The following is an excerpt of a spirit channel from a collective group spirit guides I work with that I’ve come to lovingly know and call ‘the Grandmothers Circle”—

Jamie: "Fate. How does it work?"

Grandmothers Circle: "Could you be more specific, please?"

J: "Well, I guess what I want to know is how can someone truly take charge of their future if fate and destiny are dictating everything along the way? In that respect, if it is my fate to be an artist then I could never become a successful doctor. Sometimes I feel so limited by this idea and that only specific dreams are achievable. What if I miss my destiny?"

G.C: "It might be helpful to talk about 'fate' and 'destiny' first. These are two very different things and not meant to be interchangeable. Fate is where the universe steps in to create a particular movement, or opportunity for an event in your life to happen. Destiny is the grand idea of your life, the general scheme or plot that the lessons of your living will evolve around.

When you come into this life, you do so in complete understanding of your character. You decide which major challenges you wish to try to overcome and what soul growth you would like to focus on. Circumstantials like the family you will be born into, your passions, place of birth, even the approximate age of your death are all known and conveyed. You choose which talents you would like to use in this lifetime and in most cases, they have been cultivated over many, many lifetimes; an artist truly is not born, they are made.

Throughout your life, challenges will arise from the construct of free-will, both yours and all the others you interact with. Fate will intervene at specific times to assist you with pre-determined events. These events are markers on your journey, push-pins on your soul's map meant to encourage the growth from an old response to a new one. Fate only requires that these events happen but your free-will determines how you respond to them. So in that respect, yes, you can miss your marker but there is always another up ahead to correct your path.

If we were to address a part of your question, "if I am destined to be an artist than I can never be a doctor", we would answer that this is not a truthful statement. Your destiny is the life map you've chosen for yourself based on the talents you came with to cultivate. If your soul loves music, then perhaps you would have chosen to be born with parents who would foster the discipline needed to learn the piano. If you love art, then you might choose to live a life that requires you make use of your artistic expression. To go against this path, say, to choose mathematics instead of dance or be idle instead of active, often leads to a feeling of great misalignment with oneself. There are the souls who suffer deeply, languishing in their despair because they are living in a way that goes against the natural path of their life. They are living against their own destiny.

This is why we always encourage you to seek your dreams. It is most fortuitous for you to put effort into what you naturally admire and relearn skillsets and advancements in the new ways of your era. We would love nothing more than to watch you take those talents and interests and cultivate a life utilizing them to the best of your capability, for a life spent extending time to doing what one loves, truly loves, will be a soul that always lives up to their destiny."

 -Jamie Homeister

The following is an excerpt of a spirit channel from a collective group of indigenous helping spirits I work work I’ve come to lovingly know and call ‘the Grandmothers Circle”—

“Upon your breath are the whispers
of all who collectively gather around you.
Upon your breath is the stillness of Spirit.
Of the peace that we know
and the calm that you seek.

Upon your breath,
every exhale is an opportunity to extend peace;
a will of serenity
sent out into the world
into your home
into your community
to your very self.

Upon this exhale
you can cleanse your aura
your emotional body
and change the red to white.

When your breath catches in your throat,
when your lungs seized
when you cannot take in the vital life force
that is air into your body
it is because you are feeling restricted in your life.
You are feeling restricted in your dreams
and your capabilities of being; seeing, living, knowing.
There is oppression there to be as you are and to live as you will.

Whether that oppression comes from external factors or internal,
whether that oppression is felt, sensed or seen, know this:
that oppression has to be allowed by you in some way,
therefore you are restricting your own air.
You are restricting your own way of being.
You are restricting your own dreams yourself from being free to live in the white.

And I know what you're thinking—
'but how can I live in the white if I don't know what 'the white' is?
How can I become unrestricted if I don't know where I am tying the noose?'

This is where the stillness comes in.
This is where the calm begins.
This is where you stand tall in strength,
with mercy, and grace,
This is where you are learning peace.

Exhale white.
Let it seep from your bones
and pass through your skin.
Let it permeate the air around you.

Exhale white.
Let it change your color.
Your vibration.
Your message to the day
and to the world.

Exhale white.
Know that when you do
it is not an extension of us,
it is the reflection of you;
Your purity.
Your offerings.
Your being.
Exhale white to know you.”

-Jamie Homeister

I'm sharing today a rare peek at my altar. Glamorous, isn't it?

There are no crystals, no fetishes.
I have no pictures of gods or goddesses.
No tokens of ancestry.
There are no water bowls, no flowers, no fruit.
And I do it on purpose.

At one point in my spiritual journey, I had seven different altars erected at once. Yes, you read that right: seven. It was complete madness.

If something came up and I'd miss my prayer appointment, I felt guilty. 
If the water ran dry, guilty.
If I wasn't into it and cut the prayer short, guilty. Dust? Guilty.
If I felt stupid (and I did) when visitors would see all these strange, table clusters crammed in every corner, guilty.

It took me about six weeks of this insanity to realize that "guilt" and "Spirit" were two words which didn't fit well together and that my practice to honor had somehow convoluted itself into a way to self-shame.

Now, I choose to keep my altar clear of frivolity. Buddha reminds me that peace of heart only comes from peace in mind. Lit in his hands is the biggest little flame that could— I am but one small person but have the power to comfort or destroy the lives of millions around me.

At his feet rests the first feather I recognized as a gift, reminding me that every situation can change based on perspective alone.

All of this, this tiny little bit of nothing, is nestled beside my front door to help me remember that effective worship is not bound table side, it is in me. I am a walking prayer and I take Spirit with me everywhere I go.

-Jamie Homeister

Winter is my invitation to surrender. I bury into myself just as the four-legged's burrow into the earth, both of us seeking replenishment through the solitude.

I have found myself praying for the first fall of snow. Nothing quiets our homes and communities like being tucked under Grandmothers blanket. Her duvet of white covers our messes and hides our collections of things that we scatter across a land we dare to call our own. Our humanness is never held against us, though—her patience is infinite for folk like we. Instead, with gentle eyes and soft hands she reminds us of how special we each are by mirroring the beauty of our individuality and our interconnectedness, represented by every snowflake that she lets fall; our separateness is a miracle but together we can build mountains.

I have been in stasis for a while now trying to prepare for living the New Year in a new way. 2016 had stripped me bare, removing entire limbs of my life that grew from my actions and usurped the roots of foundational knowledge I fed on.
It was transformative.
It educated me.
And it was devastatingly isolating and painful.
I would dig into every event as far as I could go and drown in my role as an antagonist because deep down, behind every misstep and mistake was this truth: I intuitively knew better but lacked the confidence in myself to listen.

New Years Day is a marking point we all identify with. It's a reset button, a passage in time we use as a permissive marker to live in a different way. New love, more income, better health—all of these typically take priority on our lists but what about our spiritual selves?

For the past four years, I have implemented a New Years tradition of asking for things to happen to me. Not once did the Universe let me down—I got every single thing I asked for, often delivered in ways that I didn't. That's an unspoken caveat in manifestation work, though. To Spirit, every experience is a powerful learning opportunity. The challenges we face are expressions of our true Self that need refinement, not retribution, but far too often we will devolve into self or circumstantial punishment instead of focusing on what's really being asked of us: character improvement. When hard things happen, the Universe isn't asking us, "How are you going to survive this?" It’s asking us, "How are you going to respond?"

If you feel inclined to reminisce on the lessons of this year instead, consider questioning where you made good things bad and the bad things better. 
What actions and reactions were you responsible for that you are most proud of?
What brought you healing? How did you bring joy into your life? And with whom was there laughter?

Instead of following the trail of breadcrumbs that keeps you from starvation, why not instead follow the pathway that leads to plenitude? I can think of no greater disservice that we create upon ourselves then running away from what makes us scared instead of chasing all that makes us happy.

Seeing rainbows ahead,
-Jamie Homeister