3/5/13—Digging Into Past Lives

Today's Draw: Six of Pentacles in a Past Life from The Wild Unknown and the Deck of 1000 Spreads. Do you believe that children are more psychically inclined than older children and adults? Do you believe in past lives? And if you do, what do you suppose you learned in past lives that you won't have to deal with in this one?

Back when I was three or four years old I had a number of premonitions or mystical experiences that I've carried with me all my life. I've told this story before, but this fertile period of "awareness" all happened while I was living in the "creepy room"—a tiny room that was intended to be a closet, but we turned into a bedroom. 

Anyway, during that time I felt like I "downloaded" a lot of information from...somewhere. Or something. Some of it, I'm pretty sure, was about a past life. Some of it was stuff that I remembered, but didn't understand the significance of until much later in life. And some of it came in the form of just "knowing" what some of my struggles would—and wouldn't—be in this lifetime. Today's card reminds me of one of those things because I've just always believed that any lesson of poverty or gross mismanagement of money happened in a previous life. So far it also seems like any lesson involving having way more than I need was saved for another life, too...haha. But I've always had enough to keep me from struggling and that was the premonition—that I wouldn't struggle. 

While the Six of Pentacles is usually about giving or receiving money, in this deck it's about prosperity and growth. So this pair is talking about a lesson of prosperity and growth that came from a past life. That can mean you're not going to struggle in this life. Or it can mean a resentment, fear, false belief or impediment of some sort that came from a prosperous past life. 

Thinking about all of this and what it means to me brings up a whole sack of warring philosophical thoughts. So I had this notion as a small child. Is is possible that it came from my imagination and, having that belief from a young age, drove the eventual reality in my life? I very much ascribe to this method of creating things in our lives, so it's possible. 

Could it be that I was getting input from spirits their messages had nothing to do with me? Part of the creepiness of that room was that I heard Native American-type drumming every night that terrified me because, even then, it felt otherworldly. 

Or could it really be a past-life lesson and one I didn't need to learn in this lifetime? Any one of my brothers and sisters will tell you about the lucrative industry I created in my pre-school years centered around selling dirt-clad rocks, pebbles and gravel to my parents for precious pennies and nickels that could be spent on candy at Pat's Market.  

Or could it have nothing to do with mystical matters at all and, instead, be because I work hard and have my hand in so many pots that I have good "insurance", financially speaking? When you look at the picture, it could suggest this. Each clump of leaves collects the water and sun needed to produce the fruit. And there are many clumps collecting the energy needed to bear fruit. 

Of course, these are all questions we'll never know the answers to...at least not in this incarnation. Some of the information I got at that time has come to pass in one way or another. Not small things, either. My career in advertising, my struggle with weight and the money thing among them. But, of course, some of it has also not yet come to pass. 

But this prompts us all to ask ourselves some of the big questions. How much of our live is pre-determined and how much is not? How much do we create through our thoughts and how much by our will? And what tough past-life lessons are you gratefully free of having to deal with this time around?

1/24/12—Stepping Into the Void

Today's Draw: Two of Wands from the Tarot of the Crone. Do you feel like you're in a little bit of limbo right now, or are you walking solidly toward your future? Have you ever had a premonition about something....anything? And where do you stand on the whole 2012 thing?

This Two of Wands depicts the passageway between this reality and another. It's a passageway you created—a passageway to your future. But beyond that, you can't know exactly where it leads.

I saw a quote from Sue Monk Kidd today that said: 

"When you can't go forward and you can't go backward and you can't stay where you are without killing off what is deep and vital in yourself, you are on the edge of creation."

It's interesting that a number of people said they felt that way right now. Like there's a mass limbo out there that has caught us in its grasp. So we stand poised in this passageway for a moment, getting up the energy and courage to meet our destinies. 

There are perfectly normal, non-woo-woo, non-conspiracy-theorist everyday folk out there who feel that way about 2012. This is probably the biggest "anticipated question mark" in many of our lives. Y2K was up there. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Maybe the moments after 9/11. I can't really remember a whole lot of times when so many were questioning the future—curious, anticipatory, powerless. 

A priest, a St. Bernard and an Octopalian walk into a bar...

I'm pretty curious myself. Like the feeling in this card, I don't know for sure what to make of it—a year like any other? Some sort of something that changes our worlds forever? I could totally go either way. I believe in ETs and I believe the Mayans had contact with them, so my best guess goes to "something extraterrestrial". IF anything happens, that is.

I could swear I've told the story before about how, when I was between 3 and 5 years old, I lived in my sister's closet? I couldn't find the story through search, so I'll tell it again. It was a walk-in closet just off my sister's bedroom, in a dormer. My sisters were 7 and 8 years older than me. So this was how I got my own room and they got their privacy. 

Anywho, this room—this house—was creepy. It was old. And I had to sleep in a closet just big enough for a single bed and a small dresser. And my sisters used to make me ask permission to leave my room so I didn't interrupt their private big-girl business. So I was like a little prisoner in this space that I was pretty convinced was haunted. Because the room was in a dormer, it just ripe for capturing whatever energies might be floating around, too. *shiver*

Many believe we'll attain higher levels of enlightenment in 2012.

Well, while I lived in this room I had a number of "experiences" and a few very clear "premonitions" that were beyond my years. One was that I'd be a writer who lived in Maine. One was about a past life. And another was that something would happen in my lifetime that would cause many people to disappear and I would survive it. It didn't occur to me until many years later how people would "disappear"...would they die or just "poof!" And it also didn't occur to me that maybe surviving it might not be a good thing. Who knows?

Anyway, that's the baggage I bring into 2012, yet I'm still open minded, because who's to say the premonition was about 2012? I didn't fear this thing as a child, and I don't fear it now. I err on the side of "positive outcome" regarding it, if there's any notable outcome at all. Certainly I'm making earthly plans for 2013 and beyond. 

All of life, whether it's in anticipation of some new dimension of our life or Armageddon, is like this red hallway to the mystery beyond. It takes incredible courage to be a human being and stand at this threshold repeatedly throughout our lives and take those steps forward. Because not even the best psychics and mediums know what lies beyond. (Most of them, by the way, believe it's a huge shift in consciousness that's going to happen. No harm. No foul.) 

I get the sense with this card that the further I go down this hallway, the more I'm going to see into the dark. I don't know if that's logical. But that's the feeling I get. We get this amazing opportunity at adventure every day we're alive. And since some may be concerned they only have about 300 of those days left, it makes sense to make the most of every one of them.