Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for:

• A roof over my head
• The ability to pay for my schooling
• Having a job
• The experience of having lived in 3 different countries
• Supportive Friends

Daily Draw

From the Book:
"there are place you must go where you have feared exploring, that you must go deeper, dig down, down into your own self, and explore alternatives in the world.  In your own deep darkness there are secrets for you - can you bear to look?"

Personal Interpretation:
I'm getting a thread here this week - a drive to tap creative energies for exploration but also a call to reach out and invite the dark mother into my life.

Wellness Wednesday

Welcoming Home

I've been thinking a lot lately about the positive influence a welcoming home can have on the body and the mind.  You see we are moving in about 18 months.  Not just moving, but moving overseas.  So we will be giving up our home - hopefully to some wonderful tenants that will rent her and look after her (because we can't sell for what we owe, but that is a whole other story).

Yet, despite knowing that my home will not be my home for much longer I am still driven to make it what I envision it to be.  I want to finish painting all the walls, put up artwork and inspirational quotes and turn it into a wonderful welcoming sanctuary.  This has confused me a little as 1. I've never really been a make it homey person, and 2) My logical side of my brain knows that its financial output that we wont get to enjoy.

So why so driven?  I think it comes down to the need to have a sanctuary.  A place that I feel good to go home to.  My life is so stressful with school and work that I need to come home and feel like this little part of the world is all mine, it reflects my personality and it offers me a warm embrace to soothe the tired body and mind. I don't think we can underestimate the impact that this type of environment can have on us.  I think I'm just experiencing it for the first time.  My childhood was such that the house I grew up in was not a home, then we moved around a lot when my parents split and I never really had a home.  In fact I don't believe that until now I have ever lived in one place for longer than 3years.  We are going on four in this house.

Daily Draw

Your third eye is awakening and spiritual messages are coming through.  Open yourself up to them.  You may find these messages coming through in the form of artistic endeavors.

Meditative Monday

Source: http://www.marcandangel.com/2012/02/23/40-photo-illustrated-questions/

 

Taken from Marc and Angel Hack Life - a wonderful web page of inspiration and thought provoking goodness.  The whole series of 40 questions really got me thinking.

This one in particular resonates with me at the moment as I battle with the balance of work, life, school, spirituality etc.  It seems that despite my best laid plans things get out of control.  So what word best describes the way I spent my month...unmotivated.

I need to find my motivation, find my drive and a big part of doing that is finding time for me.

J is for Journaling

Many of us I am certain have used a journal at some stage in their lives, it is an important part of our learning process and it is always interesting to look back over the years at how we’ve changed. 

I have been a sporadic journal keeper throughout my life.  I go through phases where I keep one and phases when I don’t and it has been interesting to look back at them.  Journaling isn’t just for teenage dreams and angst; it is an important spiritual technique also.

Throughout your spiritual practice you may find journaling to be beneficial in a number of ways.  Firstly, in simply tracking your journey in life – part of our spiritual growth is to better understand ourselves and so simply keeping a standard journal that you can look back on plays an important role in that.  You can also keep a dream journal – I am terrible at this, I recall my dreams no problems but I don’t have time to write it all out first thing in the morning as I’m usually jumping straight in the shower.  I tend to ponder my dreams in there but the benefits of dream journals are many.  It can train your mind to recall dreams, you can use it to create your own dream dictionary and it is a great way to tap into your own meanings. 

You can also keep and Oracle/Tarot/Rune or general divination journal – a way to record your drawings and to perhaps cast for a week and return and record events at the end of the week.  It gives a great deal of insight into your journey. 

Keeping a journal of your spell work and rituals (which I’ve seen called your Book of Shadows and Book of Mirrors) is another good way to track what works for you and what doesn’t.  This type of journal can be quite complex with recordings of hours, moon phases, moods, etc or it can be as simple as you make it.  This is especially a good idea when we consider that oft times it takes time for magic to work.  We can work a spell and forget about it before it actually comes to fruition and this is a great tool for looking back and tracking the spell.

The journal that I currently keep I found the idea from in a book on Wiccan Wellness.  I liked the idea so much I ran with it.  Essentially one divides the journal up into three sections. Body, Mind, Spirit.  When you journal each time you write an entry in each section.  The categories are pretty obvious.  Body deals with how your body is feeling that day, Mind deals with your thoughts etc and Spirit deals with your spiritual aspects and connections.  It is a great tool to look a little deeper than the usual gloss over for me, it forces me to go deeper.