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Hello!
Hope you are all making it through this Mercury retrograde that continues through November 2nd. Double check everything you do and try not start anything new. Put off buying computers and cars until after November 2nd.
Halloween will soon be here in a few weeks and I am looking forward to being on radio station in your town, talking about Halloween superstitions and more! So far, my publicist has received over 1,500 interview requests for the next 2 weeks due to the Halloween season. We are going to accommodate 5-10 per day and in the major markets, so listen to see if I'll be on your fav station!
Since this will be the last newsletter until November, I've included an excellent article that answers the question; "What is a Ghost?" Read more below but first here's where we'll be this weekend as well as some great events we have planned for you including our 2008 Greece Cruise and another Cosmic Connections Convention, this time in Lansing MI. |
Issue #156
October 2007 Update |
Our Psychic Fair This Weekend
Saturday October 20th - Our psychic fair comes to Lapeer Center Building from 10a.m. to 5p.m.
Sunday October 21st - we're at the Saginaw Holiday Inn Express 10 a.m. to 5p.m. as well.
This is our last fair of the year in these two cities. Next month we will only be in Midland and Port Huron MI. |
My 2008 Moon Calendars Is Out!
 Please go to my web site MariaShaw.com or call 810-631-6887 to order yours. $15 and includes lucky money days, mercury retrogrades, moon voids, full and new moons, lucky/yucky days for each sign and much more!
http://www.mariashaw.com/store/calendar-2008/
Here are some testimonials from happy StarScopers who use the calendar every year:
Maria - I followed your moon calendar's lucky dates for Leo and won over $100,000 playing black jack. I also won a smaller amount last week, using the money days. Thanks...it was a great investment! J. (Michigan)
Dear Maria - I buy your calendar every year and use it every day. In fact I have one in my office and in my laundry room too!
CeCe. (Grand Blanc MI)
Hi Maria - I can't wait for your 2008 calendar to come out. I buy them as gifts for everyone for Christmas. I use it for planning everything. I especially like to know when those dreaded Mercury retrogrades are coming. So your calendars are really helpful!
Bobbie (Naples, Florida)
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Our 10th Annual Cruise is set for 2008 to Venice Italy and the Greek Isles!
If you would like to join us for our Conscious Living Cruise with speakers, readers, classes and more, click here for details! If you sign up within the next 30 days, you will get $50 shipboard credit per cabin.
http://www.mariashaw.com/cruise/ |
Cosmic Connection Convention
We had a wonderful event in Midland last month. Guests came from as far away as China, Israel, Texas, Florida and Canada to attend our first annual event.
Here's a few of the emails we received:
Hi Maria,
Just a note re the fair in Midland. Myself, friend aunt and cousin all attended and of course had a great time …. Cant wait til next year and am anxious to see the lineup for the Fair in Lansing after the first of the year. I enjoyed all of the seminars I attended and really felt I got more than my moneys worth. Had a few good readings. Midge of course never lets me down and I had a reading from Jean and got some new info on direction in my life.
I have one more thing to tell you about my friend who had a reading from you a few years ago. You told her a male would come into her life who she owed a Karmic debt. You told her he would even move into her house. You told her his birth sign also. She told me about it and didn't know anyone in that sign in her family and she couldn't imagine anyone else beside family that she would let move in. Well as fate would have it, her sons best friend who was being raised by his older sister became homeless when the sister was transferred to Germany with her military husband. The boys mother wasn't able to care for him so she took him in as a foster parent. You guessed it, his birthday was as you said. He lived with her for 2 or 3 years til he graduated.
Thanks for all of the meaningful work that you do,
Marsha
Dear Maria,
WOW! What a weekend... I just wanted to let you know how amazing the convention was. In each and every seminar there was an important soul development lesson to learn and the tools were given to each one of us to succeed. I have not been able to stop talking about it!
The readers were amazing. Allie was just so funny and her classes on the tarot and Intuition were fantastic! Lynn Hunter, what can I say, she is always a delight. Carol's class on crystals taught me so many new uses and I would love to hear her speak sometime on animal totems. She is absolutely amazing. Having my Grandma Ida come through in the John Edward-style class was definitely a highlight for me. My family and friends are still laughing about the fact that she was showing her jars and pickles and then my father (the skeptic) telling me she worked in a pickle factory! Jean's class on using pendulums was a riot! Where does she get her energy??? And you, Maria, thank you for sharing your amazing gifts with us. Your Sun Signs book has made quite an impression on my friends. They call me all the time wanting to know about what kind of guy they are dating! (I tell them to buy the book!!!) Last but not least, I want to let you know how great Lisa is! I met her at the Flint fair and she is so funny! Her sense of humor is priceless and she is such a great asset! Love that girl.
Dear Maria
I would just tell anyone who was contemplating attending one of your conventions or even attending one of your fairs that the information you receive is LIFE CHANGING! I walked out of the convention with new friends, lots of awesome jewelry but most importantly a new attitude. An attitude of not only raising my own spiritual energy but the ability to raise the vibrations in others! What you have given us Maria is the opportunity to change our lives for the better and those around us. Thank you for everything! This Virgo had better get some rest so I can meet Saturn head on with any tests thrown my way:)
Peace and love,
Kim Dotson
Dear Maria; Thank you for all of the dedicated work to pull together a perfect weekend for all of us to enjoy. The days were filled with friendship, love and joy-more than my expectations. Will make plans for next year's convention!
Many Blessings, Connie
Dear Maria - I wanted to take this opportunity to say thank you for giving me the opportunity to attend the Cosmic Conference. It opened my heart and allowed me to heal. I now believe in myself and what I am experiencing the moment, I am no longer afraid of what I am going through in my life. I also got to meet many new friends at the conference. You are an awesome woman and I am glad to have met you and Lisa too…she's great!
Sincerely, Michelle H. Bay City MI
Due to the amazing response and letters that are still pouring in from guests who attended the Midland convention, we are adding one in the Lansing area in February. Many of the classes will be the same but we will be adding new classes as well as time moves forward.
The Cosmic Connection Convention will be in Lansing Mi February 29, March 1 and 2nd a the Hampton Inn. The first 50- people to register will get the special conference price of only $99. After that, the price will increase to $150. Call 810-631-6887. Click here for details on the event.
We have 7 more rooms left for the for the Edgar Cayce Psychic Development Trip January 10-13 in Virginia Beach. Please join us. We have a wonderful itinerary planned for you which includes ESP testing and more. Rates start as low as $249 for the entire weekend and that included hotel and breakfast as well as classes and events. Click here for details. |
Our article for this week is in celebration of Halloween
What is a Ghost?
Date: 2006-10-30 By: J. Allan Danelek
Reprinted with permission from the Llewellyn Journal
One of the most common questions I'm asked when doing interviews for my book, The Case for Ghosts, is what, exactly, a ghost is. While this would appear at first glance to be a fairly simple question—after all, everybody knows what a ghost is, right?—it actually turns out to be a very good—and important—one to ask.
The fact is we often don't know what is meant by the term "ghost." There are many things we call ghosts which are not true ghosts at all: residual entities, for example, are not really ghosts, nor are most poltergeists. Even some interactive spirits are often not ghosts: spirit guides, for example, and those entities we refer to as angels and demons, along with a whole host of other non-corporeal beings, are also not ghosts, further muddying the paranormal waters and demonstrating the need to more precisely define the term "ghost" if we are to ever understand the things.
So what is a ghost and, further, what distinguishes them from those other manifestations of the paranormal realm? In other words, what are the main characteristics that define a "true ghost"? While this is a subject still open to debate, my research demonstrates that there are three classic elements unique to ghosts which make them distinct and markedly different from their supernatural cousins. There may be more, of course, but these are the three that stand out the most to me.
The first of these—and perhaps the most important—is that ghosts are always human. To put it more precisely, a ghost is the disembodied conscious energy—that which we might call the personality—of a once living person, as opposed to spirit guides, angels and other supernatural entities (in my book I refer to such beings as extra-celestials) which have never been human nor have ever existed in a physical state. This distinction is important, for it is in the nature of an entity that we might perceive its purpose and determine what it can and cannot do within the world of linear time and space.
The second characteristic of a true ghost is that it is interactive, at least to some degree—that is, it has the ability to manipulate matter, observe and be observed, and have some capacity to communicate with the living. Of course, among the examples I presented a moment ago—residual entities, poltergeists, and spirit guides—there sometimes is a degree of interaction (especially by poltergeists—making at least some of them potentially ghosts), but for the most part such apparitions are at best manifestations of conscious energy and not ghosts in their own right. Just as it is true that while all robins are birds, not all birds are robins, the same is true with ghosts; simply because and entity is interactive doesn't make it human, while those entities that appear human but remain non-interactive may be nothing more than a replay of an event recorded by the environment and not conscious energy at all. A true ghost, then, must be both human and interactive, or else it is simply something else.
Finally, the third characteristic unique to ghosts is that they are not a natural part of the spiritual realm, but beings that exist apart from it. In other words, whereas spirit guides and angels and other such denizens of the ethereal realm are a natural extension of the spirit world, ghosts are beings that are unnaturally confined to the physical realm for a variety of reasons, usually having to do with either a free-will decision to stay behind or an unwillingness to completely move on to their next level of existence. In essence, then, depending upon ones point of view, ghosts are either "trapped" or choose to reside in a type of "twilight" state that exists between the spiritual and physical realms, effectively making them residents of neither the physical nor the spiritual realm yet subject to elements of both.
So how can something exist within two mutually incompatible worlds simultaneously and yet remain an element of neither? At first thought, such would appear to be contradictory and, as such, illogical; however, what we are dealing with here is not a contradiction but a paradox in that with ghosts we have beings that can be two things at the same time.
Perhaps this exercise will better illustrate this point: imagine dividing your living room into two halves by drawing a narrow line down the center of it. Now we will call everything that exists on the left side of the line the world of matter—that plane of existence subject to linear time and space that we call the physical realm—and everything on the right side the world of pure spirit—that plane of existence which is subject to neither time nor space, but exists as an eternal now that we call the supernatural realm. What's important to recognize is that while these two realms, despite being so different in nature and function from each other, do share a few things in common. For example, both are populated by conscious energies—some housed within a corporeal form and others existing as pure energy—and each is vital for the other realm to exist. Think of them as two sides of the same coin that serve an important role in permitting the other realm to serve its role: the spiritual realm as the abode of conceptual thought and energy and the physical realm as the world of practical experience and physicality. In a nutshell, the physical realm is where spiritual beings go when they choose to experience things and the spiritual realm is where physical beings go to consider what they have just experienced.
With me so far? Good. Now imagine that there exists within the razor thin line you have just drawn an acclimation zone—a "no man's land" if you will (sort of a paper-thin membrane made of pure energy) that paradoxically both separates and joins the two realms together. Now this narrow strip contains elements of both realms in a sort of workable paradox of time/no time and matter/no matter, which is what makes it possible for a spirit returning to the flesh to acclimate itself to the realm of physicality and a person returning to the spiritual realm a place to adjust to living within the realm of timelessness and pure energy. Picture a type of revolving door at this dividing line that says "birth" on one side and "death" on the other that our souls are constantly passing through on their journey into and out of physicality and you get the idea.
Now it is within this acclimation zone—this place that exists as neither pure spirit nor pure matter, but maintains elements of both—that ghosts exist or, if you prefer, find themselves trapped. Unfortunately, despite possessing no mass and existing as pure conscious energy, beings trapped within this zone are still subject to and aware of—at least to some degree—the passage of time and space, which effectively gives them spatial dimension—that is, they can only be in one place at a time just like those of us in the physical realm. This is what limits them in terms of how far they may roam and where they can go, which is why hauntings tend to be localized to a particular location. In effect, they have one foot in the spiritual realm and one in the physical, but are incapable of completely interacting with either, making them effectively "stuck" between two worlds.
In contrast, those entities we call spirit guides, angels, and demons—I use these terms only because they are so well known; I do not personally believe that angels and demons exist in the biblical sense, though I do believe there are both benevolent and malevolent energies in existence in the universe which we have mythologized with our religions—do not live in this zone, but move effortlessly between the two worlds, making them capable of experiencing the world of time and space at will without being subjected to or limited by either. (It is widely believed that some physical beings share this ability to move between realms of existence via an out-of-body experience, and that all of us may be capable of doing so while dreaming, demonstrating that the process apparently works both ways. If true, this means that those deceased loved-ones we meet in our dreams are not ghosts, but are full-fledged citizens of the spiritual realm who have successfully crossed over but have decided to communicate with us through the mechanism of dreams, leaving us no reason to be concerned about them being trapped.)
What's important to recognize in all this that being a ghost is not a good position to be in—at least in an immediate sense. We are spiritual beings that exist within the confines of a physical body for a reason; to be trapped between these worlds is to exist in an unnatural state that can be frightening and unpleasant for those caught in it, and positively terrifying for those unaware of what is going on. Of course, New Age teaching tells us that the soul moves immediately into the spiritual realm upon death, an idea the possibility of ghosts—human consciousnesses caught between the two worlds—would seem to challenge. However, there is no contradiction when we understand that what is caught in this transitional no man's land is not the human soul—it effortlessly transcends this zone upon death or birth—but the individual personality that soul has generated. In essence, a ghost is the flotsam of the soul, the individualized ego of a previous incarnation that has essentially detached itself from its resident soul and has been cast adrift in the "twilight zone" between the spiritual and physical realms. That is why it can continue to haunt for decades or even centuries when the soul that generated it has long-since moved on.
So why does this disembodied personality choose to stay and how does it manage to find its way out of this fix? First, it stays for a number of reasons (several of which I have outlined in my book); it may stay because it is either overly attached to something or someone in the physical realm and refuses to give it or them up; it is too emotionally traumatized by its own death to move on; it may be afraid to move on out of fear of hell or judgment (particularly if it was an especially evil person in life); or it may even be anchored to the physical realm because it still possesses great rage and is unwilling to let go of that anger (much like a drowning man who refuses to let go of the anchor that is dragging him to the bottom.) Some ghosts, however, appear to remain more out of choice: for example, some may be immature personalities who simply enjoy frightening others (mischievous ghosts and possibly some poltergeists often fit this profile) while others could be merely curious about this zone and wish to linger awhile to study it (those that we refer to as "curious ghosts") and still others remain behind because they feel they have some important task to perform before they can go (these are commonly referred to as "mission ghosts"). There are even "comfort ghosts" who remain behind out of concern for those left behind and stay just long enough to find some way to assure their grieving families that all is well and that they have passed over safely. Further, the reason a personality chooses or feels compelled to remain behind has much to do with how long it will remain in that state; mission ghosts, for example, tend to be short term entities who will leave once they have completed their task (or have given up trying to accomplish it) while frightened or possessive ghosts may linger for centuries, unwilling to let go of a world they are no longer a part of. It is all linked to the basic personality traits, proclivities, and tendencies the person possessed during life that will determine how long they stay and, for that matter, even whether they will become a ghost at all.
So how does it move on? Many move on when they are tired of playing the game; some, however, need help, either by sympathetic humans willing to convince the entity of the futility of remaining behind (or, in the case of mission or goodbye ghosts, giving it "permission" to go) or by spiritual entities on the other side whose task it is to show these lost personalities the way out. Just as free-will often determines whether one becomes a ghost in the first place, it also appears that free-will has a hand in determining how long one will remain one. The universe is extremely respectful of our decisions, even if those decisions often result in our experiencing unnecessary anguish and pain (in death just as we frequently do in life). In effect, it really is all up to us, whether we realize it or not.
The good news about all this, however, is that most humans will never become a ghost. Instead, most people will move on to the spiritual realm quickly and naturally, effortlessly transcending the acclimation zone on their way to the other side just as they were designed to do. The other good news is that no one remains a ghost forever; eventually all will work their way through it effectively making a haunting more of a wrong turn than a dead end and demonstrating that the universe is nothing if not compassionate and patient with those souls who seem to need constant reassurance of that fact. In the end, we should realize that there is nothing strange or frightening about the spiritual realm; it is our true home and a place we should anticipate returning to once our work here in the physical realm is complete, for that is from there we can truly begin to appreciate the marvelous complexity and sheer joy of existence.
Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd.
Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd. grants permission to use this article as originally posted at:
The Llewellyn Journal -- www.llewellynjournal.com
P.O. Box 64383
St. Paul, MN 55164-0383
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Happy Halloween!
Maria |
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Copyright 2007 Maria Shaw, PO Box 490, Genesee, Michigan 48437
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