We’ll Call This One “Mid-Day Musings”

It’s too late for a Morning Coffee, but I want to share my morning walk with you. It’s going to be a hot one here today, and people were out early getting the walks in and the yard work done. I followed suit, and headed out right after breakfast to get the now daily exercise my body has been craving. I am starting to feel better thanks to these efforts. You can’t avoid the getting older part, but you can have some say in how it happens. But that’s a post for another day.

I had the hit to take my camera with me today, and I’m glad I did. Spring has finally come – and it looks like it will last all of a nano-second. The temps are still cool at night, but it has started to heat up pretty quickly during the day. It’s noon and already over 90 degrees here.

Good for the crops that went in late though. The unseasonably cool weather contributed to a lag in farmers getting their seed in the ground. According to reports in these parts, only about 15% of the crops are planted. I saw a pickup loaded with sacks of soybean seed while I was out this morning. Bet he’ll be glad to have the planting behind him. Then he can start to worry about enough rain…

I took a few photos of some of the flowering trees that have (finally) bloomed, and as I headed out of the park, I spied a beautiful, large flight feather from the wing of a pretty good-sized bird. It felt like it was for me, so I walked off the path to pick it up. I’d only gone a few steps when I spotted another. And then another.

Obviously, I stumbled upon a roosting spot. I came to this conclusion based upon the, er, evidence that was everywhere. Let’s just say it was as if someone had splattered white paint everywhere.

I headed home with my hands full of beautiful feathers. Now I just need to figure out what kind of bird they came from, because that is where the message is to be found. If anyone who reads this has any ideas, I would love to hear them. Definitely too big for duck. Goose, maybe? They do remind me of peacock feathers, too, though, but I haven’t seen any evidence of peacocks in the immediate area.

I cannot explain the feeling the gift has given me, but the message somehow being related to taking flight, or flying, is not lost on me. I do feel lighter since the move here. Perhaps my time to fly is coming.

All original material posted to this site is (c)2013, Julie Marie. All rights reserved.

Photo credits: Julie Marie

You Are Not Alone

One of the things I’m asked about most often is people wanting to know about their guides. They either want to know if they have any (yes, everybody does) or they want to know the particulars about their guides.

The message I want to give you today is that you are not alone. Your guides are always with you. They stand ready to assist you. You have but to ask for their help. When I first encountered my guides, they told me something that took me awhile to wrap my awareness around.

They asked me not to call them “guides” (I use the term here only because it is what most people can relate to), they told me to call them my Companions. When I asked them why, here is what they told me:

The term ‘guide’ is defined as “one who leads or directs another’s conduct or life; one who shows the way to others”. My Companions explained that yes, they do have an expanded view and will work to keep me on track to fulfilling my spiritual purpose, but they will not, and cannot, live the incarnation for me. Just like all of you, I have the final decision to make and will have to live with the consequences of that decision.

My Companions also said that I was to perceive the relationship as one of mutual benefit for both sides. They were also working on their spiritual development through their function as guides. I am working on my spiritual growth by the lessons I’m learning via this incarnation. Together, we work together to achieve the same goal. We all are working to return to the place from whence we came. We all long to go Home.

They also encouraged me not to look at them as the decision makers for this lifetime. I am to see them for what they are: my trusted advisors, my Companions along the way.

I tell people to ask for guidance. Consider the guidance. Act upon the guidance you can feel is of benefit to you. And remember that you are not alone. You are loved and cherished by many beings that just don’t happen to have a physical body (at least not in this dimension) at this time.

I will share some ways you can interact with your guides in the next article. For now, know you do not walk this path alone.

Never make the mistake of thinking you are alone – or inconsequential. ~Rebecca McKinsey

All original material posted to this site is (c)2013, Julie Marie. All rights reserved.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Four Simple Steps to Discovering Your Purpose in Life

Why am I here? I get this question a lot. The simple answer is: because you have a purpose that your Soul wants to fulfill and has created the opportunity to do so through the circumstances of this incarnation.

Then what quickly follows is: well, then I want to know what my purpose is. How can I discover what my purpose is? When people ask me this question, they aren’t talking about their job, they want to know the reason they’re here on the planet in the first place.  In other words, why do they exist?

I tell people all the time that if they have the awareness to frame the question, then they already know the answer. It may just be buried deep inside them somewhere is all. So how can you discover your purpose in life? What follows is a simple but effective technique you can try. Don’t let the simplicity fool you.  It will work more quickly if you’re open to the process and expect it to work.  If you have any doubts or think it’s a waste of your time, it will just take a little longer.

Here are those four easy steps:

1. Get yourself some blank sheets of paper and something to write with. (I suppose you could also use a word processing program, but I’m old school at heart, especially when it comes to an exercise like this.)

2. Across the top of the page write the following: “What is my true purpose in life?”

3. Now don’t think about it too much, just write whatever pops into your head, whether it’s a simple word or a phrase. It doesn’t have to be a complete sentence, even.

4. Repeat Step 3 until you write something that makes you cry. That is your purpose in life.

That’s it. Now begin.

As you start this excavation process, understand it may take a while to clear your mind of your preconceived notions about what you think your purpose in life is; or what you think other people think your purpose in life is.  Just remain mindful of your responses to the phrases or words you write.  Remember what I said earlier.  You already know the answer, you just don’t know you know it.

Be patient with yourself.   It might take some time just to clear the clutter, but eventually you will strike gold.

If you persist, after 100 or 200 or perhaps even 500 answers, you will write something that causes an emotional response to well up from inside you.  That response is how you know you’re headed for the truth, that you’re close to answering the penultimate question of why you are here.

As you move through this process, some of your answers will be very similar.  You may even find yourself repeating some of your prior responses.  List whatever pops into your head.  Just keep writing.

At some point during this process, you may just want to quit.  You may feel the urge to get up, or you may find you start thinking about an excuse to go do something else.  That’s just part of this exercise too.  Resist the temptation to quit before you reach your goal.  Just keep writing.  Those other feelings will pass.

As you write, you may respond to some phrases which seem to give you a little surges of emotion, but they don’t quite make you cry.  Mark these in some way as you go along, so you can come back to them later.  Each one of these responses likely represents part of your purpose, but not the whole thing. It’s fine to be optimistic at this point, however, because this means you’re getting warm. So stick with it.

Stay with this stream of consciousness exercise until you are complete. You may find you need to do it for a couple of sessions, and that is ok. You will know when you have your answer because you will be able to feel the truth of it. It will resonate with you on a deep level. The answer can come as quickly as within an hour, but usually it can take longer.

Now comes the hard part. Once you have determined what your purpose in life is, you must ascertain how you will fulfill that purpose, and commit to staying focused on achieving that purpose.

The purpose of life..is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

All original material posted to this site is (c)2013, Julie Marie. All rights reserved.

Photo credits: Wikipedia

Intuitive Development Exercise

Pay Attention

This exercise is easily incorporated into your daily routine, and is effective in helping you develop your intuitive sensitivity.

First, a little about why this works so well:

Everything is frequency. It is the interplay of vibration between beings that allows for this process to occur. Each of us has thoughts. We all have feelings. These things vibrate. They actually generate electromagnetic waves and create a field around us. When we come together in a group, a larger, more complex energy field is created.

We swim through this energetic soup, and are drawn into interactions with people based upon the very real law of attraction. We are naturally pulled towards vibrations that resonate in harmony with our own. We are also naturally repelled by vibrations that are not in harmony with ours.

Your body picks up on these signals every time you engage in conversation with someone. Generally speaking, the physical response you get when you are in a positive, supportive exchange is expansive.  You will feel lighter, and somehow drawn towards the source of the signal. Remember how you feel when you encounter someone with whom you just ‘click’? It’s like that.

The opposite holds true when you are in the presence of a non-supportive vibration. You will feel almost as if you want to shrink away, or move out of the energy field. You may find yourself trying to physically protect yourself by crossing your arms over your chest/upper stomach, or leaning away from the signal.  You might experience a sort of flip-flopping sensation in your solar plexus, or maybe even some nausea.

Most of the time when we are interacting socially, we pay attention with our conscious mind, and are listening to the words being sent our way, often framing our response as we listen. When we get the other signals in our body, we usually aren’t aware of them or we ignore them when we sense them.

If you keep a part of your attention on your solar plexus, a chakra (energy center) which is just below your ribcage, in the area of your upper abdomen, you will be better able to sense this signal when you receive it. (It is represented by the yellow sphere on the diagram.) You will also become aware of how often a person’s words won’t match the vibration they are broadcasting with their thoughts and feelings.

It can be a challenge to learn to respond to the words of another as opposed to their vibrations the more aware you become of this phenomenon. It is not yet socially correct to speak to what you may be sensing from a person apart from their words. Maybe someday we will be transparent with each other, but we’re not there yet.

In the meantime, use this simple exercise as a way to develop your intuition. When you interact with someone, don’t just listen to the words you are hearing. Pay attention to whether or not the energy they are broadcasting matches their words. Make a mental note of your observations. Over time, you won’t need to write it down, you will learn to trust the information you are receiving.

You will be presented with dozens of opportunities to practice this simple technique each day. Take advantage of them, and strengthen your intuitive connection.

Do not try to comprehend with your mind. Your minds are very limited. Use your intuition. ~Madeleine L’Engle

All original material posted to this site is (c) 2013, Julie Marie. All rights reserved.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

City Mouse to Country Mouse (Again)

Already I can feel the difference.  I can feel my chest beginning to relax.  It’s almost as if the shields that I didn’t even know were there are starting to come down.  I’m in a little town.  By “little”, I mean no stop lights.  Not one.

There’s still a lot to do before I am settled in, but I can tell you it feels better every day.  There are some tradeoffs for this kind of peace.  Instead of 4 miles from the nearest organic food source, I am now 34 miles from organic food.  But that’s why God made freezers.

Here, I will have the opportunity to buy a membership in Community Supported Agriculture program which will give me pretty much  unlimited vegetables for the summer. I also want to experiment with a small square foot garden out  in back of the house just to brush up on my veggie growing skills. It’s my intention to consume larger quantities of fresh vegetables and this is definitely the time of year to cultivate (no pun intended) that habit.

There are some stark differences between my last place and this town that were apparent right away as I went about my errand-running today. I needed to procure a new post box, get the utilities turned on, establish garbage service, all that stuff. Pay this deposit and that activation fee. Oh, and do a quick load of laundry because I left my aging washer/dryer in the grateful hands of a young man just setting up house. Spirit guided, so there you go.

The laundromat isn’t that far from the house, and is virtually empty in the middle of the day in the middle of the week. I may just coast along until the weather gets really bad without a set. The walk would do me good, and I can take a book along to read while I wait for the clothes to get clean.

As I walked around town, strangers spoke to me as if they knew me. They smiled. They bantered. They looked me in the eye when I talked to them. If they passed me on the street, for the most part they said ‘hello’. I’ve not been here long, but it feels like forever.

The street is quiet at night. No barking dogs to keep me awake. No deep subwoofers thumping and waking me from a sound sleep. The birds congregate on the wires in back of the house and begin their chorus of chirping just before the sun comes up.

I am playing country music on my car radio because it just seems to fit. I haven’t listened to country music in almost a decade. I have lived in small towns before this one, but none like this one. I cannot yet put my finger on it, but this  time it’s different. I’ll keep you posted.

I know home can be anywhere, and I have been willing to follow where ever it was Spirit led me, but I am grateful that I was led here, now. It’s going to take me awhile to break the habit of feeling I need to build a fortress around myself in order to feel safe.

And did I mention there’s no traffic? Well, some, but not near the volume I’ve had to plow through in the big city. No story on the news every few nights about a shooting or a kidnapping or a break-in or worse. I will say I have noticed a lot of flyers about domestic violence, though. All is not Heaven in this paradise. I am sure life is hard here, but I also have a strong sense that people help one another out.

I know my neighbors have certainly been there for me since I got here, but that is another story for another day. For now, I’m going to enjoy making this adjustment. I can’t wait to see what happens to the Spirit work I do once the stress moves out of my energy field. Maybe there will be more writing on IntheCompanyofAngels. I have felt them over the past few weeks, but they have just been patiently waiting for the right time to come forward again.

To change one’s life: 1. Start immediately. 2. Do it flamboyantly. 3. No exceptions. ~William James

All original material posted to this site (c) 2013, Julie Marie. All rights reserved.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Notes from My Road Less Traveled – Chapter 6 (cont)

About a week after I honed in on my location, I decided it was time to take a road trip. Thank goodness, it was only a tank of gas’ worth of fuel, round trip.

I spent that first day mostly just driving all around the town. When I found out that it would cost me over $50- to place an ad in the area papers, I decided to make some phone calls. A call to one of the local realtors yielded a list of people who had rental houses in town. They also recommended that I call the Chamber of Commerce, which I did. That got me a few more names.

I called them all. Some responded, some did not. Some of the ones who did didn’t have anything for me to look at. Cross them off the list. Some did have some places. I started making arrangements to see them. I needed to get a feel for what was available in this town and what the price range was.

I got there early for my first appointment that first day, so I put myself on autopilot and began to follow where I was being led. I spent about two hours that day driving around and getting acquainted with the area.

There were definitely some better feeling areas of town, and the prices for rent went up (or down) accordingly. I must have seen at least a half-dozen places that first day. I decided to just follow the energy where ever it led me, and I didn’t discount any offering until I’d actually seen it. I even called another number that I got off signs I kept seeing in the front yards of the houses for sale, and there are a lot of homes for sale in this little town.

The other thing I learned very quickly is that they don’t often post a sign on the property if it’s up for rent. It’s mostly word of mouth, so you sort of have to know somebody who knows somebody who has a place if you want anything decent to live in.

I wasn’t taken with any of the places I saw that first day, but did have a gentle urging to stop at the one grocery store in town to check the bulletin board. I had had success with similar tactics some years earlier. I remember talking to myself in my head as I pulled into a parking spot. “Yeah, sure, there will be a lead there, probably just your wishful thinking anyway, what have you got to lose it’s only going to take a minute to walk in there and check it out…”

So I did. To my surprise – yes,  I still get surprised by these things, despite having them happen to me for a couple of decades now – there was a handwritten notice on the board about a house that was available for rent. I took down the number and called it.

It took the woman about 30 minutes to drive in to meet me there, but I felt it was worth the wait. I found it funny that I had driven right past the house earlier in the day, but hadn’t noticed the “For Rent” sign in the window. Is the place my dream house? No. Will it work for me and is it in alignment with my stated goals at this time? Yes.

The woman told me I would hear from the person with the final authority that evening. That sort of caught me off guard a bit. Spirit had led me here, so what was this all about? I decided I’d keep looking and let things just fall out however they were going to. I made arrangements to see another house but could not gain entry until the following weekend.

The owner of the little house I’d seen did call that evening and said he’d need to meet me before he could make a decision. I said I’d be back up the following weekend, but was not willing to make an extra trip just to look him in the eye. He said someone else was looking at it. I figured if it was my place, it would still be available and I decided not to let fear rule.

When I went up the following weekend, I was not able to get in the house I’d driven up there to see. The landlord there gave me the name of someone else who had a place, so I went to look at it. Right size, but too much work to make it energetically comfortable for me. I received one other reference about a place, and just to be thorough, went to see it as well.

It was magnificent. Circa 1910, leaded glass windows, huge rooms, hardwood floors, double car garage, updated kitchen with granite counter tops and brushed stainless steel appliances. Stunning. Perfect. My dream house, for sure.

I was headed out of town pondering these two latest prospects, but noticed I had a missed call on my cell phone. I pulled over and checked the phone call. It was from the fellow with the little house Spirit had led me to. “What the heck,” I thought, “I’m here, might as well go meet the guy.” So I turned the car around and drove to the house.

I took another good hard look at it. The rent was a little more than the prevailing market price for a similar sized house, but less than I was already paying. That was one of the things I had asked my finding angels to bring me: a suitable place that would allow me to tighten my belt a little more.

I didn’t get the pop quiz Spirit had given me until I was on my way home that day. It is important to remember that when we set an intention for something, often we will be offered other alternatives (in this case, it was the beautiful ‘dream house’ that would have left me in exactly the same situation as I am in now: too much house for my needs). It is not that Spirit is trying to confuse things. We are being given the opportunity to declare that indeed, we do want what we said we wanted.

I took the smaller, clean house and turned down the beautiful big house half of which I would not have even used. The smaller house is the place that Spirit had led me to. Twice. Once when I drove past it and didn’t see the sign in the window, and once when I had the inclination to stop in the store and look at the bulletin board. Thank you, finding angels, for finding a way to point me in the right direction.

It is easy to tell a person how to live life this way. It is much harder to actually live it. I saw the signs, and had the choice whether to follow them or not. I chose to follow them. All of them, no matter what. I struggled with my logical mind a couple of times, and almost didn’t make that last stop at the house I will soon be living in.

But Spirit – and by that I mean my guides, my guidance, my angels and my Higher Self – kept trying to lead me where I had asked to go. Eventually I found my way there. So can you.

The take away from my story is this: just keep moving forward. Don’t give up. As long as you can hold your intention and persevere despite how things may look, you will find your way.

And don’t forget that there can be a pop quiz at any moment!

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by; and that has made all the difference. ~Robert Frost

All original material posted to this site is (c) 2013, Julie Marie. All rights reserved.

Photo credits: Wikipedia