Growing Pains
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- Written by John Michael Thornton
- Category: Growing Pains
Please care more.
What ever you care about in this life, care about it deeply. Care enough to show up, make and effort, and maybe embarass yourself. Care about people, whether you know them or not. Care about ideas, art, pop culture, politics, injustice, and getting more people to compost. Find the things in this world that make your heart sing!
What you care about, what you are passionate about, is what makes you human. It is what makes you alive and vibrant. Nothing is more depressing and dehumanizing than apathy, than not caring. Nothing is more corrosive to this world than not caring.
People who care deeply get things done. People who are passionate change the world. There are lots of people who are scared of change, who are afraid of passion – their own and other people’s. They will tell you not to care, that your caring doesn’t matter, that your passion is stupid and wrong.
This year, as every year, people are going to tell you to care less. Care less about your obscure hobbies, music, art, and tv. You will be asked, “Why do you like that?” and “Why are you so upset?” You will be told that something you are passionate about doesn’t matter or is weird.
Caring isn’t cool.
The things you care about aren’t cool.
What you care about is weird.
You will hear it from the media, society, social media, family, and friends. You may even hear it from your own internalised fear and judgemental self.
Please ignore these people. Please ignore these negative voices.
Do not believe them.
This year don't be afraid to care deeply, wildly and intensly.
- Details
- Written by John Michael Thornton
- Category: Growing Pains
Last night I dreamt I was trying to make an earing out of hematite beads, but I kept fumbling, dropping and loosing the beads while growing increasingly frantic. 
I hate hematite. I don't like touching it, I won’t wear it, I have tried (unsuccessfully) to keep it out of my house. Hematite is the reason I won’t let people put stones into my hands (“just to see what you feel”) without telling me what it is first. Holding hematite makes me feel weak and claustrophobic.
I’ve given up on keeping it out of the house. Pieces of it keep turning up in old gift boxes, the backs of drawers, the compost pile, my tomato bed, while repotting an overgrown plant, and now in my dreams. I don’t live an a hematite mine, these are polished stones. While we aren’t talking about pounds and pounds of the stuff, I found four small pieces in my office yesterday.
Since it has invaded my dreams, I thought I’d look it up and this passage stuck in my mind:
“Although this stone enhances mental capability, it provides for a calming atmosphere concurrently, and, in addition, encourages one to ‘reach for the sun’. It helps one to realize that the only limitations which exist are those self-limiting concepts within the mind.” Love is in the Earth by Melody (emphasis mine)
Oh.
I’ve been struggling with feeling limited and stuck lately. Often I have to chase my mind back from the Blame Game and feelings of victimhood. I know those thoughts are garbage, but sometimes I need reminding.
Ok hematite, I will try to listen to what you are telling me. Try to be gentle.
First impressions, holding in my left hand: My wrist hurts, I feel tight in my chest like I’m about to have an anxiety attack, my throat is tight and I just started clenching my jaw. I barely avoided throwing the stones when I put them down to type.
First impressions, holding in my right hand: less anxious but my right ankle hurts and a headache is starting between my eyes.
Holding in both hands the physical sensations are better, but my head is filled with a litany of, “I hate this, I’m so tired, I don't want to do this” in repeating variations.
One last try, I hear the words “It doesn't have to be like this.”
I will keep trying.
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- Written by John Michael Thornton
- Category: Growing Pains
I’ve been thinking a lot about reincarnation recently. I think what started the thought process was reading an article on climate change and thinking, “Wow, the next time around is going suck.”
My first past life memory was one of cataclysm and destruction. I was running through the streets of a city that was crumbling from earthquakes and rising waters, clutching the hand of a companion. The memory ended when she was attacked, I don’t know if we made it to docks and escaped. I was fourteen when I remembered those few brief moments and spent years wracked with guilt, convinced I could have done more to save her and get us to safety. Hundreds, if not thousands, of years later and I am still trying to forgive myself for those last moments.
I’ve remembered snippets of other lives since then, I’ve even remembered dying, but nothing shook me to the core like that first memory. For years after recalling that life I was obsessed with never coming back. I learned what I could about reincarnation and even bought a book, from the humor section, called “101 Ways to Avoid Reincarnation.” I studied it obsessively.
Around the same time I read the book Starborn, by John Nelson, in which one character asked the question, “how could I possibly leave everyone I care about without helping them move on as well?” It was that question that catalyzed the soul growth and evolution of the character. It also deeply resonated with me, but at the time I just wanted to get out and never come back.
Twenty Seven years as a psychic has changed my perspective a bit, and I know my thinking will continue to evolve. This still often feels like a harsh and challenging planet to live on, but I’m no longer obsessed with making this my last life.
For many people the idea that this is your last lifetime on Earth is almost a boast, a moment of ego. The idea is they have evolved beyond this planet, and maybe they have, but to me there still seems like so much to do here on this lovely blue green planet. There are so many things to learn, so many souls to help, and so many gardens to tend (and trash to be picked up).
That doesn't mean I don’t read the news and think, “stop the world, I want to get off.” I wonder how I can exist, let alone grow as a sensitive soul amid so much ugliness. I remember that first past life memory and the horror I felt as we ran for our lives and the conviction I felt that this time, this life, I would do better. I would be better.
So, I know I’m not done. This will not be my last time around. When I feel tired and overwhelmed by the ugliness, fear and hatred I see in the world I will remind myself that my job is to make myself and the world a little bit better and if I fail today, there will be another day, another lifetime, another chance to be better.
- Details
- Written by John Michael Thornton
- Category: Growing Pains
If you don't follow Caroline Myss, this is a great time to start.
Like most of us in the spiritual community (especially those of us who make our living as teachers, healers and psychics) most of what she shares is positive and uplifting with a dash of marketing, but she recently shared her thoughts on the current political climate and while she mentioned no names, she was not shy.
Naturally she was attacked for getting political. I was struck by two responses she gave to that attack: "Speaking up is not being "political"; it is an act of conscience."
"What is the role of a spiritual teacher if not to alert people that we are traveling into dangerous water."
Those of us who are spiritual teachers and speakers of Truth owe it to ourselves and the world to speak out when we see Fear and Pain exploited for political and monetary gain. Any political leader who uses fear to further thier career and financial interests does not deserve your patronage. Anyone who tells you to give up faith, love and hope if you want to be safe is promoting darkness and anyone who tell you that "They" are not like "Us" and must be excluded and driven from our shores (whoever the hell "They" are) is wrong and acting against the forces of Love.
Love is the antidote to far and hatred. Reject those who tell you to hate and embrace those who speak of love.
I love you.