The Dead and Dying

Okay at first it was concern; then after pacing around for a few minutes in a negative funk I got a little pissy about it. I'm referring to the Forbes article I read this morning about the top 10 dying career paths... (I am on two of the listed career paths) if you haven't viewed it yet please go here: Declining Careers :-(

Not Surprised

Ah, but you know I wasn't too surprised about the alternative healing practices. There is a great deal of interest in hypnosis, acupressure/acupuncture and many other methods. But not everyone has the income to pay out of pocket for something they're interested in but don't fully understand. I have made it my personal quest to explore many of these healing modalities since I was a young girl. I started with an interest in herbal medicine at around age 14. But it was clear to me from day one that people in general, while interested, would still take a pill rather than play with tapping meridian points and searching for root causes of their illnesses. Concerning hypnosis as a career path there are many ways to "adapt" and if we give up our healing knowledge I'm here to tell you that we are seriously SCREWED. So do keep that in mind when your family doctor whips out his prescription pad before you finish telling him about your aliments... remember it when reading the long list of side effects on that prescription medicine your doctor just gave you. And keep in mind when you hear that most alternative treatments aren't covered by insurance: chiropractic care was once considered an alternative treatment... now most insurance companies cover it and it's viewed as a wonderful therapy. I've spent a tremendous amount of time effort and money to educate myself on different healing practices. Medical specialist saved my life two years ago when I was in the hospital with bacterial meningitis so I don't want anyone getting the idea that I'm ungrateful or hypocritical. They used drugs on me that had names I couldn't pronounce and when written, took up about three inches of type on a page. My brain was so swollen inside my skull I didn't have the ability to protest much of anything that was happening to me. I really didn't give a crap at that point anyway.  Would I have preferred an alternative treatment other than IV steroids and whatever other chemicals they put in my veins? Sure but who was trained in such a treatment? And during the initial panic of seizures and coma what would a healer employee? As a natural healer I don't touch those kinds of illnesses with a ten foot pole! Medical doctors, high tech medicines and hospitals have my respect and gratitude. But come on people most of us live in a happy medium... we're not dying but we don't feel well either and it's at this point that we should search for answers for ourselves in the forms of alternative wellness and healing practices.

True Heartbreak

I think I'm more heartbroken over the seamstress career being there on the dying list. I have a love/dislike relationship with sewing. My grandma Evans use to put little scraps of fabric in my lap when I was about 8 or 9 years old.... I was shown how to sew these together, and then she put the pieces together as a quilt. I remember watching my mom sew skirts and blouses... it was funny to me how the paper patterns didn't look anything like the garment but when you put them all together it all fit so neatly! As soon as I had money I bought material and patterns too and started making stuff for myself... it was: aggravating, fun, confusing and all in all satisfying. Sadly I don't know many girls or boys today that bother learning to sew. If ya can go to Walmart or Target and get a shirt for $5.00 why bother right? I'm here to tell you it's attractive to me as well; see something cute on the rack... it's a great deal, buy it. Simple. There is this thing to it though, and it's kinda "dark". Do you know why it's so cheap? In a nut shell it's because the person that sewed that garment wasn't paid a living wage to sew it. This means the person is working for hours and hours and at the end of the week they still can't afford to pay for food, shelter or even the clothes that they sew to begin with. It is my opinion that we shouldn't support companies that operate these low wage factories BUT without those jobs what would those employees do? Talk about your catch 22 huh?

Conclusion

I'm going to keep practicing and studying alternative healing. Also, I will teach it to my children and anyone that I can out run and hold down. It is my firm belief that we need to be able to heal ourselves of persistent pain and disease without becoming pharmaceutical guinea pigs.

I'm going to keep sewing home decor (goooooo Ken and Kerri♥) clothing and crafts. I will teach it to my children and anyone that I can out run and hold down. It is my firm belief that along with building homes and growing food, we need to be able to clothe ourselves without enlisting slave labor from other countries. 

~April

Energy, Homeopathic and herbal healing part 1

This is part one of these healing modalities. It has everything to do with energy which is another word for vibration

~♥

~ Vibrations

On a day to day basis I’ve noticed the ups and downs of my mood and emotions. No, I don’t suffer from bi-polar disorder or any one of the ever popular personality disorders; rather catching and managing personal vibration levels is what I’m really doing. I consider it my job as a person living on the face of this earth and I take this job very seriously because it doesn’t just involve me it’s for everyone.

 Everything vibrates: if it’s a fast vibration the object is fluid, if the vibration is slow the object is solid. There are variations of vibrations therefore there are variations of objects: rocks, water, trees, animals, humans, feelings, moods, emotion, everything… if it doesn’t vibrate is doesn’t exist.

Look at your body, feel it. Your body for the most part is flexible. Soft in some places, hard yet yielding in other places. Look at your mood and basic personality. Is it light and flexible? Or is it hard, unmoving and rigid? Ever notice how things that are rigid break easily, while the flexible items change and flex with manipulation and therefore remain strong and whole? I’ll leave you with these concepts in your awareness while I explain the following exercises that I enjoy doing.

~ Catching Judgments

 Go to your local grocery store and grab a cart (I’m from the south so I call it a buggy). Sometimes I really do shop but sometimes I just look around at the multi-colored packages, walk around stretch my legs and look at all the people. This is a wonderful thing to do during the winter time; it helps with the blues. Do this, just look at all the people. Don’t stare like a crazy person and don’t start up a conversation with anyone unless you know them and not talking to them would seem rude. Do you see women, men and children? Are they short, tall, fat, skinny, baggy, dressed funny, dressed nice, messy hair, no hair etc. etc.? These are judgments. Can you look at a person and have no comment? Can you look at a screaming child and allow that child just to be without internal dialog? But what if my thoughts are positive? Oh she’s pretty or he’s dressed nice; oh look at that adorable baby! Positive thoughts are nice but they are still judgments and with those innocent but positive judgments you are not letting that person, place or thing “be” there without your permission. This exercise is a good one for promoting inner peace. It’s peaceful NOT to have a comment (good or bad). It’s peaceful NOT to have an inner opinion or outer reaction (good or bad). Did you see how much milk has went up in price? Did this make you angry? While you’re at it you can go on an internal commentary about how unjust all these price hikes are because you can’t remember the last time you got a raise. There is no peace in this commentary, it helps nothing. This is an exercise that helps with those times when you are listening to family; friends or co-workers argue and be drama queens and kings. The exercise is to promote peace within yourself and when you are at peace you vibrate peace then other peace filled people and situations draw close to you. When one asks “Yes the world is in a mess but what can I do”? This is it. Be a promoter of peace. Be Peace. Be it. Show it. Do it in every area of your life… (This means have no judgment) everyone will sense it and see it and do it for themselves. It’ll spread like wild fire. Don’t worry if you get really good at this, it will not turn you into an emotionless zombie caring for nothing and no one. This tendency to judge stays with us forever. The goal is to experience what it’s like to turn it off and rest.

Once you practice turning it off every day for a while you may find your sense of humor enhanced in different ways and the things you once found funny no longer tickle you like they did and on the other hand you may find a lot of things just plain hilarious. That leads me to the other exercise I like to do that involves lightening my vibration and maintaining my flexibility.

~ The Giggle Factor

Being at peace and being happy might be two different things. Peace leads to happiness as far as I can tell. Happiness and Peace must be sisters. I know it certainly helps to maintain that “on the outside objectivity”. But remember your dominant vibration draws other situations and people to you that vibrate very much the same. So knowing this re-visit those things that make you giggle and smile. I do this because I want to giggle and smile more often and it "pulls" more people to me that giggle and smile as well. So these are the times in my life I find myself smiling suddenly or times during a sense of happiness and pure contentment. This is my list but what makes a person “happy” is highly personal. Sit and think for a while. What are things that make you happy?

~ I’m happy and content

• When I’m chopping veggies or preparing an evening meal in the kitchen and I can hear the news on the TV in the background.
• When I catch a whiff of wood smoke on a cool crisp fall day
• When waking up in the morning with absolutely nothing to do but to go back to sleep for another hour.
• When my two sons are in the same room together and they are laughing their butts off about something.
• When receiving a good pay check.
• When thinking of good writing subjects
• When listening to my oldest son belly laugh
• When watching puppies playing on the grass in the spring
• When smelling fresh cut grass
• When grilling out on a quiet summer day with soft music playing from the open window
• When going for a long walk on a rarely used back road
• When watching a favorite show or movie on TV
• When chatting with a friend in a small coffee shop or while sitting at my kitchen table.

These things mean comfort, happiness and contentment to me. I focus on these every day. When you clear your mind and have no judgments, you’ll find more instances like these. When you recognize these feelings make a mental note then write them down before going to bed. Be gentle and non judgmental of yourself first and foremost. Have fun, feel good and raise those vibrations.

Mediums and Spirit Contact

A do it yourself approach.

Now keep in mind; these blogs are FYI for your information. You make up your own mind and the little links you see on these are suggested reading (both books and web links). Having stated this; are we ready to learn a little bit about mediums?

How many ways can one type “be careful”? Be careful with your feelings, your heart and your wallet. Everyone wants to be special. To have a special unusual ability sets one apart from the masses and keeps the ego feeling satisfied. A medium is a person who “taps into” the spirit world and contacts the dearly departed or other dimensional beings for advice and communication. Although, why a person would want advice from someone from another dimension about this dimension is beyond me. Perhaps it would be more prudent to hire a life coach? Please don’t think I’m poking fun at the art of medium-ship! I personally spent long hours on and off for the past six years studying and practicing this meditative exercise, just out of shear curiosity. I just wanted to learn more about my dimension and others out there too.  Medium-ship is a meditative art form. The reason I say to be careful about hiring a medium is the same reason I would advise you to be careful about hiring an accountant or a babysitter. At least with them you can look to see where they went to school. Mediums usually claim to be “born” not “made” or trained.

Remote viewing: “Remote viewing is a mental faculty that allows a perceiver (a "viewer") to describe or give details about a target that is inaccessible to normal senses due to distance, time, or shielding”.

Knowing what I know about remote viewing: The U.S. government trained people to remote view targets during the cold war. You can have the psychic ability of a duck and still learn to remote view. One person that is famous for his remote viewing technique is Major Ed Dames.  The more you practice the developed process the better you become. So knowing this about a process that is obviously practical, trainable and learnable you would think other “psychic abilities” would be trainable: the key word here is “able”. Having said this why wouldn’t one be able to learn how to become a medium?

I spent most of the summer of 2005 heavily exploring this and more recently I have set up IADC sessions on and off as I have time and privacy. I have two suggested readings for you on this topic. One is a web page by Raymond Moody using mirrors. And the other is a book by Dr. Allen Botkin called Induced after Death Communication (IADC). * If you type IADC in Google it links up with a site about mud equipment manuals, among other interesting things. Yes, this has been around for the past 15+ years but Google has as of yet to recognize it. Just thought that was and interesting bit of info*

 Dr. Botkin was treating post traumatic war veterans with a popular but new rapid eye movement therapy (EMDR) and found out the soldiers were turning into mediums during their rapid eye movement healing sessions; communicating with the people who they had killed as enemies during battle, among others. This, in turn, relieved their stresses and nightmares, putting them on track to healing faster than traditional “talk” therapy.  For a more detailed description please feel free to browse Dr. Botkin’s site. In that summer of 2005 I practiced both of these methods as a combined experiment. I set up my mirror, chose my target, (departed love one) thought about the target along with rapid eye movements and relaxed “gazing” (please refer to Moody’s site). The results were alarmingly vivid at first, then I got more comfortable with the process and as I grew more comfortable my success dropped.

EMDR is a rapid eye movement therapy; it's like dreaming except you are awake and fully conscious. A person thinks of the thing that bothers them the most. Examples: a rape, childhood abuse, robbery, battle, even selfishness or heartbreak over lost love. They feel this pain, remember it as if it were happening right then. As they bring this pain into their “now” they follow their right forefinger from slightly lower left (around jaw line) to slightly upper right (tip of eyebrow), in consistent motion, within their visual limits, without moving the head. Just move your finger back and forth about four times. Don’t move your head; just your eyes. This is processing, this is only one of the ways a person can experience releasement. It takes about 60 seconds. Years worth of talk therapy… EMDR takes approx. 60 seconds. Yeah.

As you can see these subjects I’ve listed are tied together very nicely. You practice one you get another. In order to practice after death communication you have to learn to “let go” or release. Release the need of it, the importance of it. Let it flow. This is why my success declined; I needed to practice releasing.

So do you have an interest in this? Are you afraid or curious? I don’t think I’m the only one who has ever combined these two “medium techniques" together but I do have some advice for success and continued results and it involves releasement. As stated earlier (and I can’t repeat it enough) Releasement is to let go of the importance of it. Botkin found that when the same client tried to achieve the same successful communication result it was harder if not impossible to repeat it consistently. Letting go of sadness and grief, self imposed guilt and shame relaxes your body and mind. You can even “let go” of the need to communicate with your chosen target or your dearly departed. This letting go process is key to continued success. My personal opinion of this: I think our ego gets in the way of doing great things in the end.

Any remote viewer or anyone with highly developed ESP will tell you that the more personal and emotionally involved in a situation they are, the more clouded their abilities become. Feelings maybe the universal language but too much of a good thing will shut down the abilities to see what is really there.

So be careful with your feelings they can cloud your God-given gift to “know”. Be careful with your heart; practice releasement as much as possible. Even if it’s just getting pissed off about silly things: release it right away. Last but not least, be careful with your wallet. Don’t pay someone to do something for you that you can do yourself….     ~If you have the nerve

Ta Ta for now. Up next #11. Energy, homeopathic and herbal healing practices. (This might turn into an anti-pharmaceutical  rant or maybe not; I don’t know yet ha).

Love Ms.A

  

This is where it begins.

     Well that took a while and I had to have some help from my friend Mrs. B. Thank you Mrs. B, me love you long time!

The Barefoot Path is a beautiful spiritual path that some say is smooth without stones with warm grass on which to walk. I, on the other hand, did not find this true at first. I placed myself upon it, saw a little way ahead, tried to come back and found that someone had locked the gate behind me. ~damn it.

 Well I'm going to start out full blast and just tell ya a little bit about myself. I enjoy all things "other-worldly" I've been known to spend six months researching mirror glazing or trespassing through old houses with camera and recorder in hand hoping to get pictures of orbs (my favorite) or audios of EVPs (electronic voice phenomenon). I spent some time in 2005 getting my hypnotherapy license and studied for a D.D. in spiritual healing arts which I use to this day. When I use to work nights, ten years, I was an avid listener of coast to coast am; a whole radio show dedicated to the unusual. This is what spiced up my life and made the work experience better and more palatable for me. I've had some very strange experiences even before listening to "coast". So what I would like to do to make my first blog on "Blogger" more informational and concise is list all the things in which I have grown to believe over my life time, just right off the bat. This way one subject will be chosen and I will let you, the reader, know my experiences involving that subject. Sometimes I might write about somethings that are not on the list. On the other hand I may believe in a subject and have no person experience with it, in which case I will research it and write my findings. Sounds good to me.

                                                    ~The List~

1. EFT
2. Psychic abilities
3. Ghosts
4. Other Dimensions 
5. Hypnosis
6. Vibrational healing
7. Magic: words, wands, and spells
8. Tarot cards
9. Remote viewing
10. Mediums and Spirit contact
11. Most all energy, homeopathic and herbal healing practices
12. Manifesting
13. The Sedona Method
14. Kabbalah
15. EMDR

Okay I think this will do to begin with. If you have heard of other subjects you would like to discuss and they aren't listed here let me know in the comments section. My goal is to choose one of these subjects and give my honest opinion of it and also, to show how to work it into ones everyday life OR if it pays to work it in at all. Soooooo I think I'll choose number 10: Mediums and Spirit contact. Thanks for reading.

~To be continued

Ms. A