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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.

The Checklist: A Most Unexpectedly Powerful Magical Tool, by Durgadas Allen Duriel

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

Though magic may appear to be about fancy paraphernalia and items collected from hidden places in distant lands, my experience is that some of the most powerful magical items are highly practical and in plain sight in our everyday lives. For example, one of the most potent magical tools I've encountered is found in the personal productivity section of bookstores: a daily checklist. In this context, it's a checklist with areas for tracking my ritual and meditation practice each day, both in terms of whether I completed them and how well I performed them.

I know that even the notion of this may seem extreme to some of you, and I relate. I began practicing magic in childhood, and by the time I had something resembling a formal practice, I was a rebellious, anti-authority teenager. The idea of having a spiritual practice be anything other than spontaneous and self-directed horrified me. At some point though, through a series of synchronistic events, I began an intensive daily Hatha Yoga practice and experienced the benefits of spiritual discipline. Soon after, I initiated into a Hermetic order, where I was also encouraged to have a daily practice, this time of ritual and meditation, and which presented me with the checklist to aid with that.

I don't remember what I thought of the checklist at first, or whether I attributed any significance to it, but as I began checking off my rituals and meditations each day, I felt momentum building around my actions. Once I reached certain critical points, like six months of daily meditation, I was confident that I could maintain and expand my level of practice. Due in no small part to the checklist, I've meditated every day for over 15 years, and I've kept a daily checklist as long, with the contents changing a bit as what I decide to monitor varies.

In most spiritual traditions (as well as in psychology) there is an awareness that when we attempt to make changes in our lives, part of us resists. On the one hand, we're creatures of habit, and altering our status quo will inevitably provoke resistance because of that. Beyond that though, there's also a part of us that fears change because it doesn't know what it can predict from new conditions, especially grand frontier change like what can accompany a daily spiritual practice. This part of us is often called the ego in spiritual traditions, and its number one priority is making sure that we don't veer far from our status quo and comfort zone, even if that comfort zone is decidedly uncomfortable.

As long as we don't stray much from our routines and patterns, we won't tend to encounter much ego resistance, but when we do, it becomes noticeable. Most of us experience this when setting New Year's resolutions and realizing that even something that seems totally healthy, like exercising regularly or eating better, can provoke significant resistance within us. It's actually quite difficult to make sustainable, healthy changes in our lives, even in honor of realizing our dreams, because the ego resists them.

In my new book, The Little Work: Magic to Transform Your Everyday Life, I explore this topic in-depth and provide a host of strategies for dealing with this issue, but fundamental to that process is maintaining our awareness of our behavior. Have you ever had the experience of setting a goal or intention only to blink your eyes and realize months have gone by and you've barely thought of it? That's how sneaky the ego can be when it resists something, but with the magic of a checklist, we never fully lose our awareness of what we intend because we've held space for it in our lives. We see, day after day, if we're doing what we said we would or not.

Another reason the checklist is powerful is that it's an objective form of measure. Though there can be acceptable reasons not to do what we said we would, a pattern of that is a problem, and it's invaluable, especially over time, to see trends in our behavior. Maybe there are certain times of year when when tend to waver in our practice, for example. This holds for tracking our level of focus, too. For instance, maybe we maintain our daily meditation practice, but our level of concentration within it has been lackluster for months. Without a checklist, we may simply move along oblivious to that, or that it's such a trend. Recognizing that I wasn't showing up to my practices with as much attentiveness as I once did was what inspired me to integrate this evaluation process with my checklist, and since doing that, I've consistently practiced with a higher degree of attentiveness.

While keeping a checklist, it's important to mind being realistic with what we intend to do and track, and to be compassionate with ourselves throughout the process of our inner work. The point of this isn't to stare at a blank checklist day after day and feel guilty or ashamed because we haven't done something we know is good for us or want to do. If that's what we keep finding ourselves doing, it usually means we overestimated our capacity and would benefit from scaling back. For example, if a daily ritual and meditation practice is too much for us now, how about a small ritual daily and meditation once a week? In my experience, it's far easier and more sustainable to start small and build than to strain ourselves and falter only to give up completely (which many of us have experienced with New Year's resolutions).

That said, even though we may feel uncomfortable looking at our performance level, it's important to be able to accept the reality of where we are in our practice. When we admit and accept where we are, we can strategize doing something to help ourselves live more in alignment with our intentions. That's unlikely to happen if we allow ourselves to consistently make excuses for not doing what we said we would, and after a certain point, the excuses become flimsy. This is a moment when it can be helpful to remind ourselves why doing what we said we would (in general and in particular) is important to us, ideally in a documented form we can revisit and add to later if need be.

Without the aid of a checklist, I have little doubt that magic and meditation wouldn't have been part of my daily life for over fifteen years. I imagine at some point, perhaps many, I would've come up with reasons not to prioritize my practice, and it would've faded from my awareness only for me to hit the start of a new year and resolve to practice again. Because of persevering with my practice, I can confidently say that I've experienced vistas of consciousness and flowerings of magic that were unknown to me before, some even beyond the scope of what I had imagined was possible for myself.

Since beginning my daily practice, more conventional magical tools have come and gone, and when I think about what has contributed the most to my practice, it's the checklist: the most surprising, ordinary-seeming yet super powerful tool in my kit. I can't recommend it highly enough, and your checklist can be composed of whatever you feel it would be beneficial for you to track.

Here are some ideas:

• Ritual practice
• Meditation practice
• Full and New moon observance
• Tarot readings or other divination readings
• Reading goals
• Health goals

To make a checklist like this, create a document that has a table with the days of the month on the top row, and the items to track in one column on the left. Then, as the month progresses, check off the items as you complete them. Remember to be kind to yourself during this process, and that the purpose of this checklist is to sustain your awareness and help you stay motivated, not to cause you to feel badly about yourself. This is about helping us live in alignment with our intentions, which is one of the most magical things we can do.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2020. All rights reserved.

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.