My only goal in life at this point is to be happy. I get asked often what’s my one, five-year plan for my life and career. Yet the question always draws a blank stare from me. My mind freezes and I start scrambling for a good enough response. Don’t get me wrong I’ve had goals in the past, something I’ve set to get to a certain point. Some goals I’ve met some I have not. I decided what I truly want has nothing to do with family, friends, career, wealth or objects. What I truly want at this point in my life is to be happy. It’s an internal thing. It’s a mental space that I find myself moving closer to everyday. Take for example right at this moment I’m sitting on a restaurant patio listening to corny classic rock yet I feel so happy and content. I’m not doing anything in particular except reading, grabbing a bite to eat, swatting flies and just enjoying the occasional breeze as it swings across my face. The sun is shining, the trees are green, the sky is blue sky and I am totally happy.

• a kind word (given or received)
• laughter (by myself and with family)
• peace of mind, no worries, no stress
• randomly jumping on a plane for a few moments of rest and relaxation
• sitting on the beach or next to water
• feeling the sun on my skin
• putting my feet in the grass
• seeing the beauty in my surroundings (people, places and things)
• loving myself and others around me
• freedom to choose… to be… exactly who I am, as I am…
• acceptance of all that can not be controlled, cajoled or conquered

I am not much of an artist in this life but I dabble with paint and markers on occasion.  A few months ago I felt inspired to draw this picture I’ll call becoming the child. I didn’t understand it at the time but it’s been sitting on my nightstand for a while.

I love kids and I have a lot of them. Well actually I have not given birth to any of them but I feel like I did, like they are a part of my permanent family.  One of the kids is a ten-year old girl who I’ve been mentoring for about a year.  After months of begging on her part I decided to take her to the water park. She’s only ten but I feel like I always have to barter with her on what we are going to do next. She really wanted Six Flags but I got a weak stomach and roller coasters are not my friend. So I got her to settle for the water park instead.

As soon as she got in my car she was on ten. She smiled, she screamed and talked really fast and I hadn’t even started up the car yet.  She was so excited that I got excited just by listening to her.  I suddenly remembered being ten.  It took me back to a place when I was her age and I was in the car on my way to Six Flags with my siblings and parents. I imagined how the night before she probably couldn’t sleep. And how she’d probably been up since dawn fully dressed just waiting for my car to pull up. And then I remembered the picture and decided I would really share in this day with her.  So I let go of my ‘hey I’m adult look at me, do as I say’ and I started to mirror her. We giggled, we talked about the rides we’d get on. We stopped at the gas station and bought cookies and chips to eat on the way (it’s only a 20 minute ride).  She made me stop so we could get matching gargles.  Of course they didn’t have any my little mermaids in my size but we sure did look for them. We rode rides, floated along the lazy river, we had a great time.  Every time I even thought about getting stern with her I’d visualize my little picture. This picture helped me to remember why  it was ok to become more like a child. In fact we all could learn how to be a little more loving, innocent, giving, creative, joyous, imaginative and carefree.  Being all those things allows you to slow down and to enjoy just being…no cares, no bills, no relationship, no pressure… just fun. Sometimes it’s hard to remember what it was like to be a kid but on that day I remembered. And I want to keep remembering…

You can’t really began to cultivate your relationships with other people until you cultivate the relationship with yourself.  Prior to that you are only giving a small piece of who you are to other people.  Today I am learning to self-love.  I always thought I loved myself but this is to a whole new extreme.  It feels different.  Today loving myself means acknowledgement, acceptance, appreciation and approval of my physical and spiritual. It is not necessary to look at myself in the mirror to point out that my stomach could be flatter, my ass could be bigger or my breast could use a lift.  It is no longer necessary to think my hair could be longer and fuller or that my skin could be clearer.  Today I saw the beauty of what’s already here and what’s always been with me.  And for once I just walked around my house in a meditative state naked and vulnerable. Yet I felt a wholeness.  A love that I hadn’t felt for myself in a while or maybe ever.  So today I send gratitude to the universe for allowing me to see myself as I am, perfected and here in this life with this vehicle and vessel as it was intended to be.

I got some abandonment issues I never knew exactly why. On the surface I seem fine. My parents have been married for almost 40 years.  No one of significance really left my life permanently or made me feel extremely rejected. All the things you would on surface think that would cause abandonment issues I could not identify with. What played on in my own life right before I divorced my ex was this strong feeling of abandonment. I went into the relationship with that issue and so to see it play out in real life was paralyzing. It was so strong that it felt real. It was betrayal and extreme panic mixed into one. The only way at the time I knew how to handle that feeling was to run as fast as I could in the opposite direction. It’s been a few years and I’ve long gotten passed why things didn’t work but that abandonment thing keeps bubbling to the surface.

I own a past life regression CD. I’ve used it over the last few months. It has been pretty insightful so I figured why not use it for this. At the beginning of the mediation I see myself in a hospital. Everything is white. A blond-haired nurse walks pass me with a chart in her hand. I see my spirit standing in the operating room. The year 1836 pops into my mind and the word German. I am not sure what the world German means at this time, is it the name of the hospital or is it my background. I’m not German in my present day life. On the table is my ex husband. He’s surrounded by doctors. They are operating on his heart. In the adjacent room I see myself in a physical body. I am in pain. I am unsure as to how this is going to turn out. I am crying. In the row behind me, my former mother in law is there too. She is his mother in both lives. I was also his wife in both lives. My awareness turns back to the operating room. I see his spirit get up from his body. He comes over to my spirit and we start to talk. We start to have conversations about the life we’ve had together. We are laughing and having a good time. No one else can see us. After some time the doctors give up, there is nothing else they can do to bring him back. My awareness turns back to the waiting room and what I feel from the physical version of me is pain. I feel abandoned. I feel like he left me here by myself, there is nothing to console me. We didn’t have any kids, he wasn’t suppose to leave me. In my mind it didn’t dawn on me that it was by design for him to go. He wouldn’t have left me by choice but our time on that plane at that time was complete. I continued that life feeling abandoned. I never remarried. Years later when his mom died, I began to relive the abandonment again.

Before you leave a regression you are asked to release it. Because of your awareness level, you can see the situation from a different set of eyes and understand that what you felt although real, the conclusion you might have come to at the time was not truth. In order to move forward in this life you can realign with the truth. So I began to pray and I used my conscious thoughts to make sense of the false imprint I’d been carrying for years and maybe even lifetimes. For the first time I honestly felt a weight lifted. I had at least one thing I could identify with as to why I had these feelings in my present life. I can’t guaranteed that my abandonment issues are gone but I definitely have gained another perspective on it.

As I’ve started the process of finding my own path I’ve stumbled from method to method trying to find my own magic. After months of trying I decided to get the advice of an experienced magician. I figured I could use some outside clarity on some things.  A magician is a person who takes certain actions to produce a specific result. The magician uses all the tricks of his or her trade to produce that result.  As I sat across the table from the magician I noticed something. He incorporated astrology, numerology, palmistry, tarot, past lives views as well as his own real life experiences. At that very moment it dawned on me, there is no right or wrong way. There is not one method to finding truth, you can use what feels most comfortable to you and develop more as you go along.

What I took away from this experience is the realization that what I have done so far I can use as a starting point. It’s my foundation, the ground work so to speak. Astrology was my first point of interest, it’s a system I’ve been able to use to help me understand myself and others. Tarot cards tap into a specific part of my psyche and it has created an internal dialogue through the use of symbols. I’ve gained the most information through dreams and mediation. Mediation slows my mind to a point where I am very receptive to messages and visions.  My experiences are my contributions to consciousness.

I also came to terms with the fact that my purpose here is somewhat dual.  There is a need to contribute to the overall state of consciousness as well as a need to understand myself. In order to be effective at this thing I’ve signed up for, I have to travel through the self. At times it seems like I am doing two different things at one time but they are connected.  It’s has become very important for me to neutralize all things that can affect me in a way that causes separation.  What the magician gave me was a look into what can become if I continue in my current state.  But if I change my current state, I also change the rules. There is a need to understand what I am changing and why. This is the responsibility that comes with harnessing your magic. There will be someone to answer to at some point.  But I try not to use that phrase as a limiting factor. The main thing at this point is to shed all limitations. We are born to make mistakes along the way but we all have a contract and a purpose so material manifestation should come second to it. This world is new to me but I understand some desires will naturally fall off while others will require more of my focus. I try to keep in mind the real intention of letting go of all blocks and focusing on my version of truth.  No one else can choose your path for you, it’s all by design.