Food and I have a new relationship. It used to be love-hate, but now it’s just love-love. I changed my deepest feelings about food, and that changed everything else. How it happened and how to apply this method to any area where you feel stuck. The Old I’ve been a lifelong dieter. Every day of my fifty-nine years, I’ve either been eating what I love and feeling bad about my body, or starving myself and being happier with my form, but feeling bad about depriving myself of thin

Our series of annuals has grown with the release of A YEAR OF BLISS, Volume 3. It’s on sale now in eBook format at Amazon for Kindle, Barnes and Noble for Nook, Kobo for Kobo eReaders, and GooglePlay for android devices. The Apple iBooks version is being slow, but it should be live there any time. It’s only in eBook for now, but there will be print copies eventually. We had a heckuva time figuring out how we could refer to 2020 as a year of bliss, but I think we managed to ha

Today’s post is a spiritual message for TEACHERS. This one never made it onto the site. I wrote it last spring, and my teacher daughters asked me to please get it up on the blog so they could share it. So here it is. When this thing hit, our local school teachers (in a district near me that shall not be named) scrambled to make remote learning lesson plans for their students. They had to do this over a weekend, then attend school on Monday with everything ready. Oh, and also,

Because it actually is my birthday. I’m having all the feels. 59. Holy fork. So I’m pondering, as one does on birthdays, on what 58 brought. A lot of contrast. (I just started listing it all. Um, no. Backspace, backspace, backspace…) The details of the “problems” are not the part that’s important. EVER. It’s what the problems made us want that counts. Last year’s challenge was practicing what I preach. I mean, I always try to do that. My success varies. But last year, I stru

It seemed like a small kindness, at the time, decades ago, buying a gift for some kids who didn’t have much. But the youngest one contacted me later. All grown up, she was spending her time working to give gifts to kids who didn’t have much. She told me that long ago gift had been magical to her, and had touched her deeply. It had stayed with her all this time, and made her want to help other kids who needed what she’d needed that year. It broke my heart with joy to know that

A group of friends and I have a tradition. We each choose a kind of a focus word for the new year. Usually it’s a word we think of as a goal. Something we want to do more of or do better Last year I chose “Balance.” It seems to me, at the end of 2020 as I look back at the year I’ve had, that the word we choose teaches us something. We don’t necessarily become more of our word, although sometimes we do. But sometimes, I think we just seem to inhale the word. We assimilate its

Blessed Mabon! Last evening, I captured the final sunset of summer. The Autumnal Equinox takes place at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time this very morning (22 September.) A time of balance? Some celebrate the equinoxes as times of balance, and use their energy to try to re-balance themselves and their lives. I’ve been mulling on this and coming to a new understanding, for me, that balance isn’t a real thing. It’s a passing illusion. The actual point of balance, the moment of the equino

There’s a method I’m using with great success at the moment, the method of distraction, which is a form of magic all its own. A person who is lying in a sick bed thinking about their illness, is going to suffer every bit of that illness. A person on a roller coaster is not going to feel any part of his illness. Unless he gets motion sickness, in which case… Okay maybe that’s a bad example. Did you ever notice that a great movie or book can make you forget you had a headache?

Repeat after me. All is well, and all is well, and all is well. Take a nice deep breath and open your mind to the possibility that everything is exactly the way it is. And be okay with it. Parts of it are actually very good. Most of it is good. Take another deep breath, and maybe one more. All is well. We have to be okay with what is, because it is as it is. In our lives, the longest, hardest times are what we call our Dark Nights of the Soul. They are a universal part of the

Gemma Teller Morrow, SOA My usual Mary Sunshine persona is currently in quarantine. My inner Gemma wants to be the focus of today’s post. I accept her as a part of who I am. I have written novels featuring the woman who is that side of me. She is Rhiannon. She is Rachel. She is Puabi. Perfection, I submit, is overrated. So since I’m taking a walk on the dark side, I thought I would share the journey. That’s what I do here. And I reach a really good conclusion, so please read

Today to help me get into the the vibe of meditation, I thought being aligned with my non-physical self means leaving it all behind. All those things I worry about all day, the to do list, the grocery list, the bills. All the stuff I know about my profession. All the rules and facts and methods. All the grammar and spelling. All the point-of-view rules especially. (You’ll see why.) I felt myself rising and spreading broader. I sensed I was experiencing myself as consciousness

Transitions are hard, aren’t they? I’ve been noticing how hard it is every year going through the transition from winter to spring, and how it feels, here where I live, we go two steps forward and three steps back over and over again. I had a glorious Sunday outside, with sunshine and nearly 70 degrees. Then yesterday it poured and the wind blew and today the sun is bright but the high temp will not get out of the forties. We had an overnight frost. And I feel like throwing a

Aside from being Groundhog’s Day, February 2nd is also the traditional date of Imbolc, or “Imbolc Brigantina” also known as St. Brigit’s Day. The actual high holy date falls precisely halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Vernal or Spring Equinox, which this year is on February 4th. Brigit or Brighid is the Celtic Goddess of the Forge, and on her day, she awakens the sleeping earth with her power of creative fire. She’s known as the inspirer of poets and writers and art

Mystics and sages have always known the power of the in-between. The most powerful times for magic, for example, are in-between times: dawn which is the precipice between night and day, and dusk, between day and night. Midnight is the fulcrum between today and tomorrow, noon the tipping point from morning to afternoon, and so on. In nature, swamps are in between earth and water, fog is in between water and air. Doorways are in between rooms and are always considered potent pl

This is my second Winter Solstice post this year, but I felt inspired, so here you go! It's Winter Solstice What you'll need You’ll need a small fire. You can make a bonfire outside near sunset, or use your fireplace if you have one. You can use an iron cauldron or other fireproof container in a room without smoke detectors or outside. Write down the things you want to be rid of-not in too much detail. One or two words. “The accident” or “the incident” or “that person.” You’l

Briefly: What is Divination? Divination, according to the dictionary, is “The practice of seeking knowledge of the future by supernatural means.” Well, that’s off. First, it’s seeking knowledge, period. Not just knowledge of the future, but all sorts of knowledge. Most importantly, knowledge about your own inner being, your own connection, your own baggage, focus, goals, and pathways to reach them. Second, it’s not “by supernatural means” because there’s no such thing as supe

Define Magic So to begin, let’s agree to define magic as, “to create change at will by non-physical means.” But I have trouble with even this much, because I know that all change is accomplished by non-physical means long before it happens physically. And I also know that the change created by the practitioner of natural magic, is really a change within her. Magic is this: I am a person who does not have X. I recognize that I would prefer to have X. I then morph myself into t

Autumn is officially here. But as always, I like to talk about how our own cycles reflect the seasonal ones, and what the changing seasons mean to me on a deeper level. The energy of Mabon and fall is adulthood. Maturity. The fullest level of growth. It’s harvest time. The fruits of our actions are coming to us now. It’s a time for gathering and appreciating all we gather. It’s a time for celebration and a true moment of balance. Not just between light and darkness, but betwe

Here is what I got. I was shown my cupped hands, and my spirit-self pouring its energy down into them  and from them into my body. I  meditate near a rippling stream, so the sound effects assisted this vision beautifully. I directed the flow to my third eye, then to my throat and heart and on down. And then I felt this clear message: You don’t have to channel it. You ARE it. I am it. I am spirit. I am Source. I am light. The song, I Am Light by India Arie came to me and I lis

Here is what I got. I was shown my cupped hands, and my spirit-self pouring its energy down into them  and from them into my body. I  meditate near a rippling stream, so the sound effects assisted this vision beautifully. I directed the flow to my third eye, then to my throat and heart and on down. And then I felt this clear message: You don’t have to channel it. You ARE it. I am it. I am spirit. I am Source. I am light. The song, I Am Light by India Arie came to me and I lis