The Six Clairs

At this point, we all know that we are energy. We are souls having a temporary experience. We have thoughts and those thoughts turn into feelings, which then vibrate out to the universe and within 30 seconds that vibration is felt and returned to us. We also know about raising the vibration and always striving to be in alignment with love which is our natural state.  If we want to change things, then we change the way we think about them. We know to focus on what we do want and not on what we don't want because we are like magnets! We know that we don't always get what we want but we always get what we believe! I'm not saying we have any of this perfected but I know that we are striving to live our best life by radiating love and compassion. 

So now, what about our psychic abilities? First of all, the word psychic usually has a negative connotation which is unfortunate. Psychic simply means "of, or relating to, the soul or mind".  I never refer to myself as a psychic and neither do any of my mentors or friends that share their gifts of this nature.  I am not a fortune teller. I simply receive messages from Spirit and can connect with those who have passed and are now in spirit form. I can also communicate with living animals and have connected with some living persons. It's all about energy.

I have been sharing my experiences and, as I have done so, some of you have mentioned that you wished you had this gift. Well, what if I told you we all have this ability? Remember we are all on our own journey and no one is better or more advanced than anyone else. You are exactly where you are supposed to be at this exact moment. Becoming more aware, being mindful and being present are so important! 

We use an extended form of our physical senses to receive information psychically - clear knowing, clear sight, clear sound, clear feeling, clear smell and clear taste. "Clair" is the French word for "clear".  There are six "clairs" and you may not even have realized that you have these abilities but you do! Perhaps, explaining what they mean will help you along this journey. 

Clairvoyance - clear seeing.  This is the ability to receive symbols and pictures; mental images without physically seeing them.  I get signs and symbols from Spirit when doing readings or connecting with your loved ones which will then make sense to you and to me when they are shared. How does this work? Well, imagine what the front door of your house looks like right now. You aren't looking at your front door but you can see it in your mind's eye right? The color? The doorknob? The peephole? Any windows? The way you just "saw" your door, is how subtle clairvoyant messages come through. 

Clairaudience - clear hearing. This is the ability to receive sounds and words. I will often receive names, words, sometimes a sentence or two. It isn't clear like having a conversation in human form but when spirits really want to make a point to me, they find a way to get the word out for me to understand.  

Clairsentience  - clear feeling. This is the ability to feel or sense emotions. Being an empath, this often comes pretty easy. Spirits will make me feel a certain way to get their message across. An example of this is when my cousin had a heart attack and died and I felt it in my own chest as it was happening. I also felt my dad's tremendous head pain as he was collapsing and being sent to the ER. 

Claircognizance - clear knowing.  The ability to KNOW information. It's hard to trust at first because you don't see, smell or taste anything and you aren't sure where it came from. You "just know". The information is just there and you just know. Hard to explain but you'll understand when it happens to you. Often people will say, "I just knew it in my bones" or "All of a sudden, it hit me!" 

Clairgustance - clear tasting.  The ability to receive tastes that aren't there. A spirit person will give you the tastes of their favorite meal, drink of choice or something food-related that connects to them. When my great aunt is around, I taste her mac and cheese. 

Clairalience - clear smelling.  The ability to receive distinct smells/aromas.  I often smell pipe tobacco, cigarette smoke, perfume, flowers, food which are all messages related to the spirit person. 

Understanding and developing the six clairs is an important tool for intuition work.  During meditations, you may receive signs from your spirit guides and your inner voice in these ways. Mediation is so important in learning to develop your clairs; even if just for a 20 minutes a day. If this is something you are interested in developing, you now have the first step.... awareness of the clairs! Remember, we are all on our own journey. Some of these clairs may be easy for you to develop and some just may not seem to work for you at all. That is OK! There is no right or wrong way. It's really just a matter of being aware of the energy that is around you and learning how to tune into it! 

Be careful what you think

We can all agree that we are all energy and have thoughts, right? Then those thoughts turn into emotions which create a vibration that we send out to the Universe. Within 30 seconds, that vibration comes right back to us. We know this already. We are practicing flipping the switch when it's something negative or doesn't serve us. We are striving to have positive feelings and raising the vibration. This isn't easy and it takes time and practice. The more you do this the more it will become routine but don't expect it to change overnight. We have been thinking the way we think for decades and it's going to take time but it CAN happen.... if you WANT it to.

You've heard me say, "You don't always get what you want but you always get what you believe". Well, what is a belief anyway? A belief is just a thought that we have over and over.  We have between 20,000 and 60,000 thoughts each day and 95% of those thoughts are the exact same thoughts as the day before. So when you have the same thought over and over it becomes a belief and guess what? Beliefs aren't something that come from within us. They are either taught or told to us.  Ready for this? The thoughts or beliefs that you have now.... you were NOT born with them. Just as easily as they were picked up, though, they can be thrown away. YOU are in control of your thoughts and, as a result, YOU can get rid of any of those that aren't serving you. 

Ever wonder why someone does the same thing over and over even though they know it will NOT give them any different results? Maybe you have even caught yourself doing this before. Well, it's because of your subconscious mind. Our subconscious mind controls 95% of what we say, think and do. Everything we believe in is a result of what happened from 0 to age seven. Yep, you read that right. Everything you believe in is a result of what occurred from 0 to seven years old. That time frame is when we are most vulnerable and the subconscious mind accepts whatever shows up. Good and bad experiences are all stored there. Think of it as programming. The subconscious mind does NOT have free will. Its job is to always point us back to what is familiar. That familiar isn't always good for us but the subconscious mind doesn't care- that's not its job.

Perfect example - when I was about five, I was sitting with my great aunt at her apartment complex pool and long story short, I fell in and my head went under water. I panicked and, as a result, I never learned how to swim.I also never put my head under water again; not even in a shower. Did I almost drown that day? No. Did 911 have to come and rescue me? No. Was I hurt? No. But, even to this day, I remember exactly how I felt that afternoon. As a child, in every family vacation photo, you will see me in a pool but I will be in my dad's arms clinging on to him for dear life. I will be in the ocean but not past my knees and that's even pushing it. My mom never learned to swim. Her mother never learned to swim. There must have been a reason and now my four year old self knew - it was because the water was terrifying and I should stay away from it because it's dangerous. I grew up within walking distance of a neighborhood pool - never went. After high school, I went to a pool party and flirty guys would try to get me in the pool. When I didn't want to go, they assumed it was because I didn't want to get my hair or makeup messed up and would threaten to throw me in. I left many a party angry as a result and was probably seen as "no fun" but it was because of what happened to me when I was a child.  My subconscious mind was always pushing me back to what was familiar and I believed that the water was the devil. To this day, I still do not know how to swim. I am 45 years old, I am surrounded by water, and I do not know how to swim.

Well, where is all this coming from? Well, obviously fear. It surely isn't in alignment with love. The whole point of fear is to bring something up for us to heal, right? I may not know how to swim but I do not fear the water. I am drawn to the water, I find peace in the water, I am enamored by the water. A part of me is missing when I am not near the water. I don't fear it but I surely respect it.  I have been able to go back to this belief from five years old and heal it. Now this is a pretty minor example, it seems, but hopefully you get the point. (One day, maybe I'll share my true core wound from when I was four that has wreaked havoc over my life and relationships, but for now this will have to do.)

But there's good news. Unlike the subconscious mind, WE have free will and we can do something about those limiting beliefs and negative patterns that are still prominent in our adult lives that were created when we were a child. We can correct them because WE are NOT controlled by our thoughts! If you want something to change, then change it! YOU are the only one in control of your thoughts. No one else is in that head of yours controlling you but you!

Silver Linings from Jupiter

Jupiter went retrograde today, April 10, and will be there until August 11. What does that mean? Well, from the vantage point of Earth, Jupiter appears to be spinning backwards.  What's really happening, though, is that Earth is completing its orbit around the Sun faster than other planets outside of its orbit. Periodically, Earth will outpace them and that's when retrograde chaos begins! 

Mercury is the planet that goes retrograde when everyone loses their shit. Excuse my language, but if you haven't experienced a Mercury Retrograde, be grateful. You'll get your chance to experience it when it happens again in July though. Be careful what you wish for.

Jupiter being in retrograde is different though. It's about joy and silver linings! It is a time to do some soul searching to look over events of the recent past and see them in a different light. Jupiter's energy is going to help us be optimistic and hopeful, and when we revisit painful events, Jupiter will guide us to see the positives. It may even guide us to see something we missed the first go around.  During this retrograde, we will be led to open ourselves to the possibilities around us and surrender expectations in order to receive gifts that are meant for us WITHOUT our ego getting in the way.  

Jupiter represents our belief system and during its retrograde is a good time to reflect on what you believe in. You will feel at a crossroads and you may say such things to yourself like, "It's now or never" or "I want to live a life that is meaningful!"  Guess what? You are right! Jupiter retrograde is also making us feel like we need to take action. You have the right, the opportunity and the responsibility to live that meaningful life - that life of purpose. Remember we are soul beings having a temporary human experience in which we are here to learn and to gain soul expansion. Think of this world as school- we are here to learn as much as we can to become our true selves and to always align with love and compassion. What's the secret to living that meaningful life? Love, of course! As if you didn't know that by now. Love is the only thing that is real!

So why don't we make the most of Jupiter Retrograde and do an exercise:

1. Make a list of no more than 5 amazing, positive things that happened to you in the last 6 months. Don't get caught up on the number - list whatever you can but no more than 5.
2. During that same time period of the last 6 months, choose 1 or 2 difficult or challenging things that happened.  When you look at these, what lessons, gifts or silver linings do you now see? If you are struggling to find any, that's ok. Just be proud of yourself for making the effort to at least try to see something good.
3. Once you've made these lists, what positive emotions or shifts have been stirred? Then come up with 1-3 things you can do to change your daily routine as a result.  What can you add or remove that will bring you more joy and make you feel more purposeful and more aligned with love?
4. During this retrograde period, begin integrating these changes into your routine and see how things shift when Jupiter is ready to go direct again on August 11. 

Jupiter being in retrograde is a perfect time to address these areas of our lives and to think about ways that we can step it up, take charge and get that feeling of purpose again! I know I am more than ready! You are going to have to be willing to make a shift and do things differently though in order to bring in that new energy to your routine.  Jupiter energy will help us realize all we need to do to keep moving in the right direction is to find the light in each step, look for the grace in each day and start seeing that even the worst events have that wonderful silver lining!

Grounding

You probably have heard me often say that I am in need of grounding. Or a picture of how I went to the ocean for grounding or I meditated on my lion to get grounded. I may even tell you that you need to walk around barefoot, especially outside, to ground yourself.  At first you may think I'm crazy, but when I tell you to do it, and you do and feel better, I'm not so crazy, am I? So you see and hear me say the word grounding but what does that actually mean?
Grounding allows you to release any excess energy and emotions that you have by energetically connecting to the earth.  This is super important and necessary for me because after I do any energy work (working with spirit, transfer of energy, healing) I am just exhausted.  Having taken on the energy of another person gives me excess energy on top of mine and leaves me drained and often lethargic. So many of us think that we need more energy but that's not always true.  It is often hard for us empaths to stay grounded because we are constantly bombarded with other people's emotions! Sometimes you may think that you just want to be a hermit and stay home so you won't attract any of those outside emotions, but it still happens. Just turn on the news - it gets me every time and often makes me angry, depressed and just worn out.  Simple grounding techniques really help release those emotions and recenter yourself. These even help with anxiety issues and panic attacks.

1. We already know that changing our mindset from positive to negative instantly will change our daily life and we are striving to make that a habit. 
2. We've heard forever that exercise releases pent up emotions but who likes to exercise? I know a lot of us don't because we make it feel like it's something we "have" to do and not something we "want" to do. Well, make it something you want to do! I ride the bike and indulge in Grey's Anatomy at the same time and it's amazing how fast an hour goes. 
3. Crank up your favorite music and dance all over your living room barefoot for 20 minutes nonstop. Have fun!
4. Mediation will not only help you deal with the woes of the day but will also give you clearer insight. It is such an important aspect of being able to connect with your higher self and intuition too!
5. Jump into a sea salt bath for 20 minutes to draw out and dissolve any negative energies from your mind and physical body that latched on to you during the day. Add a cup of sea salt and your favorite essential oil to the warm water and just immerse yourself!
6. Drink water. Yep, drink water. Stop moaning. Why does everyone not want to drink water? I don't get it. I have always been a fan of water. I was told by a wise doctor friend of mine that everyone needs to drink half their body weight in ounces of water a day. I know when I haven't done so, I drag, my skin is gross and my vision is often blurred. Water is such a self-healer as
   
   well and will help flush out the toxins as well as replenish what you have lost naturally. After I do any sort of energy work, I am always craving tons and tons of water. 
7. Eat foods from the earth - they will ground you- vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. I end up craving those more than usual when I am in need of grounding. 
8. Use a hematite crystal which is known to have a powerful grounding energy that makes you feel as if you are being sucked back down into the earth. I have heard so much about this stone and I am desperate need of getting one for myself. I have difficulty staying grounded because of all the spirit and energy work that I do daily. 
9. Have a cat? If not, go to the animal shelter and find a cat.  Cats naturally ground us. I just found this out today actually and that's what prompted me to write about grounding. Cats chakras (energy centers) spin in opposite direction from humans which gives them the natural ability to ground.  So holding or petting a cat will help ground you!
10. GO OUTSIDE! Be in nature. These are my absolute favorites.

• Simply, go outside, close your eyes and put your hands on the ground on the grass/dirt/earth and visualize the energy flowing from your hands to the ground.
• Walk barefoot every chance you get. On the grass, on the sand, in the dirt, even inside your house. I can't begin to tell you how simple this is to help get you grounded.
• Play in the dirt. Seriously, like when you were a kid. Dig up some dirt and put it in a pot and play with it. 
• Plant something outside in your garden. I absolutely love working in my garden. I feel at one with nature. 
• Stand/sit with your bare feet flat on the ground. Close your eyes and visualize roots growing from the bottom of your feet. Then see those roots growing deep into the ground and connecting you to the earth.  Feel your energy flowing from your body to the earth and connecting. This is my go-to and it truly re-centers me every time. 
  

Depending on the situation, I use different grounding techniques. Yesterday, I left work and was in dire need of grounding and could literally feel myself craving the earth. I grabbed Hubs, the pup and off to the beach we went. I left my shoes in the truck and the minute my feet hit the scrub grass I could feel the energy releasing already. One step on the sand and I could feel my heart let out a big sigh and the more I walked the more I felt pulled down in to the earth. I needed that release badly! When I got home I sucked down a ton of water and was still thirsty and even added more mushrooms than normal to the sauce I was making for dinner.

There is no right or wrong way. Whatever works for you is what you should use. Grounding is so necessary and can make a huge difference in you day and on your outlook!

Love or Fear

Remember we are all souls having a temporary human experience. We are energy. We all came from Source Energy. We are extensions of Source - God, the Universe, our Creator. (You can call it what you want, but it's all interchangeable. I am a Christian, I believe in God and so that's where my heart lies.) We are all perfect created by and from God - the epitome of pure love and light. As a result, our natural state is love and light. Only love is real. 

We already know that we are all energy and that we have thoughts that create an emotional response. Well, every emotion that we have comes from only one of two places.  Either Love or Fear. It can't come from both. Only one. Love OR Fear.

Love means we are in alignment. It is our natural state. 
Fear is misalignment or contrast.

What is contrast? It's not conflict. Conflict is a clash or disagreement; often of a violent nature. Contrast is when something is strikingly different from what we want or are used to. Although we were made in God's perfect love, as an extension of his energy, we are not supposed to feel perfect 100% of the time. We NEED contrast. Why? How else are we going to know what we DO want if we don't experience what we DON'T want? By showing us what we don't want, it makes it even clearer to us what we do want. Contrast isn't here for our suffering; it's here to help us learn and to lead us to our purpose of oneness - back to love; our natural state. We have come here to experience things and yes, it will be hard at times but by staying in alignment with love it will make things so much easier.

If you're like me, you were taught early on to be strong, suck it up, never let 'em see you cry. That's where it all went wrong. Be vulnerable. If you aren't, you'll end up like me (and a lot of you already are but don't realize it) and your health will suffer later on as a result. By sucking it up, you are stifling your emotions and slowly manifesting disease.

Have I lost you yet?  If I have, go back to the top and read it again. Stop and ask me questions. I want you to get this. Sometimes it takes a while. It did for me.

Maybe a visual will help. I am a visual person so it helps me.  Below is the emotional vibrational ladder. How you feel on this ladder will determine what you attract; what the Universe sends back to you. We are energy. We have thoughts that create an emotional response which then creates a vibration. Within 30 seconds, the Universe sends that exact vibration back to us because it FEELS the vibration we are putting out.

Draw a line out from the word Neutrality. Everything above Neutrality is vibrating in love - our natural state. Everything below Neutrality is vibrating in fear. When I say, "raise the vibration," this is what I mean. Vibrate higher. Move up the chart. When you vibrate in alignment with love, you get love in return. If you vibrate with fear, you get those emotions in return. If you had the choice, wouldn't you always choose to vibrate with love? Of course you would. So why don't you? It really is all in your control. Totally your choice. 

Our inner being is who we really are which is pure love and light.  When we are in alignment with love, we are in alignment with our inner being.  Our inner being will never join in on the lower vibrational emotions. It will always stay in alignment with the truth which is love - we are perfect exactly as we are.  If our emotions are aligned with fear, then there is a wound that we need to heal. We will never be triggered by an emotion unless there's a wound that needs to be healed. The triggering is to bring the need for healing to our attention. Don't push it away because it WILL come back. Deal with it - and I can help you.

So, in each instance of your life - in every experience that you encounter- you will FEEL a certain way.  When that happens, I want you to get in the habit of going through these steps. After a while, after consciously practicing this, it will get easier and become second nature to you.

1.  Recognize the emotion that you are having.
2.  Identify where it is on the chart. 
3. Allow yourself to fully feel it. If you suppress it, it will not do you any good and it will get stuck in your energy field. 
4. Identify the purpose. Why are you feeling this way? What caused this emotion? What is the trigger?
5. VERY IMPORTANT STEP - once you have identified WHY you are having that emotion, ask yourself: "What is it here to teach me?" Because that is why this is coming up in the first place. 
6. Give gratitude for the experience because it has helped you learn something about yourself and you are now aware of it happening and why.
7.  Release the emotion - cry, exercise, write, sing, dance, offer forgiveness

The best way to raise your vibration? Be conscious of your thoughts.  Everything that you think, say or feel becomes your reality, right? Law of Attraction. Every single thought that comes into your head, every single one, has an impact.  When you change those thoughts for the positive, your reality is going to become positive also.

Perfect simple example. I have always said that if I don't have at least 8 hours of sleep every night I am going to be useless the next day, a zombie. Well, of course I am and I always have been because I created what we call a limiting belief.  I have always thought that way so I feel that way and that's what happens. Well, it's ridiculous. So I don't tell myself that anymore and it doesn't affect me. Sound like magic? Too good to be true? Right, I thought so too. Give yourself some credit. Change the way you think about things and the things you think about change.

Here's an easy way to start:  Every time you have a negative thought, acknowledge it, thank it for showing up and then tell it you don't need it, dismiss it and turn it into a positive.  Start this practice and things will start changing for you. I only started doing this about two months ago and it's already made a huge difference in my daily life.

Eighty percent of changing anything is being aware. Guess what? By reading this blog, you are now aware and the more you practice, the awareness will get even greater.

It's all about finding our way back to our natural state of love.
Love is peace.
Love is inner happiness.
Love is contentment.
Love is a state of mind.
Love is why we are here.

Worth it

One year ago today, April 1, 2018, I started my whole food, plant-based journey. You may have followed my blog and all my crazy rants, outbursts and "why the hell am I doing this" posts. You also may have seen that the results I wanted coming in quicker than anticipated and then I started realizing that maybe this was not so bad after all. What started out as a 30-day challenge to see if I could do it, and if it would yield positive results, turned into a lifestyle. It's not a diet. It's not a fad. It truly is a lifestyle and it is one that I am so incredibly grateful I embarked upon. Here is my original post when I first started that challenge and what it entailed:
https://winefoodie.blogspot.com/2018/04/back-to-basics-30-day-food-challenge.html

When the self-imposed challenge ended, I kept on going and decided that I would go 90/10 instead of 100% because there were foods that I truly enjoyed that I missed. For the most part, that still is the case but the foods that I used to crave, I am finding that I don't crave anymore. If anything, I am leaning closer to the 100% now.  The food I was used to eating I don't even want anymore. I would rather have a baked sweet potato with roasted spiced chickpeas and basil pesto than a grilled marinated chicken breast or a steak. I think one time in the last six months I really wanted a big, fat, juicy burger and my stomach paid for it, but I still enjoyed the instant gratification. I used to eat burgers once a week. One thing I can't even fathom giving up and don't plan to though is Hubs' smoked brisket. Now, I'll make the hell out of plant-based sides to go with it though.  And cheese. I was told I'd never want cheese again after this, but I still do. I don't crave it and I don't eat it as much but I still love cheese. But if I had to, for health reasons, I'd kick it to the curb in a heartbeat.

What I have realized, among many things, while on this journey is that it's truly about making better choices. Reading labels is paramount on this journey.  Doing things such as making my own vegetable broth instead of buying the sodium-laden carton crap makes a huge difference. Using broth or water instead of oil when cooking is major. Snacking on cherry tomatoes and hummus or a handful of raw almonds is better than sucking down a bag of Doritos or a Twix candy bar. Cutting out all processed foods, dairy, eggs and red meat have been the key for me. But everything is a choice and sometimes, I make a wrong choice because I am human. Because I want that damn chocolate cupcake from my friends cupcakery when I go home to visit Mom. Because I want to indulge on a six-course wine dinner at my favorite Salt Box Cafe. Because my Beef Wellington kicks ass. Because I want the flipping pizza. But those are choices that I make and I have to live with them. And you know what? When I stray? I make up for it in spades for a week because I know how it makes me feel and I know what it is doing to my body in the long run. As a result, those poor choices don't happen very often.

Why am I bringing this up again after a year? Because today, as if I needed any more reasons, I had confirmation that this whole food, plant-based journey is completely worth it! I began this journey because, for the first time in my life, I was told I had high cholesterol (total and bad) and was pre-diabetic. I am not a medicine girl. I will always choose everything else over shoving a pill down my throat. Had I been provided these results with most physicians I would have been expected to go on statins and God knows what else. Well, I wasn't going to let that happen. I was taking charge of my health!

Today, I went to the clinic to have the same annual testing done (as part of a health insurance requirement with my employer) and guess what?

I am no longer pre-diabetic and I also do not have high total or bad cholesterol!
In fact, all of my numbers are not only in the normal range but are excellent!!!
Oh hell, yeah!!
There was only one thing I changed in the past year and that was starting a whole food, plant-based lifestyle. And you know what?
It was absolutely worth it!