Mar 23 2016

How I Prayed Away a Yard of Ticks

Danaheadshot by Dana Taylor

My Facebook feed has a lot of Lyme disease stories nowadays. Whenever I visit my family in Missouri, we do a tick search everyday on the children. I’ve picked up a few myself. Being raised in California, I’d never seen a tick until I married an Oklahoman and moved to Oklahoma City. Here’s a story of my early tick encounter that might inspire and amuse.

The year was 1983. Our family moved into a new rent house in Edmond, Oklahoma, that had a nice back yard. With a dog, a cat, a four-old-daughter and a 9 month-old baby, it seemed like a good location. When the temperatures rose, I noticed something strange. One day after being outside there were creepy, reddish bugs crawling inside my baby’s diaper. The next day the dog had swollen things hanging off of her. When my husband came home from work, I had him examine the dog.

“What is that?” I asked.

He dug through the dog’s fur and grumbled, “Ticks.”

It took a moment to register. “Ticks?…TICKS! The yard is full of ticks??!! What do we do?”

He shrugged. “Call the landlord, I guess, and ask him to spray the yard. Better keep the kids inside for a while.”

So much for having a nice yard to play in. If a call was made to the landlord, I don’t remember, but no one took any action. I tick powdered the dog (no Advantage in those days), pulled off ticks, banished the cat, kept the kids inside and got progressively more frustrated.

seagull Those were my early days of exploring the power of prayer. I was learning to take concerns to the Divine for help. Eventually, I asked about the darn ticks. As synchronicity would have it, I read a book about the early Mormons settling in Utah. One story jumped out at me. In 1848 the settlers planted crops, only to have swarms of what came to be called “Mormon crickets” feast upon their growing stalks and decimate the plants. The people tried stomping and beating the bugs, but were far out numbered. In desperation, the farmers and their families prayed for Divine help. June 9, 1848 is designated as The Miracle of the Gulls. Hundreds of seagulls flew in from the Great Salt Lake and descended upon the insects. The Mormons gave God the credit for sending all the birds to eat the bugs and save their crops. The California gull is the Utah State bird and a monument stands to commemorate the miracle.

I decided to pray for a little miracle of my own. I didn’t really want pounds of poison spread all over my yard, killing every good insect and possibly making us all sick. If the Mormons could call in legions of seagulls in huge fields, maybe I could attract a few robins, cardinals, and sparrows in one backyard. I began visualization. I’d stare at the yard, picturing birds walking in the grass, pecking at all those ticks. I mentally invited birds over to our house. Come here, birdies. And guess what…they came! First a few, and then more and more. Every time I glanced out the window, feathered friends were cleaning the yard. After a couple of weeks, the dog came in tick free and we began playing outside again.

It was a wonderful lesson in prayer, visualization, and manifestation. The Law of Attraction is real. It’s important to remember, we attract what we’re visualizing–even if we don’t want it. As far as ticks and Lyme disease goes, I visualize a shield of protective energy around my family.

If a tick is discovered, we immediately apply Purification Young Living essential oil to the bite site and on the bottom of the feet. Actually, daily application of Purification strengthens the immune system and acts as an insect repellant.

SY9F7lG This week I saw this meme about the benefits of opossums controlling the tick population. Maybe this summer I will visualize and invite more opossums to the property. I can see it now, The Miracle of the Opossums….

Have a great day–

Dana Taylor

Mar 22 2016

Reincarnation: Past Lives and the Akashic Record

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One of the most fascinating and wisest women I’ve come to know through cyberspace is Lois J. Wetzel. She recently released of an audio version of Reincarnation: Past Lives and the Akashic Record. You don’t want to miss this one!

The book description:

In “Reincarnation: Past Lives and the Akashic Record” Lois J. Wetzel, MFA, has written the long-awaited sequel to her first book, “Akashic Records: Case Studies of Past Lives.” Yet “Reincarnation” takes the reader on a trip to the past like none other. Once again, riveting stories of the past lives of scores of different people are narrated. These lifetimes go back hundreds of thousands of years on Earth, allowing the reader glimpses of long-lost civilizations not contained in our historical record. In this book, unlike the first, the author challenges our ancient history as wrong, giving ample examples of proof we have lived on this swirling ball of minerals for hundreds of thousands of years! She talks about her past life readings for clients, but she also shares some of the spontaneous past life memories which others, including famous people, have had.

The past lives of Lois’ clients are shared so that the reader may learn and grow from the experiences of her clients. Naturally, clients’ names and identifying information have been changed to protect their privacy. Surprisingly, some readers have said they actually felt some of their own past life issues were resolved as they read about the prior lifetimes of others.

Why learn about our past lives? Isn’t this lifetime enough to handle? Because the whole story of who we are has to do with everything we have experienced. We know that who we are has a lot to do with our childhoods. Why would it not have to do with who we were in our prior lifetimes? Knowing about our past lives allows us to know more fully who we actually are at the level of the Immortal Soul. Why are we terrified of, instantly despise, or immediately adore someone we’ve just met? Why would we avoid visiting a certain location, even though there is no reason? Why do cruise ships or horses terrify us? Why are we so powerfully drawn to bow-hunting, cake decorating, scuba diving, fashion design or sailing having never experimented with it before? Why do some things come so easily people swear we have done it before? Why were we born with these predispositions? Are the answers in past lives?

The author also includes correspondence between the clients and herself before and after the reading was done, so that we can see the client’s experience of the reading, and the reaction to the reading and the information which came out of it.

“Reincarnation” also discusses some truly strange concepts, like parallel and overlapping lifetimes, and why it may be possible to be alive in two bodies in different locations on a timeline that overlaps. Or how can we die and come back into the same body, remembering the out-of-body event with conscious awareness of ourselves while not in our bodies?

All these topics and more lie between the pages of this fascinating and compelling book.

Lois J. Wetzel

Available in the Kindle Store at Amazon

Mar 11 2016

Erasing Reincarnation from the Christian Mind

Book Cover Reveals: Coming soon–a new look and a new book

Streams Adventures

Back in 2010, Ever-Flowing Streams: Christ, Reiki, Reincarnation and me was the original title of the book currently called Ever-Flowing Streams: Tapping into Healing Energy. While I felt the first title more accurately captured the spirit of the book, I changed it in deference to my husband (now deceased) who considered “Christ” and “Reincarnation” associated together an insult to his faith. In the ensuing years, the greatest feedback I’ve received about the book has been from people in the Christian church thanking me for giving them “permission” to maintain a faith in Jesus and yet embrace a philosophy of reincarnation.

Since I’m on the brink of releasing a companion book, Supernal Adventures, I feel it’s time to repackage Ever-Flowing Streams and restore the original title. There’s a whole chapter devoted to the controversy regarding reincarnation. Here is a snippet, revealing some history. As it turns out, many early church theologians and followers believed reincarnation to be the way of the human experience.

Excerpt from Ever-Flowing Streams:

“Born Again?

Great minds and mystics have grappled with the theory of reincarnation for eons. The modern Christian church dismisses the concept. The party line is that we are born once; we have the option of accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior for our ticket to heaven; if we don’t, we are condemned to hell. This interpretation of scripture promotes church membership quite effectively.

But looking historically and globally, I found that reincarnation has been embraced by cultures far and wide. Even the Bible retains passages that allude to it. Besides the reference above from Matthew naming John the Baptist and Elijah as the same soul, Jesus seemed to convey the concept in several references:

John 8:58–Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.

Luke 9:18-20–“Who do the people say that I am?” And they answered, “John the Baptist; but others say Elijah; and others, that one of the old prophets has risen.”

John 9:2—As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

If you take the above passages at face value, it appears there was a cultural acceptance of the idea that souls return to the earthly plane. Clearly, the people of the time exhibited a belief in reincarnation if they conjectured Jesus might be the returning spirits of Elijah or an Old Testament prophet.

Theologians have argued these passages for two thousand years. One of the earliest and most respected was Origen of Alexandria who lived from 185-254 A.D. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, he believed in the “pre-existence and fall of souls; multiple ages and transmigration of souls; and the eventual restoration of all souls to a state of dynamic perfection in proximity to the godhead.” Quite the metaphysician, Origen. He devoted his life to teaching and writing his Christian beliefs until the Roman Emperor of the day ordered a purging of the followers of Christ. Origen was martyred in Tyre.

The debate continued for another two hundred years until the church grew into a political institution. According to Life Between Life by Joel L. Whitton, Ph. D, “The new Church-State alliance, aiming for the cultivated dependence of the masses, felt threatened by those who believed in rebirth because such Christians tended to be self-reliant, free-thinking individuals whose subservience could not be guaranteed.”

In 553 A.D., the Fifth Ecumenical Council condemned Origen’s theories as heresy (the root definition meaning “able to choose”). Emperor Justinian formally denounced the concept of rebirth in no uncertain terms:

If anyone assert the fabulous pre-existence of souls and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema

Wow–let him be anathema– as in a “person or thing accursed or consigned to damnation or destruction.”

Zealous church leaders followed up that dictate by slaughtering a half million reincarnation-believing Cathars in Southern France during the 1200’s. Not satisfied with that carnage, the Inquisition was born.

Carol Bowman sums up the legacy of such repression in Children’s Past Lives thus:

The murderous efficiency of the Inquisition proved effective. The persecution by the institutional Church has scarred our collective psyche, and it has surrounded us with an invisible fence dividing what is safe from what is dangerous to believe. Since then, people who harbor forbidden ideas have learned to keep their thoughts to themselves. Our cultural memory still carries the fear of reprisal for publicly associating with any occult practices, the use of psychic powers or a belief in reincarnation.

Consequently, believers in reincarnation were effectively wiped out or muzzled. In time, the masses of the West generally forgot about it. The day-to-day struggle to survive and the poor education of the eras erased reincarnation concept from cultural memory. “

I’m happy to be living in a modern culture where my ideas can be expressed without fear of torture and death by church and government officials. Indeed, the content of the soon-to-be-released Supernal Adventures would have had me burning at a stake in a earlier era.

If you haven’t read, Ever-Flowing Streams, I invite you to check it out, in its current incarnation. I hope it will intrigue you to find out what happened next in Supernal Adventures–coming soon!

Available in the Kindle Store at Amazon and paperback at Lulu.com

Mar 3 2016

Remembering Your Life Plan

“Your Soul’s Plan” by Robert Schwartz is a major work on pre-life planning. Here is an amazing story from his blog….

yoursoulsplan

I’d like to share with you a beautiful and inspiring email I received recently from An, who came into a Knowing of one aspect of her pre-birth plan. An writes:

“Hi Robert, I have read both your books, and and your writings have truly resonated deep within my soul. I was drawn and guided to your work after a near death experience in May of 2014. It was such a strange experience, and I am still healing from it now.

“To give you a brief account, I was riding my bike and making a right turn at a very busy intersection in Montreal when I was run over by the four back wheels of an eighteen-wheeler carrying a 1-ton crane. Right when it was all happening I felt strangely calm. I knew it was unavoidable and relaxed into it (rather than tensing up, which would have killed me) and also…

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Jan 25 2016

Women’s Fiction with Spiritual Flair

Finding mainstream novels with a spiritual component is rare. I know, there are thousands of books from Christian publishers, but, personally I often find them restrictive. They stay too safely in “the box” for my taste. Here are two novels from authors I’ve followed through the years who don’t stay in “the box.” Back in the day when I was on Internet radio, I enjoyed interviewing them.

Barbara O’Neal is a prolific award winning author (aka “Barbara Samuel” and “Ruth Wind”). Rising through the ranks of romance writing into women’s fiction, she creates complex characters that tug at your heart and also make you think. The Garden of Happy Endings features a unitarian female pastor, Reverend Elsa Montgomery, caught in the grips of personal and spiritual crisis. After many years as a successful minister in Seattle, a tragedy in the congregation unmoors her so much, the church leadership insists she take a sabbatical. The bulk of the story takes place in her hometown of Pueblo, Colorado. There she must deal with the man she gave to God, plus her sister is also in the midst of crisis. Healing for all is centered on the community garden, where Elsa pours her ministerial energies. As always, I enjoyed O’Neal’s unfolding story and relationships, but really relished inclusion of ministerial people working for God, but confronted with all-too-human emotions. As a bonus, there are even some mystical moments to satisfy supernal appetites. And as the title implies, there’s a happy ending.

And for your further spiritual reading enjoyment, take a trip to Pie Town with author, Lynne Hinton. My radio interview with Hinton especially sticks in my mind because at the time she was pastoring a church in a small rural community. We discussed her personal journey from North Carolina, to a Masters in Divinity from the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California to ministering in the Southwest. Pie Town takes place in New Mexico, a place of lost hopes and dreams, looking for inspiration. A new, fresh-out-of seminary priest is assigned to the small Catholic Church, and soon realizes he is unprepared for the cultural mixture of Hispanics, Anglos, and Native Americans all struggling to make a living. And when he brings a pregnant hitch-hiker into town, he unwittingly creates more drama. Hinton’s personal experience dealing with all the personalities that make up a congregation shines through the piece. Pie Town offers an entertaining slice of life with spiritual underpinnings.