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

The Serpent and the Apple

Greetings all,

I haven't written in two weeks.  This is the first time I've taken a break from the blog since 2013.  It was the right decision, and also convenient seeing as how I would have had to borrow a laptop to do it.  I am once more plugged in, and I am not sure how I feel about it.  I should backtrack a little to give you some context.

I was preparing to co-facilitate a class on Self Sabotage and Spirit Animals.  (To be clear the spirit animals were not the cause of the sabotage they were the help).  Part of my preparations was a journey to see Sashamama for a healing dismemberment.  Yes I realize that last sentence had a lot in it that made no sense, let's start with the who first.  Sashamama is the mother serpent of the Amazon, you know her more popularly as Anaconda.  In the South American medicine wheel she is the Guardian of the South.  She teaches us to shed our past as she sheds her skin.  Okay introductions done, now you are probably wondering about a healing dismemberment, how can being dismembered ever be a good thing?  Well in shamanism when an animal eats you in a journey it is considered a healing.  They are taking you apart so that you can be restructured, they can make you better, faster, stronger, and less of an asshole.  I have had many such dismemberments in the past ten years as I have taken my trainings.  In fact if I hadn't had a dismemberment in more than six months I get to it,  otherwise it will happen in dreamtime.  That is not pleasant for anybody.  The spirit has to chase me down, and I'm quite fast in the dream realms.  If they do catch me I will physically feel the sensation of being ripped apart and wake up still feeling it for a second or two.  That little side effect makes me a bit more proactive in journeying.

It had been a while, and I knew that I needed Sashamama's help for this class.  Here's the sticky point, I've never been dismembered by any serpent before.  I am afraid of snakes in ordinary reality.  Remember what I said about me being fast in the dream realms.  Mama Anaconda has tried to catch me before, but she never did.  So I went into this journey knowing it would be a bit uncomfortable.  When her mouth opened to swallow me I had to close my spirit's eyes and pretend I was in a wet sleeping bag.  I went in and she shat me out.  Did I forget to mention how glamorous shamanism can be kids?  So with the dismemberment done she agreed to help the participants for the class.  They would all be getting a taste of that snaky love bite.

All was going well, I did my weekly prayer ceremony mailed it off, and then the computer crashed.  I ran some diagnostics and rebooted and all was fine so I went home for supper.  After supper I was in for a shock, the computer wouldn't boot.  So the next day I took it to the Mac repair place.  Monday afternoon I received a call that the video card failed, but I couldn't get it repaired because it was a vintage model (Apple's term for anything more than 5 years old).  So I had to buy a new computer and they wanted close to a thousand more than what I paid for the previous one to get similar capabilities.  So after I leveled every curse in the tongues, of elves, men, and hobbits  I set out on a quest for a new computer.  This quest took twelve days.

Twelve days I was cast forth from the digital realm, only touching it on occasion with borrowed time on another's window to the blogosphere.  In this time out of time I found myself meditating more, practicing yoga and tai chi for longer periods, getting to bed earlier, and with plenty of time to get where I needed to be without rushing.  Digital distractions had been eating away at my moments of life for a while, but it had gotten pretty bad.  I had begun to sanitize my Facebook feed and declutter, but it wasn't enough.  The computer was always on, in part because I had this fear of it failing if I turned it off (self fulfilling prophecy).  With it always online, any little thought to check messages or see a video took me away from real life and sucked me into digital fantasy land.  So Sashamama ate the element of self sabotage.  It was a great lesson, but a very expensive one.  Truth is with a business I really have to have a computer.  However when this new one arrived I was wary of it.  I have turned it off every evening and waited until after I've gotten things done in the day to turn it on.  This time I am trying to use it responsibly without the addictive behavior I'd developed prior.  I am hoping twelve days was enough to retrain the patterns.

Why am I telling you this?  Well as I look around the world, I see people consumed by their tech.  Running around to find charge ports to service its needs, they have become the servant and the machine the master.  We are only given so much time on this earth, and many of us are wasting it on phones rather than friends.  Rather than sit with our feelings we feed our impulses to escape any uncomfortable moments.  I'm not saying we should never numb ourselves or let ourselves be entertained, but it is clear to me that my life was suffering due to my imbalanced relationship with my technology.

So ask yourself?  Am I subservient to my tech?  Do I dodge human interaction, trading it for a digital facsimile? Do I get sucked into digital quizzes promising to tell me who I am?  Am I losing sleep surfing through youtube how to videos?  Do I feel a pull on my attention every few minutes to check in and see if something is happening someplace else?  Well if you answered yes you may need Mama Anaconda's help too, just make sure you back up your data before you enlist her expertise.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle

Millennials

Greetings all,

I am typing from a borrowed machine.  My laptop is in the shop.  It is currently dead. I only hope that the high priests of tech can resurrect it easily and cheaply.  So no photos on this week's blog post.

Having been cut off for two days from easy internet access I am finding there is so much more time in my day.  There is time for more meditation and yoga.  There is time to give people my full attention.  It can be startling to realize how much we compulsively look stuff up until we are without the means to do so.  I've never much cared for using my phone as a computer except at great need so I am having some flashbacks to the 90s before hi speed internet was everywhere, and google wasn't able to find us anyone and anything instantly.  The other thing that happened in the 90s were the Millennials.

What can I say about this much maligned millennial demographic that hasn't already been said.  Well quite a lot actually.  Being a prognosticator of sorts I take a great interest in up and coming generations.  I think we've handed this one a pretty bad deal.  They are inheriting a world with vastly depleted resources, polluted environments, climate change, antibiotic resistance, and debt.  I technically am part of Generation X, but I come at the tail end of it almost between that and Millennials.  So I feel for them I really do. It seems every article you read about them they are getting slammed.  They are being called selfish and lazy.  Simultaneously they seem to be very active in destroying sectors of the economy.  This is mostly being written by the boomer generation and some misguided X'ers.

While the aging power structure blames them for the wholesale destruction of our way of life I think it is about time to point out all the wonderful things about them.  For starters they are all about diversity. This generation seems to be more accepting of differences among people.  Whether it is ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, gender preference, or economic status, Millennials don't seem to care.  They also are more environmentally conscious.  They want things to be sustainable.  Perhaps they can already see the writing on the wall but the generations before them rapaciously have gone through a good deal of the earth's resources and squandered them for short term gains and comfort.  Our Millennials are also one of the most educated and innovated generations yet, they've had to be.  They also happen to be one of the largest generations.  This is good news since they seem quite concerned with social justice.

Right now our young people need our help though.  They are saddled with debt and limited access to social services.  Instead of encouragement they are often lampooned by the media as incompetent children living in their mom's basement.  What the media conveniently leaves out for the comfort of older viewers is that those basement dwellers are often working full time jobs and can barely afford their student loan payments and healthcare.  We have turned students into profit making ventures for banks thus robbing a generation of resources, then we turn around and blame them for not consuming more to boost stock prices.  This feedback loop has created the perfect scapegoat for society.  Millennial bashing seems to be a daily occurrence in the press and online.  We've changed from, "The children are the future,", to "Screw those lazy brats I paid for my own college and got a job after to buy a house."  What most people don't want to look at is that the social contract since they were in their 20s has been altered significantly.  A person used to be able to land a good job out of college that provided medical benefits that were cheap, they could afford to buy a home, have a pension, and even put money towards retirement.  Now it is generally only state employees that have these magical unicorns known as pensions.  Healthcare even if you have a plan can bankrupt a family even with both parents working and insured.  A part time job that used to cover tuition won't even cover books for a semester.  Is it any wonder that some of this generation is thinking they shouldn't bust their ass to not even squeak by?

Why am I telling you this?  Well I am the Faery Godfather to a few in this generation and they are awesome people!  It's so maddening to see them demonized when I know how hard they work and how well they treat others.  I'm seeing ideas and inventions that they are creating at very young ages that could literally save the world.  As I look around and see all the craziness in our society they give me hope that if they could claim their power, the future would once again be something to look forward to.  We are not lacking in solutions to the world's problems only in the will to implement them.  Millennials have that will, now they just need our help.  So if you're a parent, grandparent, teacher, or in any way involved with these up and coming human beings please do what you can to encourage them and let them know that they are powerful and that they matter.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle

Inspirational

Greetings all,

I hope your week went well.  Mine was a flurry of activity.  I've been trying to balance it all just like the sculpture above.  Well almost like that, I tend to balance things with pants on.  This week I've been prepping a kiln load of work which is currently firing away.  I also got to goto St. James Art Fair.  I look forward to it all year.  Besides that I had an art opening to attend as one of the local ceramic artists.

As I walked through the fair with a friend.  I breathed in all the energy of creativity.  The court itself is a wonderfully tended neighborhood full of old victorian homes that borders Central Park.  Seeing all the work of so many gifted artists and craftspeople always inspires me.  It fills up my heart and feeds my own inner creative spark.  Inspiration held a special place in some of the old pagan traditions of Europe.  When you trace the word origin, it comes from the latin root inspirare which means to breathe in the divine influence.  We often use the phrase, "Divinely inspired", but that is just like saying divinely breathed in the divine.  I do consider it a gift from Spirit, but not always a deity.  Inspiration can be passed from person to person, leading to one more reason to believe that we all carry the divine within ourselves.

Inspiration is a super power.  The best leaders have it, visionaries, those who bring us scientific breakthroughs, and artists.  When society is stuck in a pattern and there seems no way forward or out of the mess we find ourselves in, it takes someone with inspiration enough to share to help us change.   It is really the only way we can ever change other people.  If you actively try to change people. you will be mostly unsuccessful.  You may even get attacked.  If you inspire someone by your words or actions they choose change.  It is done without coercion because it comes from that sacred part within ourselves which the sacred part in others recognizes.  If you look at the state of our world right now we are in sore need of inspiration.  It is the source of light amidst the darkness.

So why am I telling you this?  Well we often think change comes from a lot of applied force and effort.  It can come in passionate hope and even joy.  Think of when you were inspired in your life by someone.  How did it change your perspective about yourself?  How did it change your perspective on what you believe is possible?  Now is the time for us to act from our heart centered passions, not only for our sake, but for the sake of those we might inspire.  Inspiration wakes the spirit in us to its full potential.  The  world needs our spirits in action right now.  So take time to stoke those inner fires.  Breathe in what lights you up and move with it, for yourself and the ones that follow in your footsteps.

Peace and Blessings,
Thomas Mooneagle