Sunday, January 29, 2012

Never alone - They will hold your hand

Sometimes we hit the wall and feel like everything is going against us until we see the light, we see the helping hand, we see the Goddess shinning and telling us everything will be ok. Today I had two experiences when Goddess showed up and told me she was there just by me. I went hiking in the morning with some friends and in the beginning it was very hard, I felt I could not go any longer. My calfs were in pain, my legs were hurting, my ankles were burning to the point I felt I should just give up and stand there waiting for them to come back. I decided to stop and voiced my feelings to my friend, I told her "just go... I need to stay behind" and she said "I am not going anywhere.... what's going on?" So I explained to her my ankles and calfs were hurting and she helped me stretch them out, and every time we stopped she helped me stretch and keep the positive attitude. We were lucky to see a hawk flying by and I would not have seen it if she had not helped me and hold my hand, made me feel ok when I felt like giving up.

Later that afternoon, I felt like I wanted to drop my Chinese class. I spent hours decoding Chinese characters ~ by decoding I mean putting the Chinese Character into pinyin, then English... yep decoding. After 6 hours of studying I felt I accomplished one exercise.... Needless to say I felt less than bright and like I did not have enough time to cope with this class. I wrote to my teacher and told her that I was having a hard time with the homework, that I have spent all day and I have accomplished little and that I felt like going back to level one or dropping the class. Her response was so loving... she was cute and sweet, she told me to stick with it, to not stress, to not work that hard, to have fun and enjoy and that she would be there to hold my hand when I had problems. She felt like the Great Mother for me. She was holding my hand when I was struggling, telling me everything will be ok. It is ok to be lost, it is ok to feel pain, it is ok to feel fear of failure, it is ok to feel like we want to give up. She is there. She is guiding us. She is holding our hands and wrapping us in her arms when we want to cry.

She is there, she is holding our arms - we are never alone.

Blessings,

Lady Carolina

Monday, January 16, 2012

When the Red Queen comes out....

Off with their heads!!!!! We all have those moments when the irrational parts in ourselves come out and play. When somebody says the wrong thing and sets you off on a fiery road that may end up worse than started. We all have our trigger words or situations that may get the ugly out pretty quickly. We may get angry, we may get sad, we may get upset and stop seeing the big picture because we are hurt or our boundaries have been crossed. We all have people that push us and make us go irrational. For me, one of those people was my mother. She was able to literally ignite me and get the beast out of myself. I know it may sound crazy but we all have that dark side, our shadow self, that is hidden or pacified but when awaken can not be calm down. Many people prefer to ignore it because it is not pretty. Women are not supposed to get angry. Women are not supposed to be aggressive. Women are not supposed to get upset. There are so many rules about how to be and how not to be but in the end, it takes a lot of energy to hold those parts of ourselves in the dark. The Ancient Greek Aphorism says "Know Thyself." or "γνῶθι σεαυτόν" and this means to know yourself fully, not just the part we like, but also the part that you don't like. It's easy to accept our good traits like compassionate, loving, caring, perseverant, etc, but when it comes to the challenging traits like irritable, impatient, anxious, aggressive, among others, it is harder to accept that we have those characteristics within.

We are a blend of positive and challenging traits and that keeps us in harmony when we learn to accept all our parts within ourselves. If we spend a lot of energy blocking the challenging traits, one day they explode and what I call the Red Queen (yes, from Alice in Wonderland) comes out and starts cutting heads off. We stop thinking clearly and instead we just blast. Those are them moments when we need our Queen self to not be Red but to go back to Neutral White. As Rev. Ava Park said "The Queen does not react; she intends, she plans, she sets boundaries, then she acts." When we lose our temper and our vision gets cloudy, we need to remember that we should not react but instead look within and see what boundary was broken or what triggered that reaction, then clearly state that we don't appreciate that comment or situation and what the consequence would be if it happens again. In this way, we are able to honor our boundaries and request others to respect them as well. In doing so, we may avoid situations that trigger the Red Queen to come out but if the Red Queen happens to come out, just honor her, ask her what is making her upset, and let the emotions flow so they don't bottle up and come out stronger in the future.

Know yourself - know what sets you off, what ignites you, what turns you irrational and accept those parts of yourself as you accept your loving, caring, beautiful self. They are all part of you and it takes more energy to hide them than to lovingly accept them so they can all live in harmony and lead you to live a life more fully and whole

Blessings,

Lady Carolina

Harmony vs. Balance

During the first few weeks of this new year, I spent some time meditating what the focus for 2012 would be. Each year has a topic or an underlying story to tell. For me, 2012 is the year when I will strive for harmony in my life. Some people may ask why harmony and not balance. For me harmony is about combining all the energies and activities in my life to work in synch with each other and like an orchestra where there are several instruments playing to create a beautiful melody, my life would reflect several activities and energies all moving at the pace I decide to create a vision of the life I want to live. Balance, for me, is about not doing some things or limiting the amount of time we spend doing something so we are not out of balance like the scales in the Justice card of the tarot - if I do this, I may not do that type of thinking so things are not out of balance.

I am the type of person that has a tendency to be "all or nothing" and achieving harmony in my life will help me to see that I can do all those things I want to do like studying Mandarin, leading my online community, being a teacher, being a mentor, working full time and spending time with my love ones, writing, translating... the list goes on and on. As the Queen of my own Realm, I am visioning what I want my Realm to look like, who I want to be part of it, and who has to go for the best of all. There may be activities that don't have a space in my life anymore, and others that will be incorporated. I am trying to see the full picture of my life, where I come from and where I am going so I can manifest the life I deserve. 2012 is the year when I want my Queen self to come out fully and to incorporate all the qualities and characteristics a Queen has. I want to be the visionary of my own life. I want to lead like water. I want to avoid reacting to life but instead visioning, planning, and executing according to the plan.

When I calculated my Tarot Card for this year, I got the Star or if I reduced the number the Strength card. You calculate your tarot year by using numerology to get the result. You take the day you are born, the month, and this year and get the result. For example, if you are born on September 21, you would calculate 2+1+9+2+0+1+2 = 17 (the star) or you can reduce the result by adding 1 + 7 =8 (strength). When I saw those two cards, I couldn't help but think the message is that it takes strength for me to shine like the star and be able to bring light into my life. Sometimes we need to tame the lion in order to achieve our passion, to live our vision, to fulfill our purpose. What is your card for this year? What does this card tells you?

The first few weeks of the year set the tone for the rest. Spend sometime meditating what the focus is, what you want to achieve and see if your card tells you something else about what this year would be about. You have the power to create your world, you have the power to impact your environment, you are Divine.

Blessings )0(

Lady Carolina

Sunday, January 8, 2012

2012 - end of the world or shift of consciousness?

Everyone has heard the Mayan prophecies about the world ending on December 21, 2012 and how we are facing total destruction but the question remains the same: Is this it? Are we really facing extinction? Or is this like with the Death card in the tarot deck that we are facing the end of one journey and the beginning of the next? Last weekend, I went to the Isis Oasis Temple in Geyserville, CA for the Sunday services and we were discussing this phenomenon and how we believe 2012 would be. When it was my turn to speak, I said that I believed 2012 was the year for the great shift. I do not see total destruction in 2012 but I do see a need to change our mindsets and our way of seeing things. We have lived in the mind for too long and we have bought into all the things that the media says we should do or buy or be in order to be happy. We have forgotten to check inside and see what our souls really want. Many believe that they will be happy if.... you can add whatever you want to this phrase and see what I am talking about. We have forgotten we have the power within to manifest what we really want and not what others have said we should want or the "normal" says we should have or be.

In Ancient Egypt, it was believed that when the person died, he would go into the dying chamber and in there, his or her heart would be weighted against the feather of Ma'at. They did not weight the brain, they weight the heart. It's not about how intelligent one is, or how many things they accomplished in life but it is about living with passion every day and making sure we follow our vision for our lives. It's time we shift from the mind to the heart and start thinking what we really want for the future. We can see the signs that the world needs to change, that the paradigm that we have been living so far is not working. Our forests are getting depleted, the ozone layer is getting thinner, the water is getting contaminated and this is a result of the paradigm we have been living for a long time. If we look at the patriarchal religions, most of them have a pyramid structure having God on the top and then comes angels, man, woman, child, animals, plants and earth at the very bottom. Earth is the last thing on the list for the patriarchal religions and we still wonder why everything is just collapsing. The earth is our foundation, it is what is holding us together and if we don't take care of our foundation, everything we put on top will collapse. It's time we realize we need to change our ways or we will not survive, and this is not because of a prophecy says but it is because we have not taken care of our foundation - our beautiful Earth Mother.

Similarly, we need to connect with our souls - our own personal foundations - in order to not collapse. We live in a world that is bombarded with information 24/7 - email, internet, television, just to mention a few. We live accelerated and running all the time. We feel we don't have time to develop personal practices that connect us with our spirits. It's time we also change that. If we don't feed our foundation, we will also collapse. Dedicating time to our spiritual practices is very important and it is usually the thing we avoid doing because we "don't" have time. We need to make the time for that for our benefit and the benefit of all. If we don't connect, if we live like zombies, sooner or later we just become an empty shell with nothing inside that can be manipulated in any way the people in power want.

It's time we wake up and take care of our foundations so they can keep holding us and supporting us. I don't think the end of the world is coming but I think a new journey is about to begin and we can either choose to participate consciously in this shift or unconsciously. The choice is always ours.

Many blessings,

Lady Carolina