Fall of the Cards

Greetings all,

I hope you have had a pleasant week.  I've been watching the maple trees begin to put out their little blossoms.  I've also worked a psychic fair for the first time in a few years.

It has been about seven years since I had worked a fair.  I'd never done particularly well at them in the past.  Besides that I used to get rather annoyed when I would just sit there knowing I was extra "switched on" that day.  So I stopped doing them (aside from assisting in a friend's booth that is), and only booked private readings.  It is unusual that I do more than one reading in a day.  It is more typical that I do more healing work with a reading peppered in here and there.   It's funny, I started my practice by giving readings.  I thought that is all I would do, but now it is something that has become one of my more occasional services.

It is easy for me to forget how vulnerable it can feel be to be read.  Doing this fair was a good reminder for me.  Holding a space of compassion is probably the most important thing I can do for someone whether they are receiving a reading or a transformational energy session.  People come to me at the crossroads of life.  They are often afraid or desperate.  It is my job to meet them where they are and give aid.  I forget how magical (or scary) this can seem to people.  I often get people who've never had a reading before, or someone will send me their child to read.  I take that as a privilege from Spirit that I would be trusted to usher somebody through their first experience.

Readings often are people's first brush with mystical energies.  For many that may be as deep as they want or need to go.  It's the hint of the pattern that underlies events.  Occasionally I feel a bit of that too as I see the signs come into recognizable shapes.  A reading is just a snapshot of a moment in time that gives you the direction of the currents that are rushing our lives along.  Still it is nice to step back and see the wonder in it.  So I shall do a few fairs here and there just to reach out into the world.

Why am I telling you this?  Well our own patterns and experience can sometimes become so habitual we miss the mystery in them.  We can forget what it is we have to offer the world.  We can cocoon ourselves in our life and stop reaching out.  It is tempting because it feels safe, but by doing so we truly do miss out on becoming part of the larger tapestry  of lives.  So if you've kept your talents hidden or quartered off I invite you to occasionally share them with the world.  Show people what you can do.  You might just hold the answer to the problem someone has been struggling with.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle

My way, your way, no way

Greetings all,

It's been another week marred by an all too familiar tragedy here in the States.  Another mass shooting has claimed the lives of children and adults.

I am not going to talk much about gun control or the insanity of our hands off policy towards firearms in this country.  I wrote that post last year.  There is no need to repeat myself.  What I am going to focus on is how we are being manipulated into boxes.  The attempt to frame this issue by vested interests (cough...NRA) is that any action is an attempt to take guns away from everyone.  So it puts any sort of gun control into a defensive crouch having to say no we aren't interested in disarming most of you.  This has actually pushed me into an extreme myself of no guns at all.  Of course that is what the tactic is designed to do, push people to the extremes, especially the other side. That way you can yell, "You see I knew that's what they really wanted the whole time.  I was right!"

As human beings we often fall into the trap of 'either or' thinking.  You are either with me or against me, you are either anti abortion or pro abortion, you are either anti drugs or a junkie, or the tired current model of you're either for no limits on firearms or you're trying to take away everyone's guns. This my way or the highway thinking ends all of us stranded by the side of the road going nowhere.  I have found when faced with a problem there is often a third solution that is neither of the extremes, but better than either approach.  See just like you I want things my way.  That works if I am absolute ruler of reality and all are my subjects and obedient to my will.  This has yet to occur in my lifetime.  Sometimes I do get my way, but often I do not.  However there is more than just my way or your way, there is our way.  Considering how interconnected we are in this digital world we are in dire need of "our way."

I think as a society particularly here in the U.S.  we've forgotten how to listen to one another.  We are so concerned with getting our own way, that there is no collective way.  So here we sit with another fresh tragedy to bring our differences to the forefront.  I don't believe this is inevitable.  What I and all of us must do is to realize that there must be some other way that is neither your way nor my way, but a way that works for all of us.  (Well most of us).  Whenever I've been caught between two unpleasant extremes when it seemed there were only two options I always found a third way.  So I guess this week what I am saying is there is always a third option, that neither side sees until they look for it.

So why am I telling you this?  Well if you live in the States you desperately need to hear it.  If you live elsewhere perhaps you can apply this third way thinking to some personal problem.  Simply start with the conviction that there has to be another way besides these two.  Once you begin to operate under that frame of mind you'll be surprised at what presents itself to you.  Try it out after all, there is no time like the present.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle

Breath of Magic

Greetings all,

No suggestive pictures or catchphrases this week, alas I know you were waiting to be shocked.  This week was all about noticing the world around me and how I'm interacting on multiple levels.  Weather was the big teacher this week.

About midway through the week we had freezing rain.  It didn't stick to the roads, but it did coat the trees and bushes with a layer of ice.  The forest wore crystal.  I went to visit a loved one who was recovering from a stay in the hospital.  As I stepped out, I noticed the air.  It seemed somehow white, full of something.  It was cold but it brought freshness rather than the cloying bite that winter air usually holds.  The quality of light and sound seemed crisp and invigorating.  In short it smelled of magic.

Now when I talk of magic it makes some people uncomfortable.  People both want to believe in it, but are worried about looking foolish for doing so.  There is also some confusion as to what magic could be.  What people mean when they say it depends as much on who they are, as to what it may actually be.  I associate it with the deep mysteries of life, deeper meanings of the soul, and the power to create.  For me it is about a feeling rather than an idea.  What I had forgotten is that nature creates it.  The turn of the seasons, the weather, and the rising and setting of the sun and moon; all of them generate the deeper currents of our life.  Life will, if we let it, create magic of its own accord.  It is up to us flow with it, and occasionally shape it towards an end that our heart yearns for.

It is easy to forget that true power is in the world and our response to it.  We cordon ourselves off from it, and lead digital lives behind screens.  I've been told time and again that the digital world does not hold the nourishment that my body, mind, or soul needs.  It is the random world of leaf, trunk, and footpath that holds the wonder that I seek.  The breath of magic is the inhalation of forest air, of the mountains' mist, the sea breeze, or the brisk dry air of desert wind.  I must unplug to seek it.

So why am I telling you this?  Well the confusion of the mind can keep us from seeing the magic around us.  How often do you walk while you text?  Do you walk or jog with headphones?  Do you prefer the predictability of a treadmill and a screen rather than the outside air?  Winter is not my season.  It might not be yours either, but there is magic in it.  Every part of nature holds wonder if you can find the right way to see it.  While I was enamored by the super blue blood moon for it's symbolic power, I have come to realize  that the crystalline forest and the first stirrings of the trees around me hold a greater energy.  Nature is magical, the interplay of life and death, and the interdependency of all things as they move together in synchrony.  Go outside, take a deep breath, feel the rhythm of living things and you will breathe in magic.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle

Why my podcast is not safe for work

Greetings all,

I hope you had a good week.  If you can tell by the picture mine was a bit out of the ordinary.  While I freely admit that the pose is mine, the caption and words were added by a friend.  This was the first thing I saw when I went to our game night. It was posted on the door, apparently they were having a surprise birthday party for me.  Surprise!

I should probably back up and explain things a bit.  First,  I don't have a podcast...yet.  Secondly the whole pussy picture happened because of a conversation with a friend of mine who was happy that she could talk about vagina with  me and not have me go "Eww gross vaginal issues!" We got to talking about the word vagina and of course it's buddy penis.  I've never really cared for either word it's like they clinically designed them to sound like an unpleasant infection.  Having known people in the tantra tradition I am familiar with the sanskrit terms which I like better, yoni and lingam respectively.  Yoni sounds like a dessert you'd order at a fancy restaurant. "Yes I'd like the spiced yoni with honey.  Does that come with lingam?"

Some of you may find this type of talk very uncomfortable.  Well it's about to get even crazier.  I don't know how it happened but my mind started thinking of Voltron.  For those unfamiliar Voltron, it's a bunch of lion shaped vehicles that join up to make a giant robot that fights monsters.  It was really big in the 80s as a cartoon, and I even got a Voltron for Christmas one year.  Of course instead of lion robots I was thinking of lingam and yoni joining up to became a tantric warrior robot.   I couldn't think of the word for the tantric embrace at the time so we started to just call it Pussytron.  We did eventually find the actual word ,yab-yum, but Yabyumtron just doesn't roll off the tongue the same way.

Now conversations about topics like the one above happen quite frequently between my friends just as much as the deep esoteric "spiritual" conversations.  Sometimes we weave in and out of more serious reflections interspersed with sexual humor.  Considering what's going on in our culture right now though a Pussytron would be useful to combat all the blatant sexism and shaming of women.  That said, this is why if and when I try my hand at podcasting it would not be something you could listen to at the office, or around the kiddos (or your mother).  I have been trying to avoid the pitfalls of the guru/healer/mystic persona.  It puts you up on a pedestal and pretty soon you start believing the hype, and then your ego takes it from there.  So I delight in poking holes in the notion of what a person in the spiritual arts business is like.  It is also more genuine, I find humor is one of my strengths.  As for why my humor is often sexual, well sex is such a taboo topic that humor seems the safest way to approach it.  Do we need to have real conversations around it, absolutely, but we also have to learn to not take ourselves so seriously.  The Pussytron conversation had me laughing like I hadn't laughed in months.  At this time of the year where the gray days really weigh heavy on me, anything that lightens my heart is appreciated.

So why am I telling you this?  Well, it is a shout out to the awesome friends that put together an impromptu themed surprise birthday party for me complete with Voltron hats sporting the pussy logo.    It is also a reminder that life doesn't always have to be a chore.  We've created a word in the past few years "adulting" meaning getting the drudgery of life done.  We associate being an adult with just having to put up with things.  We have squashed our dreams down so we can  adult.  I'm not saying that we don't have obligations, but I am saying that adulthood is not just about obligation.  It is about taking responsibility for charting your course and creating your life.  So when I do podcast it will be for adults, and it will be fun.

So how about you?  Did you leave your sense of humor in your schooldays?  Do you take appropriateness too far?  Are you trying too hard to be respectable?  Well stop it I say!  Get on board the Pussytron and let's fight the dark forces together...laughing all the way.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle