Dana Castonguay's Blog

The Four Foundations

Wellness. Energy. Insight. Faith

Wellness is the most overlooked aspect of a spiritual journey.  Not everyone is going to have a near death experience followed by a miraculous recovery like Anita Moorjani describes in her book "Dying To Be Me".  Some of us just suffer slowly with one ailment after another until we’ve lost our quality of life and can’t remember how it feels to be happy and healthy.  For centuries prior to the 1900’s, the wellness of a person’s spirit was often assessed by the wellness of their body.  In western culture we have lost this connection altogether.  We eat foods with chemicals that are banned in other countries.  Our idea of home cooked means eating at home even if it came from the microwave.  Much of what we eat from boxes is food “material” and not really life giving nutrition.  This has set us up to be the sickest country in the world.  An estimated 80 million Americans have one or more types of heart disease. The Centers for Disease Control says that 29.1 million Americans have diabetes.  So while over 100 million people in this country struggle with diseases that could kill them, they are distracted from deeply knowing their soul and fulfilling their greatest dreams. 

Even if you are healthy, you may be sensitive to energy like I am, a highly sensitive or Pink Hearted person who feels the pain of the world more deeply than others.  This can have an impact on your overall health if you don’t acknowledge and protect your physical well-being.  In Wellness, we discuss topics like acupuncture, functional medicine, supplements, oils, reflexology, yoga, meditation and even lemons.  Yes lemons.  There is intense vitality in the juice of the lemon. 

How do you know what you know?  It could be intuition, but insight goes beyond that gut feeling about a person or place.  Insight is how we seek the information that informs our lives today and our relationships with other people.  It’s the knowledge of past life experiences coupled with the collective conscious experience that helps us understand our purpose.  As my daughter was growing up, I didn’t understand her need to help other people even if they didn’t want to help themselves.  It frustrated me that she gave so much of her love and attention to people who didn’t seem to give it back to her. One day I had a lucid dream.  I was in the car and a vision suddenly took me over and I had to stop the car.  We were in a village in a country that was dry and filled with rocks.  There was an avalanche or some natural disaster that caved in the school.  Many people were running to the building.  I saw white robes and long flowing hair.  In the dream, I sat next to the school and connected my mind to my daughter and asked her where she was.  In the dream I heard her say “Papa, I am under the stairs on the north side.”  Along with other members of the community, I went to the area and began digging to free the children.  I dug until my hands bled.  I could feel them, sore and aching.  We pulled many children out, scared and bloody, but alive.  When we pulled my daughter’s body from the rubble, she was already dead.  Suddenly I looked up from holding her tiny form to see her spirit and I heard her voice say, “I’m sorry I mislead you Papa, I had to so that you would have the strength to save them”.  I knew instantly that she had died in the original event but connected to me to help save the other children, her friends. She knew I would do anything to save her. Just as she was doing in this life, she was saving people. Whew! Crazy right?  This may seem like a very strange occurrence.  It’s one of only three I have ever had.  But it has deeply helped me understand my daughter today and her need to save others, to be friends with people that no one else would befriend.  She is a selfless soul with a giving and pure heart.  It also helped me to teach her how to protect her own heart and her precious energy. Without that vision, I would not know the depths of our connection and our devotion to each other.  I cannot even recount the story without crying.  I know it’s true because I feel it in my heart.  I see it as if I lived it, because I did. And more important, I trust it because it came from me.  It was my own insight, no one told me that story.

 

Insight includes things like psychics and mediums but also auras, meditation, Akashic Records, ancient practices, numerology and astrology along with more traditional concepts like EMDR-Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing, life coaching and psychotherapy.   However we get the information, it is vital to know about the people we spend our lives with because they are the mirrors by which we experience ourselves.

 

I am not a Catholic, a Zen Master or a student of Buddha nor do I claim to be an enlightened being sent to bring you information.  There are already many of those people out there, The Pleiadians as told by Barbara Marciniak is one example. Zecharia Sitchin, and Whitley Strieber tell about other planetary beings that may or may not have a presence in our world, depending on what you believe.  And there are the organized religions of this planet, from Christianity to Judaism to Muslim and Hindu that offer a more prescriptive way of honoring God or Source. There are also many collective religions and ancient rituals that all give great perspective to our lives and purpose as humans in this place and time.  Having a God concept, something that grounds you in what you believe is important when you seek out other opinions, it helps you to have a frame of reference for what you learn.  My intent is not to proclaim a new god or new planet of gods or tell you what to think.  I only want you to know that these ideas are out there and they inform our perspective of why we live here.

            I wasn’t raised with a guide in the ways of Religion.  I was baptized Catholic but rarely went to church.  I knew the bible stories and I enjoyed them immensely.  I liked the lessons and took to heart the Commandments.  But I just could not get over the idea of sin. I went to the Catholic Church on the corner of my street by myself when I was little.  On one not so particular Sunday, the priest was talking, but I was so small I couldn’t even see him.  All I heard was his booming voice (adding to the effect that it was coming from God himself).  I wouldn’t have known the difference because I didn’t know where God lived and everyone called it “his” house so it was a natural assumption.  It would have been fair for me to assume that the priest was in fact, God. He said in a loud and convincing voice that if a person were to take a quarter off of their mother’s dresser and never confess that sin, they would go to hell.  This was stealing and stealing was a sin. I gasped in horror because I had done that very thing, often. Was he speaking to me? Did he know?

When I was little, after my grandfather died, I felt very lonely.  My mom worked afternoons and I often had a babysitter who paid little or no attention to me.  At six and seven years old, I freely roamed the neighborhood and one of my favorite things to do was go to the penny candy store.  Yes, it was actually candy for one cent.  So with that quarter from my mom’s dresser I had a bag full of fun.  It was something that made me very happy.  The store had a chime that rang when you walked in. The owner of the store, Ann, was sweet and kind and she often let me sample the candies.  It’s my best childhood memory.  And this bellowing priest who didn’t know me just took it away by saying I had sinned.  Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t trying to shirk my responsibly, I just could not believe in a God that would punish a child to an eternity of fiery pain and suffering for eating penny candy.  I know you might be thinking that it’s only a concept, one not actually applied, and if an adult had been there to explain or help me understand, perhaps I would not have been scared or confused.  I would say to look at the world today, at how many people take a literal interpretation of their Gods words and use them to hurt or kill others.  I know I was right to at least be concerned and ask why.

Despite my trepidations, I tried for many years to find my place in organized religions.  I would tell people that I prayed when I didn’t.  I would say and do all the colloquial things that made me acceptable to other people.  But it just didn’t fit for me.  I was uncomfortable. I knew that I needed to expand my circle of influence and learn what other people outside of the Midwest think about God and what kinds of faith they practiced.  It was intriguing and important to my own growth and development.  I will also say this, wherever you are on your journey with Faith is perfect.  I would be the last person to judge anyone for what they believe.  In fact, no one should. It’s deeply personal.  Which is why it is a Foundation. To be honest, my Faith is a variety of many beliefs and practices from around the world, from Native American wisdoms to Eastern philosophies.  I actually think that’s the way it’s supposed to be.  We live in a complex world of such richness and diversity, how could there be only one road?