​It feels like it has been a difficult time for breathing. Every time I turn around something happens that makes me gasp or hold my breath. Frightening deplorable acts of senseless violence or insensitive inane utterings of willfully ignorant people have caused me to interrupt in some way the easy flow of breathing that sustains me.
 
Breathing is fundamental. We need to inhale oxygen to sustain us and we need to exhale carbon dioxide. The physiological processes are beyond the scope of this post but suffice it to say we need to breathe. Our first impulse as we re-enter this plane is to inhale and our last act as we transition back to our home is to exhale. Taking in a deep breath when we are anxious immediately calms us down enough to act and react in a productive manner. When we are physically exerting ourselves, our breathing changes to compensate for that additional stress on our body. For our physical experience, breathing is a necessary act.
 
For the sustenance of our spiritual beings, breathing is also a necessary tool for optimal wellbeing. And, for the optimal interaction of our spirit and our physical bodies, breathing can breach the gap between the two and bring us into a state of peaceful harmony. Allowing the physical and etheric bodies to come into a space of synergy through breathing can bring us into a state of balance from which we can best serve ourselves and others.
 
Mindful meditation can help us to not only practice acknowledgement of the breath but also gives us a tool for dealing with stress-filled situations. Sitting or reclining in meditation and allowing the breath to be our focal point helps us to release anxiety and concerns as we concentrate only on the breath entering our body and the breath leaving our body. In doing this, thoughts and ideas will flow into our minds and we can acknowledge these and release them, and then return to the sole sensation of the entering and exiting breaths. There are many forms of meditation, some stationary and some moving, and these will be shared in a future post, but for now, focusing on simply breathing in and out will suffice.

One of the nice aspects of setting time aside for daily practice is that when we make this a part of our schedule, we can make it a part of our core strategies for existing in the physical world, and we can use this space of calmness throughout the day. We can take a minute or two in whatever situation we are in to re-enter this space from which optimal performance can thrive by simply focusing momentarily on our breath, bringing back to our core the sensation and knowledge of centered peacefulness. Daily practice ensures that we always have this tool at hand.
 
Mindfulness meditation can also help us to become in tune with the universe. The focus on the breath and the breath alone, releasing all extraneous thoughts as we breathe, helps us to reach that moment of connection with the All, with the Oneness of which we are an integral part. It is that space without thought, wherein only the breath exists, in which the silence of the universe can join with our own silence, allowing a synergy that is both informing and comforting. The peace in these nanoseconds is unparalleled in our physical experience and allows us to become one with all that exists on all planes in all times.
 
This week, please focus on your breathing. Acknowledge the sensation of breathing in and out and note how this awareness serves to calm and sustain you. Perhaps you would like to try a sitting meditation for five minutes. Simply sit quietly, close your eyes, and think of nothing but the feeling of air entering and exiting your body. Enjoy the stillness and know you are One with the Universe!
 

​In asking Spirit for the topic of this daily blog, and I am hoping to post more frequently, the words, “be not afraid” entered my mind. As I ponder the meaning, I am led to believe the message is both a personal one and a wider one. We should strive not to let fear guide our actions, but instead rely on the knowledge that all things are unfolding as planned. It is a time in which fear might be the most obvious state from which to act and react, but if we let fear guide each next step, then we may miss the messages and guidance the universe is sending us.

 It was around October 15, 2015, and I was determined not to take part in the grueling National Novel Writing Month, which requires participants to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. I had spent the previous November churning out 1,666 or so words a day, and I did not think I could handle the commitment again. I admit, it did not have to be 1,666 intelligible words. It was, for me, practicing stream-of-consciousness writing as fast as I could. Nope . . . did not want to do that again.
 
And then around October 15 I became aware of urgings from Spirit that I had a topic I needed to address. It slowly bubbled into my consciousness that I needed to write about the Umpqua Community College shooting, which had occurred 15 days earlier, when a shooter entered an English class on the Oregon campus and fatally shot eight students and their professor. This struck close to home for me. I had been a community college English professor and I sensed a close connection to this incident.
 
So . . . on the first day of November 2015, I started writing what would become Tsunami of Light. It relates the event of a campus shooting from the perspective of the spirits who, through an act of violence, left their bodies and their subsequent call to serve on the other side and act before another shooting occurred. The book was a group effort. I am a mystic and I often work in conjunction with spirits, teachers, and masters on the other planes of existence. We wrote it and finished it by midnight November 30, 2015. I had it professionally edited, had a beautiful cover created, published it independently, and never marketed it. My editor had returned the manuscript, writing “Definitely interesting. A different route for you. A strong and wonderful and needed message though. I liked it.” She is the only person who has read the book. Why? Because every time I started to gear up to market it, another campus shooting would occur, and I felt that it would be disrespectful and perhaps inappropriate to do so when there were people who were suffering through yet another act of violence.

I realized this week, though, after the shooting in Parkland, Florida, that there might never be a moment I could release this book and that, perhaps, sending it out into the universe might give someone, somewhere a moment of solace and perhaps provide a space of reflection. With that in mind, I am providing a link to the book below. It is my abiding hope that it serves spirit on both sides of the veil. http://amzn.to/2sJ5Sp7
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​What do we mean when we talk about the concept of Creation? Are we talking about THE Creation, i.e., the moment everything came into being? Do we even believe there is A moment that represents that creation? Is everything simply being created on a never-ending spiral, the beginning of which is unfathomable? I know the word Creation harbors the idea of Creationism, i.e., that everything was brought into being over a six-day period, 6,000 or so years ago. And that that idea of Creation is set in opposition to Evolution, wherein everything starts at some distant moment in time in some roiling pool of chemicals, the origins of which remain a question. I don’t really like that idea because on the one hand, as the daughter of a paleontologist, I cannot ever believe in the 6,000-year or so story and on the other hand, I have always questioned evolution as the total answer to how we are what we currently are because, as I read recently, we are in fact different from the other creatures on the planet, which do exhibit the forward momentum of evolution.
 
When I think of the moment of Creation in relationship to the spiritual aspects, I am beginning to believe that the idea of one Creator, as a personified being, is not satisfactory. I believe the Creative Spirit brought into being the All in and through the energy of love. Then, what is the Creative Spirit, other than the first expression of the All, which, as I mentioned last week, means we are All part of the first and the ongoing aspects of creation. Since we are all interdependent spirits, comprising a oneness, then we could consider ourselves as both the Creative Spirit and the creation of that Spirit, i.e., that we are both the created and the creators. And it is this aspect that needs consideration at this moment, I believe.
 
As I look around the room in which I am sitting, I can see all sorts of physical items that were created. I can even note that as I prep for this episode, I am creating, with help from other spirits, something that has never existed before. Someone created the chair I am sitting on and the computer I am typing on. The glasses I am seeing through were created, as well as the coffee cup I am drinking from. Everything seems to be created by someone whose current state of being was created, as a potential, in the “first” moment of creation. But, doesn’t that moment of creation continue to evolve? And that is where that word comes into play here, we are indeed evolving, changing, for better or worse with every breath we take on this plane. And these items, all of them, are comprised of atoms and molecules, and, my personal favorite, nano-particles, that exist to formulate a solidity with which we can act and interact.
 
I have often said that the differences of solidity are created by differing rates of vibrations of these energized particles. If I could speed up the molecules in my hand to match the speed of those in the desk I am sitting at, I should be able to slip my hand between the atoms. This, however, does not seem a practical or useful action to take at this time, because it would preclude me from typing on this physical illusion of a computer sitting on the physical illusion of the desk. Why do I call these things an illusion? Because the solidity seems to me to be an illusion, comprised as it is by the same basic atoms and molecules arranged in myriad ways to form items that can act and react with our physical selves, which, indeed, are simply forms that house our spirits while we engage in learning lessons on this physical plane.
 
So, how does this relate back to the original topic of Creation? Because we continue to be created and to be creators. We create the tools we need to function and we create art to sustain us. In addition, we create non-physical aspects of our world, like the basic beliefs of societies and the ideas that hold communities together. Unfortunately, we also create the ideas that serve to separate us and that work against our wellbeing. We are, in every sense, continually creating our world, and we can serve as creators of destruction, division, and hate, or as creators of compassion and empathy using the same energy of love that we used in the illusion of the beginning.

​Recently, after a fairly remarkable psychic fair here in Rochester, I came away with the desire to explore the idea of Lemuria and what it means to me. We will explore this further in future episodes, but it has become apparent that the Creative Spirit is really us. In the beginning there was us, an amazing group of unified spirits that wanted to explore ways of being and learning and searching in order to raise the spiritual consciousness to a new and even more vibrant plane of existence. In no way does this revelation take away from the centrality of a being I call the Creative Spirit, that is comprised of the All, which does really mean all of us and that, in a way I am somewhat amazed and awed by, brings us to the idea selected before this revelation, which is the topic of this week’s blog post, Ubuntu.
 
I read a story about an anthropologist who went to Africa for some sort of research project. He gathered a group of children and pointed to a pile of fruit he had placed some distance away. He told them that the child who reached the fruit first could have all of it. He readied them at the starting line and said go. The children took each other’s hands and ran together so they all reached the fruit at the same time. When he caught up with the children he asked why they had done this, since a sole runner would have had all the fruit to himself/herself. They explained by turning to the concept of Ubuntu: “How can one of us be happy if one of is sad.”
 
Ubuntu is “a quality that includes the essential human virtues of compassion and humanity.” It is also defined as: “‘I am what I am because of who we all are.” It makes the community rather than the individual the essential center of a group’s existence.
 
I think when we look at our essential beings, this is a reflection of that. We are all One spirit expressed diversely through various planes in this universe. We are connected through what is known as the interdependent web, which binds us one to the other through and in the energy of love. One of the aims of incarnating is to discover how we can manifest that oneness while in the illusion of separateness, that is, existing in different bodies. I believe this experience would help to elevate the vibrational frequency of the One because while in the body we are most like our true selves when we work through our lives with empathy and compassion, i.e., when we practice Ubuntu. And because we are being challenged by being separated, we need to discover ways to express these positive attributes.
 
When we practice the concept of Ubuntu, we do not think about our lives as separate from one another wherein one person succeeds at the expense of the others, but as a community all growing and sharing in this time and space.
 
Can you imagine a group of people all working toward a positive goal with no thought of individual advancement but only for the good of the All? That would be the essence of Ubuntu at work in and through the energy of love.
 

​In his book The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery shares that “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
 
Somewhere along the way, I became aware that the best description of what I do as a mystic is to see and hear with the eyes and ears of the heart. It is a discernible sensation that in the area of my heart I am sensing sights and sounds. While I understand the correspondences between the physical and etheric senses, I would have imagined that these lined up logically so that the eyes of both were located in the area of my physical eyes and the ears are located in the area of my physical ears. As I write these words, or, as these words are dictated through me by those on the other plane, I am aware that this has never really been true. All of the perceptions I receive seem to resonate in the area of my heart and my solar plexus. There seems to be a certain logic in this in that when I allow healing to flow through me, it often feels as though it enters through the top of my head, flows through my heart/solar plexus area, and out through my hands. When I heal, sometimes it seems that the energy, often in the form of a green glitter, emanates from this same area toward the person needing healing. I am given the image of a sponge which absorbs liquids and then, when squeezed, releases these. So, in other words, I am very aware that there is a correlation between my heart and the ability to perceive sensory-like input entering from other parts of this and other planes.
 
The heart chakra is that of love and kindness and the solar plexus chakra is that of the self center that supports confidence in moving through life. So when I am listening and hearing with the heart, this is supported by the knowledge that I am confident in the messages I am receiving. But what does it mean to hear and see with the heart?
 
When I hear or see with my physical ears and eyes there is often a distortion in what I am perceiving either because of a certain loss of accuracy in absorbing stimuli due to discrepancies in the mechanisms that allow these perceptions, i.e., I am nearsighted and have a slight hearing loss from an illness when I was much younger, or because there is a measure of interference in the transmission of the stimuli from their source, distortions based on clarity or because of interference between the source and my receptors, like a loud noise mitigating my ability to hear a message being spoken to me by someone across the room. The communication and its purpose lack a certain clarity, which means my understanding of the message is lessened.
 
When I listen or see with my heart, the clarity is far greater, even though sometimes the stimuli are coming from another plane. When I use my heart to perceive input, the information is not being filtered through my consciousness, but rather absorbed directly through my intuition. The information is not censored through my ego mind, but rather perceived in purest form by my intuitive mind. I hear sounds and see pictures as transmitted in their original form, without distortion. There is, indeed, a clarity that is beyond what a physical sense would perceive.
 
And where are these stimuli coming from? Well, when I give a reading, they are coming from the other side of the veil, from loved ones who have passed on. They speak and let me know what they look like and show me items or situations my client can receive as verification of the survival of that which is commonly referred to as death. My clients’ loved ones are not dead, they have merely transitioned to the other side.
 
I also receive visual and aural messages from guides, teachers, and sometimes masters, as I am receiving now as I write. When I pause for a moment, and focus my awareness in my heart area, I can perceive the ideas they are asking me to type. It is like taking dictation, but there is always a momentary pause for clarification if I am not sure of exactly the words I need to capture because the idea is often presented in whole form and needs to be disseminated into individual words for typing, as is the case in this sentence I am typing now. I am always grateful for their input because it makes my job a lot easier, because it feels like a group effort. Which it is.
 
When I hear and see with the heart it can best be described as clairvoyant or clairaudient, because I am not using my physical senses at all. The stimuli are received in my etheric body, analyzed through my intuition, and passed on to my conscious mind so that I can type them, use my physical voice to transmit them, or simply use the input for my own awareness.
 
Beyond all this, though, is another level of hearing and seeing with the heart, and this is the basis for empathy. When we can perceive with the heart, we are listening to or seeing the state of being of another spirit’s experience in the physical body and can respond to that experience either with shared joy or solace. In other words, it is by hearing and seeing with the ears and eyes of the heart that we can perceive another person’s state of being and can allow ourselves to experience the empathetic impulse. We are drawn closer by the communication, coming as it is from spirit to spirit. We can be in the same room as the other person or people or across vast stretches of space and even time. When we perceive in this manner, we can respond from the heart and send healing to those who need it.
 
Right now, one of the problems we see occurring is that people in power have lost their empathy, have ceased to perceive with the ears and eyes of the heart, have indeed closed down their hearts so they can follow a path of unreasoning avarice and ego-driven lust for power. We have the ability to open our hearts and send these people healing and love that their hearts may once again be open to those of others, many of whom they are hurting by their isolation. It is time to call for a reawakening of empathy and compassion.
 
The exercise for this week is to sit quietly and enter into a state of awareness of the sensations being perceived in the area of you heart and solar plexus. Know with confidence that you are receiving information through your etheric senses and know that this is an awakening of empathy. And then, when you have that awareness glowing within, send the idea of healing and peace out into your community, the nation, and the world.
 
If not now, when? If not us, who?