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03 Nov 2021
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Aunt Allie’s Full Moon Ritual

Last year, I met an extremely gifted medium in California: Allie Barkalow. If you don’t know what a medium is, it’s a person who communicates with spirits from the other side. I heard about Allie from my dear friend, Carolyn Miller, who is a psychic and known for her amazing tarot and aura photography readings. Carolyn told me that Allie is one of the best psychics she knows, and I figured if she’s anything like Carolyn I had to meet her.

I was immediately drawn to Allie with her bold and honest demeanor and witty sense of humor. She reminds me of a favorite aunt or wise-woman that calls the shots as she sees them with practical, straightforward advice. After the reading (which was astounding), we struck up a conversation and she shared some really useful information. She told me how to clear a house of negative energy using her sea salt smudge recipe and how she protects herself energetically during a psychic session. She told me why it’s important to sage your pillows every month since, apparently, we dump a lot of psychic stuff into our beds when we sleep!

At the end of our talk, I mentioned the full moon coming up and how I could really use a simple ritual to do with some friends (it was right before the pandemic when we could still gather). Of course, she had one. In fact, she shared with me a tried and true ritual she’d been doing for over 40 years. I was giddy with excitement and needless to say my friends and I had an amazing little shindig that weekend under the full moon in my backyard with Aunt Allie’s recipe.

I’d like to share her full moon ritual with you here — Allie said it’s okay. This ritual is specifically for letting things go. I hope you tuck it away and enjoy it for many moons ahead.

I was reminded that not everyone knows about rituals and how to do one. Rituals are an ancient way to honor the sacredness of high holy days and important moons — full and new — and to clear and to invite.

The full moon is the time of ending and releasing. It is the perfect time to end cycles, release old patterns, habits, behaviors, and thought-forms. If you are working on your ascension, such as trying to elevate your vibration, be a better person, etc., the full moon is a fabulous opportunity to let go and use your consciousness to move forward, get lighter in being, and take back your power. This is not the time to ask for anything!! That is the new moon.

This ritual is a simple one, in accordance with the native way of honoring this sacred time. Feel free to use your own prayers, words, and/or name of God.

Full Moon Ritual

What you’ll need:

  • Paper and pen for yourself and extras for friends if doing this as a group
  • 1 tea light candle and a fireproof container, such as a cast iron skillet
  • 4 extra tea light candles and 4 small bowls to place the candles in to make a sacred circle on the ground
  • 1 stick of incense
  • Cup of water
  • Pinch of tobacco
  • Handful of cornmeal
  • Smudge stick such as sage, cedar, or palo santo
  • Lighter or matches
  • Compass to determine the directions

Directions:

  1. Make a list of what you are ready to let go of in your life. This may be personally, professionally, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially, etc.
  2. Make sure you know when the exactitude of the full moon is. Go outside one-half hour before with everything on a tray. If you cannot go outside find a quiet place in your house where you will be undisturbed.
  3. Light the smudge stick and smudge yourself, fanning the smoke from the top of your body and going downwards, getting the back of your body and under your feet. If doing this in a group, have your friends do the same. (This is important to do at the start of any ritual).
  4. Make a rough circle, then place the four candles in the four bowls at the four points: north, south, east and west. Pour a tiny bit of water into the bottom of the bowls.
  5. Cast the circle by lighting each of the candles at the four cardinal points and invoke the angel/guardian of each direction. When done face west, the direction of endings.
  6. Ground yourself, bringing attention to what you are about to do. Invite your highest self, teachers, guides, and angels to witness.
  7. Smudge the four directions, starting first with the east. Next, smudge Mother Earth, and make a tobacco offering. Smudge to Father Sky / God / Goddess
  8. Turn to face west. Hold your hands up and face the palms out. Take a deep breath and say: “At this time of endings and completions, I now release <insert list.>”
  9. When you are finished with your list you might also include war, hunger, pollution, ignorance, poverty, lack, and loss, fear, etc. for yourself and the entire world.
  10. Make a cornmeal offering to the Earth spirits and devas. Make a water offering to the water spirits and devas. Light your incense and make it an offering to the air spirits and devas.
  11. Finally, light your tea light. If it blows out after you light it, just put it down. It has been accepted by the fire beings. If it stays lit, make sure it is in a container that will not tip over or start a fire.
  12. Ground yourself again. Make sure you have included every area and everything you are ready, able, and willing to release from your life experience.
  13. Thank the angels, teachers, guides, devas, Mother Earth, and divine self for witnessing. Ask their help in releasing and clearing those vibrations from your life and your aura. Ask their assistance in keeping those things away from you re-taking them back.
  14. Bless yourself, Mother Earth, and your life. Release the circle by walking from the east counterclockwise one full circle and ending in the west.

Turn around, and do not look back. You can go out tomorrow to pick up the candleholders. Your magic is now set and working! Blessed Be! Love, Allie

 

Kristen Bala is the founder of the Deep End, an online community that supports spiritual learning and well-being. She enjoys writing about her many passions including astrology and holistic healing. To learn more about her work, visit www.findyourdeepend.com or contact her at [email protected]

 

Original article here


01 Nov 2021
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November Artist of the Month: Jane Hepburn

 

About the Artist:

Jane Hepburn is an intuitive, fantasy artist whose work sells internationally and adorns the walls of notable celebrities such as fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg, Ken Paves, and many others. Children and adults alike are captivated by her strikingly beautiful SuperElle angels who rule their heavenly world with wisdom and warrior power whilst being fun loving and nurturing.

For Jane, painting is a sacred experience. She has always felt a strong connection to the spirit world and channels many of her pieces, allowing her intuition to guide her. Her attention to detail allows the viewer to discover new things, long after their first look.

Jane’s work is instantly recognisable with its flowing, feathered brush strokes, heavenly angels, and animals. Her use of colour is vibrant and energizing. Jane has created a fairy tale world that many of us would love to escape to. Her studio is a magical place where her inspirations come alive as her four legged friends and supernatural guides watch on.

Each painting has its own story, full of love and light with its uplifting messages of female strength, truth, other worldly support, and togetherness. Her work is deeply personal and heartfelt and manages to effortlessly combine emotion, beauty, and possibility.

Jane produces collectable archival prints either on canvas or paper. Some of the prints are embellished with the details hand painted back in to create a unique, one-of-a-kind piece bringing out the authentic vibration of the original. Jane has exhibited several times in London and had her work featured in magazines.

Official website: https://hepburnart.co.uk

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/janehepburn

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8dPewfs_RDt-j2OrGY5nhA

Facebook Business Page: https://www.facebook.com/janehepburnart

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/janehepburnart/

Twitter https://twitter.com/JaneHepburnArt

 

 

 

 


28 Oct 2021
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Moldavite: Extraterrestrial Stone On Earth

Moldavite is a member of the tektite group, a glassy mixture of silicon dioxide, aluminum oxide and other metal oxides, with a hardness of 5.5 to 6. Its crystal system is amorphous. The color of most specimens is a deep forest green, though some pieces are pale green and others, especially those from Moravia, are greenish brown. A few rare gem grade pieces are almost an emerald green.

Moldavite’s formation coincides with the crash of a large meteorite in what is now the Bohemian plateau of the Czech Republic, approximately 14.8 million years ago. Most specimens are found strewn throughout that area. For many decades, farmers in southern Bohemia have turned up pieces of moldavite when plowing fields, and moldavite miners sift and dig through loose sand and gravel from depths of up to twenty meters. Some of the richest finds have occurred at the towns of Chlum and Slavce. A very delicate, lacy form of moldavite has been found near the village of Besednice, although this location is now exhausted. In recent years the moldavite fields have become depleted, and the stones are becoming increasingly rare.

Moldavite is the stone that initiated me into awareness of the spiritual properties of crystals and minerals, and it has been a catalyst for several of my most important spiritual experiences. It has, over the 33 years I have worked in this field, had similar effects on thousands of other people with whom I have spoken and corresponded. From my perspective, it has a special role to play in the awakening of humanity now underway.

Scientific theorists differ on hypotheses regarding moldavite’s origin. Some contend that moldavite is earthly rock melted by the heat of the meteorite crash, while others suggest that the material is of extraterrestrial origin, possibly a type of obsidian ejected by a lunar volcano.

A third theory holds that moldavite is a fusion product of meteoric material and earthly rock vaporized in the tremendous heat of the impact explosion, with the resultant gas being propelled high into the atmosphere. This gaseous material would have then cooled and condensed into a liquid glass that rained down on the crater and surrounding areas. Regardless of which, if any, of these ideas is correct, it is known that moldavite indeed fell from the sky, because of the aerodynamic shapes of certain pieces. Most scientists associate it with the meteoric collision that formed the Bohemian plateau and surrounding mountains.

The event that gave birth to moldavite was one of tremendous power. The force of the impact explosion has been estimated at six trillion megatons, far more than all the atom bombs on Earth. The heat, as mentioned above, was hot enough to vaporize rock, and the main body of the meteorite is believed to have passed completely through Earth’s crust, penetrating into the liquid iron at the planet’s core. This deep impact was described in a New York Times article as having disturbed the currents of rotating liquid iron enough to cause a reversal of Earth’s magnetic poles.

Throughout history, and even into pre-history, moldavite has been regarded as a spiritual talisman. The Neolithic peoples of Eastern Europe wore moldavite at least twenty-five thousand years ago, and the famed Venus of Willendorf — the earliest known goddess statue — was discovered in a digging site that contained a number of moldavite amulets. People of that period also used moldavite for arrowheads and cutting tools.

Feeling The Moldavite Flush

In modern times, moldavite has emerged as one of the stones most prized for metaphysical purposes. Its effects vary widely, from mild to almost overwhelming, from physical cleansings to spiritual breakthroughs — yet the common denominator seems to be the revitalization and acceleration of one’s path of evolution.

People who hold moldavite for the first time most often experience its energy as warmth or heat, usually felt first in one’s hand and then progressively throughout the body. In some cases, there is an opening of the heart chakra, characterized by strange (though not painful) sensations in the chest, an upwelling of emotion and a flushing of the face. This has happened often enough to have earned a name — the “moldavite flush.” Moldavite’s energies can also cause pulsations in the hand, tingling in the third eye and heart chakras, a feeling of light-headedness or dizziness, and occasionally the sense of being lifted out of one’s body. Most people feel that moldavite excites their energies and speeds their vibrations, especially for the first days or weeks, until they become acclimated to it.

Moldavite’s energies can activate any and all of the chakras. Its vibrations tend to focus in areas where one has blockages or wounds, first clearing these areas and then moving into resonance with one’s entire energetic system. Resonance with moldavite can take many forms — chakras can open; synchronicities can increase in frequency and significance; one’s dream life can become dramatically more vivid and meaningful; one can connect with spirit guides; physical, emotional or spiritual healings can happen; jobs and relationships can change; meditations can become deeper and more powerful — yet all these can be viewed as symptoms of a shift in one’s own energies. This shift is what moldavite can catalyze. With its high and intense vibrations, it can resonate with one’s energy pattern in a way that creates an intensification of spiritual vitality and an acceleration of progress on the path of one’s highest destiny.

Moldavite is a powerful aid for meditation and dreamwork. In both cases, taping a piece of moldavite to the forehead can have the effect of creating a much more vivid and visionary inner experience. Moldavite increases one’s sensitivity to guidance, and one’s ability to discern the messages sent from the higher realms.

Used As A Spiritual Talisman

Moldavite can be a powerful catalyst for self-healing, clearing blockages and opening the meridians, as well as energizing the interconnections among all aspects of the subtle body. It is a talisman of spiritual awakening, transformation and evolutionary growth.

In addition to use in meditation and dreamwork, moldavite can be worn as jewelry. This conveys the advantage of being able to keep its energies in one’s vibrational field throughout the day, for further strengthening of its effects. Doing this also draws an increased incidence of beneficial synchronicities into one’s daily life. Some people will have to accustom themselves gradually to wearing moldavite because of its energetic intensity, but most will make the adjustment in a few days.

Moldavite also offers an energy of spiritual protection. When one is in resonance with its high-frequency vibrations, negative energies and entities cannot connect with or hang onto one’s field. In alignment with its transformational properties, moldavite tends to disconnect one from unhealthy attachments and to magnetize the persons and situations most needed for evolutionary progress.

Moldavite tends to quickly attract whatever one’s spiritual metamorphosis requires. It also seems to cause whatever parts of our lives no longer serve our highest good to be discharged, whether we realize the need for that or not. This reminds us of Hermes, especially in regard to the speed of the changes that occur. Hermes was a being of great speed. He had wings on his feet, and was the messenger of the gods.

One phenomenon that displays a Trickster quality of moldavite is its apparent ability to disappear and reappear. I have experienced this many times. In a typical instance, I put my moldavite away on a dresser or in a box, only to find it gone the next day. Then, sooner or later, the moldavite will reappear, usually in a ridiculously unlikely spot. In one instance, I left my moldavite on top of my dresser in the bedroom, discovered the next day that it was gone, and found it again weeks later — in the container of one of our house plants in the living room! In the longest of these disappearances, my most treasured moldavite disappeared for fourteen years, only to be found eventually in the pocket of a pair of pants that I had never worn! For a long time, I doubted my memory, but this occurred over and over. And through the years, many people have told me their own very similar stories. There are numerous disappearing moldavite stories online.

What is the reason that moldavite performs these disappearing acts? I have thought at times that the intention behind moldavite’s disappearances may be to show us that the physical world is not necessarily as solid as we think it is. If that were proven to us, and if we accepted the evidence, the knowledge could be very liberating.

Moldavite Is A Stone Of The Heart And Dreams

When a person first holds a piece of moldavite, he or she often feels heat, especially around the heart. As this experience unfolds, the person frequently flushes red in the cheeks. This can be accompanied by tears, signifying an emotional release. I have witnessed people holding a moldavite and being surprised by the fact that their hearts began to beat in a different way. It is not a painful event; I compare the heart’s behavior to a dog wagging its tail when it is happy. I believe the heart responds to moldavite in this way, communicating its recognition and pleasure in the presence of this stone. And of course, moldavite is green — the color of the heart chakra.

In my first powerful moldavite experience, the sensation of energy began in my right hand where I was holding the stone. Then the current went straight up my arm and into my heart. At that point, my heart chakra opened, like a blooming flower of light. And in the next moment, the light surged both downwards and upwards from my heart, opening all of my chakras.

As an incubator of dreams, this is true of moldavite more than any other stone I have worked with. If you tape a small piece of moldavite to your forehead at the location of the third eye chakra before going to bed, I guarantee that you will dream! A lot! I have tried this many times and recommended it to others for over thirty years. Almost all of us find that the quantity and depth of our dream life increases immediately. And the dreams are often spiritually significant ones.

I believe that this happens because of moldavite’s affinity with the deep self, the part of us that creates our dreams. When moldavite lends its power to one’s deep self, a flurry of inner communication comes to us through a cornucopia of dreams. Another rather surprising symptom of moldavite’s effect on our dreaming is that most of us have to remove the moldavite during the night, because we are dreaming so much that we need to take a rest from it and sleep more deeply!

For virtually all of us, the path of spiritual evolution involves healing. In alchemical terms, we need to cook ourselves so that the impurities in our energies — the disharmonious patterns in our subtle bodies — are burned away. And moldavite just loves to do that!

Moldavite resonates with the pattern of our highest good — our full spiritual awakening and development. Thus, its influence moves us toward dispelling all patterns that are not in alignment with our wholeness, clearing the way for profound good health. However, the ride may sometimes be uncomfortable, just as it can be on the psychological level.

Something I experienced several times during my first years with moldavite was the onset of physical problems that turned out to be rooted in past lives. As people who work with past life therapy often observe, my physical ailments expressed similarities (at least symbolically) to traumatic past life events. Hypnotic regressions were helpful in completing my review of these patterns and letting them go, but I am convinced that the presence of moldavite is what brought them to the forefront.

Sometimes, especially when one is already in the throes of an apparent illness that stems from long-held unhealthy patterns in the subtle body, the introduction of moldavite can trigger a direct and rapid healing effect. It can seem as if the stone has cured a physical illness, but in my view, the presence of moldavite has simply dislodged the stuck pattern, allowing the subtle body to clear itself and bring the physical body back to health.

If one wishes to work with moldavite as a healing stone, it is often a good idea to bring another beneficial stone (or stones) into the mix. Heartenite, seraphinite, healerite and healers’ gold are good, overall healing stones that can stabilize one’s subtle body and work to soften the intensity of moldavite. In my own past, during a time when my healing was focused on the emotional body, I found that charoite and moldavite felt best to me. I urge you to work intuitively in these types of situations, and let the stone beings tell you which ones are most appropriate.

 

Excerpted from The Alchemy of Stones by Robert Simmons. © 2020 Destiny Books. Reprinted with permission from the publisher Inner Traditions

Robert Simmons has been working with crystals and stones for over 35 years. He is the cofounder of Heaven and Earth, a company offering gem and jewelry creations for self-healing and spiritual and emotional development. The author of several books, in­cluding The Book of Stones, The Alchemy of Stones and Stones of the New Consciousness, he lives in New Zealand.

 

 

 

 


25 Oct 2021
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What We Want Doesn’t Always Make Us Happy

Much of modern economic theory is based around a simple idea: Human beings maximize utility. But what is utility? Many people think of it as happiness or pleasure; British philosopher Jeremy Bentham, the inventor of utilitarianism, conceived of it this way. But this isn’t how modern economists think of the concept. To an economist, utility simply means how much people want something. If an economist observes people working hard and making sacrifices to buy houses, then the conclusion is that houses must have lots of utility to those people.

Modern economists tend to assume that utility is good — that people should get what they want. When economists talk about the notion of consumer surplus, they just mean the utility that consumers derive from getting a good deal on consumer goods. Welfare economics, which deals with the question of how much the economy benefits humanity, often conceives of social welfare as a function of the extent to which people satisfy their wants. More egalitarian economists will tend to value the utility of the poor and disadvantaged more than the utility of the wealthy, but fundamentally it’s still about giving people what they desire.

There are certainly reasons to criticize this philosophical approach. First of all, people sometimes make choices they come to regret. Smokers know they should quit now, but they put it off and years later end up wishing they had shown a little more fortitude. So should society care about people’s present selves, or their future selves? This question is very important when discussing whether to ban electronic cigarettes. If Juul Labs and other vape makers get young people hooked on nicotine in ways that they’ll later wish they hadn’t, it might make sense for government to bar those people from satisfying their wants.

But there are deeper reasons to question whether society should just feed human desires all the time. Bentham’s utilitarianism conceived of a good society as one that makes its people happy. But what if the things people desire don’t bring them happiness?

There’s no clear consensus on how to measure happiness. Some neuroscientists have tried to link it to various measures of brain activity. But economists tend to use a method that’s a lot cheaper and quicker — they send out surveys and questionnaires asking people how happy they are.

Happiness research has led to some surprising and troubling discoveries. People seem to reliably seek out a few things that make them unhappy.

One of these things is Facebook, by far the world’s largest social-networking site. In a 2019 paper, economists Hunt Allcott, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer and Matthew Gentzkow investigated how much money they had to pay Facebook users in order to get them to deactivate the Facebook app for one or two months. They found that the median amount was $100, and the average was $180 (the latter being larger because a few users really loved Facebook).

This suggests that Facebook, which is free to use, generates a huge amount of utility — more than $370 billion a year in consumer surplus in the U.S. alone. This bolsters the argument of those who believe that free digital services have added a lot of unmeasured output to the global economy.

But Allcott et al. also found that the people who deactivated Facebook as part of the experiment were happier afterward, reporting higher levels of life satisfaction and lower levels of depression and anxiety. The change was modest but significant — equal to about 25 to 40 percent of the beneficial effect typically reported for psychotherapy.

Why are people willing to pay so much money for something that reduces their happiness? One possibility is that social media acts like an addictive drug — in fact, the people Allcott et al. paid to deactivate Facebook ended up using it less after the experiment was over. But another possibility is that people use services like Facebook because they’re compelled by motivations other than the pursuit of happiness.

Another example of the disconnect between happiness and utility might be commuting time. Economists and other happiness researchers consistently find that longer commutes are associated with unhappiness. Yet people still pay quite a lot to live in far-flung exurbs. Economist Robert H. Frank has found that the larger houses that come with exurban life don’t compensate for the longer commute times in terms of happiness. House size and commute time aren’t the only factor in the choice of what neighborhood to live in, but this might be another case like Facebook where things that bring utility don’t bring happiness.

There may be a number of such cases. A paper by economists Daniel J. Benjamin, Ori Heffetz, Miles S. Kimball, and Alex Rees-Jones found that on surveys, people usually predict that the things they say they’d pay money for would also boost their happiness — but not always.

So what should society do about the disconnect between utility and happiness? The question raises the thorny issue of paternalism and whether it’s government’s role to push people to do things they don’t want to do, simply because they might be happier as a result. Basing policy on happiness surveys might also be a mistake if these surveys aren’t good measures of true happiness. Such surveys might reflect cultural expectations of what people think they ought to say, or people could gradually lose their ability to gauge how much happier or sadder they are now than they were in the past.

But it also unwise to simply dismiss the disconnect between happiness and utility simply because happiness is hard to measure. If people are consistently making mistakes that lead to a less happy society, it’s a problem that should be addressed. Bentham and the original utilitarians would demand no less.

Noah Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

Original article here


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