Changing Lives, One Reading At A Time

Over the last two days I have performed two readings that totally inspired me.

In the first one, right in the middle of the reading, my client made a decision that completely changed her future!

At the beginning of the reading, she was a few blocks away from the future she really wanted for herself.  The energy felt like a puddle slowly dripping down a sidewalk.

A new message came through for her, and she decided to listen to it, and the second she made the decision, before she told me, the energy suddenly transformed into a ray of light.  She leapt those few blocks in a single bound!  She’s now just a step away from realizing her dreams, and she’s already decided to take that step.  I was crying in Starbucks because I was so happy and excited for her!

I FREAKING LOVE IT!

I absolutely adore when a reading helps a client make a life-changing decision.  I love it so much, it’s inspired me to start Love-Your-Life Coaching!  I’m working on my website, and will definitely launch it in the next week, but y’all heard about it here first!

❤ ❤ ❤

Last night, I shared a meal with a Vietnam Vet who’s been homeless for 35 years, and I gave him a reading.

He wanted to know how he could settle down with his family, how he could overcome his fear of being rejected by his daughters and grandkids.

During the reading, he blossomed.  I watched him waver from excited about trying to fearful several times, but when he left he was determined to try the first step – to develop his faith.

He has to have faith in himself.

So simple, yet so difficult…but I know he can do it.

❤ ❤ ❤

What about you?  What inspires you?  What change would you like to make in your life?  Feel free to email me if you need some encouragement!

Love and Blessings,
Ashley Rae

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Taking Back Our Personal Power

What makes humans the dominant species on this planet is our ability to take what we have and turn it in to what we need.

When we are kids, we pick up a stick and use it as a bat, a magic wand, a horse, a phone, a flag, whatever we need in the moment.

This stick is about to become a boat. 🙂

At school, we are taught the “proper” way to use sticks.  We learn that we have to do things the way others have done them, think the way others think, understand the world the way others understand it.  Our thoughts, words, and actions are labelled “right” or “wrong.”  We are rewarded for conforming and punished for choosing differently.

This makes most of us miserable. We self-medicate with tv, movies, video games, sugar, comfort-junk.  Our poor creative muscles wither.  We forget how to adapt, how to find resources, how to tap in to that creative power that makes us God-like.

Most of us don’t even know that we’ve accepted powerlessness as normal, as “real life.”

“Welcome to the Real World,” we say.  “Life is hard.  Life is suffering.”

Bullshit, I say.

Life is love.

Life is learning.

Life is an adventure!

The Real World is the world we create for ourselves with our beliefs.  We can believe what we are taught by others, or we can teach ourselves something different.  It’s our choice.

Even when we feel powerless, we have choices.

We have so many choices, they overwhelm us, numb us, and we end up falling on old habits or doing what we think everyone else does, what we’re supposed to do.

Sometimes power is scary.

If every action we perform, every thought we think, every penny we spend, every word we speak changes us and the world around us…that’s just too much responsibility to comprehend on a day to day basis.

But that’s reality.

Reality is constantly changing based on the energy we give it.

If we are in a bad mood, throwing out angry words, violent gestures, mean thoughts, and spending our money on comfort-junk, life sucks for the day.

If we are in a good mood, practicing random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty, being grateful, affectionate, loving, consciously spending money in ways that nourish ourselves and our communities, life is awesome.

Each of us has the power to create paradise wherever we are, one moment at a time.

Each of us has the power to step out of the bully/victim paradigm and choose a new paradigm in this moment.  You can choose a paradigm of unconditional love, or of deep gratitude.  You can choose to live in a world of compassion, affection, and loving acceptance.

"Whoopty doo. But what does it all MEAN, Basil?"

How does someone stuck in a powerLESS-loop take his or her power back?

If you are used to feeling like you have no control, how do you take control of your life?

One step at a time.

Step one for you could be deciding to do one kind thing for a stranger.  You could choose to have an organic apple instead of a candy bar.  Your might choose to laugh.  You could take a day for yourself instead of giving it to others.

You could keep making excuses…or you could make plans, come up with ideas, set goals.

Every step you take towards paradise is one step out of your personal hell.

Every loving choice you make heals you.

You choose.

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Mercury Retrograde & the No Good Very Bad OMGWTF Day

Saturday morning, I had an epiphany in the shower.

Epiphanies are awesome.

For months, I’d been planning to start a weekly newsletter, but I’d been resisting the idea because I was afraid to add another commitment to my overfull plate.  But while I was in the shower, I remembered a story my mother told me before she died about how she’d chosen my name.

She chose Ashley because she thought it was beautiful.  The first time she held me in her arms, early that May morning, a ray of sunshine fell across the bed, illuminating the both of us.  Thus, she named me Ashley Rae.

In the shower I heard the perfect name, and focus, for my newsletter in my head — Your Weekly Rae of Sunshine

I was so excited about my epiphany, I decided to create the newsletter that very night and send the very first one off Sunday morning.

I got up at 8:30 Sunday morning to finish up the newsletter and send it off, despite having been up most of the night working on it.  I was hoping to get it done before my toddler awoke.

15 minutes later, the power supply for my laptop made crackling and popping noises, scaring the bejeesus out of me and inspiring me to rip the plug from the wall and throw it across the room, lest it explode.

It sounded like faeries were frying mushrooms inside the little black box. RUN AWAY!

Then my laptop ran out of power, the battery completely drained.

*headdesk

“Well, poop…” I said.  And my toddler, who had also been up most of the night, who should have slept for at least two more hours, woke up, and thus had to come with me on my quest for a new laptop power supply.

***grr Mercury Retrograde grr***

FOUR frustrating to the point of tears HOURS later, I returned home triumphant…only to discover my new “universal” power adapter did not include a tip that fit my laptop.

***insert much cussing, moaning, complaining, etc here***

It was at least half an hour more before I noticed the bracelet on my wrist and remember that life is too precious to waste on BS.   “Time for a mood-reboot,” the bracelet, or perhaps Sunny, said to me.

I packed my reluctant toddler back into the car, gave the keys to my boyfriend, and wrote this blog post while he drove us to one of my favorite places in the world, All World Acres, to attend the last few hours of the Sustainable Living Conference.

The windows were down, letting the air blow the storm clouds from my brow.  The sun was shining, the sky looking like Andy’s wallpaper from the Toy Story movies.  It was a gorgeous day, and I knew it was going to be an awesome night.

And it was. ❤

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Making Room for Prosperity

Dear Inner Perfectionist,

You are fired.

With Love,

Me

P.S. – this means I will no longer wait for inspiration to blog, and my blogs will no longer be edited for hours or days (or weeks or months) before posting. 😀

P.P.S. – Your position has been replaced by my Inner Cheerleader.

P.M.S. So eat that, you hypercritical criticizer! 😛

What does your inner cheerleader look like?

Dear readers,

Welcome to the 2012 edition of Spirit Healer Divination & Craft.  We are letting go of perfectionism and procrastination as of yesterday, and opportunities are already flooding in!

If your life if full of crap, there’s no room for the seeds of your hopes and dreams to grow.  You have to create a space for the universe to fill with the good things you keep asking for.

That’s what I did, and that’s what I’m going to help you to do today.

For this simple healing rite, you are going to need:

• paper and something to write with
• a lighter and something that you can burn paper in without damaging anything (including yourself!)
• A prosperity charm  (this could be as simple as a $ on a scrap of paper you plan to put in your wallet, a check made out to yourself in the amount of money you dream of having in your account, a piece of citrine or a green or gold stone, a lucky coin, or any picture or symbol that represents prosperity to you.)
• An optional green candle
• A few uninterrupted minutes of concentration

There are two phases to every simple healing rite: the purge, and the refill.

Phase 1: Get It Out

For the purge, you are going to write a letter to yourself, or to your angels, guides, concept of deity, universe, or whatever you feel most comfortable addressing for help.

Something like this, but way more specific...

List every single one of those things in detail.  “Please help me release my fear of not being able to pay my bills, my fear of losing my house, my job, my friends, my life…Please help me release my doubts about my ability to find/keep a job, my doubts about my compentency, my doubts about whether anyone would want to hire me/work with me…Please help me release my bitterness toward money, my judgments of people who have more than me or less than me…please help me to know that money is NOT the root of all evil…please help me to know that I deserve to be able to pay my bills, I deserve to retire in style, I deserve to have a family, a home, a life!”

Be incredibly detailed, specific, and thorough.  This is a purge.  You are vomiting poison onto paper.  Be as vulgar, profane, angry, scared, tearful, pleading, as you need to be in the moment. Write in all caps with slashes and scribbles and cuss words as much as you need to; water the pages with your tears if you need to.

Keep going until you feel empty, hollow.  Empty/hollow is good!  It means you’ve removed so much poison, the tiny prosperity seeds you are about to plant will have a chance to grow and thrive.  Now we can move on to phase 2.

Phase 2: Fill ‘er Up!

Phase 2 begins with the burning of those poisonous pages.  If you can’t burn, then tear them into tiny bits and flush them down the toilet.  As you destroy them, state your intention to release these feelings and to allow their essence to nourish the earth with harm to none.

burn baby burn

Now take your prosperity charm in your hands, get comfortable, close your eyes, and fill yourself with the most powerful love you are capable of feeling.  You are performing a muggle version of the Patronus charm.  If you’ve never seen or read Harry Potter 3, this means that you are finding your happiest memories and bringing them to life in your heart.  You need a memory so pure that when you are thinking it, nothing can bring you down.

My son is my happy thought.  Snuggling with him in the morning, his baby kisses, the way he cries, “Mommy!” and then launches himself into my arms when I pick him up for daycare and wrapping his little arms around my neck with a sigh of contentment, his laugh, his cute antics…

My Happiest Thought

Your thought might be a person, or a place, a cherished belonging, a time in your life or a cherished dream.  Find it, hold onto it, and let it fill that empty space until you feel happy and bursting with hope, joy, and love. (Or as close as you can get.)

Once you are in that happy space, start fantasizing about yourself as a prosperous person.  Keep the fantasy positive and as if you are already there.

If you have a candle (possibly a big green one,) light it now.  Then say aloud, on paper, or in your mind that you are ready for this.  Say that you are open to prosperity, that you deserve prosperity, that you deserve and are ready to live your dream.  Ask your helpers to help you plant and nourish these dreams, to help them grow, thrive, and help you harvest them when the time comes.  Ask them to give you signs to show you the way, to help you meet the earth angels/people who can help you get there, and to help you hear opportunity’s knocks.

Thank your helpers for all your blessings, every good thing in your life, and keep that prosperity charm that you’ve been holding all this time in a special place, perhaps your wallet or purse, an altar or shrine if you have one, next to your computer, or any place that makes sense to you.  Light your candle every day for a few minutes, bringing back that happy fantasy of prosperity, until there is no wax left (it’s okay to blow it out or snuff it then re-light it as many times as you like.)

There are many ways to attract money into your life.  Money is abundant and attainable.  Money is the easiest thing to manifest.

Change your beliefs, change your life. ❤

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Healing Depression: Part 1 – Loss

A year ago, I was desperately seeking shelter for my one year old son and myself, paring down our belongings, selling everything I could, shattering the last of my pride as I asked and begged everyone and anyone for help so that my son and I wouldn’t have to sleep in the street after my former fiance literally dumped us.

I was terrified of losing my precious child, who was (and is) everything to me. I was heartbroken over losing the future I’d imagined and assumed we would have, the family we had planned to expand, the home we had planned to create, and I grieved for that loss.

I could see my soul as the vessel that housed my spirit, my vital force, energy, essence. My poor soul looked more like a sieve than a vessel. Every trauma I suffered punctured a hole through its protective casing, from the bruising of my head with forceps during my birth, to the first loss of my mother, then my father, then my grandmother, and everything I knew over and over again before I even turned six; from the abuse I suffered at the hands of my dying mother from then until she died when I was twelve; from my first rape at seventeen, the next three at nineteen, and all the self-destructive behavior I engaged in for the next ten years, ending with my last abusive relationship (the last abuse I will EVER suffer!)

I died last year, in the sense that everything that I used to be ceased to exist, and can never be recovered. The girl that I was, the constant victim, survivor, the girl who hated herself and always put her own needs behind even those who were cruel to her, the girl who desperately sought a mother figure to fill the void in her heart, the girl with a soul like a sieve, incapable of holding onto good feelings for longer than a moment…homelessness was the blow that shattered her soul beyond repair, and she died with a relieved whimper, leaving her automaton body behind to care for her son and clean up the pieces of her broken life.

At her death, I was conceived. In the months I spent couch-hopping, looking for employment and a home, my new soul incarnated into my body bit by bit. I had to cast off the detritus of my previous life from my mind, heart, spirit, and body to make room for the new. Like a phoenix reborn in the ashes, my new soul clawed its way up. There were a ton of ashes to claw my way through before I could see the sky.

But now?

Now, I’m soaring.

My son is still the most precious light of my life, bringing me joy and filling me with love every moment of every day.

Not a day goes by without hearing my voice lifted in song.

I have a home with a family who love and support me, and whom I love and support. They gave me the space I needed to heal, to wrap up the lingering responsibilities of my old life, and to envision and create for myself a life overflowing with love, joy, and peace (and occasional punctuations of stress, but nothing I can’t handle.)

Now I can look into my own eyes in the mirror and say, “Ash, I love you. I really love you. You are beautiful, brilliant, and SO loved!”

This is the story of the me I am now; the story of how I learned to plug the holes, to fill the void, and heal myself of the depression that plagued the first twenty-nine years of my life.

This is a long, long story. So I will tell it in seven parts.

Today, I am telling you the story of loss, and offering you a space to mourn your own losses. Because every loss hurts. Because you have a right to that hurt. Because if your repress that hurt, it will bore a hole through your soul, and eat away at you until your soul is as sieve-like as mine used to be.

Soul-ulcers suck. Take it from me.

The first step in healing for me was to acknowledge my loss, and that I had a right to hurt. The next step was to remind myself constantly the following truths.

One, that nothing is every truly lost. We all come from a Well of Infinite Love, which we may call God or any other name, and to that sacred Well we all return. Nothing is truly lost, but everything changes.

Two, that the void left behind by the perceived loss is a space that can be filled with love and joy, if we can just let go and trust God, The Universe, and Everything.  Especially when we lose a loved one, we have to remind ourselves that we still deserve happiness, and that our loved ones want us to be happy, to celebrate our lives, and look forward to reuniting with them when our time comes.

Three, that the pain of loss makes the pleasures of life more exquisite.  It makes us see the blessings in our life in a whole new way, and eventually, we can learn from each loss, if we give ourselves permission to heal.  It helps us appreciate the true value of the people and moments of our lives.

Your beliefs may differ from mine, but if you take time to think about what you truly believe, you may find your personal truth just as comforting.

It is also important to remember that just because someone somewhere is being tortured, raped, or murdered at this very moment doesn’t mean that you don’t have a right to feel bad about failing a test you studied hard for, or for losing your favorite something or other.  Your emotions are how your body and spirit communicate with your consciousness.  Telling yourself that you have no right to feel a certain way about a certain thing is like telling yourself you have no right to see the sky, or to hear the breeze rustling the branches of a nearby tree.

How have you dealt with loss?  What have you learned?  What do you want to tell others about it?

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Invoking Balance – A Simple Healing Rite

Modern technology has made it possible to do the same work year round, and to do any activity any season.

However, our bodies and spirits are still operating on Earth’s time. Our bodies and spirits prepare for the changing seasons, even when our minds are otherwise occupied.

Now that we can do pretty much anything pretty much anytime we want, we never seem to get around to the things that matter most to us, and this throws us off balance.

When we’re off balance, any little thing can knock us down and set us back. So tonight, I’m going to show you a way to invite balance back into your body, heart, mind, and spirit.

For this healing rite, you need:

• a bowl of water big enough to wash your hands in
• about a teaspoon of sea salt (or plain salt)
• a small glass of water (to drink)
• a few minutes of uninterrupted time in a place where you feel safe and comfortable

Read over this whole rite before you get started so you know what you are doing.

Then, get comfortable.  Tell your brain firmly to stop chattering and let you heal.  Relax your body, and breathe deeply as long as you need to.

When you feel ready, pour the salt into your palm.  Cover the salt with your other hand.  Close your eyes, breathe deeply, and imagine all the stress, frustration, tension, worry, anger, fear, and pain in your heart, mind, and body flowing down your arms, through your palms, and into the salt.

The salt absorbs all the energy you put into it. It greedily sucks up the last bits of negative energy from your palms and holds it for you.

When you are ready, open your eyes, and wash the salt from your hands in the bowl of water, washing those ickies off of your hands and out of your life.

Now that you have removed that damaged energy from yourself, you have created a void that must be filled. Most people vent off their anger, pain, or fear…and then fill the void with the same pain, anger, or fear.  Counterproductive, much?

The only way to heal anger is to overwhelm it with love & forgiveness.
The only way to heal pain is to overwhelm it with joy & pleasure.
The only way to heal fear is to overwhelm it with peace & trust.

Now is the time to fill your own personal void with love, joy, and peace.

Hold your cup of water in both hands and close your eyes. Think in great detail about people, memories, and activities that make you feel confident, happy, safe, loved, special, and peaceful.  Let those fillings fill you up, and overflow from your heart, down your arms, through your palms and into the water.

When you feel ready, acknowledge that your water is blessed with love, peace, and joy, and that you accept this peace, love and joy as your own.  It helps to acknowledge this out loud…it makes it more real for you to hear your own voice saying it.   Then drink this blessed water, and visualize it filling your void, healing you, and making you whole and healthy.

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Healing Anger – A Plan of Action

I have no clue where I got this image. If anyone knows who I should credit, please let me know!

Imagine that you actually have four bodies.

One is physical, the body everyone can see, and you can see when you look down at yourself or in a reflective surface. This is the body that sometimes gets injured or sick, and that you heal with physical means such as heat, cold, medicine, or movement therapy.

The next body is emotional. It is intimately connected with your physical body – so much so that it can change your blood pressure, your hormone balance, your temperature, how much sweat you produce, your digestion, and even your ability to fight disease.

The third body is mental. It is intimately connected with your emotional body, and uses your emotions to affect your physical body. Your thoughts affect your feelings, and changing your thoughts can actually bring physical relief. I am living proof of this, as I used my thoughts and emotions to have a painless, drug free homebirth.

The fourth body is spiritual. It is actually the substance of which the rest of your bodies are made, intimately linking them all to each other, affecting each equally, and allowing each to affect the others. It also links your consciousness with the substance of the universe, the body of the Divine, and if you allow it, it communicates with you through your intuition.

Imagine all that, and this blog post, and all my future blog posts about healing, will make sense to you.

I hope.

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Without conditions, without limits…

I stepped off of the wooden bridge onto the trail of sand, watching moonlit waves through the cattails. The cool breeze blew my hair off of my face and neck, smelling of salt and life. The rushing of the waves blocked all other sound, even the sound of my breath, as I slipped and slid through the powder fine sand, walking quickly and purposefully into the chilly water, following the trail of moonlight.

By the third wave, the water felt warm and the air felt cold. I stared into the eyes of the Mother in the full moon, and summoned Her comfort, healing, and wisdom. I spoke to Her, the waves setting the rhythm of my prayer, and asked her to help me release the pain, the fear, the anger, and most importantly, to help me forgive myself, value myself, heal myself.

I plunked onto my butt in the surf and let the waves wash over me, bringing the light to my body, and washing away the darkness that has plagued me of late. I waited, ignoring the curious passersby. Let the couples enjoy their romantic strolls, and let me enjoy my solitude!

As I sat in the water, watching the foam swirl around me, being tickled by curious fish, I thought about my stress, and opened myself to the wisdom of the Goddess. She reminded me of unconditional love, and showed me the error of my efforts to stop loving. I saw myself embracing him and telling him that I was angry with myself and taking it out on him, knowing that’s not fair to him, and apologizing to him for it. The vision brought tears to my eyes.

I remembered and understood that it’s myself I have to forgive, not anyone else. I have to treat myself the way I want to be treated. I can’t expect anyone to treat me better than I treat myself. Projecting my faults onto those around me, wallowing in fear and pain, and escaping into time wasting activities are all patterns from my past that I’ve slipped into because I am faced with a new, yet familiar, situation. Things aren’t going the way I want or expect them to, so I’m freezing and feeling helpless.

I’m not helpless. I know that. I take full responsibility for my life, the problems I’m having now, and the choices I made that have brought me here. Now I just have to deal with the consequences of my choices, and make better choices for the future.

I just have to remember to view every thing, especially myself, through the eyes of unconditional, unlimited love.

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