Life Is Beautiful

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL!!

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL!!!

Sure, along the windy path of life you can have TONS of curve balls...

Believe me I do not live in a rose garden with tinted lenses. And, I have had
more than my share of...devastating and hurtful things happen to me.

But one thing my mother instilled in me, the beautiful love of my dearest
eemah (hebrew for mother) is that you must roll with the punches. You must
cross those bridges when you get to them. And you must keep moving forward.

Whether you have made wrong choices. Whether someone you trusted completely
and thought was an honourable person (poor judgement) completely crushes you
and blames you for it.

Whether you hurt your best friend (apologise from your heart and let it go).

Whether you lost your best dog!!

Life is still beautiful. There is still a chance to make a difference in the world. There is still
a chance, as long as you have breath, to make a change in your life.

So ignore those who try to tear you down. Ignore those who revel in cursing and hurting you.

Always, but always take the high road.

Bless them, for they know not what they do.

Because if they really knew, they wouldn't
do it to you. And two wrongs make nothing right.

Reality is merely perception and each must answer to his/her own conscience.

Each must be able to fully like him/herself in the mirror and LOVE, Like and RESPECT the
person they see staring back at them.

And should they cringe, should they not have love for themselves...truly deeply and madly
then that is their own private hell of a punishment.

Life is beautiful. Keep your eye on the prize. If you need a friend or a loved one to help
remind you, do not hesitate to ask for help.

No wo/man is an island! I don't care what that song said!

Angry at whom?

If someone hits you in the face with a bat, do you get angry with the bat or the person who hit you?

Perhaps the bat was wrong for existing. But that could not have been used as a weapon had the person not picked it up and smacked you across the face with it.

The perpetrator could have seen the bat in the store window and left it there. But no they picked it up and purposely hit you with it.

So who are you angry with the bat or the person who hit you with the bat?

The Universal Light Church

An interfaith, interdenominational church with members of various walks of life and religious/spiritual backgrounds including but not limited to Jews, Christians, Moslems, Hindus and all other spiritual believers.

I am , religiously speaking, a practicing Jew as well as I consider my self to be MetaSpiritual which in my definition means I acknowledge various world spiritual writings to be valid missives from which I can obtain knowledge of religion and spirituality.

I believe in miracles and hands on healing that is spoken of in the Hebrew Scriptures as well as the Christian scriptures and other eastern scriptures throughout the world.

All of these religions practiced some form of energy healing which in modern times has become known by various and numerous monikers such as Reiki, Chios Healing, Prayer, Laying on of Hands and through such schools of thought as Barbara Brennan and Donna Eden to name a scant few.

It is my 1st Amendment right to practice my religion and spirituality according to the dictates of my religious/spiritual beliefs in G-d.

the 1st. Amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; etc...."

My choice to become a member of The Universal Light Church is to reaffirm my committment to my religious/spiritual freedom and to stand with my brothers and sisters in faith in our Creator and what blessings of physio/Spiritual healing and methods to obtain that S/He has blessed us with; such as laying on of hands (Reiki,Chios Healing, Energy Healing) and prayers and all other modalities that help to keep us connected to Creator/Source of LIFE.

Radiant Health

“The secret of radiant health and well-being is: to keep a positive,
fearless attitude. By affirming the highest good, you will attract it to
you always.”

--Secrets of Radiant Health and Well-Being by Swami Kriyananda

Photo by XaiLo

My Eemah, My Mother

My mother is so beautiful.

Inside and out!

My brother calls her "special".

That makes me laugh and her

say we are ganging up on her!

It's ok that its taken her nearly

4 years to figure out what an

"email address" is or where the

"top" of the browser is!

My mother taught me unconditional

love, a lesson I am still learning.

She taught me unconditional acceptance.

She taught me to listen to my body

and to trust my intuition.

She taught me to heal with herbs and to

see with my third eye.

I love my mother, my eemah, and she is

VERY "special".

My mother circa 1969 Hyde Park, Illinois.

photo by Charles Ivester.

Reiki Blessings Academy

Seeking for a convinient homestudy way to enhance your spiritual/holistic practice?

Check out Reiki Blessings Academy which was founded by Dharmadevi.

Mission of Light

What does The Creative Force, God or Higher Power means to me.

My connection to the Divine Consciousness/Supernal Source of Life was something I felt from a very early age. I was not raised in a religious home however my mother was very spiritual in her outlook on life. She believed that we must always be thankful for what we have and to try and do what is good and what is right. She is naturally intuitive and exhibited great many psychic God given gifts of which my brother and I both inherited. My mother is a beautiful example of unconditional LOVE. God is Love. Throughout the years I have studied many religions including Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormonism, Vaishnavism, and Judaism.

I am, through descent as well as through formal acknowledgment, apart of the Jewish people and the Jewish faith. However, my attachment to Judaism, it's people and principles is not one of a pure and solely dogmatic nature. Through my life's experiences of both religious and spiritual in nature I have determined that God is far more infinite and far more inclusive that any religion teaches.

I have come to the knowledge that God, our "Creator",HaShem, Shekhinah our Source of Light and Life or the Collective Consciousness as some prefer, is far more infinite, far more everything that we could ever imagine. God our Mother/Father our Ultimate Source is pure Love and pure Light.

God is a verb, Life Becoming, Life that is, that will be and that always was. God is the Creative Principle, air, light, dark, God is everything and we are part and parcel of God. Within each and everyone of us resides our own portion of the Spark of Divinity and we are not separate from it. God or, as some understand, AIN SOF is complete, perfect and Absolute and container of all LIFE and is all life.

As sparks of Divinity, as I believe, it is our mission to exhibit unconditional Love, Light and healing to all.(Yes, not always easy for ourselves or others) Restoring physio/spiritual healing to all of Creation. Love life as God loves life, as God Is, was and will be. And this is my life's mission as a healing minister.

This is what I believe that God's messenger, the radiant Swan, came to deliver to me when I was 4 years old. Thankfully it has only taken me 32 years to come into an understanding of my mission.

Be Blessed Love & Light,
RSwan; Healing Minister, LightWorker, Priestess

Death?

With clear and steady insight
He sees this world is a mirage,
And he no longer wonders about it.

How can he fear the approach of death?


-Ashtavakra Gita 3:11

From The Heart of Awareness: A Translation of the Ashtavakra Gita, by Thomas Byrom, 1990. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston. www.shambhala.com.

My ParamAtma Swan

SWAN

Grace, Beauty, Power of Self

The Swan is one of the most powerful
and ancient of totems.

As you begin to realize your own true beauty,
you unfold the ability to bridge
new realms and new powers.
Swan can show you how to the inner beauty
within yourself and in others.

A Swan totem heralds a time of altered states of awareness
and the development of intuitive abilities.
Swan people have the ability to see the future,
and to accept the healing and transformation that is beginning in their lives.
Accept your ability and go with the flow.
Stop denying you know who is calling when the phone rings.
Pay attention to your hunches and inner knowledge,
and Swan medicine will work through you.

The Swan's call teaches the mysteries of song and poetry,
for these touch the child and the beauty within.

******************************************************************************

My paramatma appeared to me in the form of a radiant swan.
When I am still, I can hear her speaking to me, whispering into
the ears of my heart.

Gently does she teach me. Sometimes I am a good student.
Sometimes I am a student that must be dragged kicking and
screaming.

Forgive me.

My paramatma appeared to me in the form of a radiant swan.
Lucky me, it has only taken me nearly 32 years to heed her
call with all of my heart.

Thank you.

I AM THAT
I AM

Quieting the Mind

Be Still and Know That I AM

I AM

say these words outloud to yourself

and be still

I AM

say these words silently within your mind

and be still

Just accept that you are

I AM love
I AM kindness
I AM strong
I AM all
I AM

When you pray, thank you God/dess, Great Spirit,
Source of Life, Ain Sof, Baruch Hu.....
for all that you are... YOU ARE... for all that I AM

the spark is inside of you
your divine birthright... there whether you acknowledge
or not....

in me, you, her, him, them, us....

WE ARE ONE

I AM
be still and know that I AM

Shekhinah MountainWater 1939-2007

August 14, 2007

Shekhinah Mountainwater (1939-2007): Author, singer, spiritualist found truth in goddess myths

By TOM RAGAN
SENTINEL STAFF WRITER

SANTA CRUZ — As she lay dying on the bed inside her Santa Cruz home, her last words were, "It's better now."

And with that, Shekhinah Mountainwater, a key figure in Santa Cruz's alternative spiritual culture, died Saturday after battling uterine cancer for more than a year and a half.

She was 67.

She was surrounded by friends and family. On Monday they recalled her impact. They said it was not only in the way she lived her life, but in the way she left it: courageous in the face of pain. Then, finally, peacefully.

She was a healer, a tarot reader, a teacher, a singer, a musician, an author, a goddess, a pagan, a witch.

"The good kind of witch, not the bad kind," her friends and family pointed out Monday, occasionally motioning to her body, which lay a few feet away inside a plain wooden coffin in the backyard; occasionally they spoke to her.

"She was dedicated to her work and changing the world," said son Frey Faust, who followed in his mother's artistic footsteps by becoming a dance teacher. "She was a creative mother, and she was very disciplined as an artist herself. Nature was important to her. Values were important to her. She was never interested in monetary wealth"

While thousands of Santa Cruz residents could fit that very description, what made Mountainwater's life so interesting is that she dedicated her life to empowering women long before it became fashionable.

And she never let up.

And it wasn't a political movement along the lines of feminism, although that was certainly important to her.

It was a spiritual movement — one whose roots can be traced to an ancient time, long before Judaism and Christianity "came to be," said daughter Angel Brandwein, who, as a child growing up in Ben Lomond, would sing and dance with her mother and older brother in front of the old Cooper House in downtown Santa Cruz.

"She was always at the forefront of any new movement whose purpose was to enlighten and unravel the patriarchal regime," said Brandwein, who now lives in Phoenix and works at Arizona State University. "She was the original beatnik, the original hippie; she was always anti-establishment"

She sang and played acoustic guitar in the same coffee houses as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell in the 1960s in New York's Greenwich Village, before eventually moving to Los Angeles in the early 1970s, then settling in Santa Cruz, where she lived for 35 years in the same house on Effey Street.

Born Ellen Adler on Oct. 24, 1939, she was raised in New York and attended Bard College for a few years before she set off on her own in an attempt to become a folksinger.

Over the course of her life, however, Mountainwater would adopt a long line of names before settling on her final one, Shekhinah — "the female aspect of god in ancient Judaism," her daughter said.

"Her name changes represented her journey in life at the time and the discovery of a new part of herself," she added.

In 1991, she wrote "Ariadne's Thread: A Workbook of Goddess Magic," a book about feminist spirituality and magic.

"You may have heard of the five steps or keys to magic," she writes. "See, know, will, dare and keep silent. Those correspond to the five elements of the witch's star, as spirit, mind, action, emotion, and body"

Or, perhaps, a more prophetic line would be this one: "Great are the life forms that let us eat them/Some day our bodies too will be food/Great is the goddess who makes things so yummy/Great is the woman who cooks it so good"

In December 2005, however, Mountainwater was dealt a blow when she was diagnosed with cancer. Soon, she found herself having to mix alternative methods of healing, such as herbs, massage and acupuncture, with modern-day practices such as chemotherapy and radiation.

The chemotherapy may have taken her beautiful hair, friends say, but it didn't take her soul, or her fire, or the goddess within her.

"She taught us how to find the goddesses in ourselves. She taught us how to hold ourselves sacred," said Juniper Spring, a close friend. "That's what made her so special"

What neighbor Cindia Boyle said she will miss most of all is their day-to-day friendship.

"She was always here," said Boyle. "And now she isn't"

Contact Tom Ragan at tragan@santacruzsentinel.com.

Shekhinah Mountainwater

Born: Oct. 24, 1939.

Died: Aug. 11, 2007.

Occupation: Author, artist, healer, teacher, spiritual leader.

Survivors: Daughter Angel Brandwein of Phoenix; son Frey Faust of Santa Cruz; brother Seth Adler of San Francisco; father Bill Adler of San Francisco; and three grandchildren.

Services: 10 a.m. today at Soquel Cemetery, 550 Old San Jose Road. A public memorial will be announced in coming weeks.

The Art of Blessing

Yes, it is definitely always so easy to speak about the practice of METTA....universal loving-kindness (chesed). How easy is it to actually put into action....

But just for today I will practice Metta....blessing of others regardless of their actions towards me.

Please watch the video below....allow its message to bless your soul...yea, just for today.

Just For Today

Just for today
I will not worry.

Just for today
I will not be angry.

Just for today
I will honour my mother
my father, my teachers.

Just for today
I will do my work honestly.

Just for today
I will be kind to my neighbors
and to all living things.

*******************************
One of the most important lessons
we must learn is that all we have
is today.

I no longer have yesterday and
tomorrow is not guaranteed to me.

If I do for today than I have done
well.
*******************************

Just for today
I will be mindful of lessons learned.