Cathy Live on the Radio tonight at 8pm EDT

Cathy joins host Angelina Diana for talk about the afterlife on Signs of Life monthly Mediums and Messages segment. Call in with your questions at 877-230-3062. Listen via the web at:

http://www.foreverfamilyfoundation.org/signsofliferadioLISTEN.htm

I am excited to have a whole hour to answer questions and talk with my fellow Medium, Angelina. It should be great!

Interview on YouTube – Updated

Filmmaker and friend, Ashley Young, reposted these interviews she did last year. All 8 parts are now available on YouTube, or on the video interviews section above.

In this interview, I try to describe what I do as a medium and why connecting with the unseen world can help us in all kinds of ways. I’m really new at being in front of the camera, as I’m usually promoting others, but it was a lot of fun to do these pieces. I hope you enjoy them.

Check out Ashley’s other films on YouTube by searching doing a search for somedayfire. Or click on the link in the links section on this page.

Working with Spirit, The Unseen World
Shaman Healer Cathy Towle – Part 1

Everyone is a Steward of the Planet

As a mom, meduim, shaman and ardent enviromenalist, I have been thinking of how to teach my kids about my beliefs without hitting them over the head with it. How do I impart my love for nature, it’s relationship to our souls, and it’s basis in spiritualism? How do I show them that the earth holds us in an embrace that allows us to soar as spirits as we live here on it’s surface. All that beauty and stillness that reflects who we are inside needs protecting. Are we are able to take little actions that help restore balance, even if it seems unimportant or even silly?

A few weeks ago my family and I drove upstate from NYC to visit friends for the weekend. It was a beautiful day and the kids were excited to be going to the country. As we drove, I started to notice wtih dismay a lot of road kill. I had never seen so many dead animals along the side of the road. Beavers, racoons, a possum, various woodchucks.

We saw four dead deer, a site I had never seen before. Something inside me was very disturbed by that. There is something magical about deer for me. Especially being a city dweller. Deer appear for a moment along the side of the road. If you are lucky, you see them, and then they are gone. Such regal, gentle creatures. To see them along the side of the road, some brutally mangled, was undignified and violent. Even the kids grew very somber as we saw the last one.

We spend a nice two days drinking in the outdoors. As we were leaving on the back country road, we pulled onto a busier main road to get to the NY State Thruway. We hadn’t goen very far when I saw something in the road. As I came up to it, and was about to run it over, I saw that it was a turtle crossing the road. I drove over it without hitting it, but just barely. Everyone in the car had the same thought, “Stop the car Mommy, we’ve got to save that turtle!” I turned around and drove back. My husband Tom, who is usually maddenly slow, jumped out of the car and shepherded the turtle across the road, completely stopping traffic. Interestingly enough, the cars that stopped waited until they saw the turtle reach safety, and then they moved on. Tom waited, afraid that having saved the turtle, it might head back onto the road (he had experience with this). It dissapeared into the tall grass and my kids and I all breathed a sign of relief. He’d made it! Tom got back in the car jubilant, as the kids and I cheered. I only hoped we had actually pointed it in the right direction!

It was amazing that such a small act made us feel so good. It’s as if we righted the wrong of all the dead animals we had seen the day before. The sense of helplessness we had felt seemed to vanish. Instead of continuing on, we all had connected with something inside us that said “act now.” Our intuition had reached through and we all heard it together. That was the lesson right there, just waiting for us on the highway.

Spiritualism is intertwined with nature in that it’s the simple order of things. In societies where spiritualism is revered, nature ceremonies and a shamanistic viewpoint form the consciousness of community. Most ritual takes place out side and requires a connection with the earth, with a rock, with water. It involves the elements, the sun, the moon, the weather. In nature based societies spirit is imbued in all things. Spirit is as real as everything else that our consciousness holds. The ancestors walk with us, spirit helpers walk with us. And our relationship to the earth is vital. The earth holds the dreamtime, the underworld, the unconscious. If we succeed in destroying it, we destroy all that too.

Lessons in stewardship find us if we are listening. And if we are willing to act, even if it seems small, we can find a connection to spirit in those moments. We can find a connection to our hearts and our souls that can sustain us and help us to take bigger actions, and before we know it, we are changing our selves and we are changing the planet. It all starts with holding it in our hearts to ask the question – How can we take care of our planet? The spirits around are waiting to hear us ask. And we will be shown the way.

Full Moon Musings, or What Kind of Mess is This?

Happy Lammas! The harvest season begins. Hmmm, let’s see what we are reaping right now…rampage in the middle east, more debt, less services, higher oil prices, heat waves, huge oil spills in Alaska, deadly typhoon in China. If one didn’t know better, we would think Shiva was on a rampage. What kind of seeds have we sown to get us into this mess???

I know, I know, lets not focus on the negative! But I just can’t help thinking, how have I contributed to this? I am a part of the shaping of this world. My thoughtforms count for something! How have I gone along with things I didn’t believe in, that paved the way for leaders to run rampant and become self serving? How many times have I not said what I was thinking because I wanted others to like me? How many times have I passed opportunities to be of service and left it for others to do? How many times have I left a mess for others to clean up?

Now, I am no angel!! I have a messy side, like all the other humans. But, like it or not, my behavior affects others. Cause the little things count. And they lead to bigger things, and bigger things, and there you have it! I guess that means that if I cleaned up after myself and didn’t leave messes, then it would free up all the others who have been cleaning up after me to do other things. Heck, maybe they would have time to clean up after themselves and wow, what a concept. You can see where this is going!

All that aside, I am really grateful tonight. My garden looks great this year. I have so much to be thankful for, so much I have sown has come to pass. Although my life is busy at the moment, I have time to spend with my children. I have time to think, time to speak, time to be still. There is love in my life. I had a good day at work today. I am happy in this moment.

The cool thing about the capacity to live life is that we can hold space in the good at the same time as holding space among the mess. Which makes us much more accessable to each other. I guess what I want to learn to be is “in the mess but not of it.” To not let the mess define me, or limit my thinking about the present. To be among the mess and be a part of it. So I can be a part of changing it. It’s good to recognise the mess we are in, so that we can see what we need to clean it up.

Well that’s enough musing for tonight. Happy cleaning!!!

The trouble with Guru’s or…Guru shmuru

You know, I just sometimes have to rant. The Guru thing really bothers me. Not that I think teachers are a bad thing, on the contrary. Teachers are most needed, especially on a spiritual path. But it’s how we relate to them that causes such distress. It’s the deification of teachers, the giving away of our power, the self doubt that flowers and blooms when we open ourselves up that allows others to take advantage of us.

It’s all very subtle. And in some instances it’s very sweet and innocent. When I found a teacher, the first thing I wanted to do was to give it over to this person to fix me. In that fantasy, she had to have a lot of power to pull that off. So I became small and messed up, and the teacher became savior and fixer up’er. I lost a lot of ground that way.

What happened to our own inner teachers? Our inner compass? The discernment of right and wrong? How have we, in this culture, learned to relate to spiritual teachers and teaching in general?

I think the greatest secret that we push away is the enormous power and potential that each one of us possesses. It’s really awesome. And most of it is untapped, because we don’t know how to access it. Yet, when we are quiet, still, letting the magic of “nothing” wash over us, ahhh, we feel it!! It doesn’t take living in a monestary or extreme practices to make this stuff come alive. But it does take us noticing. And remembering, and noticing again. And just holding it for a moment. And thanking it for being there.

I’ve been thinking about something the Dali Lama said about teachers. He said something like this, “Test a teacher for 12 years before taking them on. Spy on them. See what they are like in real life.” Wow, 12 years. I guess there is no emergency there!! I am inferring that as you go about testing your teacher, that you are also listening to your own inner teacher. That if it takes 12 years, it might not be about handing my life over to another, as we so often want to do. Especially along the “bhakti” or “heart opening” path. Instead it might be about growing up alongside a teacher. Being human right next to them. It might mean that I take on some teachings and not others. Accept the dark and the light sides, as it points out my own. It means that I don’t give up my self, push away my ego, but let it get polished as I see what happens. And maybe I’ll pass my own test as well. For am I not also testing myself just as much?

Sometimes I feel that I have soooo much to learn. It’s overwhelming. And then, a friend calls for support, and the most amazing stuff just pops right out of my mouth. Wise, sage like stuff. Where the heck does that come from I ask? Oh…it’s that inner guru. My inner guru shmuru again! (I just like sayin that – guru schmuru!) It makes it’s presence known to me in crazy wild ways. And it keeps me humble, for I never know when it will strike, but it always does. If I remember to look for it. It’s a relationship. We are equals, partners, moving hand in hand. Looking for ways to connect with each other.

That’s how I feel about spirit communication. The spirit world is there all the time. Ready for us to reach out and ask it to be with us. The spirit world is amazing, it’s layered and luscious, and so much fun to be with. My mind keeps being blown, cause I grew up fearing the unseen world. Even though I was totally fascinated by it. Elves, faries, gnomes, earth sprites, all these beings of my childhood captured my imagination. Somehow, my christian upbringing put notions of evil and scariness that separated me from my spirits. It has taken me a long time to reconnect. They are my teachers, my guides, my helpers, my friends.

So teachers come in all forms, inner and outer. Seem and unseen. We need to embrace them all, but with a lot of room to grow. It’s a great journey.

Join me on the radio live tonight at 9:45 pm

Yes, believe it or not, I’ll be on the radio tonight (thursday 7/27) as a guest medium for the Forever Family Foundation’s radio show – Signs of Life. I’ll be doing readings for the last 10 minutes of the show. You can catch it at AM radio 540, or stream it live at this link –

http://www.foreverfamilyfoundation.org/index2.html

The show runs from 9pm to 10pm and it will be about research mediums. It shoud be interesting. The Forever Family Foundation is a great organization, supporting the idea of life after life. They participate in a lot of research and studies of this subject, and also do a lot to help people going through loss of a loved one. They are a great resource and very active in their organization.

Check it out. It should be a lot of fun. If you miss it, I’ll post a link to it and you can always listen later!!! Whoo who!!

Dying Forest: One Year to Save the Amazon

Published on Sunday, July 23, 2006 by the lndependent/UK

Dying Forest: One Year to Save the Amazon
Time is running out for the Amazon rainforest. And the fate of the ‘lungs of the world’ will take your breath away

by Geoffrey Lean in Manaus

Deep in the heart of the world’s greatest rainforest, nine days’ journey by boat from the sea, Otavio Luz Castello is anxiously watching the soft waters of the Amazon drain away. Every day they recede further, like water running slowly out of an unimaginably immense bath, threatening a global catastrophe.

A soy plantation is seen near Santarem, in the Amazon state of Para, Brazil, May 2, 2006. In recent years, soybean farming has overtaken cattle ranching and logging as the biggest factor contributing the rainforest’s destruction. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)

He pointed out what was happening on Wednesday, standing on an island in a quiet channel of the giant river. Just a month ago, he explained, it had been entirely under water. Now it was jutting a full 15 feet above it.

It is a sign that severe drought is returning to the Amazon for a second successive year. And that would be ominous indeed. For new research suggests that just one further dry year beyond that could tip the whole vast forest into a cycle of destruction.

Just the day before, top scientists had been delivering much the same message at a remarkable floating symposium on the Rio Negro, on whose strange black waters this capital city of the Amazon stands. They told the meeting – convened on a flotilla of boats by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of the Greek Orthodox Church, dubbed the “green Pope” for his environmental activism – that global warming and deforestation were rapidly pushing the entire enormous area towards a “tipping point”, where it would irreversibly start to die.

The consequences would be truly awesome. The wet Amazon, the planet’s greatest celebration of life, would turn to dry savannah at best, desert at worst. This would cause much of the world – including Europe – to become hotter and drier, making this sweltering summer a mild foretaste of what is to come. In the longer term, it could make global warming spiral out of control, eventually making the world uninhabitable.

Nowhere could seem further from the world’s problems than the idyllic spot where Otavio Luz Castello lives. The young naturalist’s home is a chain of floating thatched cottages that make up a research station in the Mamiraua Reserve, halfway between here and Brazil’s border with Colombia.

Rare pink river dolphin play in the tranquil waters surrounding the cottages, kingfishers dive into them, giant, bright butterflies zig-zag across them and squirrel monkeys romp in the trees on their banks. And an 18ft black caiman answers, literally, to the name of Fred; gliding up to dine abstemiously on sliced white bread when called. There is little to suggest that it may be witnessing the first scenes of an apocalypse. The waters of the rivers of the Amazon Basin routinely fall by some 30-40 feet- greater than most of the tides of the world’s seas – between the wet and dry seasons. But last year they just went on falling in the worst drought in recorded history.

In the Mamiraua Reserve they dropped 51 feet, 15 feet below the usual low level and other areas were more badly affected. At one point in the western Brazilian state of Acre, the world’s biggest river shrank so far that it was possible to walk across it. Millions of fish died; thousands of communities, whose only transport was by water, were stranded. And the drying forest caught fire; at one point in September, satellite images spotted 73,000 separate blazes in the basin.

This year, says Otavio Luz Castello, the water is draining away even faster than the last one – and there are still more than three months of the dry season to go. He adds: “I am very concerned.”

It is much the same all over Amazonia. In the Jau National Park, 18 hours by boat up the Rio Negro from here, local people who took me out by canoe at dawn found it impossible to get to places they had reached without trouble just the evening before. Acre,
extraordinarily, received no rain for 40 days recently, and sandbanks are already beginning to surface in its rivers. Flying over the forest – with trees in a thousand shades of green stretching, for hour after hour, as far as the eye can see – it seems inconceivable that anything could endanger its verdant immensity. Until recently, scientists took the same view, seeing it as one of the world’s most stable environments.

Though they condemned the way that, on average, an area roughly the size of Wales is cut down each year, this did not seem to endanger the forest as a whole, much less the entire planet. Now they are changing their minds in the face of increasing evidence that the deforestation is pushing both the Amazon and the world to the brink of disaster.

Dr Antonio Nobre, of Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research, told the floating symposium – whose delegates ranged from politicians and environmentalists, to Amazonian Indian shamans and Roman Catholic cardinals – of unpublished research which suggests that the felling is both drying up the entire forest and helping to cause the hurricanes that have been battering the United States and the Caribbean.

The hot, wet Amazon, he explained, normally evaporates vast amounts of water, which rise high into the air as if in an invisible chimney. This draws in the wet north-East trade winds, which have picked up moisture from the Atlantic. This in turn controls the temperature of the ocean; as the trade winds pick up the moisture, the warm water that is left gets saltier and sinks.

Deforestation disrupts the cycle by weakening the Amazonian evaporation which drives the whole process. One result is that the hot water in the Atlantic stays on the surface and fuels the hurricanes. Another is that less moisture arrives on the trade winds, intensifying drought in the forest. “We believe there is a vicious cycle” says Dr Nobre.

Marina Silva, a fiery former rubber-tapper who is now Brazil’s environment minister, described how the Government was finally cracking down on the felling by seizing illegally cut logs, closing down illicit enterprises and fining and imprisoning offenders. As a result, she says, it dropped by 31 per cent last year.

But even so, it has only returned to the levels it was in 2001, still double what it was 10 years before. And it has reached far into the forest after the American multinational Cargill built a huge port for soya three years ago at Santarem, some 400 miles downriver from here.

This encouraged entrepreneurs to cut down the trees to grow the soya.

The symposium flew down en masse to inspect the damage this had caused – vast fields of beans destined to feed supermarket chickens in Europe, where until recently there had been lush, trackless forest.

Priests and community leaders who were campaigning to protect the forest told us how they had received repeated death threats.

So far about a fifth of the Amazonian rainforest has been razed completely. Another 22 per cent has been harmed by logging, allowing the sun to penetrate to the forest floor drying it out. And if you add these two figures together, the total is growing perilously close to 50 per cent, which computer models predict as the “tipping point” that marks the death of the Amazon.

The models did not expect this to happen until 2050. But, says Dr Nobre, “what was predicted for 2050, may have begun to happen in 2005.” Nobody knows when the crucial threshold will be passed, but growing numbers of scientists believe that it is coming ever closer.

One of Dr Nobre’s colleagues, Dr Philip Fearnside, puts it this way: “With every tree that falls we increase the probability that the tipping point will arrive.”

Brazilian politicians say that the country has so many other pressing problems that the destruction is unlikely to be brought under control, unless the world helps to pay for the survival of the forest on which it too depends. Calculations by Hylton Philipson, a British merchant banker and rainforest campaigner, reckon that it will take $60bn (£32bn) a year, less than a third of the cost of the Iraq war.

The scientists insist there is no time for delay. “If we do not act now”, says Dr Fearnside, “we will lose the Amazon forest that helps sustain living conditions throughout the world.”

Get ready for the New Moon tonight!!

Wow, the new moon in Leo is heating up the world stage for some real fireworks!!! For more on this, check out Barbara Handclow’s Astroflash at the link on the right hand side here (Barbara Handclow). She really gets into some political analysis there!

Here we are focusing more on the personal side of the new moon and how we can use the energies to help us. For awhile now, I have been setting my intentions at the new moon. This has been very helpful in directing my energies and focusing my attention on being in the “now” of my life. It’s hard to maintain that with all the things going on in the world around me, so I find it particularly helpful. Give it a try and you can see how it works.

Working with the moon’s energies is a very practical thing. The new moon is the begining of a building of energy that culminates in the full moon. Perfect for starting projects or birthing new ideas. After the full moon (August 9), the energy recedes, so we can look at what we are working on, see how it grew and make adjustments and refinements to our energies. Tagging along with the moon’s waxing and waning energies, is like a skateboarder grabbing on to a truck to pull them for a distance. The moon is going there anyway, why not use the energy?

When framing your intentions, it’s best to state between 3 and 10, as it keeps the energy focused. Try to get from yourself what you really want.(As I go through my list, I ask myself “Do I really want this?”). Also, start each intention with the phrase, “I want…”. It’s best to act within 8 hours of the moon, which is exactly new at 12:30 am Tuesday morning (the 25th). So get crackin!!!

This month with the moon in Leo, the focus is on love and romance, creativity, generosity, celebration, play and fun, dignity, being center stage, determination, leadership, self confidence and tempering arrogance. Also, in the body, the heart, back and spine, inflamations and exhaustion. So that is a lot to work with!!!

Have a great new moon everyone!

Global warming is a spiritual problem.

Al Gore recently commented, on Bob Edwards “Speaking of Faith” NPR show, that global warming is a spiritual problem. I couldn’t agree more. From my work with spirit and in reviewing my own circuitous life path, it keeps coming back to this – we humans will not stop over consuming and polluting the earth until we get that she is a living, pulsating, breathing being. She has a soul, she is spirit. Unless we realize that our connection to earth is vital, that we need her, that she informs everything we do, we’ll loose ourselves. I believe that the problem of global warming is IN us. The earth is going to continue on, she’ll muddle through; it’s our lives that are at stake. We are connected to all living things, and when they die off, a part of us dies off too. Our ecosystem is thrown off and we are torn asunder.

I think we are in so much political trouble these days because we do not know how to have a relationship with Mother Earth. Everything about our lives is presently about being on the outside – ipods, video games, advertising, consumerism, TV, movies. It’s very ungrounded. Disconnected. Isolating. We don’t see ourselves and we can’t see what’s going wrong. Least of all do something about it

Things like writing, meditating, contemplation, having regular quiet time, yoga, all bring the focus inside, yet they are the last things we want to do!! We are being taught to defer everything, the pain of debt, an argument, loss…and to not sit square in it. Our elders taught differently. When I was going through stuff my Grandpa from Nebraska used to say: “Take a walk in the fields. Listen to the grass. Read the sky. Know nature and know yourself.” He used to spit all the time…I thought it was kind of gross. Little did I know he was figuring out which way the wind was blowing, what the weather was going to be. He always knew. He taught me that a little alone time on the farm, or being with the animals always made things better. It always did. I let the earth talk to me and I told it my troubles. I ranted and railed against the injustices of my life, and I felt better. I felt connected to something eternal, sustaining.

Somehow as an adult, I lost that connection. And lost myself. Life with kids and work gets so darn busy. You forget how to be in the world. We forget how to be grateful. We forget what really supports us

Let me give an example. My life had become a big mess for a few years in my estimation. I was working hard at putting myself back together after a lot of loss and coming to the fact that my life wasn’t the way I wanted it to be – at all! I had been working in Marketing and Design for 20 years, always with my spirituality and intuitive talents at the side. I had wanted to ditch the marketing for years and didn’t know how to step into my healing and intuitive gifts. After 9/11 my design business dissolved and yet I hung onto the thinking that that was all I could do. How could spirituality sustain me? But I started listening to my gut and life began to change. I became an interfaith minister, I got involved in teaching, and I began to show up. Still troubled by my lack of flow, I consulted with my friend Wendy, a very gifted intuitive. She said – “Cathy, you need to be grounded. She taught me a simple grounding technique. Then she added, you need to be in tune with the cycles of the moon. Get yourself more in the center.” Now I thought, hey I grew up in the Midwest. I have a garden. I need more grounding? I had no idea how disconnected I had become.

So I started with the simple grounding exercise. It expanded to building a moon walk in the backyard, and then to new moon intention setting and meditation, to creating a 4 directional sacred space (plus the earth below and galactic center above) that puts ME in the middle. Within 2 months, my life started to flow. I started to feel an incredible connection to spirit and connection with the part of me “that knows” has never been stronger. I learned to integrate both parts of myself. I still do marketing, but only for sustainable business, or businesses that mean something to me. I have stepped out as a medium and intuitive. I am working as a healer and teaching others to do healing.

I feel that taking the time to BE with the earth, to ask for her help in healing me, has started a great relationship. And it has compelled me to want to write this blog, to speak out. If everyone just connected themselves to the earth in a simple way – Wow, what change can happen!

Here’s the grounding technique:
Imagine yourself with a root growing from your feet, or from your tailbone right into the deep, deep earth. Feel the coolness, the moistness. Ask mother earth to send you grounding energy. Feel it travel up into your body – up through to your head. Then breathe it out, down your spine back to the earth. Breathe it in again and whoosh, breathe it out. Again and again a few more times till you feel connected.

You can do this for others too, just by imagining it. Try it on George Bush!! Try it on your favorite politician! Just try it.

To set up the 4 directional altar, consult Barbara Hand Clow’s excellent book – Alchemy of Nine Dimensions: Decoding the Vertical Axis, Crop Circles and the Mayan Calendar. Basically, you set an altar to each direction using a compass, and you sit directly in the center. I will write more on this later.

Welcome to my blog!!

Ok. so I am a bit slow getting my posts up, but I have been working at getting other pages functional. I will get some interseting blog stuff going here in the next day or so. Feel free to post a comment or two.