This week Mystic Mag’s Miguel Amado talked with Christopher Miles, from Flower Deva Healing Arts. Christopher offers space clearings and is also an astrologer and an energy medicine practicioner. We talked about his gifts, work and experiences in more than 20 years of practice.
Please present yourself to our audience. How did you discover your gift?
I’ve have always had the impression that my gift runs in the family. I remember my mother telling me when I was very young that we weren’t like most people – that we saw and felt things. So I was fortunate in the sense that there was an acceptance of my being sensitive early on.
My siblings and I were aware that our grandmother’s house was haunted – in a rather benevolent way – by a spirit we called the Blue Lady. It was never threatening or scary. It was just a presence in the house like someone who had lived there was still around. The experience of seeing and feeling things people weren’t talking about was confusing but it sparked a precocious interest in metaphysics. As a teen, I devoured books on astrology, tarot, Wicca, shamanism etc..
My work involves three main modalities that I group under the umbrella of Intuitive Counseling: Astrology, Energy Medicine and Space Clearing (healing the energy of land, houses, properties, offices etc.). I am also an Aromatherapist and it is my love of flowers and plants that inspired my business name – Flower Deva Healing Arts.
What experiences with Space Clearings have stuck with you?
Hmmm…a particular case in Marin County stands out the most. The mother of young child contacted me because her five year old wouldn’t sleep in his own room. He wouldn’t even play there and seemed to be frightened of it. His parents had tried many different strategies to get him to spend more time in the room, but nothing seem to work. So they sought help.
I remember a peculiar feeling of heaviness in what was an otherwise pleasant room. It’s windows faced a wooded area behind the house. Working with the space, I discovered that it was haunted by the earthbound spirit of a teenager who had committed suicide on a nearby trail. That spirit was afraid of moving on because he had come from a very religious upbringing and feared that he would go to hell because he had taken his own life.
In the tradition I was trained in, the protocol for helping an earthbound spirit involves calling in the ancestors and loved ones of that deceased person to comfort the earthbound spirit and help them cross over.
The ritual was a success and, not only did the site of the suicide get much lighter, but the house as well. From then on the little boy started playing and sleeping in his own room.
What are the main misconceptions about Astrology?
People have this idea that you have to believe in Astrology, but I don’t think of it as a religion. Astrology isn’t a bible, it is a Book of Tides. Surfers, farmers, fisherman and the like have long consulted almanacs to keep track of the lunar cycles or to find out when the tides were in or out and plan accordingly. Of course there are handy apps for this now. The thing that fascinated me about Astrology from day one was that it is this ancient way of mapping those cycles and rhythms in time, nature and in human nature.
The planets are not just up there in the sky – they are within you as well. They represent different facets of your being…different needs and urges. I see an astrological chart as a map of a person’s energy because you can really see the interplay of energy within. It’s a rich constellation of archetypes, myths, symbols and celestial clockwork. And, as exhaustively technical as it is, it is more art than science.
Unfortunately, it is often our cultural preoccupation with the future that informs how most people think of and engage with astrology. It’s a discipline with time-honored predictive tools so it lends itself to that, but I believe such an undue focus on the future can often be fear-driven or neurotic.
I draw a distinction between Intuitive Counseling and Fortune Telling. I believe the latter has its place (when used intelligently) but I don’t find it very useful and people tend to engage with it as a form of entertainment. I’m much more interested in helping a person understand the hidden forces (both inner and outer) at play and empower them to partner with those forces. That’s much more helpful than telling them what they can and can’t do. Astrology is a wisdom tradition at the end of the day.
What does it mean to reconnect individuals with their essential nature?
Wholeness is a core principle of my work. The metaphysical universe seems to work like a magic mirror. It reflects back to us in the form of events, people, and encounters those things that match the conscious and unconscious energies in our minds and hearts. It mirrors those aspects of ourselves that are buried or disowned. For example, someone who is out of touch with their own anger may draw angry people into their lives.
This happens not as a punishment, but as an opportunity for the soul in question to touch and reclaim the energy of anger. As this integration takes place, the “charge” leaves the person’s energy field and the individual begins to have more balanced and “wholesome” interactions with others. The magic mirror effect of our reality is what makes visualizations and affirmations so powerful. We are all the conscious or unconscious directors of our own movies.
Disease or dis-ease happens out of a sense of “split” or separation – when different parts of a whole function out of harmony with each other. Energy Medicine and the information given in a session facilitates the resolution of such schisms. The emotional dimension
of this inevitably requires some shadow-work: the integration of parts of our being that previously have been repressed and forgotten. Healing happens as we connect with our ground of being and find deeper and more courageous ways to love ourselves.
Please share a message with our readers for these challenging times.
The message that comes to my mind is this:
We live in an era of grave uncertainty due to COVID, climate change, and economic factors. It is also a time great fragmentation. People are divided by so many different ideologies and many have become more invested in the argument than in solutions.
And yet, every guidance tells me that these stressors are all colluding to remind us of our fundamental interconnectedness. I believe the medicine for these times is to lean into that interconnectedness.
In realtime that looks like slowing down, having more compassion for yourself, and turning your attention to what nourishes you and what makes you feel connected to life. It definitely means having compassion for others, as we are much more than our ideologies and our politics. We can’t save the world by resonating with the crisis. The challenge is to resonate with the world we are trying to save or create – to be the energy want to attract. Choices or actions made from that place are more likely to be life-affirming. There is tremendous transformative potential for change in these times.
