Tag Archives: Great Spirit

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

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

Clearing out the debris with Frog Medicine

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I remember playing football with my child out in the backyard recently.  We were having great fun when I was asked me to channel the my Howard Cosell energy.  Although kids today are too young to know who he was, my child likes when I broadcast his spirit.   Somewhere during our game, we noticed a frog hopping along in our field of vision.  Our amphibian friend signaled to us that it was time to transition, clean up and head inside for a change in climate.  After working up a sweat, isn’t it nice to cool down and wash away the grime and dirt?  Meditation on Frog is good medicine for purification, detoxifying and general mind-body-spirit cleansing while traveling here on Classroom Mothership Earth. 

For those of us that like to fly high and run with the wind, we need to remember where we are on the map of consciousness, keep a sense direction and also keep our feet on the ground, while here on Earth.  Before a boundary is pushed or dissolved, we need to learn where the edges and boarders areas are and show respect for them.  It is harder to be a kid and a parent today.  All children need safe, clear and firm limits set so that they are equipped to learn how to effectively navigate through life and eventually know how to self-govern themselves in developmentally appropriate ways, as maturation kicks in accordingly.  Nudging too much or being too permissive does not teach us moderation as a way of life.  Balance is key, which is why those of us in care-taking positions that like to nurture must remember self-care and water our own internal gardens, so that burnout, compassion fatigue and resentments do not build exponentially.  Many folks struggle with balancing freedom and responsiblity, particularly in the USA, because we do not launch our children well.  It is harder to set the big limits when we don’t set the small ones.  Given that mind-body indulgences have been pushed on us in our ego-gratification dominated cultural story, we have forgotten spirit as a key ingredient to our holistic program development, if you will.   

On the global weather front, we are bullied into buying into a mantra that tells us to forget that we are spiritual beings having human experiences.  Somewhere in Middle America, 165 workers are slated to lose their jobs because Mitt Romney and his friends at Bain Capital are planning on outsourcing these jobs somewhere else for cheap labor.  In suburban Dallas, Texas, $60 million was recently spent to build a state of the art High School football stadium in suburban Dallas, Texas.  As much as I love football, the cock in me roosts, “foul ball!”  What are we too chicken to level the playing field to subsidize equal access for all players?  In fact, I heard a police officer chime in class the other day that we should put prisoners to work.  Not a bad idea, but it might bring us closer to justifying hidden slavery, than moving toward true freedom.  Moreover, why not invest an ounce of prevention and a pound of cure by co-creating a system that infuses spiritual values that supports employee empowerment, safe working conditions and paying livable wages, if not envisioning a free for service economy?  Do our friends in Congress really need to be earmarking billions and billions of dollars toward weapons of mass destruction and garrisons around the planet to control the flow of oil?  Is it not a mixed message when we are regularly informed that we do not have enough money for the homeland security programs of education and healthcare for our children, but continue to invest liberally in violence and oppression? 

Former President Calvin Coolidge once said, “the business of America is business.”  In the spirit of that, many of us learned in kindergarten that it is good business to practice to sharing and cooperating with peers.  Or was that Sunday school?  As more of us get into alignment with the natural feeling that spirit wants to authentically express itself, without being held back, we awaken to the demand that our deeper souls are welcome here on Earth.  When this cadence is heard, we will see the mainstream celebration of diverse expressions of Great Spirit, while practicing the politics of oneness on our planet and Universe throughout.

Stay True,

Ari