We are closer to our Behaviors as Friends;

Thoughts are Friends too.

Nature and the Elements are Friends, yet often…

We spend more time wallowing in our Emotional Friendships;

Food and other Substances are Friends too.

Angels are Friends, yet we prefer…

Being with our Television and Movie Friends;

Romance and Mystery Novels are Friends too.

The Creators are Friends, yet we regularly disregard…

Benevolence, to be with all our other Friends;

The States of Being we find comfortably soggy, fulfilling and breathless.

Have you heard?

All bets are off, all agreements are broken, the compromise ends;

These so-called Friends are not very friendly as it turns out.

Need I repeat myself?

Maybe you just didn’t understand me the first time…

Anyone out there?

In the past I was willing to compromise myself…now I am not.

Not too awfully long ago, I needed you and that’s why I put myself aside.

Surprise! I don’t need you anymore…and I’m listening to my inner voice, a lot!

Before now, I was ready and almost anxiously waiting to sell my soul, just to have a friend.

I am not desperate, so that’s not happening!

Up until very recently, I was a garbage can waiting for your trash.

The trash collectors ran over and smashed my can yesterday…so I can no longer serve you in this way.

Yes, I know you are feeling lost and confused…I know it took you a long, long time to train me to take out your trash…I’m really sorry you are having these experiences…and I’m not at all sad that you have to find another place to put all those unresolved emotions.

Yet you see, you are not my job, anymore…I will never again make space for you and not me…I am not willing to be present for you at the risk of losing myself.

Right now I’m looking for equality in my relationships…equal give and take…honest expression…personal responsibility.

It may take a while to find this–probably a bit longer than it will take you to find another garbage can–I know, so I’m also learning about patience, self-worth and vertical living.

Anyone out there?

There are many explanations for this response, including, simply, one that is tactile. Let’s look further and interpret it as a form of intuition. In this massage instance, it’s a physical body sensation based in our ability to physically feel energy from outside ourselves–it’s called “clairsentience.”

Even though there are many relaxing stimuli present–quiet music, evocative scent, soft color–the therapist transmits something through her hands that goes beyond what triggers all the usual senses.

The following experiences convey various types of intuition, even telepathy. Some are pretty simple and are sort of the norm for us all. Others are a bit more complex and until fairly recently have remained hidden to the mainstream behind a thin veil of fear or discomfort, even denial. All involve what is often called the metaphysical realms–energetic or spiritual experiences–beyond the physical.

It takes willingness to see things differently and a bit of dedicated practice to bring the pieces of the puzzle together. Even if you’ve been intuitive all your life, are you ready to take it further, to own it 24-7? Are you willing to engage with it in a more truly responsible realm for the greater good? Read and gauge these scenarios for yourself; have you ever experienced anything like them? Do you want to experience more of the same with consciousness?

-You walk by a building and feel a cold chill.

-You’re driving down the freeway and suddenly feel the spiky rush of adrenalin pulsing through your body. Not a car in sight, a mile down the road you come across a serious accident.

-You aren’t a sports enthusiast, yet are talked into a professional soccer game while traveling through Chile. The closer you get to the stadium, the more excited you become.

-A woman awakens at 3:15am mountain time feeling all the symptoms of a heart attack. Gasping for air, she holds her heart and wonders whether or not she should call 911. Instead she walks around the living room, sweating and panicking with chest pain. She does her best to breathe deeply and slowly until the symptoms finally clear away nearly an hour later. This woman’s mother calls the following day with news of her father who had experienced a heart attack at approximately 2:15am Pacific time.

These are clairsentient experiences–intuition through body sensation.

-In another time, a woman is walking through her castle garden with her husband holding his arm. She spontaneously gasps and squeezes tightly, her eyes widening. She turns quickly to his chest, looking up into his eyes and murmurs without apparent cause, “she’s been taken.” At the same time in a different part of the country, this woman’s daughter has just been tattooed with the priestess’ crescent moon symbol on her forehead.

-A man lays down on his living room carpet to stretch his back and relax. Suddenly an image of his wife comes to mind…she is making love to someone else. The man sobs uncontrollably, watching as the image plays out in full-length and color. Later he confronts his wife and she admits to the affair.

-One Friday, a woman begins to see the image of an acquaintance in her mind and out in her energy field as well. This image is tenacious, and no matter how many times she clears her mind and field, this face does not go away. Gradually the woman’s head begins to pound, her body goes into fear, she tosses and turns for two nights. Thoughts of this face are rampant, preoccupying her mind throughout the weekend. On Monday she calls that acquaintance to set up a brief tea date. The conversation reveals an incident that took place on Thursday that validates & explains the presence of this face around her the last few days. As soon as the conversation is complete, the face disappears, the thoughts stop, and the woman sleeps again.

These are all clairvoyant (clear sight) experiences; the second and third are also empathic (ability to feel others emotions); the third is probably clairaudient as well.

-A woman rests in her hotel room. Suddenly, a quick short breath throws her head onto the back of her chair and she feels immediately lost and alone, overwhelmed with fear. A voice rings in her head over and over, “where is everyone, why is everyone gone; why isn’t anyone here?” A barrage of rainy, sodden images fly through her mind, though nothing looks familiar, and the loneliness creeps in deeper and deeper for the next few days.  On the last leg of her journey home across country, she becomes filled with rage and begins to spontaneously & primally scream for no apparent reason.

-When she arrives home, she learns that three key people in her life had betrayed her on the very day of that first lonely vision. Upon walking into her office for the first time in three weeks, she feels unwelcome and pushed out, like someone else belongs there instead. Some days after, she learns that the same three people had misused her work space while she was away and many assumptions were made about ownership.

Both of these experiences involve clairaudience, empathy and clairvoyance.

We are all gifted with visions, feelings, hunches, instincts and the like. Intuition is our   inheritance and an ally!

Use it, speak to it, trust it, embrace it without reservation. Sometimes the signs are very soft and quiet; sometimes they are loud and obnoxious. At times they are seriously tenacious and just won’t go away; we lose sleep because we fail to address the first signs. Reframe what you previously thought of as mental chatter; notice if you feel emotional or have physical sensations at odd times. Do strange thought patterns arise…things you wouldn’t normally think about?

Listen and honor these moments; you will soon become a fluent “intuitive” speaker with increasing awareness and graced with a new interpretation of events around you!

Please join us on this incredible intuitive journey! Check out our online courses in self-mastery and opening to spirit. You can sample one session or sign-up for a full course.

They are strange black marks on white paper aching to say something to someone. We humans do a lot of simplistic black marking these days in our emails and text messages, and quite frankly, use this shallow modern day symbolism to cover up what we’re really saying. These words are often written hastily without much consideration, depth or meaning, and they do little to enhance truth and soulful interaction.

One of my favorite lines comes from the 2010 movie, “Ghost Writer.”

“All the words are there, they just aren’t in the right place.” That was Ewan McGregor’s character when he first previewed the book he was to re-write for a famous “illiterati.”

Great writers can transmit subtle energies and amazing messages through their expertly placed words. Good writers and speakers paint incredible pictures to create allegories with their words; they make love to us with well-crafted sentences, cohesive paragraphs and integrated chapters. Writers are some of the most amazing artists, who, like black and white photographers, capture the essence of life in varying shades of two non-colors. The words they choose have the ability to call on the primal and intuitive qualities of the brain, deep inside readers’ personal plays of expression.

Writers are wordsmiths, courageous and willing, as they allow everyone who reads to lay brushstrokes on their work.

Yet no matter how enticing the prose, when we are half-asleep with the book on our breast, if the paint is too thick or too thin, if we read the words with personal dogma and projection in place, we will most certainly miss the message. This level of ignorance is not really a reading and writing problem, and our communication issues are not the fault of writers.

What would Homer and James Joyce feel about that level of responsibility, or that lack of receptivity.

No, everyone isn’t a writer or even a reader. Though we do all have the innate ability to listen with openness and care, allowing the words of another to resonate with the intentions of their personal stories and to stand alone. We all have the heart to put judgements aside if we choose it. We all have imaginations, we are all inspired by the same creative source, someplace deep inside.

If we are still, if we move ourselves out of the way, we can actually sense the transmission of the artist, feel the essence of the words, and hear the heartbeat of their lost and naked souls.

1. You only have to sweep the house once because there’s no longer any dirt on the stoop that would normally blow in with the wind through the front door.

2. As you sweep the inside dirt out the door, you can clearly see what it looks like because the outside dirt has already been swept away.

3. When all the dirt is swept, you can sit inside a nice clean house.

Pros and Cons of Sweeping the Inside of the House First:

1. You only sweep the stoop once…this is good.

2. When the outside and inside dirts mix together on the front stoop, it can become confusing. You might find yourself asking, “where did all this weird dirt come from…can it possibly be all mine?”

3. You might as well just sweep the outside dirt into the house and get it over with…the wind is always moving to some degree or another and rarely does it blow from inside outward!

4. If you do sweep inside first, you could be overworking, never taking time to rest and reflect as the old dirt flies out the door.

What do you sweep first…the front stoop or the inside of the house?

I say sweep the front stoop first…who cares if you have to sweep it again!

Learn to be a really good sweeper.

Yin and Yang are often identified as the masculine and feminine qualities represented in sacred symbolism, within our physical bodies as well as the emotional and psycho-spiritual conditions deeper inside of us.

To the Taoists, Yin and Yang are evident in the flow of energy moving through the meridians and as the elements of water and fire. The Hindus and similar yogic-based philosophies may see this as prana and apana, the union of Shakti and Shiva or the Ida and Pingala nadis.

Celtic and other indigenous people find Yin and Yang represented in the earthly and heavenly elements of water and fire, earth and air, as well as in the energies of moon and sun.

Our physical bodies are holograms for Yin and Yang, the mythos of ancient cultures and divine symbolism. In these contexts we can see ourselves as reflections of heaven and earth, a balance of both integrated within us. Our brains, our autonomic nervous systems, arteries, veins and blood flow, the endocrine system, and even our behaviors are filled with this energy.

In our world, we say that Yin and Yang is a Universal Principle. Maybe we would better express it as an Earthly Principle–part of a series of earthly expressions that exist under or inside a principle of Oneness. When Yin and Yang are truly integrated, our human version of oneness can be a gateway to higher dimensions where duality probably doesn’t exist.

In fact, it can also be expressed by the levels of consciousness and our chakra system–the 8th chakra above our head represents the gateway. For us humans, it’s important to actually experience the principles, singularly and in concert with one another. It helps us to physically feel both distinction and unity.

Try this simple integration exercise using one of the most profound yet simple, divine energies available to our bodies. Use it for self-reflection, expression and evolution: the BREATH!

Sit quietly; breathing naturally, your feet are on the floor. Visualize your breath moving up and down your spine, as if it is a river contained within your body. Feel the breath pooling at the top of your head and then allow it to run down to your pelvic floor and tailbone; let it pool there too.

Breathe and feel all the spaces along your spine in between.

Allow your breath to flow freely inside and immediately around your spinal column. It surrounds the bones, the muscles, especially the nerves and fluids inside the container of your vertebrae. Breathe in this way for at least 5 minutes, noticing how you feel, what you see or sense. What do you discover about your breath, your thoughts, your physical sensations and emotions?

Now, imagine the breath moving up the spinal river into the center of your head and then branching off down two streams that run alongside the spinal river on right and left sides. Inhale upwards through the spinal river, all the way to the top of your head again. Exhale downward through the two streams to the pelvic floor and tail area.

Perform this gently, quietly, repeating the sequence for another 5 minutes. Notice how your body feels, notice what you see or sense. What do you discover about your breath, your body, your thoughts and emotions?

Repeat this whole exercise each day for a week. Do not purposely change anything inside you—not your breath, nor your rhythms; not what you see. In other words, don’t try to fix what you observe. Just keep breathing.  If something naturally or spontaneously shifts inside you on any level: physical, emotional-mental, energetic, visual or spiritual, allow this to take place. There is a big difference between fixing and allowing.

What do you notice as you progress through the week? You might want to make some notes in a journal about your discoveries.

Qualities of Yin & Yang:

Feminine-Masculine

Right Brain-Left Brain

Are there any schizophrenic, psychotic or depressed people around you?

Has anyone you know experienced a fugue state or a dramatic split during their lifetime?

How about anyone with that new boutique mental illness called bi-polar disorder? Have you ever been anxious, anxiety-ridden or had a panic attack?

Have you ever rubbed elbows with, or are you acquainted with any sociopaths or psychopaths?

Have you ever spent time with anyone who has what is conveniently diagnosed as dementia, senility or Alzheimer’s disease?

And by the way, have you ever asked yourself these questions?

If so, have you explored the possibility that all humans are easily capable of going into one of these states, or that many are currently sitting on the precipice looking down into the abyss of madness? Have you ever given any thought to looking over that edge yourself?

What about the truly creative types who are dangling one foot in the air, holding an almost constant and compulsive state of curiosity and willingness to jump? Did you see the movies “Pollack,” & “Surviving Picasso?” Have you read any of Sylvia Plath’s books, especially “The Bell Jar?” Do you know the story “The Prince of Tides?”

How about this: have you ever been in a state of love, lust, even enthusiastic ‘like’ or ecstatic grace with God…another person?

A warrior might interpret many of these things intensely, yet if that is daunting, you could take a gentler approach, looking at madness through John Keats’ eyes or some of the old balladeers and poets like Yeats, Wilde, Lord Tennyson and William Blake. Some of them spoke softly then, yet touch us now no less deeply, viscerally and melodramatically.

Stay up for a couple days without sleep; sail the ocean without sight of land for even a day; walk alone in the forest for a few hours; make your way through thick, soundless fog for a few minutes. Can you feel the madness creeping in?

Maybe it’s just a grander connection to earth and sky that we feel in those moments, a loss of direction and increased confusion, a temporary separation from self as we know it to be, and a greater sensation of the divine.

Can you feel it?

And can you simultaneously know the mini-mad-moments in life? How do you move through them? Do you judge yourself, loathe yourself or pressure yourself to return to some state of self-designed sanity? Are you afraid of them, looking only for comfort in your divinity?

Wouldn’t it be wonder-filled to be still and breathe in these moments, or would you rather run away from yourself and anyone else who appears in this way, anyone who isn’t ‘normal?’ Can you look yourself or someone else in the eye while in such a vulnerable state of self-expression; can you hold space for it all to just move naturally while altered in any of these ways? Can you be yourself in the midst of an episode of madness, no matter who’s it is, and how far the insanity goes?

Can you imagine a moment of freedom? Can you imagine a lifetime of freedom, or does that much freedom make you feel a little bit mad?

One of my former teachers created a lecture series called, “You May Be Psychic, Not Crazy.” It was how he started Berkeley Psychic Institute, decades ago. He also wrote a creed about Spiritual Freedom, and was the first to roll out the truth in a way that resonated with my sensibilities, my interpretations.

Paulo Cohelo speaks to madness as a state of warrior-ship. He speaks truth to me too.

“A Warrior of Light carefully studies the position that he intends to conquer.

However difficult the objective, there is always a way of overcoming obstacles. He seeks out alternative paths, he sharpens his sword, he tries to fill his heart with the necessary determination to face the challenge.

But as he advances, the Warrior realizes that there are difficulties he had not reckoned with.

If he waits for the ideal moment, he will never set off. The Warrior requires a touch of madness to take the next step.

The Warrior uses that touch of madness. For–in both love and war–it is impossible to foresee everything.” An excerpt from Paulo Cohelo’s “Warrior of the Light, A Manual.”

Purchase Paulo Cohelo’s book.

Bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next.

What makes you a warrior is what you do when that storm comes.

You must look into the storm and shout as you did when you were born…

‘Do your worst…for I will do mine.’

Then the fates will know you as we know you…as one who came to stand for integrity.”

*This is a paraphrased version of a birthday speech from “The Count of Monte Cristo.”

Those who see life differently than I, might say it’s a bat.

No matter to me, I am who I am. I see it as a sword and I use it regularly, especially when I need to move out of an outworn paradigm or escape from the clutches of an addictive habit.

Everyone is batting, slicing and poking lately, not just me.

Each one of us is integrating, re-integrating, reorganizing, and even rewriting our stories. We are turning over apple carts right and left, leaving our former villagers agape in our wakes.

Sometimes this is not only upsetting, it’s incredibly painful. Sometimes we feel confused, sometimes certain, and in others there’s a lot of ease. No matter how we interpret recent big and small events, time is quickly moving and we are quickening whether we want to or not. That in itself feels sort of strangely easy lately because we simply don’t have the time to worry, feel guilty or get stuck anyplace too long!

I like this quickening…even though it often hurts me and anyone else in the surrounding or nearby energy fields. I just use my sword–or bat depending on how you might see it, to cut through my own tendency for sluggishness, guilt, grief, or even too much sympathy.

Even if you aren’t a sword fighter or batter, you might like this.

There’s a story about a woman who, on her last legs to enlightenment, crosses paths with a bent and tired old man carrying a bundle of wood on his back. She watches as the man loses his balance, all the wood falling to ground. It’s her choice, her final test, whether to stay and help him pick up the wood or to walk on.

What would you do?

One day a couple weeks ago, I must have misplaced my stinger because I found myself under a pile of rotten, moldy and crumbling sticks. An old man was laughing and skipping down the lane not too far away.

Sitting in what felt like a sodden mire of great trepidation, I called an old buddy of mine. Instead of pulling the decaying wood off of me, this friend sent along an article about spiritual warrior-ship.

It was a reminder. Here’s the link: The Unknown Lightworker–The Lightwarrior

Reading this blog helped not only to allay the sticky feelings that could have easily turned to guilt, it helped me to shift my way point…it got me up and through one of those more confusing moments recently when I might have stopped again to help an old man.

What does it mean to be someone with integrity, and how do we define our placement along the way in terms of ‘all things being equal?’

One day while watching the second martial arts movie about Bruce Lee’s master teacher, ‘Ip Man2,’ I heard my answer.

Ip Man said at the end, “No man’s integrity is more valuable than another’s.”

Something really clicked in me and this was my mantra for several weeks. One day while reflecting on the message of Ip Man’s words, I saw an image of two circle patterns. Each circle had an outer ring with a fairly large center point in the middle. The first and larger circle appeared to be a Universal metaphor for integrity and had a lot of dots along the outer ring.

The second, smaller circle symbolized the individual circles in which we humans live and operate. It was an enlarged version of the dots around the Universal circle ring.

In that moment I felt truly clear about this idea of who is where on the way. We are only as enlightened as we are whole, and wholeness, or integration, is the same for everyone. No one person is better than another or further along the path than someone else when integrity is at the center.

All other points are just varying degrees of integration–stages along the way.

Each one of us is walking inward toward center; inward to our own center and inward to the center of the Universal principle of integrity. A balance of yin and yang inside of us, yin and yang together, inside a circle of oneness.