With Lizard, We Consciously Draw Our Dreams and Visions To Scale on Classroom Mothership Earth’s Blackboard

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A long time ago, I remember catching wind of a fantastic story that the Star Wars saga was actually based upon true events that took place in the Pleiades constellation.  I don’t know about that, but by George, has anyone else heard about a UFO documentary coming soon to a theater near you that posits a revelation of the truth about extraterrestrial involvement on Earth and our collective history?  In the spirit of that, has anyone heard the reimagined story of Master Yoda shedding light on Anakin Skywalker’s curiosity about the difference between Heaven and Hell?  Yoda respected Anakin’s natural Force (Chi) sensitivity and power.  Given that Anakin respected Yoda’s wisdom, he sought counsel from his reptilian friend, by asking Yoda to describe the difference between these places.  First, Yoda became uncharacteristically provocative with the young Jedi by putting him down, calling him a bastard son of a slave and elaborating in that manner. Given his orientation and propensity toward reacting to his anger without reserve, Anakin lit up his saber and was ready to behead his deeply respected Master teacher.  At that point, Yoda said, “hell that is.”  Immediately, Anakin remembered his True Self, relaxed, calmed down and cracked a smile as he put away his saber.  At that eternal moment, the wise lizard asserted, “Heaven this is . . . Physical location they are not, but internal state of consciousness they are.”

Here on Classroom Mothership Earth, a growing number of us are realizing that a deeper reality lies beneath our conscious minds and surface reality of our Planet.  Poignantly, I noticed a lizard arriving in my consciousness recently that served as a bell of mindfulness to pay attention to synchronicity, signs, symbols, dreams and visions.  In the theater of Life, it’s as if lizard is there to help us realize that we are the dreamer behind the dream by watching ourselves with a healthy, detached perspective.  By consciously allowing the arrival of the Dreamtime into our material reality, we are invoking a light-hearted dance between spirit and form.  Meditation on lizard is good medicine for that.  We are here to wake up to the reality that we are spiritual beings having human experiences, not the other way around.  But in our developmentally delayed cultural wars between our attachments to the egotistical mental constructs of us and them, we have been programmed to view ourselves as disconnected and separate from one another and from Great Spirit.  However, we are all One and we are here to wake up to the awareness of that.  I like to dream big and envision peace in the Middle East and a Garden of Eden there now as a Fertile Crescent it once was.  However, I know that I am also part of the heaviness that resides in the energetic field that envelops the old world of Abraham, founding father of the World’s Big Three religions.  Some folks view Israel as a democracy, while carrying a separate intellectual concept that perceives the rest of the region otherwise.  But with respect to the classic Woodie Guthrie song, both lands are part of Great Spirit, meant to be shared in harmony.  We are all part of the land, as the Earth is our Mother.  What we do to Her, we do to ourselves.  While I envision the global dismantling of weapons of mass destruction, I know that I have to disentangle the tentacles of egotism that resides in my Being.  It is seductive to worship the god of judgment and opinion, like a good armchair quarterback.  When we wake up to the awareness that mind is an illusion, we are no longer unconscious robots in the human-made constructs of the world.  When the CEO’s and workers of fast food corporations awaken to the perspective that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, perhaps they will break bread together by enacting a more livable, equitable and sustainable business practice.  Somewhat akin to effectively digesting last week’s hungry Lunar Full Moon, we stick in alignment by shifting gears that facilitate a healthy digestion process when cooking up a New Earth–particularly as we move closer to the Winer Solstice on December 21, 2012.  It might feel like small potatoes, but even one fry can make a difference in France and beyond.

When we allow the light to illuminate the shadows, we look authentically at our natural orientation, especially our shadow sides.  When we keep our wits about us to laugh at ourselves like the full bellied Buddha, we see that Nature often holds up a mirror for us to look at, particularly our shadow sides. Ingesting lizard medicine is a good remedy for this walking meditation.  Saying yes to the energy of lizard means that we say yes to increasing our perceptual powers and heightened sensitivities to physical, emotional, mental, psychic and spiritual subtleties in perception.  But remember to proceed with caution and be mindful of the ego’s trickery during this process.  Increasing our true power means we are neither superior or inferior to anyone else.  There is ego in powers of perception.  Awareness understands that we simply are what we are and it is what it is.  We are consciousness itself, rather than what consciousness has identified with.

Stay True,

Ari

Feasting With Turkey, We Give Thanks For Our Shared Blessings

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I remember hearing stories about turkey leading the flock by harmonically harvesting balance, here on the ground of Classroom Mothership Earth.  For example, turkey notoriously drives squirrels nuts when She levels the playing field by taking back squirrel’s stockpiled hoard.  Whether a nervous woodland creature’s modern-day version of Robin Hood, or a Shaman from the Americas, turkey is good medicine for warding off evil spirits.  Have you ever noticed a room lighten up-almost immediately after someone new enters a shared space, where the air just felt heavy with an attached negative vibe?  If so, you might have been the free recipient of some turkey’s shared blessing.  Turkey’s strength lies in their numbers.  When consuming their energy, turkey has the potential to awaken inner vision, feminine energies and infinite possibilities.  In our modern world of 10, 000 things and bling-bling, the more humanity consciously consumes turkey’s positive spirited energy, the more we co-create a more equitable and sustainable New Earth.  Isn’t this just another utopia (or dystopia), ego-centered labeling mechanism describing a totalitarian new world order, communism, socialism and/or devilishly fixed idea of Heaven?  No.  What we are talking about right here, right now is a perceptual shift in consciousness, starting at the intrinsic, individual state of consciousness and reflecting back that picture of the world around us.  From the perspective of Great Spirit, turkey reflects win-win scenarios where abundance is available for all of us to share.  We become the change we want to see in the world. 

Have folks caught wind of the forecast that Wal-Mart workers will strike on Black Friday?  Don’t we already have way too much stuff?  How much money do the heirs to the Wal-Mart empire really need anyway?  Is it really too much to ask that the working folks of Wal-Mart earn a livable wage, with access to the same health care as Wal-Mart’s top dawgs enjoy?  Cheap for me to say, I’ve hardly shopped at Wal-Mart since it came on the scene.  However, when I pass one of their stores, I imagine the building running on renewable energy, with a greenhouse-like park atop its structure and a garden-like oasis that families and children can safely enjoy.  Maybe a sweet penthouse nestles there, like an oversized wolf den, where the landlords and groundskeepers live like Hobbits, boroughed within the structure.  But I digress.  We have much suffering, polarity and disparity on Earth today.  Climate Change is forecasting stormy weather that is affecting the way we live.  Are we going to allow ourselves to get in alignment with Nature, or are we going to resist the changes in weather so within and as reflected in our outer world?  To date, we humans have been so outer directed in our program development.  And yet, we are pre-wired to evolve into our Higher Selves, where the cosmetic and insatiable old world of the dying ego is losing its grip on our plight.  Great Spirit resides within all of us, just waiting to awaken to flow like a fountain of youth that gives freely and replenishing itself endlessly.  When we enough of us awaken within ourselves by welcoming turkey’s shared blessings, we simultaneously co-create an egalitarian human family of politicians, business folk, movers and shakers and salt of the Earth folks that intuitively know reciprocity and egoless harmonic giving and receiving.  At this moment in time, we will see turkey’s meditations reflected more clearly in our internal experience with external reality, with an unfolding convergence.

Being present is not always easy.  In fact, it is easier to be distracted from the present moment, hypnotically lost in the robotic doings, than to merge with it.  Yes, there is an endless commentary from the voice in the head that feeds off incessant, predominately unconscious and mostly repetitively negative thoughts and the accompanying choir of emotional reactions.  When we become aware that we are aware, we create space around our thoughts and attached emotional reactions.  The more frequently we become a passive observer, the more we are equipped to watch this drama unfold like a movie before our eyes, without reacting to it.  When this becomes an integral part of our daily walking meditation, we start replacing those pesky soap operas, by consciously choosing to co-direct a solution focused script.  Perhaps the ring tone of this melody sounds like a John Lennon earworm singing, I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round.  In dreaming a new dream, solutions are our focus, rather than creating problems that the ego insatiably feeds on.  The most important prayer, if you will, is to carry an attitude of gratitude with what is happening right now in this present moment.  Find a way to say thank you to whatever the situation might bring.  Like a vampire bite, dark emotions carry venom.  Bloody serious.  Why not sink your teeth into turkey to ward off foul food for thought?  In spirit of birds of a feather flocking together, use this energy to drink in the turkey medicine in you, pass it on and be pleasantly full. 

Stay True,

Ari

Isn’t Owl Medicine a Hoot?

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I remember our child coming home from school, sporting an owl’s mask recently. Some moments thereafter, I was having a conversation with folks in a shelter from the storm and couldn’t help but feel captivated by an owl statue nesting there.  Following that, I received a spirited forecast from some friends that included owl’s significance at this time on Nature’s clock.  Owl’s medicine is powerful and we recognize its wisdom when paying attention to the omens in our lives, particularly when watching Channel Now, here on Classroom Mothership Earth.  In becoming more conscious in our program development, we are noticing ring tones getting louder that are arriving in our consciousness in the forms of visions, dreams and deeper feelings.  In our awakening, we see our soul’s recognition of these nuances and making the necessary shifts in alignment with our changing tides accordingly.  When we allow ourselves to heed the calling of Great Spirit, the Universal Quarterback if you will, we empower ourselves to expand our collective awareness, rather than analyzing exclusively from our intellect.  There is nothing wrong with using our intellect. However, if we only rely on our intellect without balancing our awareness and intuition, then we will collectively continue participating in the current nightmare we are living in, proliferate human egotism, suffering and our ultimate extinction on our planet.  When Jesus said, “be of good cheer!  It is I; do not be afraid”, what he was talking about is humanity waking up to the I Am Presence within our own inner state of consciousness.  In the spirit of that, we co-create Heaven on Earth.  The Christ wasn’t telling us to develop a devilishly fixed idea that demanded our blind worship of a mental concept of an iconic rock star.  He wasn’t asking us to be groupies, rather he was asking us to evolve into the light of consciousness.  I believe that Creator manifested Christ Consciousness into the body of Christ so that we embody Being when we are awake.  Like Christ, consuming owl energy assists us in effectively seeing in the dark without being afraid.  When we perceive through owl’s lens, we peer into the future, akin to the psychical power of clairvoyance.  Beyond the realm of probability and statistics, lies the higher realm of Infinity, where possibilities abound. 

We are at a crossroads today in our Nation, Americans, Planet and Universe throughout.  Not long ago, the United States was in a civil war when Abraham Lincoln our Nation’s President.  The Country was divided then, as it is today.  Slavery existed then as it does today.  Both the master and the slave suffer from the shackles of ego-centered oppression.  We are more polarized than ever and on the brink of something unknown, as many prophesies and calendar’s have forecasted.   While we almost had our first orange President (but with white ears), we still have our first biracial President of European and African decent.  Curiously, owl hints at reincarnation.  Has anyone else out there observed that Barack Obama looks strikingly similar to Abraham Lincoln, in both physical stature and energetically?  Have you heard the positing that Obama is the reincarnation of Lincoln?  Will he suffer the same fate for standing his ground on the edge of the cliff as we all gaze into the Great Void of the unknown?  Many of us are sleepwalking through our lives, as if in a hypnotic trance, lost in the robotic doings of life and completely identified with the voice in the head.  Who is that voice?  Do we have the courage to take the quantum leap into unchartered territory?  When you read the politics of this blog, do you find yourself feeling whacked at times?  That is what it feels like to wake up and it does not feel comfortable or secure.  But there is security in knowing that waking up is both a death and a rebirth.  Waking up means we are willing to allow ourselves to effectively weather the Climate Change of  growing pains when shedding our old skin and rising up from the ashes like the phoenix.  Do you have a tendency to resist the weather inside of you and as reflected in the outside world around you?  Or, do you consciously accept what is and say yes to the situation as it unfolds, through radical internal non-resistance and pacifism?  This does not mean we condone the tyranny.  Rather, it means that we accept what is.  In that acceptance, we harness our power and take conscious action to do something about it.  By releasing negative pollution within, we send it into the fire and transform this energy into a renewable higher vibration.  This is what happens when we heed the messages from our lower Chakras by feeling those experiences organically and then sending them love, by cutting back to inner peace by sticking in alignment with our Higher Chakras. 

Now is the time to be in alignment with our spirit, mind and bodies.  Now more than ever, it is a good time to give thanks and let go.  We are all living vessels traveling here together.  Now is the time for our business and political leaders, the haves, the have a little, want mores and the have-nots to accurately reflect policies that embrace what is good for the goose and gander alike.  There is enough and we can all win.  There is nothing to be afraid of.  The power and labor of Love is a boundless energy that springs eternal.  In the music within, can’t you hear the earworm, celebrate we will because Life is short but sweet for certain?  Remember that the moon will still shine, the sun will still rise and our darkness is our sunlight.

Stay True,

Ari

Patroling with alligator, adapting with coyote and making magic with cats

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I remember alligator vividly swimming into my dreams this week.  Alligator symbolizes primal energies of birth, motherhood and initiation and reminds us that we cannot experience death without life, nor life without death.  Alligator navigates water and land, symbolizing birth and creation.  Breathing fire into mythical connections to dragon, alligator reminds us to dig in our own Beings to unearth the treasures hidden within our own Secret Garden.  Alligator is good medicine to consume for cultivating new wisdom.  Its power moves swiftly, but if we do not harness its creative flood by staying buoyant, then we will sink like a stone.  Alligator powerfully helps us swim with the energies of the New Moon on Tuesday, November 13th.  Like a master T’ai Chi martial artist, alligator maintains a wide open angle gaze, while remaining submerged in water.  Energetically, its medicine hints at higher vision and clairvoyance.  In alligator’s wake, we notice the trickster coyote trotting into our consciousness, reminding us to carry a sense of humor and not take ourselves too seriously.  Coyote gets caught up in his own tricks, which do not always work.  Paradoxically, the tricks reveal treats in the form of laughter and joking that elevates consciousness and energetically lighten things up by stoking new and different viewpoints.  Coyote helps us balance the delicate dance of wisdom and folly.  Pouncing forward, cats remind us of the magical and mysterious elements of Life, provided that we are willing to navigate the darkness effectively.  Following election day, our cat revealed a penny to me from 1968, just before the light of day.  Somewhat akin to that era, present day Maine leveled the playing field by opening up marriage to all folks, regardless of how they are oriented in their sexuality.  Today, the line that was drawn and the curse that was cast evaporated before our eyes, but not without formidable resistance from a mountain of opposition.  Cats help us tap into the magic and mystery of Life, even when we feel that we are on the ropes, so to speak.  Their energy helps us wake up and see more clearly, even if we are hypnotically sleepwalking in the dark. 

On the surface, our planet is a hot mess, while the belly of our Mother is cooking up Climate Change as She re-births Herself.  In our Nation’s changing demographics, we nearly had our first orange president, chameleon that he is.  Has anyone out there noticed that many Caucasians, particularly those with economical means and positions of power are turning orange these days?  Thankfully, coyote helps us get comfortable in our own skin and embrace ourselves in the way we are naturally oriented. But the orange brother was defeated, as Barack Obama was re-elected to a second term, with high hopes from many that he will lead more gracefully during our transition into Aquarian Unity.  However, we need to remember that he is a business candidate of Wall Street and a crafty politician.  Movements like Occupy Wall Street are not going away, just as resistance from our friends in Congress, Supreme Court and High Command will continue to intensify.  The era of the wealthy viewing our Mother as a playground for the privileged is dying, just as the appetite for equal access to resources growing.  But spirited wisdom teaches that there are no enemies, separations or us and them.  We are all cut from the same cloth in the eyes of Creator.  Here in Maine, the will of the people recognized that the valued tradition of marriage will expand to all human orientations.  Gay folks will no longer be legally closeted and viewed as separate but equal from their heterosexual friends, whom until now, have exclusively enjoyed the privileges of marital membership.  Many folks have opened up their minds and hearts to the understanding that holding back our gay brothers and sisters from playing on a level field is the same form of discrimination as the color-gender line from an era ago.  What a long, strange trip it has been, but with clean energy, we keep on truckin’.

Are you feeling invested in and identifying with the robotic doings of everyday life?  Do you feel identified with any particular role that you play in your life?  Are you invested in the realm of outcomes and expectations?  Perhaps the energies of alligator, coyote and cat will help you dissolve and disarm those pesky entanglements with form and help your spirit express itself more freely and responsibly in this world of 10, 000 things.  During the week ahead, may we consider ingesting the energies of alligator, coyote and cat in our consciousness.  In this process, we gently allow ourselves to re-create ourselves anew by tapping into our primal depth, keeping our wits about us when balancing our wisdom and follies and remembering the magic and mystery of our daily routine.  Together, we watch the movie of our lives unfold before our eyes wide open.

Stay True,

Ari

Dreaming with Salamander and cleansing withTurkey Vulture

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I remember walking along the trails with a student, when he noticed a salamander.  After exhaling dead air, I felt alive after taking a conscious breath of fresh air.  Further along the festival of Life, I became engaged in another conversational flow with one of the cats I roll with from around the way.  After helping him pick up some fallen branches left over from Hurricane Sandy, I said a prayer of gratitude for the storm’s minimal impact in our neck of the woods, while simultaneously expressing a silent blessing to our friends to our South that were affected more dramatically.  Given that I had just cast my absentee ballot, our conversation quickly cut to a commercial about going blue.  Although I didn’t turn into a wolverine or get depressed while listening to my feline friend’s assertion to vote in that hue, it saddens me that we are merely one step away from a dictatorship here in the United States, in that we are more polarized than ever in our collectively boxed-in mindsets.  But seeing two women on a presidential ticket here in the USA fills my heart Chakra green with hope!  When we truly walk in alignment with Nature, we shift our focus less on the odds by levitating into the realm of Infinity, where holographic possibilities abound.  With turkey vulture and salamander as a spirit guides, we ride the thermals of life, elevate our Auric vision and invigorate our energetic field around us.  Moreover, we shed our old skin to make way for rebirth and effectively navigate the elemental forces of land and water.  In this process, we co-create Heaven on Earth by consuming a healthy spirited diet, while feathering each other’s ripple in a positive vibration of Love and Light.

If we are to co-create a more egalitarian culture here in the Nation, the Americas, Planet and Universe throughout, we need to heed the cadence of Classroom Mothership Earth and the heart of Great Spirit.  All creatures, great and small, above and below are equal in the eyes of Great Spirit and we are all nourished by our Mother Earth.  Nature has an organic way of leveling the playing field and we see that play out in Climate Change.  Some of you have noticed that I have selected Tom Brady as a metaphor for staying calm in the pocket, especially when blitzed by unpredictable and turbulent weather patterns in the form of Giants.  Tom Brady personifies someone who may not have been blessed with the greatest natural talent, but he has become greatness by avoiding catastrophes time and again.  Specifically, the future Hall of Fame quarterback effectively demonstrates T’ai Chi like subtle movements in the pocket, psychically reading and adjusting to relentless defensive storm fronts and maintains a wide open angle gaze downfield, while believing in the possibility of making a big play, against apparent all odds.  Now if you think I’m throwing low balls at the rest of the team around him, I’ll bet that turkey vulture would concur that would be a foul ball.  Like a salamander, Brady slithers between the elements and demonstrates metamorphosis right in front of our eyes.  Like switching gears from running and passing, Mother Nature shows us similar shifting fronts of waning light and movement toward the dark.  Here in the Northern hemisphere, we officially turn our clocks yinward in the week ahead.  Masculine-yang energy is fading to black as feminine-yin energy is becoming more dominant, until it’s climax on the Winter Solstice and the end of the Mayan Calender on December 21, 2012.

Given the corporate media’s compartmentalized view of Nature’s new normal, we must get into alignment with Climate Change by embracing this phenomenon, rather than resisting it.  Humanity has a say in how we navigate this process and rather than hate the media, we must become the media.  On a personal spiritual front, experiential wisdom reminds us that what we resist persists and we must become the change we want to see in the world.  Yes, large socialist mega-corporations that continue to rape and abort our Mother need to wake the f-bomb up and stop fracking around folks, as my Midwestern aunt that likes to rant provocatively asserts.  We are spiritual beings having human experiences.  As such, we have the capacity to right the ship, come about and lead an unprecedented shift in consciousness while floating on the waters of life.  When we see things in our field of vision that are alarming, the Universe is providing us an opportunity to send the power of Love to whatever floats in our orbit.  That means that we acknowledge our anger and other flood of negative emotions that arrive and then gently breath those feelings out, while sending them Love for compost.  In a sense, we swim on land and surf the shifting tides into a New Age and Paradigm, one step, one breath and one moment at a time.  This kind of mulching has a much more pleasant stink to it than getting stuck in the muck.  By sending Love to our inner space, we shift from pollution to healthy renewable energy for all to share. 

Stay True,

Ari

Flying high with Eagle, staying grounded with Racoon and keeping it real with Blue Jay

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I remember walking out of school the other day, while joining in with some co-workers gazing at a bald eagle soaring the heavens over a near-by stream.  I couldn’t help but snatch the friendly reminder to pay close attention to our spirited encounters with our animal friends and open up to their cadence to walk with one foot in the material realm, while also stepping into the realm of Infinity.  In much the same way as an eagle flying over a valley, our ripple was feathered to pause to reflect on its teaching that we need to remember to see the big picture in the Book of Life and see all directions.  Moreover, eagle has strong talons that remind us to keep our feet on the ground, so that our spirits don’t soar too high.  In this way, we maintain perspective and balance when bringing back wisdom from the Dreamtime, for effective integration into our Earth Walkabout.  But with this great power, comes great responsibility.  Some moments later, blue jay sent an assertive and positive tweet to remember to stay true to ourselves.  Somewhere in time thereafter, a dead racoon reminded me that Fall is leaving us behind and the veils are thinning at this junction in Nature’s Cycle.  Raccoon helps us remember that it is a good time to wear masks while exploring primal knowing and accessing wisdom from Unknown realms.  Raccoon medicine helps us become true master martial artists in the sense that we cleverly know what mask to wear to tap into our inner power.  Further, raccoon helps us balance our intellect and intuition to effectively sort through this process and relax and allow what we are looking for to appear organically.

Does anyone else out there in the participatory audience wonder why these free offerings aren’t all over the mass media to assist us in an effectively transition into a New Age and Paradigm?  I know some of the top dawgs at the top 1% experience a high concentration of Nervous Woodland Creature energy when considering this possibility.  From a position of empathy, some folks might wonder where they fit in, when barking up a more colorful tree with deeper roots.  And I know many folks that pass for white privilege in America feel that they are losing their country.  Some folks remember their working class parents having good jobs, more leisure time and nice vacations away at camps with access to waterways and outdoor fun.  But when we open up to the realm of Infinity, we know that abundance is there for all of us here in our nation, the Americas, planet and Universe throughout.  Although I believe in a philosophically free-market, based on bartering and sharing of resources–a simple shift in taxation with representation means less money for weapons of mass destruction and equal access to eco-friendly resources with special emphasis on the human factor.  We need to remember that what is good for the goose is good for the gander, ma chucka.  What would happen if humanity were to embrace the amazing power within us and send love to everything?  I have been practicing this skill when observing how polarizing politics have become, especially here in the USA.  In fact, many of my liberal and progressive friends out there became enraged when some Republican candidates said that pregnancies resulting from rape are part of God’s intention.  And of course folks on the religious right argue that God would never allow a woman to choose to abort her child.  With all this bickering, what gets lost is that free access to quality health care co-creates less rapes and less unwanted births.  However, the Hidden Hand wants the prize-fight to continue, while distracting us from the truth that there are devilishly dominant forces that wants to remain unexamined–the Great Deceiver, if you will.  Some of my closest friends sarcastically laughed me out of a room when I accurately pointed out that President Obama, when it comes to policy, is really a moderate Republican, business candidate of Wall Street.  Mitt Romney, the other pop candidate is right-wing white guy that speaks in a paternalistic tone and sprays himself to look darker to appeal to folks of color.  What a chameleon.  Really, master illusionist Carl Rove and company don’t scale back to buy our vote!  Can’t you hear the thunderous W.C. Fields energy commenting, what a catastrophe.

So what can we do about this mess?  Checking in with our inner voice and voting with our conscience is typically good medicine.  With open hearts, we send love everywhere.  We are pre-wired by Great Spirit to let our inner light shine and illuminate the shadows within our inner space and without our orbit.  Like Jim Belushi’s character in Animal House once said, “it don’t cost nothin’.”  If you find yourself disillusioned during this election year, with the ways of the world, or more importantly what is going on within yourself, just send love to it.  Take an honest look at your thoughts, how you are feelings right now in this moment and simply send love to whatever arrives in your field of vision.  Yes, feeling shame and guilt are important to own so that we may move forward in our journey.  After taking an authentic look at why we feel shame and guilt, we become ready to send love to the shame and guilt, so that it can be released for healthy compost.  Then notice what happens.  I welcome your experiences with that.  Also, please enjoy powerful energies of the Full Moon without getting a fever or too nervous and try to stay calm in the pocket during the hurricane.

Stay True,

Ari

Roaring with Lion

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I remember watching an after school PBS program with our child recently.  Although I have not yet had the privilege of seeing a lion in the wild, I am named after this creature and even within the comforts of our own home, it is strikingly obvious that it’s a jungle out there.  However, we humans are pre-wired with the capacity to borrow lion’s courage when we need to assert ourselves by clearly stating our goals and objectives with dignity and respect.  While all creatures are equal members of Great Spirit’s pride, is there a more noble creature than lion?  Yes, having an attitude of gratitude is always good medicine to ingest while leaving our Carbon Footprint during our Earth Walkabout.  Given that we are expanding souls, it is merely natural for us to want more.  Regardless of how powerful the ‘Wizard of Oz’ might appear, meditation on lion helps us remember to access courage within ourselves.  In this process, we discover how to tap into our feminine energies of creativity, intuition and imagination.  Moreover, lions are natural martial arts masters,  in the sense that they are here to teach us how to pursue our desires through stealth by avoiding danger and confrontation.  In much the same way as Master Yoda taught Luke during his Jedi training–lion reminds us that the Force (Chi) is used for knowledge and defense only.

On the global, geo-political front, prideful phat cats are sitting atop mega-corporations, while devilishly violating every conceivable free-market principle, though bullying abuses of power and economic strangulation.  Here in the Americas, it is an election year in the USA.  As featured on the Corporate Media, the Presidential ego-centered debate revealed to us yet again that president gas is still president gas.  While current President Obama identifies himself as a Democrat, the reality is that his policies are that of a moderate Republican, given that he is a business candidate of Wall Street.  True, he has spoken in populist rhetoric that resonates with many of my progressive and liberal friends out there, but wake-up and smell the coffee folks!  So what, are you going to vote for Mitt Romney to protest the conservative, business as usual mantra that bank on us in staying stuck in fixed, intellectual concepts?  Even further to the right on the political spectrum, Romney is a step closer to fascism than Obama.  A Romney administration will cut already miserly social-democratic programs and will funnel more money to the top 1% of the wage earners.  In fact, ever since the New Deal was reluctantly implemented during the era of FDR, it has been continuously beaten back by corporate power.  If you grew up in a place like South Philadelphia or any other blue-collar community with working class values, you probably thought that becoming a Republican and working for a private company was an act of rebellion and saw yourself as a cut above the other stray cats in the old neighborhood.  As Americans, we are living in a more polarizing times that ever and yet we are properly indoctrinated to allow the corporate media to successfully pull the wool over our eyes, by sleep walking in a hypnotic trance-like state.  But big money is a well-oiled machine and keeps our fuel injected Military-Industrial Complex running on Dunkin.  Really, even a cop can hardly afford a donut these days.  As if that were icing on the cake, drug dealers and private tyrannies run health care.  Before giving myself an earthquake like we had in Maine recently, I remember to channel Chris Rock’s energy by reminding folks (by cracking on insurance companies) that if they were really doing their jobs, then they would return our investment in them if we did not end up using what we paid them for in the first place!  Insurance companies make their money by betting on the probability and statistics that they will score a maximum economic profit, before we lay claim to one iota of what we paid into their pool of cash.  Dead serious, isn’t that enough to make anyone sick?

Perhaps some folks out there are not purring after reading this blog entry.  Maybe some others feel helpless about what they might do about it.  However, isn’t the cat’s meow that we can take responsibility for our own individual state of consciousness?  Getting stuck in negative thoughts and feelings will only yield more negative returns.  But choosing to look at the ways of the world with an open heart and mind and send love our internal experiences with them is empowering on both a personal and collective front.  Like a lion, we might not look like we are working harder, but we can learn to work smarter by focusing on the positive and by becoming more conscious and mindful of our thoughts, feelings and behavioral patterns.  When we meditate on the energy of lion, we stoke the Weather Underground by breathing fire into a New Sun and co-create a New Earth one step, one breath and one moment at a time. 

Stay True,

Ari

Isn’t Cougar Medicine the Cat’s Meow?

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Does anyone remember the great Native American footballer Jim Thorpe, or Wa Tho Huk, which translates as Bright Path in English?  Jim Thorpe was Sac and Fox Indian (and a wee bit Irish too) and was born and raised on a Reservation.  Although Bright Path never competed in the pentathlon or decathlon until he ventured to the Olympics in the early 1900’s, he won both events and was declared the world’s greatest athlete by the King of Sweden at the time.  But given how institutionalized racism was back then, Thorpe’s medals were taken away from him, citing a violation that he earned a few bucks playing semi-pro baseball before he competed in the Olympics.  There was nothing uncommon about that back then, just that Jim didn’t use a different name like other athletes did and later admitted that he wasn’t very wise to the ways of the world.  For those of us that watch professional football today, it might be hard to imagine that a Native American was the first president of the NFL (before the league was called the NFL).  Moreover, there is an old story that Wa Tho Huk shed light on some white players who didn’t want to level the playing field by allowing some black players to join in, by asserting something to the degree of, who cares what color they are, we’re here to play some football!  In today’s game, it’s hard to be a person of color and become President and it’s not always easy for a white man to be allowed to run with the ball.  But as we move on up into a New Age and Paradigm, we celebrate the good times of our diversity in unity as colorful rainbow children of Great Spirit.  Given his versatile athleticism and capacity to know when to lead and when to follow, I wonder if Jim Thorpe had a cougar totem as a power animal spirit guide?

Here in the Americas, the planet and Universe throughout, we are moving full steam ahead toward the Samhain, where the veils thin and the playing field levels between the material realm and the spirit realm.  With an election year rapidly approaching, I wonder if there will be trickery of coyote energy during this presidential election?  Will it be somewhat akin to 2000, when America flip-flopped between moderate Republican Al Gore and right-winger George W. Bush?  What a bunch of malarkey we have going on in American politics today!  Yet again, we have two candidates of Wall Street in our business run society that protects the status quo and seeks to block leveling impulses with expensive consequences that tax the average working American, who still tends to vote against his own interest, but without realizing it.  America is a business run society and it shows.  However, even a business run society has the potential to weave more egalitarian spiritual strands into its webbed matrix.  When resources are shared in a more equitable way, we see that there is enough and we can all win.  When our collective program nurtures healthy development of all neurons and neighborhoods with an open mind and open heart, then we equally invest in all sentient beings being equal creations of Great Spirit and nurture our Mother.  Do we continue pillaging our Mother that gives us life during our Earth walkabout or do we choose to dream a new dream?   Do we allow ourselves to shed light on psychic blood sucking vampires with dark energies surrounding them like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan?   Do we allow skilled politicians fed by egotism to continue feeding off the ignorance of the American public at large?  Do we continue to vote for our current policies that suppress and repress our Global Community?  Who knows for sure, but remember there is a real political slugger named Rocky that is trying to run up the Capital steps that I hear makes a lot of political sense.  What is the old guard afraid of by allowing run-off elections and giving politicians free and equal access to air time?

With cougar, we have the potential to wake up and find the confidence to get in touch with our own true power.  In that, we learn to balance when to assert our power with masculine-yang energy and when to gently allow it to unfold in more feminine-yin energetic expressions.  Cougars are natural tai chi masters in that they teach us when to follow and when to lead, when to speak and when to listen.  All great leaders are good listeners.  And good listeners know how to hear the pulse of the planet and understand how to respond to the needs of our global community.  Cougars can jump up to 40 feet.  While meditating on cougar energy, just imagine the possibilities if humanity borrows its medicine to take a quantum leap forward into a New Earth!  Remember that when we become healthier by digging in and unearthing our own power, we need to ward off the naysayers that want to hold us back by convincing us to maintain the Satanic better the devil you know mantra.  Godspeed . . .  

Stay True,

Ari

Porcupine Medicine

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I remember hearing stories of some Native American tribes using porcupine needles for acupuncture.  While most of us think about acupuncture, yoga and other meditations as arriving to us as gifts from the East, a closer look points us to these same treasures being available right here in the Americas.  Perhaps the Fountain of Youth, in much the same way as the Holy Grail was the relentless pursuit for what is already available to all of us, if only we allow for it.  While hiking in the woods yesterday, I exchanged pleasantries with a nice couple along the path.  Moments thereafter, I heard a rustling in the leaves and noticed a young porcupine schlepping along as only our prickly rodent friends can.  I called out to my hiking friends and we all enjoyed watching porcupine with a renewed sense of wonder and childhood curiosity and innocence.  Had I been too distracted by taking in the radiant falling leaves or been too invested in fantastic imaginative realms, I would have missed the opportunity to indulge in the encounter with porcupine and share it with a larger participatory audience in the theater of life.

Did anyone out there see the recent presidential debate between the typically cool President Obama and mild-mannered challenger Mitt Romney?  I only made it through about a third of the event, when I started fighting off demons.  Was it just me, or did Obama’s energy radiate flat Chi?  I tried to imagine how I would have felt, or my wife for that matter, if our anniversary was celebrated by a big money corporate event, like a professional sports playoff game.  In our developmentally delayed culture in the USA, we thrive on winners and losers and spend relentlessly on winning a desired outcome.  In professional football, bounties are offered as incentive to exploit an edge and it’s the same way in with respect to the top dawgs in politics.  For example, in the ego-centered debate, our two-headed, one-party system is censored by a Corporate mob that will cut to a commercial if real issues are discussed in a truthful light.  If votes really didn’t count, then big money would not try to block certain populations from voting.  What are they afraid of?  Here in America, we have been so indoctrinated by Corporate propaganda to believe that democracy, capitalism and a free market are the same thing.  I still believe in a free for service economy that looks more like a philosophical free market based on bartering.  However, a more immediate and pragmatic solution is to infuse spiritual values into capitalism, where cooperation and competition are balanced and a round-table approach where circles are valued, rather than the dying linear, top-down and hierarchical approach that mirrors what we see on the tele.  By focusing on our inner spiritual development, seeing the silver lining and making only positive interpretations will take us to the Promised Land so within, as without.  Rather than worrying about whether right-winger Mitt Romney wins the election or not, focus on porcupines medicine to release our judgments, perceive beyond the veil of separation and experience Unity with Creator and All That Is.

Many of us on the spiritual path become too serious and forget the innocence and humility of what the energy of porcupine has to offer us, by remembering playfulness and curiosity as a way of life.  Many adults get too bogged down in trying to be too intellectual or trapped in the vicious cycle of greed and fear.  However, Great Spirit has a Divine Plan and we all have the freedom to get into alignment with that.  There is a much bigger picture going on than political victories.  If we have faith in Divine Intervention and we become the change we want to see in the world, by letting go of outcome, then we know that the Kingdom of Heaven is everywhere, provided we stay awake with an open heart.  Porcupine helps our energy flow in a healthy direction toward healing, rather than becoming stuck in victim consciousness with whatever shame and guilt we might feel.  These negative energies of our lower chakras are meant to serve and inform us about ourselves.  Once we understand and accept their messages, typically vis-a-vis bodily signals, then we are equipped to release their dysfunctional stories and co-create something new.  Porcupine is merely one point that works to stimulate energetic alignment in climbing onward in our journey together–especially as we leave behind a dying world and move closer to fine in a whole New World.

Stay True,

Ari

With Rat, We Find Success and Press Onward, While Leaving Behind Familiar Woodpiles

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I remember the energy of rat entering my consciousness this week and thought it poignant to reflect on our Nervous Woodland Creature friend for this week’s journal entry.  At school, we are reading the book The Rats of Nihm to our students, while they sit captivated by how shrewd the countryside rats are, with relation to their lab rat counterparts. However, it isn’t that country rats are superior to city rats or white lab rats, as elitist intellectuals might secretly suspect from positions of judgment.  Rats have been popular among social scientists, as they have shown an ability to form cognitive maps and reason.  In fact, if a rat learns where to go to get a tasty morsel of cheese as a reward and when the cheese is removed, the rat will learn a new pathway to the Promised Land.  We humans, on the other hand, tend to keep going back to the once Fertile Crescent, even when it is no longer serving us.  Rats are adaptable, restless, shrewd and are oriented toward success.  But getting attached to any energy, in the spirit of human ego, is somewhat akin to a rat developing an attachment to the comforts of familiar woodpiles.  Further, egotism seeks to strengthen its identity through the relentless pursuit of happiness, rather than knowing inner joy as a way of life.  Sometimes living authentically takes staring fear square in the face, stepping outside of familiar woodpiles and taking it to the edge for growth to occur.  And then blue jay flies in and reminds us that we have the right to become master illusionists, skilled politicians or pretenders to the throne.  But we also know that blue jay will show us how to become true wizards, real magicians, if only we allow for it.  Perhaps meditation on rat will help us succeed in becoming that.

Here in Maine and the nation throughout, we are restless as rats in our drive to level the playing field with gay marriage and voter registration being hot ballot-box items.  Some folks, particularly the dimensionally challenged dinosaurs of the old world want to hold folks back by scaling down human rights by blocking the expansion of certain rights to our human family.  I get a chuckle, in the black comedy sense, when so-called Christians pontificate about protecting the sanctity of marriage and right wingers cite protecting the sanctity of the voting process by finding clever ways to keep the riff raft out, so to speak.  And I get that some heterosexuals that sit on top of the majority have a sense of entitlement about their privileged status.  But what about when you are on the receiving end of deliverance?  What are these folks afraid of?  Was Jesus a bigot?  My understanding of Christ’s fundamental teaching was modeling Love as a way of life and His inspiring us to spread it liberally and unconditionally.  Moreover, the devilish fixed idea of hating the sin and loving the sinner is inconsistent with His message, though I can empathize with the compartmentalized indoctrination of the masses, particularly here in America.  Remember that Hitler sang Christmas carols to children as jews, gypsies, homosexuals and other fringe groups were incinerated.  Remember that Hitler commented that he wanted to come back to America, given our far greater harness on propaganda than Nazi Germany.  Forget not that America’s very own IBM literally made a killing through an exclusive business arrangement with the Nazis, by selling them the technological profiling precision that allowed for strategic genocide.  Prior to that, it was the sound economics of slavery, stealing land that was not for sale and cannot be owned.  How do we own what gives us life?  Do you realize that biological and germ warfare  nearly wiped out First Nation folks?  If “We The People” are going to heal our Nation, Planet and Universe throughout, then we need to clear our Karma.  All Karma means is the Higher Spiritual Law of Cause and Effect, which can be transcended.  When we step into the realm of Infinity, we know the realm of Intention and infinite possibilities.  Perhaps Dick Cheney has had a change of heart since he has had a change of heart and will see that elements of the 2005 Energy Bill that allows for underground pollution hurts all of us.  Where did you get those high cheek bones, Dick?  Maybe Mitt Romney will authentically see himself as one of the biggest welfare recipients around and realize his dependency on the liberal welfare state by his active participation in the Morman-LDS church, which takes in more government welfare dollars than non-Mormons in Utah.  Remember the Preamble to the US Constitutions speaks of promoting the “general welfare”, or a safety net that everyone should benefit from.  The only difference is that Mitt and his followers want the net to catch the welfare for his family, religion and the opulent minority, but not for the rascal multitude.  In his view, the overwhelming majority needs to be contained or else our natural leveling impulses are a threat to Country Club living.

Rats, now the cat is out of the bag and the rat is tempted to scurry back to familiar woodpiles.  But with rat consciousness, we are equipped to use our collective intellect and transcend the comforts of old securities in consciousness by releasing old, dysfunctional energies and patterns of behavior.  With the arrival of Autumn, an election coming up and the end of the Mayan calendar coming down the pike on the Winter Solstice in December 21, 2012, we are officially in transition.  Yes, there is forceful opposition to co-creating a more egalitarian New Earth, we have the spirited Universal winds at our backs that cannot be stopped.  Nature reminds us that change is inevitable.  True, we have two republicans running for President.  Barak Obama, being the moderate and Mitt Romney being the right-winger.  Both are candidates of Wall Street and carry allegiance to a dying world, but one offers a slightly more paved causeway to a New Age and Paradigm.  Regardless of who wins, please remember to focus on your own inner spiritual growth and evolve in that light.  Just be, let go and enjoy the ride!  And remember to step up to peace by standing your ground when bullies try to prevent you from getting out to vote!

Stay True,

Ari