Eagle In Flight

Eagle in Flight

A step from the light
A step from the dark
Close to fallin’
Close to flight

And I’ve got stage fright . . . In the dark tonight
A Soarin’ Eagle in Flight . . . In the skies tonight
A sunlit moon twilight . . . On A Starry Night

A leap of faith
Into an ocean’s abyss
Close to drownin’
Close to fate I’d miss

And I’ve got stage fright . . . In the dark tonight
A Soarin’ Eagle in Flight . . . In the skies tonight
A sunlit moon twilight . . . On A Starry Night

Here I’m standing still
Life’s pulse I can feel
This moment surreal
This experience is real

And I’ve got stage fright . . . In the dark tonight
A Soarin’ Eagle in Flight . . . In the skies tonight
A sunlit moon twilight . . . On A Starry Night

Now my Heart beats alive
My emotions I drive
Your perspective I see
In my own arms I am me

And I’ve got stage fright . . . In the dark tonight
A Soarin’ Eagle in Flight . . . In the skies tonight
A sunlit moon twilight . . . On A Starry Night

This Land Is Your Land Revisited

This Land Is Your Land Revisited

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York islands
From the Redwood Forests, to the Gulf Stream waters . . .
This land was made for you and me

This land is your land, this land is my land
From our Lost Wages, to the stock exchange
From the cookie cutter suburbs, to the water treatment plants . . .
This land was made for my SUV

This land is your land, this land is my land
From corporate propaganda, to the Woodstock Nation
From the self-evident truths, to expanded consciousness . . .
This land was made for Liberty

This land is your land, this land is my land
From crafty politicians, to fortune telling
From intellectual constructs, to intuitive understanding . . .
This land was made for reciprocity

This land is your land, this land is my land
From telepathic communication, to respecting diversity
From free for service economies, to dreaming a New Dream collectively . . .
This land was made for Aquarian Unity

Our Town

Our Town
Here on Mothership Gaia, in dying Pisces centuries
Birthing into a New World of Aquarian Unity
An old age built on wireless, in sweatshops on other shores
And they built the satellites that helped the Empire win Star Wars

Here in Our Town
Here in Our Town
My sweet Eartha I’m sinking down
Here Buddha in Our Town

Well Granny’s working at Wal-Mart
Keeping aisles tidy to sell
Always greets customers with a smile
A job that’d suit a robot as well
Property taxes rising, lost my job without pay
Mr. Le Page took down the Labor Wall
As small businesses sail away

Here in Our Town
Here in Our Town
My sweet Eartha I’m sinking down
Here Buddha in Our Town

Well my Grampy’s off the Waterfront
Now he’s come to join Occupy Main Street
Our yard’s just rusty lobster traps
Cuz the Hidden Hand did what fishermen couldn’t do
These seas are filled with tales of mermaids and whales
Swimming these ocean floors
We sent our daughters to department stores
Now we’re wondering what they’ve been buying for.

Here in Our Town
Here in Our Town
My sweet Eartha I’m sinking down
Here Buddha in Our Town

From the Harmonic Convergence
To the 9th Cosmic Wave
To the instant Karmic Groundhog Days
That tired story remains the same
Crystalline Grids are rising
Now mister you tell me the world’s changed
Once working folks made a few wealthy enough–bought up deeds
to forget our own names

In Our Town
In Our Town
My sweet Eartha I’m sinking down
Here Buddha in Our Town

When I die tonight I’ll eat a Slice of Heaven
And digest it mystically well
I pray to God to bathe me in Light
As I leave behind my human shell

Wise Fool

Wise Fool

Alone in a place no one can see
Sit fools spinning dreams of who they might be
Images and colors flickering, remain undefined
Serving only to remind

Are your feelings pulling at you tauntingly?
Smoldering beneath the surface cautiously
Does your frigid exterior got your smile frozen?
Clinging tentatively to distorted visions

Like a vampire bite, dark emotions carry venom
Attaching blame when I become a victim
Feeding off the energy of another
God help me, for I’m a psychic blood sucker

Are your feelings pulling at you tauntingly?
Smoldering beneath the surface cautiously
Does your frigid exterior got your smile frozen?
Clinging tentatively to distorted visions

Groundhog Day and I’m dead again
A fleeting shadow is there no end?
Searching for an exit, fools eyes find none
Until I awake and see we are one

Are your feelings pulling at you tauntingly?
Smoldering beneath the surface cautiously
Does your frigid exterior got your smile frozen?
Clinging tentatively to distorted visions

Eye of the Tiger

Pouncing down the trails head, we look forward to a New Moon this week on May 10th and a Full Moon leaping down the month on May 25th. Also, we celebrated the Beltane last week, otherwise known as May Day. This ancient sacred tradition “honors and celebrates the sacred marriage of masculine and feminine, yin and yang” and the “inner union with the Beloved.” It marks the mid-point between the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice and fertilizes harmony between our spiritual and material growth or walking in alignment with “one foot in spirit, one foot in ground.” Tiger synchronizes with the New and Full Moon cycles as its energetic power time. Consuming Tiger’s spirited medicine helps us develop our passion, power, devotion and sensuality. Meditation on Tiger will wake up your sensitivity to touch. Tiger’s are skilled swimmers, so their energy reflects connection to the elemental forces of water. They are colorful and unpredictable, reflecting the world we live in and the changing times we are swimming in on Mother Earth today. In Chinese Astrology, their sign is seen as adventurous, powerful and passionate and symbolize the dark night of the New Moon and the sunlight of the Full Moon. Given that “traditions are time-tested proof that things work”, meditation on Tiger, in conjunction with a fire ritual facilitates burning away Winter, while shifting our gears full-throttle by igniting Spring.

Something is changing in the sea of consciousness on our Planet today. Although it is a process, it is becoming more difficult for folks to ignore. The garden variety of band-aids used to quell the symptoms that are roaring out to us are less effective in covering up the spirited energies streaming in now. Whether the arrival of symptomatic reactions manifests as distorted visions, racing thoughts, chronic headaches, lethargy, terrorism, mania in the global Stock Exchange–the intensity is rising and the times, they are a changin’. The perception of polarity, duality or “us and them” needs to be released from and healed in our consciousness. Living authentically and respectfully in a global village requires us to sit with the tension of opposites that exists within our individual and collective souls. Every man has a woman inside of his Being, just as every woman has a man within hers. When meditation is embraced as a popular way to consume a spiritual diet, we will see the proliferation of this understanding reflecting in our outer world for everyone to notice as obvious. Right now, you really have to take a close look for the evidence and hold that focus, given the reality of the dark and stormy weather patterns. The smoke and mirrors of our World are an illusion that carry a reality to that perception. In the realm of Infinity, the possibilities of blazing New Trail into a New Frontier are there for us to clear, if only we allow for it. But it is a process that we all have to step-up to on a case by case basis. The Golden Age is not a fixed ideal, where we find ourselves living in after a long, strange trip. Rather, when we change the way we look at the world, the world we look at changes. In this way, we become the change we want to see in the world. We are co-creating novel neuronal pathways inside our brains, signaling our conscious evolutionary next step in our program development.

We all have a basic need to feel safe and secure. However, looking to our outer world to provide that meal for us to eat is frequently met with a receipt for poor digestion. At the end of the day, we all need to access and acquire our internal power for a sense of safety and security. Our spirited animal friends are here to help reflect that back to humanity. True, it is a jungle out there. But have you ever watched animals frolic and play, even among predators and prey? They are good reminders for that. We are shifting from a divisive, compartmentalized view of the World that looks either matriarchal or patriarchical in our shared history, toward Unity Consciousness. In the words of Mr. Miyagi from the film The Karate Kid, we are “different, but same.”

See you further on down the trails,

Ari

Cleansing Frog Meditation

Frog is a powerful animal spirit totem for cleansing your soul during your travels in your spirit-mind-body vessel. Consuming Frog Medicine helps the purification and detoxification process of cleansing your soul. May the energy of Frog help you clean up both your inner and outer world. Doing this proactively helps us weather our experiences with Climate Change and effectively transition into a New Age and Paradigm. Here is a shamanic journey meditation to assist you in this area:

*Light incense/candle.
*Start drumming to a consistent beat that feels natural to you. A simple bongo drum works well. Get into a comfortable position, relax and breathe.
*Picture a frog in your imagination and feel its energy coming into your Being.
*Ask Frog for any guidance that you feel is appropriate for you. Being specific with your question is helpful.
*Continue drumming for 10-20 minutes and gently allow yourself to receive whatever arrives to you in your consciousness.
*Thank Frog for its spiritual medicinal offering.
*Remember your callback by opening your eyes and changing your drumbeat. A callback facilitates the transition back into our material reality. A callback can also be in the form of a word or mantra that you prefer. My callback consists of 3 sets of 8 beats, then 3 sets of 3 beats and then 3 sets of 7 beats.
*Record your notes of whatever messages Frog brought to you. These messages might be in the form of feelings, lyrics, sounds, visuals, smells, etc. Let go and gently allow your soul to inform you as you travel along during your daily walking meditation.

With Frog, April Showers Bring May Flowers

Frogs help us remember how to evoke changing weather patterns by singing harmonically with Mother Nature. Perhaps these vocalizations are more raw and less polished than the popular voice. And yet, their melody is powerful and music to the clairaudient ear that resonates deeply within our souls. In the beginning, there was sound. In that vibration, our spirited songs of freedom were born. This reverberation asserts that we are all diverse expressions of Great Spirit. It is true that we are a rainbow of different orientations, but we are all cut from the same cloth. There is no us and them. We are one human family. If corporations are people too, then we wake up to the awareness that we all benefit from a spring cleaning in our souls. Developing tolerance for our diversity is a “step-up” for many folks. A step further is to integrate acceptance of what is into our Being. Frog helps us purify and detoxify blockages in our souls, so that we are equipped to move more gracefully with the changing tides during our experience with Climate Change. As more of us become hip to this vibe, we witness a proliferation of this Oneness reflecting in our material realm. In this process, we help clear the way for spirit to weave its way into our world. Ingesting Frog medicine is good food for the soul and amplifies our power by becoming clearer channels, serving as conduits for radiating cleaner energy. This internal purification and detoxification facilitates the internal experience of inner peace, which decreases pollution so within as without.

While we are one human family, we see that we have been raised with much dysfunction and toxicity. We have been programmed by our societies and parents to follow certain rules and rituals, often unconsciously and without review. In Maine, there’s an old saying, “that’s just the way we’ve always done it.” But part of our healing, especially in Spring, is “out with the old, in with the new.” We can learn from Frog and shamanic network of animal friends how to get back into alignment with Nature. Do you remember the scene in Rocky 3 when Apollo tells Rocky that he has lost the “eye of the Tiger”, but that he is going to help him get it back? Given where we are at in human history, the timing of the spiritual wisdom, “if not now, when” is critically important. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. The corollary is also true. In much the same way as the Buddha, even children raised in ideal situations have an underlying yearning to wake up to the emotional sensitivity that there is more to life that creature comforts and pampered privilege. Through our dirty waters of suffering, Frog breathes in a renewed sense of harmony into our lives and rekindles the notion that there is great peace and joy in taking time for yourself. With its connection to the water element and the lunar cycle, we look back to the waning Wesak Full Moon and are inspired by clearing out our muddy waters and drinking in crystal clear fresh water. Whether you are an atheist, agnostic or a devout believer, Frog is here to remind us to do whatever we can to get closer to Great Spirit. Some ways we can bring in this energy into our lives are going for a walk in the woods, taking in a deep and cleansing deep breath, asserting “stop”, unplugging from technology, staying away from the news for a while, taking a long, relaxing bath, going for a swim or just getting near the water for a spell. We all need to give ourselves a break from information and choice overload. In our modern world, tapping into Frog’s energy might even make you a bit of a rebel. How do you like to weave Frog’s cleansing energy into your life?

Frog is the rainmaker and is a true weather person that is capable of weather control. Its medicine encourages us to wash away the dirt in our lives. As such, meditation on Frog reflects metamorphosis and creativity into our waking lives. Given their amphibian nature, consuming Frog’s spirited energy links us to water and land and helps us stay grounded and emotionally sensitive with respect to the boundaries of self and relationships. Meditation on Frog can assist us in vocalizing our truths powerfully and respectfully. Given that Spring and Summer are its power times, we need to use its energy effectively so that we do not blow things out of proportion. Frog is good spirited soul food to consume while digesting Climate Change.

See you further on down the trails,

Ari

Heavenly Umbilical Chord Meditation

Here is a meditation I would like to give you that I carry with me in my walking meditation tool-kit. It is a helpful resource in staying connected and in alignment with the Universal flow.

–Picture a luminous Divine thread from the Heavens connecting to the top of your head where your Crown Chakra is.
–Feel yourself being nourished by this Divine Light flowing in through the top of your head, pulsating down your spine, Chakras, body and exiting through the balls of your feet, or bubbling wells if you are into tai chi and qigong.
–Gently allow the residual energy to exit three feet into the Earth for organic compost. This process is free mulching for the soul.
–If you are into Reiki, you may also picture the appropriate symbols to enhance this powerful meditation.
–Repeat as needed.

Bonus material:
–Feel your heart open up and connect with other energies around you, allowing yourself to give and receive this Divine energy. Imagine yourself elevating your own consciousness and the consciousness of others.

When out on the trails of Life, this is one way we step into the realm of Infinity and co-create Heaven on Earth.

Black Like Crow

Soaring further with Spring energies, we catch wind of an out with the old and in with the new Crow Medicine show. Coming soon in the theater of Life, we will bear witness to a fiery astrological light show of consecutive eclipses streaming in. We will consume a powerful Full Moon on April 25th, a New Moon on May 9th and another Full Moon on May 25th to celebrate the grand eclipse finale. I don’t know if there will be a supernatural war between werewolves or vampires, but we have some bloody serious conflicts going on our Planet today. Things are particularly heating up in the Middle East and North Korea. Our Armageddon friends are licking their Doubting Thomas chops just waiting to pound their cynical chests by arrogantly asserting their self-fulfilling prophecy of doom and gloom. But there is a darkness on the edge of town. In that light, it is a challenge to become your own boss, rather than auctioning off your power to some charlatan. Crow is a powerful clairvoyant that peers into our forecast, while becoming a detached observer into a co-creative and fluid future. Crow is a powerful omen of change. Relaxing your gaze, so that your eyes feel a bit cross-eyed and slightly blurred vision will help you tap into Crow’s medicine, while paradoxically seeing more clearly. This is somewhat akin to Mayan legend of cross-eyed folks peering into the future. Is there a natural connection between Autists and Shamanism? Forget about those silly parlor tricks. Crow’s depth helps us acquire and access communication skills, wariness and intelligence. Their energy reminds us of the magic in everyday Life. In the spirit of protecting sensitive information, Crow will help you know magical knowledge and hold a secret, when silence is the higher form of honesty.

As we have discussed, Black is the color of creation, night and maternal feminine energy. With Crow, the darkness of night literally walks in sunlight. In a sense, Crow personifies the Taoist yin and the yang at play, weaving magically before our eyes. Why is it that black has conjured up fear in the collective consciousness of our modern world? America was built off the backs of free labor, predominantly by African-Americans during slavery forced unwillingly to work on command. When slavery was officially abolished, we witnessed an increase in incarceration among blacks, shackled and drawn. Have blacks received their fair share of their slice of the pie they brought to the table? Some statistics might hint at that, but we know that dollar for dollar, blacks are still earning less than their white counterparts and carry double the unemployment rate. While W.E.B Dubois might cite a rise among the “talented tenth”, can’t you hear Booker T. Washington still singing a “Dissatisfied” blues song among working folks? With Crow, we see that there are still systemic barriers in place serving as roadblocks to a more level egalitarian playing field. Part of my passion and sensitivity in serving the population I work with in my profession, is to help prevent our students from falling through the cracks and end up in institutions like jails and mental hospitals. Still predominantly white men, our friends in Congress seem to carry an air of the very sense of entitlement they complain about. While crafting the Rule of Law the rest of us are expected to follow, these pillars of the community appear to feel above the limits they are setting with the rest of us. But there is a movement for a proposed 28th Amendment to the US Constitution that says, “Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not equally apply to the senators and/or representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the senators and/or representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States.” If only our friends in Congress and the rest of those at the top of the food chain would allow maturation to kick in and realize that we all win by heeding the political will of the people. This is homeland security for the entire population of our Planet.

Are you beginning a new course of study? Are you being alert enough? Mediation on Crow may assist you in gaining clarity to those questions, own your own magical powers and bend the laws of the material plane. Today, skeptics will often say “show me the science!” In that vein, the Quantum world reveals what the spiritual reality already understands–that it is possible to be two places at once. This is somewhat akin to the practice of spiritual shape-shifting, or becoming the fly on the wall, so to speak. In a Karmic sense, ingesting Crow Medicine assists us in balancing the past, present and future right now. In this light, we transcend the Law of Cause and Effect and become the inner peace we want to see reflected in the World.

See you further on down the trails,

Ari

Stand in the Place that You Are

When we respectfully stand in the position of our own authority, we keep our power. Out on the trails, there are many charlatans willing to take our power from us and be fed by that. This process frequently elicits unintended consequences of the ego’s tricks. We all have the freedom and responsibility to access our wizard-healer-sage within our Being. There is nothing wrong with seeking guidance, consultation, therapy, etc. Energy is energy–it is what we do with it that counts. I can hear the Robin in me tweeting, alternative energy starts with I AM. In the spirit of that, please consider the following standing Qigong meditation.

–Stand rooted in your Being with your feet approximately shoulder width.
–Relax your body, keep an assertive posture and slightly activate your hands and slightly bend your knees. This is somewhat akin to a running back in a two point stance in American football.
–Primarily focusing on the balls of your feet, imagine your energy sinking three feet into the ground, growing deep roots into the earth like a wise old tree.
–Picture a luminous, white light figure 8 sign of Infinity enveloping your ankles.
–Envision the figure 8 slowly rising up through your body. As you do this, release each body part along the way. For example, say to yourself, “release my ankles . . . release my calves, release my shins, release my knees, release my quads, release my hamstrings, release my groin, release my hips, release my stomach, release my back, release my chest, release my neck, release my eyes and release my head.”
–Remember to start at your ankles and slowly ascend to your knees and pause there for a few moments. Then ascend some more to your hips and pause again. Then ascend up your spine and pause again at the top of your head, where your crown chakra is and pause briefly. Then reverse the order and descend. Feel free to give extra attention to wherever you feel called by your body. Your body is a powerful portal to consciousness.

See how you feel. I welcome your feedback.