Reiki Flow

The Daily Draw: Death

The Spring Clean of the Soul

It’s all about change. Much of life is about change. Death is all about change, or at least the card is.

This is the time of year we open our windows and doors to let in the fresh air. OK, maybe not literally, yet. In Co. Kildare I still have to defrost the car in the morning, but the sun is shining and the equinox is upon us so the last of winter should soon be past us. So much for the weather report.

Part of the airing out process is to discard the things that seem to be serving no other purpose than to collect dust. That way the fresh breeze blowing in won’t cause said dust to blow up your nose and in your eyes, and your home won’t be cluttered when you bring in new things to it.

The energy of the death card is very much like that spring clean energy, only applied to oneself rather than to one’s home. This can be a little less comfortable, and perhaps partially because we make a choice to clean the house, but when it comes to the changes indicated by the Death card, it feels like we are the ones who are being cleared out, and we have little or no choice in the matter.

Many of us probably have a natural resistance to the kind of changes indicated by the Death card. They are challenging. We may need to move house, town, or even country. We might find ourselves losing one set of friends and making others. The job we thought we had for life might suddenly evaporate because the company was purchased by a competitor. Anything could happen, and our complacency could be shattered and replaced with a new appreciation for how little in this world we can take for granted. Death can be quite inconvenient.

The thing is, these unavoidable changes that come along in our lives are usually for our own good, even if we can’t see that immediately. What we might lose in imagined security, social status and creature comforts we make up for in character development and spiritual growth. That is, as long as we are willing to go with this energy and ride the wave of change. Swimming against the current will get you nothing but exhaustion, but people still try to do it.

We are here to live, to learn, to love, to experience life. The energy expressed by the Death card is a necessary part of making that happen.

The Daily Draw: The World

It’s been a busy few days at work and a somewhat cathartic week personally. It feels like some internal spring cleaning has been happening, leaving more room to move, a sense of freedom and lightness. My head is a little melted from a serious amount of 1s and 0s, but I can take my foot off the gas now and start easing into a four day weekend.

The World seems to be a perfect way to end my week after the emotional experience of letting my self own my own awesomeness on Wednesday with the King of Cups, and then the reinforcement of connectedness and assimilation of my own personal beliefs and values that came with The lovers on Thursday.

The World has to do with assimilation too, and so much more. There’s a feeling that you’ve actually arrived somewhere, although that somewhere could well be an internal destination where you are still on your journey (aren’t we always) but that journey feels like home. You are where you are meant to be, the right people are around you, and everything is as it should be. You feel like you’re at the centre of synchronicity. “We are all one” isn’t just an expression, it is your life, at least right here and right now.

There’s a feeling of accomplishment too, a milestone has been reached and you’re on to the next level, whatever that may be. Whether it be material, spiritual, intellectual, etc., you‘ve realized a goal or a desire, maybe a long held one.

Enjoy this feeling. There will be more challenges, another leg to the journey. Sometimes it’s easier to realize the energies represented by this card than at other times, but they are always there even when they seem so distant. So remember this feeling, because when you can recall it in your body and spirit then you are most of the way back to being connected to this energy.

But enough of my rambling (I told you my head was melted, lol). It’s Friday! I hope you all have a wonderfully blessed weekend.

Namaste.

The Daily Draw: The Lovers

This is the third time The Lovers has come up for this blog in the last few months. The energies seem particularly appropriate following on from yesterday’s post about the King of Cups, I’m feeling a strong sense of peace today that I can best describe as an assimilation of belief to a state of being, feeling comfortable in my own skin, knowing who I am. And that, in turn, is showing up as a sense of connectedness to the people around me and the places we inhabit. We are all one, as the saying goes.

I am also feeling like I need to focus a bit more on my day job today, since it is making more than the usual demands on my time. So, sorry if this is a bit short, but instead of a new, long post today I’m hoping you will take the two old ones I referred to earlier about the same card:

The Daily Draw: The Lovers, February 12th 2015

The Daily Draw: The Lovers, December 9th 2015

Namaste

Don’t Look Back: Some Astrological Thoughts for the week

I wanted to share this article by Isaccs George because I feel like it’s aligned with the direction The Daily Draw seems to be going in this week. I detect a theme of drawing a line in the sand, leaving the past behind and moving forward.

The Daily Draw: King of Cups

This is the first message I read on social media this morning:

The light in me thinks the light in you is FREAKING AWESOME- Namaste

That’s a nice thing to read to start your day. And it’s a nice thing to feel. I certainly feel that way about other people, and I say it to them without hesitation, although perhaps not in those exact words. I keep reading, hearing and, on occasion, even saying (silently) the same thing about myself. But actually getting myself to say the words out loud in front of a mirror, for example, is not quite as easy as saying it to others. In fact, it can feel a bit forced. I know some of you have mastered this, but many of you know what I mean.

The question is, why is it so hard? Is it because like many people I am my own worst critic? Is it because I know where all hidden blemishes are and in which closets the skeletons are hidden? Is it simply a matter of conditioning from an early age, same as many people, that I’m nothing special, that I should aspire to being normal (whatever that is)?

The quiet voices inspiring me to be myself were drowned out by the (scarily) IMPORTANT people in my like parents peers and teachers. My feelings were strong, and meant a great deal to me, but growing up in the middle of the 20^th Century, of course that had to be conditioned out of me. If any parents are reading this, I can assure you that one really good way to screw up your kids is by training them to deny their feelings, that they are wrong, or that they are unimportant in an effort to “help” them achieve normality.

Young people don’t need any encouragement to feel like there’s something wrong with them. Despite trying to “be normal”, and keeping my real self to myself, I knew I was doing a terrible impersonation. I gave myself bad grades for my performance, and let others do the same. With 20 20 hindsight, all I can think now is what a waste of time and misplaced effort that was. I was denying who I was, my own inner power, and leaving myself a boulder of a block to my inner being that, years later, I was still chipping away at. As a result I was missing opportunities right in front of me to reveal and regain who I was.

So what does any of this have to do with the King of Cups? Well, it’s me isn’t it. I feel like my past experiences, what I probably had to go through to “get it” (and I’m still “getting it”) has led me to a point where I feel like this card is challenging me today. You get your heart abused enough over the years and either you are going to shut down or hone a certain degree of empathy. In all honesty, I’ve probably had a bit of a yin yang relationship with those two extremes in the past, and for a long time the former overshadowed the latter, which would pop up now and then for a while until I told myself it wasn’t real.

That was then and this is now. For the last several years I’ve been excavating myself, my real being, from beneath the debris of decades. Now I’m a loving and caring daddy, leader, healer, and counsellor at least to my family. Self confidence in who I am as a heart-centered, spiritual, intuitive and empathic being has grown gradually over the last few years.

When I saw this card come up this morning I saw a challenge. Not to be the more like the King of Cups, but to own being the King of Cups. To stop saying “I’d like to, but” and start saying “I am”, believe it, live it. Because you know what, I am freaking awesome.

And so are you.

The Daily Draw: Four of Swords

Well, this is a bit of a no brainer for me, no pun intended. There’s been a lot going on in my head lately. Not in a bad way, but most certainly in a busy way. I’ve been inundated with important information, parsed it, questioned it, condensed it and translated it from binary to English. And that’s just the day job.

One thing about having a full life is that your head space tends to get very little time to itself, when it doesn’t feel obligated to think, plan, remember, strategize, etc. not just for yourself, but also on behalf of the people who count on you. Do you know that in March alone there are five birthdays in the immediate family? FIVE! My partner is out two nights this week for meetings. I need to get back to updating the playschool website. There is just so much going on.

So, I look at the four of Swords and think, “Yeah, that’s about right, I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” Except we all that’s not what it’s telling me. It’s telling me that I need to find a way to work some rest and recuperation time into my schedule, because it’s just as important as all the other big important things that need to be done.

Why is it always so much easier to say no to myself than to anyone else? When I have space in my life it’s easy to find time for healing, meditation, chakra balancing, the benefits of which include letting my mind unclench and disentangle, which can also be felt in the body as relaxation from stress. But it’s when I feel like I have the least amount of time that I need those things the most.

There are many places and ways to meditate that might not seem all that obvious. You can clear your mind and meditate while hovering or doing the dishes. Chakra balancing while driving along the N7 has become part of my daily routine, along with the Reiki shower, which can be whatever you intend, in case you’re wondering. And the relax game I play with my 6 year old each night, which is basically the learn how to meditate 101 exercise of relaxing all the parts of your body, is as much for me as it is for him.

My ideal is to have that that peaceful, harmonious core of being 24/7, to be able to live out of that with an open heart, at one with all there is. As you can imagine, it’s more of a challenge to maintain at these more demanding times. It’s also the best time to practice.

The Daily Draw: Ten of Cups

What did I do yesterday? I made dinner, changed nappies, played with my kids; what can I say – I’m a wild man. The people on the RWS Ten of Cups have it easy, demonstrating the card’s energies of joy, peace and happiness with their small family. We’ve got twice as many that age, and then the teenagers.

Yesterday I found myself appreciating (once again, I’m sure) that so much of being a dad is just showing up, day after day, doing “normal” things. I don’t mean just being in the same room, with your face behind a digital newspaper or something, but being present. Sure you have to be the leader, the peacemaker, the teacher, the moral compass. But sometimes it’s just about them sitting on your lap and babbling on with them about everything and nothing. Obviously I’m not talking about the teenagers, although the main difference there is they don’t sit on your lap.

I think part of what I mean by “just showing up” is there doesn’t always need to be an agenda, a trip, a goal or a plan for the day. Especially with very young children, plans need to be very flexible anyway. Few things in life are as futile as trying to get the cooperation of a defiant four year old who just doesn’t want to. Sometimes you can get more out of Sunday if you just let it flow naturally and go with the collective energy.

As it happens, the day before we hosted a birthday party attended by up to a dozen three and four-year-olds along with some of their parents and siblings. And that went well, despite being cautioned by their teachers who suggested that perhaps we were insane for attempting such a thing, which left me with a suspicion that my daughter’s playschool class is similar in chaos to the caterpillar room from Toy Story 3. We found them very well behaved, but in fairness we only had about a third of the class.

So Sunday was a day of chilling out, watching videos, eating party leftovers and hanging out of the guy who is there all day a only a couple of days a week. That’s good for all of us, especially mammy, who never gets a break during the work week. It wasn’t a terribly exciting day, and it wasn’t a particularly noteworthy one. It was only perfect.

The Daily Draw: Seven of Wands

I had an online conversation begun with a post I put up about Kepler-186F, an earth-like planet with probable life that was identified in the Cygnus constellation about 500 light years from here. So if there are life forms, they are our closest neighbors.

This immediately inspired comments along the lines of hoping they aren’t as horrible as the parasitic inhabitants of our own planet. I was bemused by that since I was expecting more awe and less negativity. I wondered aloud which planet would try to colonize the other first.

The conversation eventually turned to an agreement that we are all creatures of shadow and light, and that often the shadow in ourselves is a reflection of someone else’s darkness, which is most likely reflected from elsewhere. There is a quiet revolution going on where some of us are trying to reclaim our core being, who we were before this world tainted and conditionalized us. And then there are people who think that is a load of nonsense – we are just base creatures out to serve our own agenda with no regard for anyone else.

Now there’s a conflict to ponder – maintaining peaceful resolve and raising vibrations in the midst of chaos and corrupt, decaying, controlling institutions throwing at us whatever power they have left to survive. You could construe that conflict as an epic of Tolkien or Star Wars proportions if you think about it. But how does reacting to that darkness with our own darkness do anything other than perpetuate the darkness? Is peaceful resistance, and raising our awareness and vibrations as effective on this plane as we hope it is? What is the way forward when opposing ideologies insist on imposing their world view through conflict instead of allowing others to live in peace?

I’ve got more questions than answers today. If you have any ideas jot them below.

Meanwhile, here’s a more concise and coherent discussion of the Seven of Wands from when the card came up for me last.

Namaste

The Daily Draw: Justice, Reversed

Life isn’t fair. We’ve probably all been told this, said it, lived it, worn the T-shirt. Sometimes we feel let down when cosmic payback doesn’t come as instant gratification in a form of our own choosing. That’s probably a good thing.

The Justice card represents fairness, ethics, truth, responsibility, objectivity, and the use of those attributes to determine outcomes. One example of Justice energy is when a judge makes an impartial decision in a court case after weighing up all the facts. Another example is the cause and effect that is continually in play within the universe. It may not always be obvious to the earthbound eye, but every action does indeed have a reaction.

When the sword of truth and justice becomes inverted, the universe seems to go against the laws that we assume it works by. I say “seems”, because how can the universe do anything other than abide by its own laws? When it seems to circumvent those laws I suggest that the fault is not in the universe, it is in our perception. When it comes to understanding the universe, we are like the blind men and the elephant. We experience some of it, each in our individual ways, but none of us ever see the whole of it. Not in this life anyway.

So what is justice? If someone steals from you, they should be punished, and you should have your possessions returned to you, right? But what if the thief was a poor woman struggling to feed her family, would you demand equal punishment? And yet a court of law might put her in prison while more serious criminals with better lawyers receive lighter sentences. Meanwhile thieves in business suits find new and interesting ways to “legally”, but not ethically, steal your money then play golf with the judge on Wednesday afternoons. But while we can all see the injustice and inequality in that, what do we know of any soul contracts or karmic debt that might have created the dynamic where some are punished for trying to survive while others become billionaires siphoning whatever they can from the many?

What we can be sure of is that somewhere in this apparent chaos there is order, even though we might not see it or appreciate it at the time. So do we just give up and let whatever happens happen? No, but maybe we need to shift our focus from the injustice, and the anger and frustration that accompanies it, to the lesson. Every injustice, challenge, obstacle, hardship we experience is the universe trying to teach us something. If you’re scheduled for that lesson, the universe will keep trying to teach it to you over and over until you get it. Once you do, everything will change – you’ll go on to the next lesson.

The Daily Draw: Ten of Wands, Reversed

I drew this card upright a couple of weeks ago, and focused on how, although it indicates a struggle, this is a sign that you’ve been able to carry on regardless – so it was a good news/bad news take on the card.

Today the Ten of Wands is reversed, and all those wands are about to come tumbling down as the load is lost and that is also a good news/bad news situation. The bad news, of course, is that you’ve hit the breaking point. You’ve taken on more than you can or are willing to carry and you’ve had enough. It’s over, finito, tote your own bales, do your own dirty laundry.

The good news is kind of the same news. Sometimes we have to get into a crisis situation, a tipping point, before we really allow ourselves to stop and say, “HEY!!! I deserve better than this. Somebody help me out here. I need a break.” Hopefully this turning point hasn’t literally left you broken, as in physically, mentally or emotionally ill, any of which can feed off each other. It’s no coincidence that stress often shows up as back pain, and long term stress can lead to heart disease and cancer.

I know it won’t always be the case, but the majority of people who get to this tipping point do have one or more people in their lives who can take over while they recuperate. In my experience, some of those people were actually trying to help the self-appointed carrier of all wands long before now, but of course some people have to do everything themselves until they get to a point where they are incapable of doing so.

If you recognize yourself in that, then I suggest it might be a good time to find ways to let yourself “skive off” (as we say over here). Make a cup of coffee and put your feet up. Tell the older kids to put on some chicken dippers and chips for the younger ones. Play hooky. Call in well. Watch some daytime TV. Take a mental health day. Go for a walk without your phone. De-stress, meditate, book a Reiki session. Get proactive about self-care before it becomes a matter of life or death.