The Night I Found a Bear in My Closet

One of my earliest childhood memories is of running into my parents’ bedroom to wake them up in the middle of the night after seeing a bear emerging from my bedroom closet.  Of course, as soon as they turned on the lights, I realized nothing was there even though it felt so real.

I look back on that night with curiosity because I don’t know if I dreamt of the bear in the closet or if I’d imagined it in the dark or both.  The memory didn’t emerge until decades later when panda spirit showed up as a power animal during a shamanic journey at a workshop and shared that he had been with me as a protector ever since that night.

My Dad had just returned from a trip to Hong Kong and gifted me a stuffed panda that I still have to this day.  I’d kept the panda all through the years even though I’d gotten rid of most of my other childhood toys and relics and now I knew why I was drawn to keep it.  Panda spirit is very playful and fun loving, sensitive and compassionate, but also needs solitary time and sets strong boundaries.

Children are often able to observe unseen worlds, which is why it’s common for parents to be awakened in the night by their youngsters who are convinced something is there that doesn’t exist in this 3-D plane.  However, these interactions with guides visiting from other dimensions can be experienced by any of us when we’re in a theta brainwave state and young children usually spend most of their time in a theta state. 

Unfortunately, this connection to both the unseen world and imagination subsides as children get older and are expected to fall in line with the collective tribal conditioning of being realistic and sensible.  It’s all rooted in an ever-evolving expression of survival coping mechanisms, but it’s also a reason for so much of our untapped potential to be left sitting in the shadows.  While yes, human beings need to adopt a skillset for meeting the practicalities of life, it’s also empowering to maintain a connection to the mysteries of the unknown.  It’s easy to not bother with remembering our dreams, taking up a creative project just for the sake of engaging our imagination or taking a moment once in a while to acknowledge our natural intuitive nature. 

There’s a default tendency to process what happens in life through the lens of what we already know instead of perceiving life through a symbolic lens that offers a rich landscape of wisdom and understanding.  To play with our imagination and intuition means dancing in the dark and allowing clarity to come later.  It’s about observing something that doesn’t immediately make sense and instead allowing the meaning to be revealed in right timing, even if it takes years or decades.

When a shaman travels between worlds to retrieve healing wisdom, they begin with the steady rhythm of a drum or other instrument and sit in a dark space that supports them entering a theta state to commune with spirit.  We all have a healing shaman in us that can travel between worlds to receive support from unknown realms, just as a child sees their spirit animal coming out of the closet in the middle of the night.  While you don’t necessarily have to take a shamanic journey to the steady rhythm of a drum, it does help to be engaged in an activity that gives the logical brain a break and offers the symbolic mind the internal mic.

As the days grow shorter this time of year, nature creates the circumstances for us to commune more easily with the spirit realm.  This is a great time to start a dream journal, begin a new creative project or take a nature hike to see what spirit animal shows up.  In fact, you don’t even need to be in nature for a spirit animal to show up.  Just the other day, as I got turned around at a subway stop while meeting a friend in Brooklyn, a large yellow butterfly appeared and turned down the street in the direction I needed to go.

There’s no right or wrong way to engage the part of you that understands the symbolic nature of life.  You just need a willingness to dance with the unknown and see where spirit takes you. 

Messages from an Angel in Training

One and a half years after my maternal grandmother passed away, I had the most amazing reading with an intuitive healer named Emily Blank.  As soon as she started the reading, Emily said there were a lot of guides on the other side wanting to connect with me, but one particular guide was being very loud and vocal and announced herself as my grandmother. 

As Emily received her messages for me, one funny thing Nanny shared was that she is now an “angel in training” but she doesn’t “get a certificate like I did with Reiki”. 

The funny thing is that Nanny has appeared to a few of my more intuitive friends over the years.  A friend called me up one day and said she appeared in a dream and announced herself as my grandmother.  Another woman who is naturally psychic (but not a professional psychic) called me and asked if I had a grandmother on the other side.  I’d only met the woman once and she said that Nanny showed up, announced who she was and proceeded to follow her around all day.  She shared uplifting messages that included details this woman would have never known, like the type of perfume she kept on her dresser. 

While I don’t necessarily need other people to receive messages from Nanny, the way she is pushy with others and eager to get her messages across makes me laugh. 

Shortly after my reading with Emily, I started seeing the number 919 everywhere and finally one day I realized this was Nanny’s birthday - September 19^th – and she was letting me know that when I see this number, she’s connecting with me.  It isn’t just when I look at the clock that I see 919.  The number will pop up on a store receipt or street number, in a sequence while I’m working, or just about anywhere numbers are involved. 

Initially, 919 would appear after I’d had a tough day and it was her way of soothing me.  I would feel a warmth come over me, like she was giving me a hug. 

However, over time, I started paying more attention to what I was thinking, feeling, and engaged in when the number appeared.  I’d check in and sure enough, she’d be highlighting a thought or situation.  I’ll also sometimes ask her what she’s trying to tell me, and the messages get clearer and clearer.  Sometimes it’s a reminder that I haven’t spoken to my mother in a while.  Other times there’s a message that gives me clarity on a situation.  Then there are times when she’s just saying hello. 

In the early days of the Ukraine war, the number 919 was coming up multiple times a day like I’d never experienced before.  One night, I looked at my phone just before lighting a candle to pray and meditate, and sure enough it was 9:19.  As I settled in and got deeper into the meditation, Nanny showed me an army of angels surrounding planet earth and pouring a powerful white light over Ukraine.  She understands how much grief and fear I experience when learning of human atrocities.  She reminded me to tend to my own light to assist the angels in doing their work.

Unless it’s not a person’s time to die, Angels don’t intervene until humans ask for their assistance.  Over the past month, as I continue to send light not only to Ukraine, but the world as a whole, I ask for assistance from the angels in channeling light to these dark dimensions that cause human suffering.  Light doesn’t always dispel darkness, but it can bind the dark so it can’t spread.  It also highlights the truth of a situation to inspire people to help others. 

The first time I ever personally experienced the presence of an angel intervention was over 20 years ago when a loved one was in physical danger.  I was sound asleep when I felt a hand grab me by the collar and pull me out of bed.  Still half asleep, I barely felt like I was in my body as I picked up the phone, without knowing why, and made the call that intervened and eventually lead to this person’s safety.

Angels are everywhere and I love it most when they show up in my healing sessions.  They are beings of light carrying messages from the divine and the more we open our hearts to them, the more they can assist us.  As I mentioned, they will intervene when it’s not your time to die, like in the case of my loved one.  They will also support those who are dying to make their transition as peaceful as possible.  But they will also show up to connect in fun and playful ways if we’re open to having a joyful interaction with them. 

Students who study Reiki with me will often ask why they are suddenly seeing the same number sequences everywhere such as 1111 or 222.  They want to know what it all means.  I advise them to pay attention to what they are thinking and feeling when the number sequence appears.  Just as we build friendships and professional relationships over time, when we consistently invite them to join us on this earthly adventure called life, we can develop deeper connections with the angels.

Angels are often misfits who love to be playful in their interactions.  In the final years of my grandmother’s life, her personality became much more playful and mischievous.  For her friend’s 90^th birthday party, she stayed out until 3 am like she was a teenager.  Her jokes were sassier as well.  At her 88^th birthday party she asked when the stripper was arriving.  We were shocked because Nanny was always much more reserved.  I can’t help but wonder if her training to become an angel hadn’t already started in her final years of life. 

America’s Pluto Return and Healing of its Karma

Most years Presidents Day comes and goes, and I don’t give it much thought other than gratitude for a 3-day weekend to catch up on taxes or other projects.

This year, though, the cosmos is inspiring those of us who follow astrology to reflect on the karma of the founding fathers.  This week, for the first time since the founding of our nation, Pluto returns to its exact location in the sky as on the day the Declaration of Independence was signed.  It will also ping this point in space a few times this year.  

When you look at the symbolic nature of this, Pluto is the god of the underworld, the place where we experience a dark night, heal our karma, and in turn are reborn.

On the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, these men turned around and continued living out of alignment with the very truths they had declared.  They continued to enslave Africans, slaughter Native Americans, and destroy a land that didn’t belong to them, creating a whole lot of dark karma.  

The lead up of Pluto pinging 27 degrees Capricorn this week started back in 2008 when it first entered Capricorn and the economy collapsed.  What has happened since then?

10 years ago Trayvon Martin was slaughtered and his killer got away with it, giving birth to the Black Lives Matter movement calling out racism and racial inequality.

We’ve also had the Me Too movement calling out misogyny.

We’ve made gay marriage legal through the Marriage Equality Act.

We’ve had the Standing Rock protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline, calling out the oppression of Native American communities.

Then there was the election of Trump who is the ultimate embodiment of America’s dark side, bringing to light that we still have a long way to go to heal the karma of this country.

And over the past two years the pandemic continued to amplify this karma, dividing us instead of uniting us.  

We are at a pivotal point.  Do we take the momentum of the good that’s come out of these past 14 years and continue working to make this karma whole?

Or do we double down on the patterns that destroy our democracy and end up losing the very freedoms the original presidents claimed they stood for?

It’s time to make our country whole.

At this very moment, there are school systems refusing to teach about slavery, the holocaust, and the massacre of the Native Americans.  How can we evolve if we don’t understand the past?

The systems at play want us to be divided.  Political parties, the tech industry, communication and media, religions, economics, dark conspiracy theories created to distract us from the truth are all in play to trick us into taking sides and in turn shaming the other side until they are deemed unworthy.

When we consciously choose to unplug from these systems, we remember that we’re all created equal in the eyes of the divine, god/goddess, source, however you relate to the greater whole.  

This country was founded on the premise that anyone escaping oppression could come here to carve out a life of liberty.  We’ve come far, but there is still quite a ways to go for us to reach the point where we can say that we do indeed live according to these values. 

It’s time to create equality through healing our land and waters, through meeting the basic needs of every human being, through remembering that we are all equal.

(Photo by José de Azpiazu on Unsplash)

Remembering Love in All the Right Places

 

There is a growing number of loved ones in my life who have passed away and as time goes on, there’s been a beautiful shift in how I relate to their love.  The first big loss was my maternal grandmother.  She passed away on Valentine’s Day 13 years ago.  I was in London visiting my brother at the time and I believe it was her way of always reminding us how much she loved us.

Each of my closest loved ones who have passed on have a way of connecting with me from the other side.  The number 919 shows up when my grandmother is reaching out to me.  Her birthday was 9/19.  With my paternal grandmother, blue jays show up on my fire escape or follow me around in the park.  She loved watching the birds hanging out at the feeder in her backyard.  These are reminders that I am still loved even if I can’t be with them here on the earth plane.

When my stepmother, Linda, passed away last spring, she came to me in a dream and said, “Ladybugs will be our thing.  Anytime you see one, remember that I am with you.”  I thought to myself that’s nice, but I rarely run into ladybugs.  There was that time over a decade ago when one rode the subway on my shoulder and got off at Columbus Circle, but that’s about it.  The next day I saw a big bright ladybug on the label to a wine bottle and said to myself, “Very funny Linda.”  Then a few weeks later, as I was walking in the park, a butterfly flew into my face and as I turned my head, there was a ladybug sitting in the middle of a flower.  I would have missed it if the butterfly hadn’t slammed into me.  Last fall, my dad was visiting, and we were sitting on a bench near the river when a ladybug decided to join the conversation. 

Most recently, I was watching the television show This is Us (small spoiler alert ahead if you’re not caught up) and the mother, Rebecca, is recalling a day when the kids were having a tantrum in the car and a ladybug flew in through the window, immediately transforming the tantrums into sheer delight.  Here’s the kicker. . . The kids named her Linda the Ladybug. 

Linda suffered from Alzheimer’s the last 16 years of her life.  In the final years she was unable to communicate yet being alone with her in the silence was never difficult.  I could still feel the love and joy that was in her heart.  She might have lost her memories and forgotten her words, but she still remembered love and I could still experience that with her.

Love is such a powerful force and yet can make us feel so vulnerable.  It serves up so much joy, pleasure, and passion and is also an elixir to help us heal when we are suffering.  In Reiki we work with a mudra called Gassho.  In other practices it’s known as prayer or namaste position.  When we work with this mudra and breathe into the heart, we begin to restore balance and harmony within our being.  As that harmony is restored, we can more easily remember with gratitude both the tangible and intangible expressions of love. 

Love is not only found in our personal relationships that make it easy to be loving, but also in the people who trigger our anger and fear.  When we can remember this, we can begin to shift how we respond to our most challenging relationships.  Love is accessible to every dimension of life, and it can be called upon to transform any given experience into something beautiful.

This week I was reflecting on the “recipe” for restoring the fullest experience of love in our lives and the words grace, compassion and joy came to mind.

Grace reminds you that you are loved, and you are enough no matter who you are and what you’ve accomplished.  It helps you to cultivate self-love and anchors a sense of safety within you so you can have the courage to explore your inner realm.  Think of how the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz discovered he always had courage in his heart and grace bestows this on us when we journey back to love.

Compassion creates space for you to embrace both the light and the dark.  It reminds you that everything is of the divine.  It brings fluidity to how you perceive yourself and others with kindness.  Within the word Compassion there is “Passion” which inspires you to stay the course as you seek to experience more love in your life.

Joy is the presence that exists within all dimensions of life.  It is found in the cracks of even the darkest of places as well as in your happiest moments.  It creates a nonresistant space within you to welcome the fullest expression of love into your life.  When joy is fully flowing within you, you can’t resist love.

Love is everywhere, even when we’re grieving or in a state of fear and worry.  

The mind prefers we stay in the old patterns of “looking for love in all the wrong places”. 

The heart encourages us to instead remember love in all the right places!

Preparing for a Re-BEarth

When I was in college, my roommates and I had a tiny black and white TV and on Saturdays we would gather around it to watch The Golden Girls.  We would laugh so hard!  Sometimes my friends would tease me and compare me to Rose, played by the late Betty White, which I didn’t appreciate at the time, but now I find it quite endearing.  Those who have known me for decades know that I can see things from a lighter or even sillier perspective than most and yet be dead serious at the same time. 

This Monday happens to be Betty’s 100^th birthday and it’s quite poetic that we also have the first full moon of 2022 arriving that same day in the sign of Cancer.  The cosmos is opening doors for us to connect with several different archetypal patterns starting with the Divine Mother.  The moon which represents the mother archetype also happens to rule the sign of Cancer, creating a beautiful flow of energy to nurture what is ready to be Re-BEarthed in your life. 

We all carry the Divine Mother within us.  It’s the energy that encourages kindness, love and care for yourself and others.  I can’t think of a better way to shine a light on the mother archetype than by celebrating the life of Betty White.  While she didn’t become a mother herself, she mothered the world at large with her loving kindness, and the sweet joys of life that she shared with others.  She showed the world how you can be both kind and fierce. 

The full moon in Cancer always opposes the Sun in Capricorn which represents the Divine Father and so when the full moon rises around this time each year, you can call on the mother and father archetypes to marinate in the supportive energies that will help create something new.  This could be a new sense of healing and wholeness, something you are wanting to manifest, a new way of being of service to the greater whole, or simply a new pattern of relating to yourself and others. 

We have also just entered a new and powerful Mercury Retrograde cycle that moves backwards from Aquarius into Capricorn.  Aquarius is the visionary while Capricorn is the cosmic CEO that makes sure the vision becomes reality.  This is a wonderful time to reflect on your higher vision and how you can align your daily actions with what is truly important to you.  And at the same time, ask how this contributes to the Re-BEarthing of the planet as a whole.  Capricorn reminds us that in taking the baby steps with focus and patience, we do indeed get to the top of the mountain.  If you ever find yourself overwhelmed by the world’s problems, remember that each small but positive action contributes to the collective and over time makes a bigger difference than any of us can imagine. 

Every winter this dance between the sun and moon creates the setup phase to support and prepare for the generation of new life come springtime.  However, I foresee 2022 having an overarching theme of connecting with the Divine Mother throughout the year to heal and restore our energy and to discover how we will be giving BEarth to a new world in the coming years.  It’s natural for us to want to jump ahead and make plans for when the worst of this pandemic is over, but before we can move on, the collective needs time to recover, heal and connect with its higher values once again which will naturally guide us towards a clearer vision.

The human psyche loves to celebrate the new but when we equally embrace the stages of life that call on us to slow down to heal and recover, our experience of the new is that much more fulfilling. 

How can you answer to your own personal needs for healing and recovery?

How can you in turn encourage others to do the same in their own unique way?

There is no right answer here.  It’s an invitation to listen unconditionally to yourself and others, just like a mother listens to the needs of her children.

(Photo by Elena Mozhvilo on Unsplash)