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December 2 through December 8, 2024

The first three days of the week are ruled by a Capricorn Moon, meaning high work demands and a race to complete projects that are time-sensitive. There could be unexpected interference as we try to power through these days, so patience and flexibility will be a must if we’re going to get what we want completed. Thursday and Friday an Aquarius Moon will shift the energy, lightening the mood and putting us in a more free-flowing stance. Mars will turn retrograde on Friday, something it only does every two years, which, combined with the current Mercury retrograde, could create some "do-overs" over the next few weeks. Mars will remain retrograde until the end of February, so get used to the idea of having to shift your movements or revise your plans on a weekly basis until it clears. Neptune will resume forward motion on Saturday after five months of backward travel, followed by Venus moving into the electric sign of Aquarius for a few weeks. Luckily this weekend’s Pisces Moon will keep us focused on the higher purpose and spiritual gifts these planetary shifts are sure to bring our way in the coming months.

Applied Meditation: How to Make Changes in Your Everyday Life with Meditation, by A. Paul Miller, PhD

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

Do you meditate? Or, do you wonder why people bother with meditation? After all, most of us are not concerned with reaching some higher plane of existence or gaining some "special powers." We have relationships to maintain, jobs to perform, and bills to pay. Meditation does provide us with some tranquil time, but we still have to function in this world—and cannot, therefore, go floating around in some "la-la" frame of mind. So, what does meditation really provide us? What if, we are able to not only reach our personal meditative goals, but also see the growth and change that is actively occurring?

If I, personally, were to have a personal growth goal, it would be about connecting with more peace and fulfillment in my life. So, how do I achieve that? How can my meditative practice help me to get them pragmatically? I want to be able to do it in a targeted way and not just left to the winds of fate...but how?

It seems like, even after thousands of years of teachings by enlightened beings, we are still living at the whim of our internal baggage. I wanted a practical, accessible meditation technique that worked within my daily life, and that did not entail spending extended time in a forest or ashram—but how? These where the questions I asked myself as I set about trying to create a method for finding more peace and fulfillment in my life—which, once developed, I called Applied Meditation.

What is Applied Meditation? I mean actively using our meditative practice to make pragmatic, trackable changes in our lives, rather than only passively by just doing the practice of meditation.

Many years ago I was in a very difficult place in my life. I had just been laid off from my engineering job, and needed to get my stress levels back down to a normal level. (The fact that I even had these thoughts about stress levels is a damning statement about how we are living our lives today.) I had heard that meditation was a way to lower stress levels, so I started my quest to learn how to do it.

Never quite sure what a successful meditation was supposed to "feel" like, I tried several techniques to experience that "magic feeling" that everybody seems to talk about. The problem was that I had no idea what I was supposed to be feeling. Was it "floaty?" Present (whatever that is supposed to feel like)? Peaceful? Calm? Still (which, for the life of me, I had no idea what was supposed to feel like)? So I went back to the basics, to find a practice that held my attention enough that my mind did not keep wandering off. In this case it was focusing on a candle flame. After trying this for a couple of weeks I noticed that I felt very different inside after meditating. I wanted to understand what it was that I was feeling, so I sat down and asked myself how would I describe how I feel inside to someone else. By asking myself that question it helped me to get a more tangible connection to the feelings. I avoided words like "good," "nice," "better," and "relaxed," as they were too generic and could easily apply to how I felt with a tub of ice cream or a bar of chocolate. After experiencing the feelings over several practices I concluded that I felt peaceful, calm, and...there was another feeling, what was it? My mind was not racing; in fact, it felt like someone had just pushed the pause button on it. I asked myself, how does my mind feel? What does "pause" feel like? As I sat there trying to pick a word to describe the feeling, it suddenly hit me—still! Wow, this is what stillness felt like! I then wondered, had I just succeeded in meditating "correctly?" I thought about it for a bit, and then decided that it did not matter—the point was that I felt as though I was in a much better place with my feelings. I wanted a catchy phrase to describe these feelings so that in my journal I could refer to them without having to keep writing out all three descriptions. I thought about it for a few days and came up the phrase, "the Meditative Feeling." (Yes, that was as good a description as any, I thought.)

So, I now had a technique that helped me to create this new "space" inside myself where I was more at peace with myself and the world around me. However, I noticed that after a short time I went back into my old, discordant mode of how I thought, behaved, and felt. At this point I wondered, what was the point of meditating? Sure, I felt good while I was doing it, but it only lasted for a short time. So what was the point of it all? Then, the logical, engineering part of me came to the fore. I thought to myself, what if I were to treat the Meditative Feeling as a platform for change? I knew that while I was experiencing the Meditative Feeling my perceptions of myself and the world were less judgmental, and that I felt more resilient against the chaotic, tidal flow of the world around me. There must be a way that I can use this feeling to make active, tangible changes in my life rather than the passive ones that would come from just doing the practice of meditation.

There had to be a way that I could use this Meditative Feeling. I just had to sit down, contemplate a bit, and logically figure it out. These became my first few steps into the development of the Applied Meditation process.

The first consideration was how to maintain the feeling—that is, the Meditative Feeling—outside of the practice. If not, all I'd be doing was trying to change but doing so with my old discordant thoughts and feelings, which would feel the same as trying to push wet spaghetti up a hill. So, I needed a place and time when I was not having to rush to do anything after the practice. I decided that mediating on a morning at home was a good starting point. I would practice for ten minutes, first thing, and then get on with the rest of my day. I did not need any longer, as I could create the Meditative Feeling within that time. However, if I wanted to stay longer with the feeling, I would just stay there and enjoy it, but the primary goal was to simply create it. I made it into a game. Do my practice and then get ready for work or do a few odd jobs around the apartment, checking in with myself to see if I still felt the Meditative Feeling. In the beginning it would only be for a few minutes. I would write this down in my journal, and over a period of several weeks, noticed I was holding the feeling for almost ninety minutes. This was fun!

It was all well and good holding the feeling while in the comfort of my apartment, but I needed to be able to hold it when the world was getting in my face, whether that was on a busy freeway or some place else. I called this aspect "building my resilience" of the Meditative Feeling. I now had three stages to develop with respect to my meditation practice: Create, Hold, and Build. Create the meditative feeling, hold it outside of the practice, and build its resilience to the outside world.

My next step was to figure out how to build up the resilience without falling flat on my face all the time and getting disillusioned. The solution came to me by accident. I went into a shop that just had negative energy in it. I did not realize at the time, since I had been so used to going there that the feeling of negative energy was "normal" for me. On this particular occasion I had just meditated and was in my Meditative Feeling when I went in, and after only a few moments I felt that the Meditative Feeling had been knocked out of me. Initially I was a bit put out that it had happened, but then suddenly, in a moment of inspiration, I realized that I could use this place as a training ground to build up the resilience of my Meditative Feeling. I would meditate, go into the place, and then start to time how long it took for the Meditative Feeling to dissipate. I would consciously try to hold on to it by checking that the feeling was still there. It became a new game. After a few weeks I was up to thirty minutes, and then an hour, and then, very quickly, the entire time that I spent there.

After discovering how to build up the resilience I then wanted to try it out on other situations in my life. I needed to decide how to take baby steps with this technique. I knew that if I tried to hold the feeling in a very challenging place or situation that I would fail and get discouraged. I had to look at all the places and situations that would occur and order them from high to low. The lowest few I started to call, "the low-hanging fruit." I then split up the remaining challenges into "medium" and "high" fruits. I then worked on holding the Meditative Feeling for about three of the low fruits. The amazing thing was that, not only did the feeling change how I perceived these situations, it also altered how I behaved in them (and, as a consequence, how any other involved people behaved). It was almost like magic. In keeping my inner peace, I felt as though, while I was a part of it, life it was flowing around me and instead of knocking me around.

One trick I used in helping me to be specific with clarifying my goals for change was the acronym I had used in my time in corporate America, which was SMART. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. Using that as my guide, I could pragmatically set goals for changes in my life and see them happening. It was amazing. Here is an example of how might work. Suppose I get angry during my daily commute to and from work, with all the traffic on the roads, and since I am always, while behind my own wheel, giving other drivers "advice" (which they will never hear) on how they can improve their driving. (I'm confident I'm not alone in this habit.) My SMART goals would be:

Specific: Not to vocalise my advice at least twice during the ten times I am commuting (I might still get angry, so let's take it in baby steps).
Measurable: This would be measured by whether I opened my mouth to comment on other drivers.
Achievable: Yes, I am capable of doing this. It is not beyond my ability, unlike, say, becoming an astronaut by next week.
Realistic: It is realistic to achieve the goal within the time that I have allocated.
Timely: I am going to give myself five days to achieve this goal: Monday to Friday.

I realized that, after a few weeks, using my meditative practice to make trackable changes in my life was working. As previously noted, I decided to call this practice Applied Meditation. Why Applied Meditation? I studied physics while in college; while there, I had classes in both Pure and Applied Mathematics, with Applied Mathematics being more related to everyday applications. Therefore, in a similar naming fashion, Applied Meditation would be more closely related to our everyday activities.

So, how can you, too, turn meditation into something that can help you make changes in your everyday life? Start by finding a meditation practice that easily (you should be able to create it with five minutes on an average day) creates the feelings of peace, calm, and stillness within you. While in a safe place (one where you are not being distracted by having to talk or listening to others), keeping checking in with yourself on whether you are still feeling those feelings and have fun tracking, perhaps in a journal, how long you can hold the feelings. Watch as the time increases from week to week. While you are doing this, create a list of your low, medium, and high "fruits." I'd recommend not trying to tackle any of the "fruits" until you are able to hold the Meditative Feeling for about a couple of hours. You need to prove to yourself that you can hold it outside of the practice for that long.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2019. All rights reserved.

Last April, my best friend passed from health problems dating back to childhood. I often have dreams about him, and in them he tells me about times when he was standing next to me throughout my life. This last dream hurt me deeply. In the dream, we were in a desert-like area. It was very dark with muted colors and dry air. Everyone there had no face and strange mannerisms. Joe (my friend who passed) ran up to me and we hugged and I cried harder than I ever have in a dream before. We embraced for a long time and he told me things that made me feel good. He then said he had to go, and left in quite a hurry. He tried to contact me later in the dream through my cell phone, but the call came up scrambled letters and numbers, and when I heard his voice, it was distant and soft. He said he was in a place that was dark and he was lying down and couldn't get up. I didn't understand. I tried looking for him and I couldn't find him. Someone came to me (looking back, I think it was my spirit guide) and told me Joe had tried to escape to come and see me but he was pulled back. I was even shown the escape route he tried to use and what had malfunctioned. I usually feel him with me and near me at all times. Since this dream, I worry and fear he's not with me, that his soul is lost in some other dimension. Was this dream real?

Tara

Astrea:

The dream was both a dream and real to you at the time. While parts of it come from your own fear and confusion, some of the elements in the dream you had about Joe are true reflections of where he is and what he's doing. Your friend's soul is resting, but he is not lost.

Unless the circumstances are too much for the living people left behind to tolerate, Souls who have passed over may take one to five years to be able to return. Some never return. Some occasionally come into dreams that haunt us, as I am sure that dream haunts you. Often, our loved ones bring us messages from our Guides or feelings from Beyond. As time goes by, our dreams of these departed souls tend to become more positive, and communication tends to grow easier and easier.

Often a soul will appear in a desert-like place if it is troubled, isn't aware of its death, or fought death in order to protect others. A sense of dryness is the overall feeling most people get from dreams of this nature. Souls who appear in this desert-like place in dreams are on temporary furlough from reviewing their last life and discovering where they will choose to spend their next incarnation, whether it's Celestial or Earthly.

This place of faceless people interacting with departed souls is a common area. Not being able to see their faces is naturally disconcerting, as is the desert-like landscape of the dream. Your friend was trying to tell you that he isn't happy with his current soul state of death.

This is not uncommon. Many of us respond with our own fear and confusion at the point of death because for some reason, we feel we don't deserve paradise. Each one of us takes our own time to discover that we do.

The dark place you see means he is resting. It's not dark so much as it is pleasantly cool and without any light to bother the Soul in Transition. Your friend is seeing his incarnation and maybe other incarnations as well, in sort of a movie format. The so-called escape reflects his desire to avoid this whole process. Facing everything is difficult but it must be done before he can move on.

Finally, your best friend is always with you as long as you need him to be. I call on mine less frequently these days, as it's been quite a few years since they left the Earth Plane. I think things get better with time. Everyone tells me so.

Always try to see the positive in your dreams of him. He's fine. You'll be able to see him in a happy place again very soon.

*****

Susyn:

Dreams can hold many subconscious messages and are also known for their ability to address our deepest fears. When we have dreams that are haunting or disturbing, our minds are trying to release what we fear most.

Though your friend has crossed over, you have the rare ability to talk and spend time with him just as you did when he was alive. This is a wonderful gift! Because it can seem ethereal given the fact that you both reside in different realms, it is natural for you to fear that it will cease. This fear is compounded by the fact that you did lose him in his physical form when he passed away from health problems.

This dream had you reliving this loss in a more spiritual way. Not only did it reveal just how close the two of you are, you were shown the escape route he tried to use and told that he was held back. The message that he was in a dark place, lying down and could not get up, may have signified his physical burial, which was for you like reliving the first time you lost each other.

There is no need to worry that he is lost or not with you. When we are used to feeling a loved oneís spirit near us and then it stops, we are usually the ones blocking it via fear or misunderstanding. He remains near you and all you need to do to reconnect is relax and trust that this dream was only a subconscious replay in symbolic form of the physical connection that was lost to you.

Although it is true that you both reside in different realms, your dreams will contain images that are familiar to you, while what he experiences may be very different. The description of the place you reunited with each other - an arid, desert-like wasteland with muted colors and vague faces - simply represents the ethereal nature of the world he now resides in as your mind understands it.

The fact that he could call you on your cell phone but you could not return the call because of the garbled numbers speaks to the fact that it is easier for him to contact you than for you to contact him.

Keep in mind that as you both evolve in this new realm, your friend will discover a variety of ways to let you know he is near. Some spirits use scents, animals and sounds as signals, depending on their level of mastery of the spirit world.

When you do feel disconnected from him, you need only look within to see what fears or concerns may be blocking you. Once you relax, your awareness will return, and youíll be able to sense his presence again.

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.