Horizons Magazine
APRIL 2003
Meditation makes you feel powerful, Dad banishes my brother,
Psychic Development
Hello and welcome to the April 2003 issue of Horizons Magazine. I've had an
amazing last couple of months, reconnecting with family and friends from my
childhood. I've been too busy to look into my astrology to see what's going on
that reflects what I'm experiencing, but I'm sure it'd be interesting. If any of you
astrologer types want to give me a quick read of your impressions of my transitting
planets, I was born April 10, 1952, at 6:20am in Miami, FL.
Roger Coleman, who does Solar & Lunar Celebrations of the Ancients (page 30,) points out that April is a month for goddesses around the world and I count myself among them! Roger is recovering from hip replacement surgery, so send him good wishes for a speedy recovery. Roger doesn't let anything keep him down for long and he'll be up (though perhaps not kicking) soon enough. And ladies, Roger being the tall, handsome, single guy that he is, he might be kinda slow with this hip for awhile, so now is the time to catch him!
This was the month for friends' surgeries. A girlfriend had all her top teeth pulled and, exactly a month later, was fitted for a plate. Instead of being fitted right away, she waited the month to avoid a lot of refitting due to her gums being swollen from the extractions, and now she's glad she waited. She's a trooper anyway, and as of this writing, 4 days after getting the new plate, she has very little discomfort and was happily eating crunchy tacos an hour ago! Someone near and dear to me needs that done as well and is a bit of a procrastinator, so this was good inspiration to him that it does not have to be a long, drawn-out, painful and difficult process.
Speaking of painful and difficult, even though I don't watch the news, it's hard to escape the media bombardment about impending war. A friend writes, "I feel small against the huge tension building and yet I know the only thing I can do is live peace, in my life, in my own way. I can only take responsibility for myself." While I agree about the need to live peace in my life in my own way, I don't feel small at all. As a regular meditator, I feel huge and powerful. As I "check in" twice a day in meditation, I feel renewed strength to bear with faith and ease whatever is about to come my way. I don't feel that I or anyone I know is in jeopardy of losing life or lifestyle, no matter what the state of the world appears to be.
This is not wishful thinking. I am reminded that no matter what has gone on in the world in the last 50 years, I personally have only experienced increased joy, increased sense of purpose, increased opportunity, increased income and youthful vitality with every passing year.
I am reminded that in 1987, when many were bemoaning the state of the stock market, I had my best financial year ever. All of these I bring to mind whenever I hear someone try to convince me that everything I have may be in jeopardy, and that Big Brother Is Watching. It may just be that I'm too busy having a happy life to worry about much of anything that I've had no evidence of in my own experience.
Speaking of big brother, my newly re-discovered brother Jerry and I have been getting to know each other via email, phone calls and instant messages, and I took a trip to South Carolina last month to see him and meet his sweet wife. She's as tall as me! I last saw Jerry in 1966 when I was 14 and he was 18, and shortly after that, Dad told me he'd died in Vietnam.
Imagine my surprise when Jerry emailed me outa the blue to say hello after 37 years! Apparently they'd had a falling out and Dad, not knowing how else to handle it, banished him and told me the fib about Vietnam. My dad had lotsa his own demons and did the best he could, but there was a lot he wasn't prepared to deal with.
Daddy had injured his back in a three-story fall years ago and took lotsa painkillers on a regular basis. He ultimately, in 1987, committed suicide, and wrote several suicide notes at the time, detailing his back pain and his mental anguish over things in his life he'd regretted. He failed, however, to let me know one of my brothers might still be alive. It's interesting what people choose to take to the grave with them, and why. I'm sure Daddy had demons that I didn't know the least of, but I think he always did the best he knew how.
Jerry and I share a lot of similar thoughts about religion and philosophy. He enjoys the Abraham-Hicks material and we try to inspire each other in our "joyful co-creations." We share an interest in healing through the human energy field, and he's been having success practicing Therapeutic Touch on his wife, who is healing from a foot ulcer.
We were talking last week about psychic development, and I thought I'd share with you part of an email I'd sent him addressing the topic. I wrote:
"When you first start getting impressions, you'll be inundated with input, and the first few layers will be the projections of your own thoughts and your own fears. An important part of psychic work is knowing that it's easy to get impressions, but not so easy to gauge the ability of your client to psychologically handle what you may be about to disclose." Jerry wrote, "I would think that gauging different people could really be a challenge."
"Not really,"I wrote back, "and only at first. At first, your ego is all wrapped up thinking, Omigod I hafta tell them this, or I hafta tell them that, when in reality you probably don't need to tell them anything. You realize that whatever they are headed to experience, you can tell if they are conscious enough to take steps to create something different, and you get used to folks often being so lethargic that their life goes on the skids when all they had to do to prevent it was lift a simple hand, or recognize an opportunity.
So after awhile you stop butting in and thinking you can change everything, or that you even need to. You learn that even when folks know what's coming up, they act as though they don't. I used to think I was "casting pearls before swine" but that was an unfair judgment.
What if you saw that a friend was going to have a car accident, would you tell him? What if you knew he could do nothing to prevent it? So often in the beginning we wanna tell what we see because we think it's important somehow. We wanna tell no matter what the consequences to others, because on some level we want validation of our "ability" and recognition for it. We hafta move past those filters if we're to see clearly and voice appropriately when the time is right.
And what about when you are able to see all sorts of areas of someone's life that you'd rather not see, and that on some level you have a judgment about? Like what if you saw that a best friend's wife was having an affair or plotting to divorce him? Could you stay quiet and emotionally calm knowing that? What if you saw what coworkers really thought of you (and it wasn't good) and you were in charge of doing their evaluations? Could you stay centered and impartial and act as though you did not possess that information?
We can only receive clear inner guidance when we don't allow our emotions to become ruffled. When we're emotional, we're not seeing clearly. That's one reason to do breath meditation, it trains your mind to become detached from emotion, and allows you to enter witness consciousness."
Then I went on to give him my favorite breath meditation exercise, but I've run out of room here, so if you're interested in it, email me at Horizons Magazine@aol.com and I'll share it with you.
We appreciate you.