Did you guess right? by Elsabe Smit

I have many regular clients in different countries who get psychic readings for their own or business issues. Quite often I feel that I learn more from the readings than they do.

One of the lessons that I am often reminded of is that it is not a good idea to second guess Spirit. Of course, my readings are not always 100% accurate, because I am human, and I need to listen carefully and ensure I convey what I am given.

I had a client who was not happy in her job. People who get readings from me know that I do not ask many questions. I first connect and give everything I receive, and then I answer any remaining questions. I received an image of this client with a briefcase in one hand and a passport in the other hand, boarding a plane with a one-way ticket to her destination. It was as clear as day to me that she was going to accept a job in a different country, and that she was going to move from one country to another. It turned out that she was from Estonia and based in the UK, and ready to move to either Brazil or Peru – she had applied for jobs in both countries. After I had described to her the image that was given to me and confirmed that she would be leaving the UK and the reason would be her acceptance of a job in a different country, I asked if she had any questions. She had one: “Am I going to get a job in another country and move away from the UK?”.

All I can say is that maybe she was not ready to hear what I had told her.

Another client in England had a problem with damp in a corner house he owned. He had tried everything to get rid of the damp, and after two years was at the end of his tether. I told him that there was a leaking water pipe on the sidewalk that ran parallel with the railway line. He had two issues with this answer: the damp was on the opposite side of the house, and there was no railway line near the property. However, this client trusted and went away to investigate. He called me about two weeks later, quite excited. It turned out that there was a disused railway line that very few people knew about, around 200 yards from the house. He started digging, not on the sidewalk, but just inside the boundary. The water pipe he uncovered was Victorian and ran underneath the house to the other side of the house, where the damp was. He then got permission to dig up the sidewalk and fixed the leak within days. He told me a few months later that the issue had been completely resolved. He trusted and so did I.

I have a client in Scotland who, after over a decade of regular readings, still struggle with anything he receives that is not precise. My suspicion is that Spirit is by now teasing him and giving him precise information, but not on his timescale. He has an issue with an ancient property and some jiggery-pokery happening with his neighbour, who is hellbent on abusing an ancient law to get the property for next to nothing. In short, the current owner must prove access on an existing road for at least 20 years, or else the access road cannot be regarded as part of the property. My client could only prove access for about 17 years, and the crooked neighbour wanted to use this fact to devalue the property – to ensure that anyone can only access the huge property on foot. The neighbour even went as far as erecting a locked gate to prevent access, claiming that he had a right to do so.

About a year ago I told the client two things: Firstly, an important man will take up his case and that will result in publicity. Secondly, my client will sell the property to a buyer who will save the day by telling my client about a little-known law that will swing the situation in his favour.

Of course Mr Impatient wanted to know the exact surname of the important man and the new buyer, and on which exact dates each one will come knocking at his door, and as much detail about each one as possible, so that he can be prepared and “not miss anything”.

And then nothing happened for months on end. The important man was not the council employee in charge of the case, or the solicitor, or the Lord of the Manor. So, who was it? And when would this man appear?

The property was on the market, and no buyers came forward for months. When will the buyers come knocking on the door? What colour car do they drive? Will there be one or two people? What price will they offer?

Sorry – I could not tell – because it was not even revealed to me. Patience is a virtue.

About nine months after this information was revealed to me (and my client) I had an extremely excited client on the line. The “important man” was no less than the local Member of Parliament who got wind of the situation, called my client, and added the facts to his campaign for clean governance.

The buyer, who happened to discover in a social situation that the house was for sale, made an offer, and my client made a counteroffer for the buyer’s smaller house. This suited both parties to a tee and the paperwork flowed.

My client, being the honest man that he is, was upfront about the legal wrangle around the access road.

Oh, said the new buyer. There is a little-known law in Scotland which states that if anyone maintains the verge of an access road that borders on his neighbour’s property, as well as the access road, for ten years, then ownership of BOTH verges and the access road defaults to the party who can prove maintenance for ten years.

You cannot imagine how happy this man was once he had confirmed the existence of the law and his claim of ownership.

The bottom line is: we are not told everything, and what we hear is sometimes not what we want to hear. I am not for a moment saying that every psychic is accurate every time – we are human, and we must listen carefully. But patience is a virtue, and often a healthy dose of faith and common sense need to be added to any psychic reading.

Conjugal Wife versus The Other Woman By Deborah Jordaan

First of all welcome to our faithful readers. Without you we wouldnt have a platform to write our thoughts down and have it read. This month Im writing about women as it is women`s month after all. Let us start with the married woman that is separated from her husband and is still expected to give him pleasures when he expects it.

Ursula was a successful woman till she met someone that would take some of her worries off her shoulders. She already was a single mom with three kids when she met her second husband. Everything went well for a while but between her husbands job and sports activities things became difficult. Her white knight was developing an ego and she was left at home with the children and he was busy having a life. She started drinking to cope between hes affairs, long hours at work and hes sport. According to him she was invited but hes secretary was always the one accompanying him as her son was also playing soccer. How convenient for the secretary.

Their marriage was going down quickly because her husband was now having an affair with a corporate lady and still had the secretary stroking his ego at work so he didnt care coming home to a wife that was passed out already.

All Ursula did was drink and try to keep her sanity. Maybe she was also contributing to the mess but she had lost her fight. She was giving in to her circumstances. She had money, a car and credit cards but what was that if she was unhappy. Her mental illness started from childhood and through adulthood it didn`t get any better. Her husband was no help regarding her mental stability.

Ursula had to go to rehabilitation centres a few times which really put pressure on the marriage. The eventual outcome was that she was told to leave on her 50th birthday by her husband. He got her a place to stay but now and then if the current woman in hes life wasnt being nice to him he would call her up and go for some fun and return to hes girlfriend.

Hes words to her are that they are still married and so if hes got problems with hes current partner he knows where to go to get some fun because he says Ursula is easy-she never argues. He is currently in a relationship with Olivia for two years. Olivia had no idea that he was still married and that Ursula had to move back to the property due to financial reasons.

The couple cant get divorced as they will lose their property and company. Ursula has moved back to the property they own together though now there is no more sexual relationship between him and Ursula as Olivia wont allow it or he cant use Ursula as Olivia will know about it. Olivia will never know the truth. Olivia is trying to motivate Ursula to stand up to him and her pushy son as they all think she is hard up for them and that she cant make her own decisions.

People always judge the other woman but in this case and many others it is not the other woman who is at fault. In my opinion in this case its the husband that’s has created this big lie. Unfortunately Olivia is not able to move as she is not financially stable and cant support herself at this stage.

My conclusion is that Ursulas husband is controlling that situation but he didnt bank on the two woman becoming allies. I hope that the women in the same situation or worse can also have a strong minded woman in their life like Olivia who is able to help them. Be brave and know there is always someone out there to help you no matter how bad the situation seems.

Who’s to blame? by Ada Den Hollander

You are still young
not in years, but
at heart.
You love your life,
you’re free to walk,
go out,
to dance, to laugh,
to sometimes cry,
you live!
But then all hell breaks loose.
Chaos in the world,
chaos in your head.
The streets empty,
your freedom gone.
No knock on your door,
no coffees with friends,
no hugs are allowed.
Slowly but surely
your zest for life disappears.
You don’t dare to say,
you may not want to stay.
Lonely, fearful, without hope
you take them all,
you go to sleep
to never wake up.
At least you’re now free,
free from the chaos in the world,
the chaos in your head.

The Delicate Art of Supporting Others and Ourselves by Michael Edward Bradford

How many times in your life have you felt excited about something you’ve seen, heard, done or were planning to do, yet when you shared it with someone, their comments felt as if a bucket of ice water was dumped on your head? How many times have you felt all of your joy, happiness, excitement and enthusiasm destroyed?

At the other extreme, how many times have you felt frustrated, exhausted and ready to give up, when someone gifted you with a smile, a caring hug and words of encouragement that totally lifted your spirit? Looking back over your life, remember the people who, with a few kind, caring, encouraging words made your heart sing? Do you remember how positive, re-energized and re-committed you became? Those are the friends to keep around.

As humans, we are sensitive and often oversensitive. At the same time, we have a tendency to be critical of others and especially of ourselves. Regardless of whether we are talking to children, young adults, adults, parents, partners, work colleagues or even to ourselves, the way we communicate and share – and respond – can have a huge effect on the outcome of our – and their – health, sanity, projects and relationships.

Kindness, caring and compassion cost so little to give, and yet often has a huge impact on the person we are interacting with. So rather than criticize, look for the good in people. Take time to compliment a person. Be sensitive to what others are feeling and may be going through and ALWAYS see their magnificence, their divine soul essence.

Although this article is focused on how we communicate with others, it also pertains to how we treat and communicate with ourselves. Often there seems to be an “unkind” voice within us that puts us down, criticizes us and points out even our most minute imperfection. That voice is the wounded (disowned) part of our self that is crying out, begging for healing and acceptance.

The kinder, caring, compassionate and more loving we become – to ourselves as well as to others – the faster we will heal, learn, change, grow and evolve into the magnificent perfectly-imperfect human being we already are.

Isn’t today a great time to start?

Main Stresses and Solutions by Karin Kelly Lawrenz (Transformation Coach)

People cross my path on a daily basis, whether it be a coaching client, or just sitting in a coffee shop and hearing people talk around me, and let’s not forget social media feeds — so it’s inevitable that the “stress” of life, in one way or another is brought up, be it death of a loved one, divorce, loss of a job, increasing financial obligations, getting married, moving to a new home, suffering chronic illness or injury, and even political uncertainty — they are our major stressors in life.

I write as a transformation coach, but also from a personal perspective, as I have gone through 5 of the 7 main stressors — facing death, within the week of being told, was the major one for me.

“You don’t know if the roof is leaking unless you live on the inside.” We don’t know what is going on inside of others unless we ask and unless they tell. People don’t typically go around talking about their problems, depression, anxiety, sad thoughts, or self-loathing. They fear rejection or being a burden to their friends and families.

Over 7 billion people on the planet have a different fingerprint (wow it’s difficult getting your head around that), thus the concept of our energy is different from everyone else’s. Therefore the way we deal with the main proven stressors is going to be dealt with differently by each and every individual. No Judgement, no blame!

I see a lot of loneliness, isolation, lack of connection, and judgement, in our world today. I believe this has a hand in our increased stress in our lives and in dealing with traumatising situations. Just knowing there are people to talk to and people who care in your world is a huge gift.

We live in very stressful times. Out of seemingly nowhere, an event takes hold of us and we are dealing with the unexpected messiness that comes with living. We also put a lot of expectations on ourselves.

Our society is set up such, where success, a person’s worth is looked at, what kind of job you have, how much money you have, what vehicle you drive, where you stay, and your social circle, to mention a few……everyone wants to be loved.

When we start to experience stress and anxiety we know that we have crossed a boundary line. The basic root to stress and anxiety is that one thinks that things are not going to turn out well — and that is why we become anxious.

“I am never going to cure myself of my illness”
“I am never going to find another job in these times”
“How am I going to make this relationship work when the breakup rate is so high”
“What is my purpose”
“What am I going to do with my life”

What to do? Well the first thing is not to panic — it’s all part of the journey. You need to recognise and accept that you are not going to have it all figured out. Secondly, accept where you find yourself and that there will always be uncertainty in your life. You don’t get to know it all. Just look at an artist and how they make decisions. To be artists they have to free themselves to make mistakes and go into unknown territory. Thirdly, it doesn’t have to be perfect. People are not perfect. Fourth is to truly have trust in life. When we expect the best out of life, in most cases that is what we attract. Have a fundamental belief that you are good enough. Love yourself, trust yourself and life, and know that you are good and worthy of it all. Many a time, stress and anxiety are fabricated by our minds. We worry so much and have so many unnecessary thoughts that we don’t even know which worry has taken root within ourselves. Leave ego alone.

Fifth, we do not get to go back. However we do have the ability, through our thoughts and actions, to chart a course towards new opportunities.
Sixth is the sign you are not having fun in your life. You are stuck, or lost in your own consciousness and thoughts. Learn to be present and self-aware about the different elements that make up your personality — and see them without judgment. Take some time in your day to have some fun. Go stand in your garden or the beach and take in the beauty. Or have a conversation with a friend. Notice the beauty around you. Become self-aware about the beauty within yourself. When you’re self-aware you reduce the chances of being completely thrown by things that happen — and any wrong or inappropriate moves that you might make in response to those things happening.

Life is a journey towards something — it is not the destination.

Where we are going in life will most certainly be determined by how we think and act from this point on. Here we have absolute control.

When I work with transformation or healing and my client is so self-absorbed — their minds being full, and no light at the end of the tunnel, I tell them a story of fire. When there is a fire on a mountain for example, it is devastating, destructive and painful. When everything is burnt down to ash and nothing is left, a couple of days later what starts to show? New growth from the existing seed takes place. Change starts to take place. This gives you the perfect opportunity for reinvention (moving towards a destination). As much as the devastation seemed unbelievable, unconceivable by your thoughts, this now gives you a new concept, or new way of life, or whatever it is, to develop YOU. It gives you, YOU time — to look at your deeper layers of understanding of who you are and what you really want out of life, whether it’s divorce, change of job as mentioned in the beginning of the article.

My advice is then to start from the bottom like the new seed after the fire. Building yourself up by looking into your life, doing some introspection and contemplation and then seeing how being a victim to that circumstance actually doesn’t serve you. Nine out of ten times you will get the answer that it will not serve you

We have all the resources at our disposal — but we are not meant to do it alone. So next time talk to a trusted friend, family, a transformation coach, or psychologist, to name a few.

Handmade by Vanessa Anderson

I recently read something that piqued my interest. It was posted on a social media platform and it spoke of a challenge that is facing many people at this time, a direct result of attempts by government, not just ours but across the world – to flatten the COVID-19 curve that has left many individuals and families divest of economic opportunity, or to put it more bluntly, the ability to put food on the table and shelter at our backs.

The post spoke of a trade in services, a bartering of skills, not a you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours, scenario but an honest, stripped bare and exposed, this is what I can create, grow, fix, build vs this is what I need, that I cannot build, fix, grow or create myself – how can we help each other thrive during this time when we can no longer earn what we need to survive.

Money, well that’s a topic for another day, but let me just leave this thought here because it speaks to the point. We live in a world where our value has become something determined by certain skill sets and some of the highest valued skills sets having nothing to do with the ability to create, fix or build things with our own hands but more to do with managing or controlling those who can.

But here we are in 2020 living in world where for the moment, industry has ground to a halt, food production is at risk, companies are closing and people are losing their jobs, their income and their freedoms. Some of those high value skills are scrambling for footholds in the cobwebs of yesterday as we are stripped back to the bare essentials.

And let us be brutally honest with ourselves here, because if we aren’t, we are fooling no one but ourselves. Most of us have forgotten how to weave a fabric of existence that does not rely on money, forgotten the feel of soil under our nails, how steady a root holds its ground or the pleasure of nurturing a food source from seed to harvest. Our fingertips caress tiled letters on a keyboard, fashioning reality from the microchips and fragments of quartz embedded in technology instead of connecting to the tangible textiles of our existence. We have forgotten how to be self-sufficient, we have become the soft underbelly of complacency. It is these thoughts that have sat and debated with me over the past few days, days I too have spent tapping tiled letters, grappling problems and searching for solutions, all the while feeling the cold numb my fingers.

There is scientific evidence linking the use of our hands to cognitive ability, a reason why we spend the formative years of our development using our hands, experimenting with touch, textures and the feeling of our environment, why crawling is so important and why we learn to write in cursive. We have spent an inordinate amount of time getting to know our hands. They are unique, the fingertips that sense, that touch and feel are embedded with nerves that send messages to our heart, soul and to the brain, they interpret the world and send us signals. It is our heart and soul that uses the same hands to hold, caress and heal, to create, grow, fix and build.

So, despite the cold weather, why are my hands so cold? My brain is using them to send messages, typed on tiled letters, embedding my thoughts into the microchips and fragments of quartz inside my computer. My heart is open, my thoughts are pure, but the chill persists and it is only in the malleable fabric of creating something with my own hands that they find relief.

My hands have fixed and they have built and they have had seasons to grow where the harvest has been good, but it is in creating, through knitting and more recently crocheting that they make sense of things, where the pieces fit and where I have found a quiet akin to meditation.

I have been knitting since I was a child, in fact when I was old enough to start learning needlework and knitting, as was expected at school, I opted to rather learn woodwork – much to the horror of my teachers and peers. It wasn’t a snub to the art, I simply wanted to use the opportunity to learn something new.

Knitting has always been my staple, amongst the many new skills I have learnt over the years out of necessity, such as learning how to decorate cakes – because that is an expensive service to pay for – or simply curiosity, such as engraving – because everything deserves to be decorated. Yes, knitting has always been the staple and I have whiskey tins full of needles (plastic, bamboo, round, straight) and yarn (baskets and project bags) and even scrap cuttings here and there to prove it, but crocheting has always alluded me – until now.

COVID-19 has caused some major upheavals in our lives, but I always try to look for the positives and time to learn new things must be included on that list. I have always admired the intricate weave of knots and twists that fuse colours and bend shapes like only crochet can. I have marveled at the skill and mused at ways to fund the purchasing of those luxurious crochet blankets that I have desired, understanding the costs involved, the prices have never shocked me as they do others. It is an art and as I have read, you are not paying simply for the time it takes to create the object but also the years of dedication to the skill. Something that is made by hand embodies the energy and intent of the creator, it can be made for purpose but it is most assuredly also made with meaning and that is priceless.

So when I hear talk about people wanting to share their time and skills not for money but for something of equal and desired necessity, it gets my attention. It starts to feel to me like another item to put on the positive list, it fits most resoundingly with a return to self, an acknowledgement of the power we have within our own hands, to fix, to build, to grow and create and I can’t help but wonder how differently we would start to value ourselves if the experience and skills we listed on our CV’s had less to do with the building empirical economies and more to do with our ability to craft by hand the world we deserve to live in.

Yesterday is an experience lived, today is not too late and tomorrow is not a given, if we have learnt, as we should have from this experience, should we not start gifting ourselves the opportunity to learn new skills, to stop resting the value of our worth on the mechanics of industry and instead remember what it meant to make our own clothes, grow our own food and start carving the value of our place back into our existence.