Greetings all,
The glory of spring is upon us. I've felt its magic bursting forth in the life all around me. This year it has hit me harder than in years past. Maybe because death has paid a few visits to my circles this year.
It's been a little over a month now since a very good friend of mine passed on to whatever is next. He had been sick for a while. I had the privilege of helping him continue to do what he loved. He was able to follow his passion until almost the very last days of his life. In a few weeks I'll be heading up to the Victory of Light Expo to present a lecture and do my first public book signing. It would have been the 6th year I would have been in my friend's booth. It's very bittersweet for me. The signing and presenting at one of the region's largest and most well run psychic fairs is a huge achievement, but the absence of the Tomstones booth and the man himself weigh heavily on me. (Even heavier than moving that 60 pound shiva lingum stone).
I have purposefully waited to write about this in my blog. It was too close and too soon to say anything. Today though my friend continued his work even though he has left his body. Standing beside him for so many fairs I heard much of what he said to all the people who came to the booth. I remember many of the things he would teach people with the stone spirits. This afternoon I was in a little magic store dropping off a copy of my book to the owner when a customer came in and was talking about how they needed to learn to block people's energy. They were apparently highly empathic and it was a constant struggle. Without even thinking I went over to them and asked them if I could show them a technique. I picked up a piece of hematite and handed it to them and out of my mouth came the words that my friend Tom said over and over at the fairs. They learned to make the shield with a hematite stone to block out everyone's energies except those they consciously invite in. For that moment, he was alive again in the room with us. It felt good to pass on what he taught and know that even though I won't hear his voice out loud again (not for many years at least) that his impact on the world will continue to ripple outwards helping others.
What we have is not ours to keep. We have to give it away. Our knowledge, our love and our passion must all be sent out into the world. If they aren't they die with us. As a shamanic practitioner I know death isn't the ultimate end, but it is still an ending. We want our loved ones to stay with us, it's natural to miss them and not want them to leave. I've been fortunate in that most of my family tend to be long lived. At this moment I still have one living grandparent, and I am grateful for that each day. It will be a hard day when that changes.
Death comes to us all. We are all just passing through. Still as more good people depart it is so hard to accept. The message from spirit has been a great light has moved on and now the rest of us must shine brighter to keep the light burning. So I work harder sharing what I have learned sending it out into the world just like these blog posts. Like a message in a bottle someday it will touch a distant shore and be read, maybe giving comfort, or direction to someone in need of it.
So what about you? Whom have you lost? What precious piece of them did they pass on to you? Do you share the gifts that they imparted on you? Do you share your own gifts and grace with those around you? If you are keeping it all inside you it might be time to open the old cabinets where we lock our precious memories and loves. Within ourselves we can treasure what we have, but it serves no one to keep it all to ourselves. Bring forth what is inside you, gift it to those who will carry it with them. Pass it on and then one day you will touch those that never knew you in life. You will leave your mark upon them and the world. It is the small gestures of kindness and generosity that will ultimately change our world for the better. As for me I intend to honor my friend by shining brightly and toasting to his spirit at our favorite sushi place.
Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle
Musings
Saturday, March 26, 2016
Saturday, March 19, 2016
Drawing Parallels
Greetings all,
Well this week has come and gone. It's been another crazy week. I had some in state travel and this is the weekend of ceremonies. Unfortunately the sweat lodge ceremony (my first to attend ever) was rained out. Still there was the shamanic weather circle last night, my Friday ceremony, and tomorrow drumming and despacho for the equinox. That is a lot on any week this also just happened to fall on the week following the time change, so I am tired.
I am out there. Even among practitioners of the holistic fields and energetic arts, I'm the weird one. It's okay I know I am and I'm mostly alright with it. I play with forces like time and entropy. I move my awareness into other realms. This is normal for me. I shift a lot especially on the mental, emotional, and spiritual level. Occasionally something happens on the level of the physical that is not directly tied to me. I've had physical shifts in my body and I expect that with some of the healing work I do. Where it starts to get strange is when a change occurs that seems to have nothing to do with me personally.
This week I had a craft night with a good friend. We haven't done one for two years due to various life altering events, so we were super excited to finally reinitiate our get togethers. I hadn't been to their house since last January. They had a new dog, which I recall as a shepherd mix. Well this time when I went down their dog was more of a lab mix than a shepherd mix. It was also a different color. I found this just a tad off. When I inquired if this was the same dog I was told yes it was, and that it had always looked this way. Now I suppose I could have just remembered him wrong, but it seemed more like I had side stepped into a parallel universe. After all ,one of the consciousness tricks I've learned is to peep into some of them and draw something back. This isn't the first time I've had the external world alter on me. I've had this happen with parking lot arrangements which people swear to me have always been this way.
Some people would start to doubt their sanity or cognitive recall, but I immediately registered the dissonance to drawing in a parallel universe. Luckily my friend knows me well enough and has seen some of the weird stuff that can happen around me to just accept that. The strangeness might have ended there, but of course it didn't. Not satisfied with the wu wu factor of parallel universes, I also experienced time dilation. (A contracting of time so that it passes more quickly or slowly relative to its normal passage). In this at least I was not alone. Somehow the whole night ran away from us. When we tried to account for what happened we just couldn't. We added up our activities and the time just didn't make sense. So time slippage and parallel universes are currently on my radar.
Why am I telling you this? Well when you play in the fields of magic and transformation you need to have a certain comfort level with some of the more twilight zone side effects. Sometimes things will not make logical sense unless you expand your framework of what is possible. It's one thing to know about parallel universes and another to allow for them to show up in your life. Time is a bit more mutable we even have language to support that idea, "Time flies when you're having fun." Still these are just the ripple effects from some other change or shift.
So are you ready to embark on an adventure where sometimes the setting of the board just changes without apparent cause? Are you flexible enough to allow for flitting back and forth across the multiverse? How invested are you in the solid deterministic clockwork universe? Well if you want a bit of magic you may have to allow for the rules to bend, break, or just forget themselves now and again. How rational must this world be for you? Think about it, and maybe parallel me will drop in for a time warp with you.
Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle
Well this week has come and gone. It's been another crazy week. I had some in state travel and this is the weekend of ceremonies. Unfortunately the sweat lodge ceremony (my first to attend ever) was rained out. Still there was the shamanic weather circle last night, my Friday ceremony, and tomorrow drumming and despacho for the equinox. That is a lot on any week this also just happened to fall on the week following the time change, so I am tired.
I am out there. Even among practitioners of the holistic fields and energetic arts, I'm the weird one. It's okay I know I am and I'm mostly alright with it. I play with forces like time and entropy. I move my awareness into other realms. This is normal for me. I shift a lot especially on the mental, emotional, and spiritual level. Occasionally something happens on the level of the physical that is not directly tied to me. I've had physical shifts in my body and I expect that with some of the healing work I do. Where it starts to get strange is when a change occurs that seems to have nothing to do with me personally.
This week I had a craft night with a good friend. We haven't done one for two years due to various life altering events, so we were super excited to finally reinitiate our get togethers. I hadn't been to their house since last January. They had a new dog, which I recall as a shepherd mix. Well this time when I went down their dog was more of a lab mix than a shepherd mix. It was also a different color. I found this just a tad off. When I inquired if this was the same dog I was told yes it was, and that it had always looked this way. Now I suppose I could have just remembered him wrong, but it seemed more like I had side stepped into a parallel universe. After all ,one of the consciousness tricks I've learned is to peep into some of them and draw something back. This isn't the first time I've had the external world alter on me. I've had this happen with parking lot arrangements which people swear to me have always been this way.
Some people would start to doubt their sanity or cognitive recall, but I immediately registered the dissonance to drawing in a parallel universe. Luckily my friend knows me well enough and has seen some of the weird stuff that can happen around me to just accept that. The strangeness might have ended there, but of course it didn't. Not satisfied with the wu wu factor of parallel universes, I also experienced time dilation. (A contracting of time so that it passes more quickly or slowly relative to its normal passage). In this at least I was not alone. Somehow the whole night ran away from us. When we tried to account for what happened we just couldn't. We added up our activities and the time just didn't make sense. So time slippage and parallel universes are currently on my radar.
Why am I telling you this? Well when you play in the fields of magic and transformation you need to have a certain comfort level with some of the more twilight zone side effects. Sometimes things will not make logical sense unless you expand your framework of what is possible. It's one thing to know about parallel universes and another to allow for them to show up in your life. Time is a bit more mutable we even have language to support that idea, "Time flies when you're having fun." Still these are just the ripple effects from some other change or shift.
So are you ready to embark on an adventure where sometimes the setting of the board just changes without apparent cause? Are you flexible enough to allow for flitting back and forth across the multiverse? How invested are you in the solid deterministic clockwork universe? Well if you want a bit of magic you may have to allow for the rules to bend, break, or just forget themselves now and again. How rational must this world be for you? Think about it, and maybe parallel me will drop in for a time warp with you.
Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle
Saturday, March 12, 2016
I Have Doubts
Greetings all,
It has been a busy week. Between my normal responsibilities I also took part in a podcast, taught my first chi kung workshop in a salt cave, joined a local potters' association, and saw clients. I'll admit it I slept in late today. I needed a slow day.
I often say I have been perfecting the art of failure for years. I think I finally got that part as good as it will ever get. Now I am working on perfecting the art of success. To others it can seem like I've suddenly just started working a lot and opportunities just keep cropping up. Some people have even harbored some jealousy at my "sudden" good fortune. What they don't know is that I've spent over a decade struggling to do my work and have it support me. I've put in hundreds of unpaid hours honing what I do. As far as teaching goes, the only thing I'm currently teaching I have practiced for literally half my life. So it comes as a surprise to many that I still harbor doubts about my abilities.
I've read for people since I was 14 years old and professionally since I was 24. I still get nervous before every single reading. I still doubt that I'll be able to tune in easily or completely. Yes I've done it for longer than I have anything else, but somehow in my mind every time someone walks in or phones I worry that this will be the time that I can't do it. The strength of this doubt ebbs and flows from barely negligent to almost crippling. Thankfully most of you never could tell that during your reading. So I am letting you in on the big secret, I doubt myself and my abilities constantly. I'm not going to stop either.
I had a conversation with another practitioner a week or two ago who was suffering from doubt. Within the context of that discussion I came to a realization. I don't want to lose my doubt. Here's why, when you possess absolute certainty on any topic you can learn nothing more about it. There is no room for more information, contradictory information, or even a suggestion for further thought. That's it case closed, nothing to see here people move along. Religious fundamentalists boast absolute certainty of a wide range of topics, hell they'd even kill over most of them as we see time and again. So no I'm keeping my doubts. However, I don't want to be stuck with a crippling amount of self doubts, because I'm a busy fellow and need to get some things done. I do want a healthy amount of doubt. Enough doubt so that I am open to learning something new or finding out when I'm wrong so I can improve, while simultaneously retaining enough confidence to practice my crafts in a more relaxed manner. What is a healthy level of doubt? Is it 40%, is it 25%, or maybe even 10%, I'm not sure. The answer may vary depending on you and what it is you do.
So what about you? How much do you doubt yourself? How much does it interfere with your life? Maybe you don't entertain enough doubt, maybe you're stagnating in your own certainty. Only you can answer these questions (or possibly your significant other or close friends can shed some light here). Whatever level of doubt you have, what if you started looking at it as something that could be helpful if it is balanced. Imagine what level of doubt in the areas of your life is healthy for you? Run those numbers by me in the comments.
Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle
It has been a busy week. Between my normal responsibilities I also took part in a podcast, taught my first chi kung workshop in a salt cave, joined a local potters' association, and saw clients. I'll admit it I slept in late today. I needed a slow day.
I often say I have been perfecting the art of failure for years. I think I finally got that part as good as it will ever get. Now I am working on perfecting the art of success. To others it can seem like I've suddenly just started working a lot and opportunities just keep cropping up. Some people have even harbored some jealousy at my "sudden" good fortune. What they don't know is that I've spent over a decade struggling to do my work and have it support me. I've put in hundreds of unpaid hours honing what I do. As far as teaching goes, the only thing I'm currently teaching I have practiced for literally half my life. So it comes as a surprise to many that I still harbor doubts about my abilities.
I've read for people since I was 14 years old and professionally since I was 24. I still get nervous before every single reading. I still doubt that I'll be able to tune in easily or completely. Yes I've done it for longer than I have anything else, but somehow in my mind every time someone walks in or phones I worry that this will be the time that I can't do it. The strength of this doubt ebbs and flows from barely negligent to almost crippling. Thankfully most of you never could tell that during your reading. So I am letting you in on the big secret, I doubt myself and my abilities constantly. I'm not going to stop either.
I had a conversation with another practitioner a week or two ago who was suffering from doubt. Within the context of that discussion I came to a realization. I don't want to lose my doubt. Here's why, when you possess absolute certainty on any topic you can learn nothing more about it. There is no room for more information, contradictory information, or even a suggestion for further thought. That's it case closed, nothing to see here people move along. Religious fundamentalists boast absolute certainty of a wide range of topics, hell they'd even kill over most of them as we see time and again. So no I'm keeping my doubts. However, I don't want to be stuck with a crippling amount of self doubts, because I'm a busy fellow and need to get some things done. I do want a healthy amount of doubt. Enough doubt so that I am open to learning something new or finding out when I'm wrong so I can improve, while simultaneously retaining enough confidence to practice my crafts in a more relaxed manner. What is a healthy level of doubt? Is it 40%, is it 25%, or maybe even 10%, I'm not sure. The answer may vary depending on you and what it is you do.
So what about you? How much do you doubt yourself? How much does it interfere with your life? Maybe you don't entertain enough doubt, maybe you're stagnating in your own certainty. Only you can answer these questions (or possibly your significant other or close friends can shed some light here). Whatever level of doubt you have, what if you started looking at it as something that could be helpful if it is balanced. Imagine what level of doubt in the areas of your life is healthy for you? Run those numbers by me in the comments.
Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle
Sunday, March 6, 2016
Mixed Metaphors
Greetings all,
March has opened the floodgates and I'm swamped. I'm grateful and yet tired. Also there is still emotions to unpack. It might be time for spring cleaning. This week I am blending a bit of pop psychology, with retro video games, and some Doctor Who references. That's right I am summoning some of my former geek powers to enlighten you, so here goes.
I used to lose myself for hours in video game universes. My favorite were adventure or role playing games. I loved a good story combined with action. I can thank the Final Fantasy series for a good bit of how I visualize magical and etheric effects with my work. (Who says video games never did anything for me). However one series of games had a profound impact on my understanding of mystical temporal mechanics. That series was the Prince of Persia, and no I don't mean the substandard movie adaption that was put out a few years back. The Sands of Time introduced me to a fascinating mechanic, the ability to rewind time and prevent tragedy like: falling from a ledge, getting a spear in the face, or falling into one of the many bottomless chasms that some insane architect put in the middle of a royal palace. (I mean COME ON who puts gaps in the floor that you can only get past by swinging from banners and then running along the wall)! You also have the ability to slow down the flow of time so that you can evade an enemy attack, and the ability to rocket through time and attack like a whirlwind. Playing with time is fun. I did it first in video games and now I do it all the time in my healing practice.
Acrobatics aside the games through story introduced the idea of retroactive causality. For those not familiar with nonlinear time mechanics, that means that something in the future causes something to occur in the past so that the effect precedes the cause. Pretty trippy stuff, but it allows you to do a lot. I literally could go on for pages about these games but I need to speed ahead a bit (or time jump) to the last game in the series The Two Thrones. In this one your gameplay is split between the prince and his alter ego the dark prince (somebody took Jungian psychology very seriously when designing this one). It was my least favorite but once again the game brings into sharp focus the consequences of our actions and the struggle within ourselves between our more altruistic and selfish aspects. Mind bending twists of timey-whimey plots aside the prince could be any of us. (I really wish I had his build and could free run like him though #runalongthewallyoucleverboyandremember).
Okay I have laid the metaphors out. So I am the prince and I too have those warring sides. I have them in multiple facets as well. It isn't just selfishness vs. altruism. It is also optimism vs. pessimism. The showdown of logical analysis vs. feelings. My head is a very divided place. Emotions are especially tricky. I am on the one hand an Aquarius I look at the ideas of feelings, I analyze, I project and I check for errors in the subroutines. I evaluate what emotions are the proper response most times. Then on the other hand I also have the moon in my chart ruled by Scorpio. It is easily summed up as this, "Don't talk to me unless you are prepared to be real and drown with me in the abyss of sensation and meaning." So basically I get pulled between, "Feelings, but they're so….sticky," , and "None can feel the true depth and layers of what has passed between us it is unpronounceable in the language of men."
On and off I often despair that I will never connect with people or be "normal" enough to relate to the world at large. It occurred to me recently that this may ultimately be the case. I had a sad moment (not for the first time and most certainly not the last), but then I thought that maybe this was the point. Maybe it was okay to not always connect with the norm. Maybe I wasn't here to be the life of the party. Maybe I didn't have to fit in, and maybe that was okay. Maybe I won't ever really be accepted and that was all part of my genius plan for this lifetime. There is a perspective you get from being on the outside that you just can't see when you fit in. I never have fit in and most of my ideas come from my pondering alone, or on the rare occasion I connect with one of the other human outliers.
So how does this rambling assemblage of sci-fi and video game pop psychology apply to you? Well are you down on yourself for not being the "good" human who gets along with everyone and has well adjusted emotional responses to life? (Psst it's okay I won't tell anyone). What if instead of berating yourself for not being able to do things the way other people do, you did them your way? What if the fact that you couldn't do what your siblings, colleagues, friends, or old school acquaintances do wasn't a burden, but just a piece of information. Maybe it is a cosmic BRIDGE OUT sign for you. What if wasn't a character flaw just stage directions? Maybe you've been mixing your metaphors and you got your story wrongly labeled a tragedy instead of a comedy of errors. Chew on that, maybe rewind time a bit and rewrite the narrative you've been playing over. Perhaps you could change some of those fixed points in time with a little mental time machine. Just remember you're bigger on the inside.
Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle
March has opened the floodgates and I'm swamped. I'm grateful and yet tired. Also there is still emotions to unpack. It might be time for spring cleaning. This week I am blending a bit of pop psychology, with retro video games, and some Doctor Who references. That's right I am summoning some of my former geek powers to enlighten you, so here goes.
I used to lose myself for hours in video game universes. My favorite were adventure or role playing games. I loved a good story combined with action. I can thank the Final Fantasy series for a good bit of how I visualize magical and etheric effects with my work. (Who says video games never did anything for me). However one series of games had a profound impact on my understanding of mystical temporal mechanics. That series was the Prince of Persia, and no I don't mean the substandard movie adaption that was put out a few years back. The Sands of Time introduced me to a fascinating mechanic, the ability to rewind time and prevent tragedy like: falling from a ledge, getting a spear in the face, or falling into one of the many bottomless chasms that some insane architect put in the middle of a royal palace. (I mean COME ON who puts gaps in the floor that you can only get past by swinging from banners and then running along the wall)! You also have the ability to slow down the flow of time so that you can evade an enemy attack, and the ability to rocket through time and attack like a whirlwind. Playing with time is fun. I did it first in video games and now I do it all the time in my healing practice.
Acrobatics aside the games through story introduced the idea of retroactive causality. For those not familiar with nonlinear time mechanics, that means that something in the future causes something to occur in the past so that the effect precedes the cause. Pretty trippy stuff, but it allows you to do a lot. I literally could go on for pages about these games but I need to speed ahead a bit (or time jump) to the last game in the series The Two Thrones. In this one your gameplay is split between the prince and his alter ego the dark prince (somebody took Jungian psychology very seriously when designing this one). It was my least favorite but once again the game brings into sharp focus the consequences of our actions and the struggle within ourselves between our more altruistic and selfish aspects. Mind bending twists of timey-whimey plots aside the prince could be any of us. (I really wish I had his build and could free run like him though #runalongthewallyoucleverboyandremember).
Okay I have laid the metaphors out. So I am the prince and I too have those warring sides. I have them in multiple facets as well. It isn't just selfishness vs. altruism. It is also optimism vs. pessimism. The showdown of logical analysis vs. feelings. My head is a very divided place. Emotions are especially tricky. I am on the one hand an Aquarius I look at the ideas of feelings, I analyze, I project and I check for errors in the subroutines. I evaluate what emotions are the proper response most times. Then on the other hand I also have the moon in my chart ruled by Scorpio. It is easily summed up as this, "Don't talk to me unless you are prepared to be real and drown with me in the abyss of sensation and meaning." So basically I get pulled between, "Feelings, but they're so….sticky," , and "None can feel the true depth and layers of what has passed between us it is unpronounceable in the language of men."
On and off I often despair that I will never connect with people or be "normal" enough to relate to the world at large. It occurred to me recently that this may ultimately be the case. I had a sad moment (not for the first time and most certainly not the last), but then I thought that maybe this was the point. Maybe it was okay to not always connect with the norm. Maybe I wasn't here to be the life of the party. Maybe I didn't have to fit in, and maybe that was okay. Maybe I won't ever really be accepted and that was all part of my genius plan for this lifetime. There is a perspective you get from being on the outside that you just can't see when you fit in. I never have fit in and most of my ideas come from my pondering alone, or on the rare occasion I connect with one of the other human outliers.
So how does this rambling assemblage of sci-fi and video game pop psychology apply to you? Well are you down on yourself for not being the "good" human who gets along with everyone and has well adjusted emotional responses to life? (Psst it's okay I won't tell anyone). What if instead of berating yourself for not being able to do things the way other people do, you did them your way? What if the fact that you couldn't do what your siblings, colleagues, friends, or old school acquaintances do wasn't a burden, but just a piece of information. Maybe it is a cosmic BRIDGE OUT sign for you. What if wasn't a character flaw just stage directions? Maybe you've been mixing your metaphors and you got your story wrongly labeled a tragedy instead of a comedy of errors. Chew on that, maybe rewind time a bit and rewrite the narrative you've been playing over. Perhaps you could change some of those fixed points in time with a little mental time machine. Just remember you're bigger on the inside.
Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)