Dawning of the Age of Aquarius

Up until last night, I've been wondering if the Age of Aquarius, that we have been hearing about for decades, would ever really kick into gear. I've been watching and waiting for the "harmony and understanding," the spirit of cooperation and communication Aquarius promises to awaken in humanity, and now I see that it has truly arrived. The campaign of President Elect Obama was a grassroots, cooperative venture like nothing ever seen before in American politics. The resulting outpouring of support from around the world gives me hope that America may once again become a world leader in peace, justice, freedom, and equality for all.

I see hope for the manifestation of paradise on Earth. No, I don't believe Obama will create it. It is not Obama that gives me hope. It is the uprising of humanity asserting a choice to make big changes. A very quiet revolution took place in America yesterday - a peaceful, joyful, hopeful sort of revolution. But, as with all revolutions, there will be a lot of work involved in co-creating the new version of reality.

How will we shape our future, now that we have wrested it from the hands of the greedy power-mongers who sought to economically enslave the world? Will we fall back into complacency and let the power-mongers rise again, or will we take this golden opportunity for what it is and run with it?

We now have the momentum to change the dynamic of our crumbling economy so that it is based on cooperation rather than competition, so that it supports rather than degrades the environment, and so that it empowers rather than enslaves the population. Hope shines bright. And I hope we will all continue to envision a world where paradise is more than an idealistic dream.

Celtic New Year

Wow! The Celtic New Year has started off with a bang. I did my own private ritual to let go of the past and bring in my next phase, by writing down everything I wanted to "delete" from my life, and another list of what I wanted to bring in.

I burned the list of what I wanted to delete, and buried the list I wanted to attract, after connecting it with the four directions and the four elements.

The next day I was immediately inspired to complete the four courses, for my Naturopathic Doctor degree, that I had been putting off for TWO YEARS! Then I signed up for the final courses I need to get the degree. I expect to finish the course within the next few months. Talk about positive manifestation!

Why include the four directions and the four elements? It's all about the way our brains work. In order to change anything in our lives, we have to get all parts of the brain to cooperate. It's easy to use the logical left brain to formulate ideas about what we want, but the right brain doesn't have a clue what that means. The mid-brain doesn't FEEL it; the brain-stem doesn't connect it with physical reality; the frontal lobe isn't holding it in focus.

So I physically walked around the circle of the four directions and connected with the feeling of each direction and the element associated with it - Earth, Air, Fire, Water - to involve my mid-brain and brain-stem. I envisioned my goals for the next year so clearly that I created an emotional response that my frontal lobe could grasp. And I created a repetitious pattern of addressing each element and direction, repeating the list of goals in each direction, so my right brain could get in on the act.

So far, it's working really well. I've already accomplished one of my goals in the first day! More on using the whole brain to achieve your dreams later. Right now I have to get ready for a guest arriving soon.

By the way, I took the photo of Stonehenge over the summer. I'm putting it in public domain if anyone would like to use it.

Teaching the Faery Way

Yikes, have I ever been busy! Yes, I did take that trip to the U.K. and Ireland, and since then things have been popping. It was a really fun trip and it triggered all sorts of internal changes. Hard to explain, really, but it has led to a clarity that I've been seeking for years.

For one thing, I just finished watching all 15 of Kevin Gianni's Rawkathon videos. WOW! I feel vitalized just from getting all that information. In a nutshell, I finally feel like I have all the information I need to achieve perfect nutrition. The big questions for those on a raw and/or vegan diet are where do you get your protein? Vitamin B12? Omega 3 fatty acids? and Iron?

Some sources claim that you can only get those things from animal products. Turns out, that is total hooey.

According to Dr. Rick Dina, who is a raw food vegan medical doctor who has done numerous nutritional studies, leafy greens provide all the protein, iron, and Omega 3 fats that we could possibly need. Furthermore, every whole food, even fruit, has enough protein to sustain life, as long as you eat it raw. Cooking destroys some amino acids that are the building blocks of protein, so cooked foods like meat are actually not the best sources of complete protein.

The iron in green plants is abundant and it's the kind that will never become toxic to the body, because the body only takes in as much as it needs. The iron in meat can overload the body.

Green leaves, and especially algae like spirulina, contain lots of Omega 3 fats. The body can make it's own DHA from these fats, or you can get DHA from marine algae. And of course flax, and hemp seeds are loaded with Omega 3 fatty acids.

As for B12, a large percentage of meat eaters are deficient in it, as well as vegans and vegetarians, so it is not a vegetarian issue. If you are concerned about your B12 level, you can get a blood test to see if it is optimum, or take a sublingual B12 supplement. Dr. Dina says that Vitamineral Green also raised his B12 level. It's not cheap, but it's a great product.

Whew! 15 hours of raw food experts talking about their own experience was nothing short of enlightening. I hope Kevin keeps making those videos available so others can watch them. The best news for me so far is that I dropped 8 pesky pounds by eating more raw foods! After hitting menopause, the pounds started creeping up, ever so slowly, and nothing I tried seemed to get them to leave -- until I went back to eating raw foods. Yay! For more info. on that subject, visit
http://healitall.com/weightmanagement.html


On a whole different subject -- well sort of, but not really -- I finally got my "mission statement." This is the phrase that encapsulates my life purpose. Of course it is nothing really new, just a new way to speak about what I've been doing all my life.

I went to a spiral dance that Starhawk was leading for Samhain (Halloween) and we did a shamanic journey to the Underworld. There I met a faery guide. I asked her to help me define my life purpose. Without missing a beat, she smiled and said, "You are here to teach the Faery Way." That was it.

Now -- I've had people make fun of me because I "believe" in faeries. I tell them it is not a "belief;" I've seen them. Still, it's sort of hard to communicate with people who are not aware of something that seems so obvious to me. So I'm thinking, how am I supposed to "teach the Faery Way" when most of the people I encounter think anyone who "believes" in faeries is nuts, or at least somewhat deluded?

I realized then that I've been teaching and living the Faery Way all my life. It's nothing new. It is all about compost and gardens and compassion for animals and eating fresh, whole plant foods. It is about healing with energy, and magic -- and singing and dancing and creating art.

I had to laugh when I realized that I don't even have to talk about faeries to teach the Faery Way. But, because it has helped me feel more confident about my own perceptions when others have spoken or written about their encounters with the fae, I will stick my neck out and testify that yes, they are here in our forests and our gardens, and I have personally met some of them.

By the way, that's a photo of my friend Judy visiting a fairy grotto. She wasn't holding anything in her hand when the picture was taken. What do you think?

For more information about the Faery Way
visit http://fairysource.com/faery-way.html

Off to See the Wizard

Though I will only be in the British Isles for 10 days, I'll be traveling for a month 7/16 - 8/16 and probably won't be able to post blogs. I'm sure I will have magical tales to tell on my return. I will be spending some time in the Glastonbury-Salsbury area of England where I hope to see at least one crop circle, and of course Stonehenge, Glastonbury Tor, and Chalice Hill. I don't know why, but it's almost like I HAVE to go there at this point in my life journey - as if to retrieve secrets stored in stone and soil, or to connect with a particular Earth energy. I'll know more when I return... though usually knowing more means I'll also have a lot more questions!

Comparing EFT to CTP (Choice Transmutation Process)

Ah life! (As my friend Tim always used to say when things got a bit overwhelming... yet were still inexplicably wonderful.) As I prepare to take a whirlwind tour of Brittan and Ireland, it seems like there is so much to do to get ready and so much to learn about where I'm going! Never the less, I have been trying out my new emotional healing modality with several clients over the past few weeks and the results have been fascinating.

What I now call CTP (Choice Transmutation Process) has been very effective for some people, even more so than EFT, but with others, the EFT process was needed to clear residual feelings. I found that they actually work very well in tandem - actually better than either of them work alone.

By using CTP to help clients really get in touch with their issue and the way it looks, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels, and perhaps most importantly CHOOSING to feel the feeling, the stage is set for using EFT most effectively. After applying CTP for all aspects of an issue that we can uncover (which was sometimes enough to clear the issue in itself) I would apply EFT to remove any lingering energetic disturbance related to the issue.

As with EFT alone, this process works best when the client comes with one particular issue to work on. I had several clients with multiple physical and emotional issues, which made it harder for them to see rapid improvement (since they would immediately start focusing on another problem each time one issue was resolved). Not surprisingly, the people who responded most quickly were also involved in some type of alternative health care modality. They were immediately able to get into the process and identify some of their underlying issues.

Here is a very clear example of a client with a single issue that was quickly resolved (in about an hour): I'll call her Jane - a lovely young woman with a fear of getting sick, but otherwise healthy and balanced.

Jane's complaint was that it really made her anxious whenever people at work started talking about illness or "what's going around." She could trace it back to an early childhood experience of getting sick and being afraid she was going to die. When I asked her what it looked like, she said it looked and sounded like a Tasmanian Devil cartoon character whirling out of control, felt heavy, but had no smell or taste.

I had her ask the character if it had a message for her and why it was there. It said it wanted to devour her and that the heavy feeling was necessary to keep her grounded and healthy. I asked if she could choose to let it be there and appreciate that it was trying to keep her healthy. She agreed, but wished it didn't feel so out of control.

I asked her to tell the character what she wanted it to do and see if it would agree. She told it that she appreciated its help, but that anxiety was actually counter productive, and she would prefer that it take the form of a powerful woman warrior with a sword who kept away the anxious thoughts. The character agreed and transformed into her chosen image.

At this point Jane felt much better, but still had a residual feeling of anxiety about getting sick when she thought of people at work talking about it. We could have gone further with CTP, but it seemed that EFT might speed up the process at this point because it now seemed to be a purely energetic issue. We did a couple rounds of EFT on "Even though I still have some anxiety about getting sick, I deeply and completely love and accept myself," and she reported that the anxiety had vanished.

Other clients had similar results, though most had more issues than we could address in an hour session. Sometimes, simply getting deeply in touch with their feelings brought the deepest relief.

New Form of Emotional Healing Therapy

I've been practicing Emotional Healing work for many years, including EFT and Bach Flower Remedies, and I have found that it has been very helpful for most people. Even so, I always had the feeling that there was an even more efficient way to clear emotional blocks and deep seated pain. Thanks to a recent altercation with someone in my own life, I was able to get in touch with a deep-seated personal pain. It was a blessing in disguise.

Apart from the confusion resulting from miscommunication... and with Mercury retrograde, I probably should never have tried to communicate with this person in the first place... I experienced a sense of having been kicked in the stomach and later a burning in my heart center. This was a perfect opportunity to use my emotional clearing skills on myself!

One of my favorite metaphysical teachers, P'taah, says that in order to transmute pain we have to "Take responsibility - Align the judgement - and Feel the feeling." It has always been a difficult process for me, but I thought I'd give it another shot when my recurring heart pain came up. This is not a pain in my physical heart. It is a burning sensation in the center of my chest that is purely emotionally based... though it could eventually cause physical damage to my heart if not cleared.

Somehow, as I lay awake in the middle of the night wondering how and why I had attracted the angst I was experiencing, I had a flash of insight about how to apply the wisdom of P'taah to my situation. I have coined the term "Choice Transmutation" to describe the process that came to me. It works amazingly well and I cleared many layers of deep-seated pain through the night.

Here's how it works in a nutshell. (I plan to write a book about it to go into all the details, but for now I'll share the short version so you can try it yourself.)
It's very simple.

Start by identifying WHAT you feel (whether physical or emotional) and state:
In this moment I CHOOSE to feel _____________ (describe your feeling).
In my ____________ (describe WHERE you feel it in your body.)
At this point you may also want to say WHY you feel it if you know the reason - because: _________________________

Then use your imagination to give it sensory qualities in this order.
It LOOKS like __________________
It SOUNDS like ___________________
It SMELLS like __________________
It TASTES like __________________
It FEELS like ___________________

Then state: My BELIEF about the cause of this pain is ________________
What other beliefs could I substitute that would allow me to come to a deeper understanding? ____________________________
(A belief is simply a frequently held thought.)

By this point in the process, the feeling will probably have already shifted to another feeling or another place in the body, in which case the whole procedure can be repeated with the new feeling until a sense of peace returns.

The cool thing about this process is that it automatically takes you through the steps that P'taah outlines. In choosing to feel the feeling in this way, you "take responsibility" for it as well as "aligning your judgment" with it, because you are choosing to stop resisting. At the same time you are staying focused on "feeling the feeling" by identifying all the sensory aspects of it.

I found that I was quickly letting go of pain and taking deep releasing breaths after each round of the process. A nice side effect was that my senses were also enhanced. I was aware of hearing things clearly that I hadn't even noticed before - like the buzz of my refrigerator. Well, that isn't always welcome in the middle of the night, but it's a sign of the clearing and healing process at work.

If you want to give this process a try, I would love to hear your feedback on how it works for you. I may even add it to my book with your permission.

What's Wrong with "The Secret"

By now, millions of people have seen the hit film "The Secret." A lot of people found it inspiring, and I was one of them, but others have a very valid criticism. The film mainly focuses on material abundance, without addressing the issue of inner peace and fulfillment, which is what everybody is really looking for.

As a life coach, I hear all sorts of ideas from people about what they think will make them happy, but sometimes they don't have a clue. They imagine that it is the outward circumstances of their lives - the partner, the job, the financial security, the education, or any number of other things.

In actual fact, according to Law of Attraction, we have to find the happiness first, and THEN all the outer stuff naturally flows to us. The "stuff" is a natural consequence of living joyfully in the moment. So why not start right now?

Can you find something to appreciate? Can you feel the wonder of life flowing through your body? Are you aware of simply being - right here - right now? If so, you have found the real Secret. Everything else is just frosting on the cake!