Take the next 3 weeks to reflect rather than initiate something new. Mercury goes retrograde October 4 through October 24.   On November 11, Mercury will be back to where it was when it went retrograde, meaning whatever you leave unfinished this week, you will have the chance to properly complete it after November 11.  I think Mercury Retrograde  gets a bad rap.  Since Mercury rules communication, people say “oh everything’s going wrong, that’s Mercury retrograde for you,” and that’s not the case at all.  Mercury Retrograde just means review, reconsider, return for more info. Pay extra attention to detail.  Check everything twice.  Slow down during this time, to be as effective as you can be. The way to make the most of Mercury retrograde is to not let it have any power over you. Stop keeping track of when it is.  If you can’t do that, then make Mercury retrograde a time for you to be extra careful paying attention to details.  During the retrograde, your time is best spent looking back in review – not looking forward.   Continue reading →

Hello and welcome to the October 2014 edition of Horizons Magazine. Halloween! Samhain! Time to don a mask, dress up and celebrate!. Halloween is a socially acceptable time to wear a mask, and the crazier the better. But we all know people who wear masks all the time. Some wear a mask to avoid letting on that anything is triggering their emotional pain. We accuse another of wearing a mask to project the reality away from ourselves and our own mask. And it comes at the cost of knowing who we actually are. Like Dorothy and her friends in the Wizard of Oz, we’re all trying to find a Wizard to make everything ok. Blinded by the yellow brick road, we embark upon the perilous trek to the Emerald City. We get there to have the Wizard put us through exhaustive tests with the promise of receiving our heart’s desire. Like Dorothy and friends, we withstood the trials only to find out in the end that the Wizard was all smoke and mirrors. And in real life, when you see behind their mask, if they are not ready to face who they are and what they do, they will disconnect from you until they grow into their soul. We all wear masks every day: the happy one, the helpful one, the one who cares. Like the day after Halloween, we all have to know when to wear the mask and when to put it down.   Continue reading →

I am doing it again! I’m pouty because I gave my power away to my ego once again, and by ego I mean the personality based, lower s self of me, not the large S Soul of me. Yesterday I told a friend I would give them a ride this afternoon then I rearranged about 4 hours worth of appointments up in Melbourne since I would be up there anyway. I called to ask when they thought they would be ready and they said, “Oh, I changed my mind. I do not need a ride today.” Grrr… I know better than to plan a day ahead of time to be awake and driveable after 2pm. My ego gets so stuck on “oh, I’ll be their hero since they have no one else,” so I have only myself to blame.  Continue reading →

A friend remarked that I couldn’t understand her situation because life was easy for me. I told her life is easy now for me because I’ve been where she is and years ago began making a series of different choices to get in this better place. I didn’t get happy overnight. I spent a long time contemplating my life, having realizations and making amends. I got happy day by day by dumping old baggage and looking for stuff to be happy about.

Today you can make it easy or you can make it hard
Come clean and see what the Universe rewards you with

Money is as abundant as air, no one limits it but yourself. If there is not enough, go where there is more. You would not stay in a room with no air, what keeps you from going to find more, it’s out there, go find it and keep on task until you do. Works for everything, not just money.
Terri Mermis

What does an Aries x5 do while waiting for the faces of previous in-progress paintings to come to me? Begin another! Here’s the under painting for the Watcher at the Window. I’m not sure what colors I’ll use yet but know I wanted these as a base.  I’ve Photoshopped in this pic the moon and a few stars to remind me where I want them to go. The window on the left was initially going to be a painting of Yogananda. We’ll see…  On the left is the picture I am painting from.  I liked the image of sitting alone, gazing out the window but wanted a more open and cozy feel to the scene.  I’ll add pillows and maybe a table with a cup of tea, maybe add a cat and hang a few windchimes.  The man likes the stark look of the source photo with the focus on one window.  So do I, but he and I have a different experience when we look at that image.  It reminds me of looking out my living room window on full moon night at a home I had in Murphy, NC. A chilly night, I had the heater on and set big pillows on the futon next to the big window. The room glowed from the moonlight shining in  I followed the moon across the sky on full moon nights, and watched as it illuminated the woods and mountains.  I had three level wooded acres, 2 acres up on a bluff and the home on an acre at the base. I loved watching the moon come over the treeline of the bluff.  I did some of my best thinking at that window.

A friend attracted an amount of money she’d been wanting for a new project.  She considered it a windfall and was excited beyond words she could now make her dream a reality.  She began making plans and went to sleep a happy camper. She called me the next day in a quandry.  As she was making a list of what to buy, she began to call the friends and family who’d supported her vision to tell them the good news.  During their conversations she was reminded that a friend paid her cell phone bill the past year, her mom let her live rent free and her dad loaned her his car. While no one was asking for her to pay them back, she began a tally in her head, deducting those amounts so she could surprise them by repayment.  By the time she added it up, she was left  a far cry from what she needed for her project.  Her question to me was, should she pay everyone back first or do her dream first?   Continue reading →

It’s been raining a few days.  It’s 3:00am and I’m sitting in the office with the windows open, listening to a gentle rain drip off the leaves outside.  It’s 71 degrees, the windows are open to the night air and I can smell the jasmine in the courtyard.  I love being awake in the middle of the night time when everyone around me is sound asleep.  It’s a time I sit and contemplate how good my life is.  It’s a time I bring to mind my friends, advertisers and clients as I pray for them as part of my spiritual practice –> here are my altar and healing bench techniques. It’s also a time I daydream about my partner while he sleeps soundly nearby. It’s one way I stay connected to him when we don’t spend waking time together.  Continue reading →

An excellent article here –> The Dance – The Sociopath and The Empath.  A turning point in our own evolution is when we choose to stop allowing them into our life. I’ve only had the honor of attracting one such troubled individual and gained much wisdom from it. The good news – when you’re being played, you learn the game. When they tell you right away you’re the soul mate they’ve always sought, it’s time to dash. Or at least to step back, reflect and learn the back story.  It may take years. That’s ok.  You’ve got all the time in the world, and not a moment to lose.

RELATED: How to spot a Sociopath
They didn’t know their partner had a secret life
How to spot a sociopath – 10 red flags
Psychopaths: 30 Red Flags
Beware the narcissistic sociopath disguised as your “Soul Mate”

Self publish? Get an agent? A friend has fallen for “an editor” offering to make her manuscript ready for publication. After a year, all she has is an outlay of dollars, an unfinished draft and the slow realization she didn’t win a contest at all, it was a marketing scheme to get her to pay for hours of “editing and consulting.” Please check everyone out. Not everyone is out to play off your narcissism and rip off your dreams.

General Guidelines & Tips on Avoiding Scams:  There are too many scams out there, so in addition to listing the ones we know about, here are some general guidelines and tips to keep in mind when searching for publishers, agents, artists, contests, editors, etc.:   Continue reading →