Read the back story to my newest book!

 
A time of reckoning. The fulfillment of a prophecy.
This is why she is here. 
But will peace or tumult reign in Devor?

​Several years ago, I started receiving fiction plots downloaded while I was sleeping. Even though it’s my second published fiction, The Oracle of Devor is actually the first plot I ever received. I had written a lot of it and then was getting sick to my stomach whenever I tried to write one of the climactic scenes. I decided it was too close to home with the My Karma Ran Over My Dogma saga, so I decided to shelve TOOD and work on the next fiction plot, which was The Girl with a Gift. 
 
Once I published TGWAG, I wrote a short fable that had been dowloaded as an e-book (The Wizard's Toy) and then started writing a 4th plot that had been given to me. About half-way through the 4th book, I got a little stuck and so decided to pull out The Oracle of Devor and look at it again. I found I was much farther along than I remembered and so attempted to write through the part that had given me difficulty before. 
 
I had no trouble writing that scene and continued on to finish the rest of the story. It took me some time to edit it once it was finished, as I wrote it from multiple viewpoints, adding to the complexity of who knew what when! Plus, there were a lot of details to keep straight in creating my imagined world where the kingdom-city of Devor is located.
 
Some people have asked me what kind of details I get in my downloaded plot fictions. I don’t see everything. I see the general arc of the plot. For The Oracle of Devor, I could see several scenes play out and different characters saying lines, all of which I’ve used in the book. Looking back on what I immediately wrote down after receiving the download while dreaming, I can see that I’ve changed several details in the final telling of the story. I consider it spiritual creative license! 
 
I hope you enjoy the story! Since my next book of fiction is already half-written, I’m hoping it will be out next year!

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If you are so moved and are able, please consider supporting my writing by making a donation (PayPal Donate button in the right hand column) or buying one of my books. Thank you!
 
Monica McDowell is a dynamic speaker, author, and practitioner in alternative wellness and spirituality. Find her on Thought Catalog here. She is the author of The Oracle of Devor, The Girl with a Gift, Confessions of a Mystic Soccer Mom, You are Light (internationally published by 6th Books in over 14 countries) and My Karma Ran Over My Dogma, and has the distinction of being the first ordained minister in America granted civil rights by a federal ruling. She lives in Seattle, Washington, USA, and can be reached at monica@monicamcdowell

I sit here as events are cancelled around me and people are staying home and business are telling people to stay home from work, and schools and colleges are going totally online for classes. Stores are wiped out of tp and hand sanitizer and water and long-shelf-life food due to fears of quarantines because of the spreading COVID-19 virus here in the greater Seattle area and now the country. This is all happening, mind you, after I had a blog titled Apocalyptic Fever already in the works.
 
Why did I have this blog already in the works, you ask? Because I could sense a rising collective panic about the state of the world. With the apocalyptic-like fires in Australia nearly wiping out koalas and other unique species and with recent 60+ degree weather in Antarctica, with political unrest in normally stable countries, and the world doomsday clock moving to 100 seconds to midnight, the collective consciousness felt on a precipice of panic, of apocalyptic fever.
 
Add to this that a recent poll said the vast majority of Democrats and Independents in the USA would rather a meteor wipe out all life on earth rather than have the current POTUS win a second term, you get the sense of the dire level of dread and doom that is weighing on many. 
 
Another prompt from the universe to write this blog was a lucid dream I had several weeks ago. In the dream, I was driving south on I-5 into Seattle with a passenger. Around Northgate, we noticed a huge fire nearer to Seattle. We could only see the upper flames and smoke as it was hidden behind the hills that lead into the U District. I said, “We need to call and make sure (my daughter) doesn’t go downtown. She’s not going to be able to drive there.” Then, as we crested the hill over the U District about to head onto the ship canal bridge, a huge fireball hit the earth in front of us. Everything was fire, we felt the earth melt beneath us and we fell into its giant maw into darkness. A split second later I was back in my body and in my bed, fully awake after this vivid dream.

​A premonition? Probably not. I’ve had these apocalyptic dreams several times over the years since my awakening and energy-shifting path. I used to think they might be premonitions but absolutely none of them have come true, and some are so over-the-top (like the above), that they really couldn’t be true. What I have learned is that they signal a coming big energy shift for me. Although I shift energy very regularly as part of my spiritual path, continually opening to new energies, sometimes though, there are big shifts that happen and my entire paradigm has to expand in a large way (again) to release a lot of old beliefs, thoughts, patterns at once in order to see from an entirely new perspective (again). Another rebirthing. Another death and resurrection. I’m not yet sure what this means for me. The big shift hasn’t yet happened, although perhaps it’s already in the works and I’ll know later in hindsight that yep, I’m in a radically new paradigm (again).
 
My larger questions right now have to do with what the current apocalyptic fever means for humanity as a whole. Does it signal a large shift in human consciousness? Does a pandemic wake us up to how ruled we are by fear of death? Does it show us how quickly an emotional/mental virus can spread—go viral—even faster than a biological virus? I’ve had to quell the rising sense of collective panic many times by telling myself “not my panic, not my panic” and even doing some EFT. Does a pandemic wake us up to how we are One Mind? One Body? 

How do we create a stronger emotional/mental/spiritual immunity that’s not so susceptible to panic? I’ve taught many classes on how we can build a stronger immune system for our bodies energetically. But how do we build a stronger collective immune system so that every wave of “the next thing that’ll kill us all” doesn’t cause us to horde and even steal the items essential to a well-functioning medical response to those who need those items the most? And do we share some collective shadow fascination with creating popularity out of the macabre, riding a sensationalistic wave of an emotional fever? 

I do wonder that if protecting the vulnerable is really what we’re rushing to do by all staying home (which is compassionate and noble and flattens the curve), why not this same sense of urgency to the vulnerable who die needlessly every damn day: those who are homeless, who suffer from untreated mental health issues, who are without medical insurance or food, who are children caged alone and tortured in our border facilities? So are we really rushing to protect the vulnerable or are we so used to a certain number of people suffering (and we deem that number “acceptable”) that we see no need for widespread systematic response? Why is there not already widespread systematic response for the escalating crisis of climate change, which will be far more deadly? (The quarantining of Wuhan and Italy drastically dropped pollution!) Perhaps the realization of the threat of a sudden spike in suffering and death COVID-19 could cause is breaking through our acceptance of “low-level” or “long-term” suffering. Perhaps there are other underlying motivations that we’re not really conscious of yet. It’s good to probe into some shadow motivations to see what else is driving the sudden need to protect the vulnerable in only this particular case.
 
More questions than answers for this blog. I do encourage you to do whatever inner work this pandemic is triggering in you, to use it as an opportunity to dig deeper into our True Nature. To open your heart more to all those who suffer, to imagine how each of us personally, and all of us collectively might move into living differently so that suffering is greatly diminished for all, now in light of COVID-19 and long-term in light of all suffering on the planet.
 
For myself, my fears, my griefs greatly resolved when I woke up and knew who I was, who I am, who I will always be and who we all are. May this apocalyptic fever bring about a Great Awakening that shifts us not into apocalypse but into rebirth and resurrection. May we as a species wake up to Love, remembering who we are as embodied souls of the Divine, One Mind and One Body, and also One Heart.

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If you are so moved and are able, please consider supporting my writing by making a donation (PayPal Donate button in the right hand column) or buying one of my books. Thank you!
 
Monica McDowell is a dynamic speaker, author, and practitioner in alternative wellness and spirituality. Find her on Thought Catalog here.She is the author of The Girl with a Gift, Confessions of a Mystic Soccer Mom, You are Light (internationally published by 6th Books in over 14 countries) and My Karma Ran Over My Dogma,and has the distinction of being the first ordained minister in America granted civil rights by a federal ruling. She lives in Seattle, Washington, USA, and can be reached at monica(at)monicamcdowell(dot)com

​Lockdown
Yes there is fear.
Yes there is isolation.
Yes there is panic buying.
Yes there is sickness.
Yes there is even death.
But,
They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise
You can hear the birds again.
They say that after just a few weeks of quiet
The sky is no longer thick with fumes
But blue and grey and clear.
They say that in the streets of Assisi
People are singing to each other
across the empty squares,
keeping their windows open
so that those who are alone
may hear the sounds of family around them.
They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland
Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.
Today a young woman I know
is busy spreading fliers with her number
through the neighbourhood
So that the elders may have someone to call on.
Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples
are preparing to welcome
and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary
All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting
All over the world people are looking at their neighbours in a new way
All over the world people are waking up to a new reality
To how big we really are.
To how little control we really have.
To what really matters.
To Love.
So we pray and we remember that
Yes there is fear.
But there does not have to be hate.
Yes there is isolation.
But there does not have to be loneliness.
Yes there is panic buying.
But there does not have to be meanness.
Yes there is sickness.
But there does not have to be disease of the soul
Yes there is even death.
But there can always be a rebirth of love.
Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.
Today, breathe.
Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic
The birds are singing again
The sky is clearing,
Spring is coming,
And we are always encompassed by Love.
Open the windows of your soul
And though you may not be able
to touch across the empty square,
Sing.
- Fr. Richard Hendrick, OFM
March 13th 2020

​I have been hearing a lot of people around me, who are beyond the literal-only interpretation of scripture, wonder how to take the Christmas season stories. For me one of the things it is all about is visitations. 
 
In Christian traditions, the Advent and Christmas season is full of visitations. Angels visit Mary, Zechariah, and the shepherds in person—Joseph and the Magi in dreams. The visit of the Magi is celebrated on January 6th, 12 days after Christmas (the real meaning of the 12 days of Christmas), and is commonly known as the Epiphany or the Theophany. It celebrates that a significant astrological or celestial event guided the Magi’s visit to the Christchild. 

For myself, since the intensifying time leading up to my own awakening to Christ consciousness or the divine indwelling or theophany, or whatever you want to call it…and ever since, I have been in a season of visitations. Mostly it is my nighttime that is full of faces, lights, and events that communicate to me various things, mostly about healing, although daytime visitations happen as well, with orbs and lights of guides and angels for me and for my clients.
 
Just in the past few months, on October Eve Eve, a dragon and a thunderbird visited me while sleeping—both powerful healing totems. A few weeks ago, in lucid dreaming, I saw the plants in an atrium of a friend’s home—a friend who is having a health crisis—communicate with the trees that surrounded this friend’s prior home that is near me. These trees then communicated with the trees that are on our home’s property just a block away, asking me to reach out to this friend. The plants and trees wanted to communicate their love and care to our mutual friend. It was such a beautiful experience of the interconnectedness we share with Nature and Love.
 
On New Years Eve Eve (my dreamtime seems to be a day ahead of the traditional eves) my dog-on-the-other-side, Ruffles, appeared to me as did a former healing teacher. In the past year, during the nighttime, I’ve been visited by orcas, who came down the ship canal through the smaller lakes to upper Lake Washington by Lake Forest Park to meet me while I was in a boat. I gave them all Reiki. After doing so, frogs lined my lower legs—a healing gifted back to me in this very vivid, vibrational dream. I’ve also been visited by grandparents, souls on the other side who were here to connect with a medium renting out a room in the church building I work at, and various healing shapes and patterns with various colors.
 
A couple of months ago, I had a health question that I didn’t really want to go to the doctor about. Western Medicine definitely has a place that I respect and honor, but for me most of it is too invasive and hyper-stimulating, so I knew the tests that would be ordered about this particular question would probably be revealing, but it would take a toll on my body and my energy. So I asked the Universe instead. That night a series of souls, healers, and others visited me and looked in my energy eyes and at my energy overall, each one saying “you’re fine.”
 
I regularly have healers from the other side come and work on me when needed. One time last month, after having an embodied healer in this dimension do some work in person on me, there were some rough spots that hadn’t yet healed, and a spirit healer on the other side associated with this embodied healer visited me that night and smoothed the energy.
 
I am so blessed by these visitations. The biblical stories about Christmas may not be literal as in the sense of factual. I hear a lot of people opine that they are at least metaphorical. I would say they are beyond metaphorical. They are metaphysical, and therefore more real than “factual” or even “metaphorical" stories, as they show us that by awakening to our own Christ consciousness and connecting with the Divine Light within, visitations and guidance become the NORM. These stories are guidance as to what is really REAL when you wake up.
 
Keep up your spiritual and energy practices. Visualize starlight at the core of your being. 

When the veil of the 6th (forehead/third eye) chakra is opened with light and is in balance with your other chakras, healing and guiding visitations become the norm.

May you be guided by your highest and best Light and Love in the New Year!
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If you are so moved and are able, please consider supporting my writing by making a donation (PayPal Donate button in the right hand column) or buying one of my books. Thank you!
 
Monica McDowell is a dynamic speaker, author, and practitioner in alternative wellness and spirituality. Find her on Thought Catalog here.She is the author of The Girl with a Gift, Confessions of a Mystic Soccer Mom, You are Light (internationally published by 6th Books in over 14 countries) and My Karma Ran Over My Dogma,and has the distinction of being the first ordained minister in America granted civil rights by a federal ruling. She lives in Seattle, Washington, USA, and can be reached at monica@monicamcdowell​

And the Body Stubborn

​St. Francis of Assisi referred to his body as Brother Ass. Now that might sound just a wee bit derogatory to modern ears. Calling someone or something an “ass” is not exactly a compliment today. However, he was simply referring to his body as his “beast of burden” that got his soul where it needed to go in this physical dimension. St. Francis was still a man of his times, and he practiced self-mortification on occasion. But he never saw the common practice of his age as something that should be done to excess. In fact, by the end of his life, he came to see Brother Ass as something he should be grateful for and extend compassion to, even if he saw his body as stubborn and willful at times.
 
I’m always surprised at how many people are taken aback when I suggest that if they’re having an issue with their body, that they talk to their body. They have so identified with their body, that it hasn’t occurred them that the body is its own being, with its own consciousness. When I am working with a client on a body issue, I will often hear the body talk. All energy (body-as-dense-energy included) contains information and when you connect with energy, it will “talk” to you. I encourage students and clients to treat your body like you would a beloved pet. Talk to it, listen to it, encourage it, keep it in line when needed with a strong, clear, positive intention, and love it unconditionally. It has faithfully gotten you this far! Thank it with tons of gratitude for the work it does unseen and unknown, keeping your soul hereon Earth. It truly is the temple of the soul.
 
Having said that, the body RESISTS change, just like everything else in this world. It likes things to stay the same, even if it desires healing. Healing means change though, and with that the need to release resistance. How do you get a stubborn ass/donkey/pet to move when it is making it abundantly clear that it doesn’t want to?

First of all, you are the body’s manager. So, you get to set the terms. It might get stubborn like a mule (or two-year old or teenager), but you get the final say. Strong, positive clear intentions are important. Intention heals.
 
Second, when I hit resistance in the body, it’s usually because of some unacknowledged pain. I try to process with as little to no backstory as possible for myself and clients, because really, does the story matter? The more we attach to story or to the sensationalism of our backstories, the harder it can be to release. So, the first thing I try is just to “release any resistance, release any old energies.” Oftentimes, this is enough.
 
Third, if simple release doesn’t work, then I go into the backstory. What’s the pain about? What didn’t get acknowledged so that my body can’t release until I learn the lesson it has for me? Once I delve in there, and acknowledge the story behind the pain, my body is usually happy to release. Applying an organic castor oil pack to the particular “issue in your tissue” can help release stored cell memory and give greater insight, too. I applied a castor oil pack to a body area just last night before I went to bed, and during the night, I had the most insightful, funny, and yet also reassuring dream that helped me understand what was really going on, which happened to be something completely different that what I had been thinking!
 
Fourth, if none of the above works, I’ll ask for help from the universe. What am I missing? What do I need to learn, expand into? Then I look for clues, repeating phrases, and other “messages” from the beyond.
 
Fifth, call for reinforcements. I am fortunate to have a lot of healer friends who generously answer my questions when I’m stuck. We don’t need to heal alone. The divine is in all, and we sometimes need a divine-human team to help us out. This is one of the reasons I love to do breathwork groups and Reiki Shares and classes. Check out my next groups here. I hope to see you soon!
 
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If you are so moved and are able, please consider supporting my writing by making a donation (PayPal Donate button in the right hand column) or buying one of my books. Thank you!
 
Monica McDowell is a dynamic speaker, author, and practitioner in alternative wellness and spirituality. Find her on Thought Catalog here.She is the author of The Girl with a Gift, Confessions of a Mystic Soccer Mom, You are Light (internationally published by 6th Books in over 14 countries) and My Karma Ran Over My Dogma,and has the distinction of being the first ordained minister in America granted civil rights by a federal ruling. She lives in Seattle, Washington, USA, and can be reached at monica@monicamcdowell

Enjoy this excerpt from Confessions of a Mystic Soccer Mom. It was an event that occurred several years ago now!

I confess: I was afraid to try to start my lawn mower again. Maybe I used up all my miracle miles with it on that divine day and the next weekend, the thing wouldn't work at all.

Here’s the back-story…
We had this wonderful eco lawn mower for nine years: a rechargeable battery-operated Black and Decker that was super quiet and hadn't had any mechanical problems since we'd bought it. For two years prior, the battery had clearly been fading as it began to take more than the normal one recharge to mow the entire lawn. Toward the end of the last year, it was taking about four charges total, two each for the front and the back to get the job done. Then it started taking about eight recharges to mow the entire lawn. Every week it got worse so that we couldn’t mow for more than about two minutes and the battery would die. We were mowing the lawn every day it didn’t rain and couldn’t get the whole lawn mowed over two weeks time—by a long shot. Plus, the lawn looked terribly haphazard: The grass (and the dandelions) were at varying heights every few feet, making it look like someone very drunk, very anarchic—or both—had mowed it.

Another item of importance to this story: Our financial situation was not optimal then. We were swamped with medical debt from my husband’s ruptured disc. He’d essentially been laid off from his position, and we hadn't had a full paycheck in many weeks. Somehow I wasn't really stressed about this. I knew God was watching out for us. One day, during this time, when I was out doing errands, I had this deep abiding peace come over me. I reflected to myself, "I know we’re in God’s hands, I know everything is going to turn out okay." I then “over-heard” my spirit guides say to each other, “By golly, she’s got it, she’s really got it!” Right after my oh-so-hilarious guides humored themselves at my expense, I crested the top of a hill in my car and overhead I saw three eagles circling over me. I love confirmation from the universe: snarky disembodied voices, eagles, whatever. I’ll take anything. I’m not picky.

But peaceful feelings aside, with the financial situation we were in, we couldn't afford to get another lawnmower, new or used, let alone a new battery. We tried using our weed-whacker as a substitute, but that just made the lawn look like someone on crack had tried to fix the drunken anarchist’s work.

So on the day before that divine day, I tried to mow a little bit again in high hopes but low expectations. The mower lasted about a minute and then I had to plug it back in again. The next day—the divine day—it was blessedly still not raining, so I thought, "Well, I’ll try and at least even up over some of the weed-whackered areas." But after getting the mower started, within a minute (again), the needle on the battery gauge went from F to E, the battery whined in a descending pitch like it was going to die (again), and I had only mowed a couple of measly strips.

So, I prayed. “Angels of mine: I know you’re good at energy and charging things." (I was also thinking, Heck, I know this because you’ve been charging and shocking my body now for years rewiring me, but I was—unlike my guides—too polite to actually put this snarky comment in as a part of my formal request.) "Could you just charge this mower for me please?”

And wouldn’t you know? The battery gauge stayed at empty and actually dipped below E and didn’t move from there at all. Yet I was able to keep mowing. I mowed and I mowed. I was able to finish the entire front lawn and so I thought, "Gosh I should just keep going."

So without turning it off—because I was afraid maybe it wouldn’t restart if I did—I opened the gate of the fence and set off into the jungle that is our back yard. It’s thick with moss, dandelions, and clover interspersed with dense weeds of mysterious origins. Add to that the thorny blackberry shoots sprouting up all around the edges of our evergreen bush-lined fence, and you see the Herculean task my battery-challenged mower had that day. Even on a good day, back when the battery was working fine, our mower would bog down in it. But hey, I was able to keep mowing the back yard, too—even the tallest grass! I was also sweating like I had run a half-marathon, which time-wise was about equivalent. I must confess: I was totally worn out before the mower was, but I wasn’t going to stop. It might not start again!

About an hour into my miracle mow, my husband, a true skeptic in the philosophical sense of the word, wandered into the back yard, looked at me quizzically, and questioned, “Is that still going?”

“Yup, I prayed over it and it’s still going.” He rolled his eyes at me in response and went back inside the house.

After another forty-five minutes when I was almost done, he came back outside again. “It’s still going??”

“Yup,” I said laughing. (Apparently, I say “yup” and “nope” a lot when I’m mowing—my backwater hillbilly ancestral genes revealing themselves when they feel most at home—outside doing chores.)

My beloved husband started coming up with all sorts of interesting “theories” as to why the mower’s battery was suddenly coming to life as if it had just been transformed into the Energizer Bunny battery.

“Maybe only the gauge was broken.”

“Nope, the battery was totally dying after just a minute the last couple of weeks.”

“Maybe, the battery just needed a good charge.”

“Nope, the mower didn’t ever mow the entire lawn on one charge even when it was new."

“Maybe…”

Finally, I cut him off and said, “Honey, you’re looking a miracle square in the face and refusing to see it.”

He retorted, “Well start praying about my job then.”

“It’ll be okay. The universe is giving us a sign. Everything will all be okay.”

I then stepped profoundly into the middle of doggy doo-doo.

I hadn’t picked up the doodie in the back yard where the dog lives before I began mowing because that would be ridiculous, nay, impossible, to think I’d be mowing the front and back lawns on the same day, let alone on the same battery charge. I had seen a couple of piles of doggy doodie when I had started mowing in the back, but I didn’t want to stop the mower and go get bags to pick it up, just in case, as I’ve stated, it wouldn’t start again. Obviously, I was rather superstitious about this miracle. Or maybe I was just selfish, but I wanted my entire lawn mowed, so I wouldn’t risk turning off the miracle.

Thus, the doggy doodied shoe didn’t bother me in the least. I guffawed heartily at the trickster prank the universe pulled on me and kept right on mowing. I mowed everything I could think of, under the bushes, on all the sides, the extra tall grass that was creeping up on the edges of everywhere—I finally had to give up. There was nothing left to mow—absolutely nothing. I even double-checked with my husband, “Do you see anything I missed?”

“Nope. It’s done.” (Yups and nopes are contagious, I guess.)

So reluctantly I turned my miracle off and plugged it back in. My son came home soon afterward, the one who usually does most of the mowing, and asked his dad, “How did the lawn get mowed?”

“Mom mowed it.”

“How is that possible?” my son queried, knowing full well the hopelessness of trying to mow the lawn over the past few months.

“Mom says she prayed to her angels and they kept it going. We’re going to be hearing about this miracle of hers for the next ten years.”

My son laughed.

The most mundane of miracles happened today. That’s okay. I’ll take it. I’m not picky. To me it shows the Source isn’t just concerned with our inner workings, but also our outer workings, even the minutiae of mowers and money, or lack thereof. But hey, I’m happy—my lawn looks fantastic.

Till next week anyway.

Questions for Reflection: What are some mundane miracles you’ve experienced? Do you have people in your life who scoff at miracles? What part of you is a skeptic that would like to be awed by the in-breaking of the dawn into the despairing places in your life?

*update: The lawn mower battery never worked again! The miracle must've worn it out, but my husband was fully employed soon after this event. :)
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http://www.amazon.com/…/dp/0615587607/ref=la_B0039SP09G_1_1…

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​If you are so moved and are able, please consider supporting my writing by making a donation (PayPal Donate button in the right hand column) or buying one of my books. Thank you!
 
Monica McDowell is a dynamic speaker, author, and practitioner in alternative wellness and spirituality. Find her on Thought Catalog here.She is the author of The Girl with a Gift, Confessions of a Mystic Soccer Mom, You are Light (internationally published by 6th Books in over 14 countries) and My Karma Ran Over My Dogma,and has the distinction of being the first ordained minister in America granted civil rights by a federal ruling. She lives in Seattle, Washington, USA, and can be reached at monica@monicamcdowell.com.