2/28/13—Celebrating Your Successes

Today's Draw: The World in the What to Do Next in Regards to My Goal position from the Tarot of the Sidhe and the Deck of 1000 Spreads. Do you feel you fully celebrate your successes? Or are they just a blip on the radar of your busy life? Do you ever just stop and give yourself a good old pat on the back?

So today I used the same Deck of 1000 Spreads technique of creating custom spread positions that I used yesterday. But I also did something I'm not sure I've done intentionally in the nearly three years I've been writing my daily posts: I drew a card specifically for me to explore what to do next now that my deck is out. 

See, the Deck of 1000 Spreads wasn't a destination for me. It was never been intended to be one. The "destination", as many of you know from reading this blog, is to be a spiritual/self-help type of writer, dispensing the kind of insights I deliver here each day. While on that road I got this phenomenal idea for a product serving the tarot world and I HAD to do it. And doing it was divinely inspired, not only because it has been such a gift for me so far, what with all the positive feedback and the things people are doing with it. But also because of something that became clearer to me just the other day. 

OK. I'm going to brag. Facebook people are probably sick of hearing this...haha. But I haven't told the people who just know me from my blog. For the past week or so, the Deck of 1000 Spreads has been a best seller in the Fortune Telling category on Amazon. It's been anywhere from #1 to #7 when I've checked. It moves around a lot. At the time of this writing, I'm #1 in Fortune Telling, #4 in Tarot, #15 in Divination and I'm really nowhere near the Top 100 in the New Age category (the next level up). Yet. Haha. But I'll tell you this much—none of this was on my radar a month ago. These rankings never occurred to me. 

Now that I've seen them and the little outline that goes along with the photo here, it occurs to me that I'm already writing in the category I want to: Religion & Spirituality. I'm a few levels deep into it, but I'm already in it. And this fills me with hope that I will be able to achieve my dream of being a mainstream spiritual author and helping and healing people with my words. I think I do that now here and feel very blessed by it. 

Do you know I've been operating this site for more than two years and this summer will mark three years of daily posts I've been making and I've never once heard a negative word about what I do? I mean, there are critics everywhere in life, but I've been so blessed to hear only words of support from you. I'm getting all emotional just writing this. But this has been such a gift because I get such great feedback. AND I share some stuff that makes me uncomfortable admitting from time to time, and it's such a safe place. On my blog and on Facebook, this post has been a safe place for anyone who has ventured in. 

Anyway, to get to the actual reading we're doing today, the rest of my week is slow in my actual job. So I have a couple of days of lull before I get busy again next week. And I want to continue this momentum that seems to be building over my deck and ride it into my next project, which I'm thinking right now might be a few ebooks adapted from this blog. Over the years people have asked me to put it in ebook form, but I can't take the tarot with me in ebook form, primarily for copyright purposes...I can't print cards from all these different decks in a money-making venture without getting permission.

So anyway, that's what today's draw is all about. What should I do next to reach my goal? And The World is telling me to tie up loose ends first. To integrate the experience I've been having. My deck has been out in the world for, like, two weeks...haha. I can keep enjoying this fun for a little while longer. Like, I haven't even drunk a toast to this release or had a "me" day to celebrate. And that's so typical of me. I'll wallow for weeks in my failures...haha...but I feel bad bathing in my successes. And, when you think of it, that's just not the way to live. We should forgive our failures and celebrate our successes, instead if the other way around. So I think The World is telling me to do just that...to do something to synthesize this moment it before I take the next step. 

And the next step is? Well the next step is The Fool. I begin the cycle again. I make the leap into the unknown and start out on another journey. But for now...for maybe another week or so...I get to stand atop the World...or atop the Fool's cliff...and enjoy the view. :)

6/30/12-7/1/12—Celebrating Integration

Weekend Reading: The World from the Mythic Tarot. Looking for a project for the weekend? How about just liking who you are. As you are. In this very moment. You're not so bad, are you? Nah! Take away all the self judgement and self flagellation and, as it turns out, you're pretty cool! In fact, minus all the would'ves and should'ves and could'ves your entire life's not so bad either. The World card comes to us when we've integrated and accepted opposing parts of ourselves. It also signals a time of successful completion. If that's what the cards say, it must be true. So celebrate the completion of this phase of all that inner that work you've been doing by giving yourself a two-day vacation from self criticism!

1/31/12—Healing With Energy

Today's Draw: The World from Tarot of the Sidhe. Have you ever had an energy healing session? Do you believe that humans can transmit universal healing energy to each other? Would you be surprised to learn that 15% of hospitals in the US offer reiki and Dr. Oz says it's his favorite alternative medicine?

The World card is about completion and wholeness...the ending of a successful journey. In this particular one, Emily Carding's image evokes the perfection and wholeness of God, nature and the universe. It speaks to a divine force or power that has come to you as a result of your spiritual journey. 

The spiral that overprints the tree in this image gave me an immediate impression of something. The same spiral is on the backs of her cards and, even though it's upside down and has more turns, it's very evocative of Cho Ku Rei, which is a symbol used in Reiki. 

Reiki (RAY•key) is a form of energy healing that channels universal life force and concentrates it for use on healing others. While this may sound like BS to some of you, it's becoming more and more accepted by the mainstream medical community. Dr. Mehmet Oz is probably the most well-known proponent of reiki and one source I found said it's now being offered in about 15 percent of hospitals nationwide, including the Cleveland Clinic, Children's Hospital in Boston and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Some of you may know the phenomenon better as "laying on of hands". Reiki is similar, but without all the drama.

Whether your issue is physical or emotional, reiki can be used to help heal it. Before anyone gets their panties in a knot, no responsible reiki practitioner or doctor would recommend you stop traditional care in favor of reiki. Reiki is usually used as a supplement to medical care. 

Reiki symbol Cho Ku Rei.

In a typical reiki session, you would visit a practitioner in their home or office, lay down on a massage table, then the practitioner would move their hands over parts of your body (usually not touching you) and send you the healing energy through their hands. What you would feel would most likely be intense heat wherever their hands were. An interesting note to reiki is that it works whether you're in the same room with the practitioner or not, so it can be transmitted over distance.

You become a reiki practitioner by being "attuned", which just means that a reiki master gives you the energy. There are three levels of reiki attunement, Reiki 1, Reiki 2 and Reiki Master. It is a skill/ability that is passed down, person by person, and there is great reverence and ceremony in the passing down. It doesn't belong to any religion, but it can be considered a spiritual practice. It is certainly always approached with that sort of reverence and respect.  

So, back to Cho Ku Rei. There are many symbols reiki practitioners use, whether they picture them in their head or draw them on their hand with their finger, to address different circumstances. And the Cho Ku Rei symbol is like the light switch that turns the power on. 

There are many different kinds of energy medicine other than reiki. Each month I receive two energy healings, each of which is intended to help me maintain an emotional and spiritual balance...like recharging my spirit. One session is a form of reiki and I get that over the phone, the other is a form of music energy healing I receive in person. No matter how I feel entering these sessions, I feel much better upon leaving them. They do shift my moods. And the one I do over the phone....she used to live locally, but moved. There is no difference in the effect now that we do it over the phone.

Magick Moonbeam swears by reiki for curing hiccups.

I've never used energy healing for a physical issue, but I once took a class from a man who had his own form of energy healing that he taught. I was more skeptical back then, so I asked him to do something I could feel. He put one hand behind me at my ribs and when he put his other hand in front of me, I SWEAR it was like he threw a baseball through my gut. I didn't imagine it. He sent a ball of energy through me so intense I could not only feel it, but I could tell you its size and shape. It made me catch my breath. Since then I've become attuned to reiki and have taken a few other energy healing classes. 

Anyway, in this past weekend's post, I said that once you create a space within you to allow for new possibilities, you begin to see and recognize things you didn't know were possible before. If you're not familiar with energy healing, maybe this is a good time to consider it, along with other alternative healing methods like acupuncture, guided imagery, meditation or therapeutic massage. If you're not getting the results you want from traditional medicine or treatment alone, it may be worth the try.