Exchanging a gift for a spiritual service

I have had a few people in the past comment that they don't think I should charge money for the readings I do or the classes I teach.  Believe me, I do understand these thoughts.  There have been times in my past when I deeply needed help from a healer or a psychic, yet that person would not work with me because I didn't have the money.  These situations left a bad taste in my mouth.  I thought, at the time, "How can you have such an amazing gift and not share it with the people who REALLY need it instead of just the people who have money?"

By the way, I do offer my work to people who don't have the money, all they have to do is communicate their financial situation to me.  This takes courage, I know, and that courage is the first step in taking responsibility for oneself.

Over the years, I have witnessed an interesting phenomenon, which is that when a person offers nothing for  a reading or a healing, (money or a gift) then they tend to not take the teaching as seriously.  It seems that receiving a service for free means, to some people, that the result is not as valuable.  Receiving a service for free is a passive experience.  It tends to be like sitting back and watching a movie.  There is not much involvement and little desire to take responsibility for one's own healing and growth.  Whereas offering money or a gift for a service, is taking action.  It is getting directly involved in the result of the reading/healing and letting the Universe know that you are taking matters into your own hands.  In other words: responsibility.

So when you want a service from someone such as a psychic, healers, medicine person and so on, and you don't have the money, then always offer a gift.  Show some respect for that person's knowledge and life experiences.  Consider what that person has gone through in order to receive his or her knowledge.  Consider what it took in order for that person to rise the position of teacher/healer/guide.  Because someone who did not put in the time and effort is not worth the money anyway!

Expecting something for free only cheapens the outcome.  Whereas taking action, taking responsibility and stepping up to the plate honors everyone involved.  Prove that the wisdom and knowledge that comes your way will not go to waste with you.

Introduction to my new book

Dear Friends, please enjoy the introduction to my new book: Dancing with the Dream Deva. Currently it is available at https://www.createspace.com/4203237.  However, in February it will be available on Amazon and Kindle.  

This book deals with some controversial subjects and is suited for open-minded people who enjoy self-exploration and spirituality.

Introduction

“The sun may set on another day

and my life begins as I dream away…”

As I was cleaning out my closet one afternoon, intending to throw away old papers, outdated documents and useless notebooks, I came across my long forgotten dream journals.  I sat down and thumbed through the tattered and yellowing pages surprised to see the span of dates range from sixteen years old to around the age of 35.  After perusing through all five of the journals, I gasped to myself, “Twenty years worth of dreams… Wow!”  Not everyone can boast that.  Naturally, the next step was to read the entries from so long ago, however, my hands trembled.  Old emotions flooded back to me. 

For most of my childhood, I had experienced frightful nightmares and hauntingly eerie dreams.  Now, as a seasoned adult, I noticed a reluctance to re-visit those memories.  I feared the return of those old familiar anxieties.  However, knowing that a closed mind never grows, a blooming curiosity got the best of me.  That evening, I snuggled into bed with my reading lamp on and began pouring through the twenty years worth of dreams.  I was stunned.  The dreams were intense, yes, but also amazingly beautiful!  Not only because the dreams once belonged to an aspect of my youth, but because they expressed a vast and imaginative wisdom of the subconscious mind.  Even the darker and more haunting dreams in my journals were rich with powerful images and creative characters.  At the time of writing the entries, I thought the nightmares had been conjured up by my Dream Self (the Dream Deva) in order to scare and harass me.  I thought she was out to get me.  In fact, I grew up feeling resentment towards my subconscious mind.  I didn’t like her at all!  I viewed the Dream Deva as evil and twisted, something from which to run, from which to hide, and to avoid.  I grew up with anger towards myself.  Eventually that anger settled into ugly daily thoughts about who I am. 

However, twenty years later, I was awestruck to realize the truth.  I realized that the darker dreams from my youth had served a clear and distinct purpose.  They were actually helping me to process pain.  They were, slowly, step by step, moving me towards self acceptance, self love and a profound spiritual identity.  The Dream Deva, or my subconscious mind, was not trying to harm me, she was trying to save me!  I only wish I had enough maturity at the time to have understood the importance of this growth.  However, my subconscious mind understood everything the whole time.

There are countless books available that discuss the meanings and purpose of dreams.  The subject has been studied and researched for thousands of years.  Any indigenous person can tell you that dreams have been regarded as important sacred tools for generations.  Dreams have been known to diagnose illnesses, predict the future and solve large or small daily problems.  In order to begin working with our dreams, some authors and researchers have suggested using a dream dictionary in order to decipher the meaning of symbols in dreams.  This might work well for beginners, however it’s not for everyone.  In the midst of my dream struggles as a teenager, I ran out and bought myself a dream dictionary, a rather good one, yet it didn’t quite work.  This, of course, wasn’t the book’s fault!  I found that reading someone else’s interpretation for an element in one of my dreams didn’t help me deal with the overwhelming emotions and psychological issues that I was dealing with on a subconscious level.  Naively I assumed that by knowing what a symbol meant I would suddenly understand myself better, and this was far from the truth.  Frustration swelled.  Eventually I gave up on the dream dictionary altogether thinking that it was just, “Stupid.”  What I didn’t realize at the time was that I needed a psychologist, or a spiritual teacher, not just a dream dictionary.  I needed serious help sorting myself out, not just a book that told me what a “table” or a “bunny” might have meant in a dream.  The issue was much larger, life sized in fact, and my inner Dream Deva was tapping on my conscious mind trying to get my attention.  

This is the case for everyone.  The Dream Deva wants to let us know that we are not losers or no-bodies.  She wants to help us realize that we are fully-functioning, powerful human beings with the ability to create whole new worlds.  She also wants to helps us process through abuse, fear, anxieties, anger or crippling sadness.  This processing can only happen at night, once we shut away the outside world, lower our defenses and sink deep within the self.

Dreams are the process of self healing at it’s finest.

As an adult, once I found my dream journals again and read through the many entries back to back, I suddenly “got it.”  The value and purpose of the dream world as a whole dawned on me (no pun intended).  And here is the secret: the messages from dreams are not only contained within each individual dream, but strongly come through as a whole package.  The dream journals as a whole are the message, the way individual brush strokes eventually blend together to form a masterpiece painting.  We need to understand ourselves on a larger scale, instead of simply trying to interpret the individual dreams one at a time.  This is one reason why loyally keeping a dream journal is vital for dream exploration.  It is like piecing together your own dream dictionary.  It is self discovery, self exploration, as well as a commitment to the self.  And once this commitment is recognized by the subconscious mind, it will respond.  It will begin to speak more clearly and reveal more wisdom.  The Dream Deva will peek out of the darkness and graciously unwind herself.

Immediately, sitting on my bedroom floor with the journals spread out around me like snowflakes, I knew that I wanted to share my dream journals with as many people as possible.  I wanted to share the healing and the potential.  I saw not only myself, but the entire human race; the wisdom, the humor, the insight, the beauty and the spiritual evolution.  “People need to see this wonderment!”  I thought to myself, “Everyone is this deep and this brilliant!  Everyone has this fertile soil of creativity!” 

What would happen if we all tapped into it?  What would happen if we ceased living on the surface of reality, just for a little while, and glimpsed our Deeper Genius?  What if we soared through our souls like the Great Eagle who flies above the land and sees everything that is hidden from mundane lives?  What else might be buried deep within the subconscious mind of the human race?  Ancient memories?  Past lives?  The knowledge of how to live in harmony with Earth?  Folk medicine?  True love?

I decided to publish my dream journals in order to help people connect with their own depth and creativity, to entertain and to assist people in appreciating the larger part of themselves with love and fascination. 

Other realizations that came to me from my journals were: the language of dreams, the structure of dreams and how to generate uplifting dreams for anyone who might be plagued with nightmares.  I also learned how to program the subconscious mind to answer specific questions.  This and more I will share in Chapter One: Dream Awareness.  After that, Chapter Two: Memories of Jane begins the best entries from my actual dream journals.  At the end of the entries, in Section Three, I offer a brief analysis of each dream so that anyone can benefit from the messages contained within.

#1: What I learned about dreams from my own journals.

#2: Fifteen entries from my dream journals.

#3: Brief analysis’s of each dream from the journal.

The dreams are organized in order of dark themes to light, however they do not have to be read in order.  Perhaps one dream might speak to you more profoundly than another.  Also, some of the subject matters are controversial and might ruffle some feathers.  If intense emotions arise after reading a dream or two, please give yourself time to process.  Work through the emotions and heal any buttons that might have been pushed.  Feeling confused is a sign of transformation.  It indicates that old belief systems are being left behind while the breakthrough realizations have not quite happened yet.  Just keep going and trust that you will understand the messages down the road.

Perhaps your own Dream Deva is trying to awaken.  Perhaps she is inviting you to dance.  Allow your feelings to find her.  She is a kind and gentle soul, with burst of wild energy, wind in her hair and a fearless disposition.  She has the courage to face uncomfortable issues.  In fact, the only thing that seems to irritate her is apathy. 

A Navajo medicine woman named Ellouise once told me that dreams are highly sacred.  She said that dreams should only be shared in a Sacred Space and only with people who will be respectful to the images and messages contained within the dreams.  I’m sure Ellouise would not approve of me sharing my dream journal publicly in the form of this book.  Therefore, I declare this book to be a Sacred Space.  I ask anyone who reads it to be mindful of the messages and knowledge contained within these pages.  Please learn what you can from my dreams, enjoy yourself and use this book as an invitation to dive into your own dream world.  I am willing to bet that your dreams are just as amazing as mine.  I bet they are entertaining, fun, eerie and beautiful.  And I bet they are pointing you in the right direction as long as you pay attention and listen to their messages.

Enjoy dancing with the Dream Deva!

You were born a whole and complete being.

You were born a whole and complete being.  When your parents conceived you, they did not do it with the intention that you would be a failure for your entire life.  They did not intend for you to live in fear, worry, anger or stress.  Perhaps they made mistakes along the way with their parenting.  Perhaps they were not perfect themselves... or, more accurately, they had forgotten that they were born whole, complete and perfect... just like you.

You were born a whole and complete being.  And if you are not experiencing yourself as whole and complete, that is simply because your memory has faded and mis-perceptions got in the way.  You were like the sun shining bright and full, and as you grew up, clouds got in the way of that sunlight.  Those clouds are fears, defense mechanisms, worries, stresses, anger, feeling unloved, under valued and so on.  These clouds started getting in the way at a very young age.  Some of us have more clouds than others.  But that still does not diminish the truth that you were born whole and complete and perfect.

I see that it is possible to begin blowing these clouds away.  Some clouds are thick and seem stuck in place, yet they are not.  Other clouds seem sneaky, intangible and elusive.  Yet they too can be vaporized.  All we have to do is being seeing ourselves for the truth, as whole and complete beings and realize that the clouds do not define who we are.  This is possible.  If we can stop identifying with the clouds and see them for what they are... things that cover up the sun... and begin recognizing our beautiful Inner Light, then we can begin finding freedom.  Once we begin finding freedom, we find that we are able to move forward in life with emotional and mental agility and ease.  We begin to see the Sunlight in other people.  We begin to desire to know other people as the Sun that they are, not as the clouds with which they identify themselves.  We desire to see other people as free... whole and complete.  We call it forth from them.  We bask in their Light instead of wallowing with them inside their thunderstorms.  We share.  We find generosity. 

We begin Living once again...
As the whole and complete beings we are now, and always have been.