Long Winter's Nap

My recovery from surgery is going really well because I have been asleep. I'm not kidding, I've really been asleep. For days and nights I’ve been snoozing and napping. I feel like a bear in a den, completely quiet inside and content to live with a slow, steady heartbeat and just a few hours of daylight. 

I know this long winter’s nap is a natural way my body has to heal from the trauma of surgery. And I can’t help but wonder if it is also my spirit’s way of embracing the energy of winter. There is nothing better than to create warmth and quiet on a cold day.

The December 2011 Message says: “This is an important time to take very good care of your bodies. It is

an important time to take a deep breath and slow down. If you try

to rush around this month, you might find that you get into accidents

and make mistakes. Because you are not very grounded, you need to

be extra careful to be mindful and thoughtful about your body and the

things that you say and every action that you take.” 

I don’t always follow the advice in the Monthly Message. For better or worse, I tend to have my mind a couple of months ahead because that is the time I am actively channeling. (I just completed the Looking Ahead Message for February 2012 and am excited to share it with you soon!)
Because I don’t always remember to look at the message during the month at hand, I am grateful for the events in my life that have forced me to slow down and pay attention to what is needed this month. For me it’s sleep, quiet reflection, and healing. Healing from surgery has led me to an ongoing state of the long winter’s nap and I love it!

Twas the Night Before Christmas: 
A Visit from St. Nicholas

By Clement C. Moore
 

Pictures by Jessie Willcox Smith




How are you working with the deeper energy this month? With the holidays, it’s not always an easy time to find an extra hour. I hope if you do find one that you spend it doing the thing that most feeds your heart and nourishes your soul. It feels like we are all shifting and preparing for something big, so take this chance to be grounded and rested! 

 

Surrender

I had surgery last week. I’ll tell you a lot more about that later, but for now I have to share a channeling that just came through this morning.

I’ve been very curious, and a little nervous, about how general anesthesia would affect my ability to do channeling work. On top of that, I used narcotic painkillers for several days after surgery, which is a far cry from the caffeine-free, alcohol-free, aspirin-or-any-kind-of-drug-free life I usually live. I try to avoid stimulants and depressants when I can because I never want to wonder if something I’ve channeled was influenced by them.

My plan was to wait four or five days to make sure the drugs were out of my system physically, then for my energy to adjust to having them gone. Then I would try channeling. Instead, two days after ceasing those drugs, I woke up to a channeled message coming through me like a voice in my mind that definitely wasn’t my own.  I got out of bed, wrote it down, then formally accessed the Records to make sure it was real.  It was real, and here it is:

“You are the ones you’ve been waiting for. We talked about this several months ago, and too few of you are acting on it. You can no longer afford to live with the emotional and behavioral patterns that hold you back – that tell you there is something wrong with you or that you have to prove something.

Don’t you understand? If you are reading this, you are one of the enlightened ones. It is time to start acting like it.

Today, map out a plan for the next day, week, month, or year. Think of something you want to accomplish, big or small, and map out what it will take to get there. Then take note of the few things on that map that you can control or influence, and make a plan to do those things.

Finally, and most importantly, take note of the many things on that map that you cannot control or influence much. List those, and decide right now to surrender. Know in your heart what you hope for, and then surrender those to your higher self and the angels watching over this plan.

It is time to stop trying to prove your worth, or to attain something different from the divine path you are walking now. You are here to help lead humanity to a new age, and your leadership will not occur because you have achieved something in particular. It will occur because you develop a deep sense of peace as you go about your plans, and that peace becomes something everyone wants to follow.

You do not need to work so hard. Humanity cannot afford to have you indulge any further in self-hatred or criticism. You are the ones you have been waiting for, and the people around you are waiting to learn from you how to surrender the fight and step into peace and joy right now!”

This is one of the first times I have ever received a channeled message without formally accessing the Akashic Records, and honestly I didn't really like it. For one part, it felt a little bit like getting a lecture from the Keepers right when I wanted to be snuggling and sleeping!

But the dislike goes deeper. For years I have resisted any channeling that comes without my conscious consent. I’ll admit it – just like the channeling tells us, I prefer to feel as if I am in control of how Spirit moves through me. So I suppose this is my opportunity to surrender to what is rather than to strive to create what I think it should be.

I remain curious about how my recent surgical adventure will continue to affect my channeling. Did the spontaneous morning message come because I had just removed the narcotics from my system? Were those kinds of messages there all along and I was just too tired to block them out this time? Who knows, but you can bet I’ll keep you updated on what I find out!

New Age Grammar Lesson

I laughed at myself today as I was updating my website with the Daily Message. I think I spent about ten minutes deciding how to capitalize the word “love” in the message for November 30. It’s not that I’ve forgotten the basic rules of English grammar. It’s just that grammar gets a bit confusing in the New Age.

There are certain words – Love and Enlightenment, for instance – that have become ideographs in the New Age movement. They’ve taken on a gravity and persona all their own. We capitalize them in the same way that more conventional religious folks capitalize the word God. We strive to have the letters in the word help us hold reverence for what we’re writing. And I think this is great. Until I find myself writing something like this:

Daily Message -- November 30, 2011
The energy of Love is very strong today. Find a way to show Love for everyone around you. Spend time meditating on the people and places you Love most, and build a sense of Love in your heart that reaches beyond your body. Live in a field of Love today.

After I typed this out, I felt uncomfortable. It’s one thing to occasionally break the rules of classical grammar in order to add emphasis. It’s an entirely other thing to write the word Love with a capital L five times in only four sentences. The inner grammar critic inside my mind just started spinning and I couldn’t do it.

So I rewrote the whole thing with no capital-L Loves:

Daily Message -- November 30, 2011
The energy of love is very strong today. Find a way to show love for everyone around you. Spend time meditating on the people and places you love most, and build a sense of love in your heart that reaches beyond your body. Live in a field of love today.

That looks better to my inner critic, but it doesn’t fit at all with the emphasis on love that was coming through the Records when I channeled this message several weeks ago.

Finally, I decided to use a little grammar rule of my very own – one I’ve come up with over the course of typing out many channelings from the Akashic Records that use the word love in so very many ways. This rule dictates that I capitalize Love when it is used as a noun, and leave it small when it is used as a verb.

So here’s the variation that finally posted on my website today:

Daily Message -- November 30, 2011
The energy of Love is very strong today. Find a way to show love for everyone around you. Spend time meditating on the people and places you love most, and build a sense of Love in your heart that reaches beyond your body. Live in a field of Love today.

I feel fine with this for now, and I’m glad I’ve come up with my own little rule for New Age grammar. Sometimes I feel like I am overcapitalizing in the channelings when I post them online. Other times I wonder if I’m not doing it enough to emphasize the importance of certain concepts coming through the Records. Whenever I channel a message, it comes through as a set of ideas and concepts. It’s up to my and my brain to figure out how to put them into language.

I think all channelers and healers must face a similar conundrum. How do you put these huge, nonlinear concepts into words? When do words fail to convey, and when do words come through so powerfully that they have the ability to heal? I’d love to hear about your experiences.

Lightworker Scavenger Hunt

The Keepers have been talking a lot lately about Lightworkers.  Last month’s Live Channeling event (now a website download) was on the topic of “Leadership and Change: You Are the Ones You’ve Been Waiting For” which was all about how we are learning to lead by example, rather than leading by bossing each other around --  though the Keepers said it a bit more nicely than that!

I posted a channeling last week about Lightworkers that said:

“It is time to expand your definition of what it means to be a Lightworker.  It is time to expand your identity as a Lightworker to include everyone around you.  It is time then to start looking around and noticing that the most mundane situation can be filled with Light.  It is time to look around and start noticing that the most unassuming, quiet person in the room might be the one who is bringing the most Light.” 

Most of the channelings and most of what you’ll find online about Lightworkers tell us how be Lightworkers ourselves.  But what the Keepers have focused on lately is how much everyday life events are really expressions of Lightwork -- how we don't necessarily need to be involved in spiritual or energy work to be Lightworkers.

In that light, I’m going a Lightworker scavenger hunt and I’m inviting you to join me.  Every time I enter a new social situation, instead of asking myself how I can bring more Light, I’m going to start hunting for those magical souls who are bringing more light – each in their own way.  Then I'm going to help them, or celebrate them, or just sit back in awe and admiration as they work their mojo!

It’s easy to pick out the obvious ones -- the minister at the pulpit or the healer giving someone a hug over in the corner.   It’s not so easy to spot the stealthy ones --the kind soul who slows down while crossing the street in order to protect an elderly stranger, or the teenage boy making jokes in the hospital waiting room in order to ease the tension. 

I’ll give myself extra points for the ones I spot who have probably never even heard the word Lightworker -- the ones who show kindness in everyday moments because it’s in their nature, it’s just who they are.  Because “just who they are” is a Lightworker. 

It doesn’t matter what language you use or what social movement you are part of – if you sense the hearts of others and strive to make those around you just a little lighter, just a little more at ease – then you’re a Lightworker.

Hunting for hidden Lightworkers is fun.  It give me a sense of hope to realize that I am surrounded by them, and that whatever I’m striving to do to make the world a better place is supported by countless moments across the world in which others are doing the very same thing.

So let's make the Comments field for this blog post be a place where you can tell us about a hidden Lightworker you've spotted.  I can't wait to see what you discover in the months to come! 

What's Up With October?

Has anyone else noticed that this month feels little weird? For a long time now, I’ve been struggling to see ahead to October. Back in June when I channeled the topics for the year’s events, I couldn’t get a topic for the October Live Channeling event. The Keepers gave topics for November and December -- but for October they kept saying, “Ask us later.” The energy for this month was twisty and difficult to predict.

The October Message states clearly that this is an unusual and changeable month:

"The energy this month is difficult to predict. The reason for the difficulty is that a major turning point occurs in September of 2011. As you cross the threshold into October, much of what will happen will depend on the choices that you made in September. The energy for the year 2012 has been on its way into Planet Earth for the last couple of years, but the actual energy of the very year itself arrives in October. While your calendars mark the year beginning in September, the true energetic beginning of the year is in October of 2011..."

When I channeled all the Daily Messages for this month and I saw something I hadn’t seen when I channeled the Monthly Message back in August. As I watched the days unfold, I could see that the entire month moves like a spiral. Every day brings more change, like a curve in the road, so that eventually the energy swirls around on itself. From above, the energy this month looks like a cyclone.

Maybe that cyclone is the reason I’m feeling so strange. Every time I choose a direction, I seem to spin around on myself and get lost all over again.

(This is Hurricane Ivan from 2004, courtesy of hurricane-facts.com)

I finally did get a topic for this month, just a few days ago. And, no surprise, the topic is Change!  More specifically, it's “Change and Leadership: You Are the Ones You’ve Been Waiting For.” Be sure to visit my calendar and sign up if you want to join us. It will be fun to learn more about becoming leaders in the midst of change, especially when we are right in the middle of it!  

Wiped Out, But In a Good Way

The Live Channeling on the Year 2012 took place this week, and it was a doozy! What an amazing year we have ahead of us!

Participants asked wonderful questions, and I remember being surprised by some of the answers. The strange thing about channeling is that I see the answers so clearly when they come through, but once I’ve closed the Records it all slips out of my mind like a dream. So, just like the rest of you, I can’t wait to listen and learn what the Keepers have to say about this much-anticipated year. The recording will become available on my website beginning October 1.
 

Until then, here are a few of the highlights:

- This is the Year of the Wheel, or the Year of Choices. This is the time when we decide what direction humanity will take in the next age.

- Our ability to make choices this year makes us incredibly powerful. The consequences of our choices will happen more immediately and intensely than ever before, for better or worse. (Don’t panic: If you’re paying attention and doing your best to be honest with yourself and others, it will be mostly for the better.)

- Most people will be changing their minds and directions often during the year. Lightworkers are called to have patience and avoid getting caught up in the drama surrounding you.

- The energy of 2012 begin in 2009, so if you’ve been paying attention and doing what you can to heal and wake up, then this year will bring more empowerment and joy. If you have been avoiding anything, this year will make that thing come crashing down on you so you can finally deal with it.

- I also remember that the Keepers addressed movie and media portrayals of the Year 2012, and how those are related to real life dynamics.  Can't wait to be reminded about what they said.. thank goodness this was recorded!

- I remember seeing more clearly how the Mayan Calendar was accurate in predicting this shift, and exactly how those predictions have changed…. But I can’t remember what came through. ARG!  Again, with the recording. 


Another highlight for me was the moment when all the callers said good-bye at the end of the call. I usually have between ten and twenty callers for events. This time there were over 60 people on the line! It was so lovely to hear a cacophony of voices saying farewells and blessings. Thank you to everyone who participated in that channeling event.

And, after channeling the energy of the Akashic Records, the Year 2012, and all those lovely participants -- I was wiped out. So, true to form, I made a huge bowl of very salty popcorn and watched an episode of Glee.

There is something about song-and-dance that enables that blank stare I require after intense experiences. It’s probably not the best way to get grounded, but it sure is fun.

Of course, I could manage that only after lying in the grass outside my office and staring wide-eyed at a nearby tree for at least 30 minutes. I think my neighbors might wonder about me sometimes…..

(No, sadly this is not the view from my office. The trees in Seattle are far more coniferous and prickly, and the sky is far more gray, but I love it anyway.)

Native Family

 

I’ve just returned from a visit with my native family. They are native as in my first people – the ones who raised me and were raised with me. These are the people with whom I built my deepest fears. Fears like, “What if I am not loved? What if I am not good?” They are also the people who taught be to love and be loved. They are the ones with whom I developed my strongest attachments – some healthy, some not so healthy.



Over the years we have all made many mistakes together, and our patterns of behavior fit together like puzzle pieces. My tendency to swallow my words molded itself perfectly around my brother’s childhood bravado; my desperation to be admired and respected grew right alongside the skeptical looks my little sisters gave me when I tried new things. 

No matter what kind of family, every single one of us is molded by the shapes our loved ones took as we grew up together.

 

 

As we navigate our spiritual paths as adults, it can be tempting to imagine that we can think our way out of those childhood limitations.  It can be tempting to expect that we will take our enlightened spirituality into our family visits and somehow make those relationships work perfectly.  But those old puzzle pieces still fit together, so that when I visit, I find I am not myself. I say things I would never usually say. I feel things more strongly than I usually feel. And I struggle to keep my center more than in any other situation in my adult life.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. We all know that family relationships can be complicated and confusing. Yet these are the people we keep going back to, because amidst all that confusion there is a deep and profound potential for love. After all, if this is the place we learned our greatest fears, just imagine what could happen if we heal our fears in those very relationships where they started?



Luckily, I ended the trip with a clarifying visit to Grand Teton National Park. There are few places that clear my mind and set my senses soaring as much as the high mountains of the Rockies and Great Basin.

Beautiful!