Michael A. Michail

Spirituality * Culture * Self-Expression

Category: Info

Please Subscribe

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On July 25, 2021

In Info

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that the “blog subscription” widget on my site suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. It hasn’t come back and I still don’t know where it went. I have, however, found a replacement for it. The new widget/plugin seems to work OK, but there are some concerns. First, none of my old subscribers were migrated to the new program so, if you had subscribed before, you will have to re-subscribe with the new system. Second, the notifications are going straight to the spam folders – even the notifications to me. I can’t seem to correct that on my end – I’m not great at even simple tech. If you have tried to subscribe, please check your spam folder – also, try to make your own adjustments to allow my notifications to get directly to your in-box. At this time, and for the foreseeable future, the only notices you’ll get from me are announcements of new posts. At some point, I might make other announcements – but nothing too ponderous to read. Third, I have no idea how long this widget will keep working.

If you prefer not to subscribe, perhaps you’ll consider bookmarking my page and checking in now and then. Since the start of the year, I have been consistently posting every week and I hope to continue that practice.

What comes to mind, for me, regarding this situation, is a comment frequently made by spiritual teachers. They often use phrases such as “when one door closes, another door opens” or “losing something makes room to find something better” or “everything that happens to you, happens for a good reason.”

I won’t say these are false teachings; they are, however, naïve and misleading.

Certainly, good things happen to good people: but so, also, do bad things. And good things even happen to bad people.

Really, for the most part, things just happen. God notices every sparrow that falls, but God doesn’t stop every sparrow from falling. Things are going to happen to us in the world – how we react to things happening is the important part for each of us, individually.

Sometimes when a door closes, we find ourselves locked in a room with no way out. There’s nothing wrong with hoping for something good to happen and actively looking for ways to make good things happen. There’s nothing wrong with having faith that whatever happens, we will be able to make the best of it. The problem revolves around the EXPECTATION that somehow a new door will magically appear without any effort on our part. We must each take action to create our own good.

Another popular saying comes to mind: “God helps those who help themselves.” We must open ourselves up to possibility and be ready to seize opportunities as they appear – or appear to appear. And if another door opens, step through it quickly before it shuts again. The real doors we should be seeking are the ones the open up within us.

So, will losing my old widget lead to something better? I don’t know. I’m just going to keep trudging along with these posts and hope people enjoy reading them. Sometime in the future I might invest in some service that handles widgets and upgrades and all that for me.

Maybe.

For now, I’ll continue doing what I do.

I might not be anyone’s open door, but maybe I can be a small crack in the wall that lets a few people peep out at the mystic world.

Tarot

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On June 27, 2021

In Info

When I was a youngster, I watched a lot of silly movies on TV (I still do, but for different reasons). One of those movies was something called “Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors” starring the great Peter Cushing. This is one of those anthology movies popular at the time made up of five short stories held together with a wrap around narrative. In this case, five passengers on a train meet Dr. Schreck (whose name means terror). He is a doctor of metaphysics and purports to use the tarot cards (his house of horrors) to reveal the nightmarish situations the passengers are destined to face.

It’s a dumb movie, not very scary, and the ending has nothing to do with the stories presented – so, I’m not sure why this film appealed to me so strongly. It did however, make me want to become a Doctor of Metaphysics (which I now am) and study the Tarot.

Tarot is part of occult teachings and as my readers know I discourage people from taking part in occult activities due to the dangers found there in. The images on Tarot cards can serve as windows or gateways to other worlds.  When untrained people “play” with Tarot, especially if they have any degree of sensitivity or intuition, forces and even personalities from the other worlds can come through the windows and intrude on what is thought of as normal reality. Without adequate training and protection, those intrusions can result in serious psychic harm to the person messing with these powers. Unless you know how to channel the other worldly forces and know how to protect yourself and your associates from the forces, stay away from Tarot and all things occult.

The best training is to learn and PRACTICE effective meditation techniques and immerse yourself in positive, well established, spiritual literature and thoughts.

The proper use of Tarot is to gain access to and develop understanding of your own inner self, your subconscious, your true personality. Your subconscious has a way of gathering and sorting information that is not readily available to your conscious self – which relies heavily on only the five material senses. The subconscious can provide you with the information it collects and can even urge you to act in more positive, beneficial ways. However, it is often difficult for the conscious mind to understand the language used by the subconscious. The tarot symbolism helps to verbalize the information and make it usable.

There are, then, three main uses for the Tarot:

1/  Self-Analysis

Laying the cards out in a specific pattern provides a platform for the subconscious to pick and choose appropriate symbols and combinations of symbols that can be articulated and interpreted by the conscious mind. Readers in the past have provided possible interpretations of the symbols – generic interpretations, we might say – but a skilled reader need not rely on these. The images and the connection between the various cards that appear in the spread are more like mental prompts to get the subconscious involved in analyzing the issues at hand. By drawing the conscious attention to some symbols but not others, the subconscious can guide the reader to the information the inner mind wants to convey.

2/  Analyzing Another

Similar to the first use, in this case the reader helps guide the person being read to an understanding of their deeper problems. This is an effective tool for counseling and therapy because the client doesn’t always know or understand exactly what the issues are that disturb them. They can discuss the symptoms while the root causes of their difficulties are a mystery. The Tarot helps the client’s subconscious mind reveal the deeper concerns that are blocked from conscious awareness. Analyzing another requires the reader to have an empathic connection with the client.

3/  Divination

Divination is NOT fortune telling. You don’t want some external force dictating your decisions. The human connection to Universal Intelligence is through the subconscious. Proper divination allows the person’s own inner mind, with its greater scope of information, to participate in the decision-making process. Before beginning a new project or operation, you want to get as much information about the possible outcomes that you can find. Ideally, if you have training and experience in meditation, you can access the additional, subconscious, information directly and whenever you may need it. Tarot is a tool that gives you quick insights into a situation to help you decide the way to proceed.

Tarot work, if done for yourself or others, should be approached in a respectful, meditative manner. It is not a game or frivolous past time.

I don’t think it was intentional, but in the movie, fortune telling is shown to be ineffective. The ending makes it clear that the fate of the passengers is already determined and none of the situations predicted by Dr. Schreck actually occur. Instead, Dr. Schreck turns out to be an agent of darkness who just uses the tarot cards to agitate and terrorize the other characters prior to leading them to Hell. There’s no reason for this, other than the need to make a low-budget horror film.

Energy Vampires

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On March 27, 2021

In Info

It’s not easy being an empath – even one with only mild abilities. It’s difficult to be around any type of sentient being, human or otherwise, without getting caught up in whatever emotional issues the other person is facing. Empaths are highly sensitive to the emotional energy others put out and can easily be overwhelmed and drained by the experience if they don’t take precautions and replenish themselves with alone time.

Maybe one of the worst things for an empath is coming in contact with an “Energy Vampire.” Yes, vampires are real but not all of them feed on blood. Many thrive on emotional and psychic energy and have no remorse about draining their victims dry. Even for non empaths, the energy vampire can be a terrible encounter.

You probably know or have known several energy vampires in your life – you probably just haven’t labelled them as such.

An energy vampire feeds on emotion and you can recognize their presence by the effect they have: Your eyelids become heavy, you feel unusually tired, any joy you had before the encounter is stripped from you, binging on comfort food will seem like a great idea, several encounters might make you have strange, troubling dreams. The vampire will show you no mercy and will feed upon you until you are completely drained. Then, if you manage to replenish your energy, they will return to feed upon you some more. Scary!

There are different types of energy vampires which prefer to feed on different types of emotion. Some will hunt out an appropriate victim though many will actually be drawn to you because you are giving off the correct energy pattern. If you are sad, angry, scared or hurt you might attract a vampire that feeds on that specific emotion. They will appear before you sadder, angrier, more fearful or more hurt and illicit or force a response from you – perhaps compassion, perhaps revulsion, whatever type of emotional energy the vampire desires.

The best defense is to avoid or flee from such an encounter. But sometimes this is not an option. The vampire might be someone you work with everyday, maybe a family member, or maybe some other sort of relationship that prevents you from distancing yourself from the creature.

What can you do?

First, be sure it is really a vampire and not just a one-off pathetic soul in need. Vampires are predictable with clear patterns of behavior. If it’s a vampire it is likely you will have more than one encounter and you will probably become aware of the person’s vampiric history. You might be a victim once but be prepared for secondary attempts. Next identify the type of vampire: is it trying to make you sad, angry, frustrated – what is the desired emotion the creature seeks? Once you determine that, you will be able to deny it the energy it wants.

Stay calm and maintain keen awareness. It is emotion they seek – don’t give it to them. Circumstances might require you to fulfill some sort of societal requirements by spending time with the creature but that doesn’t mean you have to feed it. Avoid having your buttons pushed. Recognize what the creature is after and when you feel yourself being drained interrupt their pattern. If they want sadness, tell them you’ve never really felt that way or tell them a bad joke to break the mood. Frustrate them with your own calmness. If they don’t leave, suddenly remember something else you have to do – but tell them you want to talk to then again, later. Next time you see them, they will be forced by their own condition to start over from the beginning. This gives you time to come up with another way to break their pattern and deny them the energy they need. Very soon they will move on to a more compliant victim and leave you alone. This will become someone else’s problem, to be sure. However, society limits the level of response we can use to defend ourselves in these situations: we cant use the proverbial wooden stake on them.

Now, if you’re an empath, even normal people can drain you of energy and fill you with unpleasant emotions.  So, empaths must train themselves to limit their exposure to other people’s issues. Practicing meditation and self-awareness is the best protection from negative emotional influences.

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