Living in balance requires us to remember our nature connection and our connection to the web of life. Below are some ways to bring harmony, balance and peace to your life.

Work and live in natural light

Clean your space at work and home, cleaning is cleaning and purifying

Walk in bare feet as much as you can

Be aware of all earthly connections-sunrise, sunset, rivers, rocks, plants, and animals. Always bless and give gratitude for our place amongst all living things. Remember that all matter, matters. We all have a significant role that we play everywhere, all the time and that we are never alone!

Wear and decorate your home with bright colors, especially yellow

Lie down on mother Earth for deep healing, renewal and contact

Give back to the world by expressing your soul’s intent-to learn, to love, to laugh

Be Peace

Dance often

Honor the feminine, now is the time where feminine energy of cooperation, collaboration, peace that will end wars, violence and poverty. Embrace the feminine

As for permission every time you enter a special place in nature or before you give advice, or speak your truth.

Be respectful, trust your intuition and allow your creativity to flow

Increase your role in community

Raise your vibration through joy, meditation, and movement

Practice being around angry people and know that all energy is neutral

Treat everyone with love

Decrease suffering by increasing peace

Practice these ingredients and remember that life is not about what you do, it’s about what you become

Enjoy the journey, Kathy

Chakras, color vortexes that surround and illuminate metabolized energy throughout our bodies are affected by many factors that include our thoughts, foods, behaviors, spiritual aliveness, emotions and mental constructs. Chakras, in a sense, metabolize all that we think, feel and do. We register our biographical data within these 7 energy centers. Each center, you could probably say, has a mind of it’s own. It regulates a certain area of our bodies that include the organs connected, and collaborates with the other chakras for optimal health.

When we are functioning well the chakras all rotate in a clockwise direction. When we are out of balance in any chakra, the direction can alter from clockwise, diagonal, vertical, horizontal or counterclockwise. Sometimes, depending on how shut down a person is to an idea or life issue, a chakra can be closed.

Using color is a great way to begin understanding the powerful life force energy that flows through us all. Here’s an easy exercise that will tell you how you are doing with color fields in and around your body. Start by either writing the following colors on index cards: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, White and set aside. If you would like you can cut out colors from an art pad, or paint colors. Do what feels right to you!

Now with the colors on cards in front of you, mix them up and close your eyes. This is a great exercise to do with a partner as well. If you have a pendulum, instead of closing your eyes, use your pendulum to answer the questions, “Is this a color I need?” The pendulum, after establishing yes/no before you do this, will guide you in a yes/no response to each color. You can make a pendulum out of a paper clip attached to a string. Simply hold the pendulum over each color and ask the question. Sometimes more than one color may be speaking to you.

If you don’t have a pendulum, again mixing up the cards close your eyes. Ask the question and place your hand over each card. The energy of the color will vibrate a certain knowing and you will sense what colors are drawing you to them.

Once you know which color you need to balance your system then imagine yourself being washed by that color during a visualization and meditation. If you are working with a partner, your partner can stand over your crown and send the color through their hands directing the color to go to the area of the body needed. Imagine that color flowing into the chakra where needed. For instance, if red is your color, imagine sending red to your root chakra, located at your tailbone. Imagine that you are sending red energy of feeling grounded in the physical world, physical strength, self-preservation and the instinct that you have all the tools you need to survive in the world. This is the power of red.

The colors are very sensitive to your mood, your day or any specific issues that are troubling you in the moment. So, it is a good tool to use often.

Each color has energy lessons for the body. For example, if orange is low and this is the color you need, imagine sending orange to your navel area and imagine that your gut instincts become activated, your capacity to receive love, taking in the tastes of the world, making choices that serve your higher good, establishing communication in areas of sexuality, power and money that does not require you to compromise yourself, and lastly orange will help you gain emotional trust in yourself.

For more information about how to use color to replenish your fields contact me, or schedule an in-depth Reiki session at 607-594-6655, or find me at kcounseling@hotmail.com

This has been how the winds have called me lately. So many changes seemingly happening abruptly and a bit abrasively. So how does one hear the message within the call? How does one wrestle with creating hope versus just an optimistic, cheerful outlook? It is significantly important whenever we are in turmoil, choosing to go left or right, up or down, that we see past the duality of our choices and look a little deeper. What do these choices within you represent? For instance, if you had a chance to live in the country with all the abundance you could ever wish for, would you take it? Would you give up family, friends, a busy suburban or city life to dwell in the depths of nature. Would you grow lonely, anxious, or would you fall in love with a new way of living. Inversely, if you moved from the organic hillsides of a mountain range toward the sure likelihood of wealth with a new job in a city, could you give up the life with the sentient primordial earth? Does it have to be a this or that?

You see what we forget is that our lives are never attached to an outcome. Remember being a child and just freely playing, climbing a tree because it felt good to be a part of the tree, or dipping your toes in a cool stream of water, because the gushing water made you laugh? These are how the seeds of hope get planted. Hope is when we know for sure that we know nothing for sure. Hope is the road we walk when we just love the adventure. It is different than cheer for cheer is the celebration once we achieved our intended results. Hope is like a chard of crystal, big, bright and beautiful and it lights you with the knowledge that beyond your personal intent and visions of success, lies this aspect of ourselves directed toward making sense out of the non-sensical. Some things no matter how crazy it seems to others, just make sense to you. That is hope. It is calling you to follow what makes sense to you.

I would rather have hope than cheer. I would rather know that the journey is worth the long walk carrying all my baggage of goods with me, knowing that the road may not be crystal clear, it may not be lined with charts and graphs of my investments along the way, but I know that the trip is worthwile when we see that we can live non-dualistically.

Non-duality means that you know in your deepest crevices that we are apart of a larger scale of life. What we do in our portion of life does effect everything. Yes, the little grasshopper who got eaten by bird, who got eaten by a cat, who got hit by a car, and that car held within it the person you were supposed to meet, who got out and wept that he or she didn’t see your cat. You see how we weave and ravel this deep mystergy together?

So, the next time you are hit with a lot of decision making and you want to focus on just the economic gains that this decision will allow you to do, or other measurements or outcomes of your actions, think and meditate on hope.

Ask yourself if you allow hope to grace you, what difference will this decision make? Hope is a dimension of soul making, it is that part of us that is directed towards goodness, what is right, not necessarily what makes you feel good. Feeling good is personal, goodness is global.

Blessings on your journey, Kathy

Is that quantum enough for you?

A great way to practice conceptualizing new ways is to work with the lunar and sun cycles. Let’s start with the closest and perhaps greatest opportunity to cast dreams into the universe. The vernal equinox is March 20th. We will be practicing this meditation at Moon Hill Community Healing Circle on March 2nd from 7-9, so come an join in.

Let’s back up a bit to understand that our significant collective purpose is caretaking Gaia, our great mother Earth. This is simply the conscious reason we are here together. Our singular purpose is always aligned with our collective purpose, so we are here to bring our unique talents and soul vibration to our physical place in the world, while the world spins and moves in unison with each person’s dance. What is in the ONE is in the All and visa versa.

With that being said we have to unwrap and untie ourselves from thousands of years of bondage. We have been conditioned to believe, for the most part, that we do not matter. Seriously, deep in our DNA eneregtic depth there exists a worldview where the individual cannot survive going against the grain. It’s true, we cannot. We survive when we are tapped to the Tree of Life and work together for the highest good of self and for all concerned.

We have been lied to about our vote in the world, that we cannot go upstream, against the grain or we perish miserably. We have invariably been investing in keeping a larger elite alive and strong by believing we are slaves. Slaves to jobs, to security, to insurance, to Wall Street, to government, oil, wars, etc. However, we are moving quite rapidly toward an ending of this regime. If we want to take our rightful divine heritage back, we absolutely must start with living the way we want.

Below is an exercise that will help you begin this process.

Find a place where you can sit comfortably where you will not be disturbed. Either through meditation, or writing record in your mind at least 3 things you would like to have or create. Imagine when, where and under what circumstances this dream manifests. For example, if you want to teach children about nature imagine that you are in a natural setting, imagine how you feel, how the children feel, sense the day, temperature, etc. Make it as real as possible in the future image. Be careful not to want material goods, or to want to manipulate people to get what you want. Maybe it’s nice to want a huge house, expensive car and be friends with a famous entertainer, but it goes against the universal flow when we mix desires with the highest good. If you need a car to get to work, it’s okay to manifest a car, but the car is connected to directed path. Also, if we want to manifest a life partner, the person of our dreams, that’s okay too, but just see that person as a cloudy image, don’t make it a specific person as that would be an example of manipulating the universe, or in a sense, taking that person’s vote from them.

Now, take the image that you are creating and make sure that it is indeed what you really want. Check in with yourself and ask, “If this were really to occur am I ready for the change in me that has to occur with it?” For instance, if you imagine yourself promoted at work, do you really want the increased demands that come with that manifestation? Try to move past ego security of more money, recognition and such. See bigger. How is this manifestation aligned with your collective purpose to care for the earth? If you imagine that you want to open a huge restaurant specializing in steaks, can you accept that steaks may come from slaughtered animals overwrought in a farm factory, or can you manifest steaks with greater consciousness, or perhaps change it to something that doesn’t harm a life? This is how manifestation can create beauty or destroy.

For the next step, keep this visualization crystal clear and now imagine three scenes in which you see this happening. If you want to be a teacher, see yourself getting a great grade in a classroom, see yourself parking your car and walking to class. Do this for each goal that you are casting. Imagine pulling this image into your third eye, our area of intuition and psychic seeing. Let each manifestation rest with three images each. You should carry a total of 9 images. Now, transfer each image, like you are transferring a file, to the back of your skull (base of) and see your medulla (where skull meets the neck) as a blank screen, like a computer screen. Each file or scene will now come alive like you are watching it. Simply view the image you have created on your screen and move on to the next file.

Once you have transferred some of your visualizations, and you can do 3 at a time over several days, whatever works for you, end the exercise with each visualization with “Thy will be done,” or “so be it.”

This is a great tool to keep in your tool box. When we manifest, especially from winter-spring, we are projecting our wishes within the natural cycles of planting, receiving, harvesting and reviewing. Living within the natural harmony of life is what we want to cultivate. It places you in charge of your life and destiny, while co-creating and collaborating with your community. When we work in unison with each other, the universal tilt is also more harmonized because we are respecting and honoring our place in the world. When we work from a place of fear or bondage we manifest fear and bondage. This is how we end the cycle.

Let go, be yourself and everything will flow!

Blessings on your journey
www.risingsunreiki.com

There is no reason to feel fearful because we face the unknown all the time, we just don’t realize how much faith we toss into the unknown every day. We just feel in control and that we have power as we navigate our world daily, but we forget we are apart of divinity. No one is here in isolation or alienation unless it is chosen. It is true, we have been conditioned to believe that we are alone and separate, that all efforts toward achievements in life are based on one’s motivation or luck of the draw. It is hard for us to fathom sometimes that we are a collective species, collaborative partners spinning a unified web. We are this and much more. What we can do and be together is infinite. This is a part of the wave changes that have passed through us. As dimensional beings we feel, are touched, our bodies resonate sound and light, all so that higher dimensions can reach down and show us a better way. At the same time, we are connected to the crystal cord below the earth and have signed on this planet to be the caretakers of Gaia. That is our unified mission.

How we treat each other, how we work and live together are all the challenges we are given so that we can practice this brotherhood and sisterhood of care taking. We are amidst with diversity in color, lifestyle, economics and geography to keep us aligned with our greater collective purposes. We live in order to create and create in order to live. Our key responsibility is to respect, honor and trust in this process we call life. When we live honorably toward each other and all living beings, we then surge in our creativity, like so many of our ancestors did thousands of years ago.

The frequency waves which have been moving time through space are natural and also designed. We don’t exist in this galaxy alone anymore than we live with earth alone. We intersperse with neighboring galaxies, but we have fences built and gates monitored and policed so that we have lost access, however the gates are now opened and a new beginning has happened and will continue to happen as each individual gets on board as caretakers.

The way to open your own personal portal is to open your heart center. The only way to do the work is to join the club. Practice releasing what you no longer need. This could be old beliefs about religion, how you work, where you live, or your obligations to the world. Really look at your script you have been living and ask yourself is this really who you are? Do you feel in love with life and the living? Do you feel like you have been waiting for permission to unfold your heart filled gifts and talents to the world? Do you feel out of touch with the world because of the wounds that you are wearing? Now is the time to evaluate and release into the universal flow the things that are holding you back from living in balance with your heart and who and what you truly love.

The new wave is the wave of vibrating love. It’s that simple. We can release negativity, environmental toxins and create methods of lasting change by thinking holistically, honoring our sacred lives, and forging ahead with the freedom that comes from unlocking the gates.

Healing or expanded awareness is all about leading your life with an open mind, but more importantly and opened heart. Our intuitive nature is closely attuned to our heart center and when this center is closed down healing cannot occur. What closes the heart? The basic aspects of our ego attachments can cause us to freeze up, shut down and close off any possible incoming pain.

Ego serves us by protecting the stability of our humaneness in relations to how and what we need to survive. The first three chakras are associated with survival and they connect us to the material world of how we must negotiate through a conundrum of chaotic challenges. Our tribal roots, belief system, religious affiliations and membership in our communities all require some ego finesse. When our egos are healthy and we have established some sense of boundary lines between that and the other, then we can with greater confidence live our lives with a more detached perspective while living with heart. However, early on in life, wounds do occur that create a sense of separation from the divine. We simply forget from what we came from and believe that we must create survival mechanisms of compromise, self doubt, feeling less than others, competitive, feelings of superiority or inferiority and a host of other ways to stay within the form of our surroundings. We can and do get by this way until periodic crises erupt, designed to open our hearts.

How many people do you know who appear successful on the surface? They have played the game well and are reaping material benefits of wealth, security, a lovely home, freedom, or whatever definition success is determined by. However, when you see this person and catch just a glimpse of expression on her or his face it looks gloomy, gray, vacant, almost as if some robot is running the show and the interior is closed for maintenance. This is how you know that one is not living with heart. It is because the rules we live by and the way the game in life is played is not the same as living one’s hearts longing. The heart longs for connection, compassion, love and wants to project this love to uplift the whole universe. When the heart center compromises or closes off divine urgings to express, freely dance, draw or sing, then dis-ease manifests. It’s just that simple and sometimes not so obvious. Disease can be addictions, running away from oneself and higher self, entering into low integrity contracts, deceiving others, hiding from the truth, or manifesting an actual illness.

It is never too late to change the path in life. The stones are always lying just before you, all you have to do is walk a path. Going out into the woods and literally just walking any path is a great place to start. Nature captures our truth, we cannot lie to nature. She is adept at hearing our cries, catching our tears, lighting our joys and soothing our sorrows. We heal just by being in a natural setting. Spend at least one hour or several in a quiet, undisturbed place in nature and allow the elements of air, water, fire and earth to speak to you, they will. Honor the four sacred directions adding a 5th to below, a 6th to above and opening your heart as the 7th. This ritual done daily is very powerful as it connects you the earth, cosmos and expands your definition of self. Ask permission from nature to take a rock, feather or piece of bark home with you. Add this or use this to create a sacred area where you can begin the process of remembering who you are to find the long way home. Always leave a token behind or a blessing.

New Years, a new moon for the month and tides of change, yet again. Take a breather and relax a bit. Remember to pull inward to your inner special place and focus on what is really important to you. Let’s walk through some ways you can remain centered, or get centered after feeling a bit off balance. First off, find a sacred place in your home that you can be undisturbed for 30 minutes. Put some soft music on to push out distractions and cuddle nicely to soothing music. Sit or lie down and feel yourself stretch out like a cat. Extend arms and legs, torso, hips, waist, jaw, neck and really feel the energy begin to circulate in any tight areas that you may be holding tension.

As you take this time breathe deeply all the way down into your diaphragm through your nose and push the air out for a slow count of 5 through your mouth. Do this rotation five times and feel yourself sink deeper and deeper into a relaxed state.

Focus your mind on your breath. Every time your mind pops us with a distracted image or thought, just go back to your breath. Allow your mind to travel with the music to any place you want to go. You can create a special sacred place in your mind that is just yours to go to. When you create this space pay attention to the environment you choose, weather, temperature, texture, touch, feel and all your sensations. For instance, if you choose to go to a beach, focus on how the sand feels between your toes, the heat of the sun, or coolness of the breeze, sounds of birds, or water that you may hear, the lull of the ocean lapping against the shore, and any other special attributes that will help you relax in this space.

If you want to know an answer to a question in your life, now is the time to ask. Use this sacred space to connect to your higher self, your guides and nature companions. For example, if you want to learn more about your vocation, simply ask, “Should I take this job?” or “Should I go back to school?” or anything of this nature. Sometimes it helps if you imagine that you walk into the water, about waist deep and ask any questions you like.

Answers come in many ways. Sometimes through a sense of knowing, sometimes through a thought, image or feel, a voice, or seeing an object or animal. Practice this exercise as often as you like and this will help through challenging times. Using our intuitive guidance is an essential ingredient especially when our lives feel very full.

Enjoy the season!

Blessings on your journey, Kathy

I studied and zoomed in the maps of the area on my computer hoping to glean some possibility of finding life beyond the human oblivion of consumption from the insurmountable number of retailers, fast food joints, grandiose auto lots amidst four lanes of whooshing sounds from drivers hidden within shiny metal. I set off on a recycled railroad bed, lined with asphalt, some dirt and wooden rails lined neatly, either to protect fragile biodiversity on the other side, or just to give boundaries along the narrow turf.

Alas I set out on a cool, December morning, an unseasonable 45 degrees with shadows dancing between buildings from the morning sun. I covered the first several miles along this 13-mile trek bored with the mundane trail, seeing and hearing chatter from people in nearby manufactured, new homes and colonies neatly arranged, as if this community agreed that nature belonged in their backyard, structured, planned and ordered. I finally relaxed as massive bogs appeared to my right and left, signs that beaver’s adapted, birds pecked and squirrels squealed in tree hopping delight. I began to sink into a meditative pace and altered state of mind where I wondered about how nature keeps up her strength despite constant attacks on her character. She seems to sustain herself, loving what she has in spite of potential futility of it all.

My somber, despondent mood lifted even lighter when I heard a song. I really heard singing and couldn’t believe it! It started gradually around a narrow band of trail and grew louder vibrating with chant like intensity. At first, I felt much like the Grinch hearing little “Whovillers” singing glory and happiness, in spite of their Christmas losses, Yes, I had become the Grinch on this run feeling hopeless about humankind and the insanity of consumption that was running our lives, but indeed the chanting, loving reprieve from a nearby church spoke in hallow chords.

Even though many parish members may never have set foot on this empty, ancient rail bed, never witnessed history beaming from old rocks many used for boundary marking in the 1700’s, never saw the Peregrine falcon swoop down from above, something about the unified spirit of song told me that they believed. They believed in something and with that I herald a resounding, “we can do this we can change this.”

The music created a giddiness, lightness in feet and spirit and I remembered this simple lesson of the day. It is our unification that will bring greater light to this world. Even as I imagined I was alone, the chorus found me and with that, we are never alone.

Let’s break this down. What does it mean to forgive? Is forgiving someone for hurting you mean that the person is off the hook in life? What about those you have hurt? Can you forgive yourself? Most of the time forgiveness means that we hold someone hostage for our pain. We may have had an expectation that they failed to meet, or we may be punishing someone for feeling rejected, or we may fail to forgive because another person is not living their true potential.

When we decide to engage in the process of forgiving, and it can be a lengthy process of letting go, what we are saying is that a specific memory that dwells in your energy field can now be buried. When we let go of the memory and begin the act of forgiveness, the person or event does not claim your life any longer. When we are unforgiving, what we are stating to another is that “you have control over my memories and life.” By forgiving you take your power back and you recognize that the other person has, or will continue to hurt her or himself. You, in a sense, release them from your attached ego, and let your higher self or spirit be able to heal you.

Humans are no different than animals in the way that we naturally grieve our pain. Animals do grieve, but they don’t hold on to the memory of who caused them pain because it simply makes no sense from a survival standpoint or a soul standpoint. The soul is interested in gaining experiences for spiritual growth and mastery and when we fail to forgive someone or ourself, then we cannot move on, it’s just not possible.

When enacting Reiki to bring healing to another, energy fields are often heavy with forgiveness material. Sometimes there is a density in the body, a coldness, or thickness and a memory may flash before me. I then know that a person’s illness or difficulty is related to a need to forgive.

Let’s talk about acceptance. Acceptance is difficult because we often view our life as a linear time line expecting only good things as we get older and more secure in life. Acceptance means looking at each situation in your life and asking a different set of questions about situations that you encounter. Instead of seeing life as starting and ending, see it as a grand mosaic, a mulitple dimensional puzzle and that each event is a significant piece of your soul’s design. This way, even though some things cause a great deal of temporary suffering, understand that it leads to a pearl of understanding. There are no mistakes. As you look backward try to see your life unfolding with detailed meaning and know that even the little upsets, like job loss, relationship woes, are ways to help you stay conciously open to the divine.

Practice forgiving and self accpetance and immerse yourself with an open heart to your present life. Don’t waste time on the past, the soul only loves to be in the present, dream your tomorrow with love, acceptance and deep forgiveness.

Blessings on your journey, Kathy