7 Random and Weird Things about Me

Patricia Singleton has tagged me with a request to share personal, quirky, eccentric facts about myself that you might not know from reading Shift Your Spirits. I hesitate to be so self-indulgent, but then I truly enjoyed reading all the other participating posts. There are literally hundreds of random things that come to mind when I consider my entire life and go digging in the past, so for the sake of whittling down the list, I've limited the following to random, "weird" things about me that are either currently true -- or, if from my past, are still true to this day:

I sleep with books

I physically sleep with a book. When I was three or four years old -- before I could technically read, but was old enough to be read to -- I believed that if I fell asleep while holding a book (or kept it near enough for me to continue touching while I slept) that it would act as a magical dream gateway to the world of the book. I believed that I could program my consciousness to fall into the world of the book and visit it during my dream state.

I was aware that most people used a stuffed animal as a similar prop, and although I tried to willfully transition to sleeping with a soft, cushy, lovable teddy bear instead of a hard-cornered object -- this substitution was a no-go.

While I don't recall this technique's ever being particularly effective, I never really ceased to believe it was possible on some level and that I just needed to work harder at it -- keep trying.

I no longer attempt this; but, to this day, I must read until my eyes close on their own. The only way I can fall asleep is while reading, and the book must stay beside me, like a sleep anchor.

I am rarely ever aware of my dreams

I do not dream. I'm sure that I (clinically) enter R.E.M. states and all that… I am barely exaggerating when I state that I can count on both hands how many times in my entire life that I've had dreams that I'm consciously aware of having, remember upon waking, etc.

I'm deeply envious of people who live an entire second life, filled with fantastic creativity, special effects... Yes, I'm aware of all kinds of techniques and strategies for working with dream states -- I've tried them all at some point. It's an absolute bust (for me).

More recently, on the rare occasion that I consciously remember or awake with an awareness of my dreams, I am disturbed to discover that I've dreamed someone else's life -- like I've been doing a reading for someone in my sleep.

I can't be hypnotized and I meditate in a completely non-traditional way. More than one psychotherapist has suggested that because I cultivate, train, and practice transcendental states in my waking life that the required shift in consciousness happens, but goes undetected -- I don't recognize it.

I sleep on top of the covers and fully clothed

This may be the weirdest thing about me of all. This sleeping habit began in 2003, and corresponds exactly with the point at which my spirit guides began to communicate with me on a whole new level -- loudly, clearly, and daily.

Since that morning, I have never been able to sleep beneath bed covers. I feel like I'm smothering, drowning, suffocating, forcefully held down, or tangled up in something.

You know how you will lie down on top of the bed when you nap during the afternoon, without really getting into bed in the same way you would at night or undressing or putting on pajamas? You just pull a small throw on top of your legs and doze off for an hour or two.

I still make my bed religiously; and I change the sheets as often as anyone -- even though I never even touch them. My sleep resembles an 8 hour nightly nap.

I do not use an alarm clock

I can not sleep with a clock in my bedroom. I can't stand the sight of one and the thought of waking up to an alarm makes me shudder.

I have an uncanny internal clock. I always know what time it is. If you woke me up in the middle of the night and said "Quick! What time is it?" I could probably tell you with a margin of error of 5 minutes in either direction.

I wake up at exactly the same time every morning -- 12 minutes after the hour.

I wear a magic ring

I love jewelry, but I despise wearing it, with one major exception.

One of the last "real jobs" I had was as a jewelry buyer for a private metaphysical retail boutique/gallery. But I have never in my life been able to wear a single piece other than the ring you see in my picture above. You can't tell from the photograph, but it's an enormous, chunky carved piece of silver in the form of a horned owl (my totem) with his wings wrapped around the entire first digit of my index finger.

If I point my finger at you, his eyes are staring straight at you. He's absolutely obnoxious as rings go, but he's very significantly charged. I am always in either a Receptive or Projective state, magically, and I switch the owl from one hand to the other accordingly.

For example, when I'm typing or working on the computer, he weights the "mouse" finger of my right hand. Writing is a Right-hand Projective state.

When I am listening to someone, feel I need to be protected during dangerous circumstances such as driving, asking for divine guidance, or in some kind of prayerful state, I wear the ring on my left hand. Left-hand Receptive state.

All circumstances in which I find myself, without exception, require one or the other state of consciousness.

I also wear red shoes when I am feeling particularly powerful or when I need to feel more powerful. I am conservative and classic in my taste in clothes -- meaning, I aspire to the fewest amount of basic, classic, timeless articles of clothing one can own.

For instance, I bought a new winter coat this fall -- I LOVE it. It's a basic black cashmere top coat. I could've worn it a hundred years ago, I could wear it a hundred years from now.

I aspire to own the "one perfect" representative of any article of clothing. A friend once told me I have my own personal "uniform."

I never wear any pattern of any kind. I rarely wear any colors that aren't neutral with one major exception -- red.

In my personal fashion philosophy, the perfect pair of jeans, the perfect T-shirt, and the perfect hoodie sweatshirt is a staple uniform. Slap on a Red Shoe, and it's the only ingredient you need to turn Plain Ol' Whatever into a Meaningful Statement.

I could ramble on about the magical power of Red Shoes at great length (but I realize you may not really care to know the ins and outs of my personal wardrobe spellcraft.)

I read very, very -- very -- few New Age books. Go figure...

This is a major confession -- and perhaps the #1 thing you would never even suspect about me from reading this blog -- I have a low tolerance for reading New Age material.

Don’t get me wrong, I have read (past tense) an entire bookstore's worth of texts that would be shelved as Religion, New Age, Metaphysical, Personal Development, Self-Help, and Spirituality. I have degrees in English Literature and Holistic Ministry...

Trust me, I have done my time studying other writers in this genre or publishing niche. I have a long list of favorites, and I continue to keep my eye on the industry.

My spirit guides explained to me exactly two years ago, January 2006, that studying, reading, and researching this type of subject matter is not the same thing as contributing to it. I could choose to keep reading and studying other authors in this field or I could become one.

The launch of Shift Your Spirits marked a fork in my path -- or, honestly, a breaking point. If you put a brand-new, current New Age book in front of me my eyes will absolutely glaze over.

There are, of course, precious exceptions -- the work of my contemporary blogging peers, my clients, and my colleagues. You can easily tell from my posts and my comments whom I read, adore, encourage, and support.

This confession may sound incredibly snobby to you -- to me, it represents a change much more like addictive behavior modification. I am not unlike the food addict who becomes a culinary artist or food critic as a way to transcend and transform a shadow purpose into a productive mission.

I simply can't do both. I was given a choice between reading and writing -- I chose to write. When I need intellectual inspiration these days, I turn to hard-core natural science, cosmology, and social politics.

Living Weird and Feeling Truly Random,

Slade : Meaning of The Name Slade

Yes, my "real" name is Slade -- it's not a chosen name; I didn't change my name as a rite of passage; it's not a pen name, pagan name, or faerie name. It's just my name -- a damn cool one, if I do say so myself -- given to me by my Mama while I was still in the womb. She discovered it in the credits of a Western film -- it's most commonly found as the name of gigolos, gangsters, and cowboys. It's bad ass.

My parents, unfortunately, chose to call me by my middle name, which always presents a bit of confusion when people address me as my first-name "Eric." I grit my teeth every time someone calls my name off an official list or emails me with this glaringly un-familiar salutation. (It does however provide me with a built-in strategy for screening unwanted telephone solicitations -- anyone who calls and asks for "Eric"... I know it's not someone I want to talk to.)

If you look at my Vacation Bible School certificate from Mars Hill Baptist Church, you'll see that I have indeed been called Slade all my life.

Enough correcting and explaining -- I LOVE my name. It's more common as a last name in Britain, but it's a killer boy's name -- it's butch, its singular syllable is musically versatile and goes nicely as a middle name behind just about any first name. I often submit it to online name databases because it's a name I have grown up to dig and for which I am very thankful.

But it's not a name that was easy to find on a bicycle license plate or belt-buckle when I was a kid. It's not often found in baby name books or dictionaries -- over the years I've scoured any potential source for the meaning. When I first traveled to England in 1992, I discovered it as a common place name, last name, as well as in a British Name dictionary.

For years, the only meaning I knew was "dweller in the valley you can't see inside of."

Recently, linguist and phonosemantic genius Jeff Lilly of Druid Journal -- researched the name Slade and discovered the following:

Slade is an English name that ultimately derives from the Proto Indo European root lei or slei, meaning "slide". Lei/slei is also the ancestor of words such as slippery, slick, loam, and oblivion. In Proto Germanic, slei became the verb slidanan (ancestor of English slide), as well as the noun slido, from which is derived sled, slede, and sleigh. In Old English, this root was probably also the source of slade, which was used to refer both to the sole of a plow and a steep-walled valley (i.e. a valley with "slippery" sides).

This latter meaning ("valley, glade") gradually extended to someone who lived in, or was from, such a place. There are a number of towns in Great Britain and elsewhere called Slade, and it is a surname as well.

The sound of the name Slade is powerful, as is obvious from its homophones sleighed and slayed. Motion is inherent in it -- swift, directed, strong motion, but also expansion, like a river filling a valley. And the motion has an endpoint: it leads to decisions, and opens doorways.

-- Jeff Lilly, Druid Journal Word of the Day

Check out more of Jeff Lilly's truly unique exploration of words and linguistic lore at Druid Journal Word of the Day. In exchange for a donation to Jeff's site, you can request a phonosemantic portrait of your own name.

Seek Wisdom -- Practice Love

If Money Was A Person, Who Would Money Be?

Lack of money/ lack of abundance in your life has everything to do with your sense of self-worth.

Anxiety about money is based on the misguided notion that love and fulfillment are on one end of human experience and money is on the other; that love and money are in opposition.

Morgana Rae of Charmed Life Coaching recounts a story of her own financial struggles in her professional coaching practice, in which she admits to feeling "embarrassed" about asking to be paid. She says on some level she didn't want people to think she didn't care about them.

Your Relationship with Money Is A Relationship The shift in her thinking came out of her experience as a relationship coach. She saw that many people who are having money issues are also having relationship issues, so she thought:

"Okay, let's approach this problem as if Money were a person...If Money were a person, who would he be?"

The Personification of Money Morgana realized that her personification of Money -- as an Archetype or Character -- basically boiled down to: A big, dirty, scary biker guy who caused fights at parties. The kind of person she would general hide from and avoid…

Money = Scary and Violent -- the way she felt about this Guy was the way she felt about money…

Her solution? First, she fired the Biker.

Then, she developed a personification of Money based on the kind of man she'd like to have as a partner or friend -- a tall, dark, handsome, romantic guy wearing tails and carrying a bouquet of flowers.

How would you respond to Money if he or she was a gorgeous person who was in love with you and wanted to give you a gift?

To address the self-sabotaging impulse to talk people out of hiring her, Morgana sat Money down and had a talk with him:

"What do you want from me now to make this relationship better?"

And Money said back to her "Stop treating me like a monster. Appreciate me. Honor me by asking the people who owe you money to pay you..."

When the Money goes down, it means he needs something from you… So, you need to start having Conversations with Money. You need to start asking Money questions.

How do I hear those answers? If you aren't getting the answers, you may not have developed a strong enough Money character.

Explore the Story about Your Relationship with Money:

• Who is the Old Money?
• Who is the New Money?

Keep developing this Character. Changing a relationship with Money comes alive with Imagination and Intuition.

*Note: Your concept of Money may be a woman - or an animal, or a mythological creature, or something else entirely. You've heard all the talk about "connecting with your inner child" - well, your creativity is the link to your divinity - here's a perfect place to be a kid again. (I think this would be a fascinating game to play with children.) This is YOUR creative concept. I'm using the masculine pronoun he throughout this article because like Morgana, I perceive the personification of money/abundance as a man. It's just an example to give you ideas -- the sky's the limit on who and what Money may be for you. The purpose of this exercise is to find out...

I don't hear anything yet… You're stuck in your Thinking Head, where the ego lives, and you're too busy trying to justify or rationalize this imaginary, intuitive relationship.

• Figure out what Money looks like, how he behaves, and how you act toward Money
• Talk to Money and see how Money responds

Negotiate with Money He tells you want he wants, and you offer what you'll do for him.

Money is the #1 excuse people give for not living their lives.

Money is just a stand-in for the Universe itself...

How do you get past the imaginary character and bring it into real-life? You don't.

Maintain the character; like any relationship, it's dynamic. You already know you don't tell your partner "I love you" once and then let it coast from there. How long would that marriage last?

The Challenges in your Relationship with Money will keep coming up. You become anxious, or you get that feeling in your gut, or sales go down, you find yourself slipping back into negative thinking.

The only power you have is to be a great relationship partner.

We're raised to achieve, be something special - but nobody tells you how to get there. We grow up without a roadmap. We're just told "Do more. Be better." But nobody tells us how that's supposed to play out.

When the Honeymoon is over... Morgana tells the story of how she thought she had her issues with money licked -- everything was going along great -- a month after she started this new relationship with Money, she was overflowing with clients… She was on Cloud 9…

But a year later, she found herself backsliding. The money flow wasn't happening, there were more clients going out than coming in -- Money was becoming absent.

So finally she said to Money "Okay, what's wrong? What have I done here to offend you?"

Morgana says she was pissed off -- she thought she had their issues worked out, and here were problems coming up again. She sat Money down again and said "We need to talk. Something's wrong...Money, I want to make this better. I want it to be great between us like it was, I want us to be close again. What's wrong? What can I do to show you that I want to make it better."

Money told her: "You've been carrying clients without being paid. You've been telling them 'Oh, no, it's okay, you can pay me later.' You've been putting it off -- putting ME off -- you've been telling them and yourself that Money doesn't Matter. I heard you. I took the hint. So I started pulling away…"

Then it hit her - she had been putting her clients and their projects first. She'd been spending all her time with them, and giving them all her attention. Giving them all her value and energy. And she wasn't asking for anything for Money. She was devaluing her relationship with Abundance, and caring more about other people's relationships with THEIR Money. She was actually coaching other people in how to have better relationships in their life, at the expense of her own.

It was unconscious. It's always easier to have the perspective to help others.

"Money is value. We keep it at a distance from ourselves and that just validates the message to ourselves that we aren't valuable."

This is a part of our culture.

Coming from a place of love, it changes the situation when you imagine someone you care about telling you "You're failing me. You're disrespecting me."

Because of Morgana's gesture of stepping into the power to say to her clients who owed her "I deserve this, you need to pay me" Money was so thrilled with her efforts, that he lavished a new wave of gifts on her.

"When you're busy giving away -- with attachments -- it doesn't feel like you're getting back because you're clutching so hard."

When you have an expectation -- which is an attachment to an intention -- you're limiting the entire experience to a Pass or Fail experience.

It's simply a confusion of jobs

• My Job
• The Universe's Job

Here's some homework Morgana gave to a salesman she was coaching: His job was not to sell a single thing, but just to be curious and care about the people he's talking to. The Universe's job is to make sure that the people who are right for what he's selling are going to buy.

She instructed her client to simply show up and be curious and caring.

Because we have agendas, nothing ever turns out like we want it to. Humanity has these fantasies about the way things are going to turn out, and yet we don't tell anybody about them, and then we're disappointed that they didn't do what we wanted them to.

Try putting out to the Universe by saying things like:

• "It would be nice if…"
• "I believe it's time for…"

Life is magic -- when you're trusting life, trusting the Universe, and trusting your integrity.

Seek Wisdom - Practice Love

Let me know what you discover from engaging in this exercise. What I realized about my ideas concerning abundance was truly an epiphany -- a turning point that I can only call life altering.

Source: This concept was developed by Morgana Rae of Charmed Life Coaching YourFinancialAlchemy.com