Gifts from the universe: Re-examining during Mercury Retrograde...

Mercury is the planet which governs communication, technology  electronics, machinery.  It's a time when computers crash, communication with everyone goes haywire and plans go a muck   This gives us a great opportunity to slow down and focus on our own lives and what we may have missed in the months and years leading up to this time.  You will feel the need to tie up loose ends, speak your truth and handle relationships you have been avoiding.  Read more about Mercury Retrograde here and here.

Mercury Retrograde (November 6-26, 2012) gives us a chance (for about three weeks, three times each year) to go back and revisit the things we've left undone. Nothing complete will ever come back into your life.  The universe wants us to grow so anything that no longer teaches us will simply no longer be in our lives.  Whether memories, behaviors, relationships, questions, tasks left undone or just your way of seeing a situation, we have been given the gift of "re" seeing something in new light. Allow yourself to see anew, to adjust your thinking and feeling and see what you missed the first (or second, or third...) time around.

Rethink

Reflect

Revisit

Redo

Remember

Recalculate

Revise

Redesign

...These are the gifts of Mercury Retrograde

Image of planet in retrograde ("retracing" its own transit)
Source: http://starsyncs.blogspot.com/2010/12/mercury-retrograde-right-brain.html

Nothing comes back to you without good reason and a lesson for you to learn. Ask yourself what old things have come up for you - or come back to you - in the last three weeks. Whatever it may be, it is, at its core, an incredibly important opportunity to explore with new ideas because it is happening to you NOW. Reexamining the past and your attitudes about it is truly a gift because your soul wants to grow and learn lessons.  But don't get stuck with what has come up for you - you must make a choice about what you want to do with this thing, take the necessary actions and let it go. Remember not to hold on; to really let it go because it did not come back to you for you to repeat what you've already done. 

Each day is a new day and an opportunity to let go.  Each day is also a rebirth and an opportunity to see the world with new eyes.  Support yourself in learning both of these lessons during Mercury's retrograde transit.

Imagine just how powerful it can be to be given another chance to let go of something? Or even better - the opportunity to let go of the way you *thought* about that thing last time? Be sure you don't fall into a trap of repeating your own patterns, however, because you are never meant to go back and do the same thing the same way twice. You've changed and so has everything else. Use your current wisdom to revisit, heal, and let go.  ...And yes, be smart about those former flames that seem to magically resurface during Mercury Retrograde.  It's a well known phenomenon that this mystical window of time can bring back a former romantic partner with whom you still have something to heal.  If this has happened for you, re-read this because an old flame may be your trickiest "re" lesson to navigate.

Your best interest at heart...

A dear friend, mentor, colleague and protector of mine, "D," died just over one year ago.  When I learned that she was dying - from a terribly painful battle with pancreatic cancer - I was in a state of shock.  She was in her early 40's and she was someone I looked up to and who, to me, was the closest thing I would ever have to a big sister.  As the oldest sister myself, I spent my life worried about and on the lookout for my little sister but spent much of life without much protection for myself.  I never really learned - despite the many, many challenges in my life as a child - to be careful about who I trusted.  I was given a kind of innate naivete that has been a gift in life because I find myself in states of awe and wonder often, but at times it has also caused me to trust and believe some people who did not wish the best for me.

While my journey with this particular karma has become a great learning lesson, it has also caused me a fair bit of pain.  I am someone who still believes the best in people until they prove me wrong - but sometimes at the expense of something dear to me, like my heart or my trust.

I am reminded today of the guiding words my dear friend D. said to me often.  I spoke them just over a year ago at an event I hosted for 120 people.  She had passed away the night before and I woke the next morning with a heavy heart and I held her with me throughout my day and during my morning speech.  D. said to me years earlier and on quite a few occasions something along the lines of, "Amy, not everyone has your best interest at heart.  You have to find the people who do and be aware of those who don't."  It was not until the first time she said this to me that I was ever really consciously aware that people could be careless about the way they would treat me - or worse, be out to hurt me.  Yes, I had been hurt before but I had spent my life operating from a place of love for others and I assumed that everyone else did as well.  I was wrong.  And I was grateful that she cared enough to help me navigate some situations where people did not have my best interest at heart.

So I choose tonight to share her advice with you.  Be sure to always take care of yourself and look for the individuals in your life who do truly have your best interest at heart. If you can't tell, check your gut.  Pay attention to your dreams.  Ask those you trust for what they see.  There may be only a very few who have your best interest at heart.  Or there may be many.  But until we heal the pain and fear that exits in humanity, you must protect yourself from those whose intentions are not what is best for you.  And when you figure out that someone is betraying you, my advice is to send them loving kindness and wish for them that no one does them harm because they are coming from a place of being hurt.  ...But their hurt should not become yours.  So please, as My friend D's words and her face and her mannerisms linger in my mind right now, let me give this energy to you to use and stay safe along your journey in life.

Look for those who have your best interest at heart 

and let go of those who do not...

Thank you for watching over me and may you be at peace wherever you are, dear D.

The spiral of life...

Life is a dance of dichotomies.  The pairing of love and loss, challenge and triumph, joy and pain accompanies us all along the journey. As long as we take time to reflect and seek the divine lessons in our challenges, then we are on the right path. When we step back and see this magical system for what it is, we can then find gratitude for all of the bliss and suffering of life.

Look for the light in one another & open to your own power...

File this one under "Love and learn from one another - especially the ones you can't imagine loving."

As life gets harder and seems to challenge us more, it seems that for many people, a natural reaction is to turn to a very primal response:  To fight.  So many people, it seems, when they are frightened or confused or feel overwhelmed, look for someone to blame.  Some even simply ascribe the pain they are feeling to someone else.  Yes, someone may be involved in a situation that causes you pain, or someone may oppress you in someway.  Yes, there is pain and fear associated with the things in your life that challenge you.  But when you choose to focus your energy on blame, hatred, drama - or if you even just focus all of your energy on trying to figure out another person's motives or reasoning for doing/being/reacting as they have - you lose your own power.  To choose to be fully in your power, despite the involvement of someone who pushes your buttons, allows you to come into your own strength to deal with and learn from the situation.

I strongly believe that the circumstances that happen in our lives are all opportunities for growth.  And a big divine hint for us all is to notice when the same feelings or similar situations seem to happen "to" us over and over. In fact, they aren't happing to us at all.  They are part of the greater intelligence that is guiding us through our own personal growth and learning.  When we consider that all people in our lives serve as teachers for us, and all events and circumstances are part of a divine curriculum of sorts, then we can see that we are simply being guided through the opportunities to learn just who we are and determine for ourselves how we would like to grow and change.  Everything changes.  All the time.  We, too, are part of that universal law of change but too often we fight it or get distracted by the personalities involved in our stories.

So step back.  Quietly thank those individuals for showing you the opportunity to learn and grow and then focus only on yourself.  Those people involved have illuminated a very important part of your path.  Now it's up to you to recognize that light and use your own to head down the path a little further to a place you have not been.  After all, you and only you are here to live the unique lifetime that is and always will be your own.