Author Archives: Andrea

Doors close in your face for a reason

When doors close in your face, it’s because you are not supposed to enter. Your soul only leads you to safety – Jurne Azubiah

A friend is upset, citing “once again life has slammed a door in my face.” I told her it’s important to remember that it’s no biggie when that happens, that something else will replace it soon enough. Where one door closes another will open, but you won’t see the door if you’re stuck in the grieving process of what you feel you lost. But what if you feel you lost your purpose in life? Your purpose in life is just morphing into new forms of expression is all, and you’re in the stage of “oh, the caterpillar is dying”. That’s all. After the caterpillar dies, the butterfly emerges. All it is doing is morphing. What a caterpillar calls death, we call a butterfly. You feel negative emotion when you’re looking in the wrong place. If you’re looking in the right place but carry unresolved baggage from the past, you won’t see it. How clearly you see what is right in front of you is up to you. When you begin fulfilling your soul’s purpose, you will see doors fly open all around you and it will become easy to attract the people who want what you have to offer.

When we fail to recognize who our spiritual family is

The person next to you is part of your spiritual family, like it or not — or they wouldn’t be there.

I’m always coming across friends who are scoping out locations to open a new healing center, a place for like minded folks to gather and come to circle. I’ve seen it often: a new group begins and soon enough personality conflicts split it apart and each party goes off to start their own group. Twenty years later, there are a dozen groups, each with just a handful of attendees. Everyone wants to start their own group rather than attend where someone rubs them the wrong way. What they fail to see is that each person in the group — especially if they rub you the wrong way — are there reflecting back to you facets of your personality that you are unaware of. When you are triggered by something or someone, that shows you where you have emotional work to do. Continue reading →

The Evolution of Pele

I’ve never been particularly drawn to Pele, of the Hawaiian-goddess-of-the-volcano-and-fire fame. I’ve never studied the mythology and I’ve only just now looked her up, after it came to me to paint a version of her . I’ve been working on a series of paintings depicting archetypal women as a form of shamanic soul retrieval. It came to me during meditation yesterday that I wanted someone who would sit in the coals of the fire and burn up the dross. As gold is heated to burn away impurities so its essential character can be revealed, just so the intent of my soul retrieval project was to do the same with me. I saw someone sitting in the coals of a fire, with fire all around her, laughing. The image of molten lava came to me and a volcano appeared behind her. The name Pele came to me, so I began adding her to the series. I’ve learned that Pele’s fires and lava are what builds and rebuilds the island she sits on. Through volcanic activity, it is always being renewed. Just so, this creat-ive force comes into our lives to cleanse, transform and rebuild. I’m still working on this one, she’s now sitting in a lava flow. Who knew lava would be so hard to paint 🙂 Continue reading →

I contemplate the reasons my partner and I have no conflict

Armand Della Volpe made me contemplate why my guy and I have no conflict. The short version: We don’t have to deal with lots of stuff others deal with. We have no kids or grandkids, we each have our own residence, income and transportation. We’re both workaholics with similar backgrounds, lifestyles, likes and dislikes. Most importantly, we both meditate daily and we’re each more committed to staying conscious and connected to God/Source than we are to maintaining a status quo with any particular person, place, circumstance or event. That’s an invaluable shared goal to have. Continue reading →

I dream of grotesque looking people in service hallways

I had an interesting dream last night. I’ve had a head cold this weekend and been pretty fuzzy from Benadryl and sleeping a lot. I turned on the tv just as the movie Shutter Island came on. I am not sure how much I slept through or might have heard unconsciously as it was on, as I was also scrolling through Facebook and half the time the sound was muted. If some of my dream scenes are from the movie, I’m unaware of it. I turned it off 10 minutes before the ending. In the dream, I am walking in a large building, like a huge old manor house. I’m aware that it’s the middle of the night and “after hours.” I’m walking through the service hallways, and every so often I encounter a service person walking past on their nightly duties. It begins to be apparent to me that every one I see has a physical deformity, and some are quite grotesque. I think, “how cool they have employed so many that may be unable to get employed otherwise.” Continue reading →

You can hold a vision and help train friends into a better feeling thought

… Holding the vision…

Part of my spiritual practice is being a vision keeper. My experience is if even one person can contemplate a scene and have faith in a successful outcome, that can entrain the consciousness of everyone who was aware of it. Last month, I wasn’t the only one –> Holding the vision. A Facebook friend commented: “I have a few I’d like to forget… That’s the brain’s biggest flaw. It never forgets. Might not remember it, but the mind can not forget. I wish it could.” I understand what he’s saying. The mind’s biggest benefit is that you can recall something painful and then train yourself into a better feeling thought. In this practice, you do it over and over and eventually the thought is not gone but the pain of it leaves you. About half of my session work is helping people re-frame past events in order to see the lesson in it and discover their new and improved place in the world AFTER that painful event. It’s been said that when just 1% of the population meditates upon peace and lovingkindness, the effect spreads to the other 99% – and it works even if they don’t believe it.

In front of the tv again at midnight with the munchies?

If you’re a slave to the nightly hand to mouth rhythm, keep bags of spinach and salad on hand and eat the greens one leaf at a time. Get thru the night by looking forward to a yummy healthy breakfast. Food always tastes best to me if I’m hungry. I like being a little bit empty. I was 50 when I decided it was time to start eating healthy and get into the gym. Working out as soon as I wake up works best for me. When I don’t do that, it’s too easy to get busy with work and blow it off. Like I’ve done all month. I don’t beat myself up for it, though. I do yoga every day and I eat healthy foods. I just feel better when I’m working out 3-4 times a week. And when I get lazy and the midnight munchies hit, I’ve always got a bag of spinach or kale on hand to get me thru the night

I love being inspired to art by friends’ happy pics

I get inspiration for art every time I see something that expresses joy to me. This week, I was inspired by my friend Eileen A. Jacobs’ profile pic. In it, she radiates such joy that, even though I was in the midst of another painting project, I wanted to stop and create a happy muse of my own. Here it is in progress. I I edited out half her hair to show more ocean, and may edit out more to make room for a jumping dolphin and maybe a sea turtle in the water. (I did.) I’m not good with hands, so it takes me awhile to get them down to size and shape. They all start out as mitts, then get whittled down to man hands, then painted down to final fingers. On the left is the arm and hand as originally drawn, and on the right I’ve begun defining the finger joints and resizing the arm. I’ll go find a tutorial on painting the ocean since I’ve never done that. Right now, though, I’m going to thin her hair down a little more to make room for that dolphin and sea turtle. The final version is shown here on the right. I realize now why I had to stick the turtle in there. The series of paintings I am doing have to do with the moon’s energy, even though the sun appears in this one. Turtle as a totem has special medicine. They carry the Moon’s cycles on their back: 28 sections for the 28 days and 13 plates for the 13 moons.

Nothing brings me back to center like a physical workout

I mowed the lawn and sneaked in a little yard work this morning before it got hot and humid. It’s so satisfying when I haven’t weeded in months to see the tall pile of pulled weeds. It included about a hundred loquat seedlings and miles of wedelia. I’ve let the north entrance to the firepit in the west woods grow over during spring and summer, so it will be fun hacking the new trail. I usually do that the first cool day of fall. I did the gym yesterday for the first time in a couple of weeks. Ugh, I can never wait that long again, no matter HOW busy I think I am or pretend to be. The elliptical machine crumbles me, that tells me I need to keep doing it since I’m working muscles that need it. I’m so sore I could… whimper. What a lightweight I am.

When you’re connected, $$ flow in from all over

I love it when the man and I are just idly chatting and he comes up with $$ making ideas for stuff we’re already doing for fun. That’s a product of being connected to Source. Who’s the man? He’s the man!

Andrea de Michaelis – Creating my own reality, one thought at a time

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