Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello, this is Blair Stanislao with the Happy Lion Center. Welcome to our podcast, mystical and Infamous, where we have playful and easy conversations about anything mystical, getting to the heart of all things, strange and weird. Join us in a bit of magical tomfoolery, spreading the alchemy of love and light. And now we invite you to enjoy the show and light. And now we invite you to enjoy the show.

Speaker 1: 0:36

The foundation of we talked about already. Like yes, the found, you know, reiki is the foundation, but you and I come from a place where we've been doing Reiki for a long time. Oh yeah, so we were just talking about a client of mine who I was trying to feel out where she was on the spectrum of, for a very poor term, the woo-woo, right, like the idea of the spiritual, like where can I? What language can I use? So you'll understand? And her first response was she was very into the angelic realms and and then the thing that she said that made it certainly gives me a lot of information was oh, I, I've taken Reiki, you know I, you know I, I learned Reiki and and the way she talked about it I was like, okay, so she gets Reiki, she totally gets Reiki, she's been instructed in it, um, which means she gets a lot of these ideas right.

Speaker 1: 1:21

But the and that of course gave me an understanding of where to go with the words to talk to her, um, but we were just mentioning that. You know it is, it is a doorway, but it's not. I don't know. I don't think people understand the importance of it, because the way that, at least if it was done through the icrt, with william rand stuff, yeah, and I don't know anything about any of the other ones, so I can't say yay or nay, but I know that through the william rand stuff, uh, the foundation, the way it's presented, is totally done with complete and total love absolutely openness, and so when it's presented to them, it it's almost like like we create these.

Speaker 1: 2:08

We experience situations where we should uh, you, you have a relationship where you think you might be loved, like by your mother or your father or whatever, and you don't have that experience. And, for example, for me, one of the things that I mixed the meanings was love and responsibility. Well, they're not at all together, they are two separate concepts, and so what they did is taint my image or understanding of love, and I've had to work to release that, whereas not that I was done with malintent, but the mixing of the ideas kind of um muddies the water, so to speak, whereas they. I find that the reiki teachings really do not muddy the water. They're very clear about what it is and what it isn't, and it's presented in a very loving way.

Speaker 2: 2:59

Yes, so the person is open yeah, and and given a lot of options that you don't have to do everything, but it's like a smorgasbord of things for a particular time or a particular person or a particular day, and you can. You know, maybe you need to do some kind of inner healing, or maybe you need a physical healing, or you need to approach someone with an attitude of forgiveness, which is the deepest form of love there is and it's the hardest one to get to. I think that it's really. I think the work of William Rand to bring it to the Western thinking has done phenomenal work. Perhaps we need to be with our spirit guides, maybe we need to be alone with the person, maybe their spirit guides show up and being sensitive to all of that is about loving that person and respecting that person, but also ourselves as practitioners too, and doing that is probably the hardest because we don't pay attention to it when we're giving, giving, giving well, yeah, we don't notice that.

Speaker 2: 4:24

Well, because most people who do that have that tendency right to give I, I think I don't think there's anyone who who works in the energy field that doesn't get have to get reminded take care of yourself. But what does it mean? On any given day it's a different thing. It's just that we have these cues like with you it's a headache, with me it'll be a gut ache, but right now it has to do with with these other goofy things I have going on in my body. And right now, for me as a practitioner, I am having to face my own physical body. I never have. It's all about healing her in a way that I can age gracefully. I need to be able to age gracefully so I can serve others.

Speaker 1: 5:16

It's interesting you say that because that makes me think back. So I was just thinking my husband just said to me last night, because I had the headache that we mentioned, I worked with somebody and I came out of that and I had a headache. So that's how we kind of started on this. But, um, I mentioned that to him and he says, uh, don't you think maybe essentially, you take too many supplements? And I was like, yeah, you know, there are times that I think I do take too many supplements and but now I've gotten better at actually, when I'm opening the bottles like there's one, I say I've been taking chlorella for a while and uh, it's still in the bag that I have where I have all the ones I'm taking. And for the last three weeks, every time I pick up the bottle, I hear no, like it's just no, so then I just put it back down. It's no big deal, but I've gotten better about being in tune with that.

Speaker 1: 6:09

And um, the what you're talking about there takes me back to, um, honestly, like childhood, because we were mentioning before, when I was probably a time like 33 or possibly 35.

Speaker 1: 6:29

I had very little information that something I was doing specifically that was talking about what's in my diet, did I realize that something was bothering me, because I had always eaten those things, like I never noticed that there was an issue, because if I had an issue it was there all the time and there was.

Speaker 1: 6:50

That was like my standard, like the, the regular level, and, um, I kind of wonder, like, actually today I got gas and I put in the gas and as soon as you know now, because we can't possibly sit around with nothing going on they have a TV on the gas pump, right, yes, it turns onto this garbage that's on there, right. And then I heard this woman whoever might've been the new dose, I don't know who it was uh, says I think she said it was Dr, somebody said, and then it was like taking time for yourself, taking time to appreciate things you want. And then I it's funny because of course it's in words too it says, like you know, make rituals out of whatever and do self care practices, which, hey, it's way in the mainstream now, right, but what, like you said, what are those self-care practices and what do they look like for everybody? And how do we?

Speaker 2: 7:49

because I think they can be so small and I think that we have them and we don't do them with intention.

Speaker 1: 7:56

Yes.

Speaker 2: 7:57

You know, intention, intention, intention, it is everything when it comes to having healing of any kind. When we set an intention and we not so much um ocd on the thing, we choose it as a decision, then all your feelings follow. If, if our issues are housed within the emotional package that we have, then it seems reasonable that we have to do these intentions to activate the good that we're seeking, and it's not going to happen all at once. The first time I remember oh, yay I remembered and I don't remember for a month.

Speaker 2: 8:45

You know, oh, I forgot about that one, um, but I think when we put that intention to it, it doesn't matter how small the thing is. Yeah, it's going to change something that we need to have changed yeah, totally so could be.

Speaker 1: 9:04

Uh, really, I mean anything. I mean I think even if you just take the time to not talk, like I, really I do better when I don't talk in the morning for a while oh, it's enjoyable to, to make that. But then when that, when it's like it feels like it's taken from you, like you have a circumstance where you have to talk and you know, I try not to always younger, I used to get really angry about it, but try not to dwell on that too much but it does kind of feel like oh, this is taking away my time, you know, for the quiet, I know, but my other people talking like they can, most of the time they can talk whatever they want to, but I just don't want to be involved in it.

Speaker 2: 9:51

Yeah, like they can, most of the time, they can talk whatever they want to, but I just don't want to be involved in it. Yeah, I get it, I really do. Um, I've been reading, I just started this. These, these two books are by by a guy who, um, who passed away, I think in 2015, 15 and he was like in his 70s and he is. He is the guru for um, educating people about jesus, and, and it's through experiential experiences and he does a whole list in this one, this, uh, the god we never knew, beyond, beyond dogmatic religion, to a more authentic contemporary faith.

Speaker 2: 10:27

Now, I haven't known about Borg. Marcus Borg I've known about because he is a, a theologian of the Anglican tradition and I'm, you know, roman Catholic Catholic, so my emphasis has always been Roman Catholic, which takes in Richard Rohr. He's, he's the guy that I go to and I'm taking a class from him right now, anyway, um, you know he's Catholic, so I I go there, but he's saying the same thing as Borg. Oh, yeah, and and the. The reason they dovetail is because these are things that human beings know about and how it can differ from one person to another, with the last one being just a simple little things in our life that we don't pay attention to, that are part of the messages that we get and we act on or we deny them.

Speaker 2: 11:40

There's so much of that. Oh, yeah, well, everybody does that. Yeah, that's not a big deal. Oh, if that's your connection to the other side and the help that you can receive, you bet they do. Um, yeah, I think back on my mom. My mom was a, an angry woman, a depressed woman. She, she raised 11 kids. Good lord know who wouldn't be angry.

Speaker 1: 12:07

Tiring at the minimum, yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:09

At the very least. Anyway, she was very we would call it religious, but all of us kids in the family understood that she had her own form of Roman Catholicism. But I know now that the things that I have going on and the kinds of things that have been in me all my life, that I respond to, I know now where they come from and I am very confident about them and I don't care whether somebody else believes them or not. They work, work for me and they're very intentional. Now, my mom would have never acknowledged anything like that. It would have been sinful for her to do that, to equate herself with oh, yeah, right.

Speaker 1: 12:58

Well, that's some of that's the dogma. So you said it was five things, or is it five pages?

Speaker 2: 13:03

Five pages of different things.

Speaker 1: 13:06

Can you summarize them?

Speaker 2: 13:09

I can take a quick look here. I just thought they were fascinating. And this isn't even telling you all that he writes about, because it's a definition with all of them, which I think is fantastic. Because it's a definition with all of them, which I think is fantastic. And I only dovetail with this because of the things we're talking about, with things like headaches or stomach aches or hour session that we've had to heal from a fight we've had with a friend to get past a frustration with the person that was in line at the bank. You know it goes on and on, but these are clues as to how we're helped in our life, clues as to how we're helped in our life. Now he's a Jesus person, so he teaches scripture, but it was interesting to me that his last years were taught at Oregon State University. He taught at Moorhead and another one, another theological one, but he ends up teaching in philosophy.

Speaker 1: 14:25

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:26

In the Oregon State University. Yes, so kind of I thought, oh he's out there. Anyway, it says the stories about Moses' experience of the sacred, the call stories of the prophets and the story of Jesus all speak of people who knew the sacred, and that's what he refers to, these events of being the sacred. For them, the sacred was an element of experience, not simply an article of belief. That's a huge difference. His emphasis is about god.

Speaker 2: 15:09

Some people would refer to buddha I'm just going to use god as, because that's his term and it's a term I'm familiar with, but it can mean these other faith traditions that aren't Christian and their founders, almost all of them, have had these very spiritual and dynamic experiences. So it says that God is not simply somewhere else but also right here. So one and the same, and sometimes occurring spontaneously, these non-ordinary states can also be entered through ritualized meanings and spiritual disciplines, and I know that can be true with people who do retreats. That all of a sudden and I think that's one of the beautiful things with Reiki and the William Rand work is that you can go to one of these and all of a sudden it's like a new paradigm or there's a shift in the paradigm we have.

Speaker 1: 16:12

So I want to say so, the way that you're describing it there. I mean, I don't have the book in front of me, but going through what I'm going through right now, learning what I'm learning, going through what I'm going through right now, learning what I'm learning, I see that very similar to these terms that people will use that are connected to clairvoyance of some on some level.

Speaker 2: 16:34

Right, one of the ones he was connected to, to source it's.

Speaker 1: 16:38

how are you connecting to spirit?

Speaker 2: 16:41

Yes and so. Yeah, and talking about these ecstatic experiences, that's one of the ones where you hear or you see, and it's outside of you. I mean it's huge. It's these big, big experiences that happen. People who have them consistently say they involve a knowing and not simply a feeling.

Speaker 1: 17:08

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 17:09

You know, and it doesn't matter what other people think, because you know and you don't have to convince or defend, you just know. Visions are a vivid experience of momentarily seeing into another layer or level of reality. And then there is the shaman, or the shamanic experiences. In that case the shaman represents the people and intercedes for them through different kinds of clairvoyance, divination, things like that, and that serves the people. And mystical experiences involve ecstatic states of consciousness in which one is vividly aware of the presence of God. There's just times people just know, oh, and it puts you back, because you're just kind of taken aback. Mystical experiences have been divided into two major types. These are names, one's X and one's N. So let's just put it that way, like extrovert and introvert that's not the words, but that's like that. And so you can have outside experience, meaning your eyes are open and you are totally aware of something happening.

Speaker 1: 18:28

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:30

It's a landscape. It is transformed and infused with light or subfused with light, as illuminated from within or behind, and I know I've experienced those.

Speaker 1: 18:42

I was talking about seeing auras.

Speaker 2: 18:44

Yes, for people that do see them, yes, it can be that it can also just be a personal experience. I remember one time I'd had this huge awakening within and I just looked outside my window and the sky was bluer than it had ever been, the garden was greener than it had ever been and the joy within me just welled up and I had to run outside and run through the garden and just be present to nature. So that's, that's one of those, yeah, kind of experiences, um, and you can have them closed and that would take in the visualizations and and those kinds of things that were led in where we get that aha, that happens to us.

Speaker 1: 19:32

The closed he's talking about is kind of like within the, not necessarily within the body, but kind of internal. It's an internal reflection. The X is actually, whether it could be the physical world or you just know it's outside of you.

Speaker 2: 19:45

Yeah, it's outside of you but your eyes are open when it happens. You don't have to always have your eyes closed for these things to happen. And then they talk about the soul may experience itself ascending to God. Mystics speak of both cataphatic images and extroverted mystical experiences. The boundary of the self becomes very soft and may even disappear, so that one experiences communion or union with the sacred. And I know there are people who have out-of-body experiences. I met one, you know, I used to go to AA and there was a woman who who was earned her living as a poker player Fascinating people in AA, they really are, they're of every walk and she said she could drive and she could lift herself out of her body driving down the road and be outside her body.

Speaker 1: 20:46

Oh, she actually kind of mastered going in and out.

Speaker 2: 20:52

Yeah, she figured it out and I I thought I don't think I want to, I don't know that's really talking about these.

Speaker 1: 20:55

It really falls into that category of what, what we refer to as psychic or paranormal kind of. But but I like the way you're saying that he says, uh, essentially is, and you're saying that even in the Bible people acknowledge this as significant connections.

Speaker 2: 21:13

Well, if you look at the prophets in the Hebrew scriptures and that is not Christian but if you look at the prophets there and the kinds of things they did, some were soft and gentle and used great metaphor and others were tougher than bootnails and some were just outright cranky, you know, and they were all used by the sacred to To lead their people in a right direction and the people were expected to go in a certain way. And the people were expected to go in a certain way and when they would get off course, one of these guys would pop up. And it's pretty cool when you read their stories. You know, I taught that when I was teaching in high school, in the Catholic school, and I taught Old Testament.

Speaker 2: 22:07

It was always called Old Testament, but it's really part of Hebrew scripture that we kept just part. Their scriptures are huge and we don't even begin to understand the Judaic mind. And then I would teach the Jesus message in the New Testament and it was amazing to me when I was reading this book how much he could pull out of the mysticism of if people would read without looking for a message to their whoever their people were around them, if they could stop long enough to not defend the position and listen to what really was being said. It's it's a whole mystical experience of that human being saying this is what I'm getting for all of us take it or leave it, but if you do this, these are the consequences.

Speaker 1: 23:10

If you do this, these are the consequences, and there's always consequences yeah it's about creating a world because, uh, I know I don't know what year was had to have been before 2017, probably 2016, ish. I was in louisiana and I connected with somebody who was mystical, like this kind kind of stuff, and we were just and I we were hanging out, we were trying to figure out how to like really do what we're supposed to do and somehow she knew this guy who was a. He was a rabbi. Okay, he was an African American rabbi and he and his wife African American or African Jews when I was in Israel oh, you did yeah in fact they.

Speaker 2: 23:59

This one woman that we talked with, she kind of, toward the end, kind of giggled and she said, you know, because people were surprised they were black yeah, it was different yeah and she laughed and she said but I didn't know they looked like this, meaning all of us. You know cause people?

Speaker 1: 24:15

were surprised. They were black, yeah, it was different, yeah, and she laughed and she said but I didn't know, they looked like this, meaning all of us white people. Oh, that's interesting, that's so cool, yeah. So so that were, as you can tell, in America and that was a little strange to have that.

Speaker 1: 24:29

But he, I don't know, I really don't know his whole story, but we went over to his place this is the first time I met him and he basically gave us a sound bath and we did an experience with him, and so we're all like laying on mat, oh, it was amazing, okay, and this guy was so smart, and I don't mean like book, he was just like out of this world. So, yes, he was well-versed in the scriptures and yes, you know, okay, he was right, he was a spiritual healer. That's what he was, because he, basically he operated this nonprofit and people would come to him when, essentially, they were either unable to go to medical or medical wasn't working and they're like I'm desperate, I don't know what to do. And so, basically, he would, these people would come and stay at his house with him and he would operate all in donations. I don't know how he did it, but they would come and stay with him and he would heal them essentially. Now it may take time to do that or whatever.

Speaker 1: 25:19

Usually the body has to recover, like we were just talking about, but he would do that. So he was kind enough to give us it was a group of us a sound bath and as he was talking you wouldn't believe this guy he found the chakras in the Bible and he would point them out one by one. Okay, he found meridians right from Chinese medicine in the Bible, pointed out literally it's right there. Look, here's this one and here's that one. I mean just crazy, amazing.

Speaker 2: 25:47

Yeah, it is. That's probably in that world of Kabbalah, which is the equal side of their, their faith, and not all of them believe it, you know, I mean it's like out there because those experiential and there's nothing to defend, there's nothing to do except you just know it. Yeah, you don't know it.

Speaker 1: 26:07

You probably think it's suspect yep, that's why that's, honestly, what I enjoyed about it the most is yes, of course, I resonated with what he said. Like it, totally. I was like, oh yeah, this is true. I know this is true what he's saying, but I really did relish the fact that he could pull those things out of the bible and all these people who, like you're talking about, are so focused on defending. Which brings me back to something that, uh, I I always go back to this because, uh and I'm pretty sure it was 2016 when I watched this movie it's a movie called flight from death quest for immortality. Okay, I didn't know what I was watching, I just started watching it and then, of course, I get completely sucked in and I'm totally into this thing. Just watch the movie as it is. It's a documentary and it essentially looks at people's fear of death.

Speaker 2: 27:04

That's really what I'm doing, okay it's to be the biggest thing oh, absolutely, humans are afraid of that and or believing whether or not that there really is the other side. You know that part always yes, so the, the the movie.

Speaker 1: 27:21

I liked it so much. I I felt like I don't know, I felt like that when it was. I don't even know when it was created, but I felt like the time at which I watched it had come after we had kind of healed from 9-11 and you know, that kind of had like that was a big motivating factor. Right, I didn't really wasn't able to put my finger on that until I watched it again, but I watched it with the like director's commentary commentary or maybe I saw it at the end, I can't remember. And yes, it was in response to 9-11. So they got motivated to do that, to make the whole documentary after 9-11. But I'm gonna spoil it.

Speaker 1: 28:02

The biggest message I got from it is that humans are afraid of death and we come up with all these stories about what happens or doesn't happen after death and the reason and I think this definitely points to 9-11, is that the reason that we get so angry and there's so much violence around these things is that we're so afraid of death that if somebody threatens what we believe to be what's going to happen after death, it is no longer a threat to the idea now.

Speaker 1: 28:35

It's a threat to literally every ounce of energy that you have put into this belief and every like, all of your fears, it just it brings it to the forefront and that's why it's so vehement, right like it's so bad and, yeah, it makes total sense. So, of course, the way you deal with that is deal with your fear of death. But because it looked at all different kinds of religions and practices and cultures and of course it didn't include everything, but I thought it was really really well-made. It was on Amazon when I watched it first, and then now I haven't looked in a while, but it's not there anymore. Well, yeah, so it's not there anymore.

Speaker 2: 29:12

Well, yeah so man. Well, he had some more on dreams and dream interpretation and he talked about the different kinds of quality to dreams, and those mean different things for us. There was an EF Ettinger who was a contemporary to Jung, carl Jung, and he talked a lot about the self and the self being with a capital S and equal to God, and then he talked about the affective in us, the feelings, and how those feelings can be a part of our understanding of the mystical and of the sacred.

Speaker 1: 30:04

Yeah, so it all goes back to channeling again, because it's like how do you get that information? Some people get it with a feeling to channeling again because it's like how do you get that information?

Speaker 2: 30:11

some people get it with a feeling, some people get it with a feeling. Some get it through their, um, their saints, some get it through their spiritual guides, mentors. Um, there can be crazy things that happen. You can be walking someplace and see a billboard and you think, oh, that's what I've been thinking about, that's where I've been wanting to go, and there's a phone number. I just don't believe in coincidence, I just don't. I believe that there is a purpose to everything on earth. I really do purpose to everything on earth. I really do, and so I. This book, this, this one, was fun, not because I didn't know these things, but because it brought it up in front of me and now I can look at my own with intention, and that's where it's helped, going to help me, um, because I do know this stuff, but I didn't know. I could never told you about it ever.

Speaker 1: 31:18

It goes back to very similar to what we were talking about initially is getting involved in that stuff. When somebody else is using language to describe the mystical or God or whatever you want to call it, when they about it, you can identify. Oh yeah, I know that I didn't have words, for it's almost like we're. We're almost like we're a baby.

Speaker 2: 31:37

We know these things, yeah, but we don't know yeah yeah, weird, um, I'm taking a book book club thing with the, uh, a book club thing with the Reiki practitioners in Great Falls, and it's a course in miracles. Sarah has wanted to be doing this for a long time so she finally got us off the ground and there's four of us who are taking it. And that is the hardest darn thing. And it's not because I don't know the material, it's because of the way it's presented in the language that's used. Oh, it's stripping it down to what is that called? Um extra? No, um, victor frankel wrote a bit, uh, in his, his form of psychology uh, denialism, I don't know what, no um, oh, it'll come to me.

Speaker 2: 32:49

What is it? Anyway, I really liked him. He developed that in the camps and it is a minimalist look at life.

Speaker 1: 33:07

And that, when you come down to the very basic of what your needs are, it's enough. Thanks for listening to this episode of Mystical and Infamous Podcast with the Happy Lion Center. Send requests for topic discussions, questions and comments to podcast at happylioncentercom. That's podcast at happylioncentercom Music, music, music, music, music, music, music.