Some Little Thoughts and a Crazy Squirrel

I love those little snippets of wisdom that my spirit friends whisper in my ears.   I'm going to start sharing them with all of you.   Before I start I need you to remember two things.  One is that my personal journey is still very new.  I have been learning my way for less than two years.  The other thing is that sometimes words are extremely hard to come by because I get these messages on such a fundamental soul level that my brain almost can't comprehend them.  I'm trying my best to be make these messages as understandable in words as  I can, but it is hard.  How do I speak like the wind or sing like the birds?  There's no way I can translate perfectly.  If you only read what I write with your eyes and brain then what I say is diluted by logic and firmly held beliefs, but if you let the words enter your heart and you sit for a while and give yourself time you will have a better understanding of these ideas.

I'll tell my crazy squirrel story first.  I have heard that lessons come to us in all sorts of ways.  One of the ways that Spirit connects with us is through animals.  I was sitting outside, reading my Kindle, and soaking up some of the sun's nourishing rays.  I was looking to see if there were any animals nearby but my yard was empty of anything big enough for me to see.  My car needed an oil change so I locked up the house and left to get that done.  While I was there the mechanics called me over to look at my car.  The air filter was full of food, including Goldfish crackers.  Some little animal, most likely a squirrel, had been using my air filter as storage for her food.  It was so bizarre that it made me laugh and I immediately recognized the message I was being given.  It is spring time now, time to clean out my car and house, time to open the windows and refresh my life physically, mentally, and spiritually!  It was an eye opening and fairly gross reminder that taking care of the small spaces around me is one of the ways I show that I love and want to take care of myself, my family, and my Earth. 

While I was meditating the other day the idea came to me that atoms store memory.  There's no proof of that, I heard, but it will be found true one day.  This is significant because as we know the atoms our bodies are made from are the same atoms that were once part of the stars.  We've each been around for a very long time!   After we die we spend some time between lives to prepare for our next life.  It is a journey and gradual progression as we evolve spiritually.  The atoms we receive to become the people we are today are filled with the memories of hundreds of lifetimes that we have journeyed in as we travel our path towards fulfillment.

I had a second beautiful epiphany.  Pagan rituals are much closer to the Divine Love of God than Christian holidays.  I'm not trying to pick on Christians.  I know it seems that way.  Please allow me to explain fully.  When you read the Bible what does it say in Genesis?  It says that every animal of the sea and ground and every plant is given to human kind for our use.  All of nature is a bounty for us to appreciate, use--but not abuse--, and take care of as it takes care of us.  Pagan rituals focus on the loving way we are taken care of by nature and spirit.  I believe that the energy of the Universe is a force of love, kindness, and good.  This force flows through literally everything, connecting us to the farthest reaches of the universe.  When we celebrate life, death, spring renewal, the last of the harvest and other earthbound rituals we are connecting with the Divine Ones who gave us everything we need on this precious planet.   At the same time, I think that Jesus was a Teacher and that there is every reason to celebrate his life and his teachings of love, kindness, gratitude, and giving.  I think that we should celebrate Jesus and other Teachers such as Buddha and Mohammad, the wisdom of the Tao, and others that I have not learned about yet in my still new understanding of spirituality.  The wonderful thing is, we can do both!  We can celebrate the lives and teachings of these Teachers while at the same time celebrating the abundance that we are given on this Earth.  I will use another saying from the Christian Bible simply because it is the religion that I am most familiar with.  "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son."   You see, the love is there for all creation, for the entire world!  It isn't exclusive to mankind.   This is even more evidence, I think, that we are all connected.  Feel the sun and the breeze and the rain on your skin, touch the rich, dark soil under your bare feet, listen to the sounds of nature and machine.  Can you feel how we are all connected?  Silly us, at war and constantly hating each other.  As another great Teacher said, "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together."    The simple message is that we are all One.  Love guides us on our journey.  Blessings to all of you as we travel together.

Light and Love,
Reneé

Spirit Night (Friday Night Meditation 3-25-2011)

You might wonder why this blog is called "Following a Path on our Placemat."  Well, it's not because I suffer from dissociative identity disorder.  It's because this is actually a blog with several different authors.  The others just haven't had a chance to come by yet.  The real purpose of this blog is to share the experiences of our Mental and Physical medium group here in Central Illinois with the rest of the world.  The group is still very young.  The core members, who have been around the longest, R. and myself have only been in group together for about a year and a half.  D. and K. are our two more recent members.  D. has become a very welcome part of our group.  She brings so much to us, especially experience.  She has such an extensive knowledge of spiritual matters that I feel I always learn from her during our Spirit nights.

Friday, March 25, only R. and I were in attendance at C.'s house.  C. doesn't come to our Friday night meeting because he joins another group during the week.  R. and I went upstairs to the special room where all the groups meet during the week.  The room is filled with palpable spiritual energy.  There is a red light bulb hanging from the fixture in the ceiling.  We like to start the night by welcoming the spirits who are there to help us on our path and by letting them know what we hope to accomplish that particular night.  R. turned on his mp3 player and music filled the room.   We sang along with the music, laughing and joking, and watching the dark for signs that spirit was around as our moods were uplifted.  We like our vibrations to be at the highest level before we start working on what we wish to accomplish each night.  Some nights we leave the music on nonstop because we are sitting and watching for physical phenomenon.   That can be a number of things.  We might watch the transfiguration of each others faces, see light dance around in the dark, watch an orb float past our heads, see humanoid figures appear, or hear tapping in the form of responses to questions.  I know many people would say, don't be silly, the tapping you hear is just the house settling.  It's more than that.  This is tapping that occurs specifically when we ask for it to happen.  It would be one thing if the sounds were constantly present.  They're not.  I'm talking about taps, bangs, and bumps that happen within a scant moment of us saying, "If any spirits are around, could you please make a sound for us?"  Then we ask to verify and another sound is again heard right away.  It's like in the movies where the paralyzed protagonist is asked to blink once for yes and twice for no.  Sure, they blink at other times when no one is around asking questions.  The important thing is that they do blink when the time comes for a question. 

On this last Friday, R. and I decided to start with mental mediumship.  This is used to connect with each others passed loved ones and spirit guides in order to bring messages.  It's good practice for the goal I have set which is to be able to connect with people's loved ones so that they know they are still around and that they are in a safe place.  Friday, I sat in the chair a couple of feet from R. and meditated about him.  I opened my mind to any message that spirit had to share with me.  The messages can often sound crazy but it's not my job to judge them as right or wrong.  The first message I got was visual.  I saw a person in glowing white pushing on R.'s right shoulder.  I realized that it must be bothering him.  The other message I got was one that I could have ignored, but didn't.  I saw a frog in a classroom.  It was a pet frog and it was wearing clothes.  I wrote both visions down and shared them with R.  He confirmed both of them.  The first one was accurate, he had been sitting there with an aching shoulder and hadn't mentioned it to me.  The second one was more clever and came from, I think, a spirit with a sense of humor.  He told me that he had joked around with one of his young students that she should dress up like a princess frog.  My getting a vision of a frog in his classroom wearing clothes must have been a message from spirit that someone was around him at that time.  I wasn't sure who was watching over R. whiled he taught his students but I do know that we all have an entire group of spirits who travel with us as we journey through life.  These are our angels, archangels, spirit guides,and our loved ones who have already crossed.  There are no "bad" spirits with us because in order to be with us the spirits have to match or exceed our vibration.  Keeping yourself in a positive and uplifted mind is the best way to ensure you are surrounded by beings of love and light.   

R. then started a reading for me.  He is clairaudient, which means that he hears the voices of spirit in the exact same way you hear the cashier at your favorite store.  He asked me to think of a question so I asked for news on my husband's youngest brother who passed away when he was 25 years old.  Unfortunately not much information would come through and R. is too honest to make anything up.  Sometimes C.'s upstairs room is not the best place to try and connect with individual spirits because there is so much energy in the area.  I changed the question to ask the spirit what should I do with my life now.  Many messages came back with the strongest one being that I should write a book.  I looked at R. puzzled.   It had been years since I had thought seriously about writing a book.  "Write about what you know", he told me.  I shook my head at him, still not convinced.  I am very knowledgeable about one subject, but could it be the topic of a book?   The next morning while I meditated the outline of the book came to me.  I explained it to my husband, getting more and more excited as I realized that, as long as I put the effort into it, I could get a novel out of my idea.  He even liked it and he is not one to praise anything unless he sincerely enjoys it.  I guess this means I need to write down some notes and get started on my book. 

Light and Love,
Reneé

Simple Meditation Message

If you know me, you know that I'm never satisfied with the person I am.  I always want to know more, do more, succeed at everything.  I'm never happy with myself.  I always tell myself that if I just wake up earlier and force myself to cram my schedule so full that I don't have time to eat or shower, that I will achieve everything that I want in life.  I have spent dozens of hours reworking my schedule until every moment of my day is accounted for.  I've tried to-do lists, check lists, alarms on my phone.  In the end nothing would work.  I couldn't understand why I wanted so desperately to change my life, but was never able to succeed.

The answer came to me the other night.  I was lying in bed and decided to take a few moments to meditate before drifting off.  I rolled over on my back and the thought came to me that I am always trying to better myself.  I frowned in the dark because the painful truth to that was I was still at the same starting point after months of trying to change.  It was then that I saw the words "I am always trying to better myself" float across my field of vision.  As I watched the letters "t-t-e-r" floated away leaving me with "I am always trying to be myself."  Then it struck me--instead of trying to force myself into the idealistic version of myself that is camped out permanently in my imagination, I need to embrace the me that actually exists.  A wonderful Reneé has always existed.  I love my family, I have friends.  I have so much going for me, like good health and intelligence.  The burden of perfection lifted and for the first time in forever I can honestly say that I like the person I am.   I feel like I've made a new friend and she is me. Even though she's not quite perfect, she's worth getting to know. 

Love and Light,
Reneé

Following My Own Path Through My Teen Years

During my teen years, I began thinking more critically about the truths passed down to me in the name of religion.  It didn’t take me long to figure out that contrary to what I had originally thought, almost no one had actually bothered to pick up the Bible and read every word of it.   I wondered if they even knew about the two vastly different stories of Creation or the two different versions of Noah’s ark or the many subtle differences in Jesus’s baby story.   Which of those stories were true, how did we know they were true, and most importantly why were different versions of the same story kept in the same book?  If I didn’t believe in God, I at least believed he was in serious need of a better editor.

There were several incidences that pushed me farther from The Flock, as Christians like to say.  First, I really did give believing a legitimate try.  I knew that was considered sane and normal in my small town and throughout the country.   It was just hard to give myself up to the idea of an omnipotent, omnipresent, loving Father when I had read through the Old Testament and knew all the bloodshed, all the deaths of babies and innocents.  How could that be omnipotent, I would wonder.  It sounds more like tribal warfare set into an action adventure novel.   One day after Church, I carried my Bible to the preacher.  I had both creation stories bookmarked.  I first showed him Genesis chapter one verses 26 through 31.  “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”  So God created mankind in his own image,  in the image of God he created them;  male and female he created them.  God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”  Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.  God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.”  Then came the clincher, why, I wondered, do you only teach about Adam and Eve’s creation story?   He couldn’t find an answer and instead was suddenly called away, looking visibly relieved.  Why are we taught the Adam and Eve story?  If you think about it, the main difference between the two stories besides the number of people created is that in the first story both men and women are created in God’s image whereas in the Adam and Eve story, Eve doesn’t come from God, she comes from Adam’s rib making her, at best, a stepchild to God.   (I wonder if she had red-hair….)

Another incident that shook any foundation of belief I had built up was the day I was sitting in church with my family, idly listening to a story.  The preacher got to the punchline of the story, something about some man sat on God’s donkey—and God killed him!  Hardy har har hilarious!  I was stunned.  I had been listening and as far as I could tell the man who died was on the “good side”.   For him to die just from sitting on the wrong donkey seemed extreme, childish, and downright evil.   I know donkeys were important in Bibical times, being hard-working, patient, plentiful animals, but to actually kill someone?  Couldn’t God have just knocked him to the ground?   I’m not a fan of bullies, human or immortal, so stories like that make me less likely to want to believe in a loving God.

Then there was the time I was in Sunday School.   I was thirteen and one of the oldest kids in my class.  I stuck around because I liked the story time and also for the free candy.  I was taking my first year of French at my middle school.  One of the words I had learned was “Dieu” which is the French word for God.   “Mon Dieu!” is “My God!” in French.   One of the two Sunday school teachers mentioned that unless you call God “God”, you don’t really believe in God.  It made sense so I nodded and added, “The French word for God is Dieu.”   I was not prepared for their response.  “Then they do not believe in God!”  My mouth hung open for a moment, “Yes they do.   Dieu is just their word for God, same as chien is their word for dog. They have dogs in France, but they call them chien.  They have God in France, but they call him Dieu.  It’s a different language.”  I said the last part barely believing I’d ever have to explain to anyone that French is a different language than English.   We never resolved our argument.  That was my last day of Sunday school. In fact, I never spoke to my teachers again after that.  I was realizing more and more that I just didn't fit in with the typical Church crowd.

Around this same time all the years of being told I was being watched constantly, by both God and Santa Claus (even though I already knew the latter was my parents, I had left over worries from when I was a small child) had taken their toll on my impressionable mind.  I was convinced I was being watched and recorded every where I went.  I got to the point where I couldn't stand eyes in a room.  Mom had a bathroom shower rug with a picture on it.  I don't remember the picture, just that it had eyes.  I kept it flipped upside down.  Mom thought it was funny.  I pretended it was a joke.  For years I felt cornered and examined.  I was never alone because my anxiety was always with me to steal any peace. Finally, when I was nineteen and away at college something happened that woke me up to the fact that my horrified fear of being watched, as logical as it was considering we really are taught that God stares at us constantly, needed to end.  My boyfriend at the time was visting during a particularly nervous time for me.   Whether or not I cared if I was being watched flucuated depending on my mood.  Sometimes I had nothing to hide.  Other times I was withdrawn and fearful.  This was one of those fearful times.  I needed to take a shower, but couldn't because I was convinced someone was hiding in the large vent above the shower head.  My boyfriend tried to reason with me that there was no way anyone could be in there.  I was resolute that I would not step in the shower until he checked the vent.  I never told him why I was so worried but fortunately he either wanted to humor me or hurry and go to dinner because he reached up to the vent, opened it, and looked inside.  It was dark and empty and I was satisfied enough to take a shower.  The logical part of my brain knew how crazy I had sounded, insisting that someone was hiding in a small cramped vent waiting for me or my roommate to take a shower.   I knew I had to pull myself together before I started losing my mind.  It was then that I started looking into other ideas, like reincarnation, lycanthropy, and atheism.  

Light and Love,
Reneé

Following My Own Path (part 1)

When I give people the shortened version of how I came to find myself on a spiritual journey I usually say, "I was very hardcore atheist until I had some very strange and completely inexplicable things happen to me after someone I loved very much died."   That’s true in a nutshell, but it leaves out so much of the detail.

Like most white Americans, I was born into a Christian family.  I grew up in the Southern United States and from an early age sat through Sunday school and sermons at one of the Baptist churches.  We weren't Southern Baptist, we were just Baptists who happened to live in the South.  From what I understood as a kid the difference between our type of Baptist and true Southern Baptist is that our members weren't baptized in the muddy creek behind the church.  I remember being baptized in the built in pool behind the pulpit and thinking that was bad enough.  I was glad I was inside a warm church instead of on a creek bank soaking wet.  I was baptized when I was twelve.   I never had the heart to tell anyone that I hadn't made up my mind whether or not I believed in God.  I just wanted to be a full-fledged Member of the church.  According to my pastor, only people baptized in the church were members.  I thought to myself, you mean I come sit and listen to these sermons every time I can't find an excuse to stay home with Dad, and I'm not even a member!  We'll fix that!  I pictured members receiving special treatment, like being invited to exclusive "adults-only" parties.  I didn't think of that in a sexual way, I was only a kid.  More of a "get to stay up to midnight" way. 

As a gift for my baptism, my paternal grandma gave me a King James' Bible.  I sat in the pew, still dripping with water and hefted the thick book in my hand.  I decided I was going to read it, from cover to cover.  The idea made perfect sense.  After all, shouldn't I read this book that was being used to guide my life and which held the secrets of Heaven and Hell?  It wasn't a terribly thick book.  Surely most other people read their copies, too, I thought to myself.

Over the next fifteen months I slowly made my way through the entire Bible, both Old and New Testaments.  I still vividly remember reading the last sentence in Revelation.  I shut the Bible and laid on my back in my bed, staring at the ceiling.  For a moment my mind was completely still.  I thought about everything I had read and willed it to have some discernable impact on me.  I felt nothing.  Nothing I read in that book convinced me that God was real.  It was just a book.  I was more convinced that Captain Ahab and Ishmael were real after reading Moby Dick than I was that God existed after reading the entire Bible. The biggest problem was that The Bible is, in the end, just a book.  I expected to see a vision of Angels, to hear heavenly voices singing, to hear a clash of thunder.  I wanted something extraordinary to happen.  Instead I simply shut the back cover on a boring and somewhat confusing book and that was the end of the matter for a while. 

Love and light,
Reneé

Hello out there!

I started this blog spot as a way to share thoughts and feelings from myself and a few friends as we live our lives and travel along our spiritual journey.  I'll let them introduce themselves when they write their own posts.  For clarity's sake, I will use their first initials, R., D., K., and C.  I have known R. and C. for close to one and a half years now.  Over that time our friendship, which was planted in the seed of a tragic and barely understandable loss,  has blossomed into something meaningful and beautiful.

R. and I have been travelers down a spiritual path since we met at C.'s house many months ago.  We've gone through a few members who just didn't work out with us.  D. has recently joined us and so far is a perfect fit.  K. is a friend of D.'s who has been with us a couple of times.  We love to sing--especially to The Beatles, we love to dance, tell stories.  We love to raise our vibrations in order to connect with the loving energies of the Universe. "Love is all you need!" This blog is going to be from different perspectives.  There will be different writing styles and even different interpretation of the same events.  I am not D., and D. is not R. or C., or me!  Last night, I was busy around the house and I had time for quiet reflection.  A sort of walking meditation, you could say.  It occurred to me that not only did our group need to start a blog to share our experiences as a spiritual group, but that we also needed to share the positive thoughts and moments from our normal day-to-day lives in order for people to really make a connection with us.  A blog about nothing more than a bare bones account of our Friday night spiritual work would seem rather empty and uninviting.  So along with our own individual takes on our Friday spirit nights we will also add in our thoughts and feelings about our lives and our passions and what is happening in the world today.  We will strive to keep our posts positive.  We don't hear much about them, but there world is still filled with kind and caring people.  Welcome to our blog, and enjoy!

Light and love,
Reneé