So maybe I shouldn’t blog when the thermometer reads 100.0 and beeps like a crazy droid when I finish taking my temperature. But I am, because really, if you put aside the fever and chills, the sinus headache/pain, and the dry cough, I don’t feel that bad. No, I’m not making a trek too far outside my house. And playing with the kitties might be lying on the couch with the flippy toy instead of making them chase me up and down the hall, but really, I don’t feel “sick” per se, just off. Which got me to thinking about the nature of fevers.

Thinking from a purely physical standpoint, a fever’s job is to raise the temperature of the body so the virus or bacteria can’t reproduce. It, in effect, burns out the illness. In the physical realm fire burns; it consumes. Generally this consumption is the spiritual meaning of fire as well. So, if we look at our body as a multi-layered creation with our physical, our spiritual, and our emotional bodies, wouldn’t it make sense that the same fire which is keeping a virus or bacteria from growing has an effect on other parts of our being?

I don’t see why not. After all, if our thoughts can shape reality, and everything we do reflects back upon us, it makes sense that this action of our body does the same.

Now, I do think we need to follow all common sense physical health guidelines. See your doctor if the fever goes on for more than a few days. Don’t mess with trying to “heat yourself” up such as in a sweat lodge unless you really know what you’re doing. Drink lots of fluids. Rest. But if you are taking care of your physical health, then there may be a time to think about what the fever might be doing to help take care of your spiritual or emotional health.

Personally, I can think of a few things that need to be “burned up” and gotten rid of for good as I’ve learned lessons and moved past them. We are, after all, ever changing creatures. So if by taking care of my health on the physical realm, I’m working on the spiritual, well that’s all the better.

The next time you get sick, take care of yourself, but also think about what your physical body might be doing to aid your emotional and spiritual ones, too.

As we get more connected and our phones, tablets, and computers become a bigger part of our life, our spiritualy moves into virtual realms. We might work with groups whom we’ve never meet face-to-face. We might put out a call using Facebook or Twitter for energy, prayers, and candle lighting for a specific purpose or reason. We now create “rolling thunder” rituals where concerned individuals pray/send energy/meditate in their own timezones so that the energy never stops until it, hopefully, encircles the globe.

Spirituality has long existed in this virtual realm. When Buffy The Vampire Slayer did an episode about a demon trapped in a school’s computer system and how it reached out to touch other areas of the world through the phone lines (this was pre-DSL/cable internet/wifi), it wasn’t far off. Though Jenny Calendar did an online ritual, with Librarian Giles reading from a book, it was a blending of the old magick and the new technology which has fostered and bloomed today.

I think we need to look for spirtiuality in this virtual space. In interacting with others, what opportunities do we have to share our authentic self and words? When we see someone in need, do we think “that’s too bad” and go about our day, or do we send energy, light a candle, spread the word, or tale action? All of these are magickal acts, and they all can happen in both a virtual world and a real world space, sometimes simultaneously.

As long as we see the virtual space as real space, in which we exist and in which we have power, then it will be magickal space. I know when I participate in a vritual world, though some call it a game, it is “me” there, and I wouldn’t do anything in that world that I wouldn’t do in real life. (No, not WoW. *smiles*) It’s a matter of honor, a matter of principle for me, for I believe all space in which I interact is sacred space. This is the power we give virtual spaces, and they are becoming as real as our own.

Does this mean I don’t see it as a game or as something separate from real life? Of course not. I understand that the virtual realm is separate from our real world, just as when we cast a circle, we pull our mundane space into the realm of the Gods. It does mean that while the virtual world has a few different rules (I can walk under the ocean without scuba gear for one), it does operate on a lot of the same rules as our own. We need to recognize that and see the potential for spiritual works there. For the lines between the wired, connected world and our “offline” worlds are blurring. And it takes great acts of will and balance to keep them in their proper places.

With the new year this weekend, there’s a lot of thought and talks about new year resolutions, thoughts, what we want to create, and how the next year is going to be. And understandably so. Those thoughts surface around the turning of the calendar every year, but this year, with its uncertainty and the dreaded, and much hyped, 2012, there’s a lot to wonder about. (And being in Iowa, I won’t even start to mention politics for this year. EEK!)

The truth is, just as we throw out our old 2011 calendars, we also need to think about what thoughts and behaviors we need to toss aside, too.

This year, I propose we throw away fear.

Now, don’t be foolhardy and start bungee jumping and sky diving on me, unless you truly want to do this. No, I’m talking about those fears that are holding us back.

Let’s throw out fear of the future. Live in today. Don’t worry about tomorrow.

Let’s throw out fear of not having enough. An abundance mindset means that the pie is big enough for everyone.

Let’s throw out fear of lack. Just because someone gains or is given a chance doesn’t mean anything is taken away from you.

Let’s throw out fear of free will. People can choose what happens in all aspects of their lives.

Let’s throw out fear of love. Love, no matter what form it takes, is a beautiful thing. We need more love in our world, not less.

Let’s throw out fear of the unknown. Yes, it can be scary, but our ancestors got into the space capsule and took the boat across a vast ocean. They faced danger and they found new trade routes and new opportunities.

Let’s throw out fear of unknown gods. It doesn’t matter what spiritual road you walk, or if you walk one at all. Deeds, not words or professions of faith, speak the loudest. It doesn’t matter what you name your faith; all that matters is that it’s there.

For 2012, my resolution is to get rid of fear. Will you make it yours?

In my Reality Shift books, Jonah Leighton and Shanna Bailey use affirmations to boost their self-esteem, manifest events that they want to happen, and just to help themselves–and each other–feel better. Affirmations can be powerful if the user puts enough energy into them while speaking. And they can sometimes change things.

I learned about affirmations several years ago. I’d heard the term, but didn’t really know much about them other than the old Saturday Night Live “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me” skits. I didn’t think affirmations were anything more serious than that, and I definitely didn’t think they could make a difference in my life.

Then I met someone who started teaching me how to really use them. The one he most frequently used was “I intend to raise my vibration to higher and higher levels”, which he said at least once a day, and whenever he felt angry or felt like he’d been dishonest. “Vibration”, the frequency at which one’s energy system vibrates, can go up or down depending on a situation, and the higher your vibration, the more likely you are to bring good things into your life. So that’s a good affirmation to use. When I say it, it immediately makes me feel calmer and more focused, no matter what’s going on.

When you use an affirmation, phrasing is key. If you say, “I want money” or even “I have money”, you’re implying that right now, you don’t have any. You’re focusing on the absence of money currently in your life instead of the abundance of money you want. When I’m trying to manifest more money into my life, the affirmation I use is, “I have more than enough money for all I want and need.” That seems to work a little better. If you’re trying to bring into your life something that you don’t have, or don’t believe you have, adding the word “more” will focus on the positives you already have. For example, instead of saying, “I want a good apartment,” you might say, “I want an apartment more suited to my needs.” Or, “I have an apartment more suited to my needs.”

When I say an affirmation, I often feel a tugging sensation at my third energy center, below the center of my rib cage (just above the abdomen). I mention this in the Reality Shift books as well. My teacher told me that that’s a sign that my energy is working on drawing in what I’m affirming.

Affirmations can help, and if nothing else can make us feel more positive about ourselves and our lives. If you’d like to share an affirmation in the comments below that works for you, or one that you’re wondering if it will work, I’d be happy to see them.

When we do the powerful work that clears out our negative emotions, for example by removing fear, we create empty space within ourselves. Though we may not see it, the fear (or other negative emotion we wish to remove) takes up energetic space. For me, when I started getting at the roots of my fears, I envisioned my inner child (because most the roots of my fears started when I was a small child) standing in the vicinity of my solar plexus chakra. Given that this chakra is the one that represents personal power and our energy, it’s understandable that’s where she’d be. She stood, and in my mind’s eye I saw the dark miasma of my fears, her fears really, surrounding her. The “not good enough”s the “unwanted”s the picked on and bullied kid through most of her school years. When I cleared away the fear, embracing the inner child and telling her she was good enough, she was wanted, and those people who bullied her were just afraid of her or feared that she was different, I realized that my inner child basically stood in an empty bubble. There was space to fill. (I also reminded the inner child, that now, *cough* twenty five years later *cough* she actually did have friends back then, and discovered that through the magic of Facebook.)

Nature abhors a vacuum. Something was going to fill that emotional space, and I better act fast because the fears were hovering on the edge of my consciousness ready to pounce like a cat upon a mouse. What did I feel the space with? Well, drawing on the last blog entry, I filled it with love. Love for my inner child, who really did feel so lost and alone; love for the joy of living, for the miracles she has, and the fact that she’s good enough to move forward and achieve her dreams.

It’s a long term process. I won’t say that I did this once, and poof! all my problems have disappeared. Remember the nature not liking empty space aspect of science class? Yeah, it’s at play in our emotional and spiritual bodies, too. So as soon as we recognize that the fear has rolled in again, it’s up to us to clear things out, and put love back in.

But it’s something to think about. If you’re moving forward in creating good habits, recognize that there’s space left from the old. Whatever created those habits in the first place, it’s important to go back to the beginning, find the source, and make sure that we pack in lots of love and good things to take the place of the bad. That’s where our self-love practices come in, our affirmations, and our core beliefs.

Step by step, day by day, we’ll get that emotional space filled permanently. And then, we can move on to another.

One of the most important things we can do for ourselves is to love ourselves and be gentle with ourselves. Sometimes it can be hard to do that, especially when we’re feeling kind of lost and don’t know what to do. However, there’s one simple thing that we can do–reiki.

Reiki, as universal energy from the source, is pure love. It’s like a shining ray of warmth, filled with love and light, and as the source comes from the universe, it is a gift that has infinite abundance. When I am giving reiki, I feel very tranquil and connected to something greater than myself. It’s a heightened state of consciousness, one that isn’t burdoned by daily problems and struggles.

The meaning of the word reiki is a combination of a higher power’s energy and our own life force, so when we are giving reiki, we are actually sharing universal love. Reiki transcends all spiritual practices, so it doesn’t matter what you call the higher power, or if you believe in a pantheon of deities, it’s all the love of at least one higher power. So if I am giving reiki to myself, or my cat, or my partner, or sending it to a situation or an individual at a distance, I am saying to the universe “put love here.”

How much more beautiful a statement can we make, than by sending love? Pure, powerful, unconditional love.

Is there anything better that we can do for one another, than simply believe in love?

And as the bombshells of my daily fears explode
I try to trace them to my youth.
-          Galileo by Indigo Girls

We might not realize it, but most of us live with a great deal of fear on a daily basis. When we worry about what someone might think about us, about why we’re not getting a raise at our job, or why our relationship has become so blah, we experience fear. Most of us don’t name it as fear, and because of that, it’s easy to think of ourselves as fearless, boldly going through our lives and damning all the proverbial torpedoes. Not really.

In order to discover our fears we have to follow them back to their source. This can be an excruciating process, one that will pick at old scabs and wounds in our psyche. It’s not for the faint of heart. But, by being patient with ourselves, we can discover the source of our fears, and once we know this, we can begin to heal.

So how do we discover the source of our fears. First, start with one single thing that you want to change in your life. For example, if you feel unappreciated at work, then start there. Ask yourself the question “what happens”.

What happens when you feel unappreciated at work (or your current issue)?

You feel like you’re not valued. Like you’re not good enough. Like nothing you ever do will be good enough. In the end, you come to a conclusion. In this example, it’s “not good enough.”

That’s a common fear many of us have, that we don’t feel good enough. But now we need to trace the feeling back. What happened in our past that made us feel as if we weren’t good enough. This may end up being a game of leap frog where we go from experience to experience until we get back to the earliest one that we remember. It’s all right if this isn’t the first time something had happened, only that it’s the earliest one we remember.

Now, we look at what had happened objectively. If we don’t feel good enough, for example, because we never felt as if we could please a parent, we can look at that situation with our adult eyes. We might realize that our parent loved us and only wanted us to do better. We might realize that while our parent may never have expressed his or her love, we did the best we could. If the parent didn’t believe or recognize that, it isn’t our fault.

It’s time to go back to that time in our mind, look at that earlier version of ourselves and express all the love, the acceptance, the understanding we felt as if we were missing. If you feel comfortable, hug and embrace your earlier self. Offer unconditional love.

It’s important to remember that we come into this world as open and guileless as a newborn puppy. We are good enough, special enough, and we are innocent. Things happen, such as a parent’s disapproval, which start to chip away at our belief in ourselves and in our world. This is the place where fears begin, and this is the place where we need to work healing.

I’m not going to say that it’s easy. Going back and working on fears brings up a lot of old baggage and a lot of things that might be better off buried. It’s going to take hard work and dedication. And it won’t happen overnight. However, if we consistently look to find the source of our fears, and we work to resolve the issues and feelings that began there, we will be able to move forward, happy, healthy, and in wholeness.

It’s a topic that not a lot of us want to talk about, but honestly, authors live with a lot of fear. Some handle it better than others, but it’s still there. I can think of several things–reviews, deadlines, publisher actions, our own ability–which generate fear in authors. It’s part of life, isn’t it?

I think it’s important for an author to look at his or her career and see how it may be affected by fear. Not afraid, you say? If so, that’s great. But then I’ll ask if you have ever been jealous of another’s success, worried over reviews or reader reactions, fretted over a deadline, stressed over royalty statements, or had that fleeting (or not so fleeting) thought that you might not be good enough. If you can answer yes to any of those, then I’m sorry, but you’ve been affected by fear.

It’s okay. It really is. We’re human, and fear is an emotion that transcends species. The important thing to remember is that while all creatures are afraid, humans obsess over their fears the most. So how can an author not let fear drive his or her career, and instead, drive the career from a position of strength and love?
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Much has been written about the power of pets. From the claim substantiated by studies that older individuals who have a pet live longer, healthier lives, to the studies touting their stress relief, there’s no denying the claim that sharing our lives with animals helps us…and it helps them! With the re-release of my previously published books on small parrot care, I wanted to focus on the little creatures among us. Having a cat or a dog as a pet seems to “make sense” because they’re large enough (usually) to live with us and not need special housing. (Dogs outdoors need shelter, and sometimes we crate our pets, but for the most part dogs and cats can live in the house amongst us.) Smaller critters who live in their own world, such as the smaller parrots, may seem to be more decorative than interactive. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

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Article by Christiana Gaudet

Years ago, when I first joined the American Tarot Association, I noticed references to tarot poetry in many course descriptions, certification guidelines and newsletters.  I wondered at this.  What is tarot poetry?

Tarot poetry, apparently, is any form of poetry that references tarot.  It could be poems about individual tarot cards, poems about the process of reading tarot, poems about the tarot characters.

In fact, the early practice of writing witty tarot poetry, then called tarocchi appropriate, may be the actual origins of tarot divination.  Recently, Tarot Grand Dame Rachel Pollack has published a book of  her tarot poetry entitled Fortune’s Lover.

An internet search on “tarot poetry” reveals many types of tarot poems and poetry projects, including mine.  My recent tarot poetry is The 78 Poems Project.

When I first stumbled on tarot poetry those many years ago, I wrote a few poems because it was required.  I started requiring my students to do the same.  It was an acceptable tarot exercise- no more, no less.

I didn’t truly understand the purpose of tarot poetry until I needed its power.  Then, it became a potent tool for healing and learning.

The 78 Poems Project was born after I quite spontaneously began writing tarot poetry.  I was desperate for emotional healing.  I needed closure, new perspective, and release.  I turned to my tarot deck.  What image would best describe the healing process I need?  I chose the Eight of Cups.  In this image, a person has carefully stacked eight cups on the shore, and is now walking away.  I needed to inventory my emotions and release them to the cleansing power of the ocean.  I needed the courage to walk away, and walk into something new.

It took me a few days to write that first poem.  After it was finished, I felt significantly better.

I wrote more, for other cards that seemed pertinent.  Soon I knew I wanted to write poems for all of the tarot cards, and the project began to take shape.

After I wrote each poem, I shared it with my students and friends.  Many people comments that they, too, found healing in the words inspired by the cards.  My students developed new, deeper understandings of the cards after they read the poems.

Everything about this tarot poetry project has been surprising.  I never expected to write tarot poetry, or to find healing in it.  I was surprised, too, that others found healing in it.  I never expected to use it as a teaching tool.  And I certainly never thought I would learn more about the cards from writing about them, but that is exactly what has happened.

Tarot Poetry has helped me become a better tarot reader.  I have fresh, new insight on the cards, and new ways of letting them speak to me.  This has added a new dimension to my professional readings.

For me, the process of becoming a tarot poet simply evolved.  Perhaps it was divinely channeled, or perhaps it was driven by my subconscious need to heal, grow and explore.  But you don’t need to wait for inspiration or desperation to enjoy the benefits of tarot poetry.

Anyone with an interest in tarot and an interest in words can write tarot poetry.  You don’t need to be a great poet, or an experienced tarot reader.  You can start by simply looking at a card and writing about what you see.  From there, the healing power of images and words will take over.

Christiana’s tarot poetry project in process can be found here:  http://www.tarotbychristiana.com/78poems