Can you tell that my guides didn’t give me a title for my piece this week?  However, they gave me the theme which is appreciation.  I could have called this the journey to appreciation, however, I  was boring myself!  I put out into the ethers is there anyone who wants to help today with this piece and start me off?  The message was this: “freedom from the chains of negativity depends upon appreciation.”  I asked who was giving me this message and it is Thoth.  Thoth, as you may know, is the Egyptian god of high magic and manifestation (among other things) coming to help me get started.  Yay!  I am very lucky he is with me today because he was the scribe of the gods and a priest-king in Atlantis.  He taught the goddess, Isis, high magic and he’s with me now as we begin our journey of appreciation.

This past week has been somewhat challenging for me as I have been receiving so many downloads of light and experiencing more ascension symptoms regarding physically adjusting to increasing sensitivity and psychic powers.  Maybe you are going through this too?  Things are accelerating and many of us are feeling this in our bodies and on many levels.  It is all good.  However, when the intense buzzing and pressure in my ears and the strange sensations and racing heart became uncomfortable I called in Archangel Raphael (whose name means God heals) and explained to him that my body is experiencing difficulty and could he please make these downloads comfortable for me.  Within seconds the palpitations ceased and the buzzing completely subsided.  Thank you Archangel Raphael.  Nevertheless, it is always just a little difficult focusing at a time like this as my inner world feels exciting but fast paced and somewhat chaotic as I expand in awareness, again.  I feel a bit like Gulliver on his travels today.  So, I am going to take you on the journey with me.  We are safe.  I have a certificate in flatwater canoeing  (yes, dear readers, in the ‘real’ world I have a certificate to canoe – as I successfully passed a course in canoeing on the Pacific Ocean while in Victoria, B.C.)  We are going to navigate through some choppy waters and rapids at the beginning; however, do not be alarmed because everyone goes through some rapids on the way to the Land of Appreciation.

As a child in the 50s I watched a tv show each week about the brave explorers.  Radisson and Groseillers.  They established trading routes that led to the creation of the Hudson’s Bay Company and were the first Europeans to extensively explore the forests of the North, first to negotiate with the Cree and also first to explore the upper part of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers.  I was captivated and spellbound by these stories of adventure and discovery.  I wanted to canoe.  How Canadian eh?  What could be more Canadian than canoeing?  Apparently, the late Pierre Berton is quoted as saying that “a Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe.”  However, to me, a Canadian is someone who complains regularly about the weather and in particular about the snow and harsh winters.  Unfortunately, complaining is one of the many ways that we stop the magic in our lives.  Worry is another.  When we are worrying and complaining we are creating barriers (blocks) regarding our manifestations.  However, since we are human as well as divine, we sometimes find maintaining a state of appreciation to be challenging.  After all, Francine (Sylvia Browne’s spirit guide) confirms what many of us have long suspected:

“Earth is the most difficult of all the planets… There is no planet in all the galaxies any harder

than this planet that you call Earth.  It has every adversity.  It is known throughout the whole universe

as the Dark Planet of Insanity.  This is the primary home of many dark entities… Earth seems to be the

cesspool for all negativity throughout the universe… So when you strong-hearted souls decided to

come down, you really picked the harshest level to come into… I do not want to paint a black, negative

picture.  What I want to do is inform you of how brave you are to have come here, and how much you

are growing spiritually!  On the Other Side, you are approaching the highest plane that you can possibly

choose.”   (GOD, CREATION & TOOLS FOR LIFE)

I quote Francine, fellow voyageurs, in an effort to congratulate (appreciate) you on your continuing dedication to the Light and for maintaining your state of gratitude when things around you ‘get crazy.’  After all, when things are going smoothly for us, when the waters are calm and still, appreciation is not much of a challenge.  The Persian founder of the Bahai faith said that “a thankful person is thankful under all circumstances.”  When we take the ‘positive’ things in our life (our ‘good’) for granted we are not giving thanks in return for what we are receiving and we stop the magic from happening.

As I mentioned before, my definition of a Canadian is someone who complains about the weather.  You see my dilemma?  Until this past winter (when I learned my lesson) not only did I feel that my complaints were justified, but, I felt it was un-Canadian to stay mute on the subject.  Oops.  The angels taught me that I was going to have to ‘let go’ of this particular label.  It began with me chatting aloud one particularly bone-chilling day (I don’t always use telepathy to communicate).  It was the dead of winter and I threw up my hands and said to the angels, ” I know complaining is negative; however, I feel that I have the right, as a Canadian, to complain about one thing and that is the weather!  Surely you angels realize that I need to hang on to one complaint?”  Then, as usual, I forgot about my little rant.  I had got it out of my system to the angels.  I was getting tired of being snowed-in and hip deep in snow and having to grab onto the base of stop signs and telephone poles to hoist myself over snow banks (thankfully yoga has made me strong and flexible).  If I had wanted to be a pole vaulter I would have become one.  So, I lapsed into the Canadian pastime even though I knew that complaining lowers our frequency.  You see, I felt that the spiritual law did not apply to winter.

The angels responded swiftly the next day.  I was picked up by a friend and taken to Kingston to go banking and get in supplies for my cottage.  Now, usually, the good folks of Kingston can be counted on to complain about the leaking sewers, the frozen and broken pipes, the ‘black ice’ and especially the increasingly harsh winters.  However, to my surprise (and for the first time ever) there were three times when I began to chit-chat about the snow, ice and dangerous sidewalks and was met with blank stares and the words “this is a Canadian winter.  We live in Canada.”  Huh?  Three times is the magic number.  So, the angels answered me and I have received the message of the angels and no longer do I complain about the weather.  (O.K., maybe once when I received a whopping gas bill mid- June and told my buddy about it!)  So, I suppose I must accept Pierre Berton’s definition of a Canadian as “someone who knows how to make love in a canoe.”  Did I mention that I have a certificate in canoeing?  Yup, in the real world.  I really, really, love to canoe.  I love the whole canoeing experience.  However, a local writer, David Newland, recently wrote that most Canadians, nowadays, haven’t a clue about canoeing and are “up the proverbial creek without a paddle.”  David, although likely true, that sounds a bit negative to me!  So, David, let me tell you how I took my negative feelings about winter and turned them into gold.

I pretended I was a child again David and experiencing the wonders of winter.  I remembered how beautiful I thought my hometown in Northwestern Quebec was when it was sparkling under the sun’s rays and everything seemed like an icicle fairyland.  I recalled how this memory resulted in me writing a children’s book MOOSE LAKE and how magical it felt writing it.  I remembered sledding, snowshoeing, toboggans, building snow forts, and making angels in the snow under the stars in a field.  Most of all I remembered my mother waking me up at 3 a.m. one night to see the aurora borealis.  I then moved quickly forward in time, David, to the highlight of my past winter when my totem animal, Gray Wolf, answered my call.  Yes, in the ‘real world.’  Gray Wolf, one lightly snowy evening bounded out from the woods behind the houses on my lane in the village and stood majestically on my driveway lit up from the streetlamp and the moon above.  Our eyes met, an understanding of my appreciation of him passed between us and then he bounded up the lane and over the highway leaving me enchanted and in a state of awe.  This is how I ‘shifted’ my energy David.  Winter reminds me of Gray Wolf.  I take this ‘new’ energy now into winter and into every other season.  Thank you Gray Wolf!  Thank you Angels!

Deep appreciation helps us find Paradise within.  Being grateful for the simple things in life, like food and water, is one of the deepest expressions of gratitude.  Our gratitude practice is key to cueing the magic in our lives.  (See my piece called Attitude of Gratitude)  Albert Einstein, Nobel prize-winning physicist, said that there are two ways to live our lives.  “One is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.”  It is an intelligent choice to live your life as though everything is a miracle – not just because it is – but because it helps you enter into the state of appreciation that allows your desires to manifest in the real  (physical) world.  Einstein also told us that he practiced gratitude daily.  “A hundred times a day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. ” With these words we know that Einstein knew the spiritual laws well.  He understood the Law of Gratitude and its part in manifestation.  Gratitude practiced daily leads to a state of deep appreciation.  Deep riches.  The Christian Science Hymnal says that “gratitude is riches.  Complaint is poverty.”    To increase anything in our lives, we have to be grateful for what we already have.  Appreciation is the way we live gratitude.  When we live gratitude we bring Heaven to Earth.

“To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and

noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.”  (Johannes Gaertner)

Rhonda Byrne from the movie THE SECRET says that “thank you must become the two words you deliberately say and feel more than any other words.  Deep appreciation is a magic wand.”

How does Abraham ( a group of loving entities channeled by Esther Hicks) define appreciation?  “Appreciation is pure Connection to Source where there is no perception of lack.  (MONEY & THE LAW OF ATTRACTION)  Source- Consciousness is All-sufficiency – because – God lacks nothing.  Whenever we appreciate we raise our own vibration and attract to us whatever we are appreciating.  (When I deeply and fully appreciated Gray Wolf, he came to me in the physical world)  When we are thinking about something that we want and in an emotion (energy in motion) of appreciation, we are allowing into our lives something we desire to experience.  Spending time with those people who truly ‘see’ us and appreciate us – stimulates thoughts of appreciation.  (The Angels always appreciate you!)  Thoughts of appreciation can lead to magic in our lives.

And it is here we go deeper into the jungle, dear voyageur, to meet my ‘new’ animal totem, the Tiger.  Tiger is a very recent totem.  I am deeply blessed by this new energy.  A tiger as you are well aware is a big cat.  If you have been following my journey to date, then you know cats play a prominent part in my life.  Is Tiger my new familiar?  Living for 14 years on Vancouver Island, where half of the world’s population of cougars reside, I can sense ‘cat energy’.  I had to – to protect my daughter – as at rare times – a cougar would wander onto her elementary school playground.  (Necessity is the mother of invention.)  I have respect for all cats.  As usual, when dis-covering a new animal guide or totem I head to Ted Andrews to find the keynote.  The keynote of tiger is “passion, power, devotion and sensuality.”  (ANIMAL SPEAK)  I was reminded yesterday of a vision that I had after returning from my training with Doreen Virtue.  I had a vision of a woman walking beside a tiger.  Was this a precognitive vision of this stage of my awakening dear voyageur?  Perhaps.  Ted says that tigers are strong, devoted mothers and strong swimmers. ( I am strong, a devoted mother and good at swimming in the unconscious.)  Unlike the other cats, because they are good swimmers, Ted says that “this gives them ties to all the energies and mystical qualities so often associated with the element of water.”  Sometimes tiger can bring to light information about past life links to other parts of the world.  I had at least one past life in India which is home to the world’s largest wild tiger population.  Sadly, there are now less than 3,000 tigers remaining in the wild and many environmental groups have declared that in as little as 20 years tigers will be considered an extinct species.  This is why this year  a leading conservation-oriented expedition company is offering a safari to India.  Hoping that seeing a ‘real’ tiger will lead to help in their conservation efforts.

I am choosing to be hopeful and optimistic that the lightworkers around the world are working to save the tigers as all of us are doing whatever we are able to do with our own particular skills and gifts to respond to the ‘call’ of the tiger and the other animals that need our help if they are to remain on the planet. We all do what we can in our corner of the world.  I know that many lightworkers are doing everything they can to promote the appreciation of all of God’s creatures.  I hold my vision of this happening.  And I continue to offer Animal Totem Workshops where  we take a dive into the energies of the world of the animal spirit guides.  I have learned that complaining does not help.  Action does.  We can sign a petition, donate what we are able, we can give a workshop or lecture and we can pray for them.   Never underestimate the power of prayer.  (See my piece the Power of Prayer) Worrying does not help.  It drains our energy and blocks our manifestations.  Our local writer, David, says – “We need to improve our game, … if someone falls out of the canoe, you can’t blame the canoe.”  No David, you can’t.  In fact, as you likely know, blame and shame is part of the ‘old’ way that is now quickly disappearing and with it our ‘old’ 3D way of life.  We are discovering a way to live that is way beyond the old blame and shame habit.  As we all let go of blame and shame we are deeply appreciating our Source, ourselves, others and all sentient creatures on this planet.   We are bringing Heaven to Earth.

Last night I had a dream where an old friend of mine on the Other Side (Larry) met me at a wonderful Book Fair.  We had each written a book.  (Larry and I produced a book in Victoria together).  We were each there to sell our books and to support each other.  I wanted people to buy Larry’s book  – YOU’LL BE BIG, SOMEDAY( bound in old style) and Larry wanted them to buy mine.  (MOOSE LAKE?)  We had a wonderful reunion.  This was a visitation.  I left Larry on the Other Side, although I feel him with me now as I write – and, in a dream I  shape-shifted into a little girl who walked into a magical garden and sat in a lovely white chair from which to create.  As she began to gather her energy to manifest she received a message and bent down to pick up her blackberry.  Onto the screen came the image of a glorious tiger.  Surrounded by beautiful blue flowers.  Who sent this I wondered as I awoke?  Larry came to mind.  One of the lessons that I learned from Larry is to never give up on your dreams.

And, this dear voyageur, is where today’s journey with me ends.  Create a beautiful day for yourself.

With appreciation,

Monica