I wrote this poem rather quickly, in one sitting, letting the words flow through onto the screen as I typed. I have been in a bit of a writer’s rut these days, and I thank Sue Vincent for nominating me for a daily poetry writing challenge on Facebook. This has stirred the latent creativity back to life, somewhat, and I am grateful for that. I’m sharing this one, today’s, because it is metaphysically inspired.
For the past couple of months I’ve been coloring mandalas. I color when I am waiting for the kids to get ready for bed, when I’m talking on the phone, and when I could be writing or cleaning the house. I’m not always coloring, but I crave it, like anything else that makes me happy, often throughout my days and evenings. I tell myself it’s cathartic and meditative, that it nurtures the creative centers within me. And it does. For all you colorers out there, you’ll know what I mean.
India-inspired mandala from Mandala Design Vol. 1 by Jenean Morrison
I’ll blame my friend Kathy for this addiction, after all she’s the one who kept posting her beautifully colored creations on Facebook for all her friends to see. She’s the one who happily introduced me to the special selection of adult coloring books at our local bookstore, and smiled knowingly as I drooled with delight over those that featured mandalas, fairies and buddhist art. I was already hooked before I opened their covers.
I started with animal mandalas. My first creation the mythical dragon horse seen below:
Dragon-horse from Coloring Animal Mandalas by Wendy Piersall
And, 7 colored pages later, pulled myself away Wendy Piersall‘s beautiful book to join a coloring club (also brought to my attention by my dear friend Kathy and her mom, both of whom were already in the club). To my delight, the group was also coloring mandalas. One a week from their chosen book and going in order, so switching pages was rather painless, especially knowing I could always go back.
Week 1 mandala from Mandala Design Vol. 1 by Jenean Morrison
I usually start with 5 or 6 pencils, choosing my colors based on impulse, rather than thought. They are quickly selected from the line-up and rarely do I switch them out. Once the choices are made, these 5 or 6 colors define the art I create. It is like the act of automatic writing, or recording one’s stream of consciousness. There is no going back once the pencil is brought to the paper, no erasing and editing, which is my habit if I am creating a non-erasure (versus erasure) poem or working on a narrative manuscript.
Chosen from the line-up
Coloring mandalas, I sometimes cross over the black lines with my pencils and there is the initial impulse to erase, or to berate my mistakes. Thinking I have been careless, imperfect. A temporary break in focus. A common condition of the human mind. Then I stop and smile. I leave the color outside the black, which has bleached into the white space of another shape. My mistakes are me, breaking through the mold of who I once thought I should be. I embrace them as aspects of self that help define me as individual, flawed if you will, or simply multifaceted. Not wholly contained, imperfectly divine manifesting into form.
Imperfectly-divine manifested from Coloring Animal Mandalas by Wendy Piersall
And I don’t always love what I create. Sometimes the colors are too pale and uniform for my liking. When certain hues are side-by-side there is not enough contrast. They clash or fade into conformity. Still, I leave the colors in the places I have put them, allowing them to remind me, to teach me, of the lessons of growth. It is not always a comfortable process, but it is a necessary one.
Blended cats clash with a mandala frame from Coloring Mandalas by Wendy Piersall
The cheaper of the two sets of pencils I use break a lot at the tips, especially after sharpening, but color the space more easily. With less effort I can spread colors through the abyss of white. So I endure the hassle of repeated sharpenings, knowing the risk I take with the pointed tips I create. Sometimes I color with wiggled ends. Sometimes with the broken tips. Coloring, like life, has an element of unpredictably and the need to work with the tools you are given, or have been made available to you. We must improvise, we must settle. I’m still using my children’s pencils, and keep promising them (who sometimes join me in coloring) and myself that we’ll soon purchase more. For now, though, we are content.
On my Facebook page Inner Truth Healing I offered free 1 card readings for the first 5 people to respond. Here are the readings, using alias names chosen by the requesters. Periodically I offer free healing sessions and readings. if you are interested, please considering liking my page. For more information on my services you can visits my website Inner Truth Healing. Now, onto the readings:
1-card readings May 28, 2015
Moodie Chic asked, “Why am I always feeling so alone?”
I was guided to use Doreen Virtue’s “Life Purpose Oracle Cards” for this reading. The card I drew for you was “Crystals.” Please study the image in the card and use your own intuitive insights as well as the messages I received from it.
Crystals by Doreen Virtue, Life Purpose Oracle Cards
Those of us who often feel lonely in this lifetime have chosen to experience this as part of their journey and lessons. It is not always easy to be comfortable alone, but in solitude we can find our greatest source of love and healing. Moodie Chic, you have a strong connection to gemstones and crystals, these healing energies that come from the heart of Earth are great gifts of healing to be used with love and gratitude. They connect us not only to Earth’s healing light, but also to the Source/Divine healing light of the angelic realms. When you work with stones and crystals, make a conscious decision to connect to their healing gifts and wisdom. Infuse your art with this healing and, in doing so, you will gain greater connection with yourself, the Earthly realms and the etheric realms. When you extend your gifts out to others through crystals and stones, you will be creating a connection of the heart, which is truly the greatest gift we can give to one another. Also, since the color purple is so prominent in this card, you may want to evoke the energy of St. Germaine. Archangel Raphael is coming to mind. Purple is a wonderfully healing and soothing energy and will help you to feel more connected and in tune with the love energy of the Universe.
Barbara asked, “Will I soon find acceptance in this difficult situation I have been going through and trying to heal and resolve, or do I still have unseen work to do?”
For your question, I used “The Gilded Tarot” deck by Ciro Marchetti. The card I drew for you was the “8 of Pentacles.” Please study the image in the card and use your own intuitive insights as well as the messages I received from it.
8 of Pentacles by Ciro Marchetti, Gilded Tarot
The pentacles evoke sacred geometry and the Enneagram, which can be looked at as a symbol of the journey one takes in life (to put it in very simple terms). The pentacles are often seen as the symbol of Earthly riches and the energies associated with wealth and abundance. In this image, 7 pentacles are above you, ungrounded. If you look closer, they could be seen as being tangled in spider webs. This difficult situation that you have been dealing with has used up a lot of mental energy for you, and has caused you to call into question the very essence of who you are. This can also be seen by your study of the 8th pentacle that you hold in your hand like a scholar. The situation has been a big lesson in your life, and one you agreed to take on with the other parties involved. Do try to remember this, as difficult as it has been, there is a greater purpose to the events. That cloak of red energy you are wearing is held by the blue energy of truth wrapped with the purple energy of healing and divine wisdom. Take care not to expend too much mental energy thinking about the “why’s” and “what ifs” in this situation (the blue cap on your head hints at mental energy and your close study of the pentacle), but allow the pentacles to fall back into their places. The mice in the card and the cobwebs are reminders that this situation has caused you to neglect other parts of your daily life, and it has caused imbalance. You are being called to surrender this situation and its lessons to the heart, where the energies can be diffused, resolved and accepted. It is not the knowing of why that is so important, but an acceptance of it as a difficult gift that you have agreed to experience. Also, because there is a spider in this image, you may gain healing and relief by writing about this experience, even if it is simply for your own eyes to view. Writing can be a deeply cathartic act, helping you to understand and release the tangled emotions you hold within. Light three candles, as you do this, and send out the intention of love, grace and forgiveness for all involved.
Titania asked, “What is the overall energy of the month of June as it relates to my current circumstances.”
For your question I used Steven D. Farmer’s “Earth Magic” oracle cards, and drew the card “GAIA: Nurturing.” Please study the image in the card and use your own intuitive insights as well as the messages I received from it.
GAIA: Nurturing by Steven D. Farmer, Earth Magic Oracle Cards
June, the month of the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, is a month filled with the abundance of light and the growth of life. You are being asked to work with these wonderful energies in the weeks ahead, nurturing both the life within you and the life around you. Embrace the Mother energies so abundantly available in this month, as well as the access and connection to the source of light. There is the potential for great growth to occur within you and, also, the ability, if you choose, for you to seed the growth in others. This card reminds you that all life is birthed from the Mother energy, and there is no limit to its abundance. There is no limit to growth and healing. I am drawn to the rainbow rays that extend from the hands of the Gaia goddess image in this card. When you look at both hands, you see that the growth is not just a physical manifestation, but also a healing. Allow the development and sharing of the healing gifts you hold within as you enter this next month of growth and abundance. Nurture yourself, and through this nurturing, allow your gifts to touch those around you, but take care not to over-whelm yourself with this intention. Let it flow naturally and easily. Do not let it cloud the vision you hold to be true, and make sure your words are clearly spoken with kindness. Your gifts are waiting to be brought to the Earth, to spread and take life. To seeded, nurtured and grown.
MM L4 asked, “What is the best way to move forward with the sale of my house in order to move in the spring of 2016.”
I used Kris Waldherr’s deck “The Goddess Tarot” for your reading. Please study the image in the card and use your own intuitive insights as well as the messages I received from it.
5 of Pentacles by Kris Waldherr, Goddess Tarot
Your card was the “5 of Pentacles.” This card evokes the energies associated with the number 5, which often center around personal action and/or struggle/conflict as well as the earthly concerns associated with the pentacles (such as wealth and finances). In this card I see two aspects of you, the once that is cloaked in an internal struggle, and the one that is looking toward a future possibility. This move does not appear to be an easy one for you to process, and you have wrapped yourself up inside a cocoon of concerns that are, in some ways, impeding the flow of internal energies that are needed for you to allow this move to occur with ease and grace. Know that these struggles are within you, and not external hurdles.When you let go of these wrappings, the energies needed for the move and the sale of your home will arrive with ease and grace. It is causing you to be in a state of winter, dormancy and inaction, but look at the spring energies surrounding the image that holds you. New life is waiting for you, and you know this, because there also exists that other aspect of yourself that is contemplating the new life and what it will offer to you. So, you are being asked to shed these wraps and fully step into the energies of the new. Don’t hold onto worry or fear, or any feeling that weighs you down and prevents movement and clear vision. Open up fully to the move and the new path of your journey and embrace its gifts.
Alia asked, “For insight on moving, including when, where and/or how.”
I drew 1 card from two different decks for this one, just for some clarity on the situation. The first card I drew was “Adjustment” from Aliester Crowley’s “Thoth” tarot and the second was “Raising Your Standards” from Doreen Virtue’s “Healing with the Fairies” oracle cards. Please study the images in the cards and use your own intuitive insights as well as the messages I received from them.
Doreen Virtue’s “Raising Your Standards” Healing with the Fairies oracle card and Aleister Crowley’s “Adjustment” Thoth tarot card
If you look at the images in both of the cards, you’ll see a theme with not only colors evoked, but also the energies exhibited in the figures. There is a sense of resignation seen in these figures, almost to the point to defeat, but not quite. This giving in to circumstances is no longer acceptable for your soul’s evolution and you are being asked to “raise your standards” and “adjust” the scales you weigh in your hands. It’s time to ask yourself some questions, such as “What is holding me back from moving?” “What weights have I placed on the my scales?” and “Why have I allowed my wings to extend but not take flight?” This is an internal struggle, and you have spent much time looking inward to the point of inertia. It’s time to remove the blindfold, lift the sword of action and move into the air of truth that is calling to you. You already know who you are, your wings are fully developed. The power of your calling is in your hands, but there is a need for movement. Not only must you adjust your standards, but raise them. Don’t settle. Remove the knot around your heart and lift your sights to the possibilities before you. This is what is holding you back. Doubt and an over-abundance of internal dialogue. You have already made the decision to move, as seen by the figure in Doreen’s deck (see how she has descended the steps from the house she was in), but you continue to look back, as though something is holding you to the old. I see this theme repeated more strongly in the “Adjustment” card where the figure has wrapped her feet around the sword she has grounded and there are 4 shapes evoking pillars of stability around her. It’s time to be bold and fly. Don’t doubt your ability. Look at those beautiful wings, which evoke the beautiful, confident energies of the peacock. The how, when and where is up to you, but I think it’s safe to say that you are being called to seek something greater than you might have thought previously attainable, and not just with your physical move. Take action towards that goal when you are ready. You are ready, it simply takes the choice to remove the blindfold.
As with any reading you receive, please take the insights that resonate with you and add to them your own intuitive guidance. Namaste, Alethea
I greeted my daughter off the bus from the seat of the child’s bench in my front garden. “You’re crazy,” she told me, laughing as she smiled at me on her way through the door. My camera in one hand, my back rested against the frayed slats of the bench, I was waiting for the elusive hummingbird that graces my garden only when the camera is safely inside my house.
Naturally, the hummingbird did not reappear for me, now that I was sitting in wait with the camera poised to capture. Instead, I took in the magic willing to be seen. Life bloomed all around me. Birds sang joy from the canopy of Nature’s ceiling, while Lily of the Valley spread its heady perfume across her rainbowed carpets.
Natural Intoxication
The rhythm of life moved around me while I sat in wait. Watching. Smelling. Listening. Being.
Spreading Life
Until the mosquitos got the better of me. Then I took the camera and walked. Instead of the hummingbird, I captured two squirrels in the act of love…or haste.
Caught in the act of…
Germination, which had led to growth a few weeks ago, was now blossoming into the beginnings of offspring, and for a few moments I took notice.
Becoming Berries
Perhaps tomorrow I’ll meet the hummingbird through the filter of the lens. For now, a toad will suffice.
I was looking through photographs, hoping for an image of baggage and hit the jack-pot when I stumbled upon this one. Baggage and behinds. Perfect! The idea that these kids (mine) were waiting for the school bus, also seemed to fit with the message I was going for. I couldn’t resist.
But this is a post about dreams, in the broadest sense of the word, and for quite some time I’ve been having a dialogue with my dream-self in an effort to shift my realities both at night and during the day. As many of you probably know, I’ve got a manuscript that’s been sitting in wait for awhile that I’d like to have published. There’s another one in the works. The finished one I wrote out of a need to heal myself, realizing as when I finished, that it had a universal message about voice and truth that applies to, well, just about anyone.
So, there’s this theme of healing and writing. They both, in my opinion go hand-in-hand. I I write to heal. I heal to write. This is a big part of my life’s journey. I’m here to incorporate both gifts in a life that involves truth, freedom and letting go of entanglements.
For those of you on a similar journey of healing, you will know that entanglements are of the self, and therefore it is up to the self to release and set free. Easier said than done. We cling to our baggage like we would cling to a life-raft at sea. Well, I do anyway.
If you were to flip through my dream journal, you would see a reoccurring theme of baggage. Our dream-selves love to use symbols and metaphors and some are rather blatantly obvious to get the point across. Quite frankly, though, I had had enough of these dreams about baggage. It was almost a guarantee that I’d go to sleep at night only to be immersed and a scene of frantic search. Usually I’m about to embark on, or leave from, a journey, and I’m in a frenetic race against time to collect all of my baggage in the form of clothes and various belongings I think I need for the trip. Things are often scattered in a cluttered room. There is too much of what I am looking to take with me. There is not enough time to collect it all. Heck, sometimes I’m even trying to wear it all. Crazy, I know. But, telling.
These last several nights I’ve been having a dialogue with that dream-self who is holding onto the idea of necessary baggage. “Give me a new reality,” I tell her each night before I succumb to slumber. For several nights I’ve refused to record her dreams, rebelling against the repetition of messages. “Show me a new reality.” And, last night, she did.
The funny thing is, I almost forgot the dream, and then I remembered.
It began as it typically does. The chaotic search for my hotel room and the things I think I need to take with me. I won’t bore you with the details, but it sure did seem to drag on endlessly. Then it shifted. There I was outside, doodling on a pad of paper, while a spirit guide with an Irish or British accent (hard to recall now) chattered in my ear. I glanced across a dirt road and saw belongings piled under a tree. They were not scattered or bagged, just a small pile in wait. A test.
“You know, you can leave it all behind,” she told me. And so I did.
It was effortless. Easy. There was no turning back. I simply left it. The female spirt guide became the physical manifestation of a man, who reminded me of the character Kane in the ’70s TV series “Kung Fu.” (For those of you who don’t know, I was named after the Jodi Foster guest character in an episode called “Alethea” that aired before my birth in 1973). I followed this Kane-like figure across the countryside and found myself without a scrap of baggage on me. Together we dove inside a hillside cave where a wondrous home was unveiled to me. Picture Dagobah mixed with Tatooine mixed with a Shaolin Temple on steroids and you’ll have an idea of what was offered to me. Suffice it to say, it was glorious. It was so worth it.
When we “leave it all behind,” we open the door to the magic waiting. Leaving the baggage of our pasts behind does not mean that we will forget that we had it. The life events still shape who we are. We learn from them, knowing that someday we will no longer need to hold on. When we strip bare the trappings in a bold release of freedom, we realize that what we thought we still needed was just baggage weighing us down. It has nothing of value, only the lessons we take with us, which are weightless. Last night I became The Fool in tarot, starting again at 0, only, unlike the fool, I carried nothing with me.
Each year I await the quickening pulse of Mother Earth as she slowly wakes from Winter’s long, intoxicating slumber. Spring offers the rebirth of life in layers, unfolding in multitudes before watchful eyes. Each glimpse into the miraculous unveiling is a gift, for it is the story of life told in the narration of rebirth’s beauty.
White risen from green
After she delivers green in every shade, Nature births white in New England, followed by a tumble of colorful twins. I call these the fairy flowers, and await them more eagerly then the blooms I lovingly plant in gardens. For these are the gifts from invisible hands. The magic seen from a child’s sight.
Purple often follows white
No, I could never have a chemical lawn. Not just because I value a healthy body and a healthy environment, I find the uniformity of artificial green in one shade dulls the senses. I walk my mottled lawn each spring in glorious search, evoking the child within who still delights in magic, as I search for the gifts of the fairies.
Common weed or miracle?
Today that child-self received a long-awaited gift. I had waited 7 years for one particular, and quite common flower to appear on the earth beside my home. There it was, in two beautiful circles. Those tiny flowers that look like stars dipped into the palette of a waking sky. I could feel the fairies smile beneath the petals as the child within skipped in joy.
In fact, it is infinitely beautiful. This, quite simply, is Truth, all else is an illusion. Let me show you why.
A Flower of Life
Like you, I am the embodiment of Light. This is the the truth of all life, yet sometimes we choose the path of shadows. Years ago, I made the conscious choice to walk the path of light. It’s the path we have all agreed to walk, whether we realize it or not. A shadow is a barrier of illusion, its purpose is to give definition to light.
The Birth of Life-Light
Yesterday was a beautiful day, as each day is. My day brought me the gifts of friendship and the love of family. It showed me the infinite glory of life in the state of becoming. Spring blooms abundance and joy bursts forth in song from winged beings. Each moment holds everything offered, and since that is all there is, it is always enough.
A Winged Being
I was reminded of this yesterday. If you asked my ego, it would tell you how it suffered two major blows. That the hopes it held onto for weeks had been crushed. Two punches to the gut. And, I crumbled into its energy of defeat, until my dreams brought me back to reality. I woke this morning remembering that my life is beautiful.
A Symbol of Fearless Abundance
Mother Nature called to me to join her in the state of becoming, and I listened. I walked into her embrace. Here she showed me life is always beautiful when we choose to see it. to feel. To allow. That at any moment we can choose to embrace the light, or stay in the illusion of shadows.
A Beautiful Grump-Stump
There is even humor, and therefor light, in the symbols that show us shadows. Today, I laugh at doubt, knowing that it is an illusion. That I can shake its frumpy clothes free and run naked in the light. This is my destiny of becoming, and it is, always, in each moment, enough. It is beautiful. My life is beautiful.
The Light Behind the Story 