Tag Archives: Chakras

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

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

Butterfly Affect

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I remember an encounter I had the last weekend with a black and gold-colored butterfly.  Admittedly, I noticed my lower chakras fleetingly take flight in vibrating with jealousy, envy and some heaviness as I watched this spirited winged creature’s ability to flit about gleefully, while tasting with its hands and feet.  But then I recollected my choice to stay away from overindulging in getting stuck in the mud by basking in these emotions.  By allowing ourselves to be informed by our lower self, we become equipped to move forward by opening up to the feeling of joy that butterfly medicine conjures up internally.  However, it can be tempting to find clever ways to bypass this inner space, with particular sensitivity to the ego and/or intellect’s ability to build self-protective fortresses.  Energetically, butterfly is good reminder that it is possible to carry a playful, light-hearted sense of detachment in getting the job done.  In spite of their heavy responsibility of cross-pollinating the planet while spreading the love, butterfly shows us that it is possible find their energy within our human shell in real-time.  Is anyone else out there mesmerized by butterflies sociability and memo to self that asks thyself, where am I on the map of consciousness?  On the personal front, when digesting this question, perhaps some delicious food for thought would be to ask yourself what developmental stage you are currently in.  Are you in the egg stage of an idea (beginning), the larva stage (manifestation), the cocoon stage (program development) and/or the final stage (transformation)?  When there is work to do and I need to lighten up, I try to remember to picture butterflies kissing a garden variety of flowers within my being.

On the national and global front, there are potential storms brewing and things are heating up.  Here in the USA, we have modern laws that are somewhat akin to Jim Crow of yesteryear.  In Florida and other states in the nation throughout, we have the Stand Your Ground Law that basically says shoot first and ask questions second.  All republicans and however many democrats failed to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which simply attempts to level the playing field of making a livable wage for all working folks.  Does “my country tis of thee” remember that many of the lawyers, politicians and police were cloaked behind white robes and burning crosses by night?  Who payin’ you?  But there is a new hope . . . US Representative John Kline of Michigan supports the Loan Forgiveness Act of 2012, which tries to alleviate the financial burden that many college students are facing.  And Burger King, Wendy’s, McDonald’s and Safeway have committed to eliminating gestation crates from their supply chains.  The country is divided and “the line it is drawn and the curse it is cast.”  In birthing into a New Age and Paradigm, we really need to move beyond fancy ego-centered rhetoric and actualize the philosophical ideals that our Founding Fathers envisioned in their Higher Selves.  If we search our collective memory, there was a time not long ago that indigenous Americans practiced something much closer to a free market, than the fundamentalist allegiance we have to maximum economic, profit-driven capitalism that liberally supports the welfare of rampant consumerism.

With butterfly energy, creativity is in the air and mental powers are active.  This time of year, I start dancing to the beat of T’ai Chi outdoors, while focusing on allowing my body to float like a butterfly without getting stung like a bee.  Readers, I don’t know about you, but I know I have learned many painful lessons from the school of hard knox.  The lesson plans from this curriculum can feel like heavy metal and reverberate like a choir of chattering monkey’s.  And though I respect the wisdom I have acquired from accessing these classroom assignments, I prefer Butterfly’s mantra that says that growth can be gentle, joyful and sweet like flowers, if only we come to our senses by allowing for it.

Stay True,

Ari

Staying Rooted

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As I write this week’s journal entry, I’ve got my feet firmly planted on the ground, like a Wise Old Tree. While concentrating downward into the Earth, I breath in and pull Her energy upward through the soles of my feet, feeling nourished from the energetic pulsations through my Being. In the Spirit of “as within, so without”, I remember reading about Ged, in Ursula La Guin’s Earth Sea cycle. In much the same way as a True Wizard sails with the Mage wind at his (or her) back, Turkey Vulture uses minimal energy of its own. With the eclipses pouring in on Thanksgiving and December 10th, what a good time to use their energies to ride the thermals to help You shift with the winds of change. Ever resourceful, Vulture uses what’s available, a la Doc in the last scene in the film ‘Back to the Future’, when he loads up the DeLorean with trash for fuel . . . “roads, where we’re going, there are no roads.”

Additionally, I take my recent experiences with Turkey Vulture as friendly reminders for Us to pay more careful attention to what We consume, as “you are what you eat.” Merely paying attention to our thoughts and feelings can empower Us to replace the negative thoughts with positive thoughts as a walking meditation, if you will. Moreover, aromatherapy is a powerful tool in connecting with Spirit and stimulating Our sense of smell to assist Us in discernment when things don’t smell right. If you are smoke sensitive, then please consider playing with adding a couple of drops of essential oils to water in a pump spray. Although I love the healing properties of smoke, I also enjoy using lavender and sage mist as an alternative when Spirit calls for it. Similarly, paying attention to how We feel after We consume food and drink also helps Us notice what to say “what up, G” and “peace out” to. But please stay away from going ‘Rocky Balboa’ on yourself, as through the suffering, Divine Will yields the possibility of a Higher Purpose and perhaps a more colorful life.

Finally, it was in the cards recently that I heard someone recommend eating more root vegetables to strengthens One’s connection to the Earth . . . keeping Us, as we say in the T’ai Chi community, “rooted”. Has anyone ever heard of “eating for the Chakras?” It kind of fits into the KISS (Keep It Simple, Sweetheart) politics of living. Simply picture the various colors of your Chakras and eat foods that correspond accordingly. When eating a more colorful variety of foods, as a mindful eating practice, perceive your Chakras feeling nourished as you eat. Even if it’s initially bitter to the taste, I am wishing You all a sweet after taste and ease in Our digestion process in the gourmet dinner of Life! If you would like to boost your Chakra’s, please see blog date 7.18.2011 in the archives.  And I’ll be posting a hearty Thanksgiving blog entry on November 24 to mark the Spirit of the Season.

I Hopi You are well,

Ari