My experience at Sedona seven years ago was one of the most spiritual moments of my life as I felt the Gods were giving me a gift of true wisdom and it is a lesson that I go back to time and time again. The lesson of the cairns was one of the greatest lessons of my life and it’s one that I work hard to live by life by. As I’ve worked to incorporate this wisdom into my very soul, I’ve realized that it is the simplest and most complex gift I’ve ever been given. I’ve encapsulated some of the facets of this wisdom below.
Have a Goal
At first glance, it would seem that having a goal is the antithesis of living cairn by cairn because having a goal implies you know where you are going long term. It took me a while to reconcile the two in my head, but then I realized that when I was in Sedona, I did have a goal. I wanted to get out of the park and I was able to accomplish that goal cairn by cairn. Living Cairn by Cairn has changed how I view goals. I used to think that when I had a goal, I had to know absolutely every step that I needed to take before committing to the goal. However, experience has taught me that sometimes all I need to do is take the next step.
The best story about having a goal and living Cairn by Cairn was when I decided to buy a house four years ago. My kids and I knew that we wanted to move out of Chicago, but we weren’t sure where we wanted to move to and I knew I had some credit problems that would stand in the way of getting a mortgage. Nevertheless, we put it out there to the universe that we wanted to move and we came up with a rough plan: we had to figure out where we were going to move to, I had to get a mortgage, and we had to actually move. Now anyone who has ever moved knows there is a whole lot more involved then those simple steps, but those were the big ones.
We picked a few cities that we thought might work for us and set about analyzing them using a set of criteria we created (access to healthcare, public transit, museums, etc.). Once we had our list, we started to visit them. The first city we visited with Cleveland we liked it a lot. We talked about visiting other cities, but it was expensive and time consuming so we decided on Cleveland. The next step was a getting a mortgage. I applied, I got turned down, I applied somewhere else, I got turned down, rinse, repeat. I finally decided to get some help cleaning up my credit and the person I asked for help, told me about a program called NACA that helps people get credit. I went to a seminar in June, filled out a whole lot of paperwork, and got a preliminary approval in August.
Once we had that preliminary approval, we spent a few weekends in Cleveland looking for a house that met our criteria. We found it, put in an offer, and did all the other minutia associated with getting a mortgage and moving and we moved into our very own house on October 31, 2015, which was a perfect day for a witch to take possession of a house.
And it all happened Cairn by Cairn. When we put it out there, we didn’t know where we’d end up living or how we would get a mortgage, but we just kept taking the next step that presented itself.
Ask for and Accept Guidance
We not only asked for and received help from a lot of people on the earthly plane, we also put it out there to the universe and asked our guides for help. We did ritual every month asking for help to buy a house and we listened as we got those little nudges. Information showed up on social media, a Web search led to a credit consultant who led me to NACA. We paid attention to all those little synchronicites and let ourselves be guided.
While listening to guidance from the spirit realm was hard, asking for and accepting guidance from the earthly realm was sometimes more difficult. In order to get a mortgage, I had to turn over a whole lot of personal and a little bit mortifying information. I had to explain the dings on my credit, I had to explain the foreclosure and the bankruptcy. And I had to set my ego aside and listen to the guidance I was being given
Trust the Guidance
I’ve struggled with trust issues most of my life and it’s been even worse since I got divorced. However, living Cairn by Cairn requires trusting the guidance that spirit gives you, even when it makes no sense. On December 07, 2018, I took a bath while preparing for an online ritual. I got out of the tub and a little voice told me not to drain the bath water. It seemed like weird advice, but it wasn’t a big deal so I left the water. We had an amazing ritual and ended up invoking Pele. I went upstairs and realized I’d left the candles burning. I bent over to blow them out and my hair caught fire. There wasn’t a towel nearby and I couldn’t see the faucet, however, I remembered the tub was still full of water so I turned around and dunked my head. It sizzled just like Pele’s lava hitting the water. I was so thankful I’d trusted that little voice because even though I was badly burned, it could have been so much worse.
Accept Uncertainty
The biggest difficulty for me in living Cairn by Cairn is accepting uncertainty. I’ve always been someone who wanted to have the entire path laid out before me before me before I took one step,
however living Cairn by Cairn means that I have to trust that the path will unfold before me. I have to trust that when I reach one Cairn the next one will appear. There are times I feel like I’m going to be left hanging, but I never have been so I have learned to trust that I am being guided.
Live in Wonder
The biggest gift that living Cairn by Cairn has given me is a sense of wonder in the beauty and joy that exists in the world. I was in Carmel, CA last April and I ended up at the beach at sunset and I stood and watched an amazing sunset with 50 other people who had taken time out of their day to stop and watch nature’s light show. It was a beautifully unplanned way to end the day and if I hadn’t let myself be guided that day, I would have missed it.
Living Cairn by Cairn is an amazing way to live your life, but it takes a little getting used to and I have to admit there are still days where I want to create a concrete life plan that details every step I’m going to take for the rest of my life. However, living Cairn by Cairn has taught me that “Man Plans and God Laughs” and to be honest, I’m kind of enjoying letting the divine take the lead.