I found myself alone on a high mountaintop, surrounded by sheets of rippling white fire. I was alone with the divine, the solitary path of the soul no one else can walk for another. I felt my spirit begin to soften, a surprising gentleness in this colossal furnace.

I have been casting gold and silver all week, for many years in fact, and never realized the metal might feel softness as the heat consumes its form. The intensity of the burning would seem to override softness, but that is not so.

The gold first is bathed in the light of the torch, changing color but not form. It grows red and then gradually loses its shape as it slumps into a glowing yellow molten mass. That molten mass becomes more brilliant, and then flows and moves like quicksilver.

When the torch is removed, the molten, easy flowing metal is centrifugally thrown into a prepared flask, a cavity that creates the new transformed shape the metal will cool and hold.

But now I know from within the divine fire itself that the spirit softens as form begins to burn away.

I offered everything I love the most to this all-consuming fire. This was no casual surrender, not my earlier surrender of that which I love to divine service. Divine service can leave the forms intact, but this required total surrender.

I yielded all that I love and silently watched as it grew incandescent in the fire and the forms dissolved in the light, changing forevermore, the old forms never to be seen again.

The fire, too, was consuming me. I became running quicksilver, a new creation of spirit, my form still only known to the divine heart.

The true meaning of Pluto in Capricorn caught me. Pluto is annihilation or transformation and frequently combines them in unimaginable power. Capricorn is traditional structure and form.

I am annihilated and I am transformed into a new form not yet created, a form still held secret in the molten fire, a gift from the divine heart itself.

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So please select your finest writing and submit for the next edition! In the meantime, please enjoy this selection of work on a variety of topics.

Creative Projects

Gia Combs-Ramirez (the new host for upcoming editions) presents Ten Days with a Guru. This article begins a series on the challenging process of including a guru and fire ceremonies in an altogether different group training.

Lexi Sundell (current host about to take a breather) presents Purple Iris and Paintings. She discusses growing the iris as inspiration for paintings, showing an image of the blooms.

dpendzich presents Character Animation Basics – Simple Animation Concepts saying, “Read my article and learn about character animation.”

Creative Personal Growth

Amanda Moore presents 106 Organizations That Are Changing the World – Are you helping?. The title is self explanatory.

David B. Bohl presents 5 Signs You?re a Pleaser and What to Do About It saying, “Wanting to be a well-liked becomes a problem when we put so much emphasis on how others view us, that we lose sight of our own identities and what’s really in our best interest.”

Scott.Goolsby presents Why Journaling Rocks my Socks saying, “Benefits of journaling.”

Mitesh presents A child in You!!. Short and to the point.

Gary Evans presents Case Study of a Manifestation That Won’t Work. He dissects a failed process.

Creative Thinking

David Godot presents Boost Your Creativity For Good With This Long-Term Strategy saying, “This article describes a long-term strategy for boosting creativity and developing a habit for creative thinking.” This article makes some good points but overlooks the fact that alcohol only causes people think they are coming up with brilliant new ideas instead of actually helping them do so.

Many thanks to the writers who submitted to this edition. Please link back to this page to help promote readership for everyone. Stumbling, Digging, etc. are most welcome as well.

For the next edition submit your blog article using our carnival submission form. Past posts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: carnival of creative growth, blog carnival, creativity, personal growth, group growth, business growth, creative thinking.

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Never mind, it is ok if you are staring at me with a blank look. I have been getting used to that stare from a few family members and neighbors of late.

I get those odd looks, not because of Fibber McGee, but because of the recent fly tying dvd my husband and I created. To us, it was an interesting and extremely challenging project that required developing some new skills. To us, it was a natural extension of what we already were doing.

Our customers appear to think so too. They like the dvd, which is a great relief after all the time we spent making the darn thing!

However, a few (not all) family members and neighbors have had decidedly odd reactions. They don’t seem to know how to respond to the dvd, and behave as though it fell out of the sky from another planet.

At first I was surprised, although I should have known what to expect. As it continued I began to realize their brains suffer from a form of Fibber McGee’s closet. There is no room for anything else in those tightly packed closets. Just try putting something new in there and you won’t believe the racket that results!

Their brains have a shelf, apparently a small one, where my husband and I are parked. They left no room to add new facets to their perception of us, even something so mild as an instructional fly tying dvd. That was alien to them, something unexpected and unwelcome.

What was a natural expansion for us is simply unimaginable for them. Haven’t we all had that experience at one time or another when we stepped outside the expectations others place on us?

I, for one, have no intention of trying to cramp myself into someone else’s assigned closet space. I shall take the lesson to heart though, and be more aware of my own effort to never shove someone into a little box and slam the lid shut.

People are capable of the most surprising developments and I believe in warmly welcoming them when they happen. Rejecting those developments is a ridiculous choice, but some people actually prefer to keep their constricted little boxes intact.

We had an employee once who went to a high school basketball game. Her daughter played on the team, usually in a rather lackluster fashion. For some reason, that night the girl caught on fire and made one amazing basket after another until the game was won in a spectacular way with the whole town cheering.

Our employee and her husband were quite horrified and embarrassed. They said it was O.K. for that to happen once, but never again! They wanted their ordinary daughter back.

Unfortunately I have never seen a spark ignite in their daughter since that time. How utterly sad. This young woman lives her life in the small space allotted by her misguided parents.

She may be too young to know she can walk away from their brain closet and just let them deal with it. I hope she discovers that fact someday before she has lost too many opportunities.

For myself, I have no trouble letting others deal with their own brain closets. Actually, the funniest part of the situation with our dvd is how innocuous it is compared to some of my other activities.

If these people cannot handle a fly tying dvd, what do you suppose they would think of the nocturnal hikes I used to take in the desert without a flashlight or moonlight? Rattlesnakes, cacti, and all.

That really makes me laugh. None of us are small enough to fit into the preconceived ideas others have about us, so let’s explode those ideas into smithereens and have fun doing it!

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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For countless millennia human consciousness has evolved slowly as major and minor traumas embedded themselves into our collective consciousness. Exploring human consciousness today is akin to revisiting centuries upon centuries of old nightmares that keep repeating themselves.

It is hardly surprising the world is in such a state of unbalanced greed, fear, and warfare as a result.

As the people researching artificial intelligence seek to trigger a new conscious awareness within their machines, they make fascinating discoveries. They speak of a point of singularity when change accelerates exponentially to a point of massive instantaneous change. They see this occuring solely through the technology itself.

However, they labor under a significant disadvantage. They regard humans as separate from their machines, failing to recognize the all pervasive reality that consciousness underlies everything in a seamless whole.

Greg Braden calls this the divine matrix, which is a useful enough term. Rather than review the scientific basis for the divine matrix, which he presents far better than I could anyway, let us simply use it as a working hypotheses. What happens if we notice that we are intrinsically connected with everything else? That our own consciousness is inherently one with everything, including far distant stars?

Actually, there usually is little practical application for such an idea, especially when we stubbornly dwell in our mental constructs of separateness. What practical relationship does the average person have with a far distant nameless star?

However, if we bring the idea closer to home and look at the internet, practical possibilities begin to show themselves. Everything in human consciousness, from the lowest dregs to the most sublime inspirations, can be found on the internet. With the lightning speed of electronic information transfer, ideas and events propagate through human awareness in ways never before seen.

This is a high risk endeavor indeed since it accelerates the negative as well as the positive in stunningly rapid fashion. Nonsense propagates readily, but then so do previously hidden facts. As the different flows of information intermingle at such high rates of speed, the process takes its own path.

The internet has been surprisingly resilient in its resistance to efforts to control it. In that respect it appears to be a direct manifestation of humanity’s exercise of spritual free will and choice.

Great alarm is raised when the freedoms of the internet are threatened. When Google acceded to China’s demands for censorship, indignation abounded. Yet, if the internet mirrors all of human consciousness, isn’t the heavily controlled Chinese population a part of this consciousness too?

The bigger question is what happens as China emerges as a major power? Will the internet with its surprising ability to change what it touches in unexpected ways, alter the Chinese stance, or will the Chinese ultimately be successful in some form of global censorship?

And just what do the Chinese bring to the table as a culture? They have a totally different concept of the individual and the group than westerners.

In the United States we still hold the concept of the rugged individual in high esteem, without quite noticing how sheeplike the vast majority of the population really is. We pride ourselves on our individuality, on each of us doing our own thing.

The Chinese have such an enormous population the individual is pretty much expendable and group issues are paramount. They have a saying that the nail that stands up will be hammered down, which sums up their general attitude towards individuality. This different awareness of the process of living and working in groups is one of the big pieces they bring to the whole of human consciousness.

The difficulty is that, even as our western concept of the individual holds distortions, so does the Chinese  concept of the group. Mixing distortions with other distortions is a hard way to evolve.

However, the internet does show evidence of the possibility it may be slightly more disposed to further human growth than to accelerate self destruction. The massive pornography segment of the internet with all its degrading qualities has inadvertently led to more positive usages. The porn sites have pioneered many methods that have been adopted in quite different arenas of interest.

The same can be said of gaming, which usually appeals to the extremely violent and destructive aspects of human nature. The process of creating games and equipment to support those games has quickly advanced much of the technology many of us now routinely use for other purposes.

If the hundreth monkey syndrome does hold sway in the untidy realms of the internet, we may be in for some even more surprising developments. Those who understand how to effectively use the internet as a tool will be able to leverage startling levels of growth and change in human consciousness.

The online event Oprah has started with Eckhart Tolle titled A New Earth is an indicator of the potential. As of the first week of this venture, seven hundred thousand people participated. Many of these people were encountering ideas quite alien to their usual manner of thinking and living, yet they began to actively explore the possibilities.

As the internet continues to mirror our collective consciousness to ourselves, as it continues to magnify and accelerate our evolution, we will surely find ourselves on a great adventure!

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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Sometimes the creative drive takes a quiet tone, action retreats within, and the outer appearance is of stillness. The paints remain in their jars and tubes, canvases gather dust, and it seems nothing is happening.

This winter I have not painted at all. I have deliberately busied my overactive mind with huge learning tasks, partly because I needed to acquire the new skills and partly just to keep my mind from monkeying where it had no business going.

We are a mentally driven culture and the conscious thinking mind has its distinct limitations that are often ignored. To create in the fullest possible manner, the conscious mind has to take a back seat to allow inner inspiration to arise in its own way and its own timing.

Handing the mind a plateful of tasks suited to its abilities can be like handing an obtrusive toddler a pacifier. Sometimes that is just the best thing to do.

This has allowed a time of incubation, such as I have been experiencing this winter. I have wanted to paint, but these other tasks were what I really needed to do. I had my own inner sense of timing I have honored, sometimes to the distress of those around me.

I could feel something stirring deep within me and I have worked with clearing the internal obstacles to allow it to emerge. I knew a big change in my painting was quietly preparing to birth, but I had no idea what the new work would hold.

That changed this morning. My dreams have been intense for weeks, the subterranean rumblings are most visible in them. Soon after I awoke, I suddenly saw my new direction with the paint.

I cannot tell you how excited I am! Color and light beckons with the siren song of my creative muse. I can see new shapes and forms blending and shapeshifting into a whole new series of paintings.

As always, I know my next paintings will be my best ones, and I am energized and enthusiastic to get on with it. I have to complete a couple of computer projects that are close to wrapping up and then I will open my palette and let my muse sing on the canvas again.

I can hardly wait…

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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Alex Shalman has created the Happiness Group Writing Project and this is my contribution. He asks that we answer five questions so let’s get started!

How do you define happiness?

Happiness is when I am in rhythm with life and flowing with the events in my life. For me happiness is a deep sense of well being that could best be described as the feeling of glowing like the dawn light falling across the flowers I paint.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your happiness now, versus when you were a child?

With 10 being high I would say 8 now and 4 or 5 as a child. The time I spent reading or in the outdoors brought me the most happiness as a child. The reading took me away from my unpleasant family circumstances and the outdoors allowed me to find a rhythm with nature that was sustaining in itself.

As an adult I gradually learned to create different patterns in my life than the ones of my family. I actually was quite suicidal as a young adult but I did not want to raise my daughter with that same level of dysfunction. I started trying different things, new ways of being. Some worked, some did not, but gradually I created a life that allows happiness.

What do you do on a daily basis that brings you happiness? And how consistent is the feeling of happiness throughout your day?

I smile at my husband, most days anyway! I interact with our dogs and cats. I always look at the mountains and watch the changing light on them. And I look at flowers in the garden, paint flowers, or look at some of my 50,000 flower photos on the computer. It is important to me to do something creative every day. I remember to appreciate what is good in my life.

Usually I maintain a decent level of happiness during the day unless I am trying to meet too many deadlines at once or am unwell.

What things take away from your happiness? What can be done to lessen their impact or remove them from your life?

In all honesty I think I am my own biggest obstacle to my happiness. In this chaotic and demanding world it can be easy to point at outer circumstances or people and blame them for my unhappiness, but the fact is my own reactions to those circumstances and people are the most important determining factors.

I don’t believe the goal is 100% happiness every minute of my life. It is perfectly ok to feel sadness or grief when the occasion arises. Resisting being unhappy actually creates a lot more unhappiness in the long run. It is best to feel the emotion for what it is and then move along.

Resistance to what is happening throws one out of the rhythm of life, and there is no happiness when out of rhythm. Most of my inner work at this time deals with releasing resistance and reactivity, both on the individual and group levels.

What do you plan on doing in the future that will bring you even more happiness?

As I become more easily responsive to my own inner rhythms and gifts without resistance, I will be creating more effective expressions of joy and spirit in all facets of my life.

And one of these days I will create a flower painting that is too large to transport in my van, just for the fun of it all!

Radiant Heart, the painting shown above, is 60″ wide by 48″ high and has been sold. Prints are available at RiverStone Gallery.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

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The trouble started in the spring when I got a trojan despite my firewall and other protections. The nasties just keep evolving and my defenses had not.

After removing the trojan and installing additional software defenses, the operating system still did not work well. The operating system had sustained damage. I decided the last thing I wanted was to reinstall all my software at the beginning of my busiest season in our business.

Instead I limped through summer with an erratically functioning computer, which was maddening enough. I developed an intense dislike for all my new anti virus, anti spyware, anti everything programs. They occupy a lot of time and resources while interfering with simple procedures I actually want to do on my computer.

Finally, Labor Day weekend was over and I reviewed all my backups and proceeded to reinstall Windows XP, easier said than done. I had never done that before but did not want to pay for a reinstall since I suspected I might also have hardware problems. This tower was old enough I did not want to sink a lot of money into repairing it.

After the reinstall I discovered I did indeed have hardware issues. I am sparing you the gruesome details, but let’s just say I even progressed past the point of wanting to swear at the equipment. I did not know things could get that bad!

So I have now learned more than I ever wanted to know about computer operating systems and still have a crippled computer. Sometimes the universe just gives me a big swat to wake up.

As I looked at my situation I realized all my usual behaviors needed to be left behind. I backup all my data like a woman possessed. But I do so in a fear based manner like the world will immediately crash upon me. With computers, that is an easy mindset to achieve, but still not a good one. Of course backup multiple copies, but I would be better off to do so peacefully.

Since I am having my second Saturn return and other intense aspects at this time, one of the byproducts is the annihilation of my computer system. Only the foolish try to cling to what clearly does not work under those aspects.

Initially I was going to get another custom built tower, but changed my mind. I hate the increasing awkwardness of the security measures I must take with Windows. I like Windows XP just fine but detest the idea of eventually being forced into Vista or whatever bloated monster follows Vista.

Since I have to spend some money, it is a good time to reassess my directions. I am switching to a Mac. I mostly do graphics work on my computer and Macs are great for that. They do not currently have the security problems of Windows machines either. Some software I treasure is not available on Macs but I have my little laptop for those programs.

So I will be learning another operating system altogether, but I really just want to get back to using my computer for my purposes instead of conducting a defensive war with it. Somewhere in all this process I have found my learning processes accelerating rapidly so I am absorbing new information more effectively.

This is a hard way to make changes, but I think it will provide many unseen benefits as this project unfolds. I am excited to be moving out of the old ways and into the new unknown. More challenges await, but also new opportunities!

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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Sliding along at face value has its drawbacks, such as the first time you buy new siding for your house from a fly by night scammer. Or when you find you have elected politicians to office who are corrupt and are acting as though pillage was their divine right.

As for the printed word, Gutenberg’s days are long gone. Printing books now is such an inexpensive and rapid process just about any idea can be found in print. Unthinking reverence for the printed word just paves the road to more confusion.

Of course, most people simply watch the predigested sound bites of the news, which is even more suspect as far as expressing truth.

For those who are afraid of dissenting from the opinions of the common herd, I have one reminder. The world is not flat.

How about those of us who docilely become whatever our parents were before us or in direct rebellion choose the exact opposite? Republicans, Democrats, Catholics, Protestants, blue collar, white collar, pro-life, pro-choice etc. Is there any truth in choosing any of these disparate belief patterns? See the hot buttons going off now…

Do outraged emotional reactions determine the truth of something? If so, why aren’t both sides right during religious wars? What is all the uproar about anyway?

Perhaps the logical mind is better to trust. Of course the logical mind led us to science, which led us to Newtonian physics, which was quite reassuring, at least after the main religious fallout quieted. Then the physicists have been confounded by moving into quantum physics, which now contradicts all our commonsense ideas of how the world works.

The main problem with all these approaches to deciding truth is that they are all based on external reference points. In one way or another, all of them require looking to someone else to define what is true, be they parents, priests, scientists, charismatic lawmakers, or some other form of authority.

These approaches are also based on staying with whatever beliefs we find comfortable in our lives, the mostly unexamined assumptions by which we live. We admire those who reinforce those beliefs because they affirm the fact we are right. And being wrong is utterly terrifying.

So we avoid the discomfort of examining the reality of our existence, the reality of the unknown which always waits beyond the tidy confines of our limited perceptions. We hide ourselves in the pleasant, and sometimes not so pleasant, fictions of our lives.

What happens when we turn inward to find truth? We find vast unexplored assumptions about what is true, our thinking minds working with agility to maintain those assumptions. We find torrents of emotions which swing in wildly different directions depending on the circumstances, emotions which are so distorted with our own misunderstandings they have taken on shadow energy.

Not only are we blind men describing an elephant, we are probably actually gripping a totally different beast than an elephant in the first place. Truth diminishes rapidly and perhaps disappears completely.

But if we persist on this inward search we may find a clear light of spiritual knowing, which then proves exceedingly difficult to translate into mundane daily reality. Our mental bodies are at odds with our emotional bodies and the physical body frequently is the helpless battlefield. It is no wonder we find it hard to translate spiritual reality into physical reality cleanly without distortion.

So what to do in all this welter of confusion and discordant impulses?

The first step is to establish energetic integrity. What is energetic integrity? That is when actions match the words spoken, when spoken words match the feelings held within the speaker, and when the unspoken energies emanating from the doer harmonize with word and deed.

This takes more work than you might think, because so many people are oblivious to what their energies are doing. Becoming more aware of oneself on all levels is vital to navigating this process successfully.

It also makes it much more clearly apparent when someone you encounter is not operating with energetic integrity. That does not make life more comfortable either.

Surrender is required, a surrender to our own deeper knowing of what is right for us, to our own soul purpose, even if, or especially when, we cannot articulate what that might be. This is usually a hard fought battle.

The mind rebels, our conscious minds really believe they have the steering wheel, even though the conscious mind is always the last to know what is happening. Complicating matters, emotions unexpectedly surge out of control. After surrender, more healing and personal growth can lead to energetic integrity.

And what is the truth that is revealed when one achieves energetic integrity?

As we become more aligned energetically, we do indeed perceive more clearly. We are more in touch with reality on all levels of being. This can be a beautiful experience, as our core essence can now move more freely into physical expression.

The kicker to this process is that the more we know, the more places we touch directly upon the unknown that ever surrounds the known. Each perception, each answer, brings up more questions. So we have the brilliant light of our core essence illuminating the vastness of the unknown around us.

The truth is, we just don’t know.

We may choose to hide from the mighty unknown, dimming the light within us to match our hidey hole, or we can choose instead to take an exuberant ride through the universe with our inner light blazing.

Somewhere along the way great discoveries await. The stars in the heavens stand sentinel, waiting for the lights within us to illuminate all creation.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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Manifestion That is Easy Or is Frustrating

I have been observing the difference between those areas where I manifest easily and quickly, such as creating works of art, and those areas where I experience frustration and delay, such as matching cash flow to the timing of my business.

The primary difference is in the vibrational level of the dreams I am manifesting. For me, artwork calls forth my highest vibrational resonance with my soul path. This manifests readily for me.

Any areas where I feel obligated, that I “should” be doing something in particular, the vibrational level heads for the floorboards. Low vibrational dreams that are not resonating with my soul path simply do not manifest in a satisfying way.

Converting Low Vibrational Dreams to High Vibrational Dreams

The solution I am exploring is to reformat low vibrational dreams into high vibrational dreams. This requires detached self observation.

I look at the dream and if it is of a low vibration, if I feel my energy sinking as I look at it, I need to restructure the dream so that it carries the vibration of the creative expansion of my soul. If any dream does not involve creative expansion, the vibration will be low and the results disappointing.

This quickly eliminates any dreams which involve just getting by, merely solving a mundane problem of the moment without any greater creative purpose. The context has to be expanded to encompass my passion and enthusiasm for expressing my soul purpose, or the efforts to manifest will be frustrating.

Adjusting Internal Energetic Alignment

Restructuring my internal energetic alignment is part of this process. As I formulate a high vibrational dream to replace a low vibrational dream, I also observe how it affects my body. Any areas of physical tension or pain indicate blockages which need to be cleared to allow the new dream to manifest cleanly.

Using Crystalline Consciousness Technique™

As always, I am working within a CCT session so it is an efficient process to use the intention of clearing, healing, and releasing any blockages I am observing.

It will be interesting to see how these new higher vibrational dreams manifest, as I have been working with this process only a few days. This is one of the results of using the Crystalline Heart Activation as I am able to see what I am doing with much greater clarity.

Request for Comments and Information

I would be delighted to hear what experiences you readers have had with high and low vibrational dreams and their results in your lives.

The painting shown is Spun Gold, 48″ wide by 36″ high, in acrylics on canvas by Lexi Sundell and is available at the Lawrence Gallery in Portland.

The Personal Growth Carnival included this article in a varied collection of articles which are worth perusing.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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I could see intense white light arising from within my heart, irradiating the heart on all levels. As this occurred, I first felt a tightness at the back of my heart.

Typically the back of the heart is supported by the past, and my past certainly has had some highly unsupportive qualities as far as my ancestral family is concerned. Happily enough this gradually dissolved until I felt my heart fully supported from within by that incredible light.

The next blockage was a large dark structure in the middle of my heart. This one was quite painful to experience and the process took quite a bit of time. As the white light irradiated this darkness, I began to see it was a huge collection of You Owe Me’s accumulated over an enormous span of time. Interestingly enough, I saw no IOU’s.

I had not known I was carrying the You Owe Me’s, even while internally waiting for everyone who had slighted or somehow mistreated me for eons to finally pay up. Of course, this could be an eternal wait!

If I was willing to let them go, the possibility opened to experience something quite different in my heart. They were deeply entrenched, but it seemed pointless to hang onto You Owe Me’s that were not going to get cashed soon, if ever.

As I surrendered my carefully horded collection, the dark structure slowly dissolved in the intense light and the pain went away with it. The light continued to blaze within my heart, and a peaceful clarity took the place of the old blockages.

I was surprised to see much of what I had thought was my basic nature was merely an outgrowth from holding that collection of You Owe Me’s. My true essence undistorted by that blockage showed a far more relaxed and gentle person than I would have guessed!

Two days later I repeated the activation and this time I saw IOU’s dissolve easily in the irradiating light. Then the light began moving from the heart into the rest of the body, with the liver needing particular clearing.

In the days following these activations I have had a number of people comment on how changed I am and how much better I look, so the results are apparently obvious to others.I know I feel absolutely wonderful, as the Crystalline Heart Activation is the most amazing healing activation I have ever experienced.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2007. All Rights Reserved.

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