Balancing - Chakras and Life - It's a Challenge

I hope all of you had a good weekend. We started our day out with hockey, then moved over to football for the remainder of the day. I slept in late, getting almost 11 hours of sleep, so I'm caught up for a few days - a very good thing. I also went to bed early last night. So, of course, I also awakened early. That gave me a rare opportunity for a week day - I was able to take an hour for my morning meditation. It was delightful to work with two of my favorite trainers and expand my horizons a bit more. I feel very balanced now - LOL (at least my chakras certainly are). 

I enjoy my morning meditation and try to get at 
least 15 minutes in every morning. Today was a 
treat. Because I awakened so early, I allowed myself 
to do almost a full hour of meditation. I'm feeling 
very grounded and quite happy. 

I've been working on my Christmas gifts list for DH. I know I won't get half of what I put down, but I'm willing to dream a bit. We're working most days until Christmas, now that Thanksgiving is over, and I'll take any opportunity to relax that I might have available. to me. I'm trying hard to find the perfect gift for Sharon. I know I'll find it eventually, but I haven't located it yet, so I need to increase my efforts. 

I came across this grown-up Christmas List. 
I must admit, I totally agree with the 
sentiments. I hope it comes across large enough 
to allow you to read it too. 

I did finish gluing the interiors of my cards together yesterday. I hope to finish the interior of the actual fold-over card this morning, but it is a swimming day, and that means I have a bit less time to work on things at the shop than I would on a non-swimming day. But it's a swimming day, and that's always a glorious thing - so no real complaints here. 

Swimming days are hard exercise, but absolutely lovely 
days. I adore the pool, and it's so wonderful to be back 
in the water again. I missed it horribly while Covid 
kept all of us home-bound. 

I'll start printing out the envelopes this week during my evenings. I use my home printer for those. I'm also making a few decisions that will allow me a bit more speed. It's almost December and some design sacrifices must be made because I got such a late start on my Holiday Cards this year. Ideally, I'd love for them to be mailed by the end of the week. Realistically, it's going to be next week sometime. It's good to have goals, but reality does tend to stick it's foot into the door of idealism. LOL

I tend to be a bit heavy on the Idealism 
side. DH tends to be heavy on the 
Realism side. It makes us a good team, 
but also means we butt heads often. 

Have an excellent Monday. I'm going to play Drowning Guppy for an hour and then hit the ground running. I'll be back tomorrow. 

It Was a Good Weekend and Thoughts About the Third Eye

We had a lovely, relaxed Sunday watching football and doing a bit of gardening late in the afternoon when the sunshine was making the yard golden and the trees ablaze in a glory of golden and red. DH had asked me to please wear a wig for most of the day, so I chose my long wig and wore it until I went to Chipotle after 5:00 pm to pick up dinner (which of course took more that 45 minutes, even though there were less than eight people in line ahead of me. Fast food? NOT). 

Chipotle's Smoked Brisket in a burrito bowl (or a salad, 
as I usually have it) is a winner for both DH and I. We 
love it. It's a bit more money, but it's very tasty. I highly 
recommend it. Waiting in line to actually get it, however, 
in today's job shortage world? Not so much! 

I wanted to share something with all of you that I forgot to share last week. When I saw the allergist, he noticed my tattoo, but make a rather unusual observation - one I had not heard  before but loved. He stated that he loved the exact positioning of the Eye of Ra inside the rising sun atop my head. He said the Eye of Ra is often correlated with the pineal gland, the gland that is responsible for discerning light and dark and the gland that is sometimes referred to as the Third Eye. 

The Eye of Horus and the shape of the pineal gland in 
the base of the skull have remarkable similarities. 
If the Eye of Horus is based upon the pineal gland, then 
it pushes knowledge of the brain back into far 
prehistory. Of course, the Third Eye has been acknowledged 
in "mystical" and in Eastern societies, religions and 
basic beliefs for centuries. Maybe it's worth a thought? 

In the Chakras, the Third Eye is a center of wisdom and higher consciousness and is associated with the color of purple. Often people will work with amethyst crystals to help awaken the third eye. After all, we could all use a bit of wisdom, consciousness and higher awareness, as well as intuition and inner vision. 

It's really easy to confuse the 6th Chakra and 
the 7th Chakra when working with color. The 
Sixth, the Third Eye, is Amethyst. The 
Seventh, the Crown, is Violet. They are close 
in hue, but they work in very different ways. 

He said that if you split the brain exactly in half, the pineal gland would be at the base of the brain and the appearance is often likened to the image of the Eye of Horus. I found that fascinating, so had to look it up (of course). Looking at various photographs and depictions, I can understand where the correlation can be made. There is indeed a remarkable similarity to the Eye of Horus and the pineal gland. 

Third Eye illustrations are everywhere. Start by looking 
at the back of the $1 bill. Yes ... that pyramid has the 
all-seeing eye - the third eye. Are you interested in 
trying to activate your third eye? Sadhguru has advice 
on two ways to open the third eye in a you-tube 
video here. It's less than 10 minutes, so might be worth 
your while watching. I'll put a separate link in just 
to make sure it comes through. 
https://youtu.be/b1AiG1a8ft0

I thought that was interesting and wanted to share with all of you. Since I forgot to share last week, my crazy Monday ended up being the "chosen" day - LOL. Have an excellent day, I'm off to the pool to see if I can improve my distance at all. I might also try a set of nose plugs for my turns, since  getting water up my nose is one of my major negatives about twist turns. Anyway, enough rambling. I'll be back tomorrow. 

A Few Scarabs to Share, and Thoughts About Hockey - No Horses Left

Las Vegas won big in last night's hockey game, sending my Colorado Avalanche team back to the mountains without a win. Vegas goes on to the Quarter Finals in the Stanley Cup, and I no longer have any horses in this race. The schedule hasn't been posted yet, but it'll be the Montreal Canadians, Las Vegas Golden Knights, Tampa Bay Lightning and the New York Islanders vying for the Cup. It should be entertaining hockey - there are some good teams playing, and lots of body slamming and fast skating awaits. 

I'm totally in love with this bronze scarab. It's 
ancient - from the Bronze Age, and was found 
buried in an ancient marketplace in Jerusalem. 
It looks as freshly designed as any modern 
graphic, but it actually dates from 3300 to 
1200 BCE (Before Common Era). Really old 
and incredibly beautiful. 

I sent Rodney (my tattoo artist) a long email with a lot of images last night, following up with one more thought that occurred to me early this morning while I was doing my daily meditation. I thought I'd share some of the images I sent to him with you today. The numbers on each of the panels were added by me so that I could easily identify each image for him in my email. 

Of course, I also felt I should include an ancient 
bas relief sculpture from ancient Egypt in the 
grouping of images I sent to him. This one was 
beautifully detailed and in extremely good 
condition. Just stunning. 

I really liked this, although I don't want a color piece and 
I don't like the faceted gem instead of the sun disk. Still, 
it's quite lovely and well done, I liked the gleam on the 
head of the scarab, and the legs were magnificent. 

I also included this, although it was a 
drawing, not a tattoo. There were things 
about the image that I loved, and things 
that I hated, but I also sent it along for 
the text.

The text reads: "Scarab - As you roll the sun from East to West across the sky, promising rebirth with each dawn. As you emerge from waste, discover your wings. And fly away towards your true existence, as your hard shell protects you from harm. Scarab, guide me in the eternal cycles of death and resurrection. As I find my way and my wings and my strength and fly forward. Like the sun rolling across the sky." 

Not the best grammar, and punctuation was a problem with this, but I enjoyed the sentiment, and I enjoyed the image. Anyway, I sent Rod 11 pictures, describing what I liked and didn't like about each one of them. I'm looking for black and shading for 90+% of the image, with a little bit of color in the body of the beetle and in the sun disk it carries. I emailed him an addendum this morning, asking for the sun disk to shade from a red center to a violet rim to honor the Crown chakra, where it will be placed. A bit of "whoo whoo", I know, but hey ... it's MY "whoo whoo" - LOL. 

So, I'm out of here. It's going to be a busy day for a "day off", and I've got yet another scorcher in store. The weather, which was expected to have backed off from our temps, is only getting worse and worse instead, and we're sweltering here. Yesterday we topped 100 degrees F, and for early June, that's almost unheard of. If this is June, I dread what July has in store. Have a wonderful day and I'll be back tomorrow. As always, please be kind and stay safe. 

Self Improvement is Hard Work - Or A Lot of Classes

I'm approaching the end of my WildFit class, and ready to start my life Living WildFit. Many of the "Tribe", along with me, have set up a separate Facebook account so that we can keep in touch with each other and support each other past the 90 days of the program. We've established friendships through our weekly Zoom calls, and many posts. We've shared recipes, success stories and the occasional failure (lessons learned) or experiments. Having that secondary group is going to make leaving the active group much easier to do. We have a safety net - something that I'm not sure any other group going through the WildFit program has ever had before. I have a strong Tribe. 

WildFit wasn't my first Mind Valley program. I've been taking 
"Be Extraordinary" for a while, but put it on hold while 
dealing with WildFit because WF is extremely time 
consuming and intensive. I'll pick BE back up again at 
some point. There was a lot of great stuff in that course. 

It's going to be a bit scary - leaving the structured program after tomorrow's video lesson and Zoom call and striding out into the big wide world of food choices without immediate answers and guidance from a Coach. Several members of our group are planning to move on and learn how to be Coaches. Although I've been encouraged to do the training, so far I'm content to not pick up a new career at this point. I want to retire and actually play with my art. I've had imagery and design pieces coming through to my inner eye and I want to fire up my kiln, pull out my copper, and start working with enamels and gemstones again. 

I've been enjoying "The M Word" and actually 
think it will go far in helping me with my 
meditation practice. I love starting my days 
out with meditation. I'd always wanted to 
do that, but real life got in the way. Real 
life tends to be sleeping at 3:30 am when 
I settle down to meditate, so I'm actually 
successful for a change. 

Because I am focusing on self-improvement, I decided to broaden my scope of a few other side-tracks at the same time. I've been meditating every morning since the early part of the year, usually for at least 30 minutes at a time, often for longer. I've been using a method called "guided" meditation, where I'm listening to a particular teacher guide me through a series of thought processes to shape that day's meditation. There are some teachers I really like, others that I'm not as fond of, and one that I liked so much I chased him through several apps to find a spot where he had uploaded more than 40 of his meditations to work with. 

I've also started working with "Chakra Healing". The workbook 
she has made available to all of us is more than 100 pages of 
pdf. Since I like to actually look at pages for reference, that's 
a lot of pages to print. The printer is up to the task, but I'm 
almost out of paper. So ... guess I'll hit Target on Friday and 
get some more printer paper. 

But I want to fine-tune my meditation. I know it can be a tremendous tool for self-awareness and universal rhythms and intensities. I decided to take the course on Meditation from Mind Valley, and while I was at it, I also decided to enroll in a course on healing my chakras. It seems to me that the two programs will work quite well together. When I combine these with the "Energy Medicine" class I started a few weeks ago, I should be in great shape - physically and mentally - by the time I get done with all of this. At least that's my goal. We'll see how successful I really am. 

I'm behind on my "Energy Medicine" class. There's a lot 
to learn here, and I haven't given it the time it deserves. 
The beauty of a Mind Valley class, however, is that you have 
full access to your classes for as long as you're a member, 
so the individual lessons, which are on-line anyway, are 
mine to watch in my own time. I need to truly understand 
meridians, how energies flow through the body, and how 
best to help them along. 

It's like I'm housecleaning my body and soul. Something that probably badly needed doing (we won't talk about the physical housecleaning that also needs to be done - LOL). I'm excited about the possibilities opening up, and the fact that my creative side seems to finally be waking up once again. Now I need to start aligning things, get the rest of my weight off, and begin the next phase of my life. It's looking like it'll be a lot of fun, and I'm certainly enjoying my Mind Valley membership. On that note, I'm out of here. Have an excellent day, be kind and stay safe. I'll be back tomorrow. 

It Was A Video Weekend - LOTRO During the Day, Avengers at Night

I hope all of you had a wonderful weekend. DH and I spent a lazy Sunday playing Lord of the Rings Online for hours. He's been working on my character, trying to get her weapons improved and her skills improved, and I'm totally in favor of his help. The evening was spent watching "Avengers: Infinity War" and "Avengers: Endgame". Of course, I still missed the final hour of "Endgame" since it is a four hour movie and I go to sleep at 9:00 pm. But, it was entertaining and a lot of fun, as most of the Marvel movies are. 

I've only seen "Avengers: Endgame" through to the end twice, 
although I've caught the end on its own a couple of 
times and watched the beginning and middle several other 
times. The problem with a four-hour movie (or slightly over 
three hours without commercials) is getting the time booked out. 

This morning started out with a bang. My alarm went off, I picked a guided meditation and immersed myself for 30 minutes of chakra balancing (always love working with the chakras). I then did a couple of quick chores in the kitchen before changing into my workout gear for my 1-75 miles on the treadmill. Thank goodness I'm listening to a book I love, it's hard to get enthusiastic about the treadmill without a good book loaded into my iPod. 

Some guided meditations have me working from the sacral 
chakra up through the crown chakra. Today's guided 
meditation took the opposite approach, starting with 
opening the crown chakra and allowing that light 
to illuminate the remainder of the charkas, working 
from top down. A slightly different approach, but 
equally effective. 

I suspect today will be OK - a bit slow, since we're into Spring now and many of my customers have their gardens on their minds instead of their beadwork. I haven't checked to see if we'll have rain today. If we do, we'll have very few customers while the rain is falling. For some reason, up here in the Frozen Northlands, people will come out on nice days, windy days, even snowy days, but rainy days won't be braved. People will stay indoors if it's rainy. It's not as if they'll melt, but they certainly seem to be under that impression. Crazy! 

This picture of baby owls sheltering from a rainstorm 
was just too cute to not share with all of you. Were 
you aware that unlike most other birds, owl feathers 
don't have a layer of oil on them? That's one of the 
reasons why owls can fly silently. It also makes 
repelling water from rain impossible, so owls 
hunker down and suffer through rainstorms. 

So, as you can tell, there's not a lot on my personal agenda today. I have a new class in my "Energy Medicine" lectures today which I'll listen to as soon as I get to the shop. I'm very much looking forward to it. But except for that, life will be semi-boring - LOL. Sometimes boring can be a good thing, though, so I'm not objecting. Have an excellent day and I'll be back tomorrow. Please remember to be kind, stay safe and wear your mask. Namaste. Mitakuye Oyasin.