Resurrecting the Light with Beetle

Last week, we followed Dog tracks.  Along the trails, I found myself being more affectionate with my family and mindful of boundaries in relationships. While celebrating the Winter Solstice, we noted hot topics of gratitude and letting go, while coaxing back the light.  On the Gregorian calendar, we embark on 2013 and continue pressing onward in our Consciousness’ assent.  We are in the process of Climate Change and co-creating a New Earth right now and you are It.  Some folks were terrified of Doomsday scenarios that promised the end of the world.  Others were disappointed about being disappointed that our dying old world didn’t fall off the cliff, while immediately being transformed into a Golden Age on the day after.  But aliens didn’t take over and Hillary Clinton went to the hospital–thankfully receiving quality health care without worry of how to pay for it.  Soon we welcome the arrival of the Chinese-Lunar New Year, as Spring begins budding underground with Groundhog.  Before too long, we will know energetic balance again on the Spring Equinox in March.  I awoke the other night to a clear vision of a Beetle gleaming across my inner sky.  Like the Sun’s movement across the sky, Beetle moves from East to West.   Mother energy has been revisiting us at this time, as feminine-yin energy is dominant and we are turning more inward.  Meditating on Beetle medicine is like tapping into a mutable orientation.  Whether we are Franz Kafka or an Average Joe, we are all capable of metamorphosis.  Is anyone else inspired by a bug’s capacity to radically change from an egg to a grub stage and then fly away as a winged creature?  In women, this is somewhat akin to menopause or “mentalpause” as I have heard it called.  Do I embrace this heated change or fight it like a war on something I reject? 

During our tracking right now, many of us remember our heavy heartfelt losses.  There is much pain and it is hard to make friends with that.  Picture the horribly uncomfortable position of grieving the death of a partner, while giving birth to a new child simultaneously.  Some folks have lost their jobs, their homes or gone through gut-wrenching break-ups, separations or divorce.  Even our worried well in the pampered West, are waking up to the hard times we are living in.  Others feel like they don’t know who they are anymore and are uncertain of who they are becoming.  In the mystery of Life, has anyone ever lost a loved one to suicide, unexpected death or any other permanent physical good-bye?  It is a mixed blessing to feel the spirit of the season and also really feel the deep hurt and anger regarding our myriad of deeply traumatic soul wounds, including the inequities, pain and suffering on our planet today.  After I lost my mom to suicide, I felt abandoned and forced to enter into adulthood with deeper wounds than your average Bear.  I had already felt that before she whacked herself, but the void widened, part of me died as well.  But it wasn’t the first time I felt that way, nor will it be the last.  Tempting as it was pursuing career goals, objectives and being driven to distraction–doing the inner work is always what yields fruitful  and sustainable returns.  Living isn’t really sustainable until we wake up to our deeper feelings, while stoking the fiery embers of passion and courage to move toward intimacy, while letting go of egocentric avoidance tactics that keep us asleep.  Some of us have fantastic avoidance mechanisms in place that get in the way of us getting in touch with our deeper souls. 

The old world of white privilege is dying too and it is OK to grieve that.  Some white folks feel like they are losing their country and for them, things seem to be getting worse and they are feeling resentful about it.  Some complainants at the top of the economic food chain do not think it is fair that they might have to pay a little more if the Bush tax cuts fade away.  But a simple perceptual shift reveals that when the playing field is leveled for everyone else, there is enough and we can all win.  When I see a community of straight white men going out on a limb and intimately sharing their feelings around a fire and cheering for gay folks being allowed to join our formerly exclusive club–it fills my heart with hope to see Karma being cleared.  Yes, social change is slow and Great Spirit works in mysterious ways.  Human rights, gay rights, gender equality, civil rights, worker rights and culturally sensitive mental health assessments and testing and equal access to resources are all manifestations of our forward progress.  But we need to remember that conservative energy anchors us in our traditions and be sensitive to that too.  Sometimes this looks like taking one step up and two steps back. 

We cannot always be in control of our lives and remain in our inner peace bubble.  Spiritual beings having a human experience need to come down from the mountain and learn to be on the ground with our fellow brothers and sisters.  Sometimes, our securities wane gradually, while at other times they wash away instantly.  We need to remember that we can control our attitude and how we respond to the cards that are dealt, regardless of how uncomfortable we feel about them.  But the democratic process is messy.  We are all in this together and we all have a say in the great waves of changes coming our way.

Stay True,

Ari

Dog as my Co-Pilot

Does anyone out there remember the bitter taste that accompanies being taken out of inner peace?  While sitting in the hot seat recently, I reflected on my own tendency to get distracted from the distractions, while yielding at taking a closer look at the cumulative effect of what has taken root.  Haven’t I already been there, done that?  Didn’t I already deal with this old wound and can’t I just get on with it?  Did I mention getting really pissed off about it?  But it is the journey, not the destination.  Meditation reminds us that within the process of taking a closer look, we wake up to the deeper layers of our souls–while carrying an accompanying gift bag to make friends with that.  If you are anything like my dying old self, perhaps you have allowed your ego to play spirited tricks on yourself to keep you asleep.  One popular technique is cleverly bypassing the deep hurt of traumas, such as abuse and abandonment issues.  Have you observed the voice in the head that asserts a convincing argument that you have successfully bypassed a putrid stench that you would rather avoid smelling?  However, from a position of empathy, how can I expect to truly blossom into a new flower and sow the seeds of Love, if I do not allow myself the shitty job of composting?  When working Dog medicine in the positive, Dog is a good reminder to heed their message to delve deeply into our soul’s sense of service to others.  The spirit of dog helps us remember our human shortcomings, both in self and in relation with others.

Descendants of coyotes and wolves, I can’t help but appreciate Dog’s presence during the past 10,000 years of our human story.  When I was a child, sometimes I felt myself transform into a greyhound as soon as my feet hit the playground during recess.  I would impatiently stare at the clock and fantasize about the bell signaling to us that it was time to get outside and play.  In fact, it was a magical experience that I shared with constitutionally similar alpha male types that featured behaviors labeled today as AD/HD in clinical speak.  While at a holiday brunch with friends recently, this memory inundated me when a woman commented that she thought a greyhound would be a good fit in our home, should we ever add a dog to the litter.  And then I shared a heartfelt connection with a similar canine breed while tracking in the woods.  I don’t know how our cat with queen bee and feral tendencies would feel about it, but I don’t think the guinea pigs would feel threatened.  And our child is getting older and could help out with the care-taking responsibilities, so I want to be open to the possibility.  In the meanwhile, you don’t have to be a dog lover to feel inspired to be more good-natured, affectionate, friendly, travel in packs and see the good in folks without being judgemental.  Dog is a good remedy to become more devoted in our relationships and nurturing and protective as parents.  Dog also helps us remember to be more discriminate with our personal boundaries and remember to not give our power away to others when looking for direction.  There’s nothing wrong with seeking consultation or guidance through friends, therapists, coaches, etc.  But when it comes to our own souls, we need to explore the depths of information available there.  Ingesting Dog’s energy teaches us how to be more affectionate and faithful companions.  As adults, we teach our children how to become healthy humans by having fun, playing and enjoying life.  Remember that modeling is the most powerful form of teaching.  The old world of “do as I say, not as I do” or “children should be seen but not heard” is dying, as is too permissive, negligent and rigid parenting styles.  Discipline comes from the Latin word disciplina, which means to teach.  Lecturing my own child and students about being a spiritual being having a human experiences is not as powerful or meaningful as working together to prepare a family style meal and hugging good-bye after breaking bread with folks from the office.  It doesn’t matter if you are a union member or not, we all need to tend to our core.  How do you like them apples? 

When we take an authentic look within ourselves and the world around us, we feel the deep anger and hurt from real gut-wrenching atrocities and inequities that abound our Planet today.  The other night, I had a clear dream of a dirty nuclear explosion, juxtaposed with an elaborate, composting mechanism that produced green energy, leaving a crystal-clear Carbon Footprint.  Even gated communities and executive neighborhoods in leafy suburban communities have a darkness on the edge of town.  Whether we target greedy wealthy individuals that throw temper tantrums about so-called fiscal cliffs, blame secularism, gay folks for raising kids or Jeremy speaking in class today–we need to dive deeper to find the pearl within.  There will be no peace in our world until we find it within ourselves.  Riding with Dog as your co-pilot will help you effectively navigate through your journey.  On December 21, we said good-bye to our last Winter Solstice on an old Mayan Calendar.  On December 28, we welcome our last Full Moon of 2012.  Did anyone else feel a shift in our collective consciousness?  In a community of men, we stood around a fire and expressed our deep feelings of gratitude, letting go and hopes for a better world, while coaxing back the light.  Further, we reflected that all it takes is a perceptual shift to dissolve our violent and aggressive tendencies to let go and let God when Life’s happenings feel out of control.  At the end of the day, Great Spirit created us in a Blueprint of Love.  Now if the predator in me remembers that at the scent of a de-cleater during our next Sunday morning football game, we’ll all breathe cleaner air, while here on the ground.

Stay True,

Ari

Remembering the Geese on Mythical Journeys

I remember hearing ancestral wisdom whispering to us that it is a good time of year for letting go.  Here on Nature’s cycle in the Northern Hemisphere, we are approaching the Winter Solstice, the darkest time of year, where folks are turning yinward and many souls are exiting Classroom Mothership Earth.  On some level, this time signals an end.  However, from a cosmical energetic perspective, we all embark on a dying experience, whether realized or not.  In this process, a promise of re-birth awaits.  Yes, we are well-trained by a developmentally delayed perspective that tells us to fear death, be afraid of the dark and forget spirit, particularly in America.  Rather than embrace the Unknown, we tend to fear what we don’t know, while some of us cling to blind faith and continue skating on the thin ice of modern life’s sea of intellectual concepts.  Others check out by indulging in a garden variety of distractions, opiates of the masses they are in this world of 10, 000 things of bling-bling.  Is that bad medicine or what?  Those in the advertising industry know that most of us do not really feel comfortable in our own skin and so they make a killing by profiting from us buying into a perception that the consumption of certain products will somehow enhance our self-image. But these remedies are really only skin deep.  In the spirit of that, flying with geese offers us the opportunity to soar within our True Selves and access the hero within Life’s mythical quest. Geese fly in a V-formation and epitomize balancing competition and cooperation vis-a-vis a sense of harmonic teamwork.  Meditation on their V-formation, a figure 8 sign of infinity, helps us enter new portals to new possibilities, new ideas and venture to distant places in our spirit-mind-body vessels.  If you are exclusively identified with the surface layer of the material realm, it is true that membership has its privileges, accompanied also by pleasure, pain and suffering.  Meditation on geese facilitates flight into deeper realms, where acausal connections and phenomena await.  I hardly think strict behavioral psychologists would take notice when conducting their social science experiments.  Even if you dismiss the existence of something, are you not acknowledging that it is real, on some level?

Whether or not Barack Obama is the reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln, the connections between the two men are striking.  Slavery has been a sad reality in our human family’s history.  Although overt Apartheid is thankfully a dying breed, today’s slavery hides behind master illusionism.  Lincoln once said, “as I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master–this expresses my ideas of democracy-whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.”  Both the oppressor and the oppressed suffer.  Will Obama and other leaders be master pretenders to the throne or will they access their inner royalty and use their positions to empower the massive change that our Mother and the overwhelming majority need to enact here on Classroom Mothership Earth?  Rather than letting go of 18, 000 workers, companies like Hostess could choose to let go of the temptation to increase CEO compensation by 300% and upper management by 200% and the gall to ask a federal judge for an allowance of 1.8 million in bonuses to top dawg executives.  How sweet is that? Moreover, if Pepsi is really the choice of a new generation, then they will use their presence in Uganda to stop the spigot of bigotry of an anti-gay bill that is backed by some Evangelical Christians that have close ties to a constellation called The Family.  I hardly think Michael J. Fox’s former TV character Alex P. Keaton would approve of those family ties, conservative as he was on that show. Internet freedom is also at risk at the UN conference in Dubai by threatening new restrictions on free speech.  Climate Change is trending right now and becoming a hotter topic–a global reality that humanity must deal with, whether we want to or not.  Our survival depends on it.  If we embrace Climate Change and effectively weather the changes so within as without, then we will make the quantum leap with grace. However, if we resist it, then it will persist in a way that tastes more bitter than the fracking insanity that sticks like tar in the sands of our Mother’s belly today. Even our nervous woodland creature friends know that denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, ma chucka.  When the floods arrive, they usually find themselves moving to higher ground, rather than getting washed out. 

On the playing field of life, some of the guys from around the way like to play football on Sundays.  Maybe we’re playing on borrowed time and a loony bunch, but that doesn’t stop us from flocking together on cold mornings.  Even a guy in his 60’s still runs the field and inspires the rest of us that you’re never too old to play. Last week, I caught wind of a flock of geese and signaled their cadence to my teammates.  The view feathered our ripple, spirits soared and our game really took flight after that.  We all take turns playing quarterback, evenly mix up the teams and usually balance cooperation and competition.  While love taps and occasional de-cleaters happen from time to time, arguably the most aggressive act in the archives was when one disgruntled squirrel character threw the acorn at another hyena player, to stop his endless running commentary.  But of course that didn’t work and the hyena is still laughing and talking smack.  Some guys have dropped out due to fear of getting hurt.  But there is risk in every breath we take.  Taking it to the edge requires trusting that the Universal pillars of Love and Truth are a real safety net that catches us and sets us free.  In the Great Spirit of that, when ingesting the free energy of geese in our internal slow-cooker, we marinate on the traits of fidelity, perfectionism and adventure.  Given that geese are vegetarians, flocking toward increased veggie consumption or eating a vegetarian diet for a while might be good chicken soup for the soul.

Stay True,

Ari

Feasting With Turkey, We Give Thanks For Our Shared Blessings

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?

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

Dreaming with Salamander and cleansing withTurkey Vulture

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

Bear Like Me

I remember when a fellow virtual blogging friend liked that I referenced the  Law of Attraction and invited me to share a related story in reference to this Divine Law.  In the spirit of that, I serve up this week’s story to share with you.  In my day gig of working in public schools, I know we all get a little stir crazy as the school year winds down to a close.  However, during this transition, I remember to maintain perspective via the Jimmy Buffett earworm that if we couldn’t laugh, we’d all go insane.  In fact, I kept dreaming about hiking with some cats from The Clubhouse, in the mighty White Mountains, while at the same time practicing letting go of outcome during the visualization process.  Although now considered small in stature, modern scientists tell us that long ago the White Mountains in New Hampshire were once a Goliath of a range compared to the Colorado Rockies.  When traversing the Presidential Range, embracing Climate Change and getting down with the elements is a key dynamic in a successful hike.  Cold, wet and windy weather mixed with rocks, roots and some tactical climbing is always more challenging when slippery when wet.   Although our forecast looked bleak, we were livin’ on a prayer by keeping our feet on the ground and seeing the forest through the trees. 

After two full days of peaks and valleys, five, 4000 footers and coming down from the mountaintop, we were all thankful for Highland Hut’s family friendly atmosphere, hot showers and hearty meals.  After our off the grid jaunt, my hiking brothers could not wait to introduce me to the opulent Mt. Washington Hotel, where big Whigs from another era used to travel via horse and buggy to enjoy the rustic scenery in decadence.  Now readers, you might think we were more likely to make contact with a bear out on the trails, while away from civilization.  Not so.  Just after parking our car at the Mt. Washington Hotel, I barely caught a peripheral glimpse of  a very large creature running past us with the distinct sound of claws on pavement, when one of my hiking buds excitedly identified the animal as a bear!  A few tracks later–after playing an old arcade game that was out of this world, we visited an underground tavern called “the Cave” and told our story.  Further, an employee came out of hibernation, nodded and informed us that this friendly creature was a local and merely following his daily ritual of knocking off local dumpsters in search of his daily bread.  Aye, aren’t bears good reminders for us to tap into our own natural resources within the depth of our souls?  In a karmic sense, bear may facilitate our making life’s choices from a position of personal empowerment, rather than egotism.  Given bears connection to trees, we are reminded that trees are conduits linking Heaven and Earth.  With Yang dominating the season in this neck of the woods, we are more energetically equipped to manifest knowledge, fertility and growth right Tao.

As I look back on our time out in nature, I realize the experience was the death of me.  When listening in on ghostly storytelling that accompanied the  grand old hotel and nature spirits, I look back on a private encounter with a dead man walking that serves as a good reminder that we are indeed spirits in the material world.  With bear in our consciousness, we are equipped to navigate the waters of the subconscious and unconscious mind.  When heeding the deafening sound of silence, the inner voice strikes a thunderous chord reverberating from the soul’s den.  While tapping into the Dreamtime and bringing back to Earth what arrives to us from Infinity, we are able to see through the smokescreen world of 10, 000 things and bling bling.  And bear reminds us that life tastes sweet like honey, if only we allow ourselves to directly experience it by moving beyond egotistical intellectual concepts and the robotic doings.  Do you hear what I hear?  Do you see what I see?

Stay True,

Ari

Blue Like Heron

I remember when I was catching up with folks at our 10 year High School reunion and peer poignantly chimed in, “at some point I realized nobody else was gonna do it for me”, as we reflected on growing up and becoming adults.  Today, as our twenty year gathering rapidly approaches, these profoundly true lyrics revisited my consciousness after recently encountering a great blue heron.  Given the rising tide of Occupy movements, perhaps we might call on blue heron to Occupy Our Selves, while dabbling as spiritual beings having human experiences here on Classroom Mothership Earth.  At this juncture on Nature’s clock, is anyone else out there powerfully inspired by heron medicine that invokes within us aggressive self-determination, self-reliance and learning to stand firmly rooted in the Earth on your own two legs?  Are you in awe of these magnificent creatures that tend to view themselves as king of the marsh?  While co-creating Heaven on Earth in a New Age and Paradigm, herons are a good reminder that we cannot soar in the Heavens if we do not paradoxically also learn how to stay grounded.  Moreover, during the waxing on of this eclipse season, it might be tempting to for spirits to soar out of control and forget about balance.

On the global weather front, the reptilian ways of the dinosaurs keep scaling back the leveling impulses of the masses by their “rule by few” mantra, while still pledging their allegiance to the bottom line and almighty dollar.  Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, do you see that by nurturing a global economy that supports livable wages for all of Earth’s caretakers is a win-win for both the top dawgs chillin’ atop the pyramid and the overwhelming majority of us breaking our backs to keep the Boat afloat?  Are you able to picture a waterfall, tame the Nervous Woodland Creature energy and stay calm in the pocket like Tom Brady during peak intensity at the Summer Solstice on June 20, 2012 in the Northern Hemisphere and its waning aftershocks thereafter?  In my clinical experience, I have learned that like physics, all systems resist change–human beings being no exception.  In fact, we humans are quite good at keeping ourselves in boxes by protecting the status quo that is liberally marketed to us by systemic illusionism.  But with heron consciousness, like Climate Change, there is security in knowing that there is predictability within unpredictability, order in chaos if you will.  If one way is not working, as humans, we are pre-wired with the hardware to reflect and figure out another way.  With the energy of blue heron, change is literally on the way.

During this eclipse season, keep your eye out for solutions that might be invisible and undocumented to the naked eye.  It is wise to pay attention to relationships that revisit your consciousness, while remembering to maintain perspective.  Watch what your relationships have to say to you, remembering to hit the pause button before being trigger happy in the excitement that accompanies its flowering, and perhaps before wilting and becoming the death of you.  Nature reminds us of Life’s fleeting transience.  As we swim away from victim consciousness, blue heron has the potential to help us stay true to our selves, while wading here on Earth.  Further, while taking flight in the Heavens into the realm of Infinity, heron helps us see where solutions abound, if only we allow for it.

Stay True,

Ari

Leveling the playing field

Here on Mothership Earth, we are in the exciting process of exfoliation by shedding our scales of a dying old world, or Piceas Age and birthing into a New Aquarian Age, or a New Earth.  Like frogs and other amphibians, we need to learn to swim and hop between worlds and realms to effectively live on Earth as spiritual beings having human experiences.  If we are to survive as a species, we must allow the dinosaur aspect of ourselves and our attachments to the old guard to gently pass with care and welcome a fresh, new egalitarian world where we celebrate our Diversity within Unity.  As we elevate our vibration and consciousness, we see from the perspective of eagle in all directions and zone in on the focus that what is good for the goose is good for the gander.  My brothers at the Clubhouse reminded me recently, perhaps telepathically while making frog noises and other amplifications, that Climate Change is happening and winds are blowing in a New Breath of Life–one step, one breath, one moment at a time.

For example, one way we co-create a New Age and Paradigm, is by working in circles, through a round table approach, where all voices are valued and heard.  True, this might seem radical to the ego-centered, hierarchical pyramid we have inherited from our ancestors at this point.  And the shift from punishment and reward, to discipline by way of learning that our actions have consequences by making natural and logical connections that we are all seeking mutual aid and affect one another.  Moreover, our fossils are teaching us that the dinosaurs of yesteryear, with their linear thinking and “ends justifying the means” fascist approaches to profiling us into boxes–are also reminding us to imagine the possibilities to co-create something different.  As we evolve into our luminosity, one way to build our New Earth together is by engaging with one another in circles.  When we perceive the Flower of Life and follow the figure 8 sign of Infinity, we experience circles as a way of life.  Perhaps I am just being a fun-gi, but can you imagine the world leaders sitting around together competing against one another by seeing who can blow the biggest bubble gum bubbles, rather than who can blow up the biggest mushroom cloud?  How many of you parents out there know the low-cost entertainment of chewing gum and blowing bubbles with your kids, as they sit mesmerized by watching you do it?  Perhaps some folks that are militaristic in being against the ingredients of bubble gum might protest, but that simple activity can become a healthy energetic balancing act of cooperation and competition.  Besides, we teach our daughter to throw away her gum when she has finished chewing it, rather than end bound up in the belly of the beast.

When we open up our heart-space to co-creative thinking and to the pillars of Truth and Love, then our invisible energetic exchanges become self-evident to us.  True, the Doubting Thomas energies are still alive and kicking, but we shed light on the shadowy thinking by illuminating previously hidden forces with sciences that are “proving” these sub-atomic phenomena are very real.  As we enter into the era of energy medicine, some folks will learn about the power of visualization and meditation through external equipment that will show them what their energy fields, Chakras, Meridians, Acupuncture points, etc., really look like.  But some of you already know that this inner space exists and cut back to inner peace without any expensive, fancy equipment.  After all, it just might buy you time and save you money.

Stay True,

Ari

Counting Crows

I remember talking with a fellow pack member recently, whom was howling about a significant Crow encounter. Some moments thereafter, I glanced out our window with my child and our cat as we noticed a Crow gazing at us, while hearing the lyrics, “When I think of Heaven, deliver me in the belly of a black winged bird.” Although Crow might offer Us an empathic glimpse into the realm of ruling in hell rather than serving in Heaven, We are also remedied by its medicine show of seeing through the veils of this “world of 10, 000 things” into the everyday magic and creation of Life.

Crows are intelligent and wary creatures, whom always have a sentinel posted in a high perch atop the treeline. In meditating on Crow medicine, We may acquire and access their traits of sound communication skills, wariness, intelligence and magical knowledge. Moreover, Native American myths speak of Crow being seen as a teacher. In the spirit of that, Michelle Paver’s Wolf Brother saga includes two Ravens that play a significant role in guiding the two adolescent shaman apprentices in their quest to help return balance to Nature so that the clans may live harmoniously once again in alignment with Divine Will. We humans have strayed from the Original Blueprint in Our consciousness, given the devilish programing by the powers that were, in their desire to manipulate and control Us. However, a massive awakening is happening and the ‘Flowering of Consciousness’ is cross pollinating across the fruited plains and beyond.

In traditions of the ancients, Crows were seen as guardians of magical secrets that signaled Us to stay alert, begin a new study and/or welcome an arrival of an important message. In the darkness of the passing Winter Solstice, the Black Crow symbolizes the Womb of Life and Creation, raw and full of unmanifested potential. In becoming the Watcher of Our Selves, We become the change we want to see in the world. Further, Crows have been known to predict Climate Change and also effectively adapt to the changes in weather patterns, both internal and external. “Crow . . . are you cawing, so I may know, the secrets of balance, within my Soul? Or are you sending your sacred “caw” just to remind me, of Universal Laws?”

I Hopi You are well,

Ari