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| Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash |
📖 The Backstory
I started this blog in 2010.
Three years after my life imploded. Deep in what I would later learn was autistic burnout. A state that was the inevitable result of a lifetime spent pretending to be someone I wasn’t.
This was not my first experience of burnout, named or not, and I knew what to do with it. I returned to the spiritual and creative interests I’d left behind years earlier.
I did yoga. I wrote stories. I went back to school for graphic design. I read mythology and literature and vampire stories. I got a job at our local paper.
But it wasn’t enough money, and I had kids to think of. So I went back to my old life. And this time, when I burnt out I sought help and was immediately misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Heavily medicated and unable to engage with the things that I loved, I sunk into a deep depression. And then I had a dream.
🌙 The Dream
The dream was unlike any dream I’d ever had before. It was complex and vivid and remarkably coherent. It was so numinous and beautiful I knew it came from somewhere else—somewhere not-me.
I called it the Spirit Dream. And while I had no idea what to do with it things were different in its wake. I had other unusual dreams. I had spiritual experiences. I noticed synchronicities I could not dismiss.
Nobody in my day to day life understood what was happening to me then, or cared, so I started The Mystic Review because I needed a place where I could make sense of my experience.
I blogged my way through the New Age, Spiritualism, earth-based practices, and everything in between. I loved everything I was doing but I did it too hard. Things went wrong. I got burnt out again. I went back to the church.
I set The Mystic Review to private. I stopped writing down my dreams. When something seemed synchronistic, I dismissed it.
Until I couldn’t.
Because spirit wasn’t done with me yet.
✨ What Happened
In 2022 I was diagnosed with autism. In 2023 I hit a wall with my writing and took my first parapsychology course.
I began my first Substack newsletter, Writing on the Spectrum, in 2023 in an attempt to make sense of my autism and later ADHD diagnoses.
In 2024, I returned to dreamwork. Later that same year, I discovered Carl Gustav Jung. Synchronistically.
I saw the Spirit Dream in a whole new way—and I knew it was time to come back here to The Mystic Review.
I set the blog to public. I republished many of my old posts. And I started sharing some of those posts to substack at Writing on the Spectrum.
I finished a novel in 2025 and started another. And in between I wrote a neurodivergent spiritual memoir I called The Spirit Dream.
In 2026 I finished my paranormal romance novel and the memoir.
📝 What I’m Writing Now
With two books finished, I was interested in learning more about publishing so I took a workshop through Hay House. On day 3 of the workshop Colette Baron Reid led us in a connect-with-the-spirit-of-your book meditation. I saw an 8 pointed star—a symbol I strongly associated with the spirit of the spirit dream.
I had been going back and forth on what to do with the memoir, knowing it probably wouldn’t get read on Amazon. The meditation brought me back to source and source seemed to be saying what the spirit of my book really wants is to be heard.
So I started serializing it to Writing on the Spectrum.
Then I started thinking about what The Mystic Review might want. And my intuition was that it would like its own space on Substack. So that’s what I’m doing.
The Mystic Review will continue here at this URL indefinitely, but all of the content will also be availble in the Mystic Review Newsletter.
You can sign up for it here:
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This post is about my renewed commitment to the blog and the dreams and synchronicities that influenced me.
Dream Guidance
For reference: I spent the last couple of weeks working on a romance novel based on a short story I wrote some time ago. There were issues with the story and, for a time, it consumed most of my attention. I put my metaphysical writing and interests on hold during this period.
Last week, I had a dream that seemed to speak to this. The dream began in a lovely old-fashioned red and gold lobby. I was attending an event, even though I felt drawn to different event at another location. There was a scheduling issue, so I’d chosen the event/program featured in the dream. When I reached the auditorium I learned that the event I had chosen was about weddings or wedding planning.
There were other characters, conversations, and indications that the wedding event was fluff and not a good fit for me but I didn't leave. Throughout the dream, a feeling persisted—I would have rather been somewhere else.
Two nights ago, I dreamt I was sitting down with an assistant who had been inattentive in the past. I ask her to begin with my day book, looking for conflicts. I feel that she should pay special attention to the energy. In the dream, the energy I mention has a magical feel to it. It is significant and alluring.
The wedding in dream one put me in mind of the romance novel. The scheduling issue in dream one suggests that time is an issue. It occurs to me that I can only choose one.
The assistant in dream two hasn't done a good job but I'm giving her another chance. Scheduling conflicts and a kind of magical energy are key.
My Reaction
Dream one seemed to indicate a core conflict around my personal focus. There is the suggestion that I am focusing wrongly and that time is limited. The color red featured in the lobby reminds me of the alchemical process and the potential for transformation.
As a result of this dream, I decided to give myself time away from the romance writing. Almost immediately, a feeling of enthusiasm for metaphysical writing poured in.
I decided to be more involved here with the blog and felt good about doing that. Still I wondered if I was being reactive. That was when I had the second dream which seemed like a variation on a theme.
In Waking Life
I felt that this idea was being reinforced in my waking life, too.
The last few weeks have been hard everyone in our family has been sick. Because I have family members with serious health problems, illness always reminds me that nothing about the future is guaranteed. When my dog Luna, became ill with hemorrhagic vomiting and had to be treated at the animal emergency something shifted for me. I started to think about what matters and what does not. Thoughts about life purpose and the limitations of time occurred to me.
And other events in my waking life seemed to expand on this.
A video by tarot reader Julie Poole talked about purging to make way for the new energies. A This Jungian Life video talked about Carl Jung and the Age of Aquarius. Points made about duality and Christianity and the Age of Pisces reinforced some of my old ideas.
I realized that I was still clinging to some of my old programming.
Old programming had a lot to do with my decision to put The Mystic Review on hold in 2017 at the height of its popularity. A family member had come close to death. I was scared. Returning to the Church felt safe. As time passed however, it began to feel restrictive. The Catholic approach to elevating virtue and repressing vice didn't work for me. Shadow spilled into my fiction writing. Eventually I began to question.
I took classes at Rhine Institute. I connected with Jung. I returned to the blog.
All of that happened in 2024. But I didn't fully commit the blog and everything that goes along with it then. Now, I have.
I hope it will be of interest to others!
My Full Moon Tarot Reading
This is my full moon tarot reading on home / family (row 1, bottom), my media (row 2) and return to the blog, and my nonfiction writing (row 3) and related new ideas.
Note the position of Temperance (which I associate with Aquarius). This card reflects points made in the This Jungian Life video about the tension of the opposites. I will dive a bit deeper into the Age of Aquarius material (and this reading) in my next post.
The Videos
I found both these videos resonant. The Age of Aquarius video is produced by the Jungian analysts who teach the Dream School course I'm studying. The tarot video is by a reader I like.
The Aquarius video was especially helpful for me because it aligns with my own thinking about organized religion and where I'm at now.
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| Photo by Stephen Wheeler on Unsplash |
The Mystic Review turned 15 years old today August 22nd and received its millionth page view last week. It’s still a milestone I never expected to see. And almost didn't--considering I put the blog on hold from 2017 to 2023 as I pursued various Christian denominations.
Right now I'm working on a dream memoir based on the Spirit Dream and the spiritual journey that followed. I talk about The Mystic Review a lot in the memoir and I don't think I can overstate how important writing here has been for me.
There is no doubt in my mind that dreams and spiritual experience changed my life but whenever I hit a wall it was the blog that helped me find my way through. And that happened repeatedly over the last decade and a half.
Learning is its own reward, but not always and knowing that people were interested in my posts meant more than I can say. So I want to thank everyone who has followed and supported me through all the ups and downs.
And I want to wish a happy birthday to my old friend, The Mystic Review!
_________
You can read the intro to the memoir here: The Story of a Dream
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| Photo by Dan Farrell on Unsplash |
When I shut down The Mystic Review in early 2018, I didn't think I'd ever come back to it. But, for some reason, I hung onto the domain. And I kept the original blogging platform, too.
Instead of deleting my old posts, I simply unpublished them. This came in handy when I decided to write my testimony. To my mind, however, those old posts told the story of the person I used to be. Not the person I had become.
But that wasn't entirely accurate.
Starting and Restarting
I started The Mystic Review in 2010 when I was struggling to make sense of a very unusual dream. The blog was a place where I could share my search for answers and I loved doing that.
Then when I returned to Christianity and eventually Catholicism there was no real need to do that. The answers were already spelled out.
But as I struggled to write my testimony I realized I still had questions. Questions not addressed, or at least not resolved by the resources of my Faith. So it made sense to come back to The Mystic Review and try again.
As of this writing the blog includes a mix of old and new(er) posts, many of which need to be updated. So I hope you'll bear with me on that.
The newer posts were posts I added to the platform after I returned to the Faith. I don't necessarily agree with everything said in these posts. I've unpublished some of these but will probably not unpublish them all.
The older posts need to be sorted. A lot will remain unpublished. Others will be updated. A few will be re-published, as is.
I hope to add new posts once or twice a month. Topics will include dreams, psychic phenomena, paranormal investigation, faith, NDEs, spirits and more. Spiritual posts will reflect a Catholic perspective. But not all posts will be spiritual in nature.
I hope you will check back!
The best example of this is my renewed commitment to my online shop. This is people centered because two of my boys are interested in participating - and even if they aren't as committed as I am, I can still do art and talk to people at the same time. It is people friendly because I can take my items to my tarot reading events and possibly do other events and interact with even more people.
And here is the big thing - I think that I can finally ignore my inner critic long enough to be productive!
I never set out in a given spiritual direction due to any kind of calculation or left brain sort of decision. Instead I followed dreams and synchronicities and spiritual experience.
It's funny how things happen. Less than a week ago, I was ready to give up on this blog - which probably doesn't sound like a big deal to the average, or casual, blogger.
The truth is - real transformation isn't about doing at all. Real transformation is about energy. The energy that knocks things over and out of our way, the energy that helps us find the tools that we need most, the energy that shows us just how to apply what we have learned. This is the energy that helps us rebuild. This is the energy that makes the things that we build stand up all by themselves.
On the last birthday of the blog (which happens to be my birthday as well) I talked a bit about how the blog started and what it had become. This year, I want to talk about what keeping this blog has done for me.
Sometimes the resource works because it triggers a new idea or approach to something. Sometimes, it is an agent of change or transformation. Both of these are good.
Somewhat surprisingly, for a girl once accused of vanity, I am okay with growing up. Several years ago, a wonderful friend predicted that an early retirement would give me the opportunity to do all the things that I loved.
Looking for a diversion, I switched on the TV, and surfed the channels until I stopped at a public access TV program featuring Eckhart Tolle. I had never heard him.
I was, I think, quite possibly the only person in the entire US who had not. Surprising perhaps because spirituality was always such an important part of my life. I was never particularly attracted to 'New Age' however and that made Tolle new news to me that night.
My curiosity, the great saving grace of my life to date, was sparked. I wanted to know more. I felt a new cycle starting and the promise of new things on the horizon. I wanted to explore again and it seemed that it might be helpful to me, on a personal level, to keep track of what I found.
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