When I first heard the diagnosis “breast cancer,” I was lost in shock and fear. How could this happen in my life? To me?! After a few days, I gradually was able to re-center in the peace within me, to remember that everything that happens in my life is part of a soul plan that I was part of designing before my birth. Nothing is a coincidence, and everything is connected to everything else. I am one soul in one lifetime on one planet. Yet I am also part of the entire fabric of being in the universe. Sometimes it takes loss or crisis in our lives to fully realize this. When things fall away or apart, the long view becomes more visible.

Do you ever wish that you could talk directly to your higher power – asking for guidance and receiving clear signs and signals to keep you on track along your journey? 

Whether or not we are aware of it, Spirit (the Universe, God, the Divine, or whatever you choose to call it) is always looking out for us and keeping us on track for our highest good. Even in our most challenging times, Spirit is there for us. 

But so much of the time, we miss the communication that is available to us every single day through the conscious Universe. Whether or not we choose to pay attention or listen, Spirit is always communicating with us and is there as our partner to protect and guide us. 

We just have to learn to slow down, tune in, and receive the guidance and the messages that are all around.

Recognizing the presence of everyday Oracles 

There are countless ways the Universe sends you messages. It could be a series of repeating numbers, a song on the radio that catches your attention, a symbol you ask for and recognize, a dream, a meaningful coincidence, or even a message in your soup bowl… 

In fact, these communications from the Divine are so common and so meaningful that I wrote an entire book about them! My book, Messages From Spirit is all about the many ways in which we can communicate with our higher power through the world around us.  

In the book, I share a story about Tasseography, a type of divination that my father shared with me as a young girl. He taught me to read messages in leftover coffee grounds, an ancient practice found in Slavic and Baltic nations as well as the middle east. It’s closely related to tea-leaf reading, which actually had its known beginnings in China although no one knows 100% of its origin.

The story goes that a close friend of mine was visiting and we had discussed the idea of going out to dinner, and then going home afterward to share some Turkish coffee and read the messages in the leftover grinds. 

At dinner, we both ordered a thick squash soup. As I ate my soup, I kept seeing images popping up in the bowl! I saw a swan, a pumpkin, and a baby. 

A quality much needed in a divided world but not often encountered is compassion. Compassion is a way of connecting the love and self-awareness within yourself to another person. Compassion is more than kindness, then. It’s a natural expression of kindness and understanding when you love yourself. Without a sense of love inside, compassion has no foundation in consciousness.

There is a path to loving compassion, as with any spiritual quality.  The path has a beginning, middle, and end. Let me describe them to give you an idea of how the path unfolds.

Beginning: You see yourself as wanting and needing love, usually more than you are receiving. You may feel insecure about being lovable, and so you love others according to how much they love you or appeal to your sense of romance, sexuality, and compatibility. Relationships involve a constant negotiation between what you want and what your partner wants. The words that apply to love at this stage include passion, attachment, dependency, romance, mutual need, liking, and compatibility. The seed of compassion remains a seed.

At some point, we need to get to a place where we realize how magical life is. It takes your breath away. This morning I saw the sunrise and in that moment nothing else mattered. It was one of those WOW moments. My life wasn’t being questioned, no part of my existence was in the balance, I was just one with the sunrise, the emerging sunlight. It felt so good to be free of the cognitive burden of needing to understand or to figure it out.  

In that sunrise, everything just makes sense. I want to live my remaining days in the wow, to remain in the wow of being human. 

To live in the wow has been very challenging for so many of you. It’s time to align with this being human thing, so fully that there is no longer a need to understand it. We weave a story that we need to weave in order to reconcile the fact we are on a blue planet, spinning in an infinite universe.

We generally define ourselves by appearance, personality, dress, role, the car we drive, relationships, etc... However, all of this can change in an instant!  Our sense of self can be influenced by what people say, the situations around us and the problems we face. What is it then that defines who we are, and do we really know anything about ourselves?

Much of our insecurity in the world is a result of limiting beliefs which we hold. During this pandemic we are being stretched to go beyond our labels and identities, which for many, have been a distraction from the recognition of the real essence of the self. We are now internally searching more than ever for spiritual meaning and truth.

Lian had been meditating for many years before consulting with me for his depression. He had been part of a spiritual community that encouraged their members to turn to God through prayer and meditation whenever they were feeling any difficult or painful feelings such as anger, hurt, anxiety or depression. He had been taught that Spirit would transmute his feelings for him and bring him the inner peace he sought.

Yet Lian was depressed. "I have faithfully practiced what I've been taught, so why am I still depressed? What am I doing wrong?"

Lian was suffering from what is called "spiritual bypass."