Thanks

Greetings all,

For those of you like me in the States, I hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving.  I hope that you were able to gather with loved ones whether the bonds be of blood or friendship.  One day out of the year I always know what my ceremony will be about.  That is one thing I'm thankful for.

Every Friday is a day of ceremony for me.  It has been for over 3 years now.  I bring out my mesa and rattle prayers for my ever expanding list of blessed folks.  So many people thank me each week for the prayers, but I really feel that I get the better end of the deal.  This ceremony has become a cornerstone of my practice.  It also always begins with gratitude.  First to the Creator, then to Mother Earth and so on until I have thanked every being in spirit that has assisted me or my clients.  That happens before any prayers are sent out.  In giving thanks I honor those bonds, and show that I respect the spirits that answer when I call.

You will be tested this season.  Yes I am speaking to you.  The world we have dreamed is incomplete.  It makes people feel unworthy of life.  It requires us to constantly prove our worth and our deservingness to be here.  In this season you will be told you must prove your love by buying trinkets.  You will be told that you must if you wish to be worthy of respect and love.  You will be shown stories of perfect homes, with perfect trees, perfect feasts, and perfect families.  You will compare yourself to these fantasies.  You will feel as if you have failed, because you don't have the boundless energy, enthusiasm, and emotional fluidity of these fables.  

I'm all for a good story.  However lately we have sacrificed depth for the window dressings of a story.  We've gone in for special effects and the props department, and skimped on the writing.  I don't quite feel the magic of the season.  So as we gather this year, I have an idea.  Be present with one another.  Bring beauty into your home and families.  Don't focus so much on having everything perfect or being filled with glee.  We are going into the dark of the year.  The important thing is we're going together.

Why am I telling you this?  Well Christmas has swallowed Thanksgiving and has almost inhaled Halloween too.  It has become more about economy than about any spiritual truth.  Black Friday has passed, I did not participate.  I never do.  It was only recently that I found out that the title was due to the fact that it was the day that retailers finally go into the profit margin, hence they are in the black instead of the red.  I always thought it meant that it dark and terrible you know like the black death.  So in this time of blaring red and green neon advertisements I challenge you to reconnect with the seasons and nature's rhythm.  I challenge you to stoke your inner fire and share it with those you care for.  I challenge you to let yourself rest and enjoy the time.  See what does for your holiday spirit.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle

Phasing

Greetings all,

At times I like playing with the Photo Booth app on my laptop.  This week has been one of monumental changes for me.  Some of them are bittersweet, but ultimately helpful.  Others are golden opportunities on the road ahead.

There was a time in my life when I would try every single new energy healing technique that I heard about.  I was convinced that it would be the "thing" that would solve all my problems.  This drive to deal with painful personal issues was very useful in amassing my technical knowledge.  They call this  pattern the wounded healer archetype.  Basically it means that your own pain drives you to search for answers which ends up helping other people.  At some point most wounded healers hit a barrier where there is no further they can go until they heal their own wounds.  I feel like I am at that point.

Feeling trapped in a re-ocurring pattern can be very frustrating.  Breaking free of it can be traumatic.  It is often messy.  As you can see above I'm trying to escape from the matrix.  I've been working on patterns of respect, self worth, and my relationship to material wealth.  So you know nothing major.  What's been interesting is how the pieces have been falling together while other parts of my life have been falling apart.  At the same time, I've been experimenting with some new techniques and even had some work done by other practitioners.  (What can I say energy wise I live dangerously).

Occasionally I work the wounded healer archetype pattern going in reverse.  What I mean is that a client has an issue and during session work we create a strategy to harmonize it which I then can apply to my own situation.  This was the case this past week relating to my concepts around wealth.  Now I've always had enough, if just barely, but the anxiety around it being just enough has exerted too much influence on my decisions as to what my options are.  After working with this client I remember even saying to them, "Wow I need to do this process for myself."  Well I took my own advice and went into deep states of meditation and worked the process.  I came out of it quite disorientated and a tiny bit anxious.  This tends to be a sign that a core pattern of self has been moved, realigned, or changed entirely.  For those not expecting this reaction it can create a cycle of increasing anxiety as one tries to find out what is wrong.

In the midst of all this I had a great opportunity come knocking at my door out of the blue.  My initial reaction before the self work was to be a bit trepidatious.  Now I'm getting excited about it instead.  A friend once told me that the physiological symptoms of anxiety and excitement are the same, the only difference is how we interpret them.  Anxiety is taxing to our system while a moderate amount of excitement is more tonifying. So before we label something as anxiety, we should always check to see if it is actually positive anticipation.

Why am I telling you this?  Well we are all going to go through similar patterns and activities through out our life.  The experience we have of these patterns will repeat unless we change the vibration of how we relate to them, and come out of phase with the less helpful ones.

So how about you?  Are you finding yourself retreading the same paths, but with different window dressings?  Are the patterns of interaction around you triggering old wounds?  Do you find yourself making the same mistakes, or having the same complaints?  Well if you are consider it an invitation to get to the root of the problem and come out of phase with it.  It may be time to relate to it from a higher perspective.  As we move into the holiday season many of us will be around family and old patterns will be switched on automatic pilot.  Use this time to observe your piece of the collective pie of experiences.  Find the piece of you that no longer fits the story.  When you do, you are giving permission to others to begin their own transformational journey as well.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle

What's in a Name

Greetings all,

I've had a week.  I was feeling under the weather, but I'm beginning to pull through.  I've had events and classes for which I am grateful.  When I don't feel well I get easily bored.  There is really only so much a person can rest before they get well restless.

I have been thinking for a while about this post.  People ask me all the time about my name.  I get the, "Is that your real name?" or ,"So are you Native American?" The answer to the second is as far as I am aware I don't think I'm Native American.  I've not had the DNA ancestry test done to see where all my people are from so I can't know for certain, but I was not raised on a reservation or with any of the disadvantages that a tribal heritage brings in this country.  As to whether or not my name is real well that depends on what you mean by real.

A name is a placeholder, a description.  It is a shorthand for identity.  The name Mooneagle was given to me by one of my teachers.  She just walked up to my booth at a psychic fair and said, "You're Mooneagle."  It stuck, I mean she's a shamanic practitioner and she used the power of naming.  I liked the name but was nervous about using it.  At first it felt like I was misleading people, or that people would think I am silly.  What made it stick was that at the time I was being stalked by a group of people I had cut ties with.  I was beginning to teach and offer services and I didn't want them to find me.  So when a flier was made about a workshop I was going to help teach I joked with a friend that they should use Mooneagle.  They thought I was serious and by the time I told them no the fliers were all printed.  The rest as they say is history.

A funny thing happened after a few years.  The name of Mooneagle felt more and more like me than my birth name.  I sort of grew into it.  Occasionally people still try to shame me about it, but I am Mooneagle and Mooneagle is me.  It allowed me to become more than my family's expectations or limits, it allowed me to be just myself.  Plus after I published my book that pretty much sealed the deal.  

What does the name Mooneagle mean.  Well although people think it sounds vaguely Native American it is more astrological in nature.  My moon was in the sign of Scorpio when I was born.  There are 3 animals associated with that sign: the serpent, the scorpion, and when the sign transcends its shadow the eagle.  The moon sign often is thought of as our hidden side or our inner emotional landscape.  I've been sneaky like a snake, sharp like a scorpion, but I want to soar like the eagle taking in the view without being mired in it.  To feel and to understand rather than just react, that is what the Mooneagle means to me.

So how about you?  What names do you claim for yourself? Are they limiting or do they give you space to grow into them? There is a power in a name that most of us have forgotten.  We should be respectful of them and wary of the names we choose for ourselves and others.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle

En"lighten"ing

Greetings all,

I hope you had a Happy Halloween.  I got into the spirit of it with the local jack-o-lantern spectacular.  It inspired me to carve quite a large smile on my seasonal squash's face.  Scraping his insides felt very cleansing for myself.  I've been sorting through what matters and what doesn't.  October has been one of my busiest months with me gadding about, out in the real world more and staying behind the screen less, well some of that was not my doing but rather the doing of my late laptop.

I have this last week been rather skeptical of social media.  It is a siren song to see what everybody is up to.  The algorithms are designed to be addictive.  I've been drawn in a few times.  However I'm waking up more and more to the fact that Facebook isn't real.  It's been a realization a long time coming.  It started a few years ago attending a party which in my mind seemed less like a party and more like a photo shoot for social media.  "Look at us, aren't we having fun?  Don't you wish your life was like ours?"

This past year and a half social media has been a minefield of political confrontation.  It was nonstop outrage and yet it felt wrong to unplug because of the idea that I had to stay informed.  Well I can say my 12 day break didn't leave me feeling uniformed, but it did bring me a sense of peace and rhythm that I had forgotten about.  I felt so much lighter.  I spent time talking to people undistracted, truly listening.  I have begun and continue to purge my social media feeds of most of the inflammatory posts.  It is not me sticking my head in the sand.  I just realized I didn't want to have outrage on a constant loop.  I make decisions that aren't well thought out when I am outraged. I wonder if that is the real point to keep people outraged and divided while the powerful raid the coffers, to keep people afraid so that they vote for more brutal responses in order to feel safe.

Why am I telling you this?  Well I am lucky to have good people around me.  I am lucky to have had the benefit of multiple perspectives due to the trait of never quite fitting in with any one place.  I am lucky to have the sight of radiant autumn leaves outside my bedroom window to see, rather than just photos on a computer screen.  I am lucky to know the difference between glamour and life.

What about you?  Are you walking in a daze convinced that your screen is reality?  Do you know the difference between sitting in a room together and being together?  Do you remind yourself that people's social media feed is a carefully crafted illusion meant to portray a story of a life rather than an actual life.  Does your inner world take more from your screen or more from your daily habits and interactions with the people you love?  What if you scrubbed your screen so that it really was a vehicle of connection?  What if you made it back into the tool?  What if you connected with people face to face and let photo opportunities slide so that you could be completely present.  Seeing life through a lens separates us from that life, what if you gave yourself permission to live that life rather than just document it?

Peace and Blessings.
Thomas Mooneagle