by karenbanfield on July 18, 2009
1. I am looking forward to your next memoir! Can you tell me when it will be available for purchase? Kim
2. Karen, I enjoyed Wolf Medicine so much and wonder if you have any new books in the works? My reading group also is interested as we found Wolf Medicine really gave us some lively topics to discuss. Thanks! Susan
Thank you for asking ladies.
I’m going to answer these questions together since they both have the same answer. We will begin to assemble a new book for press in September. It should be ready for purchase before Christmas. This book will contain the blog posts from Well Met. We are searching for the perfect title and all ideas are welcome! Please send any thoughts you might have. Maybe we should just call it - Well Met. What do you think?
by karenbanfield on July 18, 2009
Question
Dear Karen,
Do you have any recommendations regarding some ways to help remember dreams? I am trying to keep a dream journal but I can’t hold on to them long enough to write them down.
Thanks so much! Summer
I think it’s amazing how we shift realities every night, and everyone just takes it for granted. We dress for it, and buy comfortable beds to lie on, so our spirits can leave our bodies to dump out the old, learn new things, rest, recover and regenerate. If we don’t do it – we die. Think about it! That’s amazing. You’re saying, I want to remember where I go and what I do. I want to receive guidance from that place so I can have conscious contact, well good for you! If you are longing for it, my guess is that your spirit wants to be more awake in both places.
Dreaming is the veil between realities. If you are strongly focused and centered in this one, dreams seem more distant, and a little harder to catch.
First, make a decision to remember. Tell yourself when you close your eyes, that you want to remember your dreams, but don’t say it to your head. Breathe into your center and leave your request in your heart. Then have paper and pen by your bed, have them open and ready, so you can begin to write as soon as you feel yourself in the territory between sleep and waking. Write anything you have in your mind, write before you are fully awake, catch a feeling, a color, or a vague scene. Don’t judge or censor anything, just spill it out. If you can begin to pull through small pieces, more will follow. It’s like fishing; you get a few nibbles and write those down, then one morning the whole fish shows up.
I’ve read that getting to bed late and being sleep deprived can interfere. I also think alcohol in the evenings can get in the way of remembering. However, I believe that if your spirit wants to speak with you and that’s an acceptable way for you to listen that it will find a way to be heard, no matter what.
I used to fast every January with the intention of inviting the dream spirits, as a kind of vision quest. They will always come when you make that kind of offering. Fasting will take you into that realm rapidly and you’ll have vivid dreams that are full of guidance within days. Happy Fishing!
by karenbanfield on July 17, 2009
Question
Can I order Karen’s material and ship overseas? Thank you.
Rwkrn
I’m letting Linda, my business editor, answer this one:
That is no problem. The distributors; Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Powell’s bookstore and Worldwide Audiobooks can deal with overseas shipping, or you can purchase and ship yourself. Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance.
by karenbanfield on July 17, 2009
Question
I am good about protecting myself from negative energy, get plenty of sleep, eat healthy, meditate – but the past several months I have felt so fatigued. I have been overwhelmed with “not enough time to get things done.”
Can you tell me what I am missing or what I can do to get back on track? Thank you. Kris
The first mental image I have for you comes from the tarot. It’s of a person bent over and looking at the ground because they are carrying such a heavy load, they can no longer straighten up.
I’m seeing that you are in an accelerated period of growth and that change is keeping you off balance. I also get that you have too much responsibility at home and at work. I can’t see your resting place. When you try to take time for yourself your mind spins. I see it spinning at bedtime as well, marking off all that was done and has yet to be accomplished. If you want to replenish your spirit, you’ll need to be away from groups of people and sink into a communion with nature and animals. You’ll need to remove yourself from both home and work for an entire week-end, then walk barefoot, lie in the grass and reconnect to the earth. It’s your earth connection that has weakened. You lost your essence in change and worry. Animals and nature will bring you back if you allow them to. The core of you is a healer, but your healer needs to be healed and replenished. Only you can stop the cycle and care for her.
Try this: Close your eyes and breathe into the core of your body. Imagine yourself as an old Indian woman who has walked the earth in wisdom for lifetimes. See her walking through tall grass, her hair flowing, her robes free. See the civilized world falling away until she is one with the wind, the land and everything around her.
Now go do it. Make time for your version of getting back to your soul essence, and let me know how you make out!
by karenbanfield on July 10, 2009
Hi,
I was wondering if you could help me with my top 2 fears, which are rats & being burned/buried alive. I always tell people rats first, which leads me to believe that I fear this more than anything else. Do you have any insight to why this is?
Thank you,
It’s been my experience that all phobias have their origins in other lifetimes. What you face now are the shadows of something deep inside, a kind of unconscious and deeply felt knowing.
When I look for you, I see that the fear of rats and being burned or buried alive all come from the same experience. I’m tapping into a brutal vision, so I hope you’re ready. I see you living in an overcrowded city with garbage and all kinds of waste lining the streets, while your family is chained inside your house because of a plague that was spread by diseased rats. I see you dying in such a house under a cot. Your parents and siblings die before you do, so the fears of abandonment and what is happening to you emotionally are a greater distress than the disease. This is a very long time ago in history.
Those with money try to escape, while most are kept in the city limits by force. I see rats running over mounds of squalor in the street and just as many inside your house that are sick and have pink raw spots on their backs. When a family has a member who is sick, a chain is placed on the outside of the door, so no one can leave to infect the rest of the city. There are men in striped clothes who unlock the door once a month to see who is living, but most often when entire families are assumed near death, the houses are burned with the families inside. Before you got locked in, I see you following a wagon with bodies on it. You’re very young, maybe 6 years old. You are skipping and smiling, but when you come to a clearing you see skulls piled in small mountains of ash and great swarms of birds circling above.
When we die at a young age, from such trauma, the soul remembers. It makes sense that you would be extremely fear-based today with a strong undercurrent of associations. One of the things that would play out from such a memory is the need to have everything as clean as possible. Cleaning would be an unconscious priority because it would prevent disease, disaster and death. A past life like this leaves an ingrained sense of threat and insecurity. You must work at feeling safe, while many others take it for granted. This memory is still in your bones, the door between worlds still open. Because of that, your mind works like radar, often exaggerating situations and finding threats where others would not.
We also tend to re-create situations in this life that shadow the trauma from another lifetime, so we can heal it. The key is to gain control of thoughts and emotions. A good hypnotherapist can help with this. If you don’t want to seek professional help, here are a few suggestions for helping yourself:
Notice your thoughts. What we focus on and give our energy and attention to becomes bigger. That is a universal law. If you focus on fear, soon more and more bad things are happening to you, as a kind if self-fulfilling prophecy. The more fearful you become the more you attract evidence for your fears. It’s the like-attracts-like principle. If you find yourself dwelling on something awful, thinking about it constantly or giving it too much energy, work to shift your focus away. Easier said than done, I know, but if you concentrate instead on what you DO want to create in life, and do it with all the attention and feeling you can muster, things will begin to shift. Small steps go a long way.
Practice gratitude. Gratitude is medicine for the soul. Even when you can’t stand a situation or a person, concentrate on the qualities that you do like, write them down for yourself and things will begin to change for the better. Think about what is working and what you are grateful for whenever you can. And finally, appreciate what you have lived through and overcome, by being as gentle and loving with yourself as possible.
by karenbanfield on March 27, 2009
Question:
Karen, you talk about energy and I’m wondering how to clear it. Last night I felt such heavy energy surrounding my partner and a difficult client, it permeated everything. I had a restless night thinking and dreaming about it. It’s not any one thing; it’s that they discount him. They don’t pay him the respect of showing up at scheduled meetings or answering emails or phone calls unless it happens to suit them. Makes it pretty hard to do the job they’re paying him to do. If you could give me some ideas about how to clear their heavy energy out of our living space, I would appreciate it.
A couple of things come to mind. First, your partner is allowing the disrespect to take place. I know these are hard economic times and people fear losing work, but the energy you’re picking up is housed in your partners repressed anger and will be until he sets boundaries and insists on respect. That’s tricky because it could mean losing the client.
Your partner is being given an opportunity to grow emotionally by speaking out. It allows the client to see the results of his actions and to choose another path. If there is still no change, it is my opinion that clients like that are best lost. They take up space that more appropriate and respectful clients might occupy. This is his issue and probably an important lesson for him.
Next, it sounds like you have become a sponge for his energy. When you start owning his feelings, stop! That path does not help anyone. Instead, imagine a cord of light that moves from his head straight up to an unseen reality. This point has been called many things. I think of it as the place the over soul resides. The over soul being the connection to a place in us that is wise beyond measure. It is the place that guides our path and reminds us of the truth of who and what we are, separate from this reality. Doing that quietly for another person is saying, I see the God in you, and I see that you can not connect with it right now, so I will help. This leaves you clean and empowered.
Do that anywhere and anytime that folks are psychically asking you to take their pain. No need to say a word, just smile and mentally connect them to their core of spiritual light. It works like a charm.
When there has been a strong unpleasant energy left in the room, I open the windows and move it out. I use a feather and make swirling motions to gather it up, but you could use a dishtowel or anything that is handy and feels right, then send it out an open window. Loud noises will also clear a room. I use a drum followed by a Tibetan bell, but if I didn’t have any of that stuff, I would bang on a pot with a big spoon or use my voice to clear the space. Incense and candles are a nice follow up, because they restore a feeling of peace and harmony after a clearing has taken place.
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