Susan Wiener is founder and director of Gemlight Essences. With spiritual guidance, she makes gem and flower essence blends to help people work through the layers of their issues, ultimately to assist in understanding their reason for being on this planet and to better walk their spiritual path. She approaches this work with the utmost respect, and is honored to be the hands and legs for bringing these energies out into the world.

What amazing times we live in. Not only are we leaving the 2,160-year-long Piscean Age to enter into the Aquarian Age, but at the same time will be ending a 26,000 year cycle of the Mayan calendar. It's no surprise if life seems to be speeding up, or that we may feel urged to make major changes in our work, home, or partnerships. In this final decade of the Piscean Age, with the opportunity to fulfill its spiritual mandate, many people are finding themselves unexpectedly bringing new spiritual connections to their personal lives and careers.

As we go through these changes, we may need help in finding clarity and courage to move from the familiar. We may need help in releasing that which does not serve us as we look to walk forward on our life paths. However, in one of those elegant turns of the universe, as our needs expand, so too does the help available to us. There are so many re-emerging ancient practices that were little known ten or twenty years ago and are becoming widely practiced today: Reiki, acupuncture, reflexology, acupressure, iridology, color therapy, gemstone therapy . . . the list goes on. It's a profound example of humanity's evolution that so much healing spiritual energy is being increasingly shared and practiced. And in reaching out to those offering these therapies, looking to our community for help, we are bringing in the emphasis on community that is the core of the Aquarian Age.

Gem essences are one of these ancient healing modalities that is still at the fringe of popular knowledge. You may be familiar with the amazing vibrational help that crystals and gemstones offer. All energy expresses itself as vibration, meaning that every single thing on our planet is actually made up of vibrating energy. Everything we experience-tables, people, colors, sounds, heat-is made up of vibrations with their own unique frequency.

Some vibrations are helpful, some are fairly neutral, some are damaging. When you walk into a room where there just was an argument, you sometimes feel the bad 'vibes'. The vibrations of high-tension power lines have been shown to cause leukemia. When you walk through a field of flowers or deep in the forest, the vibrations can be deeply revitalizing.

We are constantly affected by stress, pollution, childhood incidents, past life traumas, our work environment. We live in a rapidly changing environment, continually bombarded by stress. We did not evolve with cell phones and beepers, highway traffic and nuclear weapons. Many of us had emotionally scarring experiences in our youths. These all negatively affect our vibrational fields.

However, we can intentionally introduce positive vibrations to readjust imbalanced or damaged energy fields. Crystals, the most perfect form in nature, generate, maintain and transmit very precise frequencies. This is due to their perfect geometric form at the molecular level. Our body's electrical system reacts and responds to the powerful vibrations of these crystalline structures.

We might place stones on our bodies, in our auras and in our home or outdoors to create balanced energy fields that can cleanse and recharge environments, provide protection, deflect unwanted energies, release fear, assist in communication, attract light energies, and so much more. These gifts of the Earth are here for us in our time of need, as we work to release our restrictions and spiritually evolve.

Gem essences are liquids that hold a gemstone's vibration. By placing a crystal in pure water, it can share its vibration into the liquid. Water is an exceptionally good conduit for such transmissions and, with careful handling, will hold and maintain these energies. Working with these liquids homeopathically, we can easily make blends to take internally and spray in our environment. Like the stones themselves, gem essences emit pure, clear vibrations, creating balanced energy fields.

Essences can also be made of flowers. Although flower essences have been used since ancient times by many cultures, their use, along with that of many other ancient healing modalities, has been overshadowed by the advent and dominance of modern western medicine. However, since their re-introduction in the early 1900s by the discoveries of Dr. Edward Bach, they have become increasingly popular in recent decades. Flowers, so extraordinarily complex, beautifully exhibit and share nature's perfection. In essence form, their highly evolved communication systems create clear vibrations which can help us rebalance our body's electrical system, release unhealthy patterns and clarify spiritual connection.

Essences assist us in peeling away the layers of our issues. Combining gem and flower essences creates a synergistic blend to better help us deal with the extensive issues we face today, often assisting in releasing blockages on the physical, spiritual, mental and emotional levels.

For example, if you have serious fear issues, you might take an essence blend that can assist you in releasing and transcending this problem. After a period of time, as you release the hold fear had on your life, you may find that you are excited about going out into the world and are ready to expand your career to encompass your true life work. You could then work with an essence blend to help open you to the clarity, guidance and focus to assist you on this path. As you continue to work with new essences addressing particular situations or major issues, you can find yourself more successfully walking your spiritual path.

Crystals, gemstones and flowers, and the essences made of them, are gifts of nature. They are here for us, here to help us evolve, along with the Earth, in these challenging times.

© Phoenix 2003