Year: 2015
▶ Guided Meditation for Sleep… Floating Amongst the Stars – YouTube
I really like this sleep meditation (below) and have been using it often.
Insomnia likes to visit my bed at its own discretion and timing! So I have found guided imagery with music most helpful during those times.
The male voice is soothing and soft with a pleasant accent. It’s counter productive when all you can think about is how irritating the voice is to your ears! It is one hour long and most nights I don’t get past the first half where I am already drifting in my dreams among the stars.
I spend the first few minutes or so lying on my back…mind clear…and allow my body to sink into the mattress. As I do this I allow each inhale of breathe to settle into each section of my body and feel it relax…starting with my feet and work upward with each slow relaxed inhale.
Not thinking any words but only observing, as I begin to let go of
tension in each body part. With one last long slow exhale I can feel a slight tingle starting on the top of my head… traveling down my arms to my fingers and ending in my toes.
Then I turn over and allow myself to be guided to sleep!
(Commentary written by Jasmine@majickalgarden.com)
“When Fear Falls Away” (Book Review)
“When Fear Falls Away”
By Jan Frazier (2007)
The Story of a Sudden Awakening
This is a story about a woman facing a health scare that leaves her bathed in fear. One day she asks for relief from this fear and wakes up to find it is simply gone. The book is written from her personal journals she kept about her journey of self-discovery on a soul level and how it has affected her life. It’s written with refreshing honesty and clarity.
Excerpt from the book:
“This is what I know about the general situations of human life:
-There is a place in every person that is not subject to harm of any sort. It is not subject to change or to death. It is actual.
-It is possible to become aware of this place—fleetingly, and even continuously.
-In the state of that awareness, all suffering ceases.
-There is nothing inconsistent about that state and what we think of as regular life.”
By sharing her story with us we are enlightened with the thought that our own story lines might sound different but the human aspects of emotion and ego are a part of us all. With true intentions of the heart, we can all find relief from fear in the emotions that permeates every aspect of our lives. In its place we can experience the joy of love, freedom and compassion in fully living in the moment with the relief from the past and future that can hinder our growth. By the end of this book, if we allow ourselves, we understand that the answers we seek in spiritual growth are not found in the myriad of books and manuals but truly inside ourselves.
Review written by Jasmine@majickalgarden.com
The Stars In Your Family (Book Review)
The Stars In Your Family:
How Astrology Affects Relationships between Parents and Children
By Sylvia Freeman (1995)
“Astrology-based, Sylvia educates the reader about relationships between every member of your family. Why did my child do that? How could my mom act that way? Why can’t we relate better? Can I ever motivate my son? Is my daughter a dreamer or a doer?”
Astrology has been a tool of mine that has helped me better understand family and friends close to me. I started with myself then fanned out with my spouse then my kids followed by friends. Discovering different aspects of the zodiac signs, with regard to personality traits, has become a fascinating hobby.
I picked up a few books, when my kids were younger, to help me understand their distinct personalities better. Most books on the subject are geared towards adults with personality traits already developed. “The Stars In Your Family” puts emphasis on recognizing budding traits of Sun signs in the children.
I was very pleased to discover this book.
I am a Libra (Air) blessed with an Aquarius (Air) son and a Capricorn (Earth) daughter. Discovering how each of us interact on an astrological level individually and together was very enlightening for me and helped me relate to, as well as understand them in a very refreshing way. It also aided me in helping bring out their individual traits with a better understanding of how to do so with their own needs recognized. A better sense of understanding, compatibility and acceptance can be achieved with relationships enhanced even more.
Review written by Jasmine@majickalgarden.com
The Camino: Journey of the Spirit (Book Review)
The Camino: Journey of the Spirit (2000)
by Shirley MacLaine
“For Shirley, the Camino was both an intense spiritual and physical challenge. A woman in her sixth decade completing such a grueling trip on foot in thirty days at twenty miles per day was nothing short of remarkable. But even more astounding was the route she took spiritually: back thousands of years, through past lives to the very origin of the universe.”
I admire Shirley MacLaine. She strikes me as someone that has truly followed her own path while in the glare of Hollywood lights. If you are familiar with any of her earlier books…she has been on a spiritual search for decades and has been publicly vocal about it.
The Camino is the story of her latest journey…a pilgrimage on foot along the Santiago de Compostela Camino in Spain. It is an ancient, and purporteldly to be, enchanted pilgrimage encompassing a nearly 500 mile trek across highways, mountains and valleys, cities and towns. It is said to have been traversed by saints, sinners, generals, misfits, kings and queens for thousands of years. Amazingly, she was 60 years old when she embarked on this intense spiritual and physical challenge. She traveled nearly 500 miles in thirty days. What she discovered in the process was even more astounding.
This book was very enjoyable and kept me interested up to the very last page. Some might find bits of it a little *out there*. However, it is her story and experience. By the time I finished this book….it had enough of an impact on me to realize, one does not have to journey across the mountains and valleys of Spain, to experience the warm, fulfilling thrill of spiritual enlightenment found thru the challenges, goals and willfully living life with awareness.
Review written by Jasmine@majickalgarden.com
The Call (Book Review)
The Call
By David Spangler (1996)
“The call is already a part of your life. All you have to do is listen.”
I found this book in paperback form, in the library, during one of my quests for enlightenment in the written word. When on these “quests”, I enter with an understanding with my guides that I am open for suggestion and shall do my best to open my mind and watch what “jumps” off the shelves at me. This was a result of one of those times. A delightfully easy read packed with applicable soul nourishing, validating information. Its one of those books I went out to buy for my own library shelf as reading it over again will reap understanding in a different light each time.
Its intentions are for anyone that has ever felt the stirrings of a particular calling deep inside or for those firmly on the path following their own calling. To be so blessed as to experience this is not an easy task nor is it without some sort of life changing sacrifice to enable the follow thru to where one is destined to end up.
Book Introduction in part:
The holy call is a revelation, an inner prompting, a vision, causing an individual to turn from a personal, self-centered, and superficially expressed life to that of a servant of the divine.
The numinosity of such a transcendent call is often of such a magnitude that the individual experiences a rupture of his or her life. He or she is cast into a vaster consciousness, and often acts with the sense of extreme vulnerability and wounding brought on by the leaving behind of-everything that had previously held primary value in the individual’s personal life. The members of the family, circle of friends, professional colleagues, and organizations threatened by such a disruption may exert extreme pressure to reform the called one. And, failing, that to ignore or, worse yet, to cast out the “misguided” individual.
For anyone to receive, acknowledge and accept such a calling is a testament to ones conscious dedication in living life in the light of life and in doing so expresses desire to truly evolve as a soul in lesson in human form.
This book will aid anyone traveling this path with willful intentions and each individual will read it with an understanding unique to who they are in spirit and with respect to where their evolvement lies.
Book Review Written by Jasmine@majickalgarden.com