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Listen to the Message. Really Listen.

In the late 80s and early 90s, I was just beginning serious metaphysical work and simultaneously experiencing rough patches in my exterior life. In between jobs and desperate, I did a lot of Walter Mitty type fantasizing: thought I would go work on a reservation in South Dakota, move to a village in South Africa and live among lions, and if that didn't pan out, move back to NY and resume life as a starving poet.

 I was living in Coral Springs at the time, just having moved there from Delray Beach (I have lived all over South Florida).I was broke and finally using the Publix gift certificates that my friend had given me when I'd lost my last job (most generous gift and most humbling experience). In meditation,thinking I would see myself communing with the buffalo clan, I sought confirmation from the spiritual realm and received a very clear answer: SOUTH.

 Well, first I got pissed off that my intuition was clearly not working. Then I started laughing and threw it back to my guides, "Oh yeah? South? How far South? Like where, Miami? HA! " and shut down the session because the channels were fuzzy and obviously I wasn't getting any good information. For a few years, I survived by first working as a per diem seasonal textbook rep for Holt, Rinehart, and Winston and  then finished a three year stint as a temporary instructor at Broward Community College (I could not be hired permanently, I was told, because they "needed" a minority hire to comply with the EEOC). I sent my resume everywhere and thought, "For sure, the Lakota tribe will want me! I will train my asthma to lie dormant in the cold!" 

Then, in August of 1993, I received a call from Miami Dade Community College IN MIAMI, where I have been very successfully employed since. I DID receive a very precise message in meditation years earlier, telling me I would be going south, but didn't align myself with the process naturally, first dismissing it and second blaming myself as a cloudy channel because I didn't like the content of the message. I have since learned. LISTEN without judgment.

Being a channel or psychic means moving oneself out of the way,Receiving useful information requires neutrality and willingness to accept the content of the message rather than the act of receiving the message.For example, we schedule an annual doctor appointment and do the requisite blood work, then cringe when the doctor labels us  diabetic and must completely reprogram ourselves, changing eating habits and adding physical activity.  We groan and stop for a doughnut on the way home.  

What is the sense in seeing a doctor if we discard the diagnosis and continue living the way we did before? 

The same applies to spiritual health.  Knowledge is the invitation to spiritual enrichment.  When we dismiss the information we are given, whether the reason is disapproval or doubt, we create blocks in our path that make our journey more arduous.  Taking the information, operating with a new awareness, does two things: 1) it 


teaches  us to trust our intuitive powers, opening gates forr deeper and more meaningful dialogue with Spirit, and 2) it gives us a map to help us navigate the earthly walk.

Messages come in many graduated forms as we delve into the metaphysical world: feeling, hunches, signs, symbols, words, urges, a gnawing sense of knowing.  We just have  to become a willing  vessel to use them wisely.

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