KAJAMA.COM NEWSLETTER

February 28 through March 6, 2022

The Pisces new Moon and two planetary sign changes add an interesting tone to the week, bringing out our spiritual as well as innovative sides. Expect the unexpected on Monday and Tuesday as the Moon travels through Aquarius and shifts our focus with new information or last minute changes in plans. Don't fight the blocks or revisions, as they are designed to work in our best interest. Wednesday's Pisces new Moon heralds in a cycle of spiritual rebirth over the next two weeks, revealing the reason for past delays, disappointments or reversals. Think of this as an “aha” phase, where everything will finally begin to make sense! Getting things done is always easier under a fire-sign Moon, so capitalize on Friday and Saturday's Aries Moon to make things happen. We may want to take things easy on Sunday as the Moon moves into Taurus and Venus and Mars enter the electric sign of Aquarius. Venus in Aquarius will inspire us to think outside the box over the next six weeks, while Mars in the same sign could create some unpredictable movement or inspire new paths to follow. Either way, with both these planets in the sign of friendship, we'll have more than enough support and backing to move us forward into a brighter future.

How Did They Do It?
An Excerpt from Someday Is Today by Matthew Dicks

I was running on a treadmill at Bally Total Fitness in West Hartford, Connecticut, back in the spring of 2005 when my life was changed forever. I had just abandoned my third attempt to write a novel — a ridiculous story about a teenage savant and his pet ferret (no joke) — and was finally coming to terms with the reality that I would never become the novelist I had always wanted to be.

As hard as I tried, I just couldn’t write good fiction. I’ll write for magazines, I told myself. Try my hand at a memoir. Maybe write a book on teaching. Wait for the day when a newspaper editor might offer me a weekly column.

I was saddened by the thought that my dream was dead, but I was also ready to move on to something more fruitful and realistic. Forward motion. It made sense.

As I ran, I was listening to Stephen King narrate On Writing, his seminal tome on writing well. King was talking about the early days in his career, when he was writing stories for men’s magazines and getting paid tens and hundreds of dollars at a time.

King was also a teacher, much like myself, earning $6,400 per year. His wife was working for Dunkin’ Donuts. Between their two salaries and their two children, they were barely making ends meet. Living in a double-wide trailer. Unable to afford a phone. Unable to afford medication for their kids. Desperate times for two young parents, both of whom had dreams of publishing novels someday. King wrote:

The problem was the teaching. I liked my coworkers and loved the kids — even the Beavis and Butt-Head types in Living with English could be interesting — but by most Friday afternoons I felt as if I’d spent the week with jumper cables clamped to my brain. If I ever came close to despairing about my future as a writer, it was then. I could see myself thirty years on, wearing the same shabby tweed coats with patches on the elbows, potbelly rolling over my Gap khakis from too much beer. I’d have a cigarette cough from too many packs of Pall Malls, thicker glasses, more dandruff, and in my desk drawer, six or seven unfinished manuscripts which I would take out and tinker with from time to time, usually when drunk. If asked what I did in my spare time, I’d tell people I was writing a book — what else does any self-respecting creative-writing teacher do with his or her spare time? And of course I’d lie to myself, telling myself there was still time, it wasn’t too late, there were novelists who didn’t get started until they were fifty, hell, even sixty. Probably plenty of them.
I slowed my pace as King read that passage aloud. By the time he had reached the end, I’d come to a complete stop. I couldn’t believe it. Stephen King was talking about me. Talking to me. Absent the alcohol and cigarettes, I was coming perilously close to despairing about my future as a writer, too.
Like King, I was giving up.

Around that time of despair, King tossed his unfinished manuscript of Carrie into the trash, finding the story to be full of unfillable holes. He gave up on the story. Decided to move on to something else. But King’s wife Tabitha removed the pages from the trash bin, read them, and told King to keep writing. She liked it. She saw potential where her husband had seen nothing but holes.

When he finally finished writing the book, it was the fourth novel he had completed. His previous three novels — Rage, The Long Walk, and The Running Man — would all eventually be published. But Carrie was the first. It represented his first big break.

King received a call from his wife one day while teaching at school, informing him that Doubleday had made an offer on Carrie : $2,500. Not a lot even by 1970s standards, but a publishing contract nonetheless. A much-needed break.

The paperback rights for Carrie would later sell to Signet for $400,000. A lot of money by any standard.

Listening to King talk about his journey, something shifted inside me. Standing on a treadmill in a Bally Total Fitness that no longer exists today, my life had changed in an instant. I suddenly saw a path to making my dreams come true. Someone not unlike me — a teacher with the dream of publishing a novel but despairing about his writing career — had found an unlikely path to success.

If Stephen King, formerly of a double-wide, telephone-free trailer, could do it, so could I. All I needed to do was keep writing. So I did. The path to my first novel was a circuitous one. It included two more false starts and nearly a year of writing Dungeons & Dragons adventures at the behest of my friend Shep, who perhaps recognized my need for an audience.

But almost exactly two years after that moment on the treadmill, in the spring of 2008, I received my life-changing phone call, also while teaching at school. It wasn’t my wife who was calling — she was teaching in a classroom two doors down the hallway — but my literary agent, telling me that Doubleday had made an offer on my first novel, Something Missing. More than $2,500, too. Enough to pay off our wedding debts and put a down payment on a house.

Crazy, right?

Stephen King and Matthew Dicks, both at school, both in the midst of teaching careers, when a phone call changed our lives. Both with offers from Doubleday.

Thank goodness Stephen King wrote On Writing. I found it just when I needed it.

Matthew Dicks is the author of Someday Is Today and nine other books. A bestselling novelist, nationally recognized storyteller, and award-winning elementary schoolteacher, he teaches storytelling and communications at universities, corporate workplaces, and community organizations. Dicks has won multiple Moth GrandSLAM story competitions and, together with his wife, created the organization Speak Up to help others share their stories. Visit him online at www.MatthewDicks.com.

Excerpted from the book from Someday Is Today: 22 Simple, Actionable Ways to Propel Your Creative Life. Copyright ©2022 by Matthew Dicks. Printed with permission from New World Library.

I met my best friend about eight years ago, and we have developed an extraordinarily close friendship. Many people say we're more like lovers than friends, though we're both straight, and our relationship is platonic. Here's the weird part: Everyone thinks we're sisters. We look incredibly alike; have the same build, etc. We work out together, and we're practically identical in terms of our strength, endurance, etc. When I'm out with her and her sister, everyone thinks that I am her sister, as opposed to recognizing that her real sister is the one who is related. One day it just hit me: we must have been twins in a past life! What do you think? Wouldn't twins from past lives seek each other out in future lives? How does the whole twin thing work anyway? Do twins plan to be twins before they incarnate?
- Jill

Susyn:

Reincarnation is a fascinating subject, the study of which is relatively young. As time goes on, we learn more and more about the relationships we have formed throughout the ages and the various forms they can take. For example, because people can incarnate as any gender and in all sorts of different relationship configurations, it's not uncommon to find that we've been married to, parented by, or even been parents to someone who seems to have no connection to us in this lifetime.

It seems that the more we discover about reincarnation, the more questions arise. Now that we have a few centuries of photos and historical documents to compare notes with along with video tape, we've entered an exciting age in which we can actually validate some of our past life memories!

People who are lucky enough to discover pictures or other visual evidence of a past life often notice an uncanny resemblance to themselves, meaning the photographs from the past life look remarkably similar to how they look today. Because you and your friend have similar physical features and are often mistaken for sisters, it could very well be that you were sisters or even twins in a past life.

People tend to reincarnate into the same family groups. When they don't, eventually the universe guides them to reconnect with important people with whom they shared past lives. As per their destiny, they are always being moved toward the souls they are most deeply connected to on a soul level, so it would be no surprise for women who were twin sisters in a past life to meet in this life and form an immediate bond.

Some believe that before we are born, we make certain choices about the family we will become a part of, the friends we'll make, and the kinds of experiences we'll need to have that lifetime. Odds are good that both you and your friend agreed to meet up again in this lifetime when the conditions were right for you to do so.

Biologically, identical twins share the same egg and genes, while fraternal twins are two separate eggs that share a womb. In both cases, the bond between twins is incredibly strong. They tend to share a deep understanding that others can't fathom. The fact that you feel so close to your friend strongly suggests that you two were indeed twins in a past life.

In my view, reincarnation has no limits, so the answer to each of your questions is YES: all of these things are possible. I encourage you and your friend to get a past-life reading to learn more. Kajama has many gifted psychics who can help you uncover the spiritual foundation of your extraordinary bond.

*****

Oceania:

Your question on the significance of multiple births from the perspective of reincarnation is fascinating. Since this isn't my area of expertise, however, I'm going to look at your situation from a psychological perspective. It is well-documented that we're drawn to what is familiar, which means you and your friend may have gravitated towards one another in the first place because you looked alike, and stayed for eight years because you ARE alike.

You may be kindred spirits (people who share the same values) or you may be soulmates (people who share a path for some period and serve as catalysts for one another's spiritual growth). Your sense that the two of you were twins suggests you long for a sense of acceptance and familial connection that you may not have experienced earlier in your life.

It's worth examining whether either of you has a life partner. Extraordinarily close friendships can create tension at home. People sometimes cope with unhappy marriages by pouring time and energy into friendships that meet their emotional needs. While this approach serves to distract or fill in the gaps, it neglects to address underlying problems.

If neither of you is coupled, you might explore whether your close friendship prevents you from dating and finding a love match. Sometimes people hide out from relationships in friendship. It's easy to love someone exactly like you because there's little cause for conflict. Nevertheless, most of our growth comes from interactions with those who are NOT like us. Differences create challenges that require us to stretch beyond our comfort zones and expand our points of view.

I have a client in her thirties who has been best friends with a man since they were in high school together. While he is content in their friendship, she keeps hoping they'll become more. Only recently did she realize that her investment in the friendship prevents her from finding a man who could not only be her friend but also her lover, husband and the father of her children.

A final consideration is whether either of you suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder, which is characterized by intensely close relationships. These passionate love/hate connections tend to fluctuate between dramatic breakups and inevitable reunions.

Whatever the reason for the closeness you share, your friendship is a treasure. It either provides you with a safe haven of love and support that will enable you to meet life's challenges, or it's going push you to examine yourself and change so that you're less like your friend and more like your true self.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.