The Spirit Shop

Friday, April 30, 2010

Wake Up Call From Spirit & The Dangers Of Energy Drinks

Many times I have heard friends, family and others say to me "It must be so nice to have your own business and not have to answer to a boss". Yes this is true, but only to a certain extent. It is nice having my own company, but I do have several bosses to answer to. They would be my spirit guides and guardian angels. Being born with this gift and utilizing it to help others as a Medium still comes with lots of responsibility and often some rules and orders from my guides. When one ignores their guides and does not take them serious, believe me, they will give you a wake up call.

A few years ago when I first meet James Van Praagh, we were on the phone talking and he insisted that I needed to stop smoking. First of all, I never told him I smoked, but he is a medium and his guides could have told him. Well I have heard it all before, not just from James, but also from my own guides and from my doctor who lectures me on quitting every time I see him. I have tried everything from cold turkey, to the patch and a few different kinds of medications to assist in quitting the nasty habit. Obviously, none of them have been successful. Even my doctor said that quitting smoking is one of the hardest things to accomplish. He said that he has patience that quit doing heavy drugs like heroin and still could not cut out the cigarettes. My doctor worked with me the best he could to assist me in quitting with no success. If I had the money to do so I would open up a rehab for people to quit smoking. I think it is a great idea and can not believe they do not already exist. I would totally go to one if there was one to go to. I'm going to give the electronic cigarette a shot and currently trying nicotine gum.

My spirit guides are pretty much responsible for all the work I do as a Medium and for protecting me from negative or evil spirits and energy. But they can only do so much. Spirit has been pushing me into a smoke free lifestyle for quite some time now. They even gave me a dead line to quit, but did I listen, NO! I thought about it and did attempt to try a few times with no success. I quit once before in my early twenties and went without cigarettes for a year. For some odd reason I went back. The way I ended up quitting was by making a chart with times of the day that I could smoke. Each day I would space the time between smoking further and further apart until I was down to one smoke a day to none at all. That worked great for me. This time I don't think I have time or patience to do that whole process again.

Little over a year ago I received a message from Spirit that it was time to focus on a few things. Those things I needed to focus on were eating more healthy foods, more exercise & quit smoking.
With two bulging disks in my lower back along with a slightly herniated disk it is a little hard to do the exercise thing. When I did Psychic Challenge for Lifetime TV I was an exercise addict. I was running between two and four miles a day along with other exercises. Then out went the back leaving me unable to do that any longer. Spirit told me I had a year to get this done, especially the smoking part. I understand the healthy eating thing. The more natural foods we eat such as veggies, fruits and nuts actually improves our minds and our intuitive abilities. I learned that a very long time ago but was never sure if there was any truth surrounding it.

It has been a few months past the year that Spirit had given me. Nothing seemed to change with one exception. I began to feel a little stuck with my gift as a Medium. The more we work on something the better we get and the more improvement we see. For the past few months everything has seemed to be the same. So then I began physical therapy for my back pain and for the past month or so I have been focused on eating all the right things and cutting out some of my favorite treats like chocolate and ice cream. Boy do I love my ice cream, but there is really no reason I should be eating it practically every night. Doing that with lack of exercise caused me to gain quite a few pounds. When I did Psychic Challenge I weighed in at 165 and last month the doctor weighed me in at 185. So that is what made me begin to go into the healthy eating habits, which is going really well. I love ice cream but also love fruits, veggies and different nuts, like cashews, yummy.

Spirit has not said anything to me about smoking in a while so I began to ignore their warning from last year. One thing I have learned is that you better listen to Spirit or you will be sorry. They are the bosses and they only give advice that will better our lives and help us grow spiritually. To make it even worst, I actually began smoking more then usual. Once being about a pack a day or less I went up to more then a pack a day and more like a pack and a half. Not good at all. I was wondering why I was having this feeling of being stuck and not moving forward lately. I asked Spirit and never received an answer I wanted to hear. Most likely because I not only forgot about their warning last year, I completely ignored it.

Spirit was not about to stand for that. So they probably gathered together, laughing in the process, discussing how they were going to get me and teach me a big lesson. That lesson is to listen to what they tell me because it is only for my own good. So this past Tuesday I got up early, another change I'm trying to make in my life. I bartended for so many years and can not get out of that sleep pattern. I'm a night owl and stay up till two or three in the morning and sleep in till ten and sometimes eleven in the morning. For the past month I have been trying like heck to change this pattern. One way to help with that was to schedule my physical therapy twice per week a bit earlier then I'm used to being up. That has helped a little bit, but is still a bit of a struggle. I do not want to be a night owl any more, I would rather be an early bird so that I can get more done, like my next book that I started writing.

Spirits devising little plan was soon about to take form. This past Tuesday everything started off as my Tuesday mornings have been starting off like for the past five or six weeks. I woke to the alarm at around 9:00 AM, just a bit later then I do on Thursdays for physical therapy. Tuesday is one of my only days off with the exception of my radio show at 8pm Tuesday. So I actually really only get off on Mondays. When I awoke to my alarm I crawled out of my bed with the typical daily pain in my lower back. Other then that I felt great and headed to the kitchen for my morning cup of Joe and cigarette. After having a smoke, a little coffee and watching a little Reggis & Kelly I got myself ready and headed out to go about my day with physical therapy, having absolutely no idea what a day this would actually turn out to be.


I arrived to Nova Care in Bristol and after paying the twenty dollar co pay I was greeted by the Physical Therapist. Mind you that at this point I have only been going to Nova Care for about five weeks and less then two weeks ago my doctor told me he wanted me to continue therapy for at least another month. Well the therapist obviously did not agree with my doctor. In the few weeks that I have been going to Nova Care there has been a fifteen to twenty percent improvement in my back pain. When greeted by the therapist he flat out said to me "At this point you are pretty much wasting our time and probably yours." What would possess a physical therapist to say such a thing? Why would he think he is smarter or has better advice then my family doctor? After this he told me not to bother coming to therapy and to go home and call my doctor. I was confused and blown away by this at the same time.

Looking back on this I can see that if anything, they were wasting my time and money. I was paying forty dollars a week for a therapist to tell me to do several different exercises on a flat table, the treadmill and some with a big ball and then walk away to play on their computers while I do all the exercises unattended. Every week they increased it little by little. They did nothing else for me, no heat, no ice, no massage, nothing. I have the ball at home, a treadmill and a floor to do the exercises myself.

To make Tuesday even more interesting I received a very interesting email sent to a very old email address that we don't use any more and only a few people actually have it. The emails was from the address whitedovefriends@hushmail.com and said not to listen to my radio show but to tune into another show. There was a link leading to the recommended radio show along with a link to my show. Bob and I have dealt with negative emails, email stalkers and crazy rude things. I learned from Lisa Williams to just delete those messages with love. We all get them Lisa said and Karma will get them. We use to get these horrible emails from an email I wrote about before in this blog, thediggsters@aol.com. We have not heard from any of these email abusers in a very long time, probably because we blocked them from our email system. Bob took care of the message and contacted those who needed contacting. Dealing with things like that are just like a bug that keeps buzzing around your head. You just want to squash it, lol.

The day continued on as usual and at some point one of us prepared a nice dinner. I can't recall what we had that evening but I think it may have been salads with grilled chicken on top. We watched TMZ while eating and as I prepared a little bit for the evenings radio show. I had no specific guest on this evening and was planning on doing nothing but answering questions and doing readings. That is exactly what I did and of course I had my daily Red Bull energy drink before the show. Last Sunday I had three of those Red Bulls before going on with John Holland in New Jersey. I thought I had two but some how I sneaked in a third. I used to do Rock Star energy drink until I read some things on line about its inventor Chris Savage. Not a very nice person nor one I would wish to support in any way.

The radio show flowed well as normal and when I wrapped up the show and chat I nestled on the couch to watch American Idol and Glee. We were just watching the beginning of Glee around 10:30 when Bob decided he wanted to make some brownies. While he was doing that there were some CD's on the coffee table that needed to be put away. SO I gathered everything and went into the meditation room to put the CD's away. I put the CD's down and remember feeling a little odd with weird pain in my chest and everything is completely blank from there. Apparently coming out of the room I ended up leaning into the door, maybe to get my balance or prevent falling, I really don't remember this. Bob said he looked over and thought I was peaking out and playing with the dogs. Then I fell straight forward out the door and onto my face and side.

Apparently my tooth pretty much went through my bottom lip leaving a gash and hole about an inch deep, gushing with blood. From this point I only remember sitting there saying something to Bob. I don't remember sitting up on the floor or even how I got there. The dogs were barking and barking and the sounds were echoing in my head like it was all a really bad dream. I felt intense pain in my side along my rib cage and my face felt as if it were smashed onto the ground, which it pretty much was. I looked down and saw blood all over my shirt and then began to feel my mouth filling with blood. Oh my god I thought as I panicked and had Bob help me off the floor. Apparently he had told me that he was yelling at me to wake up and I wouldn't move, my body went limp. I immediately ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror and that's when I discovered the huge puncture in my lip and said "I think we need to go to the hospital". I grabbed my wallet as we were about to leave for my insurance card and off we went.

Checked into the ER at Lower Bucks Hospital at eleven o'clock Tuesday evening and there were only a few others in the ER waiting to be seen. I filled out the papers and put them in the box and within about ten minutes a nurse called for me. She took me into a room asking all kinds of questions before take my blood pressure, temperature and hooking me up to some type of heart monitor for a few minutes. I was with her for about fifteen twenty minutes before being sent back out into the waiting room. I waited an additional fifteen minutes or so before being called over by the woman behind the glass desk. I took a seat, signed some papers and gave her my card. That is when she told me I had to pay one hundred dollars. What? A hundred bucks? I never heard of having to pay when going to the ER and having insurance. That was new to me. They want to make sure they have their money I guess.

We waited a good bit of time before I was finally called back into the ER by a nurse, Bob followed along being sure I would not black out again. I went through the whole process of explaining everything to yet a third nurse. Then along came the forth and now there are two nurses tending to me. They seemed to have some real issues taking my blood and hooking up and IV. I was literally poked with needles about nine times. They even tried a vain in my thumb which hit a nerve and made me want to scream. They ended up putting in two IV tubes into my one arm, which was never necessary at all. First they gave me a shot of some muscle relaxer that did not help the chest pain in my ribs but was a great relief on my back. After a while of that not working I was given a shot of something that at first did nothing. The nurse seemed shocked and then gave me a bit more. That set me off into a state of feeling as if I just came from Woodstock 69.

I went through all kinds of tests, scans, x rays and the doctor came in to tell me that my white blood cell count was really high, which meant some type of infection. They could not find any infection and therefore decided to admit me into the hospital. To make a really long story much shorter I spent two days in the hospital and had many others tests including an ultra sound of the heart which was very interesting and creepy at the same time. The high white blood cell count seemed to be connected to two things, stress and possibly too much caffeine from the Red Bulls over the past few days. I would think blacking out and waking up in pain with blood everywhere is enough to stress a person out. My ribs are very bruised with possible small fractures. They called it something like an arrhythmic heart beat. Basically the heart stopped for a few seconds that was enough to cause me to black out. This could be from a combination of the caffeine, stress and even smoking.

The time in the hospital was not fun at all. Hope do they expect anyone to sleep in that place. The bed was horrible, the food disgusting and the noise was constant. They woke us up at 6AM and almost every hour after until lunch. Then you would not see anyone all day long until the doctor decides he has a whole two minutes to spend with you. I had one doctor try and tell me I had pneumonia and I tried to tell him it just was not possible. I was fine all week. After telling him that I never saw him again. Another doctor took his place. The nurses were all great with the exception of being poked nine times and nurse ratchet that came on duty the day of my departure. She just did not like her job at all. I know this because she complained about it every time she came in the room which was totally uncalled for when you have people lying in the beds sick and the nurse is the one doing all the complaining.

I learned a few things from this horrible Tuesday. One was that I still hate the darn Mercury Retrograde. The most important is that one should listen to spirit when they point you in a direction, it is only for our own good. I knew smoking was bed for us and knew it all along. I just needed something or some way to help stop. I believe I found my way. My desire to never have to go into a hospital bed again. I know now that there always has to be time for ourselves even when we think we are getting it we most likely are not. It is time for a vacation and I'm planning for a good one come my fortieth birthday this year. And by then I should be back in shape, smoke free and caffeine free. Oh yes, I may not have mentioned, the doctor at the hospital says no more caffeine. I did not all realize how much my body depends on it. I have slept so much the past few days and could take a nap right now. Stopping caffeine may be just as hard as quitting smoking.

So once this horrible pain goes away I will begin my own darn therapy right here in the comfort of my own home. This will all begin once my cracked ribs are healed, which could take months. I will hope the doctor comes up with some other ideas for my back as I continue to eat healthy and focus on one of the most important things, the body. With Body comes mind and then spirit. Bringing us onto the positive path to enlightenment. Remember, listen to your gut is listening to your guides. They will never steer you in the wrong direction.
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Tuesday, April 6, 2010

April Inspirational Message

Wow, the month of April is already upon us and finally the sign of Spring arise while winter withers away. We are all going into a great new cycle of birth and rebirth in our lives. This is a time to sit and really focus on the things in your life that you need to change for good. No more procrastinating or pushing things off till tomorrow. If you are one to sit around in April thinking about all the things you would like to change in your life along with things you would like to accomplish is not going to actually get them done. As you can already see, this year is flying by very quickly. Before you know it everyone will be heading to the beach and you will find that you may have missed some good opportunities and that things have not changed one bit. The things you wanted to accomplish still sit in front of you awaiting completion.

The best thing for all of us to do as the month of April begins is take a few hours to sit, relax, maybe even meditate, and contemplate on the things you would like to change along with some of your goals and accomplishments. Then get yourself a pen and some paper and begin to make out a list for yourself. I find personally that I seem to get much more completed when I write down my goals and things I would like to accomplish.

We are all exposed to negative places, people and things. April is also a great time to take a good strong look at yourself and the people & things around you. Are their negative people or things in your life? Then it is time to make a plan and time to rid your life of this negative things. Negative attract negative as positive does positive. So no matter how positive we are, negativity surrounding us can also attract it to ourselves. I learned this from a very good friend & breast cancer surgeon. It just made sense.

She also pointed out to me that we need to clean the clutter from our lives. Not just the clutter in our homes and closets, although that is also important, but also the negative things. I know it is easier to say then to do. But there is absolutely nothing that you can not accomplish in your life if you set your mind to it. It may take time, but effort helps too. April is the perfect time for all of us to focus on these things. The sooner we rid our lives of the clutter the more smoothly things will begin to flow in your life. A good flow in your life leads to a life of fulfillment, happiness & reaching our spiritual selves.

Yes, at times it is a struggle to make these proper changes in your life. And yes this may hurt someone’s feelings at first. We have to look out for what is best for our lives and how we can reach complete happiness as well as getting in touch with our own inner spirituality. This is why we all have spirit guides or guardian angels. They are there to help you and to guide you in your life. Trust them and trust your gut and know in your heart that you are doing what is right. Sometimes these decisions and changes will also help to change others in a positive way. We are responsible for our own lives and the paths we choose to take. Have faith in yourself, your guides and your lord and soon the changes you make will have you looking back saying to yourself "Why didn't I do that a long time ago."

One of my least favorite times is soon coming our way. On April 18 the planet Mercury will go into retrograde. I will include an in depth article on what this means. For now I will tell you to try and make as many changes and clean up as much clutter before the retrograde comes. Mercury has a way with screwing things up. Especially communications with others. Thing get lost, unorganized, confused and even break down. Like computers, cars and anything electronic. This hangs in until May 11 and will linger slightly until May 28.

I wish you all a very happy Spring season. I do warn you to please get out and get as much fresh are as possible. It is good for the mind and spirit. Many places are going to be hit with an awful lot of rain and floors worldwide and it is going to get very hot very quick. So enjoy it on the days that you can and spend your time indoors beginning your new life plan and your new mission to clean up the clutter and rid your life of negative people, places and things. Thank you all for taking the time to read my message & newsletter. It truly is dear to my heart. With Love, Light & Desire To Inspire.....Joseph

Monday, April 5, 2010

Colette Baron-Reid On My Radio Show Tomorrow April 6

Tomorrow, April 6, I will bring special guest Intuitive Counselor & best selling author Colette Baron-Reid. Colette Baron-Reid is an internationally renowned intuitive counselor, educator and best-selling Hay House author who helps others recognize and connect with their own intuition, potential and purpose. Powerful motivational speaker, charismatic broadcast personality, and acclaimed performer, storyteller and recording artist, Colette uses her extraordinary spiritual gifts to empower her clients to live a life that is “awake and authentic”, and to create a reality that is spiritual, deliberate and meaningful.

Passionate about people, Colette’s work as an intuitive and medium is to help individuals see the magic and meaning in the Story of their lives. She has brought her message of hope, healing and humor to audiences of thousands in 150 cities across North America, Europe and the UK. Her popular books & audio programs are found worldwide. Remembering The Future, Messages From Spirit, The Wisdom of Avalon, and Wisdom of the Hidden Realms have been translated into Japanese, Russian, French, Slovenian, Polish, Czech & German. Her newest book, The Enchanted Map of You & companion oracle cards.

I will talk to Colette about her work, book and new Tarot Oracle and then take questions for Colette from the live chat and from callers during the first hour of the show. After a short break, at the top of the hour, I will return and take callers questions for mini readings. Be sure to sign up for free to Blog Talk Radio so that you can participate in the chat. You do not need to sign up to listen. The show runs from 8 to 9:30pm eastern time. You can visit my radio show web page for up-coming shows and past show archives by clicking here. You can listen live to this episode just be clicking here. Hope to see you there.
Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog. Hope you have a great day.