Have you ever been in a crystal shop and all of a sudden your palm starts tingling as your eye catches some beautiful piece of Mama Earth, and you know somewhere deep inside, there’s a connection taking place, like this crystal is calling out to you to pick it up?  So you do, and it’s like plugging into an outlet – the tingling gets stronger, even if you have no idea what kind of rock you’re holding.

This is how it tends to happen for me.  How we spiritually connect with things is as unique as we are, but the principle of my example is the same: I want you to think about your personal energy’s connection with the crystals you work with, and the immense gift that this is when you trust it.

Crystals and stones (along with everything else born of Mother Earth) hold their own unique energies, with their own unique journeys and purposes.  Just like us.  And very similarly to our connections with other people, our connections to crystals and the relationships we have with them, can profoundly affect our path.  

Far too often I see people burying their noses in thick, intimidating guides to crystals and all of their properties, desperately trying to make sure they’re making the “right choice”.  And when they don’t trust their own research abilities, they start asking for help deciding which crystal or stone will work best for them.  Now depending on what they’re looking for, sometimes it can be easy to recommend something to at least get them started.  But what I wish for most about people who open up their curiosities to include the vast and magical world of crystals, is that they’d trust themselves – and the crystals – more than their fear of inadequacy as a newcomer (though there are many who’ve worked with crystals for years and still don’t trust their own judgments when choosing – I wish the same for them). 

Please don’t get me wrong – reading works based on others’ experiences can be a huge help when diving into new areas, and the sky is the limit on a topic like crystals!  But when it comes to taking everything in a book as law and never allowing yourself the beautiful opportunity to find your own answers, you miss out on so many incredible possibilities.

When you choose a new crystal to work with, you’re committing to a relationship with it for the time that you have together.  As I mentioned before, each crystal has its own unique energy, and personality even.  It’s essential to get to know these energies and learn how you and your crystal best connect to each other in order to reach your highest potential together.

So how do we do this? 

How do we reach a deeper connection with our crystals in order to understand each other better and make some real magic?

The best way that I have found, hands down, is meditation.  

* pause for groans *

Now if you’re like me, the idea of meditation doesn’t inspire a lot of excitement.  As a natural rabbit-hole thinker, to say my mind has a habit of wandering would be like saying Bilbo Baggins went on a lovely country walk – I can go from peace and zen to dragon slaying in the blink of a third eye.  I’ll get into different ways to find your meditation practice in another post, but for now please know that meditating with crystals may be easier for you than you think.  

First of all, having something tangible in your hand can act as an incredible anchor – something to focus on and fill your mind with instead of “clearing your mind”, which can be much more of a struggle.  Playing music in the background, burning incense, and anything else you’d usually do to create a sacred space is completely encouraged, because this tells your mind and energy that you’re about to do something spiritual.  Whatever feels right to you, do.  Including your regular spiritual practice will bring in elements you already trust and that kind of energy will support your journey to open and trust your crystal.

Close your eyes and put all your focus on the crystal.  Feel your connection to it, notice if you start feeling warmth, cold or tingles anywhere, become aware of the energy flow between it and you, and when you’re ready, completely surrender to that connection and see what’s revealed to you – this is where the magic happens.  

Meditating with your crystals will deepen your understanding of them as individuals.  

You may use all of your rose quartz for love, but getting to know each one will reveal other gifts that each carries – for example, one piece may exude energies most connected to friendships, while another piece vibrates on the frequency of soul mates.  One citrine may raise your confidence, while another makes you feel bright and positive, and another reminds you to straighten your crown.  The possibilities are literally endless.  

Are you getting excited?  There’s so much more at your fingertips than just a sparkly stone to cure your headache.  There are entire worlds waiting for you to discover them. 

I generally do absolutely no research on a crystal before I meditate with it, especially impulse buys that called to me and I couldn’t ignore.  I want to know why it called to me organically before I cloud my judgement with what the books say, because I think when we have too many preconceived notions about anything, they can influence our experience of it, for better or worse.  If you really want to know how you connect with something, you have to feel it out. 

If I read that a crystal is good for headaches but I feel it’s good for upset tummies, my connection to it will be stronger when I follow my intuition (because I had that feeling for a reason).  If I tell myself I’m wrong, “the book said it was good for headaches”, I’ll lose faith in my own abilities and might never truly connect to the crystal (like anything else I allow my doubt to get in the way of).  

The knowledge we gain from books is invaluable, and I’m absolutely not saying the books are wrong – there’s a reason so many people have come to the same conclusions about the same crystals.  It’s widely accepted that rose quartz vibrates at the frequency of our heart chakra and feelings of love, amethyst at the frequency of our third eye and associations to the mind and head, carnelian at our sacral chakra and optimal energy and personal power, etc, etc.  Clearly there have been many experiences of these associations being true enough that they’ve become almost automatic.  But they can also be limiting.  

There will always be a reason you feel drawn to a specific stone.  Something in that crystal’s energy called to yours – don’t insult it by telling it what its purpose is; allow it to tell you.  Open up and listen, darling.

So what does it mean when your amethyst volunteers to aid your sore tummy instead of your head? 

Here’s my theory: understanding that blocks and issues within our spiritual body can manifest in our physical body as ailments and illnesses when left unattended, it’s possible that whatever is causing your upset stomach (the physical manifestation of the issue) actually began as a series of self-destructive, stressful thoughts that became beliefs (the spiritual manifestation of the issue). 

Stay with me.

Beliefs are thoughts that resonated deep enough to stick around.  This can be good and bad.  Say you’ve had a thought that you’re not very good at what you do and that’s why you don’t make enough money at it, and this thought persisted itself into a belief that you’re not good at anything and all of your financial stress is entirely your own fault.  Wouldn’t that make you feel sick after a while?  Think of the damage those thoughts can do to your self-confidence and sense of power, ruled by the solar plexus chakra.  

Generally when I have an upset tummy, I reach for my citrine or gold tiger’s eye to soothe whatever’s throwing my solar plexus out of whack as this is the energy vortex most connected to physical things like the digestive system, spleen, liver, gall bladder, etc.  Now enter the amethyst:  usually used in workings of the third eye and things involving our eyes, temples, pineal and pituitary areas, and ailments like headaches, nightmares and memory loss.

Why is my lovely purple piece of perceptive crystal jumping up to help with my tummy problems?  

Because while it may not be normally associated with this area, it may be trying to indicate where the root of this physical issue began.  It’s trying to make you think, “Does my upset stomach have something to do with my thought patterns?”  While this conclusion may not be immediately obvious, even just a simple, “What does my tummy have to do with my head?” is technically a step in the right direction.  

It starts the process of figuring out how A (tummy) connects to B (head).  

A – Solar Plexus: willpower and self-esteem; B – Third Eye: intuition and clearing the mind.  You have to clear your mind (B) of these self-destructive thoughts that are damaging your self-esteem (A) and leading to physical upset in your tummy area.

Not everyone’s crystals will teach the same things. 

But that’s what makes everyone’s connection to their own crystals so exciting, unique and important.  You don’t have to follow all the same associations and techniques that someone else does, but even if you do, your crystals will still communicate things to you that are only for you, because only your energy and unique connection to the crystal can understand the communication.  

Example:  Book says amethyst is for the third eye and headaches and that’s it.  You connect with your amethyst and find that yes, it does connect with your third eye and cure your headaches.  Then your amethyst communicates to you in some way that it can help with your stomach.  The book didn’t relate amethyst to the stomach at all.  Is the book wrong or missing information?  Or are you wrong and misreading the signs?

Neither – let me tell you why.

You and the author of the book may have come to similar conclusions about amethyst, but only something in your personal energy allowed for your crystal to communicate a message of aiding the root cause of your stomach issue.  The author may never have this same experience, but she’ll have unique revelations of her own.  Her amethyst may communicate to her one day about an issue around her heart chakra (perhaps her own self-destructive thoughts damaged her self-love and compassion for herself).  

My point is, the experience of every crystal will be different for every person.  They’re as diverse and unique as the people that work with them.  This is why connecting authentically to your crystal’s energy in your own way is so important to your work with it.

Still with me?  Make sense?

Kinda?  

I totally rabbit-holed on you and went from “meditating with crystals” to “deciphering what your crystal is trying to tell you about your body and why that’s cool too”.

I’m going to do this a lot – completely derail the chosen topic and off-road a little bit.  Blame my enthusiasm for the topic, if you like.

But let’s wrap this up for today.

I’ve learned some amazing things from my crystals and been taken on some incredible meditative journeys that taught me much more than I’d expected.  Each one takes me deeper into myself, and helps me to discover things about my inner and outer worlds that I’d never see on my own.  

Meditating with crystals is about much more than understanding its properties and what it can “do for you”.  

Because what it is going to do for you, is show you how amazing and complex you are, and what incredible things you can come to realize about yourself and your world that will deeply resonate with you.  

Trust them.

And they just may teach you that the world is still as magical as you once believed, oh so long ago.

Blessings, crystal lovers.  May this inspire you to dive deeper with your stones and seek the knowledge they wish to share with you.  

Love, Light and sparkles,