At least once a week, I’ll guide a meditation and someone in the group will fall asleep.

When we’re working in our small groups on a conference call, it can be common to hear a soft noise in the background, and realize the snuffling and sighing is the sound of a student, gently snoring away.

This falling asleep instead of entering in to Divine vibration is common, but it can mean different things.

The first thing to look at is simply how tired the person is. If you are really tired, you will go to sleep in meditation because this is what you as soul-in-body need most of all: more than a visit with your spirit guide, more than a clairvoyant view of your future, more than a message from the Universe.

The second thing to look at is what experience you have during this sleep state. Sometimes, people conk out because they need to receive a healing or alignment or download or other type of intensive vibrational shifting that can’t take place if the ego/mind is on full alert. You get knocked out, so the Universe can tune you up.

The next time you fall asleep in meditation, look at those two ideas: how much sleep you’re getting, and how much healing you need.

One of those will be your answer.

Sometimes I hear from incredibly sensitive, aware and well-meaning moms who’ve read my book Your Psychic Child, and are starting to work with their child in psychic training.

The only problem is, often the child is only two or three years old.

That’s just too young to start.

At this age, before language has formed fully for a child, it’s very hard to determine spiritual or psychic gifts,  let alone work with them. It’s very hard to not helicopter; we want our children to be amazing and gifted and special, and we think if we just feed them all these ideas and experiences, then certain gifts will open for them.

But it doesn’t work that way.

A psychic child is like a cup; if you pour water in, you can fill it. But if you fill it too full, the water just flows over the brim. It doesn’t stay in.

The best things to do with all kids, psychic and otherwise (and yes, most kids these days are absolutely psychic), is just let them be kids: limited electronics, good food, lots of sleep, plenty of hugs, music and art and nature.

The rest will take care of itself.

For a long time, I had really crummy cars (a late 70s Pinto that didn’t turn off when you turned it off… it kept backfiring and shuddering and belching for minutes afterwards.

Also, a Mitsubishi Galant I affectionately called “Old Smokey”.
And a Nissan Sentra, old school, that was like driving around in a tuna can.

Over time, I got a nice car, a (used) Volvo sedan that I’d wanted for ages, and when I first drove it, I was in bliss: such a smooth ride! Such powerful pickup! Such safety! Such leather interiors!

Until a few years later, $200 of monthly repairs started kicking in, and then one day it rained particularly hard and I opened the driver’s side door to find the car floor submerged in four inches of water.

You know the rest of the story…. that fancy car I’d been so excited to possess, to own to have as a symbol of the mildest form of success? Well, it turned out to be just a big headache. Another thing to deal with. Something else to distract and worry about.

For too long, cars have been trap(pings) of success that drain our financial and spiritual bank accounts in a serious way.

Now, I just want something practical and reliable, so I can get where I’m going. 

​Yes. The car is a metaphor.

We think that celebrities are the lucky ones, that they have all the perks and fame and glory.

But in reality, celebrities hold a great deal of energy for the soul collective, as archetypes and as projections for group thought.

For example, when you view someone like Kim Kardashian, you can see that she is playing some kind of archetype for society: the whore/Madonna/mother. Other women have held this space, many times before her.

At the time of this writing, Kim Kardashian is preparing to give birth to her second child, and tens of millions of people are “following” her every move. That is an incredible amount of group thought to handle.

In decades past, Michael Jackson and Princess Diana also held space as archetype: the boy would wouldn’t grow up, the princess with the loving heart. They also received group thought; millions of people thought about them every day.

I don’t know about you, but I find the idea of millions of people thinking about me pretty difficult; the soul intrustion, the energy intrusion, the continual receiving of other people’s thoughts and needs and pain.

And this... love them or hate them, there is great service that celebrities do for the collective. They hold our emotion, they hold our need, they hold our projection. 

They hold this in service, whether they know this or not. 

When I was a kid, my dad used to drive me to school in the mornings, and sometimes we’d get stuck in traffic.

I’d always be fuming, panicked in the car, watching the minutes tick off the clock knowing that I’d never make it in time. And my dad would simply turn of the volume on his cassette player (!), which was always some kind of jazz, and he’d drum his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music, and he’s say to me “Can you get there any faster than you’re going right now?”

And I’d realize no, I couldn’t.

I could only get there as fast as I got there.

Not a minute sooner. Not a minute later.

My dad already knew the art of hurrying slowly: of shifting vibration so that time shifts with you, of slowing down in the middle of rushing, to listen to music fully, and keep time to the beat.

When we hurry slowly, with full presence, time bends on itself, and we find that we have all the time we need, all the time we want, all the time we require.

When we hurry slowly, we are fully present in Now, and thus time is always perfectly as it should be. 

We are continually directed by dominant culture to go big.
​To accomplish more, to do more, to earn more, to be more.

As if a small life wasn’t worthy. As if small experiences weren’t valid.

I say: the small stuff is usually the best stuff. 

We believe the myth of more, more, more until we get to a place where we taste some of that more that They and Them have told us we want. And we find out… it’s not as satisfying as we thought.

A human being having a spiritual experience on this planet will soon find that having more stuff, or more money, or more fame, or more power, isn’t particular satisfying.

When it comes down to it, we each have to figure out how to get through the same 24 hours in a day. And often, in fact usually, it’s the small things that make us happiest. A warm bed with someone you love beside you. Watching geese fly across a winter’s sky. The way the light glints on the wet road, and rain mists up from the earth. Doing work that you love, simply and clearly. Caring for people you’re responsible for.

The modern day version of chop wood, carry water.

If you’re hung up on more, or think “oh, if I had more it would be different for me”, take a slow deep breath, and then another, and ask the Universe to help you experience the grace of going small.