Everyday Mysticism: Grace Cathedral, Hildegard of Bingen, and Labyrinths

Everyday Mysticism: Grace Cathedral, Hildegard of Bingen, and Labyrinths

Everyday mysticism means to live your life in a conscious way. It means finding the small miracles in the world because small miracles are always there. Find the silence. Understand your heart. Listen, and if that doesn't work, listen again. And again. And again. (Turn off the cell phone to really listen to your soul.)

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Writing Wednesday: The Universe and You

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(Note: This article contains YouTube videos. If you're reading this entry in an email, please click through to the blog to see the videos!)

In honor of this week's Writing Wednesday, let's talk about the eternal divine within. I believe the sacred is in you, and learning how to connect to our deeply personal and individual spiritualities is, I believe, a lifelong and intensely personal process.

1. Do you believe in a Higher Power? If yes, does it have a name? Do you call it God? Goddess? Jesus? Luck? Chance? Fate?

2. What is your personal sacred code?

3. What does talking to a Higher Power mean to you, if you pray to one? Do you call your communication prayer? Does it have another name?

4. Describe the face of your own inner divine being. What does it look like? What is the feeling associated with it?

5. What is your favorite communication or "prayer" with the divine? Some of my favorites are "I'm lost", "Help", "F-- This!", or "Thank You."

Some book recommendations are

The Feminine Face of God by Sherry Ruth Anderson and Patricia Hopkins: Anderson and Hopkins explore women's views of spirituality, including testimony from nuns, Buddists, pagans, female rabbis, and women of all kinds, creeds, and belief systems. From the questioning stay-at-home mom to the woman leaving her relationship after fifty years, the book delves into our eternal questions: If God is me, what am I doing here? What is meaning? What applies to me?

The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie: Self-help household name Melody Beattie wrote this as a daily book of meditations to help us let go, find health, and trust our inner timing. (Melody Beattie also gave the children's book I edited rave reviews. To learn more about April Claxton's wonderful Goodnight Just the Same, click here.)

The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris: The poet Kathleen Norris went to live with Benedictine monks for two years. "Here, she compresses these years of experience into the diary of one liturgical year, offering observations on subjects ranging from celibacy to dealing with emotions," says Amazon.

Women, Food, and God: Geneen Roth was featured on Oprah for this one and it's fantastic. She connects our intimate relationship to food to our intimate spiritual relationship. Wonderful meditation on the ways that our relationship to food parallels our own abundance or perceived lack of  support from a higher power.

The ways that we feel into - or don't feel into - our individual paths can often make or break us in small ways. Here's to loving and accepting our own personal paths, whatever they look like and whatever questions they pose.

And here's a song, "Universe and You" by KT Tunstall.



For any Gray's Anatomy fans out there, here's the "very special musical episode version" that aired last week.  Dr. Arizona Robbins (Jessica Capshaw) sings to her partner Dr. Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez) , now in a coma. (Who was a weepy mess? That would be me.)



Love

Marissa

The Debby Connection (and Writing Prompts)

[caption id="attachment_163" align="alignleft" width="231" caption="Pencil Sketch of mom Debby, done by my father in 1976"][/caption]

 

My mother's name was Deborah. When she died of cancer in 2007, she left me some of her precious books, among them Gibran's The Prophet and a well worn copy of Creative Visualization.

Over the years, my dead mother has shown herself to me in odd ways. Every time I do a professional event for the spiritual and intuitive side of Happy Ganesh , always and without fail the first person that I meet is named Debby, usually Deborah.

Always.

(At the last event I did, I found myself talking to two young women who were both "daughters of Debby." Predictably, their mothers spelled their names Deborah. I was not surprised.)

The day I moved into my office space, her favorite song was playing on the radio.

When I questioned a rocky relationship, I opened a book to a handwritten note of mom's, scrawled on an aging yellow sticky note, which read: "It matters how we treat the people we love every day, not just on holidays."

Recently, I wasn't sure how to proceed with certain career goals. I'd been looking for - and found - mom's copy of Creative Visualization, a book published in 1978, years before The Secret and Esther Hicks's work came to fame. Since I teach visualization and manifestation, I'd been looking for that particular book, never dreaming that it survived the book purges to Goodwill. But it had. I was fearful about my career, feeling worried, wondering how I would keep my head above water. And it was in that place of fearfulness that I opened the book, looking again for answers from my mother. Another one of her sticky notes, tumbled to the floor, all the glue long since gone. When I picked it up, it read - in her backhanded, rounded print, "To thine own self be true." Amazingly, she'd drawn a small heart after the words.

When I have questions for her, things that only a mother could answer, she seems to collect herself across the gap between life and death to just show up. It's pretty amazing.

Sleepless a few nights ago, I pulled another book of hers off my shelf. God, Sex, and Women of the Bible by Shoni Labowitz, a feminist rabbi. (My mom was pretty cool, I have to say. I feel lucky to have had a mother who read stuff like this - and who shared it with me!) Sometimes I ask books what I need to know, as if their wisdom will help me find answers. I asked this particular book. I opened at random - of course - to the Deborah chapter.

Color me unsurprised.

I've been wondering about, among other things, career improvement. Crossroads. What do I do? That's what I asked. The book "answered" "Once you have discerned what you want and it feels right in your soul, then ask: What do I need to do to get what I want? Then go for it! Passion moves a woman like nothing else can."

That's her way of reaching me. She knows that books are one of my favorite escapes and it makes me happy to know that she will show up in that favorite place of mine, to give me faith.

Writing Prompts

What gives you unexpected faith?

What phenomenon answers your prayers/wishes/dreams?

Have you had experiences where you believed (or in some cases, flat out knew) that your deceased loved one had come back to help or support you?

 

(Crossposted from happyganeshwriting.blogspot.com)

Hodgepodge

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First of all, a shout-out to all the people who came out to Modern Zen's Round Robin event. You may be reading this because you added your name to my mailing list that night. We had a fantastic time. Intuitive messages get the energy moving and it's a (trick or) treat to meet so many new people.

The four-Monday astrology class goes into its second evening on November 1. We'll be talking about Venus and Mars signs. Local and want to sign up? Contact Modern Zen. To see the class schedule, go here. Want a private astrology session? Contact me.

BOOKS!!

If you like reading fiction or nonfiction books about spirituality, check out our Facebook page to join the new Happy Ganesh Book Discussion Group! The HG Book Discussion Group focuses on fiction or nonfiction books about inner growth, spirituality (of ALL denominations), the creative process, spirituality/travel, intimate relationships, and being more present in life. These are topics that I love to explore.
Right now, The Cloister Walk by American poet Kathleen Norris is a new favorite. Award-winning poet Kathleen Norris lived with monks for a year and in that time, explored her own sense of creativity and the Divine. She discusses in the book her own growth as a poet in the silence and schedule of living within a religious community. She also goes into how this year-long experience helped her to see her marriage in a new light, as well as her relationship with her creative forces. Norris's other books are "Dakota: A Spiritual Geography" and "Amazing Grace".

Have you read this book too? What do you think? Thoughts welcome.

What are you favorite books on these subjects? What books have opened you to new ideas? To joy? To challenging yourself? To creative exploration?

Have a safe and happy halloween.

In friendship,

Marissa,

Happy Ganesh President

Image Credit: lobo235

Balancing Mediumship with Knowledge



Balance is important in every aspect of life. I have never noticed it as accutely as I do being in the "business" of spirituality. If I neglect myself, my heart, my needs or my own ability to stay grounded, I can see a difference in the way I connect to everything around me, including my clients. The way that I connect to myself comes first. It's the cornerstone of this work, so that in my own connection, I can exist. Once that connection is made, I hold space for clients.

Today, I stopped by the library and, now, a huge stack of books awaits me. Everything from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's classic, On Death and Dying, to books about American Medium Edgar Cayce, and books on manifestation. If I see how others navigated their own spiritual questions, surely I can understand my own path.

Books and learning help - but when I step into a mediumship session and it's on and the air is alive and someone's loved one is talking to me, well, there is no book to guide me through that.  There never has been. In those moments, mediumship (or channeling or reading for someone) is like the working definintion of Present. As in "I am present." Being somewhere else is out of the question because I am connected. We are - all three of us in the room - me, the dead person, the client - all connected.

We become connection.

The truth is that we are all connected, I believe. The dead don't leave us, ever. We only think they do. We become fixated on the physical - of course we do! I know that I do, and have. Of course we miss our mother, our father, our child, or spouse. We miss the physical presence, don't we? The holding, the hugging, the words that we can hear, the face we can touch.

In almost every mediumship session, the first question a client asks is "Is my loved one ok?" In my experience, the answer is always yes. Not only do they not leave us, but I believe that if we think about them, they come. All the cliches are true - as close as a breath. Nothing leaves us.

But in that is also very real grief. When people come to see me, it's there. It's a part of this type of work. I understand that. It's also there for me, some days, too - "healer, heal thyself".

I'm committed to this path. I am not sure exactly what it means and I can only see the angles I can see today. But I am here to learn and understand, and to connect, and to hold space for you to connect.

Thank you for reading.