Lipstick Mystic

Ka Gold Jewelry Brings You That Perfect Gift Item You've Been Looking For! Sacred jewelry for the energy sensitive in your life.

Talismans and Amulets

Mystic Blog Friday, September 30, 2005

New Moon in Libra Monday, October 3

There's a gentle new moon in Air sign Libra on Monday, October 3. It happens at 6:28 am Eastern Time here in the US.

New moons are our time of spiritual "new year," a great time for power prayer, meditation, and healing. It's a gateway for ushering in greater abundance and peace.

If you'd like to read about the energies of this new moon and to learn more about writing yourself a new moon abundance check, you can read my latest piece:

New Moon in Libra

Mystic Blog (I Just Typed "Mystic Glob." This Must Be Dyslexic Day) Thursday, September 29, 2005

It's All Love, Man!

Over at Montalk.net's excellent NobleRealms forum they have some great, thought-provoking discussions going. Today someone posted about David Icke's insight (and title of his latest book) Infinite Love is the Only Truth. Someone was poking holes in this concept, being very intellectual about it.

I don't think you CAN be intellectual about love. It doesn't come from the brain. It comes from the spirit. You either, like, GET IT, or you don't.

I made the following post attempting to lay out my thoughts on the subject. They ramble a bit; today has been one of those mult-tasking days where I'm doing 100 things at once.

My post:

Most people who feel that they have had a "peak experience" or time of spiritual illumination describe sensing the essential energy that pervades creation, and they perceive this as a vast, amazing, love force.

This is how everyone who has shared their own "enlightenment" experiences with me describes it. That's somewhere in the range of 1500 people at last count. My own experience happened at the age of 16 and is pretty much indescribable. You'll accuse me of being a hippie chick (Not that there's anything wrong with it!)

Does the concensus view of so many people mean that everyone will experience "enlightenment" in the same way? Maybe not. But there are an awful lot of folks who speak about receiving higher wisdom this way and seeing that, when the veil of this world is stripped away and you can see the Infinite, well, "infinite love IS the only answer."

But if infinite love is the only answer, maybe we'd better work out what the QUESTION is :)

All I know is that my experience changed me forever and turned on all of my circuits....psychic abilities, budding until that point, became full-blown.....I went around blissed out for a year with pure love and perceived NO duality in the world.......I went through what David Icke refers to as his "purple" stage because he rather infamously appeared on TV wearing purple and was made fun of. I think he was also saying he was Jesus at that point. Jesus was at that level of consciousness, so Icke wasn't wrong!

I think that when people raise their consciousness and successfully GLIMPSE that Creator/God/Great Spirit/Universal Energy/Big Puppy or whatever you call the divine essence, it's hard to describe what you sense, it's so multi-dimensional and experiential and vast. But, the common words used by everyone I've talked to are.....

IT'S ALL LOVE, MAN. That is all it is, all we are, all that is.

Does this mean that everyone who has experienced deeply illuminating moments is in that altruistic loving state 100% of the time? No. I was there for a year. Adulthood hit shortly thereafter, and boy, was that a crash landing! There's not much room for a 100% love gushing chick out there in the real world. Then I went through all my experiences with predator energy. Predator energy envies the love state but can't directly enter into it, so it seeks "proxies" to feed off of. And so I moved on through a series of vampire boyfriends, business associates, and friends. And lots of lessons learned.

Some twenty years later, I've learned enough techniques to "pick off the ticks" and to remain relatively open, clear, and in good energy most of the time. I consider that a great blessing.

It's very hard to reenter into the "real world" when you've gone 4-D or even 5-D for a period. This place just doesn't make any sense when you come back. You don't even recognize your own species, really. You don't feel like one of them anymore.

(And no, I didn't "come back" thinking I was an ET or renaming myself Aloha Starchild or any of that bunk. I just felt very different from the average "Muggles" I saw roaming around, I couldn't identify with their drives, the things that motivated them.) I often wonder if autistic children are simply out in 4-D without a road map to come back "home" into 3-D.

This spiritual dislocation you go through after "illumination" can then be the burden that you carry for the rest of your life. You're always try to show people how they can access that other level of awareness, but mostly, they just think you're a loony, and they are more interested in making a buck and being miserable. Pretty boring, most of humanity is.

At this point in my life, I've learned to embraced my looniness. It's the happiest, best way for me to be. God forbid I ever "grow up" and enter into the stodgy, stale, rigid reality that most "adults" live in.

Here's to remaining a loony child, and to staying attuned to love as much as possible, without losing sight of the reptiles always nipping at your toes.

(End Post)

Read the whole thread of discussion here:

http://forum.noblerealms.org/viewtopic.php?id=2226

Mystic Blog Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Enlightenment and the Desires of the Flesh

When people speak about being "enlightened" or "seeing the light," they are usually talking about a transformative experience which gave them a glimpse of the great mysteries of life. Maybe they had a near-death experience. Perhaps they glimpsed something holy during meditation. Or maybe they felt touched by the presence of the Divine during prayer.

People often have problems taking such experiences and re-entering the "real world" after their consciousness has shifted. David Icke of http://www.davidicke.com speaks honestly about his own spiritual transformation and how it made him appear "crazy" for a while, because his ego had been dissolved and he truly felt a sense of oneness with everything and everyone. Plus, he tended to dress in purple, which made him the object of more than a few chuckles.

Many people take those transcendent moments of peeking into the Unknown and later latch on to a guru, a teacher, or a belief system in an attempt to explain what they've gone through. It's normal to seek a framework for these experiences. Many great poets, philosophers, artists, and mystics throughout the centuries have attempted to express spiritual awakening or kundalini activation in their own words. But, if you haven't HAD this type of experience, it remains abstract. Once you HAVE had it, your life is forever changed.

When someone has a peak experience, it's an intensely private moment. It's happening to you and to nobody else. You are gaining a unique perspective that will from that moment set you apart from the vast majority of people. For whatever reasons, it seems that the percentage of people having transformative moments of spiritual awakening are still rather small.

Don't get me wrong. I personally have known hundreds, if not thousands, of folks who have experienced something like this. But looking out at the worlds of politics, media, and society, I'm not seeing a lot of evidence that such enlightened folks are active on the world stage. They are more likely to be working quietly and lovingly behind the scenes to improve the planet, in whatever way they feel is right for them.

My own awakening experience came at the age of 16, which is an odd time to have it. My adult personality wasn't yet fully formed. So to have an experience in which your ego fully dissolves and you become one with everything and to not yet have a complete adult self of your own is a little weird.

I think it created a split within me. On the one hand, I feel incredibly old. I had a full-time counseling practice from about the ages of 20 to 30, and I never felt my age. I always felt I was about 50 years old, minimum, when I worked in a counseling capacity.

Yet I also had the ability to become five years old in the blink of an eye. I love to laugh, I enjoy childlike things, and I enjoy expressing myself in childlike ways. So I'm sort of five years old going on 50. I can go from making potty jokes to waxing poetic about the mysteries of creation in a flash.

This creates a certain amount of confusion when presented with the classic adult dilemma of "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I recently turned 37, and God forbid that I ever grow up. I just don't think I'm capable of it, and I really don't want to.

Grown-ups are crusty and set in their ways, immovable, rigid, and locked into stale patterns. They follow the dictates of the tribe and stop thinking for themselves. They abdicate their sovereignty and suffer because of it. Yuck!

Children are spontaneous, open, and improvisational.

For me, being a child will win out every time.

That's why you'll see a somewhat schizophrenic mix of material here at my site. The Fortune Chicken does her thing in one section while serious articles about the nature of reality, the growth of the spirit, and the awakening of psychic senses are parked in another section.

Some people can't stand this split. They think I should be a heavy, serious being because I dare to write about spiritual stuff. Or, they just want the silly stuff. I think this one-dimensional approach is wrong.

I remember someone asking the actor Viggo Mortensen (most famous for his work in The Lord of the Rings trilogy) why he didn't just choose to do one thing. You see, he's a photographer and an artist as well as an actor, and he even runs his own publishing company. The journalist who interviewed him apparently couldn't comprehend how a person might have diverse interests and talents which he chooses to develop simulataneously.

I don't remember Mortensen's exact response, but I know he said something kind and sweet. Basically, his response was, "Why shouldn't I do lots of different things?"

Why not, indeed? We are all complex, multi-layered beings of many moods and talents. To repress your talents as a painter or photographer because the world has decided you can only be an actor is bogus. And to stuff yourself into a box and say "I have to be serious all the time because I have a social conscience and am spiritual" is stupid.

It seems that anyone who walks the mystical path is pressured to become dull, stodgy, and boring. Or they're expected to get into fights all the time and launch into tirades about the injustices of the world.

I don't like 99% of websites that attempt to talk about spiritual stuff. Aren't they boring as heck? Or is it just me? Often they are dour and depressing in their assessment of the coming apocalypse and how the ET's are coming/Planet X is going to destroy us and/or the Illuminati are going to lock us all up in concentration camps and enact martial law. Viewing such sites makes me want to shoot myself. They are unbelievably toxic and disempowering. And they are also wrong.

Today I found an interesting essay. A man named John Wren-Lewis raises lots of questions about the typical mystic's path after his own experience with spiritual illumination. He talks about how we need to redefine what it means to be spiritual and rethink what mysticism really is. An excerpt:

"I believe the world desperately needs a new, totally experimental mysticism that will set all the traditional theories on one side and try to find out, more in the spirit of science than of religion, what factors really bring about awakening, which can only happen if those who've experienced awakening eschew the Master-role and discuss their firsthand knowledge openly, lapses and all."

He means that more people should be talking about their awakening experiences without falling into the guru role or trying to take on this perfect Avatar type of position in society. "Just be you, just be honest," is his theme.

You can read the whole essay: A Reluctant Mystic Looks at Spiritual Movements. This was originally published in "Understanding Cults and Spiritual Movements" in the mid- 1980s.

Wren-Lewis makes some excellent points. He says that the Eastern tradition of embracing someone as a Master or Avatar doesn't really work. You're putting all this expectation on someone to be perfect, to be free of sexual impulses or desires of the flesh, when that doesn't necessarily correlate with being a mystical person.

In the East, someone spiritual is pressured to deny the instincts of the flesh. The same thing is true with the Catholic priesthood. This comes from a misidentification of the body as being "evil" or base.

I know I won't give up the occasional glass of white wine in the evening, whether it brands me "unenlightened" or not. Neither will I relinquish my basic humanity, this need for my body to move through space and time and to receive food, nourishing touch, and romantic companionship.

(And kitty cat cuddles. Lots of those.)

To me, if you're not living your life and you're not IN your life, you have no business advising other people about theirs. I'm not very interested in having a Catholic priest advise me about my spiritual life because he is approaching it from a completely different place than me. His life is about financial destitution, overwork, and sexual and interpersonal denial. To me, these things can only cause imbalance. So why would I seek wisdom from someone who isn't fully grounded in human life? His advice will be coming from a weird place, no matter how well-intentioned he might be. The unhappy yet incredibly sweet priests I've worked with in my counseling practice helped me to see what it's really like living that kind of life. I thank them for giving me a window into their world. It taught me a lot.

What does the concept of enlightenment mean to you? Do you see it as an experience that moves you AWAY from your life or something that propels you INTO life in a more vital, engaged way?

Mystic Blog Tuesday, September 27, 2005

African Healer and Mystic Simeon Toko Performed Miracles

(Okay, so I stayed away at the kitty dance an extra day. I now return to this blog refreshed and revitalized.)

Nexus Magazine is a wonderful publication from Australia which covers topics ranging from alternative health cures and free energy discoveries to mystical subjects. You can find Nexus in most bookstores if you look in their spirituality section.

Nexus also picks two articles from each issue and posts them online. You can find some wonderful material there. Their main site is http://www.nexusmagazine.com.

Recently in this blog I've written about the spiritual traditions of Africa and how many of these teachings are purposefully obscured by Westerners when they write about Africa. The recent National Geographic issue about Africa is a case in point. It's a weirdly disconnected issue. On the one hand, it celebrates much of the glory of Africa - her diversity of cultures, incredible wildlife, and amazing natural wonders. On the other, it pretty much ignors the indigenous spiritual practices still honored by so many who live there.

The magazine's bizarre coverage reminded me of someone who goes to New York City for the first time but doesn't see a Broadway play, doesn't go to the Empire State Building, and refuses to walk in Central Park or ride the subway. So much essential stuff about the heart of Africa was missing from the articles.

Anyway, there are modern spiritual healers who have done some amazing things in Africa, too. One such man was named Simeon Toko. The miracles he performed were witnessed by so many thousands of people that they can't be dismissed as rumor. He was truly Jesus-like in what he did. He raised people from the dead and performed other amazing healings.

You can read all about this man's incredible life work in this archived article at Nexus:

Simeon Toko and African Miracles

Alas, as happens with so many spiritually gifted people who use their gifts in public and share them with the masses, Simeon's story has a sad ending. He was, of course, prosecuted, tortured, and imprisoned. . . for going around and healing people. ('Cause, you know, we simply can't have that! My goodnes!)

Simeon passed from this world in 1984.

Unfortunately, not much has changed since he left. People who do healings are treated very poorly in today's society. We're considered liars and/or demon spawn; we're mentally deranged; and the government takes an extraordinary amount of. . . shall we say, INTEREST. . . in us. (Hi guys! How ya doing today?)

Please know that this is where I'm coming from, having in a much smaller way mirrored some of what poor Simeon went through in my own life. This is why I do not offer healing sessions or readings anymore.

Instead, through this website and others to come, and through my books and CD's, you will find me "downloading" or dumping detailed info about what I and other cutting edge healers are doing and have done. . . so that you'll have tools to duplicate these things in your own life, if you so choose.

This site is going to be redesigned from the ground up, too. So that's a big project for fall. This site is lovely and fun, but many people can't read it because it is too graphic-intensive and takes too long to load. Also, many men (those of you who might enjoy some of what I write but get turned off by the girly graphic at the front door!) never make it inside. Except, for some reason, you butch Australian fellows. . . I have a whole contingent of rabid fans living Down Under, all of them straight, strapping Aussies. G'day to you guys if you're reading!

Anyway, please be patient as changes occur here. I'm working on a layout that makes everything easier to read and emphasizes content over graphics.

Okay, now go read that Nexus article!

Mystic Blog Sunday, September 25, 2005

Mystic Kitty Dance

The Lipstick Mystic has been off at a kitty dance, but she will return to this blog sometime Monday.

Party on at the Kitty Dance!

Mystic Blog Thursday, September 22, 2005

Autumnal Equinox Today at 6:23 pm Eastern Time in US

The equinox and solstice times are powerful periods when unique gateways of energy open up here on the Earth. Meditations, prayers, and healing work can be really potent at these times since it's easier to access spiritual energy.

This is also the time when the sun moves into Air sign Libra, a refined, artistic, and intellectual sign. The next 30 days are a great time for creativity and mental work of all kinds. Librans, Geminis, and Aquarians will experience a surge of energy as they go through a "power period."

You can read more about the energy of the equinoxes and solstice times in my article:

How to Use the Energies of Halloween and the Eight Major Pagan Holidays

Mystic Blog Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Get a Free Tea Leaf Reading

Okay, so maybe it's not as good as the real thing, but I found this online tea leaf reading oracle and thought it was really cute. See what the leaves say about you!

Tea Leaf Reading

Mystic Blog Tuesday, September 20, 2005

How White Men Continue to Be Liars and Manipulators

The September issue of the National Geographic is a special issue that's all about Africa. Biologist Mike Fay travelled over 70,000 miles in a little red Cessna capturing imagery of the vast lands of Africa. He also spent time among the locals of many different nations.

His material became the foundation for an 8-part series about Africa which is now available on DVD. The September issue of the magazine gives you a taste for all the amazing things and people he saw.

Africa is a whole planet unto itself with its diverse topography and population. Indigenous peoples like the pygmies try to retain their simple tribal ways while modern life has begun to intrude on them. So you have a real schizophrenia between the "developing" parts of Africa and the places that haven't changed in thousands of years.

I like the September issue because it contains lots of personal stories about people's daily lives in various parts of Africa. It's rare to see this bird's eye view of African life. There are huge contrasts, from the sophisticated city life of a place like Nairobi, Kenya's exciting capital, to the modest situation of the oil pipeline workers of Chad. The AIDS crisis is covered, too, and the incredible human suffering associated with this disease just breaks your heart as you read about it. But they try to put a positive spin on the subject and talk about how more people are gaining access to anti-viral medicines and starting to reclaim their health.

Some of the photos of the African landscape burn a hole in your brain, they are so gorgeous and startling. You see an arial photo of elephants marching through the swamp grass of Kenya, their bodies sticking up above the greenery, making them look like huge ancient gods. A photo of northwestern Rwanda shows how every inch of its green mountains are covered by lush-looking terraced farms. Zebras dash through the arid plains of Namibia, mere dusky shadows against the dry brown land, their brilliant colors obscured by dust.

I have two photos from this issue that I like the most. There is a photo of Luangwa Valley Lodge in Zambia, where an elephant is marching casually through the lobby, and onlookers barely react. Apparently, the hotel had recently remodeled and blocked access to this elephant's favorite mango tree in the courtyard, and the elephant wasn't about to let this new construction change his plans. He wanted his mango! So he was determined to find another way through.

Wouldn't you love to stay at a place where elephants strolled through the lobby? I would!

My other favorite photo is a black and white photo of a witch doctor from the Shangani tribe of southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe.) I believe this is a historic photo, not a new one, but the caption isn't clear. This man has deep, soulful eyes. Although he seems quite young, he has seen and felt much. He's wearing a hat of fur and feathers and a complicated series of necklaces made of bone, beads, and feathers.

What I DON'T like about this photo is its condescending caption, which I can't believe National Geographic printed.

"Among the superstitious African natives, a witch doctor, such as this member of the Shangani tribe in southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), is a person of great influence. During the tramp from Mwanza to Tabora in Tanganyika (Tanzania), a journey of 15 days on foot, the author, by entertaining his safari with tricks of magic, acquired a wide reputation as a witch doctor, and whole villages flocked to see him."

There are MANY things wrong with this caption.

So - the author and creator of this otherwise wonderful photo essay about Africa somehow managed to travel 70,000 miles in Africa and yet learn nothing about its shamanic traditions and how they REALLY HEAL?

I find that hard to believe. And I found the arrogance of that caption impossible to swallow.

So the author pulls a few coins out of people's ears and impresses them because they've never seen someone do that before, and because deception, disguise, and lies aren't part of their culture, they take these actions at face value as being real manifestations of a spiritual gift.

That's not being superstitious. That's being innocent. That's living in a culture which doesn't know the meaning of "trick" because people live with honesty and don't tell lies.

Leave it to the white Westerner to come along with his deception, thinking he is "entertaining" the quaint, "superstitious" locals. Yuck. Typical attitude.

There is not one single sentence in this otherwise excellent magazine about Africa which attempts to put the shamanic and spiritual practices of the indigenous peoples into any kind of context. There is no attempt at explanation. There is no sign of respect or even a modicum of understanding. There isn't any INTEREST in learning about what these people believe, do, and practice. (There IS a section about a pygmy rite of passage, a ritual through which a young boy becomes a man, but it doesn't delve into the HOW or the WHY of the energy of this experience, covering what these people are really doing. They report this ritual as if they were watching lions mate in the desert, coolly observing this "other" species, not understanding.)

I have a cousin who once spent some time on an Indian reservation in the mid-West and fell in love with the people she was staying with. They were so honest, so open, so trusting. She learned while she stayed with them that the Indians have been wounded, time and time again, when your average white woman comes onto the reservation and promises great things - i.e., "I'll sell your jewelry at my store and you'll make a lot of money," etc. And they aren't good at spotting deception, they told her, so they just take the person at face value. Then, when things go wrong later, the person doesn't pay them, or they never hear from the person again, they are truly wounded in a way that is tragic to see.

In a society which isn't deceptive, which doesn't lie, and which doesn't have manipulation and obfuscation at the heart of its operating system, lies really hurt.

In a similar way, I could read into this magazine caption how, on the one hand, you had natives who were sweet, honest, and innocent in watching this man perform his magic tricks and believing him to be a great man.

And he was busy believing HIMSELF to be a great man, a clever entertainer who had impressed these people.

And all it was all lies and betrayal of innocence.

I think that one caption sums up the history of white conquerors and their destruction of just about every native culture in the world perfectly.

Sometimes, it's what you read between the lines that tells the whole story. And what this issue of National Geographic really reveals is our incredible, persistent, and purposeful ignorance about the metaphysical power of ancient cultures and their shamanic healing practices.

It would seem that this information is continuously and carefully edited out of the record.

To learn more about the ancient wisdom kept alive by the shamans of Africa, I recommend checking out Credo Mutwa's work. Credo is a Zulu shaman of great power and wisdom.

Here is an amazing interview with Credo Mutwa.

And here is another, in which he talks about the true origins of AIDS.

He has also written two books and is the centerpiece of a biography which was written about him, also.

This is Credo's best book.

Mystic Blog Monday, September 19, 2005

International Talk Like a Pirate Day is Today!

I'm sure you're already aware of this, but today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

(Yes, it really is.)

If you're stumped for a good pirate phrase to use while dealing with clients, children, and/or cats, you can hop on over (you have to hop, see, since you have a peg leg, being a pirate) to Eclectech and have their silly pirate generate a random piratey phrase for you.

I'm a big fan of the wacky animation guys at Eclectech. They are the ones who also animated a lovely ditty about the dangers of mind control rays and what YOU can do about it (hint: the solution may involve joining the tinfoil hat society - you've been warned.) Beware Mind Control Rays

Mystic Blog Friday, September 16, 2005

Dr. Wayne Dyer and the Power of Intention

Wayne Dyer is this big teddy bear of positive energy. If you've never caught one of his lectures or seen him on one of his many PBS presentations, you might want to check out his website http://www.drwaynedyer.com to learn more about him and his work. He's written many books, including Real Magic, Your Sacred Self, and There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem. His latest is The Power of Intention.

His lecture on the power of intention was rebroadcast this week on PBS, and I've been enjoying bits and pieces of it late at night before I go to bed. I've seen most of it before, but he covers so many incredible concepts that you always learn knew stuff when you hear him speak again.

I've seen him two times speaking in person, and his energy and material are truly inspiring. He's one of those rare illuminated persons who remains, at all times, humble, uncomplicated, and accessible. You don't read any "attitude" off of him. All you sense is love.

One of the many important points he made was how, on your spiritual quest, you have to decide whether this universe is a "hostile" one or a "friendly" one. You have to choose how you are going to frame the experiences of your life. If you decide to remain a victim, stay suspended in lack, or overly identify with suffering as your core operating system, don't be surprised if these things keep showing up in your life.

On the other hand, if you decide to frame your life through the "friendly" lens and focus on all things working together for good, you connect with the incredible creative powers of the universe and that marvelous, unified field of energy known as the divine.

I was struck by his idea of the "friendly" or "hostile" framework. Recently in my own meditations I was given the information that this world is going through a sort of core division where people are separating into realities of "plenty" or "lack." And it isn't really about money. It's more about "plenty" in the sense of connecting with the miraculous, unlimited powers of the universe or "lack" in the sense of always embracing the VOID, the nothingness, the impossibility of things.

So I could see how embracing a reality of plenty involves embracing a friendly universe. And inhabiting a hostile world involves focusing on lack. They are very much the same idea.

What's always a bit of a puzzler for me is that, despite my best attempts over the years to pretend that "evil" doesn't exist, it sure seems to! And the revelations and teachings I've been involved with learning about negative entity attachments, Luciferian beings, and soulless people have really been hair-raisers, situations I wasn't CONSCIOUSLY choosing.

At the same time, these experiences have been blessings because I've been given multiple opportunities to put Dyer's ideas to the test....and to also remember the teachings of Jesus. When Jesus talked about "turning the other cheek" he was actually talking about a masterful spiritual warfare technique. If, even in the middle of someone being nasty to you or harming you, you can attune yourself to the frequency of unconditional love, it DOES bathe you in a field of incredible protection. And this bold ACT, to love when others are intent upon dragging you down and getting you to descend into hopelessness and fear, is a supreme act of spiritual strength and power.

The neat thing, too, is that negative entities flee from love. You can cast out demons not just by using Jesus' name, but by beaming out the same type of high caliber, unconditional, pure love that he did.

Sometimes, though, you need to express this love in a different way -- in a way that is more righteously angry. Not using anger in a hateful way but transforming anger into the righteous rage of a mother lion protecting her cubs. Stepping into THAT place to cast out dark people, situations, or entities is also very powerful. And it doesn't cause you to descend into hatred or fear, either. It's a very brave, very empowered place.

So there are lots of interesting dualities about a "friendly" vs. "hostile" universe; plugging into the energies of "plenty" or "lack" and learning how to confront or expel "evil" without descending into negativity or hate, while remaining a creature of love.

These are all rich explorations, and we are all being challenged to get to the bottom of these metaphyscial mysteries.

Mystic Blog Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Indigenous Peoples and Shamanic Cures

I saw a few minutes of a documentary last night where a filmmaker spent some time living with some indigenous peoples of the Amazon. He talked about how, as white man civilization has encroached more and more upon these previously untouched Amazon areas, the natives have begun to experience more diseases because their immune systems were never exposed to these germs and viruses before. So the natives often end up having to visit doctors who practice traditional Western medicine in order to cure Western-made diseases.

In the past, their local shamans and herbalists could cure their physical ailments. Most medicine men use a combination of spiritual ritual and the administration of healing teas, ointments, and herbs, and these techniques have been carefully calibrated over thousands of years to address illnesses that are common to their geographical area.

But the entire ecosystem these people have been living within is changing rapidly with the destruction of the rainforest and the encroachment of Western development. And they are getting sick from it.

I'm reminded of how white settlers of the 1700's (or was it the 1800's?) purposefully gave American Indians blankets taken from the beds of smallpox patients in order to make them sick, knowing full well that doing so might kill these native tribes.

Often, I think that we white folks are just a big virus that should never have been unleashed upon the world! We pillage, plunder, annihilate, absorb, and enslave every other people we've come in contact with. Lovely, eh? Sometimes I am very, very ashamed of this skin I was born with. The history of my people is simply inexcusable.

Anyway, back to the documentary. It was interesting to see how, before Western civilization encroached upon the Amazon to such an extent, the indigenous peoples had everything they needed as far as healthcare through the rituals and herbal knowledge they'd kept alive for generations.

Westerners who look at these tribes from the outside tend to take an arrogant, dismissive point of view about the locals' shamanic healing techniques - even though they work.

Just because they may not always work against more modern diseases doesn't mean that the techniques themselves are illegitimate.

Do Westerners really think native peoples are so stupid to administer certain herbs or practice certain healing techniques just for the fun of it? Do they really think that this stuff isn't real? How do you think these tribes stayed alive for thousands fo years, by accident?

Anyway, this is just my rant today about how shamanic practices are powerful and DO work, but they also need to grow and change to keep pace with modern diseases and mutant viruses which are new to humanity's history.

And I encourage people to consider three things:

1) Shamanic practices have worked for thousands of years and still work. They are not flim-flam or mere displays of theatrics. They are very real and powerful.

2) Modern diseases challenge shamanic practitioners to add new cures and techniques to their repertoire to keep pace with the emerging illnesses of this world.

3) If we kill off all the indigenous peoples who are keeping ancient shamanic wisdom alive, through the influx of Western culture disturbing the ecosystems these people live within, we will lose a precious resource of wisdom that kept humanity alive for thousands of years . . . and still has great value.

On a personal note: shamanic techniques combined with some variations on pranic healing (directed energy work using energy of different frequencies and colors) completely cured me of serious heart problems some years ago. I'm talking life-threatening, major illness that just.......went away. So this is real stuff.

Think about that the next time you see some "quaint" indigenous folks portrayed in a documentary, with the obligatory white filmmaker pointing out the colorful quirks and eccentricities (to us whites, anyway) of their culture.

Maybe, just maybe, these people have something important to teach us. . . if only we make the effort to understand where they are coming from.

Mystic Blog Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Channeling ET's vs. Talking with God

A question from a reader inspired today's new article in my Mystic Mail section.

Channeling ET's vs. Talking with God

Mystic Blog Monday, September 12, 2005

Pat Robertson Says Ellen DeGeneres to Blame for Hurricane Katrina (and the Tragedies of 9/11, Too)

Could the soulless members of the extreme Christian Right in America GET anymore stupid, demonic, or bizarre?

This News Article Speaks for Itself

UPDATE: THE ABOVE-REFERENCED ARTICLE WAS SATIRE; I fell for it! How about you? And can ya tell that I'm not the biggest Pat Robertson fan? (No reason to be. He's not entirely human. I'm always rooting for the humans. The pretenders, well, those are the ones I have problems with!)

Mystic Blog Sunday, September 11, 2005

Two Paramedics' First Hand Account of Hurricane Katrina

So many hair-raising accounts are surfacing from survivors of Katrina, and each account relates the same type of mistreatment by government officials and military (those sworn to "protect us") that K. T. Frankovich of http://www.whereheavensmeet.com reported years ago as a survivor of Hurricane Andrew. She couldn't get anybody to listen to her story because the control of the media was so rigid. She even had a professional background in T.V. production, but when she contacted friends in the business, they refused to broadcast her story. She finally did get her experiences published in Nexus Magazine of Australia and also wrote a book of her own.

At the time I first encountered her story in Nexus, I could barely take it in, it was so horrific. Rayelan Allen, the owner and publisher of RumorMillNews (where I was a news agent for a while) knows K.T. and can vouch for her. So this isn't just some Internet crazy making things up. Unfortunately, K.T's experiences are all too real.

I am including a link to an article written by two paramedics and posted at educate-yourself.org. These paramedics were attending a conference in New Orleans. They relate experiences very similar to what happened to K.T. Frankovich after Hurricane Andrew, and similar stories are being echoed by private citizens across the Net who are trying to get them out there to anybody who will listen.

I wonder - how many voices have to speak up about man's inhumanity to man and the complete and utter failure of our government before we finally decide we've had enough? When are we going to stop marginalizing the suffering of others just because we want to feel good about the soulless people (and I use the term loosely) we've allowed to be in charge?

The way I see it, at this point in humanity's evolution, we have two choices:

1) Giving a shit and keeping our hearts open - and demanding change.

2) Shutting down and allowing cruelty, callousness, and a complete lack of conscience to continue to be the deciding force which rules our world.

Go read the two paramedics' story at educate-yourself.org:

Two Paramedics Experiences in Hurricane Katrina

You can read more about this in the online edition of the UK Indepedent: