Our Hidden Strengths

Shadow work is a powerful way to uncover those hidden triggers that prompt us to respond negatively to events. By examining these subconscious triggers, we shed light on the subject, bringing it out of darkness, and in the process, unleashing our energy.

Often, holding onto old ideas or attitudes may get in our way.

As we are growing up and becoming educated, we make up stories about what we want to be when we grow up. Some of us stuck with that and built our lives that way, but more of us changed plans as we went to school or got out in the work world.

So then, what happens when those stories we used to tell don't look like our present life? Do we get disappointed with our self? Our life? Do we change our plans? Which answer unleashes more energy in you?

Transform the first answer. What happened to make us change our plans? If you decided to make something else your priority, then pause for a moment and appreciate what you have done, Feel the energy? Now, let go of the old vision and feel the alignment with where you are.

If we have accepted the change of path and are looking to do that in the best way possible, letting go of the old plans that don't fit lightens the load. And that enables us to move faster and easier.

Spirit has a way of helping steer us to get the most out of our life.

And how often have we had to change how we do things because of technical evolution. When the internet was new, people didn't know if they wanted or needed a website. Now, of course, what business does not use a website and email?

Look at how many people enjoy working from home now. You don't have to be real old to know that wasn't always an option.

From another perspective, besides the technical revolution we have gone through, there are the heartfelt changes. Such as when a person leaves one field to go into another to gain peace of mind or really put their heart into something they care about.

Clearing out old baggage is part of what shadow work is about. Optimally, we all are in the best place when our head and heart are aligned. When they are not, it indicates that we need to clear an old shadow.

 

In & Out of Our Shadows

Shadow work is a term that you may have heard, but may not familiar with, so here is a look at it. Our shadow refers to negative emotions and impulses, such as rage, envy, greed, selfishness, striving for power. Everything we deny in ourselves, whatever we perceive as evil, inferior or unacceptable, become part of our shadow.

Shadow work, then, is about recognizing these attitudes, ideas, and impulses and finding ways to bring these things to a conscious level and change the flow of energies connected to them.

Example. A question you might ask yourself.

Think of a limiting belief.

Why did I create this belief?

Mantra to shift my limiting beliefs.

Think of a toxic thought.

How does it negatively affect me?

Now reframe that thought.

What makes me feel vulnerable?

How do I hide this from others?

How can I be more authentic in expressing this part of myself?

What am I afraid of, or jealous of?

How can I change that energy, those feelings?

What can I do so that those feelings no longer trigger me?

What must I do to advance my gifts?

What is my fear about this?

What can I do to bring this from shadow to light?

Certain fears we need to deal with, and some we don't. For example, I have no need to go sky diving to overcome a fear of jumping out of airplanes. But if my job involves public speaking and I have a fear of public speaking, then I need to clear that fear.

Often, when one person feels jealous of another, they are coming from a fear that they will not be successful because they other person is. However, if the fearful one takes the attitude that the world is abundant enough for us to both be successful, then the jealousy is no longer there.

Yes, it is harder for some people to make these changes than others, but once we examine the roots of some of those feelings, and change our attitude and perception, energy flows smoothly and powerfully.

You can answer these questions by meditating and journaling on them. You can thank your spirit guides for helping you have the wisdom to see things differently.

You can also use tarot or oracle cards to help you find answers to these questions.

If you use cards yourself, when a card comes up frequently, spirit wants you to notice, and this will happens whether you are reading for yourself or someone else. 3 questions, 3 cards to start. Pull more for clarifiers if you feel the need.

 

It's All Aces This Year

All those of you who have had me do your numerology for you know that each of us has our own new year on our birthday every year.

January 1 is a national holiday and our society's new year. And this year, that is a one. One always symbolizes new beginnings, fresh starts, new growth.

In other words, this year is all Aces, which are the ones in every deck.

The picture above shows the four aces from the Elemental Wisdom Tarot and the Magician is from the Time Tarot. The aces are 1s and the Magician is 1.

So for the year ahead, keep your consciousness attuned to new developments in all areas of life. Some we will plan and instigate and others may be new developments that we will encounter.

Each of the 4 suits in tarot represents an important area in our life.

Pentacles represents career, money, health and home. The physical parts of life. Element earth.

Wands represents passion, inspiration, creativity, and our spiritual energy. Element fire.

Cups represents our relationships, feelings, emotions, and connections with others. Not just our love life. All of our relationships: family, friends, co-workers, peers, vendors, merchants. Element water.

Swords represents the sharp mind. Thoughts, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, information. One edge of the sword represents gathering data, and the other edge we use to clear our path. The combination of thought plus action. Element air.

The artists who created the Elemental Wisdom Tarot are Gracjana Zielinska and Lukasz Sienkiewicz (Poland).

The Magician from the Time Tarot speaks to our relationship with time. After all, our free will gives us the opportunity to speed things up or slow things down.

The artist who created this deck is Eugene Vinitski, and the author of the book that goes with it is Elsa Khapatnukovski (Switzerland).

Elsa reminds us that time is our mysterious companion that travels silently with us on our life's journey. It knows no bounds, knows no obstacles, and is indifferent to our desires and plans. It manifests in two opposing forms, fleeting moments and endless eternity.

Their Magician uses time as his magic. In their view, only a true magician lives every moment in the present as if time is frozen. With skill and confidence, the Magician creates new realities from the elements stored in their secret pockets. People think of time as subjective, and our thoughts drift to the past or future, but all that exists around us is today.

So when will we act on our thoughts and desires? Often, the timing of our actions create magic. The timing of our words create magic.

You have already noticed that the timing of ideas and thoughts are magic, haven't you?

How does the timing bring magic to your life?

Synchronicity is when seemingly unrelated things are happening at the same time. Once we make the connection between synchronicities, the whole picture looks different. Notice how you feel different when this happens?

The most important time we have in our hands, the only time we have in our hands is the present moment. What are we going to do with it?

This is why sometimes it seems like a split second, yet from another perspective it seems like an eternity.

Where will the aces show up in your life this year?

What do you want to be new or different?

What will you do this year?

What magic are you creating?

 

Heart Warmth in the Winter

The earlier sunsets, the cold. It is a perfect time to light a fire or turn up the heat. Part of warming up our homes is the spirit of celebration, the welcoming in of visitors and guests. During the quiet times between social events or concerts, there's energetic pulls from memories of past joys related to the seasonal events.

Since Thanksgiving landed so close to the beginning of December this year, we are still basking in the good feelings of that holiday as we begin this month.

Personal connections often come to the fore at this time because of this, and it is not the same on other holidays. Are there people we would like to see that we have not seen in a while? Do we feel like celebrating all the good in our lives with our friends, especially since some of them are having a hard time? We lift their spirits and ours at the same time.

The feelings and emotions we have around Thanksgiving, Christmas, Yule, Hannukah, Winter Solstice, Kwanza or other festivities are much more powerful than feelings about other holidays.

All of this creates warmth during this cold month. The feelings of connection remind us of what we love about the people in our life. This is a way we draw up energy. It gives us that glow that brightens our aura. Our fire within.

Every time we come into the house out of this bitter cold, we are grateful to be enveloped in warm air as soon as we step inside. Seasonal parties are like that. The warmth of friendship lights up our spirits.

Images that show stark winter scenes where we see the skeletons of the trees, rather than their foliage, covered by snow and ice inspires desires for warmth. Instinctual response.

Sometimes the fire we are gathered around are in fire pits or fireplaces. It is always the energy between us that is the fire.

 

Gratitude in Work & Life

 

Gratitude is not always obvious because we do not always recognize it right away. Recently, for example, I was kicking myself for making a mistake, but the mistake turned out to be beneficial. So now I am grateful for something I was upset about upon first look. Spirit moved me in this situation.

Has that ever happened to you?

When I wake up in the morning, my first expression is to my spirit guides. This is what I say:

"Thank you for giving me this day. With your help, I will make the best use of it.

Do you have any new ideas for me today? Is there anything you want me to know?

And thank you for keeping me healthy and strong."

This sets the tone for the day. I expect good things to happen, even the unexpected people and events that may come up.

Gratitude can change our relationships with people.

A long time ago, for example, I was working on the sales team for a publishing company. At first, I saw the best salesperson as my competitor. Then he taught me some of his techniques and I got better and we both did well. I was grateful for this teacher, and the energy at work changed.

Among many clients, I have heard stories about how they were sad and distressed because they lost a job, but a short time later they were even happier because they got a better job. So maybe instead of cursing the person who fired us, we should thank them. Gratitude.

The same thing often happens in relationships. One is a near miss, with some great moments, but the whole thing didn't work. Then the next relationship is what you want. Sometimes we need to experience what we don't want to get clarity on what we do want. Grateful for the experiences that prepared us for the best fit.

By consciously acknowledging the positives in our lives, we cultivate a mindset that not only elevates our mood but also strengthens our resilience in the face of challenges.

This simple yet powerful shift in perspective encourages us to appreciate the present moment, fostering a deeper connection with ourselves and those around us.

As we integrate gratitude into our daily routine, we feel more at peace, even while dealing with turmoil, solving problems, doing what we need to do.

Picture this. Your aura expands hugely when you are projecting feelings of love, joy, happiness. You exude confidence. When you are projecting fear and doubt, your aura shrinks.

Expressing gratitude opens the way to creation. If you are looking to build your business, draw people to you with that big aura.

Thank you for connecting with me. I appreciate all of you.

Ghosts make great Halloween decorations and whimsical costumes. How many of us dressed up in a sheet to go trick or treating?

Yet, the origin of the word from the old English word gast, meaning breath, spirit or soul. A German word which may have also been a root meant guest. Another root word contributed to the origins of a word that meant excitement or terror or an old Norse word meaning rage.

The origin of the spelling with the h in it originated in 15th century England when a printer who used Flemish typesetters who used the term gheest, a Germanic spelling.

Originally it did not mean haunting, but many years of literature and stories fashioned that sort of aura about it with a big wave of popularity spewing from the seances and spiritual movements of the Victorian era.

When we consider these roots, there is another aspect that is part of our consciousness at this time of year, when we have just celebrated Halloween, Samhain and Day of the Dead.

Jack-O-Lanterns were originally carved and and scary costumes put on to scare away evil spirits during the darkening nights leading into the cold winter.

But the Day of the Dead altars were created to honor the memories of the spirits who recently departed, to wish them well on their journey.

When we work with our spirit guides to help us gain guidance and insight in our desires and efforts to make the best of our efforts in life, we are indeed connecting with the spirits of non-physical characters who once were very real, inhabiting bodies like ours.

In this way, we can interpret a positive meaning from someone ghosting us, as our spirit guides enter our space to help us and protect us. How many times did you have an accident, but not get injured seriously? The ghost of one of our protectors inserted themselves in there.

The idea of being able to communicate psychically with these influencers is seen in a different light after such an encounter.

Interestingly, technology offers us practical explanations for all this. Here the ghost in the machine takes on a few new twists.

For example, we accept the fact that invisible waves of energy can connect our phone calls through the air, though walls and over great distances. So if our phone calls can penetrate physical barriers to bring us messages, why not messages from the spirits of people who are no longer in physical bodies?

Spider webs are like the world wide web. Somehow, when we type and send a message to someone who lives somewhere else in the world, somehow that message finds its way through the whole world and goes exactly to the at person. Spider webs connect things that are not usually connected, and their lighter than air fabric catches their lunch for them.

So if we can send messages to another person in this world, who is nowhere near us, with no physical connection to them, why is it difficult to believe that spirits of ancestors and relatives who we knew and loved in this lifetime cannot continue to communicate with us even after they are no longer living in their bodies?

Kind of funny how in modern uses of the word, we now say that someone ghosted us if they just go away with no further messages.

Obviously, sometimes we want to leave situations that are not serving us well. Ghosting is leaving without notice, rather than giving someone the courtesy of a farewell message. And sometimes ghosts come to serve us with no formal advance or farewell message.

Certainly, we prefer some ghosts over others.

From present to absent, we all have ghosts.

Sometimes we get ghosted and sometimes we are the ghost.

 

What's Spooky?

 

One of the creatures that is always part of Halloween decorations is bats.

The illustration above is by the artist Brianna LaVarta, who specializes in drawing animals and birds. She always seems to find a unique perspective in the way she brings them to life. The bat above and the prairie dog below are both her work.

Here, for example, she shows the bat entering the fall season with rose hips, so instead of the vampire kind of take, letting us see the bat as a creature of life, rather than death. After all, it does us favors like eating mosquitoes. And it is the only animal that can truly fly, not just glide.

What else do bats do? They also eat fruit and pollinate plants. Agave, which produces tequila, is pollinated by bats. Think about that when you are sipping a margarita. They use sound to navigate, and they live for decades.

They are generally shy and avoid humans. They are most active at night, dusk and dawn, the hours that many of our ancestors regarded as the prime time for doing rituals. The times of day when we change, the times of day when we welcome in the rising and setting of the sun.

The way they hang upside down call to mind the Hanged Man in tarot, who looks at the world upside down, thinking outside the box, seeing things from a different angle.

Only a few varieties of bats, a small portion of the whole, feed on blood, aand these live in a few places in Central and South America.

Writers like Bram Stoker conflated them with legends of undead creatures, and that promoted those concepts. Their connection to Halloween grew out of the bats attraction to the Celtic Samhain bonfires. The large bonfires were to scare away evil spirits, and they attracted insects, which in turn, attracted bats. As nocturnal creatures, their presence was associated with the spiritual nature of the holiday.

Do you think of bats differently now?

With this and the suggestion to try at home below, do you have a new insight about Halloween now?

To see more of Brianna's art, go to:

https://www.briannalavarta.com/