Welcome! Come here to explore different tools that you can use to shift your emotions, shift trauma, alleviate pain, and handle the challenges that pop up regularly.
Sunday, June 16, 2024
Happy Father’s Day - June 16, 2024
Saturday, June 15, 2024
Badger Away!
This is post is a copy of what I wrote in my journal after a trip into the mountains in Kananaskis Country several years ago.
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As we drove home from the mountains Thursday, we saw a wide variety of animals and birds. I was surprised to see a big badger run away from us, and across the road and into the grass.
Badgers are typically dawn and dusk beings as they are very much a loner type animal. This badger, however, was on a mission, and ran across a busy two lane highway. The irony of me writing this story is that one of the characteristics of badger in all the legends is that Badger is the Keeper of Stories. Before the written word was so prominent, all traditions handed down their history by story telling. In each family was one member who could recite the family lineage right back to the oldest memories. We lost our tradition of story telling in the 1700’s with the growth of the Industrial Revolution and its need for written instructions to keep the spread of machines growing.
Back to Badger! Badger is an underground dweller. It reminds us to stay grounded. She also reminds us to dig deeper into the issues that are occurring in our lives because the surface problem is not at the root – the root is generally always hidden beneath the layers – of dirt, or of stories, or of self deception.
Badger likes to be by herself because she is very strong and self confident. Her questions are:
- Are you lacking confidence in something?
- Are you seeing only the surface of a story? Do you need to dig deeper?
- Are you using your stories to cause harm? Are someone else’s stories causing you harm?
- Do you need to tell a story to teach something?
- Does your story need to be told so that you can let go of it?
May Badger come to you in your dreams and give you a way to get to your roots!
Many blessings,
Judy
Thursday, June 13, 2024
Spirit Talks About Catharsis
Catharsis is about being able to release pain – emotional pain – by watching someone else’s pain, and being able to recognize the pain and feel it in you, and then release it in yourself. Many of us do this by crying at movies or even at commercials on TV. The process, for some people, is quite embarrassing, that is, to be crying at a movie.
However, Great Spirit and our Angels and Guides reassure us that this is a healing mechanism that humans have so that we do not overload on emotions that we store inside our bodies. From the time that we are born, it is in our nature to laugh, cry, be sad, celebrate, and all the other emotions that exist. If we cannot feel great sadness, then there is a good chance that we will not be able to feel great happiness.
Feeling emotional release based on someone else’s experience, real or performed in a movie, is a great confirmation that we are all connected; that there is Oneness. What I mean is that if we were all separate, we would not feel that tug of pain in a nerve around our heart, or, we would not feel the fear in our solar plexus when we watch that scary movie. Emotion is an energy that radiates outward until it is absorbed by “something”. Often that something is another being.
The nick name for emotional movies is “tear jerker”. Literally, the nick name describes the process of the movie pulling the tears that have been locked away, out into the open. Some spiritual teachers believe that a good tear jerker is as good as a meditation in helping a person release pent up emotion. In either case, during the movie or during meditation, the person is so absorbed that they are completely in the present moment, and, in the present moment, there is no pain, so the body releases it as tears.
What a beautiful process! Catharsis!
Blessings,
Judy
Tuesday, June 11, 2024
Connecting with Meerkat
Meerkat picture from www.irishviews.com
Is the third time the charm? I am about to find out as I try again to connect with Meerkat to receive her message.
Meerkat pops up beside me and snuggles in. She seems to be more comfortable with me than vice versa. I find her quite comforting. She sighs, and then begins to speak.
“We are so much like you humans and yet you know very little about us. I find that rather disturbing. We have many of your traits – politics, breeding practices, pup and elder care, and survival tactics. We originally came up from the depths of the Earth. We are some of the life forms that went underground when there were difficulties in the air and ground, difficulties that have re-emerged. We have learned to burrow underground and to build safe nests deep enough to avoid having to be poisoned by the air.
As the food above us died, we moved downward in search of food that we could eat. We found that others had also moved downward. We became hunter and prey. We learned the value of cooperation. We learned to be respectful of our resources and therefore to adjust our numbers to the food that could support us.
We watch you now and wonder why you fight against the obvious laws of nature. We wonder why you are destroying that which gives you life. There is nothing that you can produce with all of your machines that is as wonderful as what She Who Feeds Us All can provide.
We have black masks because our eyes are still sensitive to the light. We find the blackness dulls the glare of the Sun. It seems however, that humans find our mask fearful. We are part of the issue of fear or darkness that humans have to deal with. We are therefore, part of your path – just as you are part of our path. The easiest strategy to cope with fear is to meet it head on, much as we do. We wish you well.
Blessings,
Judy
Sunday, June 9, 2024
Spirit Talks About Purpose
There is a saying that Spirit speaks and that one has to listen to be clear on the message. This story is about how Spirit speaks to me.
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For the past several weeks, I keep getting PURPOSE as the word of the day, at least once per week. I wondered why this was coming up for me because I think I live my purpose. Here is what the word means “something set up as an object or end to be attained” from the Merriam Webster online dictionary.
I found a variety of posters on the subject as well. Here is one of my favourites.
The poster says —- The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.
And, I liked this one as well.
This comes from design.ag/inspiration/typography-showcase.
As I reflected on “purpose”, I began to wonder about all the legends and “how to” articles that suggest different ways of finding one’s purpose. The Shaman of our Ancestors’ tribes did a rite of passage with each child as they came to puberty to help them find their place in the tribe.
The Mayans had three great wheels that showed the purpose of one’s life. So, the day that you were born on, became your purpose. The movement of the wheel indicated the purpose of each day. Today’s message is (from www.mayanmajix.com) :
Each tribe or nation had and has its own belief system.
I kept hearing “purpose” echoing in my head. I decided that our purpose is probably quite simple. It is to help others have their experience as each of us has our own experience. Our purpose is to grow as much as we can.
What do you think?
Blessings,
Judy
Friday, June 7, 2024
Leopard Guides Me
Leopard is back this morning, sitting in my meditation room. I feel comfortable with her, and I wonder if she is replacing another of my Spirit Animals. “No,” she quips, “I am just joining your zoo!”
Picture from Wikipedia
While I thought this was an odd thing for her to say, I guess it did make sense. I seem to always have a lot of spirit animals around me. In fact, when I drew a card from the Animal Tarot deck the other day, the card that came up was “The World” which literally means all the animals in the world. I love them all!
Leopard then stepped forward and said that she would be working with me. She reminded me that often, in my “Word Of The Day” meditation, I receive the word “Clarity”. She told me that one of the gifts of Leopard is the ability to see clearly – they have keen eyesight, and can clearly for a mile. She said that being up in a tree also allows them to see great distances clearly, and to map out what approach they might take to kill an animal that looks like the next dinner.
Leopard told me to think about how easily we had connected. She says that I have good intuitive abilities and that I need to use them even more then I think I already do. She says this time of change is going to bring great challenges that will require instinct and intuitiveness to get through. Leopard showed me walking in a woods/forest and foraging for food.
One of the things about Leopard is that even though they like their solitude, they do also like the tactile. Touch is important for Leopard and she said that it is important for me, and that when ever I could, I should touch people. Touch is a way of connecting and of protecting.
I thanked Leopard for her teachings, and she padded off.
Blessings,
Judy
Wednesday, June 5, 2024
A Dream About Aquarium Fish
This post is from a dream that I wrote up in my journal back many years ago. I find the old dreams interesting and I look for repeating archetypes and themes in my dreams.
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This picture comes from commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Home_aquarium.jpg (My aquarium does not look nearly this good, nor is it this big!)
The other night, in my dreams, a big aquarium popped up, out of no where, and both my fish swam to the side of the tank and looked at me. They then made everything go dark, and little by little, cleared the blackness so that the tank, and the water, and the scene were filled with clear light.
When I woke up, I knew that the fish wanted me to clean the tank. As I carried out the task, I thought how interesting it was that I was spending an hour cleaning out the tank, and the castle and rocks and filter. It was very much like sifting through my emotional body, and pulling out the gunk that was sitting in there.
Fish have been a symbol of spirituality and abundance going back to the time of cave drawings. Fish, like us, come in a variety of colours with a huge range of dispositions. The most beautiful are sometimes the most deadly. Scientists agree that all life originated in the oceans/seas/rivers. Therefore, water on our planet is like a big womb. And, yes, we all require it to live. We need to breath air, and assimilate the oxygen in the water. Fish, then, are symbolic of the fruits of the womb, of motherhood. They inspire creativity and bring good luck, as the Chinese believe.
Water is always transforming – it evaporates, becomes mist, may fall as rain, and then returns to the Earth to rise up again as water. Fish, then, represent change. If they are coming into your life, perhaps they are saying, like they did to me, “It is time to clean up your act and get your house in order for the new things that are coming.”
Blessings,
Judy
