was that english?

as i have become interested in some of the things i learn about waldorf teaching philosophies i try to read books, forums, and message groups to learn more.  often i can follow along well enough to feel like i am basically understanding what is being talking about – even if i am not grasping every detail – but occasionally i read a response written by one of the group administrators or forum moderators and i have to wonder, “was that english?”  being new to any school of thinking, any tradition, any culture or set of norms (even if you speak the language) sometimes the way the words fit together can leave you feeling befuddled.

i recently tried to do a little work putting together a professional website for my self and i found the task so daunting.  there were probably eight thousand reasons it felt impossible to me but one i remember clearly was that i was having so much trouble making decisions about who i should be writing too.  should the language assume that someone looking for me to do work for them is already familiar with what a “spirit guide” is or a “journey” or should i start way at the beginning and spell it all out?  i was leaning towards just using the language without any explanations until i recently re-experienced the feeling of trying to read things that made no sense to me.  i think, to help the most people, it makes sense to speak in ways that even someone brand new to a set of ideas can understand.  as a newbie in the waldorf world that is what i am always looking for.

victory has asked me several times to put up a post describing how i meditate on the children when i lay down at night.  each time she asks i consider the possibility but it feels nonsensical to write because there is not much to say.  i bring them to my mind and i ask for guidance of a sort.  period.  end of post.

but maybe what she is asking me to do is speak english.  spell out how i meditate on something in basic language that anyone can understand.  so i will try to break it down a bit here.

first of all, i believe in my spirit guides.  so that is a basic assumption i make.  the assumption that they are out there willing and able to help me with anything in my life.  loving me and wanting the best for me and being connected to the divine and all knowing and full of good.  you might believe in something else that is a basic assumption  for you.  perhaps you believe in god, or a god or a goddess, or you believe in angels, in your own guardian angel, or that a deceased family member or close friend is looking out for you, or you simply believe in mother earth and the spirits in the plants and animals that surround you here.  i believe that when i need help and insight i have my spirit guides and power animals to turn to.

i also believe that all meditating, including meditating on, is born of and seeking that place of inner quiet.

with those basics shared i will say what i believe i do.
– lie down comfortably in bed when i am fully prepared to fall asleep.
– get myself to a place where i feel connected to the flow of the universe through seeking my inner quiet spot.
– connect with the feeling that spirit guides will help me.
– bring an image of my child to my mind.
– bring a question or wish to my mind.
– the previous three steps together are the equivalent of stating my intention which i think is key to this kind of work. if you are new to these kinds of practices and you feel unsure you might try literally thinking “it is my intention to meditate on _________ and receive information regarding ________.”
– actually, you might want to be even more clear by stating whose help you are asking for. “it is my intention to receive guidance from my guardian angel about how i might be more patient with my son tomorrow.” or “it is my intention to receive guidance from my child’s guardian angel and my own on a quality that i need to hold more carefully for my child tomorrow.” something like that.
– now i am laying there sleepy and snug in my bed and ready to doze off and i have brought my child’s image to mind and made my request. what happens? some nights i immediately receive something very clearly. an idea just pops right into my head and i know it is a good one. or i see an image of something we can do together. or i feel an emotion and i know i will bring that emotion to my interaction with my child the next day. other times i don’t feel anything right away and i let that be ok with me and i ask for information to come to me while i sleep if that is the way need to receive it.
– now i move on to my next child. the entire practice probably takes me less than five minutes per child most nights. occasionally i will get an influx of immediate information that will lead me to ask for more guidance and it goes on a bit longer. some nights i might have done both of my children in two minutes.
– i usually like to take notes when i am doing journeying and communication work because when i am in the zone, acting as an empty vessel, i sometimes forget things when i return to my normal waking state. but, when i am doing these kinds of meditations i am not taking notes. the idea is to do a very basic and straight forward exercise, one in which my brain is not involved so much as my heart is. and if my mind forgets what i received then it is no matter because my heart and spirit have taken it in.

i have written this up as a way to meditate on your children but you may use it to meditate on almost anything important in your life. i have at times taken up the practice to meditate on my spouse, on a friendship or other important relationship in my life. you could use it to meditate on a question related to your work outside the home, or to help you make a decision that you feel you are struggling with, or even on something simple like what foods your family needs to be eating at this time.

now, i hope that was english. that is, if you are english speaking. if not then i am of no use at all i am afraid…

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answers part II

this is the second installment of answers to questions that came in response to a post i put up the other day inviting them. if you are interested, the first installment is here. if you are curious feel free to add your questions to the comments section of the original post, or any other post for that matter, and i’ll answer them!

before we start you have to see where i found chickpea and the bean the other day:

on top of the table behind the sofa. the pea had climbed herself up there when i was out of the room and bean just couldn’t resist jumping into the picture i chose to snap before getting her down. i will tell you when i walked in and found them she was standing up. nice.

now, onto the real post.

i have a “light” question for this saturday night…. what was the last book that you thoroughly enjoyed?

this is shockingly difficult for me to answer. i have been an avid reader for my entire life and in the last few years i have read less and less as i spend my free time doing other things (like, sleep). i need to start reading more!

for christmas i got a copy of handmade home which i have read (wishing i had a sewing machine here so i could chose a few projects to try out) and enjoyed very much.

i love everything by barbara kingsolver and this summer i enjoyed reading animal, vegetable, miracle.

i think the parenting book that has influenced me the most and that i have consistently found helpful is hold on to your kids by gordon neufeld. good good stuff for parenting kids of all ages.

I would love to know more about animal communication as well. Is it all animals?

If you want something lighter (maybe?), how did you and flash meet?

i love answering questions about the animal communication so bring ’em on! i assume that you mean, “is it possible to communicate with any kind of animal?”  in which case, the answer is yes. it is “easier” to communicate with animals that have a relationship with human beings (domesticated animals) but i have communicated with wild animals as well. it is just a little – different. domesticated animals seem to have figured out how to send messages in the way we will most clearly understand. or, they know what a “day” is for example. with a wild animal time often needs to be framed out by sun rises or moon cycles instead. that is just a simple example.

one thing i will say, there is a very important code of ethics involved in animal communication. i would never communicate with someone’s animal without their permission. if you invite me to your home i am not going to chat with your dog without telling you. also, you can’t use the practice to do harm (bad things, maliciously, etc) or you won’t be able to do it anymore. it is that simple.

lauren, does that answer the first part of your question? did it raise any other questions?

now for the second half — the short version is that flash and i met when we were both working for the same company. (the longer version involves hiding our courtship from our very small office for months, the fact that we were both dating other people when we first met, and the reality that our life up until we met probably couldn’t be more different.) i have considered writing the whole thing out but worried that it would be too much like i was mimicking the pioneer woman’s amazing black heels to tractor wheels write up on how she met and fell in love with marlboro man. oh and also, our story isn’t quite so picture perfect.

ok folks.  that’s all for today.  i hope you are well and enjoying the pursuit of peace, love and joy so far this year.  soon these questions will be over and we will return to the more standard version of the woowoo blogging.  i’ll be finishing up the “year of blogging” that this whole thing started with soon.  i can hardly believe it.  i am also thinking about getting back to some teaching and i’d love your input.

peace out

woowoo me

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answers part I

here is my first installment of answers to the wonderful questions that have come in response to the little post i put up inviting them. please feel free to add your question to the mix if you want to!

first of all i have to thank all of you for the well wishes in the sickness department. we really are ok just a mild little combo bug that was making my brain into mush (the sleep deprivation doesn’t help). then i was all set to start answering questions but suddenly the lactation consultant that i had set witch of the west up with to help her through the early days of nursing decided to go major sucky suck on us and now i am spending all my computer time researching tongue tie, high palate, and weaning from supplementing. seriously. i will tell you why – because witch of the west and her baby and their RIGHT to have a successful nursing relationship mean that much to me. i am half tempted to fly home and live with her for a few weeks. i am also half tempted to start off on a rant about the quality of lactation support in the world these days but i’ll button my lip and try to stay positive.

if, by any chance, you have any experience with these things please feel free to email me or contact me through the blog and i’ll set you up to help me help her. go team.

now let’s answer a few questions, just for fun!

I am always interested in hearing more about the woo woo. For example, did you struggle at all with this path? Do you have a hard time talking to strangers about it? Or is it something that has always just felt so right to you that you embrace it openly?

if by “embrace it openly” you mean sitting quietly in a dark closet and hoping no one opens the door and sees you in there then yes, i embraced it openly right from the start! eh hem.

i would probably say that my spiritual path began in the more mundane way of finding myself interested in buddhism and taking a few classes about it and reading some great books. that was when i was about eighteen and it was the first time that anything even vaguely religious felt like it fit with me. it was a few years later, when i was twenty, that i first really began my animal communication work and that was like a spiritual explosion for me. it was really where the “woowoo” began in earnest.

i was in college at the time and even though i was at the very alternative hampshire college i still didn’t run around campus sharing my love for telepathic communication (interspecies telepathic communication at that) with people. my closest friends i shared it with but that was about it and that was in a very alternative little subculture. when i left hampshire and re-entered the “real” world i was pretty conservative about who i shared the woowoo with.

well, of course it is a little more complicated than that. what i tended to do was to sort of classify what type of person or group i was with and then chose what version of myself to present to them. i think i have always had a tendency to do this and i just continued on in an even more divided manner with the woowoo. was this a person/group that got the woowoo version of robin or the retail store manager side or the sarcastic intelligent side or…so on.

anyhow, i got interested in the shamanic journeying around the same time as the animal communication and the two have always seemed tied closely together for me. yes, sometimes i was just communicating with a cat to try to figure out why it was peeing all over it’s person’s home, but the practice of helping people and animals using telepathy was a spiritual experience for me. the shamanic journeying and tradition opened right up to me in a similar manner – it just felt like it was me.

a huge part of my path, my growth, my practice, has been learning how to be more open about the woowoo in my life without worrying that no one will want to be friends with me or that people will think i am freaky. honestly amber, there are still people who i am friends with in real life who i do not talk about this stuff with at all. i mean, let’s just say you make friends with a mom at the park and next thing you know you have a few play dates. you get along well and your kids play well together so it becomes a weekly thing and soon you consider her a friend. now, how on earth do you bring up the woowoo? and if you don’t chose to bring it up then are you hiding it?

these are the things i struggle with.

but i will tell you that it has reached the point where the voices that worry that my belief, my practice, the way i think and am will scare people and make me unpopular — those voices have lost a lot of their power in the last year or so. and i do not think that is entirely unrelated to my decision to start blogging and to blog so openly about these things. it has been so freeing for me in so many ways, even as it terrifies me.

ok now i am peeking back at the actual question to see if i have managed to answer it at all or if i just did an old-school woowoo mama ramble? hmmm, well, ok, i kind of answered it.

amber? did that work?

Is animal communication something you did as a child – did it just come naturally or is it something you made an effort to do?

I had an experience of what I can only explain as telepathic animal communication when I was a kid – someday I’d like to tell you about it.

i believe that every child has the ability to communicate with animals (and other things). i believe that absolutely anyone can do this. i believe that as we grow up we are told in subtle and direct ways that what we are doing is not possible and so we let it go and begin to live within the dominant culture and its constructs. we follow the rules and we lose sight of our other gifts and abilities.

so, given that, i do believe that i communicated with animals as a child. i know some people have very specific memories of actual conversations with animals (and of those conversations being denied by the adults in their life) and that is not how i feel. we always had animals when i was growing up (first just cats, then also dogs and finally we added horses). as a child i felt most comfortable with animals and i always felt like i knew how to be around them. i knew how they were feeling and what they wanted and how they wanted me to be to let them feel comfortable. none of this seemed notable to me though – it was just a part of being with animals.

the older i got the more i began to realize that not everyone felt this way and i began to think of myself as “an animal person” or “someone who is good with animals.” i didn’t hear them speaking to me but i felt like i just knew what was needed. if that makes any sense. as i entered my most difficult times (oh lets say seventh grade on) i became acutely aware that i was most comfortable with animals (not humans!) and in fact, when i was petitioning to live off campus when i was in college one of the reasons i wanted to move was so that i could be living with animals. i felt that they helped me keep my mental health stable.

with all that to paint the picture of how i felt about my connection with animals, i attended a workshop to learn (relearn) how to communicate with animals when i was about twenty years old. as soon as i had the slightest hints as to how to go about making the connection strong enough to really listen and hear words, and feel things, and set my intentions i was off and running feeling like i had found something i was meant to do. so, in that sense i made an effort to attend the workshop and with that very talented teacher’s help it all came quite naturally to me.

that workshop was a gift that totally changed my life.

and jane, please do share your story with us! i would love to hear it.

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