Healing Excavation

From left to right: Himalayan salt (clears the aura), faden quartz (supports self healing), blue kyanite (protective against environmental toxicity, especially EMFs from phones and computers).

“How do I use my crystals!”

I used to say this all the time.  I would go to the mineral shop, choose a pretty stone, come home, look at it, feel a little lost, put it on a shelf, look at it, feel a little lost, put it in a drawer, forget about it, donate it to Goodwill.  I still think of the amazing huge rutilated quartz I tossed in a box of cast-offs about ten years ago.   If only I had known I could wear that quartz when feeling disempowered and it would support me to feel whole in the face of the unknown, such as at a job interview or speaking to authority.

Eventually, I bought a few crystal books as reference, but, honestly, they overwhelmed me.  And why, I would ask, do all of these rocks end in -ite?  It makes it incredibly confusing to remember what anything is called!

…And then I started meditating with my crystals and everything fell into place.   See, once you tune into the ‘vibe’ of a stone, you really don’t need to know what other people consider their uses to be, or even their scientific name.  You start to understand instinctually what a rock is good for.

Meditating with a crystal is easy, even if you don’t meditate.  Sit quietly with a rock, close your eyes, see what happens to your energy level after about 5 minutes.  Do you feel more connected?  Do you feel restful?  Do you feel empowered and energized?  One of the first things I notice when I hold a crystal is a tingling in my hands and then an overall pulsation through my body.  Sometimes I get tingles up my legs.  Once in a while I get an idea that seems to arrive out of the blue.  These are all the effects of the rock I’m working with.

Here are some ideas to get you started working with crystals:

1. choose a pair of the same type of rock.  You can hold one in each hand during meditation.  This gives balance to the experience, and increases the likelihood you’ll feel the rock’s vibration.
2. add crystals into a practice you’re already doing regularly, such as
   1. meditating
   2. during savasana at the end of yoga
   3. bathing (double-check the rock you bathe with is not friable)
   4. day dreaming over a cup of coffee
3. start with crystals that are known to be high vibration so you’re more likely to feel their effects.  Some of these are:
   1. moldavite
   2. lithium quartz
   3. morganite
   4. phenacite
   5. tibetan tektite
   6. tibetan quartz
   7. nirvana quartz
   8. boji stones

Once you’ve tuned into the joy of using these stones, you might decide to go off the deep end and start collecting.  That’s what I did.  I have a very large collection of ‘beginner rocks’ — these are less expensive, smaller, usually polished stones.  These are wonderful to keep in your pockets, or to lay next to your computer or in your reading corner.  You can touch them as you go about your business.  I keep some of these in the ‘ashtray’ of my car.  I keep these little friends in just about every place I know I’ll be sitting and thinking.  They are a lovely support.  Polished stones are a delight to the touch as well.

a collection of smaller gemstones

Eventually, if you really love rocks, you’ll start going for the more intense pieces.  These are larger minerals, more rare, beautiful pieces of art.   I keep some of these specimens in the space where I do healing work.   You may start drilling them to wear as jewelry or sleeping with them under your pillow or on your bedside table.

A rutilated smokey quartz with aegerine inclusions. This wand is a powerful cleanser of negativity.  It is also museum quality — my first!

There are a few other things I like to do with my collection.  Before a client arrives for a healing session, I allow myself to instinctually pull out a series of rocks and place them in a beautiful silver bowl.  I think of this as a mineral bouquet.  They are quite lovely to look at even if the client doesn’t touch them or use them therapeutically.  They generate a lot of supportive energy during a healing, regardless.  You can make a mineral bouquet in the entryway to your home or by the bed or in a guest room when someone comes to stay.  Some nice rocks for greeting and welcoming are:

• rose quartz, clear quartz, peridot, amethyst, green calcite, apophyllite

A pretty gem bouquet. From left to right: fossilized anemone, stilbite cluster, aquamarine, elestial quartz, pyrite, sulphur quartz, smokey quartz.

Finally, one thing to experiment with is using crystals as an elixir to be ingested.  I have written about this in detail in a previous post.  It is important to be cautious when making an elixir because some rocks are actually dangerous to take internally.  However, you can infuse water by placing a glass vessel filled with rocks in the glass you’ll be drinking from (I use a quartz test tube). This works nicely.  A good elixir for easing the mind and body at the end of the day is:

• lithium quartz, lepidolite, blue calcite, herkimer diamond

Enjoy!

Crystals at work in the healing space. A hand-carved box from a Tlingit artisan holds palo santo and other clearing herbs. A bear is pictured on its front.

Ready feeling good.

Something interesting happened to me recently.  My dog, Ready, who so many of you have met, has been experiencing severe dermatitis around her lips and face for the past year or so.  In the past few months, it has gotten much worse, and I decided to book an appointment with a canine dermatologist.  I can only begin to describe the misery she was in: scabs around her lips, her right eye swollen from scratching, her muzzle hot pink with inflammation.  I was imagining the hard-core steroids the vet was going to administer….However, I canceled the appointment because I have discovered that past life healing works for animals too!  What a surprise!  I had no idea. This is what happened….

I was in my regular meditation a few mornings ago.  I have taken to meditating laying down in bed because I love using crystals on my body to go deeper (more on this in another post!).  So, there I was, covered in rocks, when Ready jumped up on the bed.  Now, everyone in my household — my husband, my child, and even the dog — know disturbing me during meditation is strictly verboten.  But there she was, pawing at me.  I gently pushed her away from me, but she continued nudging.  Finally, I gave in, and allowed my hand to rest on her body even though it was somewhat distracting to enter her energy field while I was deep in my own field.

Almost immediately, I began to get images on the screen inside my head (aka the third eye).  When I am working, doing an Excavation, I always know when a past life is coming into my consciousness.  It has a certain look, feel, and vibe about it, and the images always appear on the left side of my screen (deceased loved ones and angelic beings tend to be on the right side; current life, childhood are in the middle).  So, I recognized pretty quickly that I was entering this territory.  However, the image felt distinctly not mine.

I watched as an elaborately dressed Buddhist monk approached.  I felt shorter than him, as my point of view was looking upward.  The monk had a gentle face and I did not feel alarmed.  I waited, and watched for more information.  Very quickly another image supplanted the first one.  I could see a lovely, shallow golden bowl filled with water.  The monk was pouring this water almost as an offering, and it was at this point that I realized I was seeing one of Ready’s past lives.  I can’t say exactly how I knew.  I simply felt it.  I felt that I was a dog, having a dog experience.  I could see and know Ready’s life during that time.  She was what might be called a ‘temple dog’ or a stray who was cared for part-time by the monks.  She was free to come and go, and go she did, and often, to the town dump to forage for food.  I could feel what it was like for her to lay in the sun in the temple’s courtyard, and to be spoken to by the kind monks.  I felt she was very happy in this life.  However, on one of her trips into the city, ‘Ready’ ate something very bad, perhaps rat poison.  Its effects were immediate, painful and obvious, and there is no doubt it was fatal.   ‘Ready’ somehow returned to the temple to die.  The kind-faced monk poured her the water as an act of compassion, aware that she was dying, and hoping to offer some comfort in her last moments.

However, from ‘Ready’s’ point of view, it was the water that killed her, not the poison, because the water was the last thing she ingested before passing away.  This belief — that she had been betrayed by her friend, the monk — left an unprocessed trauma imprint in Ready’s soul.  This was now manifesting in this life as the sores on her lips and muzzle.

Once I viewed this past life drama a few times, I psychically connected with Ready and let her know she could release the story of betrayal.  She didn’t need to suffer the symptoms of poisoning anymore.  I explained the monk had been trying to ease her pain with a sip of water.  I spoke this truth to Ready out loud, as well, telling her, “You can let go of all of that now.  You don’t need to relive that pain anymore.”  I channeled some loving, supportive energy into her system and imagined her trauma blowing away like dark smoke from her body and in its place I intentioned golden light.

I didn’t think much of this experience (believe it or not!) until I noticed Ready’s sores were suddenly disappearing.  I hadn’t given her any new medicine, hadn’t changed her diet.  I had simply shifted her energetic field by accessing this past life trauma imprint.  Within 24 hours it was obvious she was healing.  After four days, the sores were completely gone.  I even cancelled the vet’s appointment because there was nothing for the doctor to exam.

I have read that children and animals are very receptive to energy shifts and their physical bodies heal quite quickly once their fields have been ‘righted.’  I think this points to some wonderful conclusions for the rest of us adults!  Past life work can have the same effect on our realities as it does for children and animals.  We just have to be a bit more patient due to the fact that adult bodies shift more slowly.  We’ve had many, many years of living and navigating our past life trauma imprints.  It takes a while for our physical to catch up to our new energetic awareness of freedom and space.

I always say that dogs are given to us by loving source as teachers, a source of emotional support, and as friends.  It’s no mistake that dog is god backwards!

For a long time, I wasn’t sure there was such a thing as a ‘past life’.  My literal mind definitely got caught up in the logistics (and seeming impossibility) of it all.  However, past lives appear regularly during Healing Excavation and I’ve come to realize they are useful tools for releasing blockages and pain.  For quite a while, I would refer to past life recall as simply a metaphor that a client could use for healing in their lives today.  This allowed them to free their imagination and go with whatever emotion or body-symptom the re-telling of ‘the story’ would dredge up.  I saw many healings on this level.

At a certain point, as I got more used to working with past life energies, I started noticing attachments* from past lives showing up in the present day energy fields of many of my clients.  My literal mind got tangled up again as to how this could possibly be…..I’ve seen lots of attachments and intrusions in clients’ fields, but they typically are from experiences in this life.  The first time I saw an attachment in a client’s field from a past life, it pretty much blew my mind.  This person had been having difficulty finding a love partner. When we delved into healing this aspect of her experience, a past life sprang up immediately and, with it, I could see a young man corded* to her energy field.  Her past life lover was still somehow attached despite the passage of centuries and many intervening lives.  We worked with his soul –and hers– and decided to cut the cord between them.  I could see him immediately transition to the next field (aka heaven) in a ray of golden light.  It was very beautiful.  My client also felt the release and the space that opened up in that long-occupied spot.

Since that time, I have detached a number of past life energies from clients’ fields.  I don’t even pretend to understand how it all works, but I guess it does, because the attachments are most certainly there, and there are big differences once these attachments are removed.

There is also something I refer to as ‘an energetic imprint’ which is a trauma of some kind that is left in the energy field of a person, regardless of time period.  I have helped clients remove manacles from lives led as slaves, ropes from strangulation deaths,  wound imprints from fatal beatings.  Once the imprint is released, the person feels lighter, more grounded, more whole.  Often, clients tell me that their lives changed for the better after the session.  These past life imprints are simply blockages in the energy system.  It doesn’t seem to matter in which time period/life time they occurred.

I have recently been shown another piece of this fascinating puzzle — how an imprint is formed.  I was using mediumship skills with a client to communicate with her friend — we’ll call her Susan — who had died six months previous.  I noticed pretty quickly that Susan was having a hard time speaking or breathing.  My throat felt very uncomfortable like I needed to say something but couldn’t get it out.  I thought perhaps it was just me/my imagination or an inability to connect really clearly, but what was actually happening is that Susan had been intubated for the last three days of her life while in a coma, and unable to speak.  As I looked more closely, and honed in on the discomfort in my own throat (a mirror of Susan’s experience), I could see her energy was choosing to keep — or imprint — the intubation experience in her field.  I’m not sure why she was choosing this — maybe because she didn’t have a chance to process the experience while alive?  This seems quite possible to me — trauma needs to be processed in one way or another, and trauma as an end note doesn’t get that chance.  There were light beings with Susan — angels, ancestors — who were there to support her, but not to interfere with her free will.  I told her “We can help you process that trauma right now.  You don’t need to carry it with you.”  She agreed, and my client and I both visualized its release into golden light.  Once the intubation imprint was removed, the room felt lighter.  We could definitely feel Susan’s energy become more spacious and free.   If we hadn’t intervened, Susan’s energy would have held on to the imprint into her next cycles of existence.  Based on my experience with releasing imprints with my (living) clients, her intubation may have resulted in physical issues with her neck, breathing, or swallowing (to name a few); or may have become a deep seated fear of hospital rooms, doctors, or even laying on her back (which was the position she was in while intubated in the ER).  I felt honored that my client and I could help Susan release this blockage before she incarnated once again.

Since that time, I have seen a few other imprints in the energy fields of recently deceased loved ones, and, with their permission, have processed and removed them.  I suppose blockages are blockages!  The more we can keep our fields clear of negativities such as cords, attachments, negative thoughts, or imprints, the easier it will be to function both in this current life and future ones.  I believe that karma is the accumulation of these forms of blockage, and if our goal is to be karma-free so we can ascend and become spiritually free, then clearing blockages in whatever field we happen to be in is beneficial.

One thing I advise is for all people to free themselves today of any negativity and blockages by spending a few minutes in meditation and saying:

“I choose to release now any and all imprints, cords and hooks, and otherwise inappropriate energies from my system that are no longer helpful, beneficial or needed.”

It’s amazing what grounded intention can accomplish.

*attachments in a person’s energy field (aka aura) are stuck energy from an external source, such as a deceased loved one or habitual negative thought.

*cording is another way of describing a dysfunctional/co-dependent/enmeshed relationship.  It is called ‘cording’ because, to those who can see in this way, it is seen as an actual cord.  Also, interestingly, it is often attached in the energy field by a hook.  I have seen this hook many times, as have some of my clients.  Metaphysicians will sometimes refer to this form of attachment as “cords and hooks” for this reason.

Soul parts are aspects of the emotional body that can get separated from a person’s primary essence as a result of…..
1. leaving somewhere/someone reluctantly, not wanting to let go of someone
2. trauma (including physical injury)
3. changing locations without being conscious (such as being in a rush or being in anxiety)

All people have some level of soul loss since human life is full of sudden change, relocation, and trauma (big or small).  In my shamanic training, I found that even the ‘healthiest’ people emotionally still had some soul loss or separation.  Retrieving these lost parts is a main occupation of shamanism, and it is a beautiful reunion to witness.

People tend to feel more present and whole after experiencing soul retrieval — and with fewer sensations of heartache, yearning, regret, loneliness, and depression.  Bringing these parts together with a person’s main essence can help them to reach their goals more easily and to stop dwelling in the past, forgiving all manner of grudge or bad feeling.

I recently wrote an article about jet lag and the importance of calling in soul parts before setting off on an adventure.   With air travel, it is necessary to plug the physical/energetic body back into the earth’s grid upon arrival to help alleviate jet lag.  I liken this to rebooting an iPhone when arriving at a new place.  Calling in soul parts is like gathering up everything for the toiletry bag to pack in the suitcase.  Toiletry items always tend to get scattered when I’m somewhere for a while and it takes a conscious effort for me to find my toothbrush, my nail clippers, my hairband, my soap, etc etc and put them in one place.  I might not notice if I forget, say, my toothpaste, until I’m in my new location and I need it.  Then I have to make the conscious effort to find a pharmacy and buy a replacement.  It’s the same with soul parts.  If we don’t gather them up, we may notice at some point at our destination that we’re not functioning as well.  This may present as a sadness or loneliness or a homesick feeling.   If we call in the parts before we travel — like gathering our toiletries — we’ll be more comfortable on the other end.  In fact, we won’t even think about it!  Calling in soul parts before traveling really helps with getting to, and staying in, the present moment.  I have found that I think about home much less when I practice calling in my soul parts, and that I can enjoy my travel much more.

Finally, the shaman I learned from, spoke about calling in soul parts whenever she experiences a trauma* of any sort.  The soul can send off parts of itself when anything sudden and unwanted occurs to the physical body, such as injury, attack — or even an alarm clock in the middle of a dream!  The shaman explained it’s important to simply say “I call in all soul parts now” in cases like these.  It can help with healing, recovering and the lessening of any PTSD.  As an example, she fell off a ladder a few years ago and broke many of the bones in her body.  As she lay on the ground waiting for help (and in immense pain), she was able to call in her soul parts so that no aspect held the pain/trauma and got stuck in time.  This is a way of consciously processing pain in real time (not setting any of it aside).  She believes she healed quickly and without fear of climbing ladders afterwards.  (Often, people will be afraid to ‘get back in the saddle’ after an injury, and might even co-mingle portions of the traumatic experience.  So, that if the radio was on during the event, hearing the same song in the future would be a subconscious trigger.  The trigger might cause a cascade of anxiety.  The person wouldn’t even realize it was the song that caused the anxiety and might begin to consider and label themselves “anxious”.  They might seek professional help and receive a diagnosis of ‘unspecified anxiety’ and a prescription for pharmaceuticals.  Calling in soul parts, helps to process all aspects of the trauma and to blunt or lessen any co-created triggers).

I had the honor of treating a client whose brother had passed away over thirty years ago.  The client complained of difficulty in fostering deep love relationships for herself.  When I investigated the situation energetically, I saw that she and her brother were holding parts of one another’s souls.  I suggested that my client could love and remember her brother without holding on to his soul part.  It was actually taking up space where other, real-time relationships could occur.   As sometimes happens during Excavation, my client did not feel ready to let go, and decided to continue holding this part of her brother’s energy field.  “I am not ready to let go,” she told me.  “I don’t know what it would feel like to be without him.”  It is up to each of us to work at our own pace and comfort level.  She was still learning that letting go of her brother’s essence would not let go of the love she felt towards him.  In fact, letting go would allow both souls to thrive, flourish, and relate on a more functional (not dysfunctional) level.

It is not necessary to believe in “the soul” to benefit from calling in the soul parts.   Just as it’s not necessary to believe in gravity to step out of the way of a falling boulder.  It’s a simple law.  The more we work with consolidating our soul, the less struggle we may notice.

Be well!

Lizzy

*I define trauma as anything that happens to the body that isn’t expected and isn’t wanted.  This can run the gamut from serious abuse, rape or physical attack, to sudden bad news, to small startles such as a loud sound during deep concentration.  We tend to discount the smaller traumas that lodge in the physical body and emotional field.  However, they are just as uncomfortable as the larger traumas.  The subconscious, in my opinion, doesn’t delineate  between big and small occurrences.

Jet lag is kind of a drag!  I have tried many remedies in my life to avoid the crushing exhaustion of jumping time zones.  These have included fasting, melatonin, earthing, ambien, and staying up all night before traveling, to name a few.  Honestly, none have really worked (although the seven days I spent getting on Italian time before traveling to Rome from LA came the closest — I got really good at waking up at 3am, reading the paper and hiking all before 6 am!).   I was intrigued when a shaman I was working with mentioned the importance of ‘calling in all soul parts‘ whenever traveling (and also, btw, after an injury or surgery).  She said we tend to leave parts of ourselves behind whenever we make a serious move.  This soul loss may present as homesickness or a vague yearning, melancholy, or heartache.  I kept this in mind the last time I crossed time zones from LA to London.  The 8-hour time change has always left me in a shambles during previous visits.  I figured I might as well see if the shaman’s approach of calling in soul parts could help me with jet lag.  Even if it didn’t work, it was better than using pharmaceuticals which for sure didn’t work and left me feeling gross.

I made sure to call to, and consolidate, all my soul parts when I got on the plane*. While doing this brief meditation, I received intelligence from higher guidance of further steps I needed to take to manage jet lag.  Not only was I supposed to call in my soul parts, but I also needed to ground into the earth before take-off, so I placed my feet flat on the floor of the plane and connected energetically to my location on the planet.  (The connection can feel like an electrical pulsation or circuit moving up from my feet into my body.  You might also feel a rush of energy or nurturing support, or an intuition of connectedness).  Once I connected, I told the planet I was planning to shift my location on earth and I would plug back in when I landed.  The entire process took about 4 minutes.

Immediately upon landing, I placed my feet flat on the airplane floor once again, and connected back into the planet.  I registered my presence at this new location and called in my soul parts.  It felt similar to the way we restart our iPhones when we visit new places.  The phone needs to reorient and plug into the local network in order to function properly.  It is the same with our bodies.

It seems to me that the planet wants to support us, but momentarily ‘loses’ us when we use an airplane to travel.  Maybe it’s because we literally sever our direct terrestrial connection at lift-off, or maybe it’s because we move across space so quickly without leaving a forwarding address.  For whatever reason, without the conscious practice described here, it takes a few days for our bodies and the planet to find each other again.  During those few days we are like zombies, attempting to use the operating/navigational system without the power source (or software) provided by the earth’s energetic grid.  This could be why jet lag is so overpowering and uncomfortable.  I always experience more from jet lag than just exhaustion — going through periods of sadness, loneliness, dark melancholy and beyond.

I flew between Los Angeles and London a few days ago with my five-year old and my  friend.  We all practiced this anti-jet lag regime and none of us had any jet lag whatsoever.  We weren’t even slightly fatigued after the 14 hour travel day.  It has been a true revelation.  It has made traveling so much easier.  Please try this technique and see how it works for you!

UPON DEPARTURE
1. sit quietly and ‘call in your soul ‘parts’.*
2. place feet flat on the airplane floor and consciously connect to the earth.  You may feel a surge, tingle, knowingness, or calm energy come up through the bottoms of your feet.
3. let Earth know you will be leaving this location and will check in again when you arrive at your new location.

UPON ARRIVAL
1. call in soul parts.
2. place feet flat on floor of plane and re-connect to the earth, letting Earth know that you have now landed and can be found in this new location/time zone.
3. ground often during the first one to two days.  Using bare feet on soil is best, but shoes are fine too, as long as you ground consciously.

That’s it…..and have fun!

*”I ask all parts of my soul/being/essence to come with me as I travel, leaving no part of myself behind.”

There are many ways of seeing.  In fact, one of my favorite books is John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”.  In it, he talks about subtext and meaning in fine art.   It certainly changed my way of seeing representations of our culture through the arts.  When we look with intention, we find more layers, some intended, some subconcious, some subversive, and some personal/subjective to the viewer.

People ask me often how I “see” during a Healing Excavation.  The answer is multidimensional, much like the work I’m doing!   When I was a young girl, I saw the spirits of deceased people (aka “ghosts”) with my normal vision.  These beings appeared in full 3-d human form, yet they glowed like they were lit from inside, and  I could see the ‘atoms’ that comprised their forms zipping around.  They looked like the static we used to get on our old TVs.

I stopped seeing these spirits with my ‘normal’ eyes after one too many nights with the covers over my head. (Ghosts used to appear in my bedroom doorway after the household had gone to sleep.  It was incredibly unnerving, and I decided I didn’t want to see these spirits anymore, so I didn’t.)  I sometimes think back to that time, and wonder how I would use those skills now.  Would I still hide under the bedcovers or would I do something more constructive.  A friend of mine who is a medium (and whose job it is to connect with dead people all the time!), says she prefers not to see with her physical eyes since it is uncomfortable to be unexpectedly joined by someone’s grandpa while brushing her teeth in the morning (spirit doesn’t seem to have a sense of appropriate time or place to materialize).  She also says it takes a lot of energy for a ghost to manifest in our 3-d world, and that it makes more sense for all involved if they connect energetically so they can communicate their messages via images and thoughts.

This brings me to the way I most often see now.   Information generally appears on a screen inside my head.  Everyone has this screen.  If you imagine your childhood home or the face of your friend, you’ll most likely see it on your own screen.

I also see what can be described as a “third eye projection” or “hologram”.  This means that I see a sort of overlay on our 3-day reality.  It’s like those old biology texts where the bottom page is a skeleton and then plastic overlays have details of musculature, circulation, etc.  It’s like seeing and not seeing at the same time, or seeing the invisible.  It takes a strong will and sense of self to see in this way, because the critical mind is more than happy to step in and proclaim a person off their rocker, or, at the very least, declare the images to be simple ‘imagination’.  (My critical mind loves to tell me that my clients think I am certifiable).   However, all of these images — be they seen on the internal screen, or as a projection — are distinct from imagination.  In my experience, my imaginings follow a story line or thread of thought — if I’m telling myself a story about a subject or an idea, the pictures that appear are contextual to my thought process.  Images that appear as part of psychic connection don’t have context, and literally pop into my head (or into the 3-d space) out of thin air.  They have a different texture and flavor than simple imaginings, and they have the essence of an external consciousness, not my own.

One of the first third eye projections I experienced was during my college years when I worked at the Minnesota Science Museum cataloguing Native American sacred artifacts for repatriation to the Lakota tribes.  I became quite aware, in the dark of the archives (located in the museum’s basement!), that there was a presence watching me from the corner of the room.  The more I tried to ignore him, the more I felt him, and, if I turned my eyes just the right way, I could see him too.  I was curious because he wasn’t manifesting in the internally-lit way as had the ghosts from my youth, but as a projection.  As I said above, he was both there, and not there, but I could describe his physical appearance exactly.    Over days, this presence moved closer to my work station and I became more uncomfortable . He was not generating welcoming energy my way.  In fact, he felt pretty menacing.   Soon, he was at my elbow and I debated calling in sick or quitting the gig altogether.  I had no idea how I would explain this to my supervisor.  However, at a certain point, maybe three weeks into the job, I couldn’t take it anymore and I left the archives and headed straight to the administrator’s office.  I explained that I wasn’t crazy but that I was seeing an Indian chief down in the archives and I was scared.  Dan seemed completely unfazed, which was a bit of a relief!, and said,

“Oh yes, that’s a protector spirit.  Just explain what you’re doing down there.  He’ll leave you alone.”
“You know about this stuff?” I asked.  I couldn’t believe this PhD-level anthropologist was taking my story seriously.
He nodded, and said, “We all do.”

This is one of my favorite stories of my early psychic development.  Not only was my experience validated, but, in a way, I was validated too.   I wasn’t a nut job.  I wasn’t the over-imaginative kid so many people called me as a child.  I was simply tuning into the wider reality around me.

This validation is so important as we navigate the images that appear in our minds or before us as holographic images.  I believe all people have psychic abilities and extrasensory perceptions, but they have no experience believing their eyes—they don’t believe what they see!  Take a few moments the next time an image suddenly pops into your mind.  Ask yourself whether the image is apropos to what you were just thinking or if it appeared out of blue sky.  I notice that psychic images most often appear (especially during the learning stages) when a person is ‘zoned out’ such as in a daydream and not thinking about anything.  Pay attention to your mental state the moment before the image appeared.  Then pay attention to your critical mind.  Does it immediately judge?  That’s another clue the image was not self-generated.   Finally, look at the image itself.  Is there information there?  Do you notice any other physical changes in your body such as tingling, ringing in ears, warmth, etc.  Do you notice any thoughts or words suddenly appearing?  Take notes and decide to believe your eyes.  You never know the adventures seeing and believing will take you on!

*And by the way, I did tell the protector spirit what I was doing in the archives and he backed way off.  I could still feel him watching me, but in a much more pleasant way.  In fact, by the end of the job, I felt sort of sad to leave him.  I wonder if he felt the same towards me.

“Ways of Seeing” by John Berger.

The paintings seen here are by the amazing surrealist, Rene Magritte.  He offers many ways of seeing reality.

Charoite bracelet and tumbled stone

I use charoite as an antidote to nightmares and for travel (sometimes the same thing!).  It is a great stone for weeding out what is real vs. what we fear is real.  In the case of travel, I worry that I’m gonna miss my flight it’s gonna crash I’m gonna sit next to someone who smells and has the flu I’m gonna lose my bags etc.  The reality is that my flight will get me there in one piece.   In the case of nightmares, my subconscious might dredge up any manner of darkness.  I don’t mind dealing with my dark places during sleep, but I don’t need them to hit me over the head in the form of Frankenstein (an oddly familiar nightmare presence for me).  Charoite under the pillow will keep these super negative images at bay while allowing me to process darker emotions productively.  I have a friend who tapes a small piece of charoite to her third eye when she is going through periods of difficult sleep.  Charoite combined with lithium quartz or lepidolite is an effective way to stay grounded in the moment without the stress or distraction of the what-ifs.

(As an aside, it’s one of the few stones I wear on my wrist during Healing Excavation.  It keeps me clear and focused no matter what emerges from a client’s energy field.  It also grounds the immense amount of high frequency energy channeling through my system during a healing session.)

And, by the way, charoite is purple.  Purple!  I am always amazed at the natural color of so many of the rocks produced by our magical earth, and the purple of charoite is truly mesmerizing.  A powerful stone for powerful work.

Keeping it real,
Lizzy