Hands On, Reiki On!

There are several components to a complete reiki practice, but what most people hear about is the hands-on healing aspect of it.  And this is a good thing.  Our bodyminds are concerned with their well-being.  Both body and psyche are always moving towards wholeness, towards equilibrium.  Even those off-kilter moments are often the body’s wisdom attempting to put things right.  What I love about the hands-on healing aspect of reiki is how simple it is.  Place hands on body, energy begins to flow.  My hands know where to go on me (and on clients) by perceived changes in temperature, tingling, a magnetic pull, or just a knowing.  The body will tell me when it has finished drawing in reiki in any particular spot.  No need to call in archangels, wear a certain colour, face a specific direction, or surround myself with 18 different crytals.  Hands on, reiki on.  It’s that simple.  Come and try it out sometime.  If you like it, maybe you’d like to learn it so you can treat yourself every day for the rest of your life.  Nice.

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Third Resource for Self-Employed Anythings

We continue our recommendations for self-employed folks. 

Today’s kudos go to Business Mastery by Cherie Sohnen-Moe.  In its third revision, it’s a big, blue trade softcover book that’s loaded with everything one needs to create and maintain a successful practice.  While written by a massage therapy teacher and geared to people in the healing arts, people in many fields – helping, creative, etc. – will benefit.  I suggest that you begin at the beginning and fill in the pie-like chart to help you assess how balanced (or out of balance) the various components of your life are – very revealing.  You’ll learn how to get publicity instead of overpay for advertising, how to write and send a press release, check out legalities, design an attractive display ad, and so much more.  When I worked with Business Mastery, my tarot and reiki practices became more polished.  Win-win for my practice and those who benefit from it.

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Good Daily Questions

This morning, I was planning a workshop that I’ll be giving to a group here in Toronto next week (“Tarot for Empowerment”).  Part of it will be about creating a Card of the Day practice for oneself.   Many of us pull a card for the day, whether tarot, angel card, goddess card, or other tool such as crone stone or rune.  It helps to have a focus when using our insight tool, preferably a focus which educes the best in us for the day.  And even if you don’t use cards of any kind, you can use any of the questions below for personal reflection, journal writing, or positive motivation.  If a daily card isn’t practical for you, do a Card of the Week.  Simply change “today” to “this week” when you pose your question.

• What do I most need to know or learn today?
• How can I be of service to life today?
• What is my most helpful resource today?
• How can I succeed in every way today?
• What nourishes and sustains me today?
• How can my wisest, most loving self express itself today?

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Second Resource for Self-Employed Anythings

We continue our list of supportive books for self-jobbers.

You’ll enjoy reading and working with Making a Living Without a Job by Barbara J. Winter.  She’s recently revised it to include more online/internet tips and how to make it through any economy.  Winter shows us how to take a passion or interest and turn it into successful and enjoyable self-employment.  Her sage advice ranges from why creativity is more important than capital, avoiding common pitfalls of self-employment, and developing multiple streams of income.

So, turn that hunger for tea sandwiches into an English afternoon tearoom.  Let people pay for your aptitude at tax-processing.  Transform your love of beautiful sacred sites into an altar-creation service.  Stop poring over people’s astrological charts for hours on end for free.  You get the idea!

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First Resource for Self-Employed Anythings

Many people ask me about getting into their own professional practice.  Whether your dreamjob is tarot consultant, dogwalker, astrologer, sculptor, life coach, caterer, massage therapist, events planner, or whatever, it helps to have some guidance.  Being a self-jobber (like me) is like having a job interview every day of your life.  I’ve decided to offer you a series of written resources (i.e. books) that I’ve found helpful on my journey as a self-employed visionary, helper, catalyser, etc. 

Today’s recommendation is The Medicine Woman’s Guide to Being in Business for Yourself by Carol Bridges.  Bridges’s premise is that all work can be like a shamanic practice — taking into account the well-being of ALL of life, not just our private practices.  Each chapter is based on a Major Arcana card from her Medicine Woman Tarot.  Every chapter builds on the previous one and ends with a helpful review/summary of what to integrate, what to do, and what success tool to acquire.  Examples:

From Chapter 5, “Peacemaker”. 

• Five – Four walls plus you make a space you can rule.
• Peacemaker – Make a space which is totally nourishing to yourself. Make all of the boundaries clear in a peaceful way.
• Important Success Tool # 5 – Your private “office.”

From Chapter 9, “The Guide”.

• Nine – Find nine others who preceded you on your path.
• Guide – Choose one to listen to attentively.
• Important Success Tool # 9 – Know when to be humble.

The activities are enjoyable AND they really work us to be honest, compassionate, discerning, and real.  Be ready to fill your notebook with insights and your calendar with deadlines to keep you on track.  You’ll cry a bit as you release outworn patterns of being and working and you’ll laugh a lot as you create work worth offering.  The Medicine Woman’s Guide to Being in Business for Yourself is a wholistic programme for your practice/business, no matter what it is.

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“Tarot for Relationships” Evening

Last night’s monthly tarot class, Tarot for Relationships, was deep and fun and rich.  We used the tarot as a feedback tool to explore all types of relating (intimate, professional, friends, family, etc.).  With various layouts and processes, we looked at how we might find & create specific new relationships, maintain or tweak current ones, and end or find closure around others.  My favourite activity of the evening was a dialogue between two cards (see the instructions below, after the reading).  At the end of the evening, my friend Gerald Parks offered all attendees a Oneness blessing.  Lovely!  I was so energised after teaching that I did a short reading with the Motherpeace Tarot to explore our Tarot for Relationships gathering:

1. What good can come out of tonight’s class for the participants?  Son of Wands, upright.  A more focused sense of who they are in the world and greater devotion to their self-expression.
2. What good can come out of tonight’s class for me?  Son of Discs, tilted to the right (round cards!).  Deeper centredness/grounding and more dedication to my work.
3. Which activity was most helpful to people in the class?  4 of Swords, reversed.  The privately role-played dialogue/conversation between cards.
4. In general, what purpose is served by the monthly tarot classes?  Empress, upright.  They provide an outlet for people’s instinct to offer love, caring, and support to one another.

 

Now, here’s an activity for you to try with your own tarot cards (or other insight tool).  Think about a particular relationship that you’re in.  Write down your names and the nature of your relationship.  From your face-up tarot deck, choose one card that most looks or feels like you and one card that most looks or feels like the other person.  Write down the card names and which card represents which person.

Place the two cards side by side.  Take time to be with the card images.  Notice how the figures in the two cards are interacting (or not).  Notice the colours, shapes, actions, settings, and so forth.  What do these tell you about your relationship?  Now switch the order of the two cards.  Again, notice the details.  What do they tell you about your relationship with the person?

Choose a topic that you feel is important for you and the other person to explore together.  Write it down.  Pick up the two cards, one in each hand.  Improvise a conversation between one card and the other about the topic.  Speak the parts aloud.  Speak a second conversation between the two characters from your most biased, “this is how I’d like the conversation to sound” point of view.  Then make up another dialogue from the other person’s most biased, “this is how they’d like the conversation to sound” point of view.  Lastly, speak the conversation as it’s most likely to sound realistically.  Write down any insights you’ve gained from this process.  It’s up to you whether or not you actually initiate the chat in real life.  Your personal understanding may be enough.

Please let us all know how this process goes for you.  The comments can help others to learn about their own process of relating with others.

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Keep the Web Vibrating

The past few days have been about reconnecting with terrific people.  Mylong-time singer/teacher friend Rosemary Kimberley and I reconnected after many years over her dad’s death.  I played the music for his memorial service (came out of musical semi-retirement).  Caught up with interfaith minister and life coach Barbara McDowell, whom I first met at a circle practicum with Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea a year and a half ago.  Chatted on the ‘phone with Ferol Humphrey (in Dallas) and Nancy Antenucci (Minneapolis), both terrific, wise tarot people and dear hearts.

So many people touch our lives, and we theirs.  In the spirit of circle, it’s helpful to keep the web of connection vibrating so that we and they remember we’re/they’re not alone.  Are you thinking of someone?  Send them an email.  Call them on the ‘phone.  Mail them a card.  Poke them on Facebook.  Let the smooth, round stone of affection and memory cause the pond of interconnectedness to ripple.

A tarot card that draws my attention lately — in shuffling the deck, in dreaming about it, and in seeing it in shamanic journeys — is the 10 of Blades from the Daughters of the Moon Tarot.  A group is seated inside a teepee, holding council, listening carefully as one woman holds the talking piece and a rattle.  It’s her turn, and she knows that because she has the talking piece and that she’s in safe, sacred space, it’s OK to tell the story of what’s on her mind and in her heart.  In your web of connection, whom do you trust the most with the heartstory that’s foremost in your life right now?  Let them know.  Whose heartstory do you need to hear right now?  Listen deeply.  Keep the web vibrating!  Blessed be.

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Premises of Circle Ways (and James)

Just so you know where I’m coming from, whether in my work with you or in my casual interactions with you, here’s a list of some premises which guide me.  It’s not dogma, but rather what I’ve discovered on my journey thus far.  As I grow, shift, and evolve, so will they (one hopes).  I don’t ask you to conform to anything written here, simply know what my outlook is and to respect that to the best of your ability just as I will do my best to respect your philosophy.

• We have choices about how to live and respond to life.  Life neither punishes nor rewards; it simply is.  We can choose to either keep or adjust our perceptions of the past.  We can choose to either let the future just happen to us or to consciously select possible futures.
• Every being, human and more-than-human, is inherently creative, resourceful, wise, and whole; therefore, all beings and events we encounter, if we choose, are potential sources of feedback to help us remember our personal and planetary maturity.
• Life’s helpful feedback is more apparent to us when we consciously slow down to pay attention to it.
• Questions and listening call forth wisdom.  Definitive statements lock wisdom out.
• We are not called to be super-human 0r transcendent, but rather we are summoned to be fully human, present, and embodied.
• The Earth is not a sinful “vale of tears” from which we need to escape, but rather the Earth is a beautiful expression of the Whole which needs to be embraced.
• Belief is not enough.  Practice is what counts.

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“Circle of Cards” workshop changed to March 6th

Dear Fellow Lovers of Life,

Regretfully, there were not enough participants to hold this weekend’s workshop at the Earthsong Mysteries School in Maple.  Though others indicated interest, only four people were able to come… not enough for a full workshop.  We require a commitment from six to twelve eager participants who deeply choose to explore personal and planetary healing through tarot and circle process.  I guess many of us are still in that Hanged Man mode I mentioned in my winter newsletter.

Both Andrea Mathieson (my wonderful host) and I were a bit disappointed, but in taking the pulse of the event with the assistance of the I Ching, we realised it was best to postpone for now and hold it a month later, Saturday March 6th.  Please chisel this into your  calendar, let us know you’re attending, and come for a lively and rich time together in a month!

Remember the “Tarot For Relationships” evening in my Toronto space on Feb. 18 and the introduction to circle process, also in my space, on Feb. 25.

Blessings,

James

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Brigid’s Blessings

Today, February 2, we remember the goddess Brigid, keeper of the flame/hearth, keeper of the well, inspiratrix of creativity/poetry, healer, and more.  Her name means Fiery Arrow.  The day is known is Imbolc, meaning either “ewe’s milk” or “in the belly”, both motherly references.  Some groups mark this date by offering initiations into their traditions.  Others light candles to honour the spark of approaching Spring.  Below is a series of questions for you to answer in whatever way suits you: journal, tarot reading, circle discussion, or other.

1. What does my well of creativity look like?
2. How can I best tend that well?
3. How can I quench my spiritual thirst?
4. What fires me up?
5. How can I best channel that fire?
6. How can I get more passionate about our beautiful world?
7. How can I contribute to my healing?
8. How can I contribute to the world’s healing?
9. If I were a poem, what would I sound like?
10. Into what Mystery is Life now initiating me?

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