joybasics

The message: You are a diamond.

The following is a partial transcript of a reading I did for myself recently. I decided to share this portion in hopes that the message may benefit others, to be reminded that we are all diamonds.

It begins with the voice of my Spirit Guides.

Our advice is to just continue, things will pan out. Patients and practice. A new day is definitely coming. You will be a part of that. You will be needed, you will be called upon to help in your best capacity. Is there anything else that you wish to ask?

Uh, yeah…at the moment I’m not feeling like I’m reaching very high to give a reading to myself. Why is that?

Are you feeling love? Are you feeling love for yourself? Are you feeling patience, patience with yourself? Or are you kicking yourself for not being something or further along or somehow doing something wrong? You are in exactly the right place. There are no regrets to be had. Love and honor yourself right where you are. Right. Where. You. Are.

Feel the love for yourself that you would for a small child. Honor those feelings. Honor everything about you, your sadness, your weakness, your strength, your excitement, your confidence, and stop kicking yourself for not being better, further along or doing something different. You are enough as you are. We didn’t misguide you. You have been following our guidance. At times it may seem that we’re going off on a tangent, but sometimes that is necessary for you to learn other skills to bring back to your path. So don’t worry about it.

You are exactly on the right path, exactly where you need to be. And this will continue. We only advise that you pay attention to when you are not loving yourself and expecting more perhaps because your parents expected more. They are gone, they are gone.

You can be proud of yourself. You can love yourself just as you are. You are enough. There is no need to compare yourself to others and feel that you should be more than you are. You will be called upon when the time is ready for you to use your gifts and your skills to help others. You are loved, greatly loved. We wish only that you feel this love for yourself and how great it is. You are a diamond. You are a diamond, multifaceted diamond.

We will sign off now and we wish you great love, great health, and great movement forward at your own pace.

Up at 3 a.m.

There’s so much unrest in the world! The pandemic and police brutality BOTH affect communities of color. It’s heartbreaking! I know that’s a grave understatement, but I’m feeling the pain for all people.

Spirit Guides respond:

The positive is that Yes! This is being exposed finally in a BIG way! Change is bumpy, disruptive of status quo and routine. There is national outrage more than ever. Good! There should be. Let this play out without fear. Change is difficult and slow to move. It requires pandemics, crises, “earthquakes” to move mountains.

There will be lives lost, but we will emerge fresh, stronger, changed as a society. The final push! T will show his true colors in a crisis, both with the pandemic and with riots and protesters. He already has. Biden will prevail in November because the world will be ready. It can only withstand so much darkness before demanding Light. Biden is the lesser of two evils and people will want and are ripe for change and leadership they can get behind and feel safe with. T has shown the opposite which has helped fuel this eruption and his own demise, ironically.

Roll with the rattle of change. It always brings a brighter, better outcome. Love is the common denominator. Love is the larger force in the world; we just don’t hear about it on the news. We hear about the less than 1% who are lost in hate–of themselves first and ultimately of others.

“Only in the darkness can you see the stars.” ~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Importance of Hugs

I never knew the importance of hugs until covid-19 kept us six feet apart. My hug-o-meter is on E. Running on fumes. Easily angered or on the brink of tears watching American Idol.

Yesterday, I graduated from Smith College. The commencement–a day of pomp and circumstance–took place outside my house on the deck. My husband set up a big screen TV to help give me the feeling of being at a real commencement. Soft breezes nudging my thin black gown.

Like many graduation ceremonies this May 2020, it was virtual. No picking up my sister at the airport. No making beds for my daughter and two granddaughters to stay a night or two. I felt un-tethered, texting them to make sure they didn’t miss the flash of my photo and name on the screen.

Names and faces flew by at record speed. No walking up the stairs and across the stage to exchange handshakes for well-deserved diplomas. No flashing cameras held by proud and teary parents. At the end, my husband videotaped me as I threw the mortar board up, into the backyard.

I felt the absence of my parents more deeply than the respective days they died. I’m 64. Still hoping they’re proud of me. Still wanting Mom to help me don my regalia. Maybe it was their spiritual presence that overwhelmed me with grief as I dressed in the bedroom alone before the big event. No hugs.

When the commencement ended, I ceremoniously moved my tassel from right to left. They never instructed us when to do so. I guess they assumed it would just be done. But we were watching from all parts of the globe at different times of the day and night. I felt disconnected. There was no patchwork of live faces on the screen–like on American Idol–with whom to share this rite of passage.

When the screen turned blue, we packed up wires and tissue boxes, went in the house, and watched TV. But not before I got a hug from my husband who said, “I’m so proud of you.”

An exercise to clear/heal the 5th chakra

I’ve had chronic neck pain and stiffness for years. I’ve thrown everything at it, but, so far, not the kitchen sink. That could make it worse.

Here’s an exercise that I read in a book and decided to try. It suggests going back in your mind to troubling incidents, and finally saying what you wish you could have said. It’s a very healing process.

What I wish I had been able to say…

…and maybe did say when I was an infant and my mother had postpartum and general depression: Where’s my mommy? Why is no one hearing me? Mommy, can’t you hear me? I need you! I’m hungry and I need to be held! I need your touch! I need to feel connected to you. I need to feel safe. I don’t feel safe. I feel cold. I need your warmth. Mommy, please come. Show me that you hear me. Show me that you care. Where are you? I need to see your eyes. I need to feel you close to me! Ma-a-a-m-a-a-a! Ma-a-a-m-a-a-a! Ma-a-a-m-a-a-a!

...when I was a young teenager and my mom asked me to sit with her while she lay depressed, sinking into the couch: Mom, I wish you didn’t feel so bad. I want to be happy and go outside and hang with my friends. I feel trapped. I feel like I can’t move. I feel like I can’t breathe. I think you might hate me if I say No, get up, and leave the house. I wish my siblings hadn’t left home. I wish you and Dad hadn’t divorced. I can’t handle your pain, Mom, it’s too much for me. It’s too big, too deep. I love you, but I can’t fix you. I just want to run and go have fun and forget you and your pain. I want to escape. I feel I’m being held hostage by the pain of your own childhood trauma. I need to go! I need to go! I need to go! I wish I could stand up, walk away from you, and go.

…when I was 16 and my step-mother gave me the 3rd degree over many dinners at their apartment while my dad remained silent, except for occasionally chiming in his support of her: I’m not going to college because, frankly, I’m emotionally stunted from having been raised by a depressed and often emotionally unavailable mother whom my sister and I chose to live with after the divorce because we are girls, after having first chosen our dad because the lawyers and my parents couldn’t bring themselves to make the decision for us and now, hey, Dad, why are you double-teaming me and not letting up when you see tears of humiliation and shame roll down my cheeks because I am unable to give satisfactory answers about college and “Why do you love that boy?” Dad, please! I need you to defend me and tell her to back off, but you morphed into an obedient puppy when you married this loud Jewish woman who is seventeen years your younger.

…when my father and step-mother said that my adult boyfriend of several years could not be included in the family group photograph until we were married because he was not officially part of the family: Well, then all you married people can’t be in it either if you can’t guarantee that you’ll never, ever get divorced. This family photo is just a snapshot of who we are as a family right now, in this moment. (My “boyfriend” and I are still not married, but have been together for sixteen years. One married couple in the photo has since gotten divorced.)

Is covid-19 the 2nd coming?

On March 31, 2020, I wrote this in my journal:

This covid-19 virus has not even peaked yet. We have at least another four weeks of social distancing, which means businesses remain closed. This is going to be a game changer. I have to have F.A.I.T.H. and trust the Universe. (Float freely, Allow, Imagine desired outcome, Trust, Heal.)

On April 7th, I wrote this in my journal:

Yesterday, my husband was applying decal lettering on a police car in our driveway while the officer stood behind him, watching. I could see from the window that he (the officer) was not abiding by the obligatory 6 feet apart social distancing rule. I went outside and asked him politely, “Are you keeping 6 feet apart?”

He smiled with his baby face and took a couple steps back, but with the look of a teenager’s “whatever” attitude. It bothered me because he’s a first responder. He should be modeling correct practices, if not for himself then for others.

Anyway, apparently it stressed me out because I woke up this morning at 3 a.m. in a stressed panic. But I knew I had to snap out of it, so I took a couple of deep breaths, reminded myself that I’m not in control, nor can I predict the future. I tried to relax my body while I talked myself off the ledge.

Then a thought came to me: What if this virus serves as an opportunity for God/Spirit/Universe to clean house–not just Mother Nature doing a re-boot, but also God intervening to save our souls from ourselves. A second coming! Lol. What if this is “Jesus” coming back as a virus?!

It would be the perfect opportunity for walk-ins, spiritual beings who reincarnate into existing humans. Easily done if someone is feverish and out of it or in intensive care. Meanwhile, the elderly are dropping like flies. I don’t mean to be irreverent, but they had their lives and now a new dawn is coming that perhaps energetically they won’t resonate with. Maybe God is picking and choosing who gets to stay.

Maybe some with severe symptoms plead for their lives, vowing to change if He’ll let them survive. Maybe the virus is God’s way of saying, “Namaste, dammit!” I mean, we’re killing the planet, we’re killing each other, holding tight to our right to bear arms, all in the name of F.E.A.R. (False Evidence Appearing Real).

I believe we are capable of loving each other and this, our only planet. We don’t have time to fuck around! It shouldn’t take a crisis for us to change.