As well, I have not been inspired to write much about this anxious, cranky, Charlie Brown Christmas that we’re having, but I find myself increasingly interested in fully feeling it. It is, I think, Exactly The One We Need. Whatever your holiday tradition, sink into it like arms around you.

Here’s another ‘as well’ — we are long past the time when we need a leader to follow. I know you know that but we still look for one another to show up. I can only show up when I am moved to do so, now, so it’s a bit of a quandary — still, I’m dedicated to the Wayne Dyer concept, “Don’t complain, don’t explain,” so I’m not going to do either, here. Just know that I think of you … my spiritual family … constantly, soothed that you are ‘out there’ somewhere; we are One in a conscious way, as we are One with a world not yet conscious of our connection. Holy stuff.

Everything is changing. Those who carry on wildly [Palin and crew, for instance] about how hope and change have failed us are full of crap — change is EVERYWHERE and hope is like a butterfly that won’t land but hasn’t left us, flitting around just above our heads. If anything, the emotion burns all the brighter because we need it!

Quickly, I want to share some links — and thanks to you that send along the ones you love best. I’ve enjoyed them.

Patty Cota-Robles has a new YouTube — I used to attend Patty’s seminars in Tucson and always wished there was a way to have her meditations available to play softly in the background. Now we have YouTube to allow that, and the graphics are quite nice, I think.

I have a Political Waves post here, Opening Windows, and a Planet Waves post, A Changeling Season, here; because I am, they’re spiritual as well as political. As is life. You know.

You’ll find that energy, as well, in this article by Starhawk, and one on communications by Christine DeLorey, who decodes the numbers.

It’s getting late and time is short. Soon Luna will, for a time, turn red. Forming in the heavens, there is a dimensional doorway filled with Light.

Let the old go, now. It is so tiresome to drag along, year after year; so heavy a load when we are trying to find our wings.

Stay out of fear.

Wake up in the morning knowing that everything is different, that the old is only memory and has no influence over your day. Choose what you wish to experience and expect it to manifest. Affirm your good, anticipate your neighbors good, intend the worlds good and celebrate our growing wholeness.

Remain steadfast in the Light, dearhearts — it will take you where you want to go — and, from Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment, a favorite quote for this amazing moment:

Go beyond reason to Love.
It is safe.
It is the only safety.

Namaste ~

Jude

This window is, I think, about intent — we intend for something extraordinary to happen. So be it.

I missed 10/10 — my dear friend Christine DeLorey wrote an excellent article on the numerical signature which I discovered after the fact; you’ll find it here, powerful wisdom for this moment, as well.

And yes — here I am, at last. You may have wondered about me. It was never my intention to leave you for all of a season and more. Here’s the shortest and clearest explanation of my absence: I didn’t have anything to say.

When I tried to write, I got very clear signals to let it go.

A series of challenges — computer, illness, social obligations — kept me away initially. And then it just didn’t seem time to write about anything, deeply in process with a kind of gentle but insistent cosmic shift. I think we’re all deeply in process, hindered by habits that no longer serve and bedeviled by the chaos of the moment that seeks to suck us dry. We look to our patterns to soothe us, to reassure us, even when that’s no longer working and then, eventually — bam! Something changes the cadence, the tempo — the dance. Everything shifts ever so slightly and we can’t go back to where we were, so we hunt for footing where we find ourself.

I thought about you every day. Truly, I did; fretting that I was failing you, surrendering the blog to obscurity, yadda. I worried about ‘failure to launch,’ and still I wasn’t ready to write. It wasn’t until I ran across this Thich Nhat Hanh quote — “Smile, breathe, and go slowly” — that I realized I really was doing something, just not the thing I thought I should do.

On this hiatus, I jumped some hurdles. Breath caught my attention, since my bout with pneumonia this summer made breathing such a challenge for awhile, and when you don’t have enough oxygen even the simplest things … like movement and thought process … becomes laborious. Thich said, as well, that “Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts.” For weeks, my affirmation was, “Breath is life, I choose life.” And along with that experience, came the necessity of ‘taking a breather’ and listening, dreaming, feeling.

My illness was a ‘retracing’ event — a do-over from the early 90s. I have no idea why. What I do know is that I was required to process it differently this time. Whatever I did, said, thought before needed to be recalled, examined and redecided … brought up to speed. Dreams clued me in to important aspects. Smells and sounds hearkened back to earlier days. Life was … is … holographic.

I chose again. I quit smoking after almost fifty years. Just … stopped, with little or no discomfort. My body and brain chemistry shifted, continues to shift.

Life is a constant state of adjustment. Form is in a constant state of flux. Any attempt on our part to remain the same, halt progress or repeat old patterns will be met with frustration and failure — so it’s time to take charge of our manifestations, mindfully.

If we choose it, we can consciously step into a new iteration of life. We worked long and hard to handle our baggage, let it go — that’s done now, if we wish it. Just step away, into the new.

Our reality is empowered by our thoughts and emotions but in order for them to be authentic they must come from a place of Knowing, a sure confidence and awareness of our own wisdom. There’s a kind of surrender going on right now. It’s subtle, I think, asking of us that we remember Ourselves even as the circumstances around us come and go, shift and shatter. We have always had the power to be Ourselves — we just didn’t understand why it mattered.

We can let go of the shifting forms around us much easier if we come into awareness of our own Spiritual Self, the one constant that doesn’t change. That portion of us connected with God/dess is the pure essence that makes up life’s alchemy. Everything around us may change, but that Soul signature doesn’t. That inner Knowing and sense of Self is the Sonship of which Course speaks: internal, eternal, unchangeable. Dependable. Loving. The only safety.

I fancy that Maya Angelou was thinking of that when she wrote, “A woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing. She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and only herself.”

It’s 11/11. Time to leave human ego behind and make Earth manifest as Spirit would create it. We need to re-member Who we are and shift some energy. Exhale separation, inhale love and inclusion. Here’s a visualization that I no longer have a link for, so thank you whoever wrote it — I like this one for an 11/11 activation:

Imagine that you’re breathing with every living being and organism on the planet and in the cosmos. Breathe with the trees and with the ocean. Breathe with the children in Africa. Breathe with the monks in Tibet. Breathe with the saints and mystics from the past: Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Moses, and Muhammad. Breathe with your friends, family, and community. Breathe with those you consider “different.” Breathe with the planets and stars. Breathe with all of creation and know the truth of “I AM One. We are One.”

Come alive with the breath of Oneness! Dedicate your breathing as a prayer for all sentient beings. Allow a single word or phrase to arise on your lips, and send it out to the world through the breath of Oneness. In this practice, your breathing becomes a prayer and a profound act of sacred activism.

And more — your LIFE becomes a prayer and a profound act of sacred activism.

That’s it, exactly.

Namaste ~
Jude

As you know, we’re in the midst of one of the most unusual alignments of our lifetimes. This is the cardinal T-square that is synonymous with 2012. At the heart of the matter is the square of Uranus and Pluto, the one that will make the Sixties look like a walk in the park. That square is within three degrees now, joined by Jupiter, Saturn and a pair of eclipses. All of this is lined up with the Aries Point, which is like a magnifying/focusing effect. Everyone is affected by this astrology no matter what their sign.

Some people are experiencing this as calm weather, and by the way, I don’t suggest you worry about that. There are some individuals and some charts aligned harmoniously with the current process of rapid change. When you look back on these years you will be amazed at what you experienced, who you became and what you accomplished. For others, there is quite a bit of unrest, turbulence, pressure and weirdness [...] They are two sides of the same process.

This insistent, persistent process of change is pushing us forward, and our experience of that in daily life can be difficult and distracting. If we can’t accept the process of dissolution that advances the needed Shift of perspective about who and what we are, we’re likely to get squashed. It’s here, intruding into our consciousness and fighting it is painful stuff. If we can embrace the process as necessary, a requirement for a newer, more Spirit-centered version of life on the planet, all this becomes easier.

I’ve been jumping a few dozen hurdles in my own world, here in the Pea Patch, mostly not much fun. When we don’t get our daily allotment of fun … or peace or joy or comfort … everything takes on darker shades. We think we’re capable of handling a couple of big problems at once, multi-taskers that we are; but when we have a bunch we’re hustling to solve, simultaneously, we develop a sense of perpetual stress.

For us — those who are aware of this Shift of Ages — that stress has been playing out for years; long enough for us to become accustomed to it but still playing a game of ‘first responder’ with those things that seem mighty challenges to our lives and livelihoods. And even if we KNOW it will all work out — that there is purpose in all that happens — when things don’t right themselves quickly enough, we codify what we see around us. If what we’re seeing is habitually distressing, it’s tough to break the shell of that mental construct.

I had one of ‘those’ dreams awhile back that illustrated this. I’m not a vivid dreamer, although I’m a lucid one. As in waking moments, I’m more aware of the energetic signature of what’s around me than the details; I’m always looking for meaning. This dream was ‘as usual,’ in that it shifted from scene to scene with players that I both knew and didn’t, and I recall one scenario with a monkey. Now, I’m not especially a monkey fancier and I remember thinking, ‘What the hell’s a monkey doing here?’ but so goes our subconscious offerings. I’m often surprised at what pops up and I occasionally congratulate myself on creativity while still asleep, remembering these vignettes with a smile when I awaken.

Anyhow, what was different about this dream was that on three different occasions, mid-scene, I ‘stopped the action’ by murmuring to myself, “All this is God.” Each time, the scene took on sharper color and detail and from within each thing I saw around me, each person in front of me, a golden glow began to emanate until the entirety of the dreamscape was bathed in magnificent Light. I hadn’t thought of it as ‘dark’ prior to that moment — but when it became lit with Divine Light, I realized that it was not only shabby and dismal, colorless and unappetizing, but that it was not a representation of truth!

The truth is that we ARE that golden Light, and our lives are not as we perceive them, especially now, with this level of difficulty. We are SO MUCH MORE. If we will stop seeing with our eyes and perceive the world around us from within our heart, we will begin to bring forth that Light in a wave of unified consciousness.

Which brings me to what’s being called the Conscious Convergence, an event this weekend that is about focused consciousness in this energy curve — known to the Mayan’s as the Ninth Wave. This is precursor to the 2012 event, but it’s certainly safe to say that almost everything that’s happening at this moment, and well into the future, is a 2012 event. It’s a shifting paradigm, a wave of enlightenment and we’re riding it — some of us hanging ten and some of us wiping out.

The Conscious Convergence is the baby of Mayan scholar, Carl Johan Calleman, who has called for a time of worldwide unity in resonance to the coming 2012 event calendar. He feels that we need to align our fragmented Lightworker groups to create a vibrational, and public, consciousness that 2012 is not Armageddon. This is the mission statement:

“The Conscious Convergence mission is to bring people together with the shared intention of cultivating a critical mass of harmonious energy that supports inner and outer reconciliation. We come together in the spirit of unity to heal wounds that separate us, to reconcile conflicts that divide us, to inspire ideas and actions that express our Oneness, and to join together in heart and mind to welcome the birth of our New World.

“The Conscious Convergence is a global collaborative of individuals and organizations whose purpose is to set the intention for, and to demonstrate the fulfillment of, Unity Consciousness, both individually and within communities around the world. All wisdom and faith traditions are invited to join and help express how we, as an evolving species, can transcend age-old boundaries and ideologies to fulfill a greater destiny than our history may imply.

“This Global collaborative prepares us for the evolution of consciousness as indicated by the Mayan Calendar. Mayan elders invite us to align with the Divine Plan for Humanity’s greater fulfillment, to recognize that ‘we are One like the fingers of one hand’

— Grand Elder Don Alejandro.

I’ve gotten alerts from various Lightworker networks, including the Redfield’s — who did a global prayer event this week to magnify the possibilities — and Patricia Cota-Robles in Tucson, an international group called Era of Peace that I attended for awhile. Of this convergence, Patti said:

We have just emerged from the unprecedented influence of several very powerful planetary alignments, an exceptionally powerful Solstice, and greatly amplified Lunar and Solar Eclipses. The influx of Light associated with these celestial events helped Humanity to break down the crystallized negative patterns from our pasts. This empowered each of us to release and let go of obsolete behavior patterns and belief systems that do not serve our highest good.

One of those belief systems, actually the most destructive of them all, is Humanity’s belief in separation and duality. Fortunately, the celestial events of the past few weeks have paved the way for a vitally important next step in the amazing Divine Plan that is unfolding this summer. The next facet of the Divine Plan is designed to help Humanity remember that we are One with all Life, and that there is no separation. This event will establish a template for Unity Consciousness that will assist Humanity to move forward in the Light in new and profound ways.

Once we develop Unity Consciousness we will know that there is no such thing as “us and them.” We will remember that all Life is interconnected, interdependent, and interrelated. What this means very practically in our lives is that every single thought, word, feeling, or action we express effects every facet of Life on this planet. Just think, with every thought, word, feeling, or action we are either adding to the Light of the world or to the shadows. Moment by moment, we are either positively or negatively affecting every person, place, condition, or thing on Earth.

We live in a plane of duality — black/white … either/or … good/bad. We experience ourselves through both our awareness and our lack of it — our shadow and our Light. We are now stuck in dualities most potent emotions, both personally and politically. But moderating our duality is not our goal. Our goal is creating an opportunity to move past it.

We must move into awareness that our separateness from one another is an illusion that keeps strife alive. We must bring the dualities together … two halves … to make a wholeness of triality; a new, larger vision of humanity. Triality comes from the the vast awareness of our connectedness. It is inclusive, compassionate and harmless. More than that, it is effective … duality is built on competition; triality is about collaboration for the common good.

Take this weekend to linger in your personal vision of a healed world, a collaborative future with all of us working toward peaceful outcomes and nurturing lifestyles. Take time in nature. Give yourself permission to dream great dreams. Do rituals that inspire you. Breathe fresh air and eat fresh food. Keep the Intention of unified consciousness — and if all that seems too difficult, just focus on love. That’s the glue that holds the Universe together and the hope for 2012 and beyond.

Focus your energy this weekend to do good for yourself, your brother/sister and the transformation of the planet. You’ll be amazed how good it will feel!

Namaste ~

Jude

This partial Full Moon Lunar eclipse will be followed by its pair, the New Moon Solar eclipse, in a couple of weeks on July 11. In Cancer/Cappy, this period will highlight emotion, sensitivity, a rebalance of male/female energy and, with Pluto in the square, unearthing of tribal secrets that give us opportunity to see through the Maia of Illusion. Breathe everything in and purposefully exhale it — taking what is true into your Being, releasing what is no longer needed.

Here are a few links of interest from Lightworkers and astrologers I trust. I would love to have you share some of those with which you resonate in the comments section; a gift to all readers, if you will.

Keep your heart open and your mind clear, ready to receive.

Namaste ~

Jude

Grand Cross Full Moon
Children of the Sun Foundation – YouTube

Capricorn Full Moon Eclipse
Lynn Hayes, Astrological Musings at BeliefNet

Evolutions
Allison Rae

Current events in the context of Earth’s ascension
Messages from Matthew

You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative and
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between

You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium
Liable to walk upon the scene

Have faith — I can still hear that lyric without superimposing our current Fundy-fanatic definition on the word; that may not be so for some younger folk. I’m dismayed that when we talk about faith these days, we automatically associate it with the radical trembling-voices and snake-handling we’ve become accustomed to from the über-Religious. Extremist Evangelicals hijacked the word, if not the concept, and it’s time to take it back.

“Faith is a passionate intuition,” said William Wordsworth. If we’re doing our spiritual homework, intuition is at least as strong an impulse in our Being as is logic and problem solving. I like what Wordsworth puts forth here, because it’s open ended — the intellectual debate about ‘if’ there’s a God or ‘if’ anything directs the harmony of the Universe comes to a close with such a thought. What happens next is not wishful thinking but a deep heart-acknowledgment of the Great Mystery.

Faith is that thing that lifts our foot as we step toward the unknown. It is highly personal, never dogmatic. Nobody can tell us what faith is — certainly not a televangelist asking for donations or a politician with a “faith-based” agenda, but if we’re listening to our intuition, we already know that. Intuition takes us to the heart of the matter, prompting gut feelings that tell us if we’re on the right track or wrong. It’s the surest magnet toward achieving our good.

Whatever the Divine is, it can clearly be felt in our intuitive awareness. Like most everything else, intuition becomes stronger as we use and trust it. Faith and trust are a pair, existing as parts of one another. Where we place them is the ongoing unfoldment of our consciousness. The Bible tells us that, “Faith without works is dead,” and it is from the True North of our core intuition that we will decide what ‘works’ lie ahead of us, while faith and trust lead us forward to do them.

In times such as these — social upheaval and change — we must be mindful that our human tendency is to reject change, making judgment without a complete picture of where change might take us. Perhaps we’ve waited a lifetime for such an opportunity, but if we remain in our lower mind when it arrives, meeting it with suspicion and resistance, we miss our chance to cooperate with one of life’s most interesting adventures. If we place our trust in the Divine unfoldment of our future, have faith that we both bless and are blessed by each leg of that journey, accentuating the positive becomes organic.

First, we must rid ourselves of the delusion of perfection. We are Gods godding — not THE God Who never makes mistakes. Life is a practice page, and even in the best of times, it’s messy [if we're doing it right.] If we want to learn big lessons, we’d better prepare to make big mistakes. If we want to make big gains, we must take big risks. Self-criticism for experiments that go wrong is a waste of time and insight. We must always remember that failure is impossible since life isn’t a zero-sum game, that we get a chance to recreate ourselves every day, every moment — the actual meaning of ‘born again.’

You are infinitely more than the story of your life and if you want to realize just how much, STOP TELLING IT … but that’s another post.

Problems with self-esteem are not only hindrance but ego-projections, baggage from the past is not only cumbersome but nonproductive. These issues are the product of linear judgment — but, stepping out of the Illusion, we can intuit that we are neither linear, nor do we have any talent at judgment. We can allow yesterday to be gone, wiped away — today we can start fresh, urged to ‘choose again’ and to make that choice from Love.

Our personal experience isn’t ours alone, anyhow, but is reflected out to all those we touch and influence; and if we are, as Course suggests, all One, then the totality of ALL experience is within us — which part of ourselves might we hate, disapprove, judge or destroy, then, and still seek wholeness? Neale DW sent along an Albert Camus quote this morning that nailed it: “Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.”

We can too easily become that thing we disdain. The arrogance of some Christian thought stands witness to the loveless hypocrisy we can blind ourselves to, while embracing faux-virtue. Course tells us that judgment is written within God’s personal handbook, not ours; we don’t have the wisdom or the insight to judge rightly — yet we spend most of our time in judgment of self and others. Is that an example we want to set? Is that what we want to teach others to do? Course has a better idea: “Teach only love, for that is what you are.”

Discernment — listening to our intuition and relying on our Higher Angels to moderate our ego- tendencies — is sanctuary from the tyranny of judgmentalism. But please be aware that our goal is not to become airy-fairy, only-positive, never-negative New Age clones in this process; we are, instead, looking for the authentic blending of both our darkness and our Light, able to quickly identify the core of an issue and remediate it without punishing either ourselves or someone else. We cannot lock ourselves away from all the influences around us without losing balance; we cannot discern rightly without considering all the factors. Aiming toward our highest expression does not mean we can’t identify a wrong, name it and work to correct it. We are polarized so that our choices become evident and obvious.

Yet we cannot come to consciousness while judging parts of our self unworthy. There are surely unworthy expressions of energy all around us, an ‘insane world’ if you will, but there is no unworthiness in even the meanest among us. That cannot be as it was never the Intention of the Creator.

Still, the only person we’re capable of changing is ourselves, and playing small — or small-minded — serves no one. Our worthiness is not a matter of conditional thinking, but a gift from Out Of Time. We are a perfect creation. Are we so arrogant as to judge against the Creators handiwork? Can we see how egocentric it is to believe ourselves flawed and worthless? That is not our intuitive voice that speaks of weakness and failure; it is a trick of ego to keep us looping in fear, without love. Our intuition brings us back to our Souls wisdom, that remembers these things for us — and once we begin to listen, the lessons we teach others by living our own life from center become dharmic.

I’ll leave you with a snip from Daily Om that I found helpful — especially when we’re stuck in mental/emotional angst about how flawed we are, how little we contribute; you know, whatever ego-projection we’re hiding our Light behind:

The influence we wield is infinite. In an effort to internalize our conscious understanding of the nature of cause and effect, we can never truly know how our thoughts, emotions, words, or actions will manifest themselves on the larger universal stage because it is likely that the furthest-reaching effects will fall outside the range of our perception. We can only look to the guidance of our conscience, which will help us determine whether each of our choices is contributing to humanity’s illumination or setting the stage for unintended troubles. When we are in doubt, we need only remember that the cultivation of altruism inevitably leads to a harvest of goodwill and grace. Motivated by a sincere desire to spread goodness, we will be naturally drawn to those choices that will help us express our commitment to universal well-being.

Nothing you do, however minor or mundane, is ever exempt from the rules of cause and effect. From the moment of your birth, you have served as an agent of change, setting forces beyond your comprehension into motion across the surface of the earth and beyond. You can exert conscious control over this transformative energy simply by examining your intentions and endeavoring always to promote peace, positive energy, and passion in your ideas and actions. While you may never fully comprehend the extent of your purposefully heartfelt influence, you can rest assured that it will be universally felt.

What you give the world must be your gift back to That which created you, and the more you practice this, the more you will magnetize to positive nurturing experiences. If we reap what we sow, then we must create a lush garden from the magnificence of our hearts. Remind yourself, when you need to, that feeling small is no excuse to behave that way … ever.

Until next time, then, teach only Love, for … surely, as we must all discover … that is what you are.

Namaste ~

Jude

As everything was intensely fluid, and plans shifted from moment to moment, I found myself wrestling feelings of disappointment, resentment and discouragement. Even as I worked with that, it seemed as though the old loops of ego-response and emotional binge I saw around me was antiquated and tiresome; as if there was a page to turn if I could just read EVERYTHING on the page and get to the bottom of it. All the human drama, squared, surrounding me seemed hollow and unrequired; even the hardest of our dreaded Illusions, a deathwatch this weekend and eventual passing of a friend.

There’s another word for death, of course: change. And another word for what we’re doing as we wrestle our angst: awakening.

We’re being dragged, kicking and screaming, into change and awakening — not only of circumstances but of Self — and few of us are showing the required acceptance and willingness that would make that a less exhausting ride. We fear ‘losing’ more than we appreciate the sometimes-tyranny of ‘having’ and so we clutch at ‘same’ because we have so little faith in the future.

In times of great change, the status quo – sameness, if you will — begins to look awful enough for us to try to move past it. That’s where we are now, still dragging the old into the new, trying to ‘keep’ it because we might need it where we’re going. That’s the equivalent of not trusting the new, of course, but we humans don’t work well without a net.

While I know some of you aren’t political … and don’t want to be … there’s no avoiding it and we can get a pretty clear picture of our humanity in the headlines. Politics reflects not only our own value system, our own intellectual process, but that of everyone around us and since we’re all adding to the collective pot to make this human stew, it isn’t productive to remain ignorant of what our neighbor is adding. That’s what politics is, of course — the collective thought-process that we organize under; and far too solid a projection, like a big, lumbering beast, to keep up with the changes in consciousness that now occur more regularly.

Everything around us — EVERYTHING — can be used as a mirror to observe our own selection process if we’re brave enough to look into it … and the news of the day, of the hour, SCREAMS for our attention. We can look into that mirror and find our human condition.

For the umpteenth time, I watched the PR clip that British Petroleum is running on every channel [despite criticism from the Administration and a sneer from the public] in an attempt to calm American fury over the despoilment of the Gulf. It’s an attempt to put a human face on this company, which acts … as do most corporations, subject to their shareholders expectations … in an exploitive, inhumane manner. For just a moment, I put aside my judgment of its purpose and the deep cynicism of the message in the face of BP’s foot-dragging and exploitive CYA maneuvering, and watched as if I hadn’t seen it before.

The human face of the BP Executive and his apology, temporarily considered genuine, reminded me that his whine that he wanted “his life back” was probably acutely real to him, caught up in this shitstorm of outrage and emergency. Maybe he has a wife and kids that are vibrating in high anxiety about the fate of his job and their position in life. In Britain, the headlines bellow that American reaction to this tragedy is toppling BP’s stock, which will deeply effect the pensions of many Brits who are invested in this huge money machine. So it isn’t just Tony Hayward that’s whiney, it’s a nation … several, actually … facing the result of their choices.

The probability that Hayward’s life has taken a radical twist is no less important to him than to the British pensioners or the Gulf shrimpers and fisherfolk; to ALL of us that see the holocaust within our ocean as changing the planet forever. Politics is personal because its IMPACT is — and politics will remain a dense proposition until we begin to consider the whole of humanities good our own, outgrowing our need to see to our own fractured little bit of good first.

Should we all care about or validate Tony Hayward’s feelings? Or Helen Thomas’s? Or Sarah Palin’s? Barack Obama’s? Yours? Mine? Well, we’re all adding something to the collective human stew, and we’re all poised with a spoon to sample it — so perhaps it’s reasonable to be aware of these components, suspending judgment at least for a few moments to get a sense of the taste they produce. We can’t ignore them, if they seem poised on ruining the collective dinner. But demonizing any of them takes their human face away — puts them far away from us, lost in the territory of our minds, instead of sampling them in our heart. Assessing them from our heart, they are quite different than we expect. Each one has their bit of truth and at least a spark of their authenticity peeking through. We cannot judge them without judging ourselves and perpetuating the loop of dysfunction.

Course tells us we are all One — if that’s true, when we put those whom we dislike so far away from us, we’re separating ourselves once again. We cannot find peace in separation — we cannot create the neutrality that will produce a ‘happy dream’ if we cannot accept one another as part of ourselves. Course tells us there’s only ONE Son [of God ... and/or read that as One Child of God/dess, if you wish, because it means the same.] Just ONE of us, doing the collective deed. We cannot achieve our goal of wholeness if we are still polarized against one another.

We are all making the journey back to Self because that is what life in 3D is all about. Some do it gracefully and others grudgingly — some choose not to do it at all, lost in the loop of “getting and having.” We might think that it’s the unconscious ones that are adding the bitter taste to our stew, but what if … what if … there’s only ONE cook? Us! Admitting that will make us much more aware of what we’re throwing in the pot.

Those of us who’ve been consciously cooking for awhile are still looking for some rare ingredient. What we’re seeking, in this quest for authenticity, is that moment of awareness that will break Maya’s grip, especially in a period as painful at this one. But here’s the thing — the process is not about finding some new truth and then running toward the next one with our spiritual butterfly net — it’s about incorporating found truth into our experience, working with it until we inhabit it, and then opening ourselves to the next big awareness we need to absorb. A process, a journey — not of what to think or do, but what to BECOME in our return to what we have always BEEN.

I ran across one of those a’ha quotes the other day that suits me, and especially poignant to the last few days of my own experience. Here it is, for your consideration.

“Die to who you THINK you are before who you THINK you are dies.”

This was given by American ‘guru,’ Gangaji. I’m pretty much an, ‘If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him,’ kinda girl — so I bring a bit of reluctance to the guru stuff. There’s controversy with this one, as well; trouble with the husband, also designated guru. Me, I don’t care about the drama — I cotton to ‘esoteric’ and I appreciate much of her thought process. Here’s a YouTube of her that you may find uplifting. It’s certainly part of our conversation here.

And — as with ALL thoughts you entertain — taste, spit it out or swallow as you wish! So it is as it always was … a journey of discovery, revelation, process and practice. Have a wondrous week.

And by the way, last week a few of us had a bit of a conversation re: ACIM in the comment section, if you missed it. I appreciate your thoughts and participation — you are so very welcome to contribute here on anything that strikes your fancy.

Namaste ~

Jude

Today is World Environment Day. Established by the UN in 1972, this is a particularly sobering celebration in 2010. Today’s environmental movement came alive under similar horror as that which we see today in the Gulf, as I mentioned in my Planet Waves weekly article. Turtle Island, as the Native American [First Nation] people call Gaia, is being choked and battered by humanity; the dead, oil-smothered leatherbacks and pelicans are just the tip of that iceberg [which are also endangered, of course.] Here are the photos that we MUST dare to look at, even as it makes our senses reel … and pass along to those who say, “Well, accidents happen and this is necessary for business as usual in America.”

If this is business as usual, we’ve gone very, very wrong, beloved! Moved far, far from our hearts and responsibilities as children of this lovely planet.

I have long believed in reincarnation [linear or simultaneous, no matter] — odd business for a child reared Baptist, but experience trumps rhetoric. My faerie family and the nurturing invisibles that impacted my early years put an inevitable spin on later religious instruction. The things I ‘knew’ with no way of knowing and memories of ‘lifetimes’ in Atlantis and Scotland were as much a part of me as my daily instruction in how to be a child in the mid-20th century. We come into this plane old and rich in previous experience; good to remember as we nurture the young, who are assuredly peers in our care.

The sum of my intuitive parts puts me in the Lightworker category, but the pieces are diverse: Christian [love,] Buddhist [compassion,] Pagan and Native American [the natural world,] Shaman and Astrological [energy,] and the umbrella under which these instincts all reside, Mystical. We are each an amalgam of our understanding, and whatever system we are born into provides only one select bit of that. No one system has all the wisdom — and we are in continual evolution to push past the barriers that hold us within them. There is no single ‘way’ toward God/dess … all paths lead us into the awareness of ourselves in relationship to the Divine.

I confess a continued impatience at ‘religion’ as we think of it today — not an authentic revelation, but a collection of rules and beliefs that require obedience. It is the domain of the younger souls, frightened at their own power [for good or 'evil'] and looking for safety in absolutes. Religion has been used like a club to control the masses by cynical leadership since time immemorial, and considering the warring history of the worlds religions, it’s amazing that any of us are still alive. We fight them today in the Mid-east, trying to prove whose God is the biggest bad-ass. Those who do not question the blood-thirsty human interpretation of Deity suggested in that old paradigm keep us in a death-loop that can no longer be tolerated. And the plunder of the Earths resources for such dense activity must stop now! We cannot survive it!

ACIM tells us that life is a collective Illusion that we make up as we go along, unaware that we are already perfected and dwelling in the Great I AM — and I won’t argue with that. Course teaches us how to deprogram our lower-selves to make the Illusion happier, tipping the balance toward a new iteration of existence. Essentially, that is the awareness that we are striving for as 2012 nears. Course is only one [intense] way forward; there are many others but they all lead to an understanding that, as Neale Donald Walsch says, we are “God, godding.” It matters very much what we think, say and do because we are manifesting everything around us, adding to the collective and impacting not only ourselves but every single portion of the body of God. Our outer experience must be guided by our inner experience, lifting us toward a more authentic, heart-inspired manifestation.

I am very Native American in my understanding of property — which puts me at odds with the majority of humans. I have owned two homes in my lifetime, but neither time have I considered myself a homeowner. It’s not in me. First Nation people understand that the Earth owns Herself, we are just visitors in relationship with Her. The political divide in the nation we suffer today is, essentially, between those who consider property and profit their guiding mandate and those who value the collective essence of mutual existence. It is the difference between “Me” and “We.” When the CEO of British Petroleum tells us, “I want my life back,” it’s easy enough to hear the “Me” in his self-pitying whine — and see the self-interest that discounts the thousands if not millions of life forms around him dying a horrific death. His misunderstanding of our interdependence put a gun to the head of an eco-system, and endangers us all.

Here on Turtle Island the quickest way back to our authentic Self is in nature. Standing on a beach or walking a country road, we quickly come to resonance with our Soul signature as we breathe in our placement as but one of the many life forms around us. The same oxygen that surrounds us was breathed by Jesus and Buddha, by Alexander the Great and Hitler — the very land beneath our feet was trod by every generation of humankind and animal life that came before us. The plants, the animals, the rocks and streams are part of us — one life form, connected by the mysterious animating energy of God/dess. If we abuse or kill any portion of it, we abuse and kill ourselves. That said, can we not agree that … at least for the moment … we appear to be a suicidal species?

The souls awaiting entry to this human experience — unto the 7th generation, and beyond — are watching us now, tracking our every action. THIS generation of humans will make the difference as Gaia increases her vibration to usher in a Golden Age, with or without us. Earth will go on but will we? Our worthiness is in question. But awareness is dawning on even the densest minds, now, leaving us not much time to become the We people that Turtle Island was designed to welcome and sustain. Put this foremost in your thoughts today, and every day.

It’s World Environment Day. Most of us will give that an ironic nod and go about our business. So let’s rename it — this is Sacred Life Day. Open your heart to the necessary changes and shared sacrifices, adventurous adjustments and deep remembrances that are flooding in to impact our awareness. We have spiraled down long enough to get everyone’s attention now — it’s time to honor Life with our intent, our reverence and our absolute determination to shift into a happier, more responsible iteration of existence.

We are the world, we are the children. It’s time to show the Mother … and ourselves … the full expression of our devotion. Tuesday, June 8th, is World Ocean Day — another day in which to celebrate the sanctity of life under attack from careless misunderstanding. Edgar Cayce told us that on this plane, the motto was “serve or suffer.” When we serve self, we suffer — when we serve life with love, we thrive. We must love our way out of this thought-form of suffering … for all the marbles, including the Big Blue One on which we dance.

If you have time this weekend, there are meet-up’s around the country mobilizing to help the Gulf — check here.

Namaste ~

Jude

Last weeks posting reminded us of the various aspects of ourselves fighting to win dominance in our experience. If we’re fucked up and neurotic, our mind’s probably at work — if we’re insecure and emotional, our emotional body is holding sway. And if we’re FINE, as described, our body is impacted.

In fact, studies have shown that our brain itself is responsible for sending the signals that put us in fear and overwhelm in the first place, spinning us off into worry and emotional imbalance. The maxim “Thoughts are things,” survives as a warning from early studies in New Age philosophy, but manifestation — ‘good’ or ‘bad’ — comes as a process of dwelling upon some outcome. And isn’t it funny how we focus on the positive but we dwell on the negative? Words are things, too!

Can we expect the same brain that’s dwelling to be the one that stops that activity? We do well to remember that the brain isn’t the seat of our Soul, the heart is.

The heart is where our feeling nature resides. This is different from emotions, although each moves us in a similar way. Emotions can exist independent of our experience, floating by to be seized upon by an active imagination — but our feeling nature sparks off intuition and empathy, connects us with one another and establishes a link with All That Is. The more we trust that … quieter, I can assure you … voice of unconventional wisdom, the more we are able to step away from our fractious selves to depend upon the wisdom of our inner Witness. We cannot come to wholeness until the whole of our internal persona’s can work in tandem.

I know it seems as though I’m going over very basic stuff, here, but we need to assure ourselves that we’ve working at optimum levels as we face this new era we’re ushering in. Nothing is more important than for us to be able to trust ourselves, and the information we’re receiving. I take a few moments to work with this every day, like adjusting the station on a radio.

My daughter gave me a good example of how this works a few days ago. She was fretting over a job opportunity she wasn’t sure she wanted, but felt she needed. She said that while she was sitting at the computer, her mental/emotional bodies hard at work, she stepped away from herself long enough to notice how tense and anxious her body was. That gave her what she needed to make her decision and her body instantly relaxed. Another opportunity will present that will be a better fit and offer a greater blessing.

It’s all quite mundane, dearhearts. I’d love to dazzle you with mystical stuff, but we can only get there from here if we do the diligence that allows us to enter into the awareness that what we desire is all around us. The mystical/majikal is found in “chop wood, carry water.” It’s in making sure we’ve created ourselves as an efficient conduit for Holy Spirit to use, allowing no interference in our receptors.

When boulders appear in our path, we must have the internal radar to move around them effortlessly — our center is our GPS. When we are receiving that information, we are pointed to our Highest and Best thought-forms, options and creative solutions. It’s what allows us to think ‘outside of the box,’ and we CANNOT do that mighty work if we’re IN one of our own making. We must be able to trust what we receive.

And we could use a bit of encouragement, I think. If you Lightworkers need something mystical/majikal today, I know someone I can ask — someone I haven’t summoned in a long while.

* * * * *

Greetings, Beloved One’s — gathered Human Angels and Lightworkers, holding within you the seeds of the Lightening!

We feel your expanding heart, your opening creative centers as your energy combines with ours to create a triple-Helix, an expansive body for that which is Becoming. We wipe your tears and enfold you within our energy, wishing you might see, as do we, the Light that you are shining into the darkness, by the millions of awakening Soul-signatures. Do not focus on the darkness; but notice and then turn to see the growing Light. Want that with all your being! Long ago, you pronounced Perfection boring, and so you travel this Circle of Life to choose once again. Now you see clearly what you want. Now you shall create anew.

We know your human sorrow as you hear of ocean and coastline fouled, lifeforms perishing. Yet be assured that Mighty Deva’s of Nature stand at the ready, lifting these lifeforms back into the ethereal and ministering to what seems lost, but is not. You see destruction; we see only the illusions of density that are required to awaken you. Nothing is ever lost, only changed.

We know your human fears as you struggle to meet obligations and responsibilities, yet fear is what keeps you bound in them. Loosen these chains by trusting Source. Allow them to fall. As you guard the borders of your good, Plenty stands on the other side awaiting you. It wears a fresh face you do not recognize. It seeks your welcome.

Call upon the vastness of your Soul-Self to remember why you were chosen. You have come for this, you are called to add your deepest longing into the fecund soup of the yet Unformed Void. The entirety of creation is prepared to move quickly to repair and restore, beyond your wildest imaginings, the beauty and magnificence of this beloved planet of Free Will. The very cells of your bodies are encoded to renew themselves.

Your power is limitless! What you seek is what you already are, forgotten in this dreamscape. To bring about the change of Ages, you have but to wholly desire it. See it Done and begin to live the truth within your Inner Eye. The molecules dance with potential to renew Terra but only when you say It Is So. The entirety of the Cosmos looks on, encouraging you to open your awareness to your own power to create either Heaven or Hell.

This tiny tick of time may be what shifts the Universe and ascends humankinds understanding of its experiment in matter — this, or the next or the next. Yet what remains linear to you is already Done in the Unformed, awaiting your joyful decision to allow it expression. Wipe your tears and know that all is Possible within you; when what has been seeded blooms, all will be Possible without.

Think, speak, feel, breathe from within your expanding heart — it is the only reality. All else is dimming shadow.

I am Arayna, daughter of Amon-Ra,
the Unknown God of Antiquity,
in service to awakening humanity

* * * * *

Are you FINE, today? Focused, Intuitive, Nurturing and Evolving?

Me too. Have a GREAT holiday.

Namaste ~

Jude

I had several fire drills this week, difficult and discouraging — one was distressing enough to instantly flood me with adrenalin. As you might know, when this occurs within the physical body there’s no help for it, no on/off switch for this chemical override we count on in emergency. In decades long past, suffering from severe asthma, injections of adrenalin opened my lungs and allowed me to breathe; days later, the results were still visible in tremors and muscle tension that eventually left me exhausted.

This is the stuff that readies us for ‘fight or flight’ and gets us moving in a hurry — legacy from the days when we were running from Sabertooth tigers, I suppose — but it’s toxic and must be leeched away over time. And chronic adrenal overload, coming on the heels of little shocks and bigger anxieties over the last decade, should be factored in to our current level of weariness and overwhelm.

So what I want to talk about this week is not how to avoid these occurrences, because they’re with us now and play their role … however enigmatic … in our awakening. It’s how to handle them and minimize their damage that seems vital. When situations occur that put us in emotional explosion followed by meltdown — small or large, imagined through fear or solidly in our face demanding action — we either knee-jerk a reaction or take a moment … and a deep breath … to form a response. If our physical body takes the lead, it’s the former — if our spiritual body gets a deciding vote, it will take us to the wiser second choice.

It’s no surprise that most people cope with difficulties by turning to unwise diversions to quiet their demons, thus reinforcing and feeding them. That can be anything we use to comfort ourselves to the point of oblivion — meds, booze, food, sex, whatever — thinking that we’ll feel better when we come out the other side, but we don’t … and can’t. This only solidifies our ability to put something, stopgap, into the hole where authentic response should be but seldom is. When we look around and notice how many people are behaving irrationally, we can see the result of that behavior. So few of us seem calm. So few seem like adults. So few do more than add to the chaos, unaware that they are capable of rising above it.

We — you — are not a body, as ACIM continually repeats, attempting to pry us away from identification with our animal nature and identification with only one portion of our Self. We are a physical presence, a mental capacity, an emotion quotient and — least acknowledged — a spiritual Master Energy, wrapped up in one persona. We’re Spirit playing at being human. When faced with a critical situation, it may be adrenalin that prevails but all portions of Self are at play. Calling upon that spiritual Self to lead the way is a moment by moment challenge and the only sane way forward.

One of the most important things we can do at any moment of crisis is to breathe — when we’re startled or threatened we automatically hold our breath. Breathing relaxes the body and allows in the assistance that we call forth. Breath, remember, IS life. Without it our brain function dims, momentarily, while our emotions spin up with hurricane force. If we focus on breathing for a moment, we will not focus on projections that may or may not be true.

The other thing that’s vital is our ability to momentarily detach. Buddhism gets a bad rap from its focus on detachment, which to the Western mind seems cold and calculated. Some wonder how detachment and compassion can exist within the same philosophy. We’re not looking High enough. Compassion is the higher octave of passion — and passion, as glorious and energizing as it is, is shot full of judgment and bias that colors an outcome. There is nothing neutral about passion. Compassion, on the other hand, carefully weighs the whole of the picture, defusing the drama and tilting toward our Higher inclinations.

When I was studying the spiritual arts at the little Chapel in Tucson years back, I was urged to learn how to come to ‘Center’ at the snap of my fingers. I would ‘need it,’ I was told. Truer words, as they say, were never spoken. Knowing what Center was comprised of was the challenge — how to get to there from here is harder without a destination in mind. Ultimately, because we are each the center of our own Universe, I came to a journey for that internal place of poise and calm that resides within each of us … and comprises the heart of our spiritual body.

Deepak Chopra tells us that we’re three aspects of creation in motion all at once — we’re the person doing, the thing happening and the observer of the event. Here’s the secret: the portion of ourselves that simply witnesses, compassionate and non-judgmental, disinvests any sense of drama or potential victimization our ego is waiting to magnify. Analysis coming from our mental body, and feelings arising from our emotional body, are safely factored into any physical response and put in proper perspective. The witness within us does not get its panties in a twist. It has the overview of our spiritual Self, eternal and powerful. In short, the witness is the adult in the room.

The Center we seek isn’t something we have to get; we already have it. It isn’t something we need to earn; it’s a built-in connection to what we actually are. It isn’t something that will take the fun out of life, but rather, something that will take the sting out of it while opening the floodgates to awareness. Like a little kid learning to walk, there may be spills and bumps in learning to trust our inner witness — to allow it as much power in our activities as, say, our personal wants and wishes. Last week we discussed surrender and trust — this is another step in that process.

If, during any point of high anxiety or emergency, we enter our Center — that witness portion of ourselves that can put a healthful distance between the illusions of 3D and the healing aspects of Higher thought — we will give ourselves EXACTLY what we need to feel better down the line. It’s the safety net we all seem to be working without, here on our 21st century high-wire, that is designed to minimize the emotional storm, the physical ramifications and mental anxiety that clutches at us. Our inner adult will take charge, collecting the information from the other bodies and putting it in Higher perspective — giving us a moment to collect our breath, allow creative insight to determine the next move and dissolve our resistance.

Here’s a quote from the Abraham-Hicks website that takes this further:

Resistance is about believing that you are vulnerable or susceptible to something not wanted and holding a stance of protection, which only holds you in a place of not letting in the Well-being that would be there otherwise. There is nothing big enough to protect you from unwanted things — and there are no unwanted things big enough to get into your experience.

Our Good is already in front of us, but remains out of reach if we keep from recognizing it; so learn to spot those internal voices of emotion, intellect and bodily desire that impede our willingness to do what intuition tells us. Our wisest and most satisfying impulse will come from our Higher Self, reflecting our authenticity and power. And that’s just the beginning: this is also the place from which we draw our mental, emotional and physical health and wellbeing.

When we are able to merge our energy bodies under the leadership of Higher Self, even the most difficult things become easier and less impactful. From that position, self-recrimination, attack and defense seems no longer worthy of our internal dialogue, releasing us from the twin demons of drama and victimization. Then we can thoughtfully respond to those things that happen in our lives, not react to them with the first solution that comes to [troubled] mind.

As I mentioned earlier, our job is to listen to, and accept, the assistance we’re given by our Higher Self. Ego will undoubtedly stand in the way of that direction, waving its flags of guilt and unworthiness and creating chaotic thought forms. That’s the resistance Abraham is referencing. Discerning the voices that we’re focused upon is a first step in taking authority over our creations and banishing our miscreations. No one incident, no matter how traumatic, has the ability to knock us off course if we have practiced coming to Center — and hundreds of small ones will keep us in chaos if we don’t.

Start with baby steps, if you haven’t tried this. Explore the witness portion of yourself and invite it to show you how detachment works. Practice moving into your witness-self to learn how to ‘let go’ of all those things that seem so critical and exhausting to control. Discover how self-interest quietly fades away when Self-interest takes the lead. Do it now so that you’ll be accomplished when you need it. It will integrate with the other aspects of yourself until it becomes automatic and people will be wondering how you got so calm, so unflappable, so … centered.

We’re either part of the problem in our lives and the world, or part of the solution. Unless we recognize that there is part of us that is wiser than the rest, working on a Higher level of awareness and possibility, we thrash around in our lives, helplessly. When we begin to trust what we find at Center, we discover how to go Lightly.

Namaste ~

Jude

So here’s the question: are you yourself? Are you the same person you were last week, last month, last year?

Spring has always been my most challenging period — it’s a “free space” in my astro chart where gremlins lurk and spark points brew. This year, gratefully, there were no big incidents that rearranged my life but it’s been a rollercoaster period these last weeks; perhaps for you, as well.

I know that every one of us is being challenged by our circumstances. We go about our day less shocked and surprised by the unexpected problems than we used to be; we’ve grown accustomed. In some ways, we’ve prepared ourselves for things to come flying at us from out of the blue. Keeping balance between being tuned in to the current psycho/social meltdown and expecting the worst is tricky. Being aware that we’re navigating stormy waters is required to keep alert; expecting them to swamp us can turn into self-fulfilling prophecy if we aren’t careful. Still, we’ve gathered our sea legs, most of us, to handle the twists and turns of this voyage. We’ve accepted the difficulty factor of this period in our lives. It helps to understand that this is Shift.

On an emotional level, there is so much to feel that it becomes exhausting to process. The danger, of course, is in shutting down and turning away from what is bubbling within us, begging to be acknowledged. What we don’t release, we’ll carry with us. Life is heavy enough without unexpressed emotion to drag along, coloring everything. If we don’t allow it space to dissipate, it can lodge in our relationships, careers, and even our bodies; making us deal with it in more dire scenarios. It’s not just the resentments, fears and sorrows of the day that want their moment of attention; it’s all that we’ve stuffed down and hung on to for this lifetime and more. If we too often have a day that just seems destined to be miserable — weepy and anxious — we may be in a process of release, long overdue. It helps to understand that this is also necessary to Shift.

On a physical level, many of us are handling dire pronouncements. These range from losing what has been familiar to us in living arrangements and relationships to body problems that seem too frightening and worrisome to contemplate. When these energies are ‘made manifest,’ they are harder to deal with than when they hover in either our thought system or our emotional bodies. Their complexity is more stubbornly resistant to ‘solving’ but they, too, can fall back to Grace — a change of perspective that allows us to come into our authentic power. I so admire those of you who are meeting these challenges with faith and willingness. You’re a beacon of hope and understanding for us all. This is also a part of the Shift, as our very personal physical experiences challenge our ingrained fears and reflect us back to ourselves.

There is another level of Shift that is valuable to understand in order to get perspective about our current experience. That’s the shift in Light energy that is coming in, wave after wave, tweaking the magnetics and amping in intensity. This has been going on to some degree for decades now, but lately it’s gotten dramatically insistent. If we don’t understand that the ethers are rumbling like thunder, pouring in more Light than we have accustomed ourselves to, we pin our sometimes erratic thoughts, emotions and physical symptoms on our circumstances. Our circumstances are, more likely, being impacted by the amperage. This is another of those fine lines we must navigate.

Here is how that’s playing out in my own life. I’ve been charting the energy escalation for almost twenty years. I feel it when a butterfly farts in China, if you get my drift. In some ways, my entire household is like a barometer for energy shifts and I’ve learned how to moderate my response to them. Some of you have wondered how I could remain so poised with so much going ‘wrong.’ Simply, my era of high anxiety and sleeplessness has been long behind me. But the last few weeks have been unusual.

I’m a night owl, sleeping only when I get that inner signal to drop off. For about five years, that came at precisely 12:36. I still don’t know why. I’d done the 11:11 and 12:12 awareness shifts long before and had only occasionally awakened for the 3:33 signals and the like — you Lightworkers know what I mean. Anyhow, on Earth Day I didn’t get that ‘sleep’ signal even though my mind was quiet and my body tired. Eventually, trying to force the issue, I lay in the dark doing relaxation techniques and managed to drop off into twilight sleep for a few hours around 4 in the morning.

In the 70s, leading an Edgar Cayce Search for God group, I’d kept a daily dream journal, setting my alarm to catch and record the details. Cayce felt that everyone has their own internal shorthand for symbolism, a personal system that makes books on dream interpretation mostly generic and misleading. At the end of those years, the Cosmos and I had developed an understanding — I wouldn’t ‘bring anything back’ unless it meant something important. I came out of my light sleep that morning with a note from my dreamscape that Larry King had entered into a plan to kill the Pisces of the world. Talk about obscure!

In the next days, my aura felt just a bit off kilter — I’ve experienced similar with a hangover. I was ‘out of phase’ but I was preoccupied with the difficult national and global issues of the moment, overshadowed by the tragic news of the oil leak in the Gulf. It took several days for me to get ‘back in my body.’ I wasn’t exactly nervous, but I seemed in a permanent state of High Alert. In my free time, I sage’d, I went barefoot in the dirt, I sipped soothing tea, I meditated and I dithered in mindless chores; all calculated to bring me back on track.

The weather has complicated perception, here in the Pea Patch. We’ve only had a couple of sunny days in the last two weeks. The constant rain has caused flooding inside and out and seems unwilling to move along. The temps have gone high and dipped low, erratic changes that bring tornadoes announced by emergency Doppler reports to beep-beep through whatever’s on television. I have a few re-runs I watch because they’re mindless and non-threatening enough to soothe me when I finally plop down on the couch. Watching the Red Zones circle you with tornado warnings is not a peaceful prospect, especially updated every few minutes. I do not to allow these to spin me up, here in a place of few if any disaster shelters; I trust my intuition to warn me of imminent danger, choosing instead to go to bed … but not to sleep. 12:36 comes and goes these days and I haven’t fully phased back into my body for more than a day or two in weeks.

From what I can tell, we’ve had at least three HUGE influxes of Light energy since Equinox. Our cellular structure, minds and emotions are working overtime to adjust to them. On a personal level, those of us who have consecrated our path toward Enlightenment are gaining in empathy, compassion and wisdom. Those who don’t know what the hell I’m talking about are becoming more anxious, frightened and resistant to change. As the incoming Light gets bolder, the Dark becomes more evident.

We are in a death spiral here on planet Terra, you can feel it, can’t you? The old version of life on this planet is closing out quickly now. We are engaged in formulating a new one. If you haven’t been yourself lately, it’s because that old self is passing away. IT HAS TO.

Mourn it if you wish but don’t fight what you’re becoming. Don’t pile on guilt if you find yourself suddenly cutting ties with those who suck you dry emotionally or keep you embattled intellectually. Don’t wring your hands in despair if your old interests no longer engage or comfort you — find that new thing that’s awaiting your passion and commitment. Let go of the things you thought you needed to be happy and keep a journal of what DOES make you happy — you may be surprised at how simple and organic happiness is.

Life is not static. We don’t get it right where we want it and expect it to stay put. It isn’t either/or — it’s everything/and. Things come to us, go from us but everything counts for good because the good is innate within us — it’s the signature energy we bring into our metamorphosis. We’re making myriad adjustments every day, some seem earth shaking but others we don’t even notice. It’s part of our drama here, our manifestation curve.

Think of this period as graduating from high school and preparing to enter college. Everything is changed, the old left behind and considered completed. We don’t know what’s ahead but we can tap the excitement of newness, adventure and creation as we move forward. Some day we’ll look back at our old selves, nostalgic for the simpler times but wondering what in the world we were thinking, wearing that hair and those clothes.

We will emerge from our cocoon to become a new person — an adult, but wings untried. We have flight ahead, we just don’t know it. We must trust that we are being equipped with everything we need.

Oh yes, and Larry King wanting to kill all the Pisces? The Gulf is dying, part of the great sea that is the womb of creation and the lifes blood of the Mother. When I think of Larry King — if I think of him at all — I think of a corporate hack, simplistic and unaware. I don’t dislike Larry, I just figure someone who could interview Deepak Chopra and ask if he’d ‘get to meet his grandmother in heaven’ is pretty clueless about Higher Thought and represents the lower vibration of mainstream understanding. Larry is symbolic of corporate America, skimming public sentiment for profit — Pisces is the sea and the endangered life within it.

If you will, what is happening in the Gulf is the kind of holocaust that Obi-wan felt in his being when the planet Alderaan was destroyed by the Death Star. It’s a fundamental wound to the Mother and therefore to each of us. If my subconscious hadn’t made mention of such a huge shift of energy I would have been surprised — and I brought it back in personal code because that’s my agreement with Spirit. We must send out loving thoughts and prayers of healing, support activism and creative innovation for the Gulf and protection of the ocean now and into the future. We are Gaia’s stewards — her midwives — in this birthing process and we’ve hit a very bad patch.

Back to the question. Are you the same person you were last week, last month, last year? No, of course you aren’t. The shifts aren’t outside of you so much as within you, as you adjust to the incoming Light. How could you still be that person you were yesterday?

We’re becoming more authentic, less dense, more lighted. More REAL. If it’s frightening sometimes or sorrowful sometimes, if we don’t recognize ourselves or our world, well — such is the business of Shift. And our essential lovingness remains the Heart of this transformation, our ability to embrace life as we find it and bless it with our awareness and creative appreciation.

I ran across a poem by Og Mandino today that said it beautifully:

I will love the sun
for it warms my bones
Yet I will love the rain
for it cleanses my spirit
I will love the light
for it shows me the way
Yet I will love the darkness
for it shows me the stars

Everything’s unusual now. Celebrate it, lean into it, play with it. Love all of it, beloved.

This is a period of growth our souls agreed to, and we came to experience it, to make the most of it and lift one another. This week, just remember that when you reach for the sun, you’ll eventually touch the stars.

Namaste ~

Jude