New Leaf Mentoring … new thought. new health. new life.

Posts tagged ‘universe’

Enter the Fool


I have a lot of friends who are fools – I mean down to the bone foolish. I love them.There is never a dull moment when the fool comes on the scene! Over the years I have come to cherish the fools and try to emulate them as often as possible. I have learned to not let appearing foolish stop me.

In the tarot the fool card signifies the innocence of mind that allows infinite trust in the universe and one’s God. Through the very energy of trusting we come to engage in life adventures that otherwise wouldn’t have been available. The fool teaches us to risk our normal conservative safe ideas for those a little more daring. He shows us how to traipse merrily towards the edge of reality instead of well back from the edge where most of our mothers would prefer we stay. He shows us how to release our critical judgments in favor of a taste of adventure.

It is the fools that guide us into tomorrow; they are the pioneers, the scientists, the inventors, the visionaries, the poets, the musicians and the artists. They are the dreamers with their faces pointed towards the heavens and their feet lightly dancing on the edge of all known reality. They see things differently and act accordingly.

It is only on the edge that a new reality can be created; it is where our vision and perspective is the clearest. Most people are too afraid to wander to the edge where a wrong step could prove disastrous. But the fool shows us that to dance along the edge of all that is safe, risking all that is dangerous, is where we find our truest essence. Here we will find our greatest capacity to love, to laugh, to trust, to feel compassion and to expand. It is at this edge where we come to understand our magnificent ability to connect with faith to the divine matrix of life. In this foolish place we learn that the landing area for the next step will be provided; is already there, in fact, even though we may not be able to see it.

So often I see people immobilized in fear, afraid to trust another in love and in business; so afraid that opportunities slide by. Too afraid to move out of their mundane lives, they choose instead to sit safely in their controlled predictable lives. When we only engage with what we can control we will continuously recreate the patterns of the past. While the past provides us with great memories and teachings it doesn’t offer us the opportunity to grow. Only stepping out bravely towards a new unknown will breathe new life into a wilting soul. The fool is not, however, about being reckless. It is about learning how to be in complete harmony with ones’ environment and being thus able to take advantage of opportunities as they present without fear of endangering ones self. The fool only appears to be reckless and careless by those who are over-cautious.

It is the inherent nature of the soul to seek expansion through experience. When we limit the possibilities for new experience we cause the soul to wither and fade. The soul is a luminous expression of vitality that yearns for new adventures, regardless of possible pain. Our soul knows that it came to life to live a plethora of experiences not just the safe and easy ones.

As we move through our days we will without doubt encounter a host of fears that threaten to limit our experiences. I challenge you to take stock of what stops you. How often in your day do you take the comfortable route, do the same old same old, and deny a new invitation preferring to sit back on the sidelines laughing at the fools having fun at the edge. Aspire to be the fool, little by little, inch your way towards the edge. Dare to peek at the life you could be having. If this makes no sense to you, make friends with a fool today, see the world through his eyes and see how light the world becomes!

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Lessons of the Tarot

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Be happy, go lucky!


Personally I lead a very quiet, ordered kind of life. It’s pretty peaceful, respectful and happy. I consider myself very lucky but that said I work hard at it and I learn a lot from listening to other peoples stories. I really believe in the saying ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ and it’s humbling to remember and remind oneself that what is in me is in you and in all living things. I don’t believe for a minute that the things that befall one unfortunate soul can’t happen to everyone equally including me. I also believe that I am equally as fortunate as anyone else. Universe is an equal opportunity provider and I’ve come to believe that the only thing that makes some people happy and some people so miserably unhappy is their outlook and approach to all the daily details. Shit happens – a lot, and to everyone. For some people though it just slides off and for others, well, it just sticks. Being happy and feeling lucky is a state of mind that must be cultivated if you want to experience it. Likewise being miserable, expecting the worse, being suspicious will absolutely bring you lots of experiences that reflect exactly that.

Lucky doesn’t just happen.  There are no mysteries in life. We live in a cause and effect universe, everything starts somewhere, and everything causes some other chain of events to unfold. We are always at the right place at the right time whether we like to see it that way or not, and you are co-creating your life in every moment, in other words; you are nobody’s victim. Have you noticed how the same people always have the same drama around the same issues and use the same words that start with ‘I can’t…’ and end with ‘do it, believe it, change it, be bothered, etc.’ and they’re always surprised by it. They’re stuck in a learning loop, in effect they can’t move on until they get this piece of the puzzle – whatever the ‘piece’ may be and so they are doomed to repeat a pattern over and over. Repeating patterns can make people feel very unlucky, but muttering frustrated laments like “this always happen to me!” will only get the next wave rolling in again.

The learning loop is of course created through the Law of Attraction. Whatever you believe in you will see manifested over and over until you choose to believe differently. Whatever you affirm will be. The universe will mirror back to you everything you expect to see or need to learn about. The conundrum however is that what we see repeated over and over is pretty hard to ignore and believe differently about. The more it is repeated the harder it is to believe that we still have the power to change it. So round and round we go.

There are no isolated, random events. Everything is connected somehow but we don’t necessarily have a scope of vision that is big enough to understand how all the pieces fit together. I have come to trust that eventually all is revealed if we wait long enough. The patterns are there to serve us. If we experience something often enough, we hopefully begin to see the way to change it as we come into better understanding of the beast. I hate seeing people struggle through difficulties and feel for their pain but I also have faith that the human spirit is indomitable and can survive fantastic perils when he is committed to living life.

Life belongs to those that grab hold of it with both hands and go for the ride seizing opportunities wherever possible to experience something new. Bravely facing life with a positive, happy and adventurous outlook will create many lucky opportunities as you go!

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Healing

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Forever Questing…It’s the only way!


As children, my siblings and I were taught to question everything. My Father drilled into us to not ever just believe anything. All trust, all faith had to be earned; even then it was up for discussion. For the most part this philosophy has guided me well. Today I use this philosophy to guide me in my discovery with reiki and metaphysics and even in raising my kids. Because of this questing nature I have a hard time just blindly accepting all the anecdotal information that pours out unreservedly from spiritually minded people. It is so interesting to me how easily smart, educated people will accept the same old ideas no matter how fantastic, without ever asking ‘Really?…are you serious?‘ and believe me I have had no shortage of unbelievable stories in my life. It’s not that I’m really all that skeptical, (OK – maybe I am) but I prefer to think of it as curious. I was that kid that had to ask ‘why?’ a million times a day and I have kept asking why as my life unfolds. The really cool thing is that there is ALWAYS an answer for the why question. Sometimes the answer leads to another question that starts with ‘but if…’ and sometimes it ends with an ‘Oh! I get it!’ and sometimes hearing the answer is all you really need to recognize that you knew the truth all along. Sometimes the truth is simply the hardest thing to hear.

But I have learned that just the asking begins the unraveling of the mystery. Afterall, life isn’t really mysterious, we live in a dualistic cause and effect world and reality is built on building blocks of information. I find that the biggest block to understanding what is really going on in any situation is usually 2 fold. Firstly, we like to wear our favourite coloured glasses (they could be rose coloured or grey coloured or blue or green etc.) to make sure that everything we look at is viewed with the same shading of belief (rosy, hopeless, depressed, envious etc) which keeps life comfortable and relatively predictable; and secondly we keep our blinders firmly glued to the sides of our heads to keep our scope of vision nicely limited. By limiting what we are exposed to we think we can control the path our life will take.

Let’s face it, processing new information is consuming work. You gotta’ think…HARD even sometimes! And furthermore, sometimes those thoughts are going to land you in some unpopular place and we all know how hard that can be. We learned as kids that it is way easier being popular than different. These two popular and fashionable (and by that I mean common) accessories work reasonably well to keep the path ahead uncluttered of unexpected obstacles and doubts. Everything goes along as expected, well that is until one day it suddenly doesn’t. Suddenly, one day, out of the blue, an unexpected terror blocks the road. Death, illness, financial loss, or even extreme boredom appears and screams at us to get off the road! Take a detour! Change your mind! Change your ways! And we stall, dumbfounded, confused and before we know what’s happening we ask ‘Why?’ and the quest begins.

In that moment Universe presents to us an option. Sometimes the one road changes into a very clear forked path and we are forced to choose this way or that way. Other times it seems we are tricked to follow a different path with things that seem to glitter and shine with promises that turn out to be fool’s gold. And other times, we don’t know why, we suddenly veer off into the underbrush following some kind of white rabbit that takes us on a journey we will never forget. However it happens we will, at sometime in our lives, find ourselves on the road less traveled. If we want we can squat down on the road we are on and stubbornly refuse to budge. We can stay there, live there and eventually die there without ever having to change one single thought, peacefully polishing our glasses and re-gluing our blinders every day but this isn’t life.

Life is meant to be lived and experienced not only survived. Only a new choice will quicken the heart and spark the mind. Only choosing a new road will tease the Spirit Within to awaken with groggy interest.  And once on that new road we have to embrace that we are indeed thinking, reasoning, independent creatures of consciousness meant to exercise our inherent right to choose. Our survival will be determined by our choices, our reactions, our resistance/acceptance of the new. Our happiness determine by our bravery, commitment and creativity.

And so life is lived; questing, challenging,  defeating enemies of the one true heart, embracing the unknown, and conquering fears. We are then rewarded with riches untold, unlimited love, and strength of a thousand elephants. After we have quested we come to know the stuff we are made of. We know then that we are strong enough to ask ‘Why?..’ with the innocence of a child and the wisdom of the oldest sage.

So this blog is for asking ‘why..?.’ or ‘what if…?’ or ‘how..?.’ I am every bit as curious as I was when I was 5, except now I have a car, a computer and bigger reality. Today my world and indeed my universe is much, much bigger and so are my questions and thus my experiences.

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Healing

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