Scavenge + Starlight

I woke up this morning to half eaten dreams and a quickly fading memory.   Pulling it back, the remnants drifted away like some sort of wisped cheese string, coming apart and spiraling out of my hands into the unknown.   All I could see was the small shop I had been in and the Asian man with glasses trying to show me something from the glass case.   I got out of bed and waited, energetic receptors as wide as I could make them, until a nudge to sit and journal arrived.   Half a page in, the script turned to Tibetan, notes and concepts moving too fast for my hand.   “Okay” he said, sitting back on his pillow throne, suddenly projecting out and above my third eye.   “Okay…?” I replied, knowing this was the only answer Teacher accepted.   Pointing to a hidden book, I pulled down his recommended Lobsang Dolma Khangkar’s Lectures on Tibetan Medicine and found myself in a lesson about massage, not of the body but of the blood and vital energies.   On...

I want to talk to you about depression. Depression is a birth canal. It's dark, it's isolating, you can't quite be yourself, it moves you from one place of being into another. You don't know how long it will take. You don't know what's at the end of it. You may really lose your life in it, and you cannot tell when you enter it. You just know you're there suddenly, sinking, or sunk in. It's a device of Spirit, the capital S spirit, the higher self, the You who guides the way. It gets you in there, that dark little spot, so you can let go, gestate, reconfigure. You are flattened by the process, squeezed dry, a shell. In the old days, the very very old days, this process was honored and recognized by community.  People would be assigned to watch over you, to support you, to hold your responsibilities together for you while you went on this journey. And it is a journey. It can take you so very far away from yourself, and who you used to be. ...

How important is it to figure out your own dream symbols?  I'll tell ya:  if my mother had my dream last night (where I held and spoke to a snake) it would have been a nightmare. If I google a meaning,  I get "Generally, a snake featured in a dream means that you're dealing with a difficult situation or unsettling emotions in your waking life. On the positive side of this dream analysis, dreaming of snakes could also mean that healing and transformation are taking place".  Random, vague, unhelpful cause am I unsettled or am I healing (or is it both?). Taking a few minutes to ask yourself "what does a snake mean to me?" is the only way interpret dreams.  personalized , in the moment, self-based information. Snakes to me represent close to the earth, balance, living in a right way, a feeler not a seer, and this most recent dream symbol (because I dream constantly, even while awake) highlights a snake's way of living could have a lot to teach me. ...

O ne question clients don't ask openly but do ask with reaching out:  is this the right time for me to be reaching for help? It's a very gray area for them, and I often see them reaching out months into an issue, or at the start of something that isn't an issue but a growth zone.  And it's hard for them to know the difference between growth zone and pain zone, when it all kind of looks and feels the same (or so they think). S o some clarity can be provided here.  G rowth zones are challenging. Pain zones are isolating.  Feeling challenged vs feeling isolated is one way to tell if you are being asked to step up into a level of more empowerment for yourself, or if you are slipping into a trajectory of pained thinking and response making.   If it's hard and you don't really want to do it or deal with it but it's not painful (mentally, and/or spiritually, and/or emotionally, and/or physically) then you can be assured it's just a baby-self of you resisti...

There is one variation of question clients usually bring me when they see me for a 1:1 session:  How to stay conscious when you forget to trust? They ask this when they want to know how to find clarity during a turbulent time. They ask this when doubt is high, or when they're not centered enough to keep looking at the "problem" by themselves. They ask this when they are pretending they believe in the universal goodness that surrounds them but in their deep places, they do not. They ask this when they are birthing a new version of themselves and everything is shaken to the core. So, how do you stay conscious when you forget to trust? You can't. Many people want to know how to start building a big beautiful life on a foundation of where they are right now. They don't want to know that they need to tear everything down and start building from scratch. They are sure they want to keep the foundations they have, and just do spot repairs here and th...

in this life, it's all about the getting up after the falling down.  the re-centering.  it's that act of movement that breaks the pattern but more importantly, the awareness that proceeds it right before:  yes, off track; yes, unsteady; yes, stress.  it's the dialogue between self and interface -- this is what I mean.  the knowing it's off and the pause you take to witness it and then to re-align.  most people know they are falling, drifting off course.  they can sense it: lowered energy, more anxiety, more worry, less flow, grace, abundance.  the effects of it start to bump their life:  running late, running out of money, shorter tempers, annoyances building and venting.  but people like to wait a bit longer to re-center and re-align; they lose a few days, a week, a month, a few months.  they think they are incapable of getting back up.  perhaps the missing link is the pausing.  maybe, there's not enough pausing. mayb...

Let's start here:  Your best self you, the one you'll be when you finally have the time or the money or the energy to finally do You right:  What's she doing today? What would she be doing to be your best self?  Would she be lounging in bed, really enjoying the downtime?  Would she be up and on her way to the woods for a mucky hike because she loves the nature and the movement?  Would she be meeting friends for brunch because staying connected brings her peace, belonging, and joy?  Would she be taking time to talk to spirit? What's your best self you doing that you are currently not doing? There's always one thing you can do now to bring that best you alive today.  That's self-care.  That's magic potion living.  That's Oprah zone.  No matter what my clients think they are aiming for (ease, flow, magic, abundance, energy, true love, money, healing, time bending ability, etc) it all starts at this intersection:  what would best s...

Before I started to look at my Mind, I didn't even know Just Looking was an option.  I thought it had to be participation 24/7.  "Just look at Mind" was a revelation.  And then when I learned you could look at the wellspring of Emotions, and also not participate in what emerges = I was surprised again.  Why wasn't I told sooner? I tell my clients all the time there is Them, their Mind, their Body, their Emotions, their Stories, and it can all be just looked at.  You can even, mid-getting-swept-away-by-something (emotional outburst, narrative story and drama making, illness, confusion) stop and re-orient yourself into your Themness, your true You.  You can instantly choose something new, some different way of being. It's completely okay to do this. These are things I wanted to know years before I learned them. These are things I think everyone wants to learn.  It's a complete hack to living:  realizing what you think you are isn't even you, an...

there's a lot of talk about the shadow when you get past all the talk about the light in the new age world. if you can get yourself past the shadow talk and down into the realness the new age movement started from, you find gems like this cheat sheet. judgment as shadow elements only takes you so far.  reminding yourself judgment isn't just a rejection of your hidden self and that you can take self-inquiry further:  this is where realness emerges. fear motivates in ways we do not want to acknowledge.  knowing fear and judgment are close friends on the vibrational energy train will help you work deeply with your gap (the space between experience and reaction).  when you judge, it springs from a place of habit and distancing, othering. using the gap to examine the uncomfortableness of it all, and noticing how much you want to get away from that uncomfortableness into somewhere else will help you with the next step: opening the door to the uncomfortableness t...

one of the things that clients often have trouble believing me about is the need to make self-care a non-negotiable priority.  they get that there is a level of physical hygiene or physical activity that they personally, often easily, make a non-negotiable priority in their lives, but they don't quite believe me that soul level self-care requests are as (or more) important to their quality of life and their ability to heighten the magical manifestational skillsets they possess. they don't believe me that  non-negotiable priority self-care is not a to-do list, or something more burdensome they need to incorporate into their already over-stuffed lives.  they don't believe me that focusing on soul level self-care requests actually creates bendable reality opportunities where they gain internal energy spaciousness and insight, more time, and a higher outcome for the other facets of their life.  they want to believe it's difficult to pause and hear the soul level re...

Trouble doesn't have to be terrible.  Events and situations can just unfold.  The universe is supportive and wants the best for you.  You don't need to bring story to what's happening, and you definitely don't need add worry to these equations. My mother was a worrier.  Everything, all the time.  I remember consciously choosing not to be a worrier like her when I was a teenager and I thought there could be another way.  I could see the pain it caused her, how she couldn't put it down, and I thought, terrible things happen in life, and there's no way this is helpful to avoiding them. She felt the worrying made her safe, in control, vigilant.  It was exhausting to watch, and exhausting to be raised in.   Of course, when my own daughter was born and parenting began, my own childhood rearing patterns emerged.  I did my best to pick and choose and release ill-serving habits that were deeply ingrained, but it was messy, and it wa...

There are times when an energy brews up inside of me and launches an action, from suggestion to execution, faster than I can pause and consider if it's actually an action I want to take.  These times are rare but they are startling, primarily because it's a flavor of energy I do my best to eliminate within me.  It's destructive and volatile, and when it does leap into movement, I can only watch suggestion and execution roll out of me, like a thunderclap.   It's in this watching position that I learn a lot about how far I've come, how much I've been able to use yoga and meditation to still myself into pieces, like frames in a movie. Outside of me, regular seconds occur; within, each second feels tripled, leading to lots of time to catch errant vibrations I don't want to release into my world, attitudes I might want to change before they're expressed.  Observing myself in finer and finer details, cause-effect, action-reaction -- this has given me t...

The biggest problem I find with most new age healers is the lack of humility, self-awareness, and self-care.  They learn a modality or two, begin treating people, have success (because modalities work on their own) and soon begin to drop their own self-care practices, begin to view clients out of ego-space instead of heart-space, and forget they are humans too, with still unhealed parts that need acknowledgment and tending, no matter how many modalities, certificates or courses they may accumulate. For my clients who are working in the healing professions, I do my best to have them understand that each client who comes to see them for help are actually also showing up to help them heal an unseen part of themselves.  Some clients don't like to know that; they don't want to see the parts of themselves in their clients that they are working to heal.  I work with my clients to have them understand this isn't a terrible thing, working on people who bring you your hidden ...

My notebooks carry tidbits of wisdom around that I use as tarot cards or insight channels when I feel I need something but I'm not sure what.  Honoring the wisdom when it comes to you --- whether it comes from someone else, non-reality, a book, dreamworld, life in general, yourself --- is an important step in integrating it into your mainframe, your central way of being. One way I honor the wisdom is by writing it down in the notebook I am always carrying around.  This is my way of acknowledging the specialness of the information. The next way I honor the wisdom is by transferring that jotted note down into my permanent notebooks.  This is the way I appreciate the information given to me on a deeper level.  The next way I honor the wisdom is by creating these cheat sheets (the visual above), so I can share and move the information into the world.  This is the way I assimilate the information into my greater consciousness.  If I share it, I've bee...

I have 2.25 notebooks filled with well living cheat notes, everything from what something feels like energetically to reminders on mind and ego.  Whenever I heard or read something that was "new" to me, or clarified something I didn't know I was confused about, I jotted it down.  Apparently, that's over 200 pages of things. I find most people I know hear and learn things like I do but they don't seem to keep tabs on it.  It's experienced, and then allowed to slip away.  I like my nerdy little well living books; whenever I can feel something brewing within (like after I've just woken up) I can grab one, flip to a page, point to a section and there it will be, a path to lead me to the issue brewing within.  My own personalized tarot.  Or I can flip to a page, point, and find a topic to write about.  Very nerdy and very handy. Why am I sharing this?  Living well seems to be a system, not a happenstance.  I wish I knew this as deeply as I...

If there's one thing I try to tune my clients into is the immense power they have in averting karmically seeded catastrophes in their life if only they pay attention to themselves across the quadrants of being.  For Anishnaabeg peoples (of which I am one: Nipissing), the quadrants of being are mental, emotional, physical, spiritual.  In sessions with clients, I usually keep them focused on Body-Mind-Spirit; three seem to be as nuanced as some clients can get.  They just don't know themselves in an intimate way. People aren't really taught how to tune into their quadrants, and when they begin to realize that there are quadrants that have different "voices" and ways of being, that's usually as far as they take it.  The knowledge on how to go deeper with this is "lost" to them.  And they don't seem to know hearing these quadrants' wishes is a conversation, not a demand list.  They don't know it's okay, even ideal, to hear it all, con...