The Beautiful Answer

Reframing the Future

I can’t believe it, but this is my 365th post. It’s been a year since I started this blog,  beginning with a line from an e.e. cummings poem as my inspiration: 

“Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.” 

In the year I’ve been writing, I’ve asked a lot of questions. It began with wanting somehow to release some of the negativity I felt surrounded me, to let go of some aspects of myself that I had outgrown, and release some people who weren’t really making my life a more loving and rewarding place to be. 

As I began to actually go out of my way to search for the beauty, I found it. Almost immediately I could feel my heart and spirit becoming lighter. Which is not to say that all of a sudden, everything got amazing and better. But I started looking deeper and even deeper. I started noticing more. Stuff that used to bug the crap out of me, like the endless whining for more love, more attention and more … whatever someone didn’t have, began to sound like background noise. 

In reframing my present, I found. I was reframing the future as well. 

There is no real way to tell where any of us are going, even though I work in the realm of the intuitive every day, and have seen first hand how much this stuff works. But I know that I am headed in a far better direction than the one I had going a year ago. I don’t have to search for happiness now. It’s sitting right in front of me.

I can take my  camera and find a shaft of sunlight, or a little kid blowing bubbles, and everything changes. In that moment, I have found contentment, all on my own, not counted on someone else to determine my mood. I have claimed an entirely new set of tools to work with, broken them in, and even shared them with some of my clients. 

So on this last day of this blog, I want to say thank you to the people I have met. You are a cool bunch, with lots of interesting things to say. You’re funny and human and endlessly searching for that one perfect photo, or post, or joke to share with others. Because blogging is nothing but sharing, after all. So in that spirit, I invite anyone who wants to stay in touch to join me at http://www.sassypsychic.com. Think about signing up for the mailing list (don’t worry, I don’t overemail, and you always have the choice to unsubscribe), friending me on Facebook, or following me on Twitter (links on the left side of the Sassy Psychic home page). 

I hope your journey is made happier for being here. 

Searching for Sassy’s First Award!

Super excited to report that my book Searching for Sassy: An L.A. Phone Psychic’s Tales of LIfe, Lust & Love has just won its first award, as a finalist in the Indie Excellence Book Awards! 

Yay and double yay! 

The response has really been great, and I am so grateful for all the reviews I’ve already received. 

Onward and upward, to see what’s next. :) 

Searching for Sassy on Sale!

Just found out that my book Searching for Sassy: An L.A. Phone Psychic’s Tales of Life, Lust & Love is on sale at Amazon for just $13.96! 

Not bad. Not bad at all, considering it’s about $5 off the cover price. 

Also, I’m offering a small gift for anyone willing to read the book and offer an honest review on Amazon. In case you’re in the marketing for a reading, some healing energy work, or another service I offer at SassyPsychic.com. 

For most authors, reviews can make or break the book, so if you’re interested in that, please message me and let me know you’ve bought the book, are reading it or have read it and plan to review. 

Much thanks from your humble Sassy Psychic. :) 

Expansion

I suppose it’s no accident on a day when we had a significant Jupiter transit that I (and maybe you, too) experienced some major expansiveness. Jupiter is the luckiest planet in the zodiac, and when other planets aspect it, or hit our own natal Jupiter’s position, chances are we’re expanding our influence (hopefully not our waistlines), getting a promotion, enjoying a sense of wellbeing — you get the drill. They’re just days when nothing can go wrong, and you’re kind of walking around on air, not expecting the other shoe to drop. Because it’s fabulous, and it’s already on your foot. 

Today was like that for me. As I’ve written before, I’ve got a lot on my plate these days, with a recent book launch, meetings about future writing projects, plans for a book tour this summer, existing clients and lots of new clients as well. Oh, and I’ve got a play opening in three days from now. So if you’re in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. area, go see Punk Rock Mom at the Venus Theatre. So I’m not looking for expansion as in “‘let’s find a few more things for me to do.” 

Ironically, it came looking for me in another way. I had a few clients, then a few meetings, and then a few more clients kind of bookending my day. I always like to leave my work behind this way, because the energy of my sessions stays with me, and I feel like I’ve spent my time well, helping people. When I looked back at my day today, it was as if some snake charmer had orchestrated it. It was just so graceful and easy, not stressful or forced in any way.  And I wondered how that had happened, when no one seemed to be the planner — except for maybe Jupiter. 

Thank you, Jupiter, for making my life an easier place to be, and helping me experience expansion as so many things are going right. Since it’s Beltane, I’ve left out some almonds and cookies for the fairies, in the hopes they’ll grant my wishes. 

Love Bunch

When you’re approaching a deadline of any kind, time seems to contract somehow, becoming telescoped and ever emphasized. I have a client who’s waiting for her first child to be born, and she tells me that every day seems like it’s twice as long, so fierce is her desire to see her baby’s face for the first time, and hold the little one in her arms. I have another client that’s waiting to hear back on what could become the defining moment of his life — an audition for a big part on Broadway. Either way, these are big deal moments. 

I, of course, have my own version of this coming up on Tuesday. I’ve been guided to step back from work a bit, to prepare myself for this moment but also so I can have the time and emotional space to enjoy it. For myself and clients alike, I’ve noticed the tendency to rush past these moments, thinking them not important enough to celebrate since they’re not “there” — wherever “there” might be. 

This one I fully intend to celebrate, with champagne and cupcakes. I’ve got some great joint venture partners offering free meditations, e-books and discounts of all kinds, so there’s plenty of incentive to buy the book on April 24th. The value of the incentives far outpaces the price of a paperback.

I’m just happy to have made it to this milestone in my life, and to extend the bunches of love I feel for everyone around me now. This shit is truly infectious when you work it. 

A Curious Thing

There’s a curious thing that happens whenever you put out a book. A kind of compression of time and space, until you’re living inside yourself, of course (I suppose it’s hard to get out of that responsibility) and living outside yourself as well, seeing what your work does to other people. You begin to see yourself through other people’s eyes. 

The book that’s coming out in 19 days, for me, is my third, but each experience has been really different. The first was an enormous learning curve, where I did just about everything wrong, and nearly drove myself insane with all the expectations. The second was more relaxed. I let it come to me, and it did, in a larger way. It became an Amazon bestseller for around three months, which was nice. The third is … well, it’s still happening. I’m doing a lot more for it, in a much more concerted way, and I’m reaching a lot more people as well. Chalk that up to all the learning experiences I’ve had in the past, or just a realistic set of expectations, I don’t know. I’m just happy I’m not tempted to tear my hair out anytime soon. 

So many people I run into want to write books. They tell me that, and then in the next sentence say something like they don’t have the time, and they don’t know what they’d write, or they’re not sure if they’d be any good at it. Setting aside the “good at it” part (everyone sucks at first, trust me), I don’t know why anyone would want to write a book unless one were burning its way out of you from the inside. Writing books is hard. It takes time, and patience, and perseverance. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. You have to see inside people’s heads, which can get exhausting, and even miss out on the fun stuff of life, like seeing your friends as often as you’d like. Writing can be painful if you’re doing it right, and it can be transcendent. 

For right now, I’m happy to rest in the “done with this one” feeling. The marketing will keep happening, as well as the reading in public and the teaching of workshops. I’ve got a few new things sketched out or outlined on my computer, a few books and plays, and we’ll see how long I can go without diving in again. For me, writing is necessary to balance out the part of my life I live for other people — the healing, compassionate part that needs to do those thing, just as my fingers ache to be on the keyboard again, after too much time alone. 

Confessions of a Buddhist Psychic

I’ve always known I was a little “different.”

A vivid imagination and near photographic memory of my textbooks saved on hours of study, making it easier to pass tests in school. Finding creative excuses for why I’d done this, or failed to do that, were as simple as tuning in to the wildest impulses of my mind.

Spiritually, my explorations were all over the place as I was led by curiosity to the study of Buddhism. I was trained in Mahayana, sitting in traditional Tibetan style shamatha vippasana meditation for a minimum of 20 minutes per day, then 30 or more. Dozens of lectures, sutras, teachings and chants later, I was a Buddhist, trying not to cling to the idea of being anything at all.

But when I found myself jobless in Los Angeles, I landed a job as a phone psychic, using my scant knowledge of tarot cards to gain the position. Far from being a haven for out-of-work actors or charlatans drunk on woo-woo juice, I found myself surrounded by gifted intuitives, each with his or her own area of specialty.

I soaked it up like a sponge.

Read the rest here, on Elephant Journal. 

Still Tired, Looking Up

You know those days that kind of shoot past, and you realize by the end that you haven’t looked up at the sky at all? It could be raining outside, you have no idea, or it could be sunny and 80 degrees. Today was one of those kinds of days. I have a feeling I’ll be seeing a lot more of those kinds of days in the near future as well. 

Book marketing is going very well. I’m getting some great reviews and quotes, which are all very kind. I’m booking tons of print and radio interviews, and have a few sites wiling to excerpt the book near the launch date of April 24th. 

All I could use now is a huge shot of energy. All right, all right. I know. Writing a book is a huge burst of energy. It’s way closer to the birth process than most people realize. By the end you’re torn up and ready to go fetal for about a month. But then comes the marketing part, which is more like a marathon than a sprint, and you have to talk about yourself (writers aren’t by nature like that, at least not most of them, myself included) for a long time, a few months at least, and more if you’re really driven, as I am. 

By the end you need a vacation like you’ve never needed one, and you don’t want to even hear your own name for like 6 months. I work out a lot anyway, usually 5 times a week, and I mediate each day. I try to work in a fair amount of yoga and Pilates into my workouts, because I get bored easily. So I guess the tiredness I feel now is my wake up call. Time to get your butt in training lady, for this marathon that feels like a sprint. 

Getting some sleep early tonight. Gotta expand that sleeping zone so I can stay rested and ready. I feel so much going forward, and want to be as ready as I can to face the fun stuff ahead. 

The “I Don’t Care” Strategy

Sometimes, you have to laugh. After all, I started this little project out of a playful desire to play give and take with the universe, to se if what most people think I can do and even ask me to help them do, is actually possible. But sometimes, you’re just not in the mood, am I right? 

I have a client, who shall remain nameless. Her daughter has cancer, a brain tumor, and I help her out with energy work to help the child through surgeries and treatments, to help her little body recover faster, and so far it’s work out well. She is probably through the worst of it, and slowly regaining her strength. 

When you work in this realm, as I do, you see things in a completely different way than most people. Little things like someone cutting you off, or not calling you back, or wearing the same sweater to a party don’t mean as much to you , and you definitely don’t take them personally, At least, not always. 

Sometimes, I get impatient with people because they are seemingly so self-obsessed that they can’t even imagine someone being eight years old and lying in a hospital bed for most of the past year of her life. They’re pissed that someone doesn’t like them, or they can’t find their size in the jeans they want, or their cell phone plan went up in price. Most day, I handle it pretty well, staying buoyant and poised, but I went in to buy a lottery ticket in a bad mood yesterday, and basically said in my head as I was buying the ticket, “OK, whatever. Make me win the freakin’ lottery if you want. Or not. I don’t care right now.” 

Good strategy, right?  Real spiritual. :) 

So of ourse I got two numbers and the mega number right, which is always the hardest. That’s the best I’ve done so far — 3 out of 6 numbers. I haven’t redeemed the ticket yet, but I think it’s worth two or three bucks. 

It made me laugh, and cleared up what was left of the bad attitude. If a little kid can fight that hard, surely I can come up with a little compassion for the less-than-aware among us. 

The Healing Disease

I never believed I could really be a healer, instead buying into the notion that healers were somehow vaunted or gifted individuals who were either born with special gifts or somehow transcended the space-time continuum to achieve these mystical powers. Part of me assumed that healers had to go through many years of medical school or put in ages of residency work before spending the rest of their lives paying off school loans. 

Turns out, life had other plans for me. Years of gathering experience in other fields and then a serious need for immediate healing in my own life made me into a healer by necessity, even before I had considered using my skills to help others. But I find that the more I am asked by my guides to broaden my abilities, to reach out and try to help even more people, that so many assume that I am special, or more special, than everyone else. I call it the Healing Disease, because people assume I suppose that I have to either take on everyone else’s stuff so they can get better (not the way it works, in my experience) or just be a big-headed ashole who gets off on wielding that kind of power over others. 

Neither happens to be true in my case. Sure, I like helping people. It would be hard to do what I do every day if I didn’t. But there’s another part of me that wants to see how far human consciousness can go, what’s it’s truly capable of if made unbound. So my work in reframing this has as much to do with what others feel I do, or should do, than anything else. 

I started by just sending a burst of white light from my heart chakra as a way to clear the energetic space, then sat in that for a bit. I could feel the energy of others kind of relaxing into that shared place of light. Then I tried filling it with things I thought would be healing for all — healthy food, plenty of rest, clean water, loving families and friends, attentive mates, wonderful teachers and spiritual satisfaction. When I could feel that taking effect I moved up a notch, including tolerance and acceptance, love, education, engagement, and finally self-love. That might seem like an obvious one but you don’t do what I do and not run into a lot of people who don’t love themselves even a little bit. 

Once the space was filled with all of those intentions, I could feel any resistance or assumptions kind of melting off to the sides until we were left with a circle of people gazing at each other with respect and curiosity. Can’t ask for much more than that.