After wrestling with the idea for a long time, I've made tentative inroads into selling tarot card readings online. It's something I'm actually very good at but I've always had issues with taking money for that kind of work.
Anyways, me and my conscience had been at it hammer and tongs over the matter for a couple of days and I decided to ask the guides what they thought. M-L reminded me of some advice he'd offered previously:
Accept your gifts with grace and use them with wisdom.(Heavy emphasis on "use them!")
Of course, in this instance he was talking about my ability with the cards, which is pretty solid if I do say so myself as shouldn't. However, this could apply to any skill--musical talent, say, or training in a craft. What he indicated to me was that if you're doing something you're good at, if you are offering something to the world
with love, then it's okay to ask for something in return: not just obvious stuff like money or goods but intangibles such as respect and approval.
What are your gifts, friend? How will you use them?
Right then.Yes, well. Umm.
The guides are still here and still talking to me. Everything went a bit fuzzy over Chirstmas/the New Year because, well, drunk. It's always harder to tune in when I've had a few. (I got a very stern warning that if I didn't put a sock in it I might lose contact altogether, indefinately. A sock was duly put.)
Then for the last couple of months I've had a massive upsurge in the perceptual distortions associated with my epilepsy: visual disturbances, really feral synesthesia, sense of scary invisible people hanging around in my flat, ect. Besides that I've had the spirit of the Red Book coming online without being asked, which is an issue--he/she/it is most unpleasant. Then--and this is a bit embarrassing to admit--it rather seems as though someone in my life (no-one who's likely to be reading this, I hasten to add) decided to interfere with my magickal and spiritual work. I was getting all kinds of subtle and not-so-subtle messages about this from various sources, which I studiously ignored because I assumed I was being paranoid and egomaniacal. I'm pretty sure it's all dealt with now, though.
I don't know when I'll have an actual update for you guys. I seem to have lots of different people/things trying to talk to me at once; it might take a while process the new input and set up new filters. It'll come, though.
Laters. The spooks send Love.
