular, has never steered me wrong. It reports loud and clear on what it thinks of the situations into which I place myself. I've learned that I ignore these votes at my peril. I've noticed that some of my physical reactions can be instantaneous, such as: yawns; temperature changes; ringing in my ears; sudden, stabbing headaches; nausea; tears; fumbling or clumsiness; muscle cramps; and even sneezes.

If I ignore these sudden changes, then my body symptoms can intensify and stick around for longer. I've had my back go out, skin reactions, allergies and chronic problems that affect digestion or circulation.

Actually, what I've learned most of all is that my body is a democracy and I have to listen to myself as I would to a constituent in my community. If I don't listen, the requests become more persistent and affect more of me - just like in a community. Pain or illness can be both a protest and a teacher. If I don't understand the initial message, it comes in more ways and/or gets louder, until I pay attention. Body and spirit need our attention and if we ignore either of them, we'll hear about it, eventually.

So, my answer to the question posed to me so often is this: pay attention. I have thought that our bodies might be like a scientific experiment. We try a little of this job search and see what happens to our body symptoms. Then we try a little of something else and see what happens then. Sometimes trial and error is a good way to learn in life. It might be the closest thing we have to a User's Manual.

A psychic with a tool box

Just before I left my last full-time job in the business world in 1990, I remember talking to my Reiki Master in Toronto. I had just completed the second degree of Reiki and was burnt out after completing almost a year in the third dysfunctional corporation I had worked in since my graduation with a management degree nine years previous. I observed to her that I wasn't sure why I had ended up in business school, much less working in the business world for almost ten years. It certainly wasn't what I had hoped to do when I grew up. Then I answered my own question by saying that it was because I was going to need to understand first-hand what the people from that world were experiencing.

Eighteen years have passed since then. During that time I have: retrained and practiced as a psychotherapist; learned enough about setting up a small business and creating a computerized business model, at the knee of a seasoned entrepreneur and teacher, to be able to write a practical set of 13 how-to workbooks on the subject; co-taught conflict resolution and relationship skills in a workshop setting with a knowledgeable partner in Europe; and pioneered as a life coach when there wasn't even a term for it yet.

During my hiatus from writing here, I have been considering how I identify myself. I have asked myself what is at the core of my belief system. I conclude that ultimately I believe we are souls experiencing a physical life in three dimensions, with all the joys, sorrows, frustrations and possibilities that that can offer. I think it's challenging to operate here on this little blue planet, in our limited but mind-blowingly complex physical bodies.

I believe that we humans are at a crossroads where we have the opportunity to redefine how we live together. Do we do it with joy, compassion, responsibility and sharing, or with fear, greed and mistrust? It's pretty simple really. We can go one way or the other, and having chosen, our choice will determine the minutia of how we live each day. The overwhelmingly large questions such as global warming and war, will come down to our seemingly little choices each day. As within, so without.

I'm here to help individuals and groups to find their 'purpose string'. Many of us lose track of who we are and what we're doing in our lives. We may be doing all the things that we think we ought to but I always come back to asking: What gives your life meaning? I believe my job/vocation/talent is in helping people to hear the voice within themselves and exploring ways to honour what it tells them. And I do it using my psychic ability. I'm a messenger.

Don't get me wrong; it isn't that I know how you should be living your life. A good psychic, like a good therapist or coach, won't tell you how to live your life or make your choices for you. My job is to help you see yourself, and appreciate yourself, and honour yourself, so that you can live the most authentic life possible.

I see myself as a 'psychic with a toolbox'. No, not a wrench or a hammer! My kit includes healing skills, psychotherapeutic skills, business skills and life skills. I pull them out if they're requested or required. But first and foremost, I have almost 50 years of experience in using my sixth sense to understand and pass along messages to those who come into my sphere looking for help. I am my own tool. Have intuition, will travel!

You're not 'cheating' if you need some help to clear the noisy debris of negative self-chatter or the needs of others, so that you can hear yourself singing out what you really need. For many people, their consultations with a psychic are a closely guarded secret. They're afraid that they wouldn't be taken seriously if anyone were to know that they consult one. But take it from me, many more people do it than you would ever think! I hope the time has come when it's considered to be a smart move to consult anyone who will help you to marshal your own resources, on the occasions when you need some additional perspective on your own life.

You can look forward to future posts about how you can do just this. I'll discuss how I do what I do and what it can do for you. If you have questions you'd like me to answer in this regard, please post them here by leaving a comment and I will address them.

Hiatus

Hello all. I've decided that I'm going to take a hiatus for a while. After posting almost every week since last June and after missing these past few weeks due to a nasty cold germ, I've decided to take some time to think. Sometimes I feel the need to consider my direction and focus, and this is one of those times.

You can expect me back again in the middle of May. Thank you so much for coming back to read my blog each week and I look forward to writing for you soon.
Lucca

Global currency

I continue this week with my thoughts about the book I've been reading called The Dream Manager. I've since finished it and have embarked on creating a list of my dreams - since I am my own best guinea pig!

Matthew Kelly suggests categorizing the dreams on your list. Although categorizing isn't a bad idea, I didn't find his particular 12 categories all that useful to me. I imagine though, that if I write down 100 dreams, the way he suggests, then I will be able to review them and find some themes that are relevant for me. I'll have to see as I do it. So far, I have noticed that I got to about 20 dreams on my list and then I was stumped. I stayed with it though, as he suggested, and found I was able to pick up again, but with a different flavour. I was having to dig deeper. I finally had to put my pen down because it was well past when I needed to be asleep. I'm at #67 and I will finish it today.

My next step will be to live with the list for a while - reread it, tweak it, add to it. Matthew suggests keeping your dreams in a book bought for this purpose, and dating new additions. We need to keep it front and center so that it doesn't get lost in the flotsam and jetsam of day-to-day life. I took advantage of serendipity today and worked with one of my clients to get a list started. It will be interesting to hear someone else's reaction to the process.

While I was reading the book, I was considering the organizations in which I have worked over my career, and how much this might have helped them. As I have said many times to many people, and at the risk of repeating myself, I have never liked the concept that human beings should keep themselves separated into compartments - one for home and one for work.

Oh, I agree that I wouldn't be an effective surgeon if I were operating and thinking at the same time about the fight I had with little Janey this morning about whether she could have an unsupervised sleepover. That goes without saying. What I object to is the idea that one doesn't affect the other, positively and negative. We know about the negatives but perhaps the positive aspects don't get enough attention.

I can't tell you the number of times I've been teaching supervisory skills when workshop participants have spontaneously blurted out in the group that the skills they were learning would help them in their marriage or with their kids. And if an employee gets better at strategic planning and budgeting at home, it has to be that they bring those same skills to work. A 'team' at work is your family or neighbourhood at home. Similarly, good listening skills apply anywhere.

Think about how much more productive we are at work when we have a supportive partner at home; someone who listens to us, believes in us, and helps us to cope when life gets hairy. Conversely, there are times when life falls apart at home and we need the support of our work team to get through it and out the other side. Death and/or illness in the family, or divorce, are just a couple of examples. You can say to someone that they shouldn't bring their divorce to work but we are now recognizing that it's more effective to acknowledge that we are coping with adversity or change, and provide some help so the person can get through it. Nowadays, we have employee assistance programs for this.

Let me get back to the idea of dreams though. When you ask employees to share their dreams at work, they bring more than their skills and their life challenges; they bring their hopes and aspirations. This is positive stuff. This is what inspires others, including the customers. Matthew recounts an interesting by-product of the dreaming process at work, when he observes that colleagues were getting a tremendous sense of satisfaction from helping one another to achieve their dreams; big or small. They started keeping track of one another's progress and offering encouragement and even resources, and then celebrating the successes.

When I'm my best, or progressing to be my best, in either my work or my home setting, one impacts the other. Once recognized, we can capitalize on it. People who are optimizing their lives, in whatever way is right for them, have better self esteem, they make better citizens - both corporate and global. It's win-win for everyone. Matthew says in the book, "Appreciation is the strongest currency in the corporate culture." Let me expand that sentiment to life! And what better form of appreciation can there be than helping someone to articulate and go after their dreams - work or personal? Talk about ripples on a pond!

It's such a simple idea and the ramifications are so grand. I can see now that I've been waiting for someone to articulate an idea like this and set it in motion. It makes me wonder, as with all good ideas, "Now why didn't I think of that?"

Books fall off the shelf

Sometimes I walk into the library and books 'fall off the shelf and into my hands'. Not literally, usually, but metaphorically. Last week it was a little book called The Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly. I suspect, when I stumble across books in this manner, that there is something important in them and it would behoove me to pay attention. (Likewise when someone sends me a book - but that's for another week.)

The author of The Dream Manager is saying that successful businesses, in fact successful organizations of any kind, are going to have to look at motivating their members/employees to stay with them in the near future, because the available pool of talent is going to become thin on the ground. Their survival will depend on it. He says the following in his introductory chapter:

It has been forty years since Peter Drucker observed the single greatest error and deception of our accounting system: people are placed in the liability column on the balance sheet. Machinery and computers are categorized as assets and people as liabilities. The reality, of course, is that the right people are an organization's greatest asset. We may have acknowledged this truth in theory, but we have not allowed it to sufficiently penetrate the way we manage our organizations, and indeed, the way we manage the people who drive them.

The fly-leaf describes the book as:

A business parable about how companies can achieve remarkable results by helping their employees fulfill their dreams. ... Beginning with his important thought that a company can only become the-best-version-of-itself to the extent that its employees are becoming better-versions-of-themselves, Matthew Kelly explores the connection between the dreams we are chasing personally and the way we all engage at work.

I am still reading the book and so I can't fully comment on it yet but I am intrigued by the idea of investing in people's efforts to make their dreams a reality. It was my experience in the 80's that the world of business was obsessed with short-term gain and not particularly interested in the welfare of it's employees, treating them as raw materials used up in the process of production, to be disposed of if they didn't fit the mold, or if they were 'used up'. Conversely, if the employee was valuable enough, the company would negotiate to pay more in order to keep him(usually a him). If not, well, they were expendable. My fear is that this is still so but I haven't tested it recently to find out.

Beyond getting our basic needs met, I don't think that people working in organizations are as motivated by money as we've been led to believe. I acknowledge that it is a factor but I watched a lot of talent walk out of the organizations for whom I worked. Unless they felt they were being grossly under-compensated, their reasons for leaving had more to do with their values and whether they were treated with respect.

Twenty years ago, from my perspective in the organization's HR department, I could see that employees were the business' greatest assets but that they weren't being treated as such. I felt like a lone voice in the wilderness. Once I started to work as a therapist, I was in a position to gain more insight. Many people felt trapped in jobs without personal meaning. The lucky ones were able to get out but even they soon found that the next job had similar issues.

That's why The Dream Manager, and the fact that it is being read so widely, is encouraging for me. It gives me hope that we can make workplaces more creative and meaningful. We spend such a huge chunk of our lives at work. It would be invaluable if it could be a place that engendered satisfaction and growth instead of resignation to the status quo.

I was having coffee with a friend today and we were talking about passion for our dreams and what such passion feels like. I have noticed with my clients that when they talk about what makes them passionate in their lives, they light up. Their eyes sparkle and they get more animated. It is a joy to watch. It's even contagious! And those people who have not yet identified what their passion is tell me they feel flat and that something is missing in their lives. then the challenge is to help them to find it.

I knew a man in England who gave a speech on the occasion of the retirement of one of his plant employees. After the speech, he went up to the man to wish him well and to ask him what he thought he was going to do when he retired. It turned out that the man had been a band leader all his adult life and that retirement meant that he could do it full time. This was clearly his passion. Who knew? Certainly not the management. It had never occurred to anyone that anything could be more important to him than his job - that it might have been just a means to an end. And if the employee had not had that band, he may not have been able to stomach his repetitive job for all those years.

I believe that my passion is what makes me who I am - uniquely me among all others. It is through my passion that I express my life force, often my talent. It challenges me, gives me joy and a sense of deep satisfaction. I can work at it when I have no energy left for anything else in my life. It gives my life meaning. I believe I bring my passion to my efforts to attain my dreams. Perhaps it's even what fuels my dreams.

I'll leave you with this: Have you given any thought to your dreams lately? Can you articulate what they are? Do the people nearest and dearest to you know what they are? Does your boss? Have your dreams been slumbering in a forgotten corner for a while? What would it take to dust it/them off and give them some attention? It might be worth it. And if you manage other people, you might want to ask them what their dreams are. You may be surprised. Who knows what passion and creativity might be unleashed!

Remember what felt right?

I had a long discussion today with a great friend of mine about how you know when you're doing the 'right thing' in your life, or making the 'right' decision. We were hearkening back to various crossroads in our lives, when we took a road that changed things for us, and how that felt at the time.

We both felt that when we weren't sure about whether a choice was right for us, then it actually wasn't right. The 'right' choices, such as the ones we had just been discussing, that changed the course of our lives, seemed easy to us at the time. The triggers, or flags, or invitations to action at these crossroads, looked like coincidence, and we followed up on them without giving it all that much thought.

I was reminded of this the other day when I was remembering how I had felt when I was clearly doing what was 'right' for me. There was flow. There was a sense of ease. I'm not saying that it wasn't challenging, but I had the motivation to meet those challenges and trusted that I would somehow make it through to the other side.

When I compared that feeling, to the feeling I have when I am considering something that I'm not sure about, there is literally no comparison to be made. The two don't feel anything like one another. I have often heard the saying, "If in doubt, don't", which I think is true, but I think it's more involved than that. If I'm plagued by doubts, then it isn't the right choice for me, because if it were, I would probably blow off the doubts and do it anyway.

Another part of this decision-making process, unscientific as it may seem, is that 'right' choices seem to come from my heart and not my head. I may 'make up my mind' but I feel the rightness of it with my heart. If it doesn't feel right in my heart, I find myself falling back on rationalizing, making lists and formulating arguments, for and against.

I surely know this with my clients. I can tell by the language they are using, whether their heart is behind the choice, or they are talking themselves into or out of the decision. When the arguments get convoluted, or they are trying to convince me, they are most often trying to convince themselves; or rather, trying to convince their heads.

With my clients though, I have the advantage of being able to watch their body language, whereas I'm not always aware of my own. Clients will often shake their heads no, while they are verbally answering in the affirmative. You've probably noticed this with people you know. The movement may only take a nano-second. You might not even be sure you saw it; almost like a flicker. But that is the body giving away the person's truth, even if they aren't aware of it. In my experience, bodies don't lie.

When I point this out to people, some are angry at me for giving voice to the part of themselves that they had thought to have safely overridden - a part that isn't acceptable and might be dangerous. Others are relieved that I am giving space and time to the side of the argument that had not been allowed to speak. Often this response is accompanied by spontaneous tears for having hit home with the truth.

And so my rule of thumb is ... compare how you feel when you are uncertain, with what it felt like when you did something that you can now tell, with the benefit of hindsight, was right for you. My friend an I agree that when a choice is right, the synchronicities line up like well-choreographed and rehearsed dancers, with the addition of just the right shot of adrenaline and inspiration.

You might be inspiring someone!

Many years ago, when I was in my late twenties, I had a friend whom I met through the psychic classes I was taking at the time. She was a little older than I was and had been working steadily since she was a teenager, without a break. When I met her, she was working in the hectic world of advertising. Sometime during our course, her marriage broke up, prompting her to take a look at her life and what she really wanted. She decided to take some time out of her career and reassess, going back to school and taking some classes in women's studies for a while.

I remember being impressed by the courage it took to walk away from her job and take care of her own needs as a person. I was still not earning very much and had no safety net to fall back on. I believed that what she was doing was completely out of the question for me and yet I was somewhat envious of what she was able to do. I doubt if she had any idea at the time that I was watching her.

A few years later, after a job change that left me disillusioned and exhausted, I decided to leave the business world, move across the country and subsequently, to get some further training in a related field and change my career direction. It was a scary thing to do and, looking back now, I can see that I had this friend's example in mind as I walked off the edge of my world.

She didn't make me do it, didn't even suggest it, but the fact that she had done it and survived, even blossomed, led me to believe that it could be done. My reasons for doing what I did may not have had anything to do with hers but I saw someone do something that I considered to be courageous, even if she didn't think that of herself as she did it, and based on my interpretation, I went ahead and did what I needed courage to do.

If I were to have the chance to talk to her today, she would probably be amazed to hear that I responded to her choices the way I did. Sometimes we are so busy trying to keep life and limb together, fighting our demons and summoning the courage to face each uncharted day, that it doesn't occur to us that we might inadvertently inspire someone else along the way. Wouldn't it be nice if we could know it at the time?

Talent in your pockets

The other day I heard someone say of Erma Bombeck, an American popular author who had a long career as a mother, homemaker and author regarding same, and wrote of the era in which I grew up, that she had the following to say about how she saw the end of her life.

I paraphrase here...

She said that she wanted to arrive wherever she was going at the end of her life (heaven I think) and have God ask her to empty her pockets, asking her if she had used up all the talents and opportunities that she had been given to work with. She wanted to be able to answer that she had used up everything and had nothing that she could return unused. I hope I got what she said right, but even if I didn't, this is what I took from what I heard.

The concept really hit home for me. I like the idea that we might be given raw materials to work with and that our job throughout our lives might be to use up everything with which we arrive, leaving with empty pockets, having lived a full life.

So I gave it some thought. What did I arrive with in my pockets? What talents do I have? Do I recognize them? Have I used them as much as I might, or am I hiding any of them where no one can see them, let alone make use of them? So far as I am aware, I think I use my talents, big or small.

And what about opportunities? Have I taken full advantage of the opportunities that have come my way? Have I shared them? I'm not quite as sure of this one as I am about the talents I have. I suspect that I may have been scared on some occasions, although no specific situations are coming immediately to mind. I recognize that opportunities sometimes look like risks to me - risks that are too big.

How about you? Are your pockets empty? Are you finished yet or do you still have some things stored away in your pockets that have yet to see the light of day, before you are asked to empty them out and reflect on what you haven't used? Hmm.

Pollyanna-ism

I'm still reading the book called The Intention Experiment and am interested in it, not only for the information it contains but because of the thinking it has inspired me to do. Today I was reading about how to prepare myself to send my healing intentions out to a person or situation. There is a list of 9 points.

• Enter your intention space.
• Power up through meditation.
• Move into peak focus through mindful awareness of the present.
• Get onto the same wavelength by focusing on compassion and making a meaningful connection.
• State your intention and make it specific.
• Mentally rehearse every moment of it with all your senses.
• Visualize, in vivid detail, your intention as established fact.
• Time it right - check what the sun is doing, and choose days when you feel happy and well.
• Move aside - surrender to the power of the universe and let go of the outcome.

I was drawn to the fourth point which is designed to encourage a sense of universal compassion. It starts with focusing your attention on your heart and ends with directing your loving thoughts to the object of your intention. The author spends some time discussing monks, yogis and healers and making observations about how they prepare to meditate and what they can do from such a state of being.

Having done healing work myself, I have had some first-hand experience of what this feels like. I can't say that I am the best mediator in the world but I do know what it feels like to focus on the person to whom I am sending healing, or on whom I am placing my hands. Many of the healers talk about 'getting out of the way' so that the healing energy can pass through them, using them as a channel.

To me, this goes hand in hand with opening my heart and entering the place where I feel love for the person who needs healing. In fact, I can honestly say that most of the time this is true with any client with whom I work, whether the person is a therapy client, a coaching client, looking to have a reading, or in a workshop setting.

While I am working with that person, a change takes place inside me and I shift into a neutral and accepting place. It is quite simply the best place, the most effective place, from which to work. I can't say that I do this intentionally; it seems to be a by-product of the work. I think that it happens when I set my intention at the beginning of a session or workshop.

For as long as I can remember, I have been an optimistic person. One of my bosses once commented, in some exasperation, "Are you always so happy?" Although he was referring in part to my being cheerful, he was also commenting on the fact that I would look for the best in situations. The answer to his question was: not always, but most of the time.

I have on occasion been told that I am Pollyanna-ish. It isn't usually said as a compliment and the term came to mind today as I was considering the state of positive expectation that I often feel when I am working. It has been a long time since I heard the story so I looked it up on the internet. I haven't read the book called Pollyanna but I did see the Walt Disney film when I was a child.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the book's influence:

The novel's success brought the term "pollyanna" (along with the adjective "pollyannaish" and the noun "Pollyannaism") into the language to describe someone who is cheerfully optimistic and who always maintains a generous attitude toward the motives of other people. It also became, by extension – and contrary to the spirit of the book – a derogatory term for a naïve optimist who always expects people to act decently, despite strong evidence to the contrary.

Pollyanna was an orphan who went to live with a bitter and angry aunt who gave her an attic bedroom, with nothing to give it any comfort. She was strict, cold and withholding, as I recall, and yet Pollyanna found things to be happy about. She called it the 'Glad Game' and taught everyone around her how to look for something positive in every situation. When she had an accident and lost the use of her legs, the town gathered around to support her because what she had taught them was so valuable.

I liked the story and could relate to it, not because I was always so much like the heroine, I surely did my share of moaning and moping as a child, but because I liked the idea that someone could influence the world for the better. I remember being surprised when I was teased for liking the film and subsequently I have kept my opinion to myself, even to this day. Well, in this blog I am 'outing' myself as a person of optimism. Maybe it's the first step towards healing the world.

The laboratory of life

I'm back on the topic of The Intention Experiment, the book that I'm reading - still. I'm reading a little each day and so it's sitting with me as I go about my life. This is one of those books that gives me hope because it shows me that the scientists are busy proving how I can do what I do. That's happening in their labs.

In the last couple of weeks, I have begun to look at my life through the lens of the experiments discussed in the book. I suppose you could say that my life is my laboratory. Most of the time, I experiment using myself as the guinea pig and then read the books that discuss it later on. Sometimes it happens the other way around but not usually.

The author, Lynne McTaggart, says that all matter transmits and receives impulses from all other matter, right down to the molecular level and even the sub-atomic level. (I paraphrase here) The idea is that everything is affected by everything else at the deepest possible level. I understood it when I read it, but not well enough to be able to describe it in detail here. Maybe I'll be able to by the end of the book! Suffice to tell you the gist of it and let you read it for yourselves.

One of the things that interests me is that scientists have proven that plants can not only pick up and respond to human intentions, but they can transmit, or broadcast, their response to those intentions so that other plants can pick them up as well. They don't even have to be in the same room with one another; not the human or the other plants. This was documented using equipment that was designed for lie-detector tests.

Scientists have also been experimenting with individuals directing healing intentions toward patients with cancer, AIDS and other diseases. They have proven that it makes a difference, and not just in a few isolated incidents. What we think, really does make a difference. For anyone who feels hopeless and thinks they don't make a difference in the world, I recommend they read this book so they can see that what they think and intend has a far more immediate effect than casting their vote every four years.

I'm not at all surprised to find proof that we're connected at such a basic level; in fact I have been sure that this is so since before I can remember. I have been acting for years as if it were true, even though I didn't have 'scientific' data yet. (I admit that I have always trusted that one day there would be proof.) I believe that this web of 'living connection' between all matter comes into play when I work with clients. It has taken a lot of experimenting and practice to pick up energy on this level, and it's sometimes more of an art than a science, but it would appear that we are developing some scientific evidence to validate it.

On a sillier level, for years I've been warning spiders before I vacuum near them, telling them that I'm was coming and they had better ski-daddle or they would be sucked up, but that I didn't plan to do them any harm. I've been talking to my plants, sometimes out loud and sometimes in my head, telling them that they're growing stronger and healthier. Loony? Maybe, but not dangerous to society, so I figure it's worth playing around with.

When it comes to the things that I know won't do anyone any harm, I indulge my beliefs. That's where my life becomes my own laboratory. I think we can all experiment. Far from doing harm, we can probably do some good. If other living creatures, including people, can sense my intentions, then it can't hurt to think well of them when I pass them in the street, and smile at them. It's as easy as spreading the common cold, except that it's spreading good energy instead.

Pollyanna-ish? Yup. It sure feels good though, when someone passes me in the street and smiles at me, for no apparent reason. To take another tack, if I direct jealous, angry or mean thoughts at a person, or an animal, or a plant, it impacts them on some level. Haven't you had the experience of just knowing that someone is thinking ill of you, even when you couldn't prove it, and then had this suspicion confirmed at a later date. Sometimes we're being paranoid or making unfounded assumptions, and it's always a good idea to check out assumptions before acting on them but ... sometimes you're right, and this may show you how you know.

I say this not to encourage you to go around accusing people of having convicted you in their thoughts, but to caution you against doing that to others. To me it reinforces the value of checking things out through straight and respectful communication instead of letting suspicions fester and malevolent intentions grow.

So, in conclusion, I think we're all connected in more ways than we know. I think it's as much science as gravity is. Eventually, we will teach this in grade school too! And, if we're all ultimately connected, then in harbouring harmful thoughts towards you, I'm really also causing harm to myself. Food for thought, if you'll pardon the pun.

Good intentions pave the way

In the late 80's, when I discovered that I had the ability to read the energy of people and objects, I was concerned that I might mislead people. I didn't want to say or do anything that would cause anyone any harm and so I was reluctant to use the gift that was emerging at that time. I wondered how I would know if what I picked up was valid.

One day at around that time, I was sitting in meditation and I asked the question that had been bothering me: How can I use my gift without causing harm? To my surprise, I received an immediate and very simple answer. A clear voice in my head told me to always set my intention to that effect - in other words, each time I worked I was to ask that my work with the person or group be for their and my highest good. I was advised not to under estimate the power of intent.

As soon as I heard the message I knew that I had a profound solution to more than just the question I was asking that day. It occurred to me that setting such an intention was a good idea for every aspect of life. From that time forwards, I have always set my intentions this way when I work.

Lately I have spent a lot of time pondering the world around me and especially the amount of unresolved conflict I see every day. My work is changing again, as it does periodically, but I can see that many people's work is changing. Not knowing what is ahead for us is frightening and causes us stress. We can prepare to some degree for the things we can anticipate but what happens when we come to a place where we don't know what's ahead and can't predict?

I'm still reading the book about the Intention Experiment (see the sidebar) and it has reminded me of my old solution about the power of intending something - anything. Webster's Dictionary defines intention this way:

intention

Main Entry: in·ten·tion

Pronunciation: \in-ˈten(t)-shən\

Function: noun

Date: 14th century

1: a determination to act in a certain way : resolve
2: import, significance
3 a: what one intends to do or bring about b: the object for which a prayer, mass, or pious act is offered
4: a process or manner of healing of incised wounds
5: concept; especially : a concept considered as the product of attention directed to an object of knowledge
6 plural : purpose with respect to marriage

I've always used it in the sense of the first and third definitions but when I looked the word up, it caused me to consider that the meaning could be broader than that. When I do healing work, I ask that the healing sources available to me be made available to the person who needs the healing. That is a prayer of sorts, although I wouldn't say that I pray to any traditionally defined God. I believe service is offered in the same way. I have loved to be of service since I was very young and I think that when we are of service to a person or a group, our intentions are to be of assistance.

The fourth definition interested me as well: "a process or manner of healing of incised wounds". I hadn't thought of intention as being a healing word but here is the definition, in addition to my thoughts about setting my intention when I do healing work.

And then there is the final definition, regarding intentions as they relate to marriage. Marriage, as we see it, may be one of the most intention-defined actions of our lives. When we set out in matrimony with another human being, we are filled with good intentions. In fact, we consider them to be so important that we make them sacred and ask our nearest and dearest to bear witness. We might do well to repeat them to one another every night before we go to sleep - to remind ourselves of what we hoped for and intended for the daily outcome.

Finally, I remind myself that intention is a sort of mindfulness. A friend was talking about the 'slow movement' the other day and I am reminding myself as I write this to slow down and be more mindful of my intentions as they relate to how I treat myself, and not only those around me.

Today I intend:

• to do no harm to myself or the people and creatures with whom I share this planet
• to share positive and healing energy as I move about in the world
• to use my optimism and vision to create wonderful opportunities
• To help people to hear their own inner voices and to walk their chosen paths
  

Faith, trust, hope

I found myself encouraging a client this week not to give up on her dream. She is a talented and dedicated teacher in an educational system that is outside the mainstream system. She and I agreed that the original intention of the founder of this particular educational philosophy was that the schools be small, and rooted in the communities in which the students and the families live. Unfortunately, this is not the norm. Most of these small schools have a hard time surviving and, operating as close to the knuckle as they do, they are constantly searching for resources, volunteer help and enough money to give the teachers a living wage. It's an uncertain and stressful life but so worthwhile as a living alternative to an increasingly stressed public school system.

Once she had gone home, I found myself thinking of all the change-makers whom I know and how challenging it is for them to ride in the visionary section of the bus of life. It takes a unique sort of person to hang in there long enough to see the changes of which they dream. Such a person must be dedicated to their vision, stubborn as hell, self-motivated and and almost hardwired not to let go. Even with these qualities, it's often a lonely ride and they eventually get tired. And frequently they run out of resources.

Our communities desperately need these individuals for our long-term survival; not in the present so much as in a future, around the bend where we cannot yet see. Some of these people will be recognized and maybe even rewarded within their lifetimes, but most of them plug away doing their small but essential bit, with no acknowledgment and little desire for it. At the most, one day in the far off future, someone might say of them, "Oh yes, odd duck; she was ahead of her time."

This client and friend is one of those people. She honestly doesn't see herself as anyone exceptional. She just wants to make enough money to earn a living, and for there to be enough support for the school so that it can stay afloat and allow her to continue teaching, doing what she is so talented at. Right now, she is feeling close to the end of her rope - financially, emotionally, energetically and creatively.

She isn't alone. Some of us obviously live an alternative life. You can point us out and wonder how we do it. But some of us are closet 'alternative-ists'. We secretly root for the people who are brave enough, silly enough, or perhaps free enough, to be able to take the risk it requires to go against the norms of our society, but we don't broadcast our sympathies. Collectively, I think there are far more of us in this world than we know about - both the obvious variety and the closet ones.

I've heard it said that these odd-balls who live or work on the fringe are disparaging of the people who aren't doing what they are, but I don't think this is true - at least not unless they are feeling at the end off their rope. Some vocal activists might come out with strong messages urging people to change, (or else there will be dire consequences) but there are many more people who just want to keep quietly experimenting in the hope of one day reaching their ideal. The projects might not all succeed, but remember that Edison had far more 'failures' than successes. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet (sorry to be trite).

So I was encouraging my client to keep the faith, simultaneously realizing that I could have been giving myself the same message. Faith, trust, hope, call it what you may, we need it or we'll give up. Our mad social scientists won't be able to keep plugging away and in so doing, keep the light burning to show the path for those who will be trying to find a better way in the future. So if you come across one of these odd ducks - these change-makers - help them out if you can, but spare some encouragement for them at the least. They're ahead of the curve and those of us who notice them are their safety net. For those of you who already do this, you have my heart-felt appreciation.