One of the great things I find about tarot is that it is easy to help connect with our inner self. A quick one-card tarot reading I like to us is to simply pull a card and ask “What should I know about myself right now?”

This can be a very powerful and intuitive reading. For example, in preparation for this blog entry, I pulled a card: The Six of Swords

I used the Witch’s Tarot, a deck based on Wiccan and Quaballah images. In this card, it shows a picture of a white bird, like a crane, pricking its breast to bleed and feed its three chicks. The card is divided diagonally with six swords and the upper corner is an Eagle flying with a sun-filled tail. The Rider-Waite deck shows a woman in a cloak, her boat filled with six upright swords, being ferried across a body of water.

This is the card of transition. The woman in the boat is leaving sorrows and negativity and an old life behind and moving forward into a new life. The transition is well depicted by the eagle/phoenix on the Witch’s Tarot card.

For me, this tells me what I need to know. It fits some things that are happening (all good) and it fits where I feel my authentic self is headed.

This can be very insightful for a reading and acts as a quick, or not-so-quick, “gut check” when it comes to our lives. The card you pull might be obvious, like my Six of Swords, or it might be more obscure. You might see a court card, which might represent the person you are, or you might see a Major Arcana card, which could represent themes or elements that might affect your true self or reflect it.

Personally, I find the cards work better when used as a tool of self-growth. The archetypes and pictures on the tarot card can tap into our higher self and our unconscious minds far better than we can when surrounded by all the trappings of our mundane lives.

One of my fondest memories growing up was helping my great-grandfather give milk re-placer to the calves. As a dairy operation, calves were taken from their moms a few days after birth, and they were given milk re-placer in buckets containing nozzles for them to drink from like udder teats. To me, the milk re-placer looked like chocolate milk, and I quickly learned not to name the “boy” calves, though they were allowed to grow up a bit before they were sent to the auction house.

As I grew older, I realized my great-grandfather’s farm was different. The cows went out, like Daisy did, and had lush, green pasture on which to graze in the day, before being brought back to the barn for milking. The calves had large pens and were housed together and well, got to be calves, before they were sent off to the auction house. This was a true family farm, passed down through the generations. One where man and livestock lived together and learned together.

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I have, and may it resonate with you as Daisy brings her unique wit and charm in helping you to discover your inner bovine!

The goal of Black March is to not purchase any media–no movies, no books, no cds, no digital music, no magazines–for the entire month of March as a way to punish those lobbying against SOPA, PIPA, and it’s related laws. And on the surface, it seems to make sense. Don’t put one more penny into the coffers of companies lobbying to reduce your right to free speech. I don’t think any of us disagree with that. But have you thought about…?

• The janitor working for a major media corporation who stands with us against SOPA who might lose his job because profits are down.
• Authors, Artists, Musicians, Filmmakers, who agree with us, but who happen to utilize one of the major media companies to distribute their work
• Small presses, small music labels, or small movie studios who are against SOPA and did not lobby for it

How are you going to support individuals like these, who stand with us? Because a boycott would reduce the money going to these big companies, but it would also have collateral damage that I don’t think anyone intends.

If you do go ahead with the boycott, think about this…

Make sure you DO support small and independent authors, artists, musicians, filmmakers, etc who do support SOPA.

How do you do this?

Buy author direct! An author offering autographed copies thorugh his or her website? Buy there!

Buy publisher direct! Purchase directly from a small or midsize publisher directly through their website.

Buy indie direct! Get your music directly from the artist when you can.

Visit sites and consume your media/news/information from the sites which DID in one form or another support the boycott.

Make your voices heard, but also understand that the action you take, could also negatively impact your favorite author/artist/musician/actor/etc., too.

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.

Bear with me here. I know this might sound kind of crazy. And I’m not talking about most video games where you have to complete certain tasks or act in a certain manner. I’m talking about virtual worlds where you have the freedom to do what you want.

Take for example Second Life, where Jupiter Gardens has a presence. I also have a personal home there and I work with virtual horses (go figure, right? LOL!). These horses need virtual food, which does have to be bought with in-world currency. And, like real horses, if they go without food for a certain period of time they become sick. Now, putting aside my personal feelings about those who don’t feed horses in real life (or any animal for that matter)… I think we need to take a look at how someone treats virtual creations.

There is a mechanism in the game whereby horses can eat for three days and “heal” themselves of being sick. (A sick horse turns green and cries.) There’s also a mechanism where horses can be sent to “horse haven” or back to the creator for points. And there’s the matter of a horse becoming “sick” because the settings or the horse’s range aren’t set correctly, and once that issue is discovered, it is immediately fixed.

And then there are those people who list their horses for sale and say “it costs too much to feed them, but you can heal them by letting them eat for three days.” So even though these are virtual creations, this person is saying “give me money so I can continue to do this, but I have no interest in caring for these virtual creations the way they’re supposed to be.”

That sounds pretty darn selfish, doesn’t it?

Now this is one example, but as we move forward in wanting to create abundance and positive things in our life, I think we’d have to take a look at this sort of behavior. How do we treat everything, including virtual creations, in our lives? Do we grief or troll in the games we play because we find it “fun”? Do we go into these games for everything we can get and everything else is a moot point?

If everything we do is a spiritual act, then how can we justify letting a virtual horse starve?

You may notice some of your favorite websites going dark today. Wikipedia and Reddit are two of the biggest names, but others, like Google, will be hosting information. You may wonder why SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act is bad. And you may also wonder why the only industries listed as being affected are movies and radio.

First, no one is saying that piracy is good. Piracy costs content providers a lot of money on an annual basis. Piracy hurts not just the “big” guys like bands and authors who are household names. It also hurts the little people who work for these companies because a loss of revenue means potential loss of jobs. However, no one knows how much revenue is lost, and it is wrong to equate one illegal download with one sale. I know, let me pause while the chorus of SOPA supporters gasp and sputter. But the truth is, we honestly do not know how many people would actually buy the work if they could. Some probably would. (We know, for example, that readers/listeners/viewers in foreign countries may pirate because the work isn’t available for legal electronic sale in those countries. They’d buy it if they could.) Now, even if the percentage is a small number, even like ten, five, or even one percent, the loss of revenue is big.

Secondly, most of us agree that something needs to be done. The problem is that technology has evolved faster than the law and the means to deal with piracy.

Third, we live in a global society. As much as we would love to have all countries follow the same copyright laws, we are all individual people and individual countries with our own belief about rules and law and justice. It is true that the majority of pirate sites are hosted outside the US because other countries (like Russia, the Grand Cayman Islands, and others) don’t enforce international copyright law. But a one-size fits all approach is like using a 2×2 piece of gauze. It might be too much for a pin prick and not enough for a gaping wound.

And fourth, every industry is different. You know what bugs me the most about mentions of online piracy and SOPA in main media outlets? No one ever mentions books! It’s all movies and music, RIAA, MPAA, blah, blah blah…. I don’t say that to be dismissive. Music and movies deserve the same copyright protection as books do. However, what movies and music do have are umbrella organizations which do not splinter different genres, different parts of the creative process, and different groups into separate entities, all of whom contain less numbers than a larger group might, and who must fight twice as hard to get their voices heard. Agents have the AAR. Publishers have the Small Publishers Access Network (or other publishing groups). Authors have groups based on their genre, or Novelists, Inc. (NINC) or the Writer’s Guild. But, all of these various groups have their own barriers to entry. (RWA, for example, is one of the genre-based organizations that let anyone join. The others have sales or contractual bars which must be met.)

But I’m also digressing on the bottom line here, which is the reason why we sport the banner on our homepage and why websites are going dark today…

SOPA is not good legislation. It does, as I explained to my significant other during a very interesting discussion about it (Up with Chris Hays on MSNBC, Sunday 01/15/2012 link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/46004493#46004493), SOPA is like taking a sledge hammer and trying to hit a thumb tack. Yeah, you’re going to hit the thumb tack (you hope), but you’re also going to ruin your wall and possibly bloody your finger in the process.

Because really, SOPA is designed, and can only affect, US websites. Yeah, the guy from NBC (i.e. big, corporate conglomerate who is probably enmeshed in the old ways of doing business and not understanding that everything is changing) says it won’t. But US law can only affect what happens in the US. It’s like Vegas, but with more bickering and gridlock.

And if a court order (yay for more income to attorneys?) makes Google (for example) delist a piracy site, then guess what, Google is a US company and has data centers in the US, which makes its websites…wait for it… US websites!

The truth is the the technology to get around such blocks already exists and is being used in countries to get around the censorship put in place by opressive regimes.

The truth is, SOPA won’t stop piracy. As we authors are well aware, if someone wants to pirate, they will. The good news (?) of that is studies have shown that people are less likely to read a book or document they downloaded for free than one they paid for.

The truth is, a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work here.

And, the truth is, there are others who can explain this far better than I. *smiles*

For more information, please visit

http://americancensorship.org/

The Problem With SOPA (and how to stop it)

And the always informational and articulate boingboing.net (link: http://boingboing.net/2012/01/14/boing-boing-will-go-dark-on-ja.html)

Please act. Please contact your elected officials (and even those officials for whom you didn’t vote, but who represent your state anyway). And please, spread the word.

To quote Schoolhouse Rock: Knowledge is Power!

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.

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?

I’m also thankful for last week’s release of Reality Shift 5: From the Ashes. This is the halfway point of the Reality Shift series, and Shanna definitely has some things to be thankful for. Here’s a short excerpt from the book:

By the time we arrived at school, the cafeteria had opened. Some of the early arrivals were waiting in line to buy their muffins, donuts, and breakfast sandwiches. My stomach growled, but I didn’t bother to join the line. Jonah usually brought breakfast for me, a vegan fruit bar or something. He generally claimed he’d brought the food for himself and had decided he didn’t want it after all. I’d caught on pretty quickly that he intended all along to give me whatever he’d brought, and only said he didn’t want it because he doubted I’d take it otherwise.

When he and I’d first become friends, I tried not to accept the food. Doing so made me feel obligated to him, and I didn’t like owing anyone anything. After a couple weeks of knowing Jonah, I’d begun learning, slowly, to let him do things for me and to accept what he gave me, so his offers of fruit bars didn’t bother me anymore.

I liked that he cared enough about my feelings and issues to keep up the pretense of giving me his “extra” fruit bar.

As soon as we sat down, Jonah took out two fruit bars and set one in front of me. “I only want one.”

I grinned. “You always only want one.”

“True,” he admitted. “And it’s always possible I might want more than one, which is why I bring two. Since I don’t want the second one today, you can have it. So are you ready for the Harvest Dance? It’s a week from tomorrow.”

I took a deep breath. “Don’t remind me.”

I was far from ready. Thinking about having a date, especially for something as special as the Harvest Dance, terrified me. I hadn’t exactly had good experiences with guys, and I’d never had a date. Too many people at school knew about what had happened to me in sixth grade with Craig and Jared, and some of them still called me names because of it. Of course, they believed I’d wanted to do the stuff those guys had tried to make me do in the woods, because Craig and Jared had said I’d wanted it. No one would have believed the truth even if I’d tried to tell them that Jared had tried to force me to touch him. They were popular boys, athletes with a lot of friends, and I was…well, I was me.

Which gave me another horrible idea, one that would have made me double over to keep from vomiting if I’d been standing up. As it was, I swallowed hard a few times and tried to force the nausea away. Maybe Ken had only asked me to the dance because he knew what Craig and Jared had tried to make me do and hoped I’d do it to him. My chest tightened, and for a second, I couldn’t breathe. I’d been diagnosed with anxiety disorder when I was seven and had never been treated for it because my mother had said it was all in my head. Jonah had been trying to get me to stop thinking of myself as a disorder, but at times like this that wasn’t easy.

As usual, Jonah read my mind. Or my energy field. “Shanna, Ken is your friend,” he said firmly. “You know he doesn’t think anything bad about you. He asked you to the dance because he wants to go to the dance with you. He doesn’t have any ulterior motives. If you can’t trust him enough to believe that, at least trust me. If I believed you had any reason to be concerned, I wouldn’t encourage  you to go to the dance, right?”

“Right.” I agreed with him automatically. I didn’t really believe he was right. Just because he didn’t see a need for concern didn’t mean there wasn’t one. He knew a lot. He didn’t know everything.

“Think positively,” he advised. “When you think about positive things happening, they happen. If you think about negatives, that’s what happens. I know you can create positive things in your life. Look at everything you’ve done for yourself already.”

I couldn’t argue with that. So much in my life had changed since I’d met Jonah that my head spun just thinking about it. “Yeah, I’m away from my mother, at least. I’m living in a good place. I didn’t do that, though. You did, because you’re the one who made me go to the nurse when Mom broke my arm, and she sent me to the hospital, and they called Child Protective.”

“No one can make you do anything,” he countered. “I encouraged you to go to the nurse. You chose to go. And you created all of that. The bad along with the good, because all of it led to you finding help and finding a safe place to live. All I did was tell you that you had the ability to create your life the way you wanted to live it. You did the rest yourself, Shanna, just like you’re going to create a wonderful time for yourself at the dance with Ken.”

He made me sound way more powerful than I felt. I knew he was right. I just had a hard time believing that I had any influence at all over what happened to me. “I hope so,” I said.

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.