Making the Connection with Our Loved Ones on the Other Side

I did a reading the other day for a lovely young woman whose father had passed years ago when she was very young.  What fascinated me was his repetitive insistence that he'd never stopped watching over her.  He really, really wanted her to know that even though he'd been gone for years, and even though she'd only known him for five years, he was her father.  He loves her and is still watching over and protecting her.  It was a beautiful message, and then he added a request.  He wanted her and the family to talk about him more.  I hear this often; it's not an egotistical request.  What they mean when they request that is this:

The more we remember our loved ones -- not through grief and sadness (that's an important point) -- but through joyous memories and funny stories, the easier it is for them to connect with us.  This woman's father presented me with a great metaphor.  He said pretend that there's a wilderness of forest between heaven and earth.  Every time we look at a photo of our departed loved one, tell a great story about them, wear a piece of their jewelry or remember them on their birthday, they come to us through that wilderness and each time they make the pathway to us clearer and stronger.  This means that the link, the connection, between them and us is made stronger each time thereby making it easier to link in with our energy and show us signs that they're around us and are more able to help us with situations in our life.

For me, this made a lot of sense.  For example, my grandparents are all deceased, but I never really knew them as they all passed when I was young.  Being a medium, I have made contact with them but sparingly and very rarely.  However, I was very, very close to my mother-in-law.  And even though she's been gone almost four years, I feel her presence around us quite often.  I know this is because I'm constantly telling my kids stories about nana.  We celebrate her birthday and I often call my sister-in-law on the anniversary of her passing.  I always think of her on holidays.  I ask her for help a lot.  We have photos of her around and, because she's buried right by our church, we "visit" her on Sundays.  In fact, it's my little five year old who insists every week after mass that we say hello to Nana.  We walk over to where her ashes are buried and the girls will lay down flowers or show her a picture they drew.  A few weeks ago, my five year old said, "I know she's not really there.  I know she's in heaven.  But going there is like picking up the phone to call her."  I like that analogy.

So, please, take the advice of that lovely father.  Honor your loved ones in heaven often and you'll make that link that much stronger and easier for them to connect with you.

How To Grid Your House For Protection -- Part 3

It's important to grid your house for protection.  This will eliminate negative things and people from coming near your home.  Here's what you'll need:

1) Four - eight black stones such as black tourmaline, hematite, or obsidian.

2) A bag of sea salt

3) Optional: Four St. Benedict Medals and a pound of tumbled rose quartz

Find the four outermost corners of your property and bury a black stone in each corner.  Option: Bury a St. Benedict medal with each black stone.  The St. Benedict medal has a latin prayer on the back that protects against negativity.  The reason why I said you can have 4 - 8 stones is because some people like to place a stone in each corner next to the house and then a stone in each corner of the property.  It's up to you; to me, it's all about intent.  

Then, take your bag(s) of sea salt and pour salt around the perimeter of your house.  Then walk to your property line and pour a bag of salt along this out perimeter.  Option: bury a rose quartz every few feet or so around the perimeter of your property so that you're also gridding your house in love.

Say a prayer of intent for your home and property.  Ask your guides and angels to continually watch over your home.

And that's it! Your home is now protected from negativity.  

Extras:

• Place a row of magnetized hematite under the outer lip of your front door.  This will draw any negativity into the stones from the people entering your house.
• Place flowers in planters flanking your front door.  Bury just under the soil in each planter seven chakra stones such as jasper, carnelian, citrine, green aventurine or rose quartz, blue lace agate, sodalite and amethyst.  This will attract balance, happiness and prosperity to your home.
• Clean a pound of selenite, amethyst or clear quartz.  Ask that these stones work to protect your home and keep all of you safe.  Then place a stone above the inside window frame of your house.
• Bury a circle of citrine, green aventurine and rose quartz around your mailbox to encourage positive mail.
• Bury a perimeter of green stones, any green stone, around your garden to ensure healthy growth.

How To Clear Negativity From Yourself, Your Space and Others -- Part 2

Here's how to sage your house:

Get a bundle of sage and a bowl to hold any dropped ash and embers.  Try to be home alone.  Personally, I only sage my house when my kids and pets are not home.  Make sure all the windows are closed.  Stand in the center of your home and call on your highest guides and angels.  Ask Christ and Archangel Michael to help you clear the home of any and all negativity.  Then, light the sage and starting at the front door, motion the smoke around the perimeter of the door and say, "I seal this home in love and light.  May only peace, health, joy and prosperity abide here."  Then begin to walk around your home.  Keep the sage bundle lit the whole time.  In the corners of your home, say, "I break up and dispel all negativity here."  Pay special attention to the rooms that you spend a lot of time in such as the bedroom and the kitchen.  Don't forget to sage closets, attics, basements and the garage.  Finish the clearing in the center of your home.  Once again, call on your guides, angels, Archangel Michael and Jesus Christ to continue clearing your home.  Set an intention for your home such as, "Our home is a place of peace, tranquility, joy, love and laughter."

Wait about 10 - 20 more minutes and then open at least one window.

You should plan on doing this about once a month  -- a little more or less depending on the energy in the home.

For daily cleansings, make a sage spray or check out my Crystal Clear spray on my website which is made with three types of sage, lavender, frankincense, myrrh, sweet grass and cedar soaked in holy water and crystals.  I spray my house, myself, my family members, and my crystals with it daily.  It works!

Tomorrow, I'll discuss how to grid your property for energy clearing and protection.

How to Clear Negativity From Yourself, Your Space and Others

I've blogged about this before and written about it in my newsletters, but from all the email questions I receive about getting rid of negativity, I think it must bear repeating.  The best way to clear negativity is to start with you. Keep your thoughts positive, your words kind and your actions intentional.  Don't allow negative people into your life.  If they're already there -- for example, your parents, spouse, boss or siblings -- then limit your time around them.  Don't take their actions or words personally.  This is a lot harder than it sounds, but with practice, it does  get easier.  Trust me.  If I can do it, anyone can.

Every morning and evening, put white light around yourself, your loved ones, your car, your house and place of work.  Imagine the white light weaving itself around your town, state, country and eventually around the world.  If you have trouble visualizing, see yourself jumping into a white puffy cloud.  Or, when you're showering imagine the water is white light washing away all your negativity and filling you and surrounding you with light, love and peace.

It's important to keep your home a negative free space.  Keep it clean.  I can't stress this enough.  Cleanliness really is next to Godliness.  Okay, just kidding.  But really, a lot of bad mojo gets trapped in the dust bunnies.  Keep live plants and/or fresh flowers in your home.  Get rid of all fake plants and silk flowers -- that's a feng shui no no and it stagnates the energy flow in your home big time.  Try to have a water fountain in your home -- preferably near the front door.  If you don't have a water fountain, a fish bowl works well.  This keeps the energy clear and clean in your home and increases prosperity.  Keep crystal clusters around your home.  This increases group harmony, decreases fights and helps everyone in the home to work together.  With five people and three pets in my home, I can truly attest to the validity of these hard working crystal clusters.  They work!

Amethyst Clusters -- increase spirituality.  Helps everyone get along with a sense of one for all, all for one mentality

Citrine Clusters -- helps increase everyone's happiness and ability to work together.

** Place an amethyst cluster next to a citrine cluster on your bedside table if you'd like you and your partner to have better listening and communication skills together.

Rose Quartz Clusters -- Increases the feelings of love for each other

Clear Quartz Clusters -- Increases the group energy.  So be careful with this cluster if one of the people in your family is negative because it will increase that negative energy unless you ask the clear quartz cluster to work only to increase positivity.

Flourite Clusters -- work great in kids' rooms because they're known as the student stone and help kids do their homework

Any green cluster quartz will work well in the kitchen to increase good food, good conversation and prosperity.  In Feng Shui, the kitchen is the center of prosperity.

Don't forget to place crystals in your bathrooms too.  Bathrooms can be big energy drains.  Amethyst and green aventurine work well in bathrooms.

To further reduce negativity in your home, play calming music as often as possible.  Sound can absorb the negativity in your home caused from fighting and yelling.

Tomorrow I'll discuss how to sage yourself and your home.

Thank You For Helping Me Believe

A few years ago, I met a client who was one of those people that make me work extra hard.  I used to be curious as to why non-believers came to see me for readings.  Why bother?  What are they looking to prove?  It's really hard to read for non-believers because their negative energy throws up all sorts of road blocks. So she came into my office, sat down across from me and crossed her arms, giving me that, "Yeah? So what now?" expression.  Uh-oh.

Everything I asked her was no.

"Do you work with kids?"

"No."

"Oh, I keep seeing you helping kids."

"I'm not a teacher."

"Okay, hmm, that's odd.  I just keep seeing you and kids, you helping kids."

She shrugged.

"Well, I guess I got that wrong.  What do you do for a living?"

"I'm a pediatric nurse."

God help me.

"So, doesn't that mean you help kids?"

She shrugged again.

That's how the whole hour went.  By the time she left, I was so drained, I felt like canceling the rest of my appointments.  I remember calling my sister on the drive home and ranting away into her ear.  "People like that make me want to quit!"

Six months later, she scheduled another appointment.  She was a bit better, but not much.  Over the next several months, she bought gift certificates for her mom, dad, and brothers plus two friends.  Then this week, she came in to see me for a reading.  She was much more relaxed this time, and reading for her was a pleasure, a breeze.  On her way out the door, she paused and said, "Thank you for helping me to believe."

I walked over and hugged her.  I said, "Thank you too." I'm sure she wondered why I said thank you, but I wanted to thank her for reminding me that I should never judge someone too quickly or too harshly or at all for that matter.  I shouldn't have taken her tough exterior personally but rather as a reminder that my job is to simply deliver the messages.  What the client does or doesn't do with that information is not about me nor is it any of my business.

When you do this work, you're simply the mailman.  I never know what happens to people after they leave my office or hang up the phone.  I don't get the end of the story.  But this week I did, and I was humbled.

Opening Your Intuition With the Three C's

If you'd like to open your own intuition and learn how to trust those gut feelings and intuitive hunches you get, look no further than the three C's.  You can open your intuition when you can be:

1) Compassionate
2) Connected
3) Cooperative

The famous medium Gordon Smith teaches that in order to be truly psychic, you must be sincerely compassionate.  You need an open heart, an empathetic soul and a sympathetic personality.  When we're compassionate toward others, we're in tune with those around us.  We're NOT judging, blaming, envying, or comparing.  We're simply feeling.

In order to be intuitive, you have to feel the sense of connection to all things and people around you.  I'll give you a simple, some might say silly, example to illustrate this.  The other night, my daughters screamed because there was a spider in their room.  I picked it up with a tissue, took the spider outside and placed it on a bush by our front door.  My husband laughed hysterically at me.  I said to him, "That spider has a white aura all around it.  That's the spark of God within it which means God created that spider just as He created you and I.  Who am I to kill God's creation?"  I really thought for a moment that my husband was going to call our family doctor.  He looked as though I'd gone insane.  Maybe I have, but really, ever since I opened my third eye, I really can see a white luminescent glow around every living thing -- bugs, trees, flowers.  That luminescent glow is around me and you too.  It's our God spark.    

Carl Jung proved the connection between all of us through his teachings on the collective unconscious.  Alexander Graham Bell beat Elisha Gray to the patent office for the invention of the telephone by a few days.  Several people sued J.K Rowling for creating Harry Potter, for they believed they had had the same idea.  Maybe they had.  We're all connected by the universal collective unconscious.  For example, every single religion shares a creation story and every major religion shares a great flood story.  Coincidence?  Of course not -- we're all connected.

Tap into this sense of connection in your own life.  Tonight, walk outside and spend some moments just looking at the moon, breathing in the air.  Close your eyes and see if you can hear more than ten sounds. Walk around your yard, touch the leaves, feel the grass on your toes.  When you're talking to your friend, really listen.  Don't think or judge or question or try to come up with your own story.  Just listen.  Really listen.  Do something creative this weekend.  Bake, plant a vegetable, play with clay, paint or just color in a coloring book with a little person.

The third step in opening your intuition is cooperation.  I mean this literally.  Stubborn people who are always right will never be really good intuitives.  They might get hunches now and then but nothing consistent or reliable.  Intuitives have to learn how to bend, to go with the flow and how to cooperate with all types of personalities here and on the other side.  I've met all kinds of people doing this work -- living and dead -- with whom I've had to be very cooperative.  There was the woman who said, "I don't care to talk to any dead people, I just want to know how I can get my boyfriend back."  Or there was the older lady on the other side who refused to speak to me because I saw that she was an alcoholic.  Or the man that asked me to prove to him on the phone that I was psychic before he scheduled an appointment. Cooperation also means being open to connecting with your loved ones, guides and angels and realizing that "it takes two to make a thing go right."  You have to learn to raise your vibration and they have to learn to lower theirs.  This takes practice, meditation and prayer.  But, I promise, it is worth it because when you begin to see the connection between all of us through the eyes of a compassionate, corporative soul, a whole new and wonderful world opens up to you.

Learning to Receive

Lately, I'm meeting so many people who are limiting themselves through poor self-esteem and incorrect views about money and success.  Try this little exercise: open your arms wide and say aloud, "I am ready to receive."  How does that feel?  Did it feel fake?  Were you able to open your arms wide?  Keep doing that exercise until it feels natural.

We're taught so many false views about money -- that it's evil and corruptible.  We see people like Bernie Madoff and believe that is what happens to people who cultivate money.

So many people believe the wealthy are selfish, mean, cheap, rude and narcissistic. While that may be true of some wealthy people, it's also true of some poor people.  We can't use blanket statements like that and make them true.  I have many wealthy clients who use their money to assist their family, friends and community around them.  Several of my clients have paid the mortgages for their families, many are paying for their nieces and nephews to go to college.  Some have funded their family and friends' business ideas.  I had one client who told me just before Christmas, "I'm feeling really good today.  I made a nice donation to my church anonymously and it made me happier than anything ever has."  I knew this client went to my church, but I didn't say anything because I knew the gift was supposed to be anonymous. On Christmas day, our priest -- with tears in his eyes -- told the story of how a person had anonymously donated $50,000 and said, "Please use this to help those who are suffering from this economic downturn."

Think about the good that has come from money -- the charities, the grants, scholarships.  Think about how happy you can make people with a bit of generosity -- an extra tip, a nice gift for a friend just because, an anonymous gift to someone in need.

If you had an abundance of money right now, what would you do?  After you paid off bills and debts and still had plenty of money left over, what would you do?  I'd like to think you'd share it.  So reflect on this thought:  the more you're able to receive, the more you're able to give.

John Randolph Price has a great book called The Abundance Book  which helps people to disassociate from the negative beliefs about money that have been ingrained in us all.  For example, the original words from the bible about money are not "Money is the root of all evil" but rather "The LOVE of money is the root of all evil."  There's a big difference there.  When we love money rather than the joy and generosity of spirit it can bring us, then money can corrupt.  But when we embrace money for what it can do for others, then we're able to receive.

So go ahead, open your arms wide to receive and then pass it on!

Random Acts of Kindness III

This is a great story anonymously posted in Random Acts of Kindness about forgiveness and learning to forgive ourselves:

I went back to Vietnam last year.  I'm not really sure why I went -- it just seemed important that I go.  When I think about it now,  I think I went back to try to find something that I had lost there 23 years ago.  It was a very strange trip, very disorienting.  So much had changed and so much was exactly as it had been.  I was there for five days, and most of the time I just wandered around in a fog -- to places where I had spent time, places I had fought.  On the last day, I was taking a cab to the airport, and the taxi driver started talking to me.  He obviously knew I was American, and he asked me if I had fought in Vietnam.  When I said yes, I was overcome with grief.  As I handed him his money at the airport, he held on to my hand for a moment and said, "I was your enemy, but now I am your friend."

On the flight back I felt more alive than I had in years.  If that cab driver in Ho Chi Minh City could hold my hand as a friend, then maybe I could be my friend as well.

Getting Through a Divorce

So many of my clients this week are in the process right now of dealing with a divorce.  Even when amicable, divorce is never easy.  I believe going through a divorce is like going through a death.  It's the death of a relationship and your family as you know it.  This is a painful thing which is why I always tell my clients to mourn the divorce like it is a death.  Give yourself the proper time to grieve.  Expect to go through the five stages of grief Elizabeth Kubler Ross identifies:

1) Denial
2) Anger
3) Bargaining
4) Depression
5) Acceptance

I find most people get stuck on anger and depression which is sad because it makes us rack up more negative karma.  Twice this week I was told that my clients were going through their divorce because they'd fulfilled their karmic contract with their spouse.  Their guides recommended that they accept this, forgive themselves and their spouse and move forward.  Easier said than done, I know, but still very good advice.

If kids are involved, it's imperative that you try to remain amicable with your ex-spouse.  No matter the cost to you, your dignity or your sense of justice -- the kids come first.  Check out a great book that discusses this called The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce -- The 25 Year Landmark Study by Wallerstein, Lewis and Blakeslee and What About the Kids? Raising Your Children Before, During and After Divorce by the same authors.

Divorce can present us with an opportunity for some important life lessons -- forgiveness, independence and courage are just a few examples.

Our loved ones on the other side do witness our relationship troubles.  They see the pain we're going through and feel for us even though they know the panoramic view of the situation.  For example, they might know that in two years you're going to be happily in love with a new person or that in six months the court dates will finally be over.  They might also know that this is a karmic debt you're balancing with this spouse.  Sometimes, the divorce isn't part of our life path, and they know that we're creating new karma that will have to be dealt with later. Still, they know how hard it is to go through a divorce -- no matter what the reason is.   However, God gives us all free will -- even our loved ones on the other side -- so if you want their help, you have to ask.  Give your grandmother, your aunt, your dad (whoever is over there for you that you love and trust) permission to help you.

And lastly, be gentle with yourself.  As I said earlier, divorce is never easy.  I'm a big fan of talking with a therapist as you go through this life changing situation.  I think kids, too, can benefit from this.  I know prayer works.  Talk to God, talk to your angels and guides and loved ones.  Pray for help, courage and strength. And know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you can and will get through this, and you'll be a stronger person as a result.

Old Salem Ghost Story

I recently returned from a trip with my family to Old Salem village in Winston-Salem, NC.  It's a completely restored 18th century Moravian village with surprisingly few ghosts lingering around.  One ghost story, however, did catch my eye because it's not scary -- just very evidential.  One night, a sickly gentleman checked into Old Salem's tavern.  He later died that evening, and because he had no identification on him, the tavern owner told his employees to put his saddle bags in storage and bury him in the stranger's section of the cemetery.

But just days later the employees started complaining of hearing strange noises, things moving and seeing a ghost reaching out to them in the hallway.  Each time, the employee would run and tell the tavern owner who did not, of course, believe in such foolishness.  About a week after the stranger died, a female employee of the tavern keeper ran into his office and said, "He's there!  The ghost!  He's in the hallway."  The tavern keeper had had enough of these alleged haunting, so he slammed his ledger book closed, walked out into the hallway and almost into the ghostly figure of the stranger who had died in his tavern.  But the tavern keeper was not a man to turn tail and run.  He stood his ground and said, "What do you want?"

The ghost said, "Please, write this all down."  The tavern keeper went to his office, retrieved a piece of paper and wrote down all the ghost had to say.  He told the tavern keeper his name and gave him his brother's name and address in Texas.  "My family must know what happened to me."  The tavern keeper gave him his word and the ghost disappeared.

Now, the tavern keeper could hardly believe what had just happened to him.  Still, a man's word is his honor, so he wrote a letter to the man the ghost had called his brother and told him about the untimely death of his brother and mailed it off.  A few weeks later, a letter arrived confirming that he was indeed the brother of the ghost and asked that he send his saddle bags and any other belonging to the Texas address.

The tavern keeper never again referred to talk of ghosts as foolishness.