The Smiling Spirit

Archive for the ‘Energy Healing & EFT’ Category

This is what I’ve decided to construct. Not a Book of Shadows. I know that the name of that book is part of the witches tradition, but that is the beauty of being a Solitary and making your own traditions in my humble opinion.

I thought about constructing a Book of Shadows and was giving thought to what I’d want to include and the more I thought about it, the more I thought of things I would include. Then the more things I listed to include, the more the similarity of the nature of those things seemed.

The nature of all of the things I would include in my Book of Shadows are things related to energy and healing and life and creation and joy and love. Those are not things of shadow. Those are things of light.

I also believe that working around some of the seemingly darker aspects of “witchcraft” will help me to reach a broader audience and be more readily accepted if not understood. And it’s not that I’m seeking anyone’s acceptance, but more that I believe that if I can bridge the gap between myself and someone else simply by altering my language, why shouldn’t I?

Besides, I find the idea of a Book of Light so much more appealing.
I know witches are said to/to have kept information regarding their magic in their Book of Shadows, but I see it like this.

My LIFE is my magic! Everything in my life, I have created… manifested. Everything I am interested in and am pursuing is under my spell and part of my magic. And my LIFE and my interests and pursuits center specifically around my home and family and health and Spiritual growth.

Maybe it’s… non-traditional, but I went and got myself a 3 ring binder. If I read something online I want to include in my personal book, I print it, punch it and include it. I’m free to use my trusty highlighter and make notes in every margin to my heart’s content! I even have section separators and folders. It organized so many things for me. I had information floating all over about all kinds of things and now I have a single location for all of it!

This translates over to everyone! You don’t have to be a witch to have your own book. Especially for the homemaker or mother. There’s so much we do and are responsible for. It really is wonderful to have a place to put it and a place to find it later! I even include a journal, calendar and my own personal “Tame the House” cleaning schedule/routine that helps me to conquer the chaos of life with boys!

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I recently changed the look of my blog and changed the title tag line to embrace who I’ve become. My blog is an expression of me and as I’ve changed over the past couple years, so has the look and feel of my site. After I chose to embrace the little witch in me and changed my site to reflect her, I lost 14 subscribers :) I didn’t think I’d run off so many people by adding the words “Solitary Witch” to my description, but I did. So, for everyone who stayed behind and didn’t jump to judgment, I’d like to talk about it a little bit in honor of this Spirit Day. Sunday has become the day when I find myself sitting in contemplation of my Spirituality and faith, so here’s what’s on my mind.

How & when I first encountered witchcraft.

When I was 23, I got my first computer (w/ 1 gig! LOL) and my first real opportunity with internet access. I’d always been very interested in psychic phenomena and other things generally labeled metaphysical. It didn’t take me long to start running searches on words like; psychic development, psychic abilities, ESP, lucid dreaming, out of body experience, etc. You can easily see my area of interest.

I found myself on Steve Pavlina’s website, reading about how to develop my psychic abilities. I didn’t really HAVE any abilities at the time. I’d had some eerie experiences with deja’vu and some weird dreams, but nothing off the charts weird, and to be honest…. off the charts weird was what I was looking for. It wasn’t so much that I thought it was cool or just found it interesting, but I always felt like it was there. I’ve always felt like I was on the verge of something big. Nothing I could describe or even understand, but I’d lived my life since probably about 10 or 11 years old feeling like I was half a breath away from an epiphany that would change my life, and if I could turn some corner, somewhere, fast enough, I could catch a glimpse of it.

That might sound sort of weird, but it’s the only way I can describe it.

On Steve’s site, I was introduced to the concepts of subjective reality and law of attraction. As soon as I read it, I knew it. It was like being reunited with one’s long lost sibling when you didn’t even know they were missing…. but recognizing them immediately and completely upon first sight. That’s how it felt to me and as soon as I acknowledged it, I knew, bone deep, that this was the epiphany I’d been waiting for.

I began reevaluating my entire life. The way I felt about my past began to change. The way I felt about my future most certainly changed. All things were suddenly possible. I read everything I could find for a month or more. I acquired books and ebooks on lucid dreaming, obe, life after death, and loa. I even started praying, which is something I’d not done since I was a child. My flame was ignited and i was burning for the depth that I knew I could find if I looked.

A friend dragged me to a women’s event of some sort at the local Day’s Inn one day. I didn’t want to go at ALL, but with a laid off husband, 2 yr old, and newborn…. getting out of the house was the main objective so I agreed to go. While there, I had my first encounter with a psychic. We had our Tarot cards read. As we sat chatting after my reading, the psychic and I discovered that through family, we each knew who the other was. She invited me to her sewing shop and I promised to stop in being that, as it turned out, her shop was a mere 3 blocks from my house.

That night, I dreamed of her. She told me she could help me and in my dream, I knew I’d prayed for guidance in this metaphysical pursuit and that she was the help I’d been sent. I went to her shop a couple days later and told her what my interests were and about my prayers and dreams. She smiled knowingly and told me to get my hands on the book “Practical Solitary Magic by Nancy B. Watson” and read it, and that I could come back anytime I had a question.

I had that book in hand within a week and I still own my original copy. I have made reference to it so many times. It has served me well. But it was through this book that I realized that solitary witchcraft and Christianity and LOA are basically the same thing. I took the metaphysical and psychological ideas I got from that book and the Christian ideas I’d learned growing up and the law of attraction concepts I was readily learning and I found myself transformed into this new person.

Where I went from there.

I dove into LOA after that. Law of attraction and the psychological and metaphysical things I’d learned from my solitary magic book made the way I understood Jesus and the Bible shift. The things I’d been taught were interpretations belonging to the person/people teaching me. I’d come into some knowledge that had given me some experiences that had changed the way I interpreted the Bible. One of my biggest epiphanies during this time was realizing the fact that I actually had the CHOICE to change my interpretation. Wow! What a revelation.

Over the past six years or so, I’ve been growing at what I would consider an amazingly fast rate. That’s not in comparison to the rate of anyone elses growth, because frankly, I’ve only recently (about a year and a half) been conversing with other people about growth and Spirituality. I say it is an amazingly fast rate because it makes my head spin. I have moments of clarity that rock my very soul and it takes me weeks of contemplation and prayer to wrap my head around it. Often it seems that as soon as I do, another moment comes hot on the heels of the first and sends me reeling anew.

One of the things I’ve learned is non judgment. That means that you don’t judge someone based on what you think you know of them, but it goes much deeper than that. When you cease judging everything, based on what you think you know, what you know… changes. It became a living miracle to simply stand in the forest when I stopped THINKING it and just DID it. Before, I would stand in a forest with a running mental commentary in my head, bombarding my experience with judgments and labels.

“What a beautiful day. I love the trees. It’s so sunny out here. It’ been sunny all week… and busy. What a busy week. I hope next week isn’t so busy. If I stay ahead of everything, I won’t be so busy. *sigh* I suppose I should start a to-do list….”

I know that you know exactly what I mean. My thoughts would run right away from me, and it all started with me judging the day as beautiful. It’s not that labeling something as beautiful is a bad thing, but I learned that one judgment sends my mind into a flurry of other judgments and labels. I feel such a sense of presence and awe when I can stand, blank minded and without judgment. It feels like the true magic that IS life is pulsating and speaking to me when I just observe.

With this discovery, I began making every attempt to stop consciously judging. I still do. It’s a daily thing. With this non labeling life I began to build, I also continued to build my faith. My faith was just that, my faith. I would not label my beliefs. As soon as I say Christian, you judge. As soon as I say new age, you judge. If I were to say witch…. oh the judgment. Judgments about who I am or who I must be based on what other people know, don’t know, and are afraid of. No thank you! I even stopped labeling myself as straight, bi, or gay when I filled out profiles because each label brings a judgment.

Why I finally decided to label my faith & how I define my life now according to the faith I’ve chosen.

I was recently struck by another epiphany. Back in August of this year (09) I was explaining to someone that, what I or anyone else does as a practice to consciously manifest makes no difference. It’s a subjective experience. What works perfectly for me might never work for you. How you manifest consciously hinges completely off of what you believe and how you see your world. I went on to explain that Christians have rituals they perform such as communion and mass and confession and prayer. Witches have rituals and spells. New agers use things like vision boards. It’s all what you believe in and what you’re comfortable with.

Then I suddenly realized… I’ve been so busy purposely NOT labeling what I believe, that I now found myself manifesting by default because I wasn’t putting any real consciousness into my manifestations. I kinda make vision boards and I kinda meditate and I kinda make intention lists and I kinda keep a gratitude journal. I kinda do so many different things and don’t put a lot of myself into any of them

I hadn’t been manifesting by default the way I did before I realized the effect my thoughts and beliefs had on my life. I had changed my mind. I had changed my life. I was happy. The things I was manifesting into my life reflected the happiness I was feeling on a pretty constant basis. I had no specific focus for my intention though. I had no specific entity that I was sharing with or talking to. I was generally addressing the universe at large. That was okay for a long time. Now I was realizing I needed something more specific.

The idea of a guardian angel or spirit guide(s) became incredibly appealing. A best friend waiting in the wings to listen to me, empathize with me, understand me, talk to me, guide me…. to help me consciously manifest magic in my life. These ideas brought me to the concepts surrounding archetypes and archetypal energies. These were concepts first reintroduced to me through the book, “The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire by Deepak Chopra”, and became a large part of my new angle on my Spirituality. They were reintroduced because I’d read about them in my solitary magic book, but passed them by at the time because it just didn’t resonate with me then.

I went back to Practical Solitary Magic and started reading again. I felt like I was reading about myself. I knew these things and believed in them and was more comfortable with the concepts than I’d ever been in the past. I realized that I’d “gone green” on Earth Day 2008 and that my connection to Mother Earth had grown clearer since. My connection to my psychic side began growing when I changed my diet. More whole grains and natural and whole foods…. MUCH less processed anything.

The thing that turned on the little idea light bulb above my head was Murry Hope’s definition of magic. Murry says, “Magic is concerned with the conversion of universal energies into practical frequencies that can be utilized according to the needs of the occasion. These energies in themselves are totally neutral, having no affiliation with any belief, system or personality either here on Earth or anywhere in the cosmos, their manifestation at the magical level being colored entirely by the nature and intention of the user.”

I’ve always thought that changing your life by changing the thoughts you think is just like magic. When I read the above definition again, I realized….. it IS magic. It can be nothing else. It’s harnessing the powers of the Universe according to what you desire and turning energy into form. How is that NOT magic. And I immediately liked the idea of being in control of magic. I’ve also realized that I apparently have a brilliant capacity for moving energy and healing myself.

It seems, I realized quite suddenly one morning in August 09, that I didn’t have to choose to define myself as a witch because I turned into it without even realizing. Here I am…. My mother, the Earth, lending form to my body allowing me to manifest the consciousness that my father, the Spirit has given me. I live inside my life as though it is a gift. I live inside my life as though all the energies at work around me are my guardians and here to assist me in my growth. And if I feel lost, I just call out for their help and they’re there.

I actively love my Mother & Father and treat them with honor, respect, and my deepest gratitude. They in turn support me in all of my desires. I’m a mother, a wife, a healer, a (more all the time) psychic, lucid dreamer, a gardener, and among these and many more things, I am a conscious living being with the power to purposely affect the events and happenings in my life. The only real difference between now and one year ago now is that one year ago, I’d refused to label my beliefs and now, I’ve accepted what I am.

I don’t dance around naked under the moon… although I wouldn’t be against it. (LOL) I do small, personal, ritualistic things to focus my energy and intent to set manifestations into motion during the new moon. Speaking of which, I’ve been living lunar for one year on the winter solstice this year.

My life really isn’t any different from anyone elses if they believe in the law of attraction and conscious manifestation. As Edie Brickell said, “What I am is what I am, are you what you are, or what?”

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Enjoy These Great Resources!

• Need Help? You Can Heal Your Life
  
• Smile Across Your Heart: The Process of Building Self Love
  
• Love Your Body, Love Your Life: 5 Steps to End Negative Body Obsession and Start Living Happily and Confidently
  

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Happy Monday Everyone!
My house is so darn quiet this fine afternoon. I love my husband and boys but MAN am I glad when they all go back to their schedules on Monday mornings!! I’m hard pressed to find 5 minutes of quiet solitude between 4pm Friday and 9am Monday.

Hello Quiet Solitude! LOL

I’ve been very interested in energy healing and bodily energy systems for about a year now, however, most of my knowledge on the topics has only come in the past 6 months. It was about a year ago that I received some pretty serious burns on my hand and through energy movement during meditation, I completely healed myself in 3 days.

I wasn’t aware at the time that I was healing myself. I’d simply been practicing a new meditation technique I’d heard about, at night while in bed. Then, each morning I would marvel at the burns on my hand and how they were almost gone and I was feeling NO pain.

Then, on the third night as I laid in bed and started to feel the tingle of the energy moving in my hands, it suddenly hit me. I sat right up in bed. I knew, without a doubt that I had healed my hand by doing that meditation.

So began my curiosity about energy healing.

I’ve used this little trick a few times since. You’d think I’d use it when I get a cold or something, but it just doesn’t occur to me at the time. I’ve recently intended to use it more. Maybe a couple months ago. I haven’t had an occasion arise until this past Saturday.

Early Saturday afternoon, while rough-housing with my dogs, I REALLY hurt my right elbow. My right elbow had been bothering me a little here and there all week, but Saturday was not good. I was roughin’ up Bandit and Abby came up behind me and my elbow came back and hit her right in the mouth.

I immediately spun around to see if she was okay, even as the sharp pain shot like lightning all the way to the tips of all five fingers and up to where the base of my neck meets my shoulder. She seemed fine. No worse for the wear. My elbow was already swelling. I looked at it in the mirror and there was a dark purple splotch forming with two red marks at the center where her teeth hit me. The skin was broken, but just enough to say it was broken. The bruise is was concerned me. That and the pain that covered my ENTIRE arm.

I walked around the rest of the day with my arm in “sling” position so I wouldn’t bump it and I was moving very slowly. The entire bony tip of my elbow was too sensitive to touch and I gently held ice on it a couple times.

That night, as I was nearly dozing in my chair, I had the thought strike me that I should heal my elbow. So I did. Totally.

I know, I didn’t believe it either. LOL I went to bed and spent a little time relaxing and then I put all of my total awareness into my elbow. I could FEEL the bones and the way they fit together in the join. I could FEEL the swollen tissue and I had an odd sensing of “darkness” in one area of the bone, so I went into that spot and focused “healing” into it.

I worked on it consciously for maybe 10 minutes before I nodded off into sleep. I remember waking once in the night and after lying awake for a few minutes, I remembered my elbow and “went into it” until I was sleeping again moments later.

Sunday morning I woke up fresh as dew. Abby cuddled with me for a few minutes as she does every morning and then I shooed her off and tried to get my robe on before Bandit licked me to death in his “Good Morning Assault!” LOL As I headed down the hallway with my entourage pulling up the rear, I stretched my arms up and ran my fingers through my hair and WHACKED my right elbow on the doorway of the bathroom.

It almost seemed to happen in slow motion. I knew what was going to happen a mere fraction of a second before it did. I knew soon enough though that I recoiled and grabbed my elbow in anticipation of the agony I expected immediately at contact. To my utter astonishment, there was no pain.

I slowly bent and straightened my elbow a few times very gently. Then I poked at it not so gently with my left hand. THERE WAS NO PAIN! When I’d gone to bed the night before, my finger tips had hurt. They were tingly and achy and just didn’t feel good. Same with my entire shoulder and upper arm. I was wondering if I hadn’t broken my elbow and had pretty much decided to have it looked at if it was still radiating pain so far the next day.

That will not be necessary. Not only is it pain free now, but the bruise AND teeth marks are completely gone also. I wish I’d taken a picture of it when it happened and I intend to remember for next time!

Today, I went over to K’s house and we went through a weight lifting routine we’ve been working on. I was bench pressing and curling just fine. Even the irritation that was in my elbow previously has disappeared.

I feel right as rain! I’m going to continue putting healing energy into it for the rest of the week. I don’t want to jump the gun and re-injure myself later. I’d rather feed it all the energy it needs to mend correctly the first time.

I was previously interested in possibly obtaining formal training in energy healing, but I don’t think I’m going to go that route now. I think I’m going to practice on my family and see if I can harness this on my own. If it’s half as easy to transfer this energy to others as it is to heal myself, I will be able to use RESULTS as my “qualifications”. Personally, I’d rather work with somebody who can give me results than somebody who can show me paperwork.

I’m so very excited about this!

So, that’s my latest development. I’ve had some more little psychic pops recently also, including seeing the window my Hubby was working on, fall out of its frame, out of the corner of my eye, about an hour before it actually happened. Now we’re debating psychic pop vs conscious creation. Did I see it before it happened or did I make it happen by visualizing it? I think I saw it first because in my conscious experience, when I’m creating, it’s more of a FEELING. I’m not a natural visualizer. Seeing these pictures is new to me, as is having psychic pops. They came at the same time.

Who knows?! I’m learning more about myself and my reality ever day so I refuse to speculate. The answer will come :)

I hope your Monday isn’t stereotypical. If you’re finding it is, it’s time to change your mind about it! Make sure you do something pleasurable, just for you today. You’ll thank you later.♥

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~ Related Resources ~
The Psychic Tarot Oracle Cards
Psychic Healing
The Reconnection – Heal Others, Heal Yourself by Eric Pearl

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I’ve started my chakra meditations today.
I’m finding myself very excited about committing to doing this for the next month. I’ve decided to go from today, Monday August 31, 2009 until Sunday September 27, 2009. That’s a 28 day round. One main chakra focus each day and each chakra will end up being the daily focus four separate times.

My main references for this little experiment are 3 books.

I have:

The Complete Guide to Crystal Chakra Healing: Energy Medicine for Mind, Body and Spirit
The Crystal Chakra Healing book is by Philip Permutt and came with a deck of chakra cards. There’s one card for each chakra that lists the associated crystals, incense, colors and a meditation. I’ll be doing the meditations on each card without using crystals for the first week. I may decide to incorporate the crystals later.

Energy Medicine: Balancing Your Body’s Energies for Optimal Health, Joy, and VitalityUpdated and Expanded
This one is by Donna Eden whom I LOVE! You can search for her on youtube and see videos of her energy exercises. It’s a little unconventional, but hey… so am I :) This book goes WAY beyond just chakra energy and covers acupuncture meridians and EFT to name just a bit. I HIGHLY recommend it to anyone interested in energy healing or anything related.

The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy
This last book is by Cyndi Dale. It goes WAY WAY deeper than the first two. This one is more for someone very interested in the human body’s energetic systems. It covers chakras and pressure points and meridians and so much more I can’t even BEGIN to list it all here. It’s a very large, 500 page reference manual.

I really love all three of these books and am reading the relevant chakra section out of each of them on the appropriate day. My intention over the next 28 days is to not only stimulate and heal my chakras but also to learn and retain the information I read and write about.

Today I started with the root or base chakra. This is the chakra associated with the base of the spine and most commonly, the color red. It can appear, to individuals who can physically SEE energy, in gold tones and purple hues also.

As I walked around all day, I kept my root chakra in the back of my mind. Any time I found myself immobile, I would focus my consciousness into it and allow myself to feel it spinning. I suppose I must have focused directly on it 5 or 6 times throughout the day for maybe 2-3 minutes each time.

I also did a formal meditation. The card said basically to take the standard deep breaths to relax and then visualize a red light glowing from within and growing in intensity. Then see and feel it sink down through your body into your root chakra at the base of your spine…then down your legs and through your feet into the ground and then see it spreading out like red roots. I also took note of the spinning sensation. I love that part.

Tomorrow, I think I’m going to start with my root chakra and move into my sacral chakra. It is said that energy moves into your body through the root chakra and networks up through the others. I figure starting at the bottom and moving upward each day should keep things stimulated and moving.

Hope you all have a great night. See ya tomorrow!

The format of this site has changed slightly, but may still be of interest to most if not all of it’s current visitors.

My target audience is now stay-at-home moms, working moms, wives and girlfriends. There is a Spiritual overtone, so ANYONE interested in Spirituality, Law of  Attraction, conscious living, conscious and/or Spiritual parenting, loving the life you live, finding purpose in your life and/or just BEING HAPPY may find this site useful and is MORE than welcome to stick around!

This site is my life. This is what I do. Not the website, but the content therein.

I’m a 30 year old mother of 3 boys, 2 dogs and 2 cats. I’m married to the man of my dreams and we will celebrate 11 years this August!! These 4 people and 16 paws are my life! I’m a homemaker. A deeply spiritual homemaker who’s doing everything she can to create a loving, happy, Spiritual existence here in this life.

I’m doing my best to raise conscious, loving, thoughtful, Spiritually aware children. My boys are 7 (Kyle), 9 (Kevin) and 14 (Thomas). Thomas has lived with his father since he was 2 and I’ve had to learn how to build a loving relationship with a son I see only every other weekend. I’ve also had to learn how to build a relationship with my Ex and his wife which has been very relaxed and easy for most of these years.

I’m here to help and inspire and LEARN from YOU! I hope you can help, inspire and learn from me too :)

To the left you should see a list of the topics I intend to be blogging about. If there’s anything listed of interest to you, stick around!