habits
Your Sacred Creative Energy
One of the most powerful and sacred energies we have is our located in our Sacral Chakra, the seat of our sexual and creative energy. This chakra is located just underneath the navel and associated with the color orange.
Orange is the most creative color. I always recommend to my clients who are struggling to design, paint, sculpt, write, choreograph, compose, manifest, or get pregnant, to introduce as much orange in their life as possible. This means wearing orange, decorating your art studio with orange, and even eating oranges and carrots and other orange-colored foods!
Nothing is more powerful or important in life than to create another life. To create a new opportunity for soul growth. To give access to another being to be able to use the planet for spiritual growth. For this reason, our sexual energy and creative energy are intertwined.
When a client tells me they are having a hard time writing their book or completing an art project, I always look into what is happening in there romantic and sex life. Usually there is a problem in this aspect of their life. For example, an unhealthy sexual relationship involving abuse or perversion will stifle someone’s creative energy.
It is vital to know that every person you are sexually intimate with will leave a residue of their energy with you and take some of yours. Sex creates an energy cord between your and the other person. If this is not a healthy sexual exchange, then it may become both energetically and karmically toxic.
The abuse of our own sexuality, as well as the sexual abuse of others, can damage our creative energy. Abuse it, and you will lose it. Sexual trauma is stored in the body and can cause reproductive, psychological and creative damage. Sexual trauma as an adult, or in our childhood, needs a lot of work and time, and sometimes expert guidance, in order to heal.
Weight Loss Astrology Using The Moon Phases
The past winter has been especially tough on all of us. Many of us are experiencing some form of pandemic fatigue or cabin fever. We’ve baked all our cookies, ordered junk food deliveries, and did the experimental microwave recipes during lockdown. And many of us have put on a pound or two, or more, for sheer comfort’s sake!
But now we’re finally beginning to look ahead again. Spring has sprung here in the Northern Hemisphere and the climate is warming up. We wanna wear less and it’s time to get serious about figuring out how to achieve our best Summer ‘beach body.’
In my own search for weight loss inspiration, I discovered a great formula for women devised by sports nutritionist, astrologer and weight loss guru, Kira Sutherland.
She recommends a diet lasting 12-14 days, starting with your menstrual period. This is apparently the absolute best time to lose weight. Then you stop and return to normal eating, even allowing yourself some well-earned treats. Even I can do that!
If you don’t experience a monthly flow, a bit of astrological research will be needed to follow this diet. If you don’t have your natal birth chart available, or don’t know how to interpret it, you may need to consult a professional astrologer.
What you’re looking for is your Natal Moon Phase Cycle, from New Moon to Balsamic (no, not the salad dressing). At birth, we fall into one of eight cycles of Moon-to-Sun connections that define our Natal Moon Phase.
Once your phase has been determined, it’s time to check out the Ephemeris to note when the transits in the sky mirror the same Moon Cycle that is in your natal blueprint. And when that blessed event occurs every month, it’s time to punch the stop watch and begin your two week Kira Sutherland diet!
After 14 days, stop. You’re done for now. Relax the diet and stop weighing yourself for the next two weeks. You deserve a reward for all that hard work and sacrifice, so feel free to live your best couch potato life! Once the lazy two weeks are at an end, you can begin again on the next moon phase cycle, or at the start of your next period.
Old And Worn, Or Shiny And New?
My dad was an avid coin collector. This is probably why I have the habit of collecting spare change to look at the dates or any flaws on each coin. I guess it’s in my DNA.
One of my favorite memories of my dad is sitting at his antique roll-top desk looking at his coins with a magnifying glass. Some coins were old, dirty, beat-up, others new and shiny. It is easy to be attracted to the new and shiny coins.
I remember my father telling me some of the ones that look so old and ugly are sometimes worth much more than they may appear to be. When we go on looks and youth alone, the old, tarnished silver dollars in our lives might look like they are not worth much, but sometimes they are priceless.
My dad always said, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” After he had passed, my mother took some of his silver dollars in for appraisal and much to her surprise some of the silver dollars were worth thousands.
When I am doing readings, my dad, who is now in spirit, will sometimes come through to show me a certain old coin. It is my personal psychic symbol meaning the person I am reading for has something, or someone, in their life that may seem ‘old and worn-out,’ but worth much more than face value.
It is human nature to choose things that are bright, new, young and shiny. Sometimes we make bad life choices regarding people, places and things on appearance alone. I once bought a sports car for the way it looked. It was red and looked feisty, but it was not a great choice for the snow and ice we have here during the winter. Totally impractical. What was I thinking!
I have been reminiscing about my dad a lot lately. I asked him once if he could only live in one of his former houses, which one would he choose? Without hesitation his answer was the old family house in Maine. He was the third generation to own that house. “Why the old house,” I asked. His reply, “There is nothing in the Florida house I cannot replace. The old house has memories that are irreplaceable and priceless, right down to the wood and square nails that hold it together.”
How Sticky Notes Can Change Your Life
We live in a world where we are bombarded with negativity every day. Whether it comes from social media or the mainstream news, it’s easy to feel like you’re drowning in a sea of negative information and fear-based messages. And the more we are exposed to all this negative input, the more we internalize it, until it becomes part of our self-talk and general state of mind.
Fortunately, the solution to some of life’s most complex challenges can often be found in the most mundane. Enter the simple sticky note! By writing down simple, positive affirmations or slogans on a bunch of sticky notes, and placing them anywhere you will see them frequently, you can significantly change your inner dialogue from constant negativity and nay-saying to one of possibility, hope and optimism.
Choose simple, short affirmations that resonate with who you are, and what you truly want in life. Whether it’s something like, “I am worthy,” or “Love surrounds me,” or even, “I will get that dream job,” it will inspire you to change the narrative and negative self-talk each time you read one of these short statements out loud.
This technique always reminds me of the famous opening scene of the television cartoon, The Simpsons, with Bart Simpson writing a phrase over and over on the chalkboard. There’s actually some method in the madness of this old-fashioned way of disciplining schoolkids. When our brain repeats a word or phrase over and over again, new neural pathways are created with new associations. Saying something once or twice only, we’re just as likely to forget it. But if it’s something we repeat many times, our brain will literally change over time, and so will our patterns of thought, feeling and action.
It’s been shown that establishing a new habit, or making new behavior automatic, takes on average about two months. Try placing your sticky notes in those places you spend most of your time every day: in your workspace, your car, on the bathroom mirror, the kitchen refrigerator, or on your bedside table. The more you see (and repeat) the words written on them, the more you will start to transform your thinking.
Overcoming Your Self-Limiting Beliefs
You’ve probably heard this before. I talk about this all the time. But the concept is one that has had such a huge impact on my life, I just have to share it! You are not your thoughts, or your feelings. You are the soul or spirit who has the ability to observe and experience your thoughts and feelings.
When I made this realization, I had already been working for years on my tendency to be very critical with my inner dialogue. But only when I paid attention to it from a spiritual perspective, did I realize how harsh I had really been on myself.
Our minds are constantly full of inner chatter which, when left unattended, can become a toxic breeding ground for fear, self-judgment and limiting belief patterns. Once I realized I was separate from my thoughts and feelings as a spiritual being, I began to observe them more objectively.
As a natural consequence of this, I found myself asking some really compelling questions. What was I believing about these thoughts? What kind of emotions are these thoughts bringing up? This kind of self-reflection opens a conversation with your heart, your soul, your higher self.
Your mind is designed to keep you safe. This too often means keeping you confined within your comfort zones and self-limiting beliefs. Your heart and soul, on the other hand, want you to grow and expand. The higher self wants you to learn, and play, and, and explore, and experience as much as possible in this lifetime.
Multi-Tasking Does Not Cultivate A Quality Life
I’m sure there has been a time in your life when you may have been too active on a hot summer, day without adequately hydrating, or juggling far too many tasks at once without taking a break. While you may have crossed the finish line, or pleased your boss by checking off all the tasks you completed, your sense of well-being was probably rock bottom, and your nerves frazzled. You possibly also questioned whether or not the best version of yourself showed up for life the next day.
Although many of us have found ways to multi-task our hectic lives, research is increasingly showing that effective multi-tasking is in fact a myth. Working on multiple projects at once doesn’t necessarily make us high achievers, or a successful super humans. Multitasking for most individuals merely replaces quality with quantity, and often leaves us feeling overwhelmed and disconnected from our deeper purpose.
As a spiritualist, I make it a practice not to judge how others achieve their everyday objectives and goals. But I do counsel many people who seem to have traded quantity for quality in their lives, and are missing out on the gift of savoring the sweet taste of personal achievement that is purposely focused and uninterrupted.
While old habits are tough to break, each of us has the innate capacity to build new processes within our mind. Psychological tools, such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) for example, can be used to re-program the mind to think differently.
Metaphysics and New Thought spirituality also teaches that through positive thinking we can manifest healthier outcomes in all areas of our lives. Many indigenous peoples also have a long tradition of spiritual practices, such as vision quests, dream interpretation, divination, and rituals and ceremonies, to help seekers find their best path.
Meditation Is For Everyone
Meditation can easily be a part of your daily life. It is a simple spiritual practice. What is difficult is to change one’s habits.
There are many variants of meditation, some of which you probably know and may have tried. If so, you may have discovered that the difficulties many of us face, when attempting to adopt meditation as a spiritual practice, are usually not related to the meditation itself. More often we are ‘fighting’ with our own minds. We are competing within, for the control, or the freedom of our mind.
Our enemies in this context are short-term rewards: leisure activities, such as watching TV, browsing social media, snacking, or anything that helps our neurons remain lazy. In these activities, attention is scattered and unfocused.
The mind thus learns to be ‘random.’ One could compare this state of mind to the behavior of a wild monkey. This restlessness has no practical purpose – it is just ‘noise.’ And it is happening all the time. We may feel we are actually doing something, but we are just passing the time.
Meditation puts a stop to this unnecessary mental activity. Although in meditation, one does not actively seek to stop thinking, one tries to generate the conditions in which thought is reduced, and the mind now merely observes whatever is happening: an idea, a feeling, a sensation. It is all just observed.