spiritual practice
Crystals And Stones For Your Spiritual Practice
Crystals and stones have grown in popularity in recent years, to aid in healing, protection, divination and wellness.
They can be worn as jewelry, placed under a pillow, infused in water, set around the home, or used in prayers, meditations, spells and rituals.
It is important, however, to purchase only ethically sourced crystals and stones from businesses that respect their high vibrational qualities, because they are precious metaphysical tools from Mother Earth that should not be taken for granted.
Here are some popular crystals and stones I recommend for use in your spiritual practice.
Amythest
This is one of the most popular crystals and aids in enhancing one’s spiritual vision. It is also great for recovery, sobriety and calming down anxiety. If dreams during sleep are intense, you can place this under your pillow to get a good night of rest.
Black Tourmaline
This stone works with the root chakra to ground one’s energy and cleanse the aura from negativity. It also promotes inner strength when dealing with difficult people and adversity.
Blue Calcite
A wonderful crystal for encouraging rest and relaxation. It is a gentle stone and assists in soothing emotional trauma and gain a positive perspective.
Manifesting Meditation For Beginners
The practice of meditation is tremendously powerful and has impacts on both our spiritual and physical well-being, as well as on our reality. Creating a routine meditation practice can help to super-charge your ability to manifest your desires, has incredible health benefits, and believe it or not – it can actually be a fun experience!
The idea that you have to be able to completely clear your mind of thoughts to successfully meditate is probably one of the most common misconceptions. This is only one form of meditation and honestly, it’s quite challenging! For someone who has never meditated before, it would be like giving a kindergarten student a complicated math equation to solve.
As with anything, it takes some time to learn the technique and train your brain to comply with your spirit. The first thing you must understand is, you are not your brain or your thoughts. You are not your body, or your emotions. These are all things you experience. You experience the thoughts in your mind, you experience the sensations of the body and of emotions, but these things are not you.
So, what or who is doing the observing? The answer is Spirit. Your spirit. This understanding is vital. Once you can separate your Spirit, your Soul, from the mechanics of the body, you can begin to tame the voracious beast that is your mind.
Going back to stillness meditations for moment, these are certainly powerful and wonderful to experience, but our brains are used to running the show! Instead of trying to turn off your thoughts, I encourage you to begin by giving the mind something to do instead.
Take some time to think about what you want to achieve through your practice. At its most basic meditation can be used as a tool to help align your mind, body and spirit with your overall goals. These goals can be anything! Reducing stress or anxiety, improving overall vitality, enhancing mental function, boosting your mood, improving your sleep patterns, and so on. Creative visualization is a remarkably powerful tool for manifesting. If you have never tried it before, start with just one simple intention. As you grow more adept, you can expand your goals and wishes.
Dreamwork With Your Angels
Dreaming is not only the doorway to the unconscious, but also an entrance to other realms. Our dreams connect us with our subconscious mind and the spirit realms, often in the form of strange and mysterious symbolisms.
We should be more grateful for our dreams, because even the difficult ones, that stir up our traumas and worries, help us to deal with any issues we have been resisting.
Dreams are also a portal into the influence of angelic forces. Connecting with the Angels in this way is easy and natural; it happens even when we are not aware of it.
The dream state is an entry point that offers unique advantages for our heavenly companions, for when we sleep, the mind is wide open. The resistances and blockages of our busy minds are suspended for us to access what normally cannot be seen. The fluidity of dreams is closer to the higher dimensions, rather than to the structured, material state in which we exist in our waking hours.
Our Angels often appear to us in dreams, but we seldom remember this, or, if we do, we do not recognize them. They are usually that friendly presence that often accompanies us through a dream. Or they may feature in the dream, as wise, powerful, and influential figures, but not necessarily with wings or other stereotypical symbols of their identity, such as ‘harps and halos.’
Angels are messengers of the Divine, and they come in various manifestations. For example, they sometimes appear in animal form, or make their presence known as an intense, bright light. They also have diverse things to communicate and infinite ways for doing so. But they all have one common purpose, and that is to be of service to humanity.
Most of us have all been brought up to believe that there is a separation between humans and Angels, but in truth we share our world with them! In our dreams, we can overcome the mental barriers that separate us from their higher energies.
Realign Your Spirit This New Year
With the difficult year 2020 finally in our rear-view mirror, it is time to stop for a moment, clear our minds, hearts and spirit, and embrace the hope, happiness, well-being and prosperity that awaits us in the new year. We do not have to carry the pain and chaos of 2020 forward with us.
The first step to achieve this would be to check our alignment body, mind and spirit. Alignment is defined as the “arrangement in a straight line, or in correct or appropriate relative positions,” as well as a “position of agreement or alliance.” Happiness, well-being and abundance becomes blocked for us when we are not in agreement and alliance with our spirit.
Many of us have been in survival mode the past year, instead of in thrive mode. Dramatic changes in our health and wellness, career, business, finances, relationships, family and social life, and our lifestyles in general, can cause our soul energy to go sideways and out of alignment, just like being sideswiped by a car.
If you step off a curb suddenly, fall, twist an ankle, or pull a muscle, it will often put unusual stress on our spine and central nervous system. When the spine is misaligned a myriad of symptoms such as headaches, lower back pain, neck pain and numbness can manifest. Symptoms like these are the body’s way of letting us know something needs to be urgently attended to.
The same holds true for our spiritual well-being. When our energy, mental processes, and emotions begin to run amuck, our spiritual alignment needs to be corrected to regain our balance. Our body, mind and spirit must all be facing the same direction for us to move forward.
Staying in alignment with Spirit enables us to bounce back quickly, stay on course and manifest happiness and prosperity in our lives. Alignment with Spirit is our natural and preferred state, and while we may find ourselves temporarily off for various reasons, we are never too far to come back.
Time To Cleanse The ‘Energy Clutter’ Of 2020
The year 2020 is coming to an end. It has been a challenging year for most of us, to say the least. Some have lost everything that they thought was important in their lives, while others discovered what truly is important in their lives.
In many cases, the material and superficial things that we used to cherish so much have now been replaced by the simple longing to just hug a loved one, touch a friend’s hand, or just be part of a crowd of like-minded people at a music festival or sports event.
It has indeed been an exceedingly difficult year for our relationships, social life, careers, businesses, finances, and especially our mental health and well-being. The lockdowns, social distancing and mask wearing (or lack thereof) has been taking its toll.
Mental illness is said to at an all-time high, and suicides rates have increased significantly. Families will be celebrating the holidays this year without one or more of their family members, and many are having to grieve the tragic passing of a loved one.
You may look at all this stress, chaos and suffering, and ask yourself if any possible good can come from the events and circumstances of the past year?
Well, I do believe 2020 to be the best opportunity we will ever have in our lifetime to truly find the deeper meaning and purpose of life. This is the ideal time to identify everything that is not important in our lives and release what no longer serves us.
This is a time to cleanse your aura, clear your vibration, and discard the ‘energy clutter’ in your life. Loving and caring for yourself is fundamental at the moment. Be kind to yourself and do not judge yourself harshly for things you have no control over. Just do the best you can with what you have and take it one day at a time. We are simply being sidelined for a period of time. This to shall pass.
White sage is my go-to for clearing my living space and my personal energies. When bad vibes and negative energy clutter start to pile up, I take a few moments to simply breathe and relax, cleanse my aura with white sage, then breathe again. It lifts my inner being.
Dare To Weave Your Own Tale Of Abundance
Most people are familiar with the Charles Dickens’ 1859 classic, A Tale of Two Cities. Set in Paris and London against the tumultuous backdrop that lead to the French Revolution, the novel has been cited as the best-selling work of fiction of all time.
I reflect upon this intriguing work at this time, because the novel has been repeatedly referenced lately by the news media in an attempt to capture the spirit of social unrest and economic uncertainty that has disconcertingly become a global concern during the pandemic.
Over the last year, I have repeatedly asked myself the question, what is my personal ‘tale of two cities?’ Do I search for hope amidst the stories of the day, or do I succumb to the popular cacophony of dire warnings, fear-mongering, conspiracy theories and atmosphere of despair.
And so at this moment, I ask of you to take just a few minutes out of your day to ask yourself the same question. Do we place our own dreams on hold because of the apparent tensions that consistently threaten to chip away at our mind and spirit each day? Do we flounder, or do we choose to thrive, moving beyond merely just surviving.
Many years ago, I overheard someone say that while tough times don’t last, tough people do. I want to remind you that no matter how dire things may seem at the moment, trust that you have the power and right to create your own ‘tale of two cities.’
In my personal story, amidst the turmoil and uncertainty of the day, there is order and certainty. History has shown us time and time again that no matter how challenging things seem, there is always a silver lining, and a bright-shining, magnificent light at the end of every long tunnel!
My mother often shared stories of how her family survived the Great Depression. My grandparents had a large family of ten children, and they lived in a rural area on the outskirts of a metropolitan city. As the 1930’s ushered in severe economic and social challenges all over the world, many lost everything they owned, and many families became homeless.
Paranormal Activity, Or Energy Residue?
Clients sometimes ask me to do an energy clearing in their homes or businesses. In have even been asked to do a cleansing in stables, where the horses had been inexplicably out of sorts and acting out of character. The energy clearing methods I use vary from the more typical Western techniques to traditional African methods that I learned while living there.
One of the most memorable clearings I ever did was for a long-standing client who struggled with a deep sense of guilt over the suicide of her late husband. She had asked me to do an energy clearing ritual in her home, to see what I could pick up.
Her husband had ended his life sitting in a large, plush wingback chair in their home, where they were bringing up their two young children. Apparently, they had argued a lot in the weeks leading up to his death, particularly after he’d discovered her affair with another man.
Guilt overwhelmed her, and her late husband’s family made their judgment of her very clear. They felt his passing was her fault.
In a mediumship reading I did for her, her late husband had come through with messages that proved he had crossed over to the Other Side, that he was at peace, and that she was never to blame for him choosing to depart from this life. Instead, he spoke of his own life-long battle with depression, and his personal failures in their broken marriage.
The mediumship validations were however not enough to ease my client’s haunting feelings of guilt. She was convinced that her husband’s troubled spirit was haunting their home, and she insisted on me doing an energy cleansing. She was, however, not keen on some of the more typical Western clearing methods, nor the shamanic African approaches I offered, so I suggested we simply use some sage incense and prayer, and she was satisfied for me to do so.
She also consented to me having free access to every nook and cranny of the house, because it is often surprising where energy disturbances can reside. She believed there was a heavy, dark cloud of negative energy around that wingback chair, but to my surprise, there was nothing! In fact, the whole room was clear of any negative vibrations. Continue reading