Abundance - Class October 3, 2004
Abundance simply put is personal fulfillment. Personal fulfillment is delivered to us wrapped in shiny foil wrapping paper that blatantly reflects our choices. The decisions we make on a daily basis equally effect our ability to achieve a state of fulfillment as well as the long term goals we catalog and carry with us to invoke our purpose. But in order to make the decisions that lead us to abundance, to arrive at that blissful state of being, we must first start at the beginning, which is self-discovery. Until we honestly know what would make us happy we cannot know what fulfillment is. If our self-discovery is based too heavily upon comparison to others we will seldom feel fulfilled in anything that we do. If we do, it is fleeting, for the next comparison arrives too quickly. Albeit, if we never gage our life's progress with anyone else we will feel egotistically superior or crippling inferior, either unwarranted. Most people fall into the first trap. When we release the overt comparison, engage in acts of self-appraisal (ourselves and supporter/mentor), self-discovery (intuitive and study), and formulate positive intentions, we will work hard toward our desires and before long we find that our goals manifest in a celebratory manner. This ideal manifestation cannot take place until and unless we tie a ribbon of love around the foil wrapping. Love, which initiates from the divine, fastens all that we work towards with integrity, acceptance, forgiveness of self and others and, importantly, a lasting underlying desire to share. Abundance brings forth the ideal of love and teams it with material success. One of our most precious spiritual life lessons is the self-actualization of our talents to better our lives, and by doing so from love, the world around us (whether we set out to change the world or not will be better when we proceed from love). Success without love results in greediness, emptiness, loneliness - love alone without any success brings longing, resentment and soon love dwindles. When the gift of fulfillment is delivered we need to become like our grandmothers at birthday parties, excitedly open the present but be sure to keep the ribbon and wrapping paper neatly stored nearby so as to remind ourselves that abundance is surely a gift we deliver to ourselves.

Reclaiming Your Authentic Self - Class September 12, 2004
What is our life mission? Our soul purpose? The authenticity in living our lives by our own truth and fulfilling our passions can be to many, a daunting task. Can I really become the poet that my soul yearns to be and still pay my mortgage on time? What if I don't know what my soul mission is? Reclaiming your authentic self is a method of visualization by which you can release the selves which we realize in order to survive, conform and conduct our lives according to the dictates of the world. During the guided visualization we release negative judgments and pressure inundated from self and others that too often compare, discourage or dismiss individual uniqueness. In visualizations, we can seek and attain inner peace. For a time you can sit with your soul and rediscover your innate talents and spiritual life purpose. You can give your soul an offering of acceptance and gratitude. In turn, by taking the time for self-discovery you may enter into a continuing state of balance, where the dichotomy of your inner self illuminates your daily life in your work and relationships. Life can become a joyful channel of your greatest talents into real work and play that balances your inner spirit with the outer demands of the world. The practice of reclaiming your authentic self becomes a retreat, regrouping and reassessment of your intrinsic value. This balance between the inner and outer may not be achieved overnight, but through practice of reclamation and trust in your higher self and purpose. Eventually there is little if any separation between your inner purpose and outer life. One of our greatest spiritual life missions is to express our full potential. This is the art of being true to yourself. A goal that brings with it lessons in spiritual growth and glowing experiences of daily synchronicity with spirit. We are spiritual beings who need to return, retrieve, remind and honor the blessed essence of ourselves. To accomplish this we journey within and place a flower at the temple that is our individual holiness. When we honor our inner temple, that is home to unlimited joy and potential, we acknowledge our right to happiness and expand our awareness of the divine. The flower we carry holds the petals of our purest intentions, the temple is the home of our soul and our life's mission is to manifest our soul's gifts - self-actualization of our potential and unlimited radiance in concert with the divine. Rather a lofty goal one might say, but the sweetness of union with spirit is a truly remarkable experience. We are amazed at the light that shines from our own temple and soon a single flower grows to a garden.

Soul Mates
This Sunday's guided visualization/class will be on soul mates. The visualization will help you see one of your soul mates. The mere idea of a soul mates presents such hope and promise to many people. The reality can be that fulfilled promise but it is much more. Soul mates can take us to our highest spiritual connection and offer us the face of god when we look into the eyes of another. When we truly put another before us and realize that our love is so great, so powerful that our egotistical needs matter little than we are one step closer to the divine for the greatest love relationship mirror our relationship with the divine. Soul mates because we bear the truth of past lives together take us often to our most difficult challenges but also to our highest potential. The familiarity, the comfort, the desire all melt into one beautiful relationship that should be treated as a precious jewel whether it be short-lived or last a lifetime. But also some of our greatest lessons come from our soul mates for they bring with them the goal to reach our highest potential and sometimes we cannot reach that until we remove the shackles of our own fears that manifest as control, blocks, insecurities, competition or manipulation. Often we test each other out of fear in soul mates relationships but those tests occur because we think that somehow this relationship cannot be real, that sooner or later this will fail or even more fearful that this relationship might succeed. But when we shed our fears and learn to love unconditionally we open ourselves up to the greatest love imaginable which can only be matched by our great relationship with the divine. It takes courage to love and it takes courage to admit that we are not perfect and neither is the one we love and in that admission there is perfection because in the humility of the recognition that the love is greater than the ego, we value love as nothing else can be valued. Love is a jewel, our soul mates take us to the mountain, yet we must dig through the rocks and boulders we find or have created to reach it and we must continually polish it and admire it to keep it.

Time and the Tarot
Topic: Time
Many of us of are in the mindset of instant gratification - if we are Americans, our cultural lifestyle is fast paced: fast food, drive through anything, hopes for instant fame and instant riches. Many of us secretly hope our dreams will be fulfilled immediately. The Tarot in its greatest capacity is a complete spiritual system. As it foretells the future it seeks to unfold the rich stories of each of our lives with each reading and even with each question asked "when", "why" or "who". The Tarot wants to deliver our answers in a storylike manner that offers to us a comprehensive understanding of our greatest individual spiritual lessons and growth. If we are impatient, we won't get the story and if we don't get the story, the lesson is too often repeated. Time is not cast aside by implementation of a strong will - we cannot will a necessary process of spiritual growth to shorten its length. If somehow we manage through our own cleverness to usurp the time needed for the story to unfold we are often met with another stronger, more challenging lesson. Practicing patience may cause our egos to take a beating which then may also bring us to believe in something greater than ourselves. It can show us to trust the process and can even cause us to reconsider what we once deemed as a "must have". The Tarot can open up to us the story of our lives and present us with moments of great discovery, renewal of beliefs and a focus on the value of the present. If we do not allow the story to unfold we can create chaos like a child frantically bouncing from room to room picking up toys and asking anyone in sight where is mine? Until we finally accept that our story may hold much more if we learn to flow with change and allow gentle guidance to emerge. Allowing patience in allows us to develop gratitude for the present and what we already have while seeing the possibilities of the future. The Tarot can offer us the story of our life's journey if we take the time to truly understand what is being conveyed. No one wants to get the "Hanged Man" in their reading - all will groan and roll their eyes in dismay at the card that denotes patience and sacrifice are coming. But it is the process, the journey, the path we take that is so important - not just the destination. The Tarot can say look here is your journey and if we pay close attention, we can learn why. It is then, and only then, we can exert our will to change the future to an even greater destination.