Ever find yourself hitting a major bump in the road of life? That’s kinda me right now. I mean yes, overall I’m happy and feel blessed as I’ve mentioned, but there is a lingering issue in my life that have been bothering me for years that I’ve now decided to confront with God and Goddess as witness. I won’t go into it as it is too private for even my anonymous, open book blog. But, I’ll just say I’ve finally made a goal for myself to commit fully to deal with it and hopefully bring more positivity to my life and less discord. The change I need to make will be hard, but I have confidence in myself to succeed.
Anyone else had that moment when you’ve realized you gotta change course or you’ll hit an iceberg?
This is St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. I took this picture while on an academic-related trip there in January of last year.
Now minus my baptism as a newborn and recognition of Christmas and Easter (the birth and resurrection of Jesus), I’m not particularly Christian in any serious way. However, I do have a special place for houses of worship. They have a special energy to them that cannot be ignored. So I was looking forward to entering this Catholic house of worship…where Pope John Paul II once was a guest.
The whole scene inside took my breath away…
You enter a house of worship and you feel the power of the Creator emanating from the room.
Tonight is the Full Moon and with that comes my first Full Moon Ritual. You read about the January 11th New Moon Ritual. Today for me is a day of spiritual reflection, of which this blog is a part of that process. Specifically reflecting upon my goal made on the day of new Moon. Here was my goal:
My goal is to give a positive blessing prayer to one person every day through the next Full Moon Day. This one person will be a non-family member.
I successfully fulfilled my goal, praying for someone every day. This included acquaintances, co-workers, even some of you out there who follow this blog. I found it very fulfilling spiritually, I felt like I was giving attention and positive energy to people who may have very well needed it. In one case, a prayer was clearly answered. It helped me feel connected to other people beyond simply being physically present with them. I felt like a spiritual being, connected with God and Goddess as well. These prayers for people, whether family, friend or stranger is something I’ll definitely continue beyond the end of this lunar cycle. Prayer is a powerful and wondrous thing. I’ll definitely make use of it more to connect with people and the Universe.
The New Moon I fasted…for the Full Moon, I think indulging myself to celebrate life is good for balance. Tonight, I’ll be hanging out with CT and our co-worker who received a new job, plus others. Should be a fun evening 🙂
The great life-giving sun returns for yet another day in the 4.5 billion year history of sunrises. I give thanks to God and Goddess every morning and night just for that bright star who’s energy sustains all of us.
The awesome coffee shop I go to for social company, study and reflection.
For some reason, there is something emotionally powerful about listening to something poetic in a foreign language. Do you feel that way too? It’s like, you don’t necessarily understand what is being said, but the way the words are spoken, the cadences, the knowledge it at least has some special meaning just does something to your soul. It draws you in. This Christian religious hymn is in Anglo-Saxon…aka Old English (translation provided in the video). Close your eyes and listen to the power of the language first. I think it’s even more powerful because it is a language functionally extinct from this Earth, but is spoken for the modern world to hear.
How many of you out there set achievable, measurable goals for yourself? No matter how you do it, whether through affirmation, prayer, visualization, etc, making goals for yourself can give a sense of direction and control over your life you might not otherwise have. As the meme states, the tragedy of life does not lie in not reaching our goals, the tragedy of life is not having goals to reach for. Without goals, life is a directionless mess where we blow based on the whims of external forces. Ever since I rediscovered my spirituality after some years of dormancy, I have renewed my commitment towards goal setting. Having faith in God, Goddess and of course, myself, I pray and affirm what I want, go about everything possible in the material world to make it happen and let the Universe do the rest. And it has already served me well. I feel like I’m more in control of my life than ever before. Life isn’t perfect and not all goals are reached, but even then as the saying goes, “One door closes, another one opens”. Some goals may not be in the cards to be reached, but other goals you weren’t even striving for are achieved, making the work not in vain.
Overarching lesson….reach for the stars. You might just make it to the Moon.
Had a rather amazing meditation experience early this morning before sunrise. I used my mp3 player to play a binaural beat track with variable frequencies which changed every 8-10 minutes or so. My brain really responded to the track as I fell in a deep meditative state where at times I would see vivid bright colors and lights, along with an overall pleasurable sensation in my forehead. At some point, vivid scenes of places I’ve been too or imagined popped in my mind’s eye as well. Emotionally, I felt a pleasant connection with the Universe and myself. Afterwards, I came out of the fairly long meditation happy and emotionally/spiritually satisfied.
Afterwards, I had a dream that i was an Apollo astronaut walking on the surface of the Moon. I remember picking up lunar dust and rocks and feeling the low gravity. I remember a couple other astronauts walking around with me. This reminds me, last night I remembered looking up at the moon in the cold dark night and remembering that the full moon is coming up in a few days.
Life is going pretty well. At least I have nothing really to complain about. School is off to a good start, the weather is very cold, but tolerable (no more snowstorms at least) and overall I feel like life is going the direction I want it to go. Prayer, meditation and setting goals for myself have really calm anxieties and bring about more internal peace. I don’t think it’s so much that the world around me has changed, but more I’ve changed how I perceive the world and how I deal with issues facing me in the world. And in doing so, I attract what I need out of life and push away what I don’t need. It’s a good feeling of quiet confidence that drives me now. I woke up to the rising sun this morning, quietly in my mind gave my morning prayer to God and Goddess, got up and felt prepared to take on the day. Homework, lunch, work, dinner, more studies…I can handle that. It helps now that I have a part-time job related to my career field that I feel good about going to everyday now (a prayer answered). The otherwise mundane life now feels, less mundane and more exciting. I mean, what’s more exciting than realizing that you’re on planet Earth, you’re living, you’re participating in civilization and can make something of yourself? I never forget how blessed I am to live where I live and have the opportunities that I have. Although, I would hope no matter where I could’ve been born and ended up, I could somehow contribute something positive to myself and others.
I thought I’d share this video with you guys. I really like this chica…she’s a model who’s also Pagan and lives in Britain. She does lots of Youtube videos, including videos on Witchcraft, Wicca and Paganism. Plus, she’s just damn charming. In this video, she talks about spiritual slumps which is very fascinating.
I’ve always had a fair amount in common with Paganism since high school (polytheism, recognition of seasonal and lunar cycles, the oneness of deity and nature). Although, I still have some connections with Christianity (celebration of Christmas and Easter, the influence of Christian thinking via family and the Bible…granted, I haven’t read much of the Bible in years). At the end of the day, I don’t really give myself an identifier, although I’m probably much closer to some type of eclectic Paganism than Christianity.
(Alert: Includes mature content of a sexual nature. Reader discretion is advised)
Last night, I made love with CT for the first time in 5 days. We hadn’t done so because she, like so many people lately was unfortunate enough to catch the nasty flu bug which was been going strong this year. It was so bad, we actually slept in separate rooms so as to avoid my exposure to it (we’ll see if I still catch it lol). But last night, she was feeling up to it, so we decided to make love. CT likes to tell me that it feels just a little different every time, but it felt quite different to me last night. There was an extra rush of energy, an extra need and desire for closeness, just something extra which I think came from the fact that (for us anyways) a lot of time had passed between sexual encounters. Of course, I felt completely merged and one with her at the height of the experience and that’s when I realized how much I’d missed her in that way. I’ll always be amazed by the powerful energy and spiritual connection sex brings with it. Makes me appreciate it as a true expression of love. I’ve had sex just for the sake of pleasure before and while it was physically enjoyable, emotionally and spiritually, the contrast is like night vs. day in terms of satisfaction. In fact, I always like I was missing something. Nowadays, I don’t think I could ever go back to having sex that way after having experienced sex as a spiritual act of love. It’s the act of God and Goddess becoming one, the act which conceived the Universe. It’s beautiful and so much more satisfying when not just body, but the mind and spirit are a part of it as well.
Last night’s meditation was mostly just devoted to getting over some anxiety I have over a new life change coming starting today. Nothing major, but definitely positive. I prayed to God and Goddess and told them my concerns as anxiety, even over positive changes, sometimes plague me. I received back comforting feelings and good thoughts about myself and felt much more relaxed and pleased after the meditation was over. I then did a visualization, building up and releasing the negative, anxious-filled energy out to the Universe. It was a short, but very helpful meditation.
This morning’s meditation was quite nice. While in a deep state, I imagined a deep flow of energy flowing in and out of my forehead through my “third eye”. This caused me to feel quite buzzed with energy and floaty-feeling. It was very pleasurable, although a bit intense. I saw myself holding the hands of a human representation of God and Goddess, floating through space, past planets and was looking down upon the solar system. I was in a weird, dream-like state at this point, although still conscious. Eventually, I came out of it a bit, changed my position to more of a sleeping position allowed myself to rest and dream.
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Do you all ever wonder about the nature of dreams? Do dreams mean anything? Certainly dreams occur within the confines of our minds, but do you believe it can be considered another reality? I mean, we feel, touch, smell, taste and see in our dreams. We also express emotion. Ever since high school when I explored my dreams via a dream journal, I’ve always considered the dream world another reality…one produced by our personal mental environment, which is impacted by our waking life. What our minds experience in waking life is processed as dreams in our sleeping life. And so I think dreams have meanings, with the symbology different for each individual person. Water in a dream could represent something different to different people for example, based on how they think of water from an emotional standpoint. And so in a way, dreams are artistic; they are short scripts written and played out symbolically to process information.
So the next time you have a dream (creating a dream journal and writing down even dream fragments helps a lot in remembering), right it down and think about what it means to you. You’ll find pretty quickly the connection it has to your waking life and maybe the conscious effort will be spiritually fulfilling to you. Plus, since we spend a third of our lives in our dream realities, it might be nice to at least record our exploration and existence within it.
My Spiritual Discovery 