Fear's Harvest

Greetings all,

Well it seems lately we are all being given opportunities to test our skills in centering, releasing, and walking our talk.  We are also being given the chance to brave our fears.  As I often tell people there is no need to seek challenges, life shall provide them free of charge.

As I look back on my life I am sad to say that one of the greatest shaping forces has been fear.  It has been the reason for not speaking up, not joining in, pulling away from others, and for not boldly pursuing my dreams.  Beneath my calm seeming exterior there is often a battle raging to maintain my mellow.   I get very upset when people set out to harsh my mellow.  Don't harsh my mellow, I'll take it personally and I'm patient.  (See I can employ fear too).

What I have noticed in this past year or so is the heightening of fear to epic proportions in our culture.   With social media, a twenty four hour news cycle, and Neo-nazis in the White House,  there is plenty of reason to be anxious.   Yet let's be honest, we've had a love affair with fear for quite some time.  To be fair fear is useful.  It warns us of danger and prompts our fight or flight systems to get us out of trouble.  For the past sixteen years though fear has overruled any reason or argument in the United States.  Any time we are about to try and reclaim some of our surrendered liberties, the invocation of, "But the terrorists will get us if we don't let government shred the Bill of Rights,", is trotted out to the masses.  Once home of the free (if you were a white male that is) is now the leader in prison populations, and we're asking travelers about their religion as they enter the country.  Now some people will sound a call to arms about radical Islam, but where is the cry against radical white Christians that bomb abortion clinics or gun down people of color in their own houses of worship?  Imagine if the police or border patrol was asking you if you were Muslim, now maybe you think it's alright because there are terrorists that claim that as their religion, but what if they were asking you if you were a Jew?  Is that alright?  What if the police started asking what political party you belonged to?  Is that okay with you?

I'm sorry to be political, really I am that's not what I want my blog to be about.  There are plenty of bloggers that are more qualified to talk politics, but the climate we have showing up in our politics right now is one of fear.  Fear has been force fed to us since the dawn of this millennium.  Sure there were scary things that happened, but then we just went bat shit crazy with them.  We have actually created an environment through our reactions and overreach where we are more likely to experience the things we fear.  This didn't happen overnight.  We allowed ourselves to wallow in our terror and lead us by the nose.  We allowed the loud voices to overpower the voices of reason.  We allowed compassion to be gagged, while we stoked our anger to quell our fears.  Of course what we have now are angry scared people, quite a lot of them.

Mindful of patterns I see the way history's wheel is turning, and I am making sure I can get out before we start building public "showers" for our detainees.  Perhaps I am being led by my own fears there, but I am reminded of something the Tai Chi Grandmaster used to say, "Fear is a tremendous servant, but a lousy master."  It's a sound motivator for sure.  If you see me running I'm not working out, I'm evading danger.  In this it serves me, but if I am always running I will eventually collapse.  Fight or flight is only for immediate threats.  We have adopted it as our entire strategy for moving through the world.  We are building walls, while our roads and bridges crumble.  We are provoking other nations instead of building partnerships.  We are abusing the migrants, while produce rots in the fields.  We are afraid and looking for an enemy to project it upon so we can exterminate that fear.  We have been so conditioned by the power structures to be in a constant state of anxiety that many of us never even stop to see if our scapegoats make sense anymore.

I think we've been afraid of the wrong things.  We've been afraid of the other coming to destroy us, while ignoring the enemy within ourselves.  The terror of uncertainty that rules us has come to collect its harvest, and we're it.  We've become the terrorists, because fear is what we now spread.  There is such a loud angry part of me that wants to lash out and attack, but that of course is what is expected.  That which you oppose, you uphold.  Anger and fear go together.  We feed one to suppress the other.  It is okay to be afraid, but it is not a good place to make decisions from.

Why am I telling you this?  Well so many of you are feeling the fear right now.  You are angry at the direction we seem to be heading.  I'm not saying don't be afraid or angry.  I'm mad as hell right now, but I can't live in that space.  We have to come out of the fear reaction and start thinking and feeling clearly again.  We cannot let fear guide our hands or we will only create more fearful things.  The world is scary enough as it is, it doesn't need us to help it along.  We have to ask what kind of society do we want?  Do we want a society that has police grabbing our genitals outside of restrooms because we're afraid of sexual assault from the people peeing in the next stall?

So what do we do?  Well we have to start questioning everything.  We have to decide if perceived safety really is working for us, or is it just a farce to keep us in bondage.  We have to ask if we're coming from fear or compassion in our dealings with those different from ourselves.  We have to ask what our ideals are, and are our actions lining up with them?  This doesn't mean we don't pay attention to actual threats, but it does mean that threats don't get to live in our hearts and minds all day everyday.  If we allow that seed of fear to germinate, it shall burst forth from our spirits in all manner of miserable harvests.  So plant something else: curiosity, creativity, love, or wisdom.  Then maybe we won't have to fear the reaper.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle

Humility

Greetings all,

I hope your week was peaceful.  There have been waves of energy this week that I have noticed have been quite disruptive in my own life and the lives of those around me.  Perhaps it is the climate we live in, or it is just one of those energetic eddies that swirl about from time to time.

So lately I have been thinking about power, magic, and all the little pitfalls that come along with its use.  People are constantly coming up to me and telling me how lucky I am to be doing what I am doing and how much they want to do what I do.  First off  I am lucky to have the support that has allowed me to develop my gifts, but this didn't just happen overnight.  I acknowledge I am blessed with a certain degree of inborn talent, but it pales in comparison to other people I have met.  The largest net effect has been from my own consistent efforts to improve what I am able to do.  I practiced readings for literally a decade before I did them professionally, and there are days where I still feel like a newbie.  I had at least half a decade of practice with various healing techniques before I started charging for sessions.  The other skill I make my way with is Tai Chi, which I have practiced for 20 years but only started teaching in facilities (i.e. not just private classes for people I knew) four years ago.

 I am still clearly aware of the areas where my knowledge is lacking, and I want to keep it that way.
Don't take what I just said the wrong way.  I don't mean that I don't wish to improve, far from it.  However, I want to keep in perspective that all of my experience is quite small in the grand scheme of things.  This does pose some challenges on the standpoint of confidence, but I prefer that to the alternative.  I was remarking recently to someone that the local magical community can be very cliquish and even aggressive.  It all comes down to the ego.  Again not here to lambast the ego and suggest murdering it.  (We have a catch and release policy at the Church of the Mooneagle).  When you first start to experiment with magic or consciousness techniques it is exciting.  There is expansion, you start to realize just how many possibilities there are for you and your desires.  It is a huge rush, and it feels amazing.  Still we end up butting heads with others especially those who are also implementing power because we live in a universe of consensual reality.  We have to be pretty well balanced and emotionally clear as we continue along, otherwise it is just like giving the ego cocaine.  See the crazed picture of the Mooneagle Ego above, just add a dash of cosmic power without including soul searching and self reflection.  Most people want to leave that bit out.  Hell I would if I could, it isn't the fun part.  It is difficult to really look at yourself.  It hurts to peel back the layers of encrusted wards we have raised around our vulnerability.  To access the deepest power in yourself you have to go that place.  The place where you dare not look is the place you must look.

Why am I telling you this now?  Well I did need a blog topic for the week, but beyond that many of us are feeling the call to awaken to our own power right now.  We wish to be more effective and empowered.  I think that's awesome!  I do want to murmur a bit of caution to you as you flex your new found psychic muscles.  Keep looking at yourself and your motives.  Find what you are hiding from the world and yourself and really examine it.  If there is healing work to do start with yourself.  That is not to say you can't help those around you, but don't conclude that the paint is dry on the canvas of your psyche.  We are always growing and having our deep hurts rise to the surface, not to assail us but to be healed by us.  We must be humble as we embrace our own brand of magic, because we are all beings of light.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle

Faery Tails

Greetings all,

I hope you had a good week.  Mine has been interesting,  not in that Chinese curse way, "May you live an interesting life,", but just in the acceleration of feedback from dreams and omens.

In fairy tales things come in threes.  Three bears, three little pigs, three rooms filled with straw to be turned into gold, three gifts or blessings, and three witches (or wise women if you prefer).  For me when something appears three times  in a relatively short amount of time it is a signal that it isn't just a coincidence.  Somebody somewhere is trying to tell me something.  I have a somewhat tentative relationship with coyote.  As a fellow trickster I really want to trust him, but you know there are a lot of stories about him.  So far he's laughed at me, helped me extricate myself from my jobs (it's funny now), and right now I've actually petitioned him for help.  Yes I know, insanity, but these are not normal times.

Last week I dreamed I was on a walk heading to a dream meet up place (a location you meet with  other dreamers to dream walk silly).  On my way I encountered a mother coyote and 3 pups.  The three pups wanted to play with me.  So my attention was grabbed.  Animals in dreams tend to peak my interest due to my shamanic training.  I can hear my teacher in my head saying, "You should journey on that."  I will I promise, but that's  not all that happened.  Yesterday I went for a walk.  It's been unseasonably warm and even the dim February light is preferable to staying indoors all day.  So I went through my neighborhood and down into a narrow stretch of woods, and I do mean narrow like 30 yards tops in width.  As I was meandering on the path I saw movement ahead.  At first I thought it might be dogs out for a run with their owner, but it was soon apparent there weren't any other human beings with these canids.  These were coyotes, three of them to be exact.  Now here I was out alone, and while cautious I wasn't exactly afraid.  I did have a big umbrella with me for one so I was armed.  (Hey a good umbrella can be an effective striking and bludgeoning device).  The coyotes also appeared well fed and playful rather than aggressive.  We've had a mild winter and there are plenty of deer about.  Which brings me to my next encounter, the night prior to that I was driving home from a rather enjoyable game night and I came across two deer on the road home.  Now lucky for me I was driving at a reasonable speed otherwise we'd have had a much more intimate encounter and by intimate I mean blood and guts splattered across my windshield.  I did say fairy tale tropes tend to come in threes yes?  During my nightly wanderings which some call dreams I encountered a crow.  This crow wanted to get in my lap and have me pet him (or her I'm not good at determining gender of individual crows).  So there you have it.  I'm pretty sure something is up and somebody has a message for me.

What we have here is a not a failure to communicate.  What we have here is spirit sending a text, a voicemail, email, and a Facebook message.  It's all tied into a greater trend these days of a bleed over between dreaming and waking life.  I'm not complaining.  It keeps me engaged.  Hell I feel like I'm on a quest.  This is better than a video game, for one if I find treasure it's more than just ones and zeros, secondly it's exciting!  Still three animal encounters, two of which are trickster spirits this is going to be big.  I am glad there was some deer energy in there too, perhaps to gentle and bring in the love.  I'm all about compassionate trickery.  Something big is about to go down in Mooneagle town.  I'm still not sure what it is, but the good news is I have help.  I'm pretty sure I am the main character in this caper too.

So why am I telling you about this?  Well it's fucking magical!  Life is not just drudgery and obligations.  It is vibrant and full of wonder, but too often we forget that.  I'm not saying we should all drop our responsibilities, but I am saying we should make space for that touch of magic to get through to us.  The story we're sold is that the world is a dark and terrible place, and  I am not saying there isn't malice and danger out there...because there is.  What I am saying is that there are powers older than you and me that tend to balance things out.  There are allies that we don't even know about, secrets that only we can unravel.  We have to let those possibilities in, and not block all the access points with our expectations or mindset of only looking for the next disaster.  Right now with what is going on in the world we are in the dark woods.  We have to decide what kind of story we're in, is it a horror story or a fairy tale?  In a horror story the only options are death or survival, but a fairy tale gives us the opportunity to end happier than we began.  A fairy tale reveals who we are deep down, are we good or are we the big bad wolf?  Now in truth we are both, but just like in that old story with the two wolves within us that fight, who we feed will be the wolf that wins.  I'm feeding that magical wolf of compassion and faery dust.  I suggest you do the same.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle

Responsibilty

Greetings all,

I hope you have had a good week.  We now trudge through the long dark of February, like the mines of Moria there are worse things than orcs in the deep places of our psyches.  This week I am talking about responsibility.

Some people will sigh, and go, "Oh no not responsibility, ye Gods save us from that!"  I hear you and understand.  I'll never forget the time when I was working retail when a manager wanted to make me responsible for another employee.  No increase in my pay mind  you, just more duties and liabilities.  I've had a rather dubious relationship with responsibility in my life.  I've tried to have the bare minimum of it that I can muster.  This is in part due to a general misunderstanding of what responsibility is, and I believe many people have similar misconceptions.  We often equate responsibility with culpability.  Now to be sure they are related, but they are not equivalent.

If you ever watch television you probably see a ton of ads for attorneys.  Some call them ambulance chasers.  I call them harbingers of doom.  We here in America have become a highly litigious society.  (That means we like to sue...a lot).  So we have come to associate the one being responsible with the one who is to blame,  and by default the one who will be bankrupted by the lawsuits.  This is exacerbated by our overly complex legal code.  Most of us are breaking the law everyday.  You may be breaking one right now, I'm not sure which one but it is highly probable.

Now I don't want you to think I'm just out to blame all the lawyers.  I've known some really good ones that were genuinely interested in helping people and standing up for the rights of those who have been victimized by either individuals or the system.  This sue happy culture is actually a side effect of something deeper.  We have an unrealistic expectation for people to behave perfectly.  This goes double for ourselves.  We who are not blind to our own shortcomings will want to avoid being the one responsible, because we know we aren't perfect and we wish to avoid blame for that.  This often leads us to pointing fingers at others and scapegoating.  When people are presented as the ones responsible it generally means they are about to take a fall.  So in our society those with the least get blamed for the most, and those with the most take responsibility for the least.  If you continue to the watch horror show called the news you will see this again and again.

Now the reason I bring this up is that I've been pondering personal responsibility lately.  I've been wondering what are my personal responsibilities when it comes to my clients and students.  I want to do right by them, which is not always easy to pinpoint.  Making things easier for somebody is sometimes the right thing to do, and sometimes it is not.  Knowing when to let someone face consequences is one of the hardest things I have to deal with in my line of work.  People constantly want me to take responsibility for their decisions in there life, and while I advise and support I refuse to do it.  If I take the responsibility for their life then I become their personal scapegoat.  Not only that, if I take responsibility for their life, I take their power from them.  This is the opposite of what I intend for the people who come to me.  I want to empower not disempower.

So how about you?  Are you relinquishing responsibility because you think it is the same as blame?  Are you giving up your power to someone else?  Are you taking someone's power and not allowing them to take responsibility for their life?  Well the best of us have done that.  Cut yourself a little slack, and then maybe cut some for your neighbors too.  As we look around the world in its brokenness we must learn to put the pieces that are ours back together and cheer on those that do the same, and have patience for those that are not yet ready to do so.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle