9/7/12—Letting Go With Love

Today's Draw: The Lovers from the Tarot of Transformation. Who do you love? And more importantly, how do you love? Where might you be holding back on your love with someone and is the reason really good enough?

Rounding out Healing Thoughts and Practices week is the ultimate healer of all—love. This particular card is subtitled "Love in the Highest Octave". And while we might usually read The Lovers as a card of choice...or choice between love and something else...this particular one is about "the higher state of consciousness that comes when your heart is transformed by love." Which is actually a choice, because we choose who, how and how far to love. 

There is a lot of emphasis in society on the love that exists between humans, primarily between you, your mate and your children. In fact, when we say the word "love" the images conjured in our minds are that of our ideal mate or of a smiling baby wrapped up in blankets. 

The next thought that may occur to us is self love. That's the topic we addressed yesterday. But other forms of love may include the love you have for something you do, the love for friend or sibling, the love you have for an animal or the love you have for your god. 

So here is what I'm here to tell you—love is love. It doesn't matter who or what you love. I'm not so lucky in the man/woman love department. I don't have children. But lord, do I have love. And lord, do I give it. 

We're socialized to place love in hierarchies...love for a mate or child is more important and more pure. But what I've learned from having neither in my life for quite some time (and from the times I have been in relationships) is that all of that is bollocks. What's most important in love is how you do it. Do you give yourself fully? Can you give and accept deep intimacy? Do you make yourself worthy of the other's trust? Does the love you give reflect your love of self? And by that, I mean do you love people who also know how to give and accept deep intimacy in a relationship? 

And here's a big one—Can you love despite what the other is feeling? I'm not talking foolishly or obsessively. If someone is abusive, I recommend you send them love from afar. If someone wants you out of their life, let go of them. But can you continue to love—continue to hold loving thoughts—for someone who no longer loves you? Can you let go with love? 

It's big because it's hard. Or maybe it's big because it has been a factor in my life this week...haha. See, life seems to tell us that if someone no longer loves us or thinks poorly of us that we have to stop loving them in return. And that's just not the case. We do have to let go of the hope of them loving us in return. But we can still love them. And by doing so, we can heal the pain of losing them in our lives. 

Love isn't about what happens between the sheets. It can't be cemented by a contract. It's really none of the things we see on TV or in our fantasies. That's lust. Or it's a fairytale. That's all love under perfect conditions. Anyone can do that. 

Healing love happens despite...despite socks left on the floor, despite petty squabbles, despite an extra 50 lbs, despite what they feel about you, despite the awful things people do to people, despite the fact that they've died and despite whether or not they're aware of your love. It's not who or why or when you love, it's how you love that determines how big a force for healing love can be in your life. It's about letting love remain at the forefront while all the other crap is going on. And giving is enough. You don't have to receive in return for love to be healing. 

The more you love conditionally, the more you'll need to heal in your life. You'll have more arguments. You'll have more frustrations. You'll have more ups and downs. It's the logical outcome of hinging your most powerful emotion on outside forces...the way others act...the way others love you back. 

But if you love because you ARE love, then your most powerful emotion hinges entirely on whether or not you love. It matters not what happens outside of you, only on what happens inside. Does that mean people will take advantage of you? No, you can love without allowing others to take advantage of you. You can say no without resentment. You can say it with love. And if they take their love for you away from you because you said no, you can still hold love for them. You don't have to stop giving love just because someone stopped loving you. 

It all sounds corny, I know. But I had this dog named Passion that was like a child. I mean, she was a dog that was more human than canine. And she would get piffy with me and ignore me and give me attitude if she didn't like the way things were going at any given moment. Just like a child. But my love for her never waned. Never when she peed on the sofa in her sleep because she was old. Never when she was aloof with me. Never when she wouldn't come when called. In fact, some of these things made me love her that much more. I had made a conscious decision when she was a puppy that, no matter what, I would love her. And I lived up to that decision. Even when days or weeks would pass with no outward show of love from her. And trust me, she was that stubborn. 

There is nothing any of my dogs can do to diminish how I feel. And I would imagine that the same is true for every mother of a human out there. The mother of that boy who shot all the people in Colorado? Do you think she has stopped loving him? I certainly hope not! Unconditional love is a healing love. It's easy to give to pets and progeny. And to God. At least for me. Some people stop loving God when they get sick or someone they love dies. With unconditional love, the whole topic of forgiveness is moot. Forgiveness happened before they even did the offending act. 

But that kind of love is harder to give to others, like husbands and siblings and friends. And strangers. And, fercryinoutloud, to ourselves. Which is exactly why we should try. Because the more divine love we're able to give...the more love "despite"...the more it heals us. The less our emotions ride on things outside us. And the more often we walk around with loving, healing chemicals inside our body, as opposed to toxic, fear-based or anger-based ones. 

I'm willing to bet there's someone out there, right at the tip of your tongue, that you could be giving love to right now instead of a host of other conflicted emotions. It's the last day of Healing Thoughts and Practices week. You know who this person is. What's stopping you from holding them in your heart with love?

6/1/12—Putting Your Mind to Rest

Today's Draw: Four of Swords—Stabilizing Mind—from the Tarot of Transformation. Is your mind playing the same story over and over like a broken record? Do you feel overwhelmed by a cacophony of thoughts, unable to tie them all together? Do you need Calgon to take you away?

This is one of my favorite decks. The artwork is so beautiful. This is the deck I was talking recently about in the entry about Passion the dog and her messages from the other side.

The woman in the image is trying to find her center in the midst of a swirl of emotions and distractions. That's how I feel in the wake of my brother's death and Kizzie's ongoing recovery as well as in the midst of some changes I've been making. In one sense I feel like I'm there and my focused has returned. But I'm not quite stable in light of some personal health changes I've taken on this week. And part of those health changes rely heavily on maintaining a stable mind. It's a Catch 22...I need to be stable to make the changes, but change makes you unstable...haha. 

This card indicates that it's time for a mental retreat. And it relates to some of the stuff we've been talking about this week. Meditation is a good skill to use when examining the things that pollute your spirit. Meditation helps you examine issues as a witness to the situations, thoughts and relationships that drag you down, rather than as a participant in them. From this detached state, you're better able to see how these dynamics work. 

Another way to find focus is to completely remove yourself from the mental chaos, then return to it with a fresh mind and perspective. Remember the fish and their message of adventure and play? That's how you can do that. 

The one thing that doesn't help you find focus is getting stuck in an endless loop of obsessive thought. In one way or another, you have to break out of the story. You may be surprised at what you find.

We can't always break away the way we'd like and plan a whole weekend  or mini vacation around mental rest and retreat. I know summer is always a bad time for that for me because work is usually busy. So I tend to take my days when work hands me a day off, rather than go through all the effort of scheduling a day off. Usually when I tell clients I'm going to be gone for a day or two, they load me down with work before I leave. So sneaking away is more "restful". :) 

It also helps for me to schedule mini-retreats....an evening out, a surprise afternoon of shopping or anything else that shakes up the routine and gets me out of the normal rut. I do, however, have one day a month that's a sacred day off, and another late afternoon that's also sacred. Those are my energy healing sessions I've spoken about from time to time. 

Anyway, if you have a hard time breaking away, schedule in a mini-retreat, and treat it like a real appointment. And use your surprise moments of rest to focus your mind through meditation, rather than get caught up in the mental chaos. I mean, how many times can you think about the same thing without going crazy?

5/23/12—Visiting Rainbow Bridge

Today's Draw: Rainbow Bridge by Lisa Hunt. Do you believe your deceased pets still look out for you from above? Do you have connection to someone in your life that you just can't understand...one you feel might be based on a past-life experience? What, if anything, do you believe about past lives and soul groups?

Today's draw is an actual drawing, not a tarot card. As part of a limited edition offering of her latest tarot deck, Ghosts & Spirits, Lisa Hunt signed a card, put together a special print and offered a custom drawing for any keyword of your choosing. My keyword was "rainbow bridge" and this drawing is her interpretation of it. 

If you don't know about the Rainbow Bridge, it comes from a poem about the place your four legged friends go to wait for you until you join them again. My dog Passion died a few years ago and on our last night together, we talked and snuggled all night and I told her what a great girl she had been. I also told her the story about Rainbow Bridge and about how one day I'd meet her there. 

A few months after she died, I pulled out my Tarot of Transformation deck to ask if Passion had any messages for me. I chose the deck because it's always gentle and contemplative in its answers. What I suppose I didn't consciously realize is that it's probably the only deck in my collection that has a Rainbow Bridge card—tarot decks don't normally have Rainbow Bridge cards. And that's the first of two cards I chose at random.  Choosing that card of all the 78 in the deck brought me to tears. Because it felt like she was saying she had found Rainbow Bridge and was waiting for me. 

The incredibly beautiful Passion the dog.

The second card I chose showed a spirit bear keeping watch over a mommy bear and two cubs while they slept. Passion's nickname was Pashie Bear. So this card was showing me that she was watching over me and Kizzie and Magick Moonbeam. I mean, what are the odds? I felt that Passion's spirit guided me to that deck so she could communicate precisely what she wanted. And I have no doubt of that, because I've never met a dog with a larger human vocabulary than her. If you could measure dog IQ, she would be considered a genius...not because she was trainable, but because she had communication, discernment and reasoning skills far beyond other dogs and beyond many humans as well. Anyway, that's her in the picture Lisa Hunt drew.

This past weekend I had an aura photograph taken and a reading. I'm not sure what I believe of all of that. And the lady doing it was a little out there. But one of the things she said was that there were 144,000 individuals in my soul group. A soul group can be considered the group of people you encounter over and over, lifetime after lifetime. This lifetime's favorite grocery clerk might be next lifetime's childhood chum. 

While Rainbow Bridge is a place where you reunite with pets, I imagine there's a place where you reunite with members of your soul group and come to know and understand the roles they played in your various lifetimes. Sometimes it's fun to think about someone you know and assess what role they might have played in another lifetime. Like my sister who calls me by her daughter's name....maybe there's a past-life reason for that. Or my real-life faux boyfriend...maybe he wasn't so faux in another lifetime. And my girl, Passion...I'm pretty sure she wasn't always a dog. I think she came back as one to teach me the valuable lesson of how to love. 

So what do you think of all of this? Can you figure out who some of the important people in your life might have been in another life?