The Metaphysics of World Peace

Shamanism and the oil spill

caroline allen — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:02:21 +0000

Archangels

It is with great humility that I write this blog. I wanted to do a shamanic journey about the BP oil spill, but emotions are running so high and everyone is so volatile that I’m wary to touch any of this. Also I wanted to make sure I was worthy of such a task. So, I decided to first do a journey to ask if it was OK to do this blog.

For those who don’t know, shamanism is an earth-based healing modality practiced for centuries by native peoples. A journey is a sort of creative visualization where one goes to speak to their spirit guides. Sometimes the guides use words, sometimes symbols, sometimes they simply pass on an energy.

Here’s what happened on the first journey. I went down into the ocean at the point of the oil leak. The water was black oily frothing. I was told to go directly into the middle of the gusher to go further down into the earth. I resisted. The force was violent, the water so full of horrific gunk. I was again urged to enter the eye of the gusher. Finally, after several urgings, I did and went down below the ocean floor. I came out to the stratum where the oil had formed. The area had been suddenly made empty, and I was told energetically that such an emptiness was a dangerous thing. I felt deeply that something would need to happen to shift that void. I felt the earth move and sway. I felt it shake deep in its bones. Then, I was led to a tunnel and down into a cave where I met a barnacled woman, my spirit guide.

She was distraught. On the ground was a coin. She asked me to pick it up. It was silver and on it was written: “In God we trust.” The barnacled woman said: “Your God is up in some heaven place in the sky. This makes it easy for humans to beg upward and outward for help. But earth is your God. You are earth and you are God and the planet earth is your God. If you could see that you would hold it sacred, and not see God as something out there.”

The fact that “In God We Trust” was written on a coin, written upon money, was important too. The barnacled women let me know energetically that somehow we’ve intertwined God and Greed, that we have allowed greed to be mandated by the heavens. That somehow deep inside of us we think it’s morally right to make a lot of money over all other considerations. I asked her what I had come down to ask: “Is it OK to do a shamanic journey on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and share it in my blog?”

She leaned in crying. “Yes, please,” she said.

Second journey. Again I go down into the ocean, enter the eye of the gusher, and go beneath the ocean floor. The earth is moving and some of it is crashing down and somebody yells, Get your head down, and then I’m in a smashed place beneath of wall of sediment. A squid is there and he tells me he’ll take me to my spirit guides.

I’m taken down a deep tunnel and come out on a meeting of about 10 people. They sit around a large crystal holding hands. They look like they could be the archangels. They remind me of the above picture. But I’m not sure who they are.

One guide says: “You must stand up for the earth. You have many people on your blog who are committed to the earth. They must stand up for the earth.”

“How?” I ask.

“Your book.” My first novel is called Earth. “The people reading your blog, some of them are writers. They must stand up for the earth in their writing. Others are doing earth work through healing. Tell everyone to stand up and shout out for the earth.”

“Take the power back from the takers. Demand it.” (For an in-depth understanding about ‘takers’, all of us who’ve been trained to take and take from the earth without making it a reciprocal arrangement, please read the 1992 philosophical novel Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.)

The guide reminded me of the quote recently by BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg: “And we care about the small people. I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don’t care. But that is not the case in BP. We care about the small people.”

NPR asked a Gulf fisherman what he thought of that quote, and he responded spontaneously: I’m paraphrasing here: “We’re not small people. We’re bigger than he’ll ever know. We’re bigger than he can ever imagine.” (When I heard this on the radio, I was in my car. I jerked the steering wheel and shouted. It was such profound truth.)

He stood up for spiritual truth!

All the archangels held hands around the table. In the middle was a large crystal. The crystal was shifting and moving precariously. They held hands and pitched and rolled to keep the crystal on some kind of center. It was like trying to stand upright on a pitching ship deck. The spirit guide continued: “Refuse to play their game.” Then the guide gave me a list of things we could do:

Use fewer resources.
Decrease dependence on your car.
Offer a prayer to the earth.
Make the earth your first priority.
Sing to it, love it. It reacts to your energy.
Open your heart to it. Feel its pain, its joy.

“The depression and isolation that earthy people feel right now are just making things worse. We all must join together, speak out together. Make the oil spill and other such subjects the main topic of your discussions. Talk about it at dinner parties, with friends, in blogs.”

I said: “We’re so overwhelmed and scared.”

“You should be.”

He continued: “It’s not time to be polite. It’s time to be honest. Be the harbinger of change. Help shift perceptions. Perceptions are already shifting. Join loudly in the singing.”

I thanked the guides and left. For four days I’ve been so deeply disturbed by the energy of the shifting earth, my core has been so deeply disturbed by it, that it’s taken me this long to feel safe and stable enough to write this.

I’m a tarot reader. Contact me before July 1, 2010 for readings at the lower rate of $100. On July 1, readings go up to $125. carolineallen@aol.com, www.creativetarot.com.

You have the right to be depressed

caroline allen — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 18:26:56 +0000

Harold’s Boat II, www.carolineallen.com

A lot of the artists and other sensitive types I know are undergoing depression right now.

I want to call out to all of these people and say it’s alright. You’re depressed. Of course you are. If you’re not depressed, you’re not paying attention.

As sensitive types, how could we not pick up all the fear and pain of the creatures of the Gulf? How could we not hear the seabirds, turtles, dolphins and so many other beings cry out from the devastation of the oil spill? As sensitive types, how could we not feel in our very bones the growing imbalance caused by global climate change? How could we not be depressed?

So, give yourself credit for feeling all of this so deeply. Don’t just give yourself a break, give yourself credit.

Now, how can you feel the depression and do something anyway? What can you do to proactively work toward the healing of yourself and the whole world? We need you. The planet needs us sensitives more than ever to help perpetuate the healing process.

Many people are feeling helpless right now, but there’s so much to be done. There are 100,000 things you can do. Begin by cleansing yourself, because that energy will affect the whole. Begin by giving directly. Begin by reinvigorating your love for this earth. Here are just a few ideas:

1. Donate money to saving the Gulf sea life.
2. Read a spiritual book to deepen your connection to spirit.
3. If you’re an artist, create a work of art around the gulf spill.
4. Sell a piece of art and donate some of the proceeds.
5. Plant an organic garden.
6. Make amends with someone you’re estranged from.
7. Take a hike in the woods and give nature your heart.
8. Take a spiritually based workshop.
9. Start a blog about the power of nature to spread the love.
10. Today, help somebody. Just help one person.

Even depressed, there’s so much one can do to work toward the healing of this blessed earth. The more you do, I promise the less depressed you will feel.

I’m a tarot reader. June is the last month for a reading at the lower rate of $100 per hour. Email me to book a reading, carolineallen@aol.com. www.creativetarot.com

Re-Visioning: Deepen your Connection to Spirit

caroline allen — Wed, 26 May 2010 12:09:01 +0000

Click to view slideshow.
A night out in Boston, digital photography, www.carolineallen.com

This is the sixth in a series on Re-Visioning Your Career to do more spiritually significant work in the world.

When you’re on a spiritual path, psychics, counselors and spiritual healers will often tell you to Deepen your Connection to Spirit.

Connection to spirit is important if you want a more spiritual career. The challenges you’ll face will be new in every way, and you won’t know how to handle them without help from greater forces. Spiritual work in the world is also so full of its own rules, and you’ll need the help of spirit guides to even begin to understand what you’re trying to do to help clients heal. Also, our perspective is more profound when we look at our clients or life through a spiritual lens, rather than simply a practical lens or even a psychotherapeutic one.

The problem is nobody seems to tell you HOW to do these things. How do you deepen your connection to spirit?

I’ll use my own path as an example, but please note each person’s journey to a stronger connection to spirit is a personal one.

I was raised Catholic. Twelve years of Catholic schools in mid-Missouri, taught by nuns, brothers and priests. Sister Thomas Aquinas in severe habit and cat eye glasses used to beat us with a ruler for the tiniest infarction. We attended mass three times a week. God was a white guy with a beard and boy could He get pissed off. Jesus was his fragile son. The only women of significance were Mary, Jesus ever suffering mother, and Mary Magdalene, the prostitute who followed him. (I did like the stained glass and incense of the church, though. I liked the ritual of it.)

In our living room, we had a huge picture of Jesus with a crown of thorns, blood dripping down his face. It was one of those pictures that gives the illusions of the eyes closing when you move to the other side of the room, a gruesome ALIVE bloody picture of what God represented. It was hung right next to the 12 point buck deer head and right above the plaid sofa. Once, I pointed to the picture and asked my young nephew as a sort of dark joke: “Why does Jesus have blood running down his face?” He answered in little boy whisper: “Because he loves me.”

So, as I grew up and got away from the church, it was quite the journey to find my own spiritual self. I began my adult life as a journalist in Tokyo, and there discovered and studied Buddhism. I was deeply moved by the gentleness of the Buddhist approach, loved how it quieted my mind, but still it was all about MEN. Where were the women? Why were God’s favorites always men? Why was God always a man?

I moved to Europe as a journalist. I discovered every time I entered a church, I’d have a severe panic attack. I’d stand at the back pews, bent over gasping for breath. I’d feel so dizzy, I’d have to stumble out and sit on a bench until it subsided. I was surrounded by some of the most beautiful cathedrals in the world and I couldn’t enjoy them. I knew it was time for some serious spiritual healing.

For many people, spiritual healing begins with a sort of spiritual breakdown. Everything goes to shit all at once. I lost the international jet-setting journalism career I loved, the husband I adored, a London home that deeply fed my alternative, quirky, old world Carrie self. I plunged into a depression as thick, black and damaging as a massive oil spill.

Finally, my London therapist strongly suggested I move back to the States, to be closer to the earth, to do the healing I needed around the paradigm that had wounded me. I ended up in Seattle. I despised it with every European bone in my body. I let a lot of people know how much I despised it. You can imagine how popular I was. I’d been abroad for nearly a decade and didn’t understand Seattle, didn’t WANT to understand it.

So, the spiritual healing began. Oh so slowly, oh so painfully. I screamed bloody murder at the gods. I didn’t know that what was happening was a blessing. I saw it as a curse. All my life I’ve had to deal with everyone and everything being sick and mad and crazy, and now I have to go through this!! Tearing of hair, rending of garments.

The universe was trying to help me, but I was often too enraged to notice. At a psychic fair, I accidentally ran into the woman who would become my spiritual coach for about a decade, Judith Laxer. Judith runs Gaia’s Temple, a regular temple service for the public that celebrates the divine feminine. I was finally beginning to find my own feminine, feminista connection to spirit. The gods started looking a lot more like me. I was just beginning to truly see the divine in myself.

I took hundreds if not thousands of long hikes in the woods. Once, on a hike in the Alpine Lake Wilderness area, I was so exhausted I sat down on the path and found I’d leaned over and fallen asleep in the dirt. I awoke to hikers picking their way over me. I could have slept for a full decade. I was bone tired, centuries-long tired. I was exhausted beyond all reason.

Why go through this spiritual healing if it’s so damned difficult? I sat on a rock in a park at one point, ready to give it all up. My body dripped with the old paradigm — God was a brutal man, the world was such a sick and brutal place. Why deal with it? What’s the fucking point? A voice bellowed from the heavens: What you are going through is very important, profoundly important, the most important thing you will ever go through in your entire life. Take it seriously.

That was a turning point. I decided to let myself be fucked up and depressed and sick and allow the process. I took up a deck of tarot and started studying the symbols. I studied shamanism.

I finally realized why I’d come to Seattle. One can be openly metaphysical there. It’s still difficult to do that in the old world. Also, I needed a break and I really needed the glorious rich dripping nature of the Pacific Northwest.

As a journalist, I’d channeled the trauma of the planet, war, rape, murder, war, war, hatred, war. I knew even as a child I wanted to be part of the solution of a better planet, and not part of the problem. I thought telling the truth as a journalist was part of the solution, but it was just regurgitating the trauma, repackaging it in pretty bows and ribbons and sharing it with lots of others, retraumatizing lots of other people.

So, the final aspect of deepening my connection with spirit was my realization that I needed to Re-vision my Career. It took years to figure out how that might translate into making a living. I became a spiritual healer with the tarot, but what I really wanted was to be an artist. (That’s such a lie. I resisted the artistic path — I’d grown up with alcholic rageful abusive artists and wanted nothing to do with being an artist — so thus began ANOTHER long process of healing.)

Today, I’m an artist, fiction writer and healer. It’s been a very long journey, very very looooooooooooong. It’s a humble life, with none of the bells and whistles of my earlier days, but I am content.

I wake up and stare at my laptop, at how much bloody work I have to do on my second novel Air. I go down the back stairs to my studio on the ground floor of my apartment building and study a half finished canvas. I know, in those moments, that the journey isn’t over, that the re-visioning has really just begun, that when you’re on a spiritual path, it never ever really ends.

June is the last month for readings at the old rate of $100. Contact me for a reading at carolineallen@aol.com, www.creativetarot.com

Re-Visioning: Divine Feminista

caroline allen — Mon, 17 May 2010 14:37:27 +0000

New Gulf oil spill generated triptych called Neptune: When you kill the sea life, what do you do to the ocean metaphor lodged deep in our souls? www.carolineallen.com

This is the fifth in a series on Re-visioning Your Career to do more meaningful work in a world that’s going to hell in a hand basket. Quit putting off transforming your life. We need you now!

I was skyping with my BFF Leah Kohlenberg in Croatia. She was having trouble making ends meet. At least once a week we brainstorm to help each other out. Friends who are living an alternative lifestyle need to brainstorm with each other. We NEED each other.

Leah gave up a lucrative journalism career to do visual art (like I did). She makes money now teaching art classes mainly to expats in Zagreb. She’s a spark plug of a woman and has set this up from nothing in a country she just moved to. It’d been financially difficult to do something like this in a country you DO know, let alone one full of so many unknowns.

I asked her: “What was your intent again?” Like others in the throes of re-visioning their career to do more soulfully fulfilling work in the world, Leah began this whole process by first setting her intent. (See earlier blog, Re-Visioning: Set your Intent.)

“Divine Feminine,” she answers. “I keep repeating it. Divine Feminine. Divine Feminine. Divine Feminine.”

I tell her: “Take all the classes you’re teaching now and give them the theme of Divine Feminine.”

She doesn’t get exactly what that means. Who can blame her. I find all this spiritual work confusing too. We throw out things like Set Intent and it’s never really explained HOW to set intent. I read this morning on the Oprah.com site to surround yourself with authentic friends so you can feel safe to grow. OK, that’s great. I’ll just go out and do that. Could someone please explain how?

I asked Leah: “Give me an example of one of the classes you’re teaching.”

“Photograph to painting. They’ll take a photograph and bring it into the studio, and we’ll paint it on canvas.”

“OK, Divine Feminine as an intent would mean you’d get everyone to bring in a photo of a woman that inspired them, a grandmother or friend or mother.” The class intent needed to be very solidly and clearly Divine Feminine. I know from painting self portraits, as you paint the face of someone you care about, your love grows profoundy and deeply. As you paint the face of a woman you care about, you forgive that woman for being as bruised as we all are by a world that still shows us so much disrespect. Try it some time. It’s an amazing empathic art process.

Leah suddenly thought of another class she was thinking of teaching. “Oh. Wow. Mother’s day is this weekend and a friend suggested I do a Mother/Daughter art class.” Exactly. Very Divine Feminista. She would end up running a very successful Mother/Daughter mother’s day class with subtle healing for all. Read her blog about it.)

When what you’re doing is aligned with your intent, it is ALWAYS a success on more levels than you can imagine. A greater force is engaged, bleeds out into the world and creates future success, as well.

“So, my intent is Voice,” I said to Leah. “So if I was teaching the class, I would have run a writing class for mothers who felt like they were losing their voice as they gave their lives over to the process of caregiving small children.” I would attract a different crowd, and of course it would’ve been a different class, but because it would have been aligned with my intent, it would’ve been a success in its own right.

See how intent focuses the work you do? I ended up brainstorming with Leah other Divine Feminine art classes.

1. Invite beautiful curvy women for nude life drawing classes and speak to the students of honoring the feminine form in a world that has a lot of hate for women’s real bodies.

2. Invite powerful Croatian female artists into the classroom for demonstrations. Discuss how women aren’t as recognized and respected in the male art world. Discuss women artists who HAVE made it.

3. Divine Feminine equated to Mother Earth — what forms of nature can you bring into the classroom to draw or paint? Do a Gulf Oil Spill painting sale and give the proceeds to an organization that saves ocean life in the region.

4. Listen to female opera singers as you paint. Discuss how the feminine voice as energy enters our paintings.

What is your intent? How can that intent enter every aspect of your work?

Contact me if you’d like a reading on Setting Intent or on how to match physical action to your intent. www.creativetarot.com, carolineallen@aol.com. My rates are going up to $125 per hour reading July 1, 2010. Contact me before that time if you’d like a reading at the lower rate.

Re-visioning: Don’t Guru

caroline allen — Tue, 11 May 2010 15:36:13 +0000

Red Circus, new painting, acrylic on canvas, www.carolineallen.com

This is the fourth in a series on Re-visioning Your Career to do more meaningful and soulful work in a world overcome with environmental and spiritual crises.

One of my pet peeves are people who guru their healers. They put their healers on pedestals, raise them up as gods. I suspect sometimes the healers perpetuate this in their clients.

If you’re starting a life coaching or other healing business, such guru-ing is a pitfall you’ll need to look out for. People will want you to be their god. It’s draining, unproductive and not healing at all to have your clients think this way about you.

I channel a client’s spirit guides, and in so doing often tell them much needed positive messages in a world gone woefully negative. I pass on all the love and support that spirit holds for each individual, each sentient being, all the way down to each blade of grass.

This is spirit talking THROUGH me. The client may attach that to me, thinking I am all loving and have all the answers. As my true friends know, I don’t have all the answers and am sometimes quite the opposite of all loving. QUITE the opposite. I’M NOT a guru and have never ever wanted to be one. I’m a person, complicated, difficult, passionate. I enjoy a margharita or two. I eat too much chocolate. I watch witlessly bad television.

The credit I DO deserve is in having cultivated a relatively clear channel and in devoting part of my time to helping others with my gift. The other time I spend using that energy to channel characters and settings to write my novels and channeling light and color to do visual art. So, the light I’m channeling isn’t JUST for my clients. I use it for my own artistic purposes, gleefully and selfishly.

It is wrong to guru me, or any other healer. Of course, after a reading, be grateful. Treat the healer with respect. Honor the divine feminista. But do not guru her.

When I’m feeling the drain of a client’s guru-ing, I imagine the client as having a thick cord emerging from their gut and on the end of the cord is a three-pronged plug. The plug needs to be inserted into spirit, not into me. I imagine taking the plug out of me, and holding it up into the light, the real connection to the universal source. I don’t want the guru-ing, and if you are a healer, neither should you. It’s ego, not spirit.

Another pitfall healers have to avoid is this: we can fall into a belief that we are the only people who can save someone. I am not here to save people, and I’m not sure I could save someone even if I tried. I am here, honestly, to express my soul. When I do healing work in the world, I must let spirit decide how that will look and how the client’s healing will unfold. It’s not my job to even worry about that end of things. I offer the channel, provide the information as honestly as I can, and let it go.

I have a great fear of healers who devote every inch of themselves to their clients, and who lecture you to do the same. To me, it smacks of sexism because mostly these are women healers who decide to lecture me for being “selfish” with my time. (Oh sistahs you aint seen nothing yet when it comes to my capacity for selfishness.) Women have been trained for far too long to give up themselves for others. And we guilt or shame other women to do the same. Please, it’s the year 2010, can we wake up from this bad sexist dream. Can we honor women being in their power without these women having to be selfless caregivers? Please!?!@#$@!!

If you’re a healer, assist your clients in teaching them how to tap directly into The Source. Support them in finding their own connection to spirit. Advise them to take workshops, go to meditation centers, pick up a deck of tarot cards and tap into their own metaphysical nature. Work to have them live fully with their own beautiful connection to spirit. Become dispensable.

I’m a tarot reader. Please contact me for a reading at carolineallen@aol.com. www.creativetarot.com

Re-visioning: Empathy and Boundaries

caroline allen — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 12:23:03 +0000

Click to view slideshow.
Images from Budapest, 2007, digital photography, www.carolineallen.com

This blog is the third in a series on re-visioning a career to do more meaningful work in the world.

One of the single biggest issues facing clients I work with in setting up a new business as a life coach, healer or spiritual teacher is not how to attract clients or establish a business model, it’s not even about getting support from their loved ones for their new venture. The single greatest challenge with the clients I see seems to be around their empathy and how to set good boundaries.

Like these clients, I am empathic and sometimes absorb the pain and trauma of my clients. My empathy is one of my greatest blessings. My ability to feel and see on such a deep level is why I do art, take photographs, write fiction. It is how I can channel spirit guides for my clients and help transform their lives.

Sometimes, though, I get overwhelmed with a client’s pain. I’m exhausted after a session and have to go to bed early or cancel plans with friends or spend hours sorting through what are my emotions and what are the emotions of my clients. This deeply affects any chance I have of living a “normal” life, and can seriously cut into the clarity and energy I need to do my own creative work.

Clients who want to set up a healing practice often find this empathy and their own knowledge that they may get overwhelmed by their clients to be a great obstacle in going forward with setting up a successful business.

What to do about it? I thought I’d use the tarot today and throw a reading on the subject. Ok here goes.

Reading on Empathy and Boundaries. I am not going to try to “fit” the reading into anything — I’m just going to channel the information and type it here:

Treat yourself well and lovingly through the process. In underestimating your worth, you allow others to underestimate your worth. This is exhausting. Page of Cup reversed.

Be yourself. Do not try to bend yourself to the needs of the client. Rather shine your unique creative nature into the world and let healing happen. Do not “try” to heal, just BE. Ace of Rods

It’s OK to outsource skills you don’t have. If you’re a creativity coach, just do creativity and leave business coaching to the business coaches. Give clients referrals if you feel what they’re asking is not your area of expertise. Death reversed.

Keep your office and your work hours strongly boundaried. Do not do work with clients outside your sacred space or outside your work hours. Do not let it bleed to other rooms or other times. Set the edges of the canvas and paint within those edges. Four of wands in the challenge position

Healers working with clients have to figure out whether or not the client is ready to hear the spiritual truth. Sometimes we get spiritual messages and do not know whether or not it’s time to say it to the client. Ask the universe to help. I always say: Universe only give me the information I can pass on. Do not give me information about the client that I am not supposed to say. That took the guess work out of it. Also, you don’t know what will be particularly healing for a client, so don’t question the information your channel just pass it on. Five of Swords reversed and Four of Swords.

Let go and let God. Or let go and let Spirit or Universe. Do not be so eager to “help” that you try too hard. In the trying too hard comes boundary issues. Just give the healing and let go. You are only one of many people and situations in the person’s life that is meant to bring about healing. Do your part and let it go. Fool.

Do not expose too much of yourself to the client. Keep your inner child safe and protected. It is not the client’s job to “see” you. Make sure you get your own healing so you do not expect your clients to be your healer. Page of Wands reversed.

A client may have a huge ego reaction to being told the spiritual truth. That ego reaction can invoke all sorts of bad behaviors, manipulation, anger, self sabotage and healing sabotage. The client could even turn on you and start insulting you. (Oh, it’s happened to me too many times to count.) Hold steady. Hold your spiritual nerve. Don’t engage or react. Leave the situation and process your own ego issues so that you know what is yours and what is theirs. The Devil.

Having a healing business cannot be only about the money or the number of clients. If you’re writing a business plan or creating a business model, with healing work it’s difficult to plan it according to projections of income or number of clients because that’s more in the ego realm than in the spiritual realm. Focus instead on being a pure channel of light for the greatest and highest good for yourself and the others you touch. I have found the more I do this, the more my entire life improves dramatically. Blessings come in unexpected ways, money comes in unexpected ways. Eight of Wands reversed. Ten of Coins reversed. Star.

Allow yourself to grapple with boundary issues. We’re entering a new paradigm where the old ego rules are being overhauled by a new spiritual truth. The transformation to the planet is happening quickly because of the serious environmental threats we face. Because of the speed of this paradigm shift, more and more people are being called to heal and we all have many questions on how to do it well, how to do it without becoming so overwhelmed we cannot function. Let’s learn these new rules together with compassion for ourselves and others. I’d like to suggest books by psychic Sonia Choquette — Diary of a Psychic, Heart’s Desire, Soul Purpose — for more information on how to handle being spiritually open.

Want a tarot reading? I am increasing my tarot rates as of July 1 to $125 per hour reading and $70 per 1/2 hour. Please contact me in the next two months if you’d like a reading at the lower $100/$50 rate. carolineallen@aol.com www.creativetarot.com.

Re-visioning: Greatest Good

caroline allen — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 15:56:10 +0000

Hallway in Yerevan, Armenia, 2009, www.carolineallen.com

This is Part 2 in a series on Re-visioning your career to align yourself more clearly with your spiritual path.

I started this series because about a dozen people called all at once for readings on how to change their careers or how to shift their existing career to align more fully with spirit. Since then, some of these people are working toward becoming artists, or setting up healing businesses. I, too, want to take my visual art, writing and tarot business to the next level spiritually.

What I keep noticing with myself, and these others who are shifting their careers, is how important it is to commit to the greatest and highest good. Always and in all ways. All too often, we set up a business thinking only of our own good. How much money will I make? How successful will I be? Yes, even spiritual types get caught in this trap. Or we extend thoughts of success to those closest to us, our families and friends, but we don’t hope for the best for everyone.

Set the intention of all work you do for the greatest and highest good for every person on the planet, for every sentient being, for every plant, for the air, for the waterways, for the entire earth itself, and extend it out into the universe. Do not control how Spirit chooses to provide this greatest and highest good. Just set the intent. You will find you are much happier. You will find much less depression in your life. You will enter a place of flow. This doesn’t necessarily mean flow of clients, or flow of money. That’s still controlling what you think the outcome should be. Set the intent and let it go. The entire reason you want to shift your career and do art, or healing or spiritual work can be found in this one pharse: the greatest and highest good. It takes a lot of courage not to try to control the outcome, to follow spirit and not have all these forgone conclusions of what your life should look like.

Here’s an example from my own life. I want to take my visual art and my metaphysical/tarot side to the next level. Let me consider art. I’m realizing more and more that I must commit every artwork I do to Spirit. I must open each day at my altar, asking the universe to keep me centered on the intent of my greatest and highest good, and the greatest and highest good of all concerned.

Does this mean I’ll suddenly get a studio (I lost my studio last year due to the financial crisis)? No, it doesn’t. It may not be my greatest and highest good to be around other artists at this time in my life. Will this mean I will sell lots of paintings? Not necessarily. It may be my greatest good to learn a new method in painting, to be alone and to work diligently without making sales. Will it mean I’ll prove that I’m better than my other artist friends, that I’ll show them up by having more galleries show my work? No. That isn’t the greatest and highest good for everyone.

To take my art to the next level, I have to ask for the greatest and highest good for me, AND for all the other artists I know, and for all artists in the world, and for all artists past and future. I have to let go of my own self centeredness and spread the love to everyone. I also need to aspire to the greatest and highest good for the planet. Yes, my art can heal the planet. I actually know that in my bones.

Women especially get trapped in providing the greatest and highest good for everyone BUT themselves. It’s important to include yourself in the equation. You must ask the universe for YOUR greatest and highest good, too, or it just won’t work. How many women and men do I know who only give, give, give and then end up resentful, bitter and exhausted? Can you see by the above example that the greatest and highest good doesn’t necessarily mean I have to caretake other people. I can just do my own art and revel in color and poetry and be fully fulfilling my own soul’s contract, AND be working toward the greatest and highest good for everyone. Don’t confuse greatest and highest good to mean you have to give yourself away and only make others happy. That’s not what it means.

Finally, let go of what you think the greatest good is, for yourself, for your clients, for your friends, for the world. Maybe your greatest good is to be single. If you think it’s to be married with three children, imagine how you’ll fight the universe. Maybe your greatest good is to have only three clients while you figure out better boundaries.

Simply say every morning at your altar: Universe, I ask that all the work I do today is for the greatest and highest good, for me, for those close to me, for everyone I work with, for all people affected, and for the entire world. I ask for the greatest and highest good for all sentient beings, all plants, the soil, the air, the water, for the entire planet, and for the universe beyond. I ask for the greatest and highest good for the people of the past and the people of the future. Yes, we can heal people who lived centuries ago. We can heal people who live centuries hence.

SPECIAL: I’m offering $10 off one hour readings for the next two weeks. Contact me to set an appointment! www.creativetarot.com. carolineallen@aol.com

Re-visioning: Set your intent

caroline allen — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:57:38 +0000

The house where Rainbow Suspenders lives, drawn for a children’s story I wrote for my nephew, www.carolineallen.com

So many people have called for readings recently on the subject of changing their lives and doing more meaningful work in the world that I’ve decided to do a series on Re-visioning your life. This blog focuses on setting your intent.

Re-visioning is a way of aligning yourself so perfectly with your soul’s purpose that you don’t have to do all the leg work. You can become so aligned with what your soul was meant to heal and manifest this lifetime, that opportunities actually appear out of nowhere; clients and office furniture and art supplies and relevant workshops just fall into your lap. These nurturing situations already exist for you, and they’re just waiting for you to remove the veil, recognize them, and reach out and take them.

If you’re like most people, you may think starting a new career begins by coming up with an idea, making a business plan, building a website, ordering business cards and creating an office space.

I actually believe the practical steps come second, after the more spiritual/metaphysical Re-visioning process. In fact, for many years I didn’t have writing or visual art or tarot business cards, and the clients kept pouring in. And this was before I’d built a website or knew what a blog was.

How do you align yourself with your soul’s purpose? We’ll focus today on setting your intent, a dynamic process of clarifying what you deeply love, passions that have dictated your life choices whether you’re aware of them or not.

When I gave up journalism, for a while I was very confused. Sure, I was writing fiction but it just wasn’t enough. I was working as a freelance journalist to make money and found it desperately, mindlessly, witlessly boring. A woman friend in London suggested I “set my intent”. What she recommended was that I sit down and write out what I really believed in. This goes way back to childhood. What are your passions? What are your personal ethics? What would you die for?

I wrote down that I loved artistic expression. I wrote that I was passionate about reading novels and writing fiction. I added that I loved looking at visual art. I also put down that I was intensely committed to telling and being told the truth.

I wrote that I believed women deserve to be empowered in their artistic voices, that there had been too many centuries of disempowerment and it had to stop. I also put down that I believed fundamentally in healing — I believed it was essential that everyone did their own healing for true peace to exist on the planet.

To be honest, the process of setting my intent was so new that creating my Statement of Intent took almost a year.

The moment I reached alignment with what I deeply believed, a job fell into my lap teaching writing at an art school. It was the beginning of my opening to becoming a visual artist, and to my understanding of how profoundly I love teaching, afterall it involves cultivating voice, healing, and artistic truth.

Years later, that Statement of Intent is still playing out. I now coach writers, mostly women, but some men too. I help cultivate their voice in the world, a healing process for all of us.

Recently, at the local library I picked up the book: Zen and the Art of Making a Living, by Laurence G. Boldt. It has a section on clarifying your values, and I’d highly recommend it.

Here are a couple of quotes from the book:

“Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle… (or) Einstein’s Theory of Relativity… (or) the Second Theory of Thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love. — Martin Luther King Junior.

“Not I. — not anyone else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.” — Walt Whitman

So, if you really want a more meaningful career, start with a blank sheet of paper and pen. Write down your deepest passions. Come back to it tomorrow, next week, in six months. Keep deepening the themes. Watch what happens. Think of it as a dynamic document that will grow and change as you grow and change.

If you’d like a reading for some spiritual guidance on re-visioning your career, please e-mail me at CarolineAllen@aol.com. www.creativetarot.com

So you want to be a channeler

caroline allen — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 21:45:39 +0000

Neon flight, digital photography, www.carolineallen.com

I’ve received at least five calls in the last 10 days from people who sought tarot readings for information on how to explore and deepen their psychic sides, even some who wanted to use their strong intuition to change their work life and channel healing for others. Because of the environmental demise of the planet, I believe more and more people are going to receive calls from the universe to enter the realm of the channeler. In so doing, we allow spirit to flow through us, explore our own relationship to the light and come to greater empathy as we help others connect more deeply with their power. What better way could there be to heal the planet?

If you’re feeling a strong urge to explore your psychic/intuitive gifts, it’s sometimes difficult to know where to begin. Here are some tips.

1. Buy a deck of tarot cards and simply start looking at the images and recording in a journal what comes to you. I recommend tarot over other spiritual decks because the tarot is based on symbols that are deep in the Western collective unconscious. It is the stuff of mythology, kings and queens and jesters, and as such the symbols have deep resonance in our souls and the souls of others.

In the deck in front of me, I have just chosen the Ace of cups reversed. Here’s a picture:

First, I know generally what the Ace of Cups reversed means– a sadness over loss in a friendship. But to be a good reader, you have to go further, deeper, more dynamically into the meanings of the cards. So look at the card for what images pop out at you. In this card in the upper left corner, I see water, reflections in the water that are dark. I would read this in this way: a friendship is going through a difficult phase and both people are having dark thoughts about the other. These dark thoughts are not necessarily the truth of the friendship. They are just being dredged up because of a shift or change in the nature of the relationship. Do not rely on these thoughts. Do not react to them. Just let the thoughts be. Know that this too shall pass.

How did I know that the dark thoughts were not real? How did I read such a meaning in the cards? Because I see the reflections upon the water, I perceive that these thoughts are but an illusion.

2. Create an altar space, with a candle, incense, some objects from nature. Explore the tarot around the energy of this altar. Ask for spirit’s help. Devote all of your work to the greatest and highest good.

3. Use Angeles Arrien’s book The Tarot Handbook to further explore the meaning of the cards.

4. Do a three card reading for yourself. Journal what comes to you. Later, look back at the reading to see how much of it came true.

5. Do a reading for a friend. Ask the friend afterwards to respond and reflect upon what you said for each card. Journal it. Come back to the entry later to see what statements in the reading were actually true for the friend.

6. Deal with blocks and issues as they come up. One big issue that tends to come up for people who are new to the realm of channeling is boundaries. How do you keep good boundaries while opening yourself to spirit? Sometimes, the very issue of feeling overwhelmed around opening ourselves psychically can stop us from even exploring this very rich realm.

7. Read for somebody you do not know. When I first became a reader, I would offer to read at parties for free. It requires you stretch and expand your abilities when faced with someone you do not know. Because you are not charging for these readings, after each one, ask the person if they wouldn’t mind reflecting on what you read.

8. If you’re passionate about honing your skills as a channeler, I would recommend having regular sessions with a metaphysical coach. I credit my regular sessions with a Seattle metaphysical counselor for my training in the cards.

However you choose to develop your intuitive gifts, expect the unexpected. When you devote your life to the spiritual, you enter an entirely different paradigm, one whose greatest blessing is healing, yours, others and ultimately the planet’s.

January is drawing to a close. Last chance to get $5 off a one-hour reading. Book your reading today. carolineallen@aol.com. www.creativetarot.com

Those Unholy Bargains

caroline allen — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:57:43 +0000

Girl on horse, detail, acrylic on plywood, www.carolineallen.com

I found a 1970s metaphysical book at a secondhand store recently, a cheap paperback with a cheesy swirly purple picture on the front, and have been reading it for its early perspective on the New Age movement in the US. I can’t seem to find the book right now in the books on my shelves, so will post it later in the comments.

I have found the book surprisingly enlightening. One idea that stood out was this: we are here to realize the essence of our souls, to explore the depths of our creativity, our spirituality. We don’t necessarily have to do good works in the world — the universe does not require that. What the universe wants is this realization of self, a manifestation of our personal potential.

As a coach, both through tarot and writing, this really struck me. I have always been passionate about doing my own artwork, my own writing and my own healing. I feel many of us are taught that we must care take, that it’s selfish to focus on ourselves.

If you are a coach of any kind, I believe you will find that if you are just coaching, just taking care of other people’s needs for soulful fulfillment, you will grow to resent it. You will not even be the best coach you can be. How can you talk to others about their creative fulfillment if you’re not fulfilling yourself? Resentment will seep in, into the tone of your voice, into the very vocabulary you use when you coach, into how much and well you’re able to celebrate this other woman who has found her voice, while you still remain silent.

How can I possibly coach other fiction and memoir writers about the process of writing if I’m not going through it myself? How can I be happy for their success if I’m denying that success to myself?

I believe resentment is an honest reaction to too much caregiving. Your spirit wants to soar, and how can it unless you nurture its very eccentric, very selfish (in a good way), very personal needs. And the only way to do that is to spend some time not giving to others, spend time giving to yourself. And I don’t mean the newest fashions or a new car or baubles. I mean giving yourself the spiritual healing you need, giving yourself the space you need to do art, asking yourself what you need for spiritual growth and finding a way to bring it into your life.

I believe this is true in romantic relationships, in parental relationships, in friendships. I believe too much caretaking, and the subsequent resentment, shows up everywhere. If you enrich others, take care of others, more than you enrich yourself, the outcome is a sort of bitterness; even if you think you’re good at hiding it, it’s still there and felt energetically. Even if you keep trying to convince yourself otherwise, that the caretaking is worth it, it’s not. And besides you’ve given so much of yourself over the years in this caretaking role that to own up to the fact that it’s not serving you would be too much to take.

I call this making “Unholy Bargains” with spirit. Universe, I’ll strike a bargain with you: If I’m a good girl, and take care of all of these other people, then you will reward me with money or security or people who love me.

How could you not grow bitter with such a bargain?

Instead, what courage it takes to fumble along the healing path, to go where you are fragile and expose it — paint it, write it, express it, explore it. What bravery! It’s so much easier to pretend you are on top of things, you are the go-to coach, the guru. The best coaching anyone could do I believe is to expose their soft underbelly, explore their own inner dynamic, and in so doing almost inadvertently affect others in their authentic healing.

I’m offering a five dollar discount on one hour readings in the month of January. www.creativetarot.com. CarolineAllen@aol.com.