LESSON THREE

Hello my dears!

It’s been awhile since we looked at divination using the stones, or lithomancy. Previously, I had asked the readers participating in the study to set aside a time and place to sit with the stones that you’d chosen. I wrote about handling them, pulling stones at random to get impressions about meaning and symbol. I asked you to write down your impressions, but not reread them, and to not attach any importance to them as yet.

Buddha Stump

Now I’d like to ratchet things up a bit. If you remember, we have a collection of about a dozen or so stones of varying types that feel good to you, the reader. There should not be any massive enlightenment around any particular rock, that is not what this exercise is about. You’ve just picked up the stones that ‘feel good’. You’ve gained experience pulling them at random, at allowing your imagination to carry symbols into your mind. And at writing down some of those impressions and symbols.

Preparation

Now, I’d like you to pick out one night in the week. You can try any night that works for you, when you will be able to be private and peaceful. Set a time in the evening if you can, if not, the morning will also work. Allow 15 minutes to a half hour every time you do this. Keep your pad by you for notes. Sit in your private and quiet space, with your stones and a white candle. We use this candle to invoke peace, and to symbolize the bringing of the light of knowledge into the darkness of the hidden. If it comforts you, it would also be a good thing to allow the candle to symbolize the Light of the Divine, the Love of the Goddess, the Purity of Buddha, or any God-symbol that helps you to keep the frequency of the energy high and the energetic boundaries secure.

I also will bring a small container of salt into this space with me, for the same reasons. It’s just very purifying. You may add incense or essential oil of frankincense, sandalwood, rose, or another high vibrational scent. If you wear or carry a crystal that has special meaning to you, bring it as well and set it next to the candle. Crystals are especially appropriate here as they ‘related’ to your rocks. Begin to build up a tiny collection of things as an altar set up to help you read. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, although some of my altar set-ups when I was reading 35 to 50 clients per day got pretty extreme! For your own work, you might consider a tiny statue, a flower, salt, a crystal, a candle, incense or oil. Or just the white candle smeared with frankincense and rose oils would do. As always it is up to you.

Why the preparation? Well today we will begin to take a bit more interest in your internal messages. How are your journalling habits? I hope they are good, because they will be necessary for this exercise. In the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you that I suck at this. I am not the best journalling master. And it has shown in the amount of time that it has taken me to master some pretty basic things! But you will be fabulous and dedicated in this journalling exercise, I just know it!

st. john

The Exercise

Take your seat in your space. Light the candle, and your incense or oil diffuser. Close your eyes and breathe deeply and evenly for a few minutes. Pull your shoulders up to your ears and then drop them a couple times. You get the picture. Relax. Then place your hands on the bag that contains your reading stones and pull a total of three out. One at a time. Eyes still closed. Lay them in a line in front of you and open your eyes. Begin to write down your impressions as they occur. What does seeing these three stones make you think of? Location, events, individuals? Once you’ve looked at the grouping of stones, and how they are placed relative to each other, then look at each individual stone. Pick them up one by one and allow your impressions to flow thru you. Write down everything, even if you don’t think it is important. Once you are finished with the individual stones, look at the grouping once more. Any new impressions, now that you’ve take a closer look at each stone? Write them down. When you are done, replace your stones in the bag. Take a moment to express your gratitude for this opportunity to work in the Light. Pinch off your candle and close your journal.

In addition to the journal entry of the reading, I’d like you to keep notes of your week. They do not have to be extensive, but again, it is whatever you yourself are comfortable with. Only this time, allow yourself to look over your notes at the end of the week, on the night before you are to read again. As you read over your writing, can you see anywhere that correlates to impressions that you might have received when you last read? You may see things immediately, or perhaps not. Sometimes it take a long time for the things we see to manifest. I’ve had clients come up to me 5 years after a reading to tell me that ‘everything changed’ from that moment on, but it took 5 years for them to observe and understand events.

Conclusions

We are human and subject to minds that frantically attempt to be ‘logical’. Allow your imagination to work here, and enjoy observing events as they unfold around you. One thing, though. It helps if you can cultivate a certain distance from the events you observe.  Try to avoid jumping to conclusions.  Attempt to stay in observation mode.  If you allow your emotional body to become too disturbed by things you believe that you have foreseen, you can harm your own serenity and grounding. If you find yourself getting caught up, becoming sad or angry or emotionally reactive, have the discipline to set the readings aside for a few weeks, until you feel better about what you have seen. Keeping the journal going is a good thing, and when your system has settled you can begin to read the stones once more. There is no shame in having to take a break from the reading. The systems of the body that carry our intuitive and imaginative energies are much more subtle and easily disrupted than one would think. Care for them by not stressing them too much, until you feel more confident. Also, a good tonic tea made with valerian root and skullcap herb can do wonders for a new psychic’s jangling system!  And so can a good multi-vitamin, multi-mineral, or some green juice.  Replenish your system, and replace the minerals that the nerves need!  Oh, and try to stay away from reading your own family… just don’t go there!

Well that is all for now dearies! Be good and I will see you in a few days with more from NMOM.

Blessed Be,

Marie Angeli

all text and images ©2011 by Marie Angeli

In the past few weeks, I’ve asked readers to pick their reading stones, and to begin the process of setting up a sacred space for reading and recording observations.  Today, I’d like to look a bit deeper at what we are doing here, and to give some further instruction.

In the past few posts, I’ve talked about the psychic faculties as primarily being fed by information from each person’s subconscious.  This is partly true, but I’d now like to look a bit further.  As I’ve said before, the subconscious is the giant sponge, the gatherer up of sense impressions that then are weeded thru so that some of that information can then filter up to us.  There are many types of senses that gather this information, some of which we have no understanding of as yet, some of which have no scientific or medical reality.  This certainly does not mean they do not exist, merely that we cannot yet understand HOW they exist or even locate or measure them.  It is a very childish understanding to believe that only the things one sees and can measure are real.

So what are we really looking at here?  Looking at the human mind, I see this very large sponge type consciousness that quite literally soaks up impressions of the surrounding world or worlds on many different levels, and then filters that information thru the current physical/emotional state, and then up through the fixed ideas that are in place to protect the personality of the individual who is doing the reading.  And all of this information that filters up is subject to alteration as it comes up through the levels of awareness.  Do you see why INITIALLY psychic information cannot be trusted, and always it should be taken ‘with a grain of salt’?  It is rare to achieve the kind of clarity necessary to obtain an accurate reading.  Talent and self-awareness have something to do with it, but not always.

For example, how often do you feel at the top of your game, healthy, no worries, plenty of money or whatever it is you seek, completely in harmony with your inner self and free of any and all inner conflict.  Sound impossible?  Or at least rare?  That should give you an idea of some of the factors that can affect a reader.  Then you have the environment that the reading is done in, the interaction between the reader and the client, and whatever personal baggage the reader has about the particular question being asked.

Once in a while, psychics are much less well-adjusted than those they serve, but that is the flip side.  It is the danger of being too open and unable to shut it off.  This is the reason for the exercise I asked you to do in my last psychic 101 post, when I had you visualize turning off the light switch at the very end.  Consider Edgar Casey, “the sleeping psychic”.  He personally was no one special:  Like you and me, he was an average person living an average life, concerned with obtaining employment, having a family, practicing his religion, and living day to day.  His talent and work was a phenomenon made possible by the fact that his waking self simply slept, via hypnotic trance, thru the whole reading.  This trance minimized the number of filters and personality obstacles that the information went thru before coming out into the light of day in his reading, to be recorded by his secretary.  And for him, waking out of trance turned off his light switch quite nicely.  In our practice, we will do this manually.

But ultimately what kind of information are we trying to obtain, or to allow thru?  And where do we look for it?

There are other levels of reality that are filtered thru our sponge.  Some of these ‘realities’ have no root in the physical world, but can only be addressed by us thru the mental constructs of philosophy or religion.  Now, please do not misunderstand.  I am not saying that religious beliefs are MERELY mental constructs.  I personally believe that the core of almost all religions is divinely inspired.  But it is the dogma of various faiths, from christianity to paganism to zen, that in my opinion reflects the filter of our subconscious selves.  Thus, the Source of Faith is Someone or Something that cannot ever be seen directly by us.  We ‘see as through a glass, darkly.’ – St. Augustine.  It is the emanation of this Someone or Something that we as psychics are attempting ultimately to perceive, in our very limited and human way.  It is the Truth in the only way it is possible for humans to know the Truth.  This state of ‘clear vision’ or ‘clairvoyance’, the ability to see truth or obtain information on levels not normally accessed by humans in their daily waking state, can be attained by prayer, meditation, hypnosis, dreaming, music or rhythmic drumming or chanting, or by training oneself to enter trance at will.

Alright, enough of that!  I’m sure you are quite sick of staring at rocks by now.  Oh well…. 

M74, courtesy of NASA

In this part of our lithomancy training, I’d like you to continue to open your sacred space as I described before.  Again, find a place where you will not be disturbed.  Take your deep breath and allow the day to fall away from your mind.  Visualize the Warm Light above your head.  This Light is our symbol for the Someone or Something we are trying to touch.  Divine, if you wish to call it that.  It is comforting, warming, purifying, protecting.  If you prefer to see it as an extension of your own mind and consciousness, that’s fine.  It is all the same.  Allow that Light to flow down into you and fill you and surround you.  Sit in the glow for a short while and feel it regenerate and rejuvenate your body and self.  Make your dedication or vow.  It can be anything, but should be yours personally, such as “In the Name of the Light.” or “In the Name of Divine Service”, or ask the blessings of whatever God or Goddess form to whom you feel closest in a positive way.  This keeps the work within a sacred boundary which is healthiest and safest.  Connecting to something of positive spiritual meaning also helps keep you ‘centered’ while you are doing this exercise.

Take up your bag of stones, the ones you have been working with these past weeks.  Without looking, pick three stones and place them in a triangle pattern in front of you.  Set the bag down and observe your stones.  Allow your mind to relax and release and just fuzz your vision and look in the direction of the stones.  Do this for a few minutes… say, three to five.  Then come back and write down anything that comes into your mind.  When you are done, look at the stones again, same as before, unfocus your vision and allow your mind to drift.  Then write.  Keep doing this back and forth for about 15 minutes.  When you finish your final writing, close your notebook and put it away till next time.  Then sit and again visualize that warm light from above surrounding you, as it has been throughout your work here today.  Visualize the Light withdrawing once again above your head, and then see yourself reaching out and turning off the light switch.  Wiggle your toes, eat something or go for a walk.

Do this about three times a week.  And once more, we are putting the writings away with the understanding that no matter what they say, it is currently not important.  You may feel very strongly about some of the impressions that you get, and that is great.  The stronger the emotions or even physical sensations that you feel, then it really shows this psychic flush is working, and you are clearing out some of your sponge filters that probably haven’t been cleared out in quite awhile!  If you get nothing at all, this is also fine and completely normal.  Most likely you will eventually get a combination of sometimes when you get input, and sometimes when you do not.  Do not focus on your writing.  Do not reread your writing at this time.  Just leave it till next time, and keep doing it.  It is important to do it because of what it does for your psyche, and how it will affect your training.

Here is as good a place as any to mention instant gratification.  We are conditioned by popular culture to want answers right now, dammit!  If I have a question, I can google three and a half million answers in a matter of seconds.  This is obviously not how this process works, and there is no way to speed up this kind of study without damaging the vehicle, i.e. YOU.  So be patient with this study and it will pay off.  You will be pleasantly surprised ultimately by just how simple it all is.

That is all for now, my dearies!  Enjoy your day.

Blessed Be,
Marie Angeli

all text and images ©2011 Marie Angeli