I remember when Grandfather would sometimes stop by for a surprise visit with some bags of groceries during my Elementary School days.
There was plenty more good that he did while our lifetimes intersected, but this experience still lights up my soul to this day.
Grandfather was a gifted storyteller, witty and could be charming. But more often than not, he was stoic, humble, the strong silent time, and didn’t do drama.
But he had a big presence, and when he showed up, he would smile and say something like, “well, I was just in the neighborhood and I thought maybe you guys could use some groceries.” At that time in my life, my Grandparents didn’t live more than a 5 minute drive away.
Of course like we’ve all heard; growing up being raised by a single parent wasn’t easy for me, nor is it on anyone else.
But extended family played a significant role in my life, and this example of how Grandfather looked out for us has always stuck with me.
During this time period in their life cycle, my maternal grandparents were in a more comfortable position in their lives financially. By this time, they were empty nesters, expanded their social network, and had the opportunity to travel the planet and experience different cultures. I always appreciated how they would often bring me back a new t-shirt that I would proudly sport at school. Fashion has never been my bug, but I always felt like those t-shirts externally reinforced my intrinsic uniqueness.
Grandfather had been orphaned by the untimely death of both of his parents by the time he was 19. He would always say that “we were poor but didn’t know we were poor. We had food to eat, and we played and had fun as kids.” And then he would always say that Grandmother grew up a different kind of poor, as in, Appalachia like abject poverty. She never saw a dentist till she was 18, when she walked in a clinic off the street with bleeding gums and no money to pay for dental care.
These days, many people, like my own daughter, still tend to call themselves adults by 18 or so. But the truth is that we are still adolescents till our mid-20s from a developmental and psychological perspective.
College wasn’t an option for either of my grandparents or their peers from their old St. Louis neighborhoods back then. Later in life, they would tell stories about their newer peer network who went to college, how they had dreamed about their own children going to college someday, and then me by the time I came along.
Parenting back then; especially for folks that grew up like my grandparents, involved a lot of financial stress and winging it. Of course there’s still plenty of all that in parenthood today.
As I got older, I remember asking Grandfather about consciously envisioning a life plan or planned parenthood back when they were starting out as a couple. And Grandfather would chuckle and say, “naw…but sometimes we’d look around and say, what the hell are we doing with all these kids?”
These days, many folks are familiar with the term Food Insecurity to describe the anxiety that connects to the insecurity about when or where your next meal might come from, if at all.
In my case, I had the good fortune to grow up around all kinds of people from diverse racial, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Some of my peers at school arrived from other lands with English not being their first language. At that time, the land we all lived in was called the MidWest.
And it wasn’t lost on me that I was only a fragile step away from what some of my peers were going through, who were part of the Cycle of Poverty, on the fringe or falling through the cracks.
But the difference in my case was that I was privileged to have someone like Grandfather looking out for my mom and me.
Finally, it is with a deep sense of appreciation and gratitude that I feel for the way that Grandfather chose to look after us, even though he wasn’t obligated to.
Galloping into the year of the Fire Horse on February 17th, seasonal transitional energies are blowing in the wind, and kicking up dust along the frontiers ahead. Pisces season starts a couple of days after that till the forthcoming Equinox in later March.
Keep in mind that the Eclipse Season further fuels the flames of transformation with a Solar Eclipse on the Chinese New Year, and then a Full Moon Lunar Eclipse on March 3rd. Many of you are already feeling the energies of the Spring Eclipses now.
Mercury will be in Retrograde on February 26th-March 20th. This mysterious Twilight Zone reality aligns with free-spirited, soul traveling and meditative Pisces. Nothing to get superstitious about, just allow yourself to go with the flow, and embrace the unknown waters waiting to spring forth new perceptual experiences, if you’ll pardon the pun.
A Full Worm Moon on March 3 reminds us that Spring is arriving, and the early bird gets the worm. Everything is ephemeral because the Law of Transience reflects that seasonal changes are in the air, and we are reminded that the only constant is change.
Speaking of Spring, the Vernal Equinox on March 20th reflects the seasonal transition between the end of Pisces and the beginning of Aries. It’s out with the old, and in with the new. New life is bursting at the seams with new growth and energies. The reason that Easter, which will happen on April 5th this year, is often associated with eggs is because eggs are symbolic of fertility, new growth and rebirth.
Does anyone out there remember that 70s TV Show called Mork & Mindy, about an ET who comes to Earth in an Egg Shaped Spaceship? Isn’t there a non-coincidental felt sense of resurrection in that?
Reflecting on technology that is out of this world, what’s up with the mysterious comet 3I/ATLAS?
Of course, there are mixed reviews but check out the scientific quote below:
“Scientists say that 3I/ATLAS has likely been traveling through interstellar space for a long time . . . University of Oxford astronomer Matthew Hopkins is part of a team of scientists that think 3I/ATLAS, discovered on July 1, 2025 by the ATLAS Survey Telescope, is around 7 billion years old . . . All non-interstellar comets, such as Halley’s Comet formed at the same time as our solar system, so they are up to 4.5 billion years old,” Hopkins said in a statement. “But interstellar visitors have the potential to be far older, and of those known about so far, our statistical method suggests that 3I/ATLAS is very likely to be the oldest comet we have ever seen.”
Remember that comets are historically seen as harbingers of change, in much the same way as Eclipse seasons are known as shakeups in consciousness. Think of them working collaboratively together as catalysts for transformation.
Dreamy Pisces awakens oceanic visions of water and its multidimensional beings, like whales, that live in its element. I remember when I had two specifically similar perceptible transformative shifts in consciousness during experiences with Whale consciousness.
The first encounter in consciousness happened while submerged in a pitch black sensory depravation floating tank filled with saltwater. And then the second experience transpired a few years later during a holotropic breathwork workshop in 2016.
Holotropic breath work was invented by the Grofs, two therapists who developed a natural way to access altered states through breathwork. Evocative music played during the breathing session, followed by non-verbal mandala artwork afterword as a way to silently integrate the experience. To learn more about holotropic breathwork, check out the link below:
During the encounters with Whale, I had authentic shapeshifting experiences, where I literally turned into a whale, energetically speaking at least. It’s hard to put into words what happened to me.
Looking back on these experiences, I felt as if I went into a deep dive into a previously unexplored empathic frequency. Even though I was aware that I was still a human being in a pitch black coffin-like saltbox of water; at the same time I had also transformed into the consciousness of huge whale in the depths of the ocean.
During the breath work meditation, I shifted into the energy of whale again. This time however, my consciousness experienced a frequency shift by ‘swimming’ into a perceptibly deeper and higher form of consciousness.
As I ‘swam’ through the waters while still embodying Whale consciousness, I encountered and also transformed into all of the animal spirits found in the first edition of my first book, Something to Chew On. The best way I can describe the experience is that it felt like I was reading the energy of the book’s material from a deeper state of consciousness that involved a telepathic-empathic form of awareness.
As heartwarming and mindblowing as these experiences were, they felt so natural. It was as if I was literally tuning into the heartbeat and frequency of our living planet Gaia.
Ah, talk about taking the plunge into unchartered waters, and an evolving co-regulative communication between an author and their muse!
Writing about consciousness is merely using the form of words as signposts to point in the right direction. Perhaps the consciousness of writers will awaken from their own lyrics, just as the consciousness of the readers will awaken from reading the author’s poetic prose. Tapping into our sense of resiliency is key. The short inspirational clip below features Mexican-American, Detroit native singer-songwriter Rodriquez that further amplifies the sentiment:
At the time of the aforementioned experiences with Whale, I had a a sound intellectual, and early spiritual understanding of the old spiritual and scientific stories that whales had big brains, great intelligence, and carried the heartbeat and consciousness of the planet.
But I was also working on getting more in alignment with my soul purpose; as in deepening my learning curve to go beyond my intellect into a more intuitive realm of knowing.
My experiences with Sacred Whale Medicine certainly invited newly awakened portals of perception and consciousness expansion.
Interestingly, humans are mostly water, in the sense that water makes up the majority of our form.
Curiously, water is a conductor of sound and an elemental force of primordial creation.
But beyond that, we are mostly formless, energetic beings of light.
May we ride the waves without getting washed out in the surf.
From that perspective, this wisdom reveals that humans are creative beings who can align with sound and light frequencies that can change our vibrations.
We are both form and formless. The formless shines through the form, and is the presence or light of consciousness that illuminates our form because it radiates from the inside out.
Further, this process can lead to a dimensional shift in our consciousness that is a real perceptible and felt sense experience. That’s why there is a growing reception to the movement in sound and light therapy as effective forms of energy work.
In much the same way as Easter’s connection to eggs, Mork’s egg-like spaceship, and of course past Creation stories of the Cosmic Egg . . . Check out the sign of the times Harmonic Egg featured in the video below:
Remember, the Truth is that we will tip the scales on our Planet and beyond our current state of consciousness when we move further away from fear, and instead closer to Love. Fear has been perpetrated onto us by certain old powers that be that are afraid to give up their control issues.
Keep in mind that when you are in a place of Joy and Light, it’s harder to get seduced or bogged down in the heaviness of the world or give up your power to others. The Power of Love isn’t going away. Consider the clip below as a friendly reminder to have the Grace to know that the Truth of the power of Love shall set us free!
May all Beings be free and awaken to the dimension of inner peace,
Holy Cow, we have made it through the Autumn Eclipse Season! Of course, the aftershocks will linger for some time; which is somewhat akin to the way Mercury in Retrograde takes time for the fog to lift, and we can reflect back with more clarity.
Eclipses have the potential to shake up your consciousness, invite spiritual awakenings, and loosen up the grip of the ego. Recently, I heard a spiritual teacher share a story of how she forgot how to drive a car after having a spiritual awakening. It isn’t that the ego doesn’t serve. Rather, after such an awakening, a new way of shifting gears can be discovered after a healing, if you’ll pardon pun.
Use the energies now to cleanse and purify any old emotions and memories that you are still holding.
What needs to be released in your soul at this time?
What has shifted within you?
How have you grown?
What have you released that no longer serves your personal empowerment and sovereignty?
Today, September 22nd, marks the Autumn Equinox because we officially say goodbye to summer and hello to fall, in the Northern Hemisphere at least. The leaves are changing, days are getting shorter, and the temperatures are dropping.
Or if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, you’re saying peace out to winter and good day mate to Spring because it’s the Vernal Equinox.
Regardless of wherever you are on the Planet, the energies of Light and Dark, Masculine and Feminine and Yin and Yang will be in equal alignment with each other.
A New Balance of creation is in the air and will show up in our footsteps, if we are paying mindful attention.
Whether you call it a Dimension of Spaciousness, the Kingdom of Heaven or the Light of Consciousness; the energy of these words describe a real attainable experience that exists within you, and is everywhere.
But we all know that the Empire are protecting old ways of manipulation that wants us to think otherwise. The clinging and grasping of the Old Guard continues to try to control us so that we behave as sheeple by convincing you that you are not worthy. Think of it as a commercial that wants you to buy into an idea that you are separate from everyone and everything; God included.
The truth is that we are awakening into a New Age and Paradigm where Diversity within Unity will become the new normal. All that means is that we will know our Oneness with each other, while at the same time discovering our individual uniqueness. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Our interconnection with all sentient beings will become a self evident truth. Remember that Love and Truth are the Pillars that hold up the Universe. It has to be felt in the heart and without forgetting in the head.
During the season of Libra on September 22 through October 21st, we are always inspired us to balance what we give to our relationship with our self with what we give to our relationships with others.
A Full Harvest Moon will occur on October 6, 2025. This Full Moon gets its name because it is the closest to the Fall Equinox, and usually takes place in September. It is symbolic of the peak harvest of crops in many places. And it will be the first of three consecutive supermoons, which is like a Full Moon on steroids.
As Libra season ends on the New Moon on October 21, a doorway into deep healing in our relationships; including blood or extended family is possible, if only we are open to seeing beneath the surface of our long held patterns.
For example, most couples have known the experience of developing deeply ingrained and dysfunctional patterns in their current or past relationships. Whether or not you are still in the couple relationship, you can still heal and change these dysfunctional patterns within yourself, and the relationship can change. Or you can change the way you experience the relationship within yourself at least.
As this writer shared with you in the last blog post, he is on a Leave of Absence after serving as a social worker in the same school community for the last 20 years. Recently, he followed the wise guidance of a soul psychotherapist, and did an identity ceremony to honor, release and let go of who he was, his accomplishments, and also let go of what no longer serves him as he moves forward.
During the process, I thought about the good fortune it has been to have meaningful work. While trauma- informed practice in schools isn’t easy by any standard, it was important for me to honor the big changes that occurred, look upon them as all blessings, and choose what parts of them no longer serve me, and what I want to bring with me into my next chapter. It’s not a coincidence that we’re in the Chinese Year of the Snake, which symbolizes the shedding of the old skin, and transformation.
For those of you hip to the Chakras, my Solar Plexus Chakra was prompting me to do this identity ceremony, and has been giving me the clear message that it was the right thing to do.
Furthermore, as I look back upon the Mount Shasta retreat that I wrote about in the last blog post, I think about the arriving Massive Changes coming down the pike, as we move further into a New Earth Aquarian Age, and deepen our alignment with Unity Consciousness.
Check out the short video clip (approximately 2 minutes below) to see what we experienced as a group together on our retreat.
According to Gene Ang, our facilitator at the Mount Shasta retreat:
“We had a series of sightings over five consecutive nights where in the night sky you can see what looks like a star powerup to a tremendous amount and then power down. The series looks like 6-8 of these power ups occurring one after the other with about a 30 second to a minute pause between each power up. You can see a version recorded by Dr. Steven Greer . . . In the video, you will see Dr. Greer point out an object in the night sky with his laser which gets intensely bright and then powers down. What we saw this past August was the same thing but the object would power up and power down 6-8 times in a row before disappearing. The group saw this same pattern in some version on five consecutive nights . . . When I took my initial trainings with Steven Greer regarding extraterrestrial contact in 2009, he said that when a group in a circle outside sees these power ups, there is a tremendous amount of light and information that is sent into the group that assists in transforming their consciousness. Even healings can occur.”
During the various debriefing sessions and sub-grouping conversations, I repeatedly shared that it felt like we were being winked at during the powerups. Moreover, I drew the analogy of when we were kids and someone would signal to the highway trucker to pull his horn, and they would.
Finally, most adult children can remember magical experiences at some point during their childhood. Even if it was the sense of adventure and promise that a new day might offer; whether a specific encounter with an animal, a field trip at school or an unscripted experience on a summer day during unstructured play, or dreams or visions that resonated and felt so real they were hard to shake. Perhaps it was an experience that your known paradigm couldn’t explain. Not everybody remembers or even had these experiences necessarily. Today, people are far more plugged into their devices, and are more likely to miss these opportunities. But there is a growing body of people who are intensionally experiencing them more than ever by slowing down their pace, stopping to smell the roses, and being mindful of the sacredness of the living moment.
May all Beings be free and awaken to the vibrational shift into the dimension of Inner Peace,
Compliments of AI, the images above capture the sentiment of the time when my mom and I got in a power struggle when I was about five years old. Like Linus from the cartoon Peanuts, I brought my blanket (blankie) everywhere, and was about to over my bring it into the bathroom with me. Typically, my mom was good at what we call in Therapeutic Crisis Intervention (TCI) ‘dropping the rope’, and avoiding power struggles. But this time, mom wasn’t going to budge, grabbed what psychologists today call ‘transitional objects’, and tried to pull my blankie away from me.
Given my strong will and formidable attachment to this object, I was having none of it. Thus, it didn’t take long for the blanket to part like the Red Sea, and tear right down the middle. Immediately, I started crying and so did my mom. After we calmed down, and processed the incident; mom apologized, told me how bad she felt and then expressed that she was really worried about me trying to take my blanket to school, getting in trouble and being made fun of by my peers. I don’t blame her; especially because I had already been profiled young, and had to go to a special purpose Preschool program to rework my difficult behaviors. She remembered the look they gave her when I showed up for the first day of the new Preschool with my cowboy guns in holsters. And then the staff turned towards her and said, “we don’t encourage guns in school.” Given that experience, her desire to help- and that I had already got into trouble with another peer on Kindergarten’s orientation day, I can see how she got sucked into this power struggle with me.
Looking back, I remember being struck with how rigidly she had set the limit; seemingly abruptly, and then held her ground without budging. Mother and I revisited this episode many times over the years, and would always laugh about it. The storytelling was a precursor to my journey in meditation, our relationship with our attachments, and how we approach working with them. This experience also informs how we can more effectively co-regulate with each other, and navigate transitions between structured, unstructured, preferred and non-preferred activities. Besides, the blankie was already about to set itself on fire, and was no longer salvageable. The agreement was that I would get a new blanket to replace the old one but under the expectation that the new one would not be going to school with me. During my career as a school social worker, I have told this story many times to students, parents, staff and coaches when situations like these have come up. Like the old T’ai Chi Master Professor Cheng used to say, learning to be human isn’t always easy, and is a lifelong developmental process; our attachments notwithstanding. Humor gets us to look at things differently, and is a powerful change agent in the transformational process of relaxing and letting go of our attachments.
Turtles have been living on this planet longer than dinosaurs
Humans have been living on Earth less than that
And yet many of us are living like dinosaurs, caught up in a karmic loop
of the reptilian mind – obsessed with order and control issues
A perpetual state of fear is the psychological reality for many
the glass is seen as half empty, which creates anxieties about the fear of loss
But Turtle’s shells reflect safety, security and protection
It’s always good to slow down and return to the mindfulness of our breath
With a Solar Eclipse New Moon, and Lunar New Year arriving this week
Stirrings of Spring energies are waking up underground
Can you feel their movement into new beginnings and foreshadowing
of above ground changes in the air, like a fading stock exchange
and military-industrial complex?
We are all children of God, even Donald Trump
The time is now to purge and release our ideas of separation
Us and Them kind of thinking is devolution
Demonizing our demons will not bring us to the Light
Why are there movements to impeach Donald Trump,
hold power abusers accountable, create a more equitable economic system,
nurture minority/woman’s rights, and
provide safety nets like universal health care?
Will Trump quit before he gets impeached, then live out the rest of his life
pontificating about being persecuted, and ensconced in seeing himself as a victim?
Why is there such push back to justify going to war against perceived enemies,
under the guise of national security?
It is because oppression needs to have a privileged few on top,
and an overwhelming majority on the bottom to feed the machine
But we are all in this together . . .
Human beings are complex creatures, and our relationships
are greater than the sum of our parts
Look upon one another as mirrors to help us reflect the light of love and truth
Remember that it takes less energy to love than to hate
It has been said that Dog is “man’s best friend” . . .
In this Chinese New Year of the Dog, meditation on Dog can inspire
a deep compassion for our human shortcomings,
and loyalty to our one human family
Can you hear the tweets from our Chickadee peeps in the trees?
Their higher wisdom reminds us that harmony can exist –
If we just remember to breathe . . .
But you can’t do that if you are attached to your position
and listening to the voice in your head, instead of
hearing the heart-mind another
How often do you hear the cheerful expression of truth
in the old world today?
The black truth is that mental illness runs rampant across our planet today
Addictions to dirty energies accompanies this insanity
We have a bloated President,
Towered by an inflated Military-Industrial Complex
New Waves of Divine Love, Light and Truth are trying to enter into
our mind-body-spirits to help us purify our souls development
They want to awaken an authentic healing wellness that resonates in our Being
Our consciousness must transform, and branch out into
greener pastures that grows roots into seven generations ahead
The higher consciousness of Chickadee reminds us that
the truth does not need to hurt but can be sung with a gentle and soft melody
You know we are living in dangerous times, where
galactic violence is accelerating . . .
Many people and Nation States are pounding their chests aggressively –
There is too much posturing, barking, nagging , and machismo military might
It reminds me of a toddler that did not want to share, or was angry
about an age-appropriate limit being set by someone older and wiser
Re-examine everything you have been taught to believe about your
relationship with yourself, and your relationship to the world around you
Look at how you have been conditioned to buy into the belief that
there are winners and there are losers, that people get what they deserve.
And then explore the opposite side of that coin
Meditate on the mantra, “Nothing is as it seems . . . Nor is it the opposite”
But please do so in your heart with a sweet singing earworm of Chickadee
Chickadees speak the truth in ways that are gentle and soft . . .
Their energy can help you authentically speak your truth without passive aggression
or other subtle acts of violence
And they can also help you become mindful of your communicative delivery
Some say that the truth hurts
But it doesn’t have to be that be that way!
Perhaps you are pondering whether or not to vote
for the Donald or Hillary in this upcoming American political election
Remember when Hitler perceived America as
having a greater harness on propaganda than Nazi Germany?
Has a big corporation like IBM followed through with reparations from
a genocidal arrangement against primarily Jews to target and dehumanize
the rising tide of right-wing scapegoats today?
And what about all the “right-sizing” big business does to justify laser-like precision
in cutting costs by outsourcing workers to justify cheap labor somewhere else?
Regardless of outcome, it is wise to prepare for the strong possibility that a bigoted
man of silver spoon white privilege will become president yet again . . .
Or arguably even more likely, we will have our first woman take office
Like her or not, that is progress here in America
where still most of our politicians and presidents are old, white men
Synchronizing with a passing new moon,
we need to talk about and entertain new
possibilities in our collective consciousness
Economic strangulation and domestic violence –
primarily against woman, black folks, people of color
and the poor and oppressed needs to stop!
Chickadees are fearless peaceful warriors
“If you see something, say something”
Let go of your fears that a half white black person, woman president,
or an honest candidate like Bernie Sanders can’t win or will be killed if elected
Picture the authentic will of the people’s appreciation over the interest of big money
Remember to stand in your own personal authority!
The black caps of chickadee symbolizes intellect and higher level thinking
There is such primordial power in blackness
Imagine ourselves as a diversified and unified portfolio –
Sharing equal slices of humble pie . . .
We are divergent expressions of Great Spirit
When we look through a lens of equality,
we honor and respect each other’s diversity in unity
In today’s overemphasis on a marketed-sex driven world-view . . .
Human sexuality is as complex as it ever was
But it is a systemic and holistic issue that is symbolic
of our modern world’s libido-centric malaise
Intimacy is a personal issue that projects itself outward
And so it is that masculine-yang desires to express itself
in the rising sunlight of the Northern hemisphere
Just because you are not in the mood to make love
does not mean that you will not enjoy the fruits of your labor
Consider allowing yourself the viewpoint that it would be
healthy to see your follow through in this area to be a private victory
rather than a personal-relational duty and sacrifice
See you further on up the trails,
Ari
For more information on the arrival of my book, Something to Chew On . . . , here are the links to access a copy if you feel so moved:
Classroom Mothership Earth 