As I was getting off the 63 bus yesterday, a stranger asked me how I was. I replied, “oh, it’s been a crazy week!” And he then said, “well, are you getting all the help you need? Do you have people who are helping you?” I told him that yes, actually, I do have help, and that at the moment I was particularly thankful for the help of the Milwaukee Transit System. While we waited for the 12, we continued our conversation about help and gratitude. This young man told me that he was personally thankful for a friend who lets him sleep in his living room, and that he believes that you should always ask God for help when you need it. For anyone who was raised around a lot of hard core Christians (as I was), those words, “ask God for help when you need it,” must surely remind you of these verses from the Gospel of Matthew:
Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For the one who asks always receives; the one who searches always finds; the one who knocks will always have the door opened to him. Is there among you a man who would hand his son a stone when he asked for bread? Or would hand him a snake when he asked for a fish? If you, then, who are evil, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! –Matthew 7:7-11 (Jerusalem Bible translation)
Now, I’m not a Christian myself (I’m a Buddhist), but I do believe that if you ask for help, it will be given (though not always in a form that you recognize as help), and that if you seek, you will find. My cards for today, from the Children’s Spirit Animal Cards, emphasize this point. I pulled Rabbit (Ask for help), and Deer (Be kind to yourself and others). The rabbit card makes it look as though the rabbit is asking a butterfly for help. You might wonder, how could a butterfly help a rabbit? And my answer is, by opening lines of communication. We have an energetic web around us that links us with so much else in the universe. And that web, believe it or not, at least in part, runs on words — truthful, honest, sincere, genuine words. Lies don’t work well to activate that energetic web. They make the web sticky; you won’t get anywhere with them. Even if you don’t tell lies, you can still get stuck in the web if you are not completely honest. When something is blocked that you are trying to manifest, it helps enormously to use honest words to open lines of communication. Do you see how the word “Rabbit” is printed in the blue of the throat chakra on this card, and how it has a blue band underneath the picture. We can use our words, that come through our throats and out our mouths, to blast energetic blocks and make our portion of that energetic web healthy again, so that we can go where we need to, find what we need to, and not just be mired and stuck all the time.
Basically, when we speak our truths instead of repressing them, we grease the lines of communication so things can run smoothly. And when we do this, all sorts of events in our lives begin to operate more smoothly than they did before. It’s as if we are driving down a road with all green lights, where before we always got stuck at the red lights, or were even pulled over. Truthfulness is a way of maintaining the energetic web.
Kindness to others, what we see on the Deer card, also maintains the energy of the web around us. And it attracts the kindness of others. When we are kind even to people we have no particular reason to be kind to, there are effects on our own lives. We don’t choose kindness for the sake of those positive gifts that we receive — if we did, I’m not sure that would really work. But we do benefit from being kind to others and genuine with them — it’s as if the energy network around us is primed to accept and receive kindness, as if unkindness and ungentleness and discourtesy are then somehow routed around us.
If you need something, be honest and open about it — ask for help. And turn that help around and provide it others. Generosity should flow, like a river. And why not let this river sweep everyone up in its torrents? ❤
Quiet Mystic 