Forming Intelligent Cognitive Maps with Rat

Chinese astrological legend posits that Rat was the first
to arrive among the 12 animals that heeded Buddha’s call

Are you aroused by a sweet and spirited
fragrance fueling your olfactory senses?

May has blossomed from a most powerful
Flower Full-Bellied Wesak Moon
Sowing the seeds of Love over us last Sunday
Shining the Light of compassion onto our World

Let it Be that the
Love of Mother Mary and Christ Consciousness
Shine sunlight onto shadowy planetary dark edges

On this Sunday, what better a day to honor
the Sacred Feminine Energy on Mother’s Day!
Thank you Mother Earth for giving us a home to live on
May we rekindle our commitment to live in harmony with You again

The Empire has studied rats and applied Its scientific observations
on the psychology of humanity
The shroud of the Dark Side of social science has used this knowledge to
manipulate and control the masses to keep us in hibernation

But if you look behind Imperial smokescreens and propagated patriotism –
Your spiritual gait will not be deflated and your footing will remain secure

Humanity is on the cusp of an eye-opening
evolutionary impulse to wake-up from a hypnotic trance and
Re-member our spiritual Nature

The Old Guard is afraid to let go of Its grip

A New Hope of Divine marital vows is lightening-up –
Keeping the flame lit with peaceful internal cohabitation

Masculine and Feminine energies live in domestic partnership
Dancing together in an egalitarian Tango

On the surface, many folks sound the alarm and hit the panic button
when they notice a rat or some other pest
nervously exploring their environment

Are you not handling the pests in your life properly?
What mirror are they holding up for you to self-examine?

Beyond a cursory glance or an attachment to a rigid perspective . . .
Might we observe a window into a deeper perceptual reality –
waiting to be explored?

It is easier to stop at the judgment and hold a fixed idea or position . . .

“Good fences make good neighbors”
Get that varmint off my property line!
Asserts the programmed “voice in the head”

But are you shrewd enough to sniff out the challenge and opportunity to
aggressively dig a little deeper to spring the traps
of your protective scar tissue and psychic defenses?

Success, restlessness and shrewdness are the ways of Rat Medicine
As are sociability and adaptability part of their daily vitality

Rat guides us into industry and cooperative efforts in community
Just waiting to flower across the fruited plain of humanity

“Become the change you want to see in the world”

See you further on up the trails,

Ari

Visited by Goose

Goose is honking out to us that Spring has sprung . . .

The spirited guidance of Geese synchronizes with New Moons –
Time to wake up to symbolic connections to new beginnings

“Out with old, in with the new.”

Geese reflect possibilities
of flowering egalitarian soul mate relationships

Goose offers wise counsel in developing couple partnership
that is based on a lifetime commitment of mutuality and trust –

A testament to purification, renewal and sustainable intimacy

What birds of a feather are you attracted to flocking together?
Do you want to become the change you want to see in the world?

Be the calm in the eye of the storm, as our world needs that now more than ever

But at the end of the day, we all need to learn how to create healthy marriages
with our own intrinsic masculine and feminine nature

A mythical sense of Life’s spiritual quest
and adventure into legendary places is re-awakened

May we re-imagine what we want our lives to look like
Suspension of disbelief stimulates the fantastic even in the mundane

Become the author of your own life by changing your story
Use the energy of Goose to unlock the forces of creativity in your daily script

Geese are vegetarians and a good reminder that we are what we eat
Are you getting enough vegetables in your daily diet?

Like an arrow, the formation of Geese point us toward experiencing
new directions and possibilities that will sharpen our vision
So that we are on target with a Bull’s Eye precision
In peaceful and non-violent ways
When we venture out and trek into new frontiers

Fasten your seat belts and
Ready up your mind-body-spirit ships
for beaming up toward uncharted places in your consciousness

Try not to be too perfectionist in your goal-setting
May we re-member that it is the mystery of the journey
that matters more than the destination of the final frontier

See you further on up the trails,

Ari

Chickadee Sings these Songs of Springdom

Chickadees are fearless peaceful warriors
Their small stature is met with thunderous lightning
revealing the power of bystanders –
“If you see something, say something”

Singing cheerful songs unlocking Truth in a key that is safe to our ears

A Powerful Pisces New Moon with Vernal Equinox
Illuminates a natural embodiment of energetic gender equality
Remember to stand in your own personal authority

Now masculine-yang is beginning to assert his sunlight
Echoed by a powerful Pisces New Moon amplifying feminine-yin dark nights
during this Spring Eclipse Season

A Critical Mass can tip the scales and will come about
Hopefully smooth sailing is your preferred navigational method –
even during dark and stormy weather fronts

But new portals of light want to shine on our consciousness
Like Snake, it is time to shed our old skin
May we breathe in fresh new air of inner peace
and then exhale deadened stagnant air that suffocates

Black caps symbolizes intellect and higher level thinking

We are a diversified and unified portfolio
Sharing equal slices of humble pie
Divergent expressions of Great Spirit

When we look through a lens of equality
We honor and respect each other’s diversity in unity

Expanding our consciousness to rise above the
gravitational pull of the material realm

Regardless of maturation –
Transformation is awaiting resurrection
Let us know adaptability within seasonal mutability

Movement into a New Age
Springs into action
an intentional reworking of success

New economies and novel ways of thinking
are cogs in rebalancing new wheels of equanimity within worldly powers
A New Earth is being born and ready to take flight

We don’t need the privileged powerful positions of authority
to tell us what is in our best interests anymore

Remember that boxes of rain
clear stagnant dirty waters away
that spring forth floral bouquets
in colorful arrangements of
little greenhouses for you and me

May we wake up expecting synchronicity
Dream woven into our waking reality

Meditation in Nature will reveal intrinsic security
Reflecting back to you in your outer world
When you are calm with an open-passive attitude of trust and empathic curiosity

See you further on up the trails,

Ari

Union of the Snake

Stoking the fire burning within . . .

Sacred marriage of internal masculine and feminine kin –
Transmutation of death-rebirth by shedding old skin.

Is your chattering mind merely a reflection of corporate propagated spin?
Fair and balanced news comes from a unified mind-body-spirit din.
Prepackaged commercials should be tossed in the bin.

Standing with energetic footprints growing strong roots –
Allows for a grounded Being anchored in Mother Earth’s soot.

A poisonous snake-bite might appear like an Indian burn . . .
But there is healing tonic entwined within the urn.
Toxic venom is released from a snake bite.
Ingesting a Divine cleansing with abundant watery crystalline love-light.

Are you awakening into New Aquarian Age Unity?
Or are you stuck in old world Groundhog Day repetitive re-run insanity?

The choice is ours to make . . .

Like a vampire bite, the Empire’s cannibalistic toxicity carries venom.
But in our awakening, we are blazing new trails through healing and transformation.

Pain and suffering abound.
Terribly tragic it is.

Nature cries a dirge of acid rain.
Within the ashes, a new Tree of Life is born.

May our souls lighten up and deliver us into our “better angels”.

Meditation on Snake is good medicine for transmutation.

See you further on down the trails,

Ari

Universal Spirits In A Material World

The weather underground is akin to the air up there
A Full Moon and Comet are coming soon to a theatre near you

What do we do?
Well it’s up to you . . .

Surfing the energetic waves rolling into the bay of emotional tides . . .
Do you bear witness to a fading Twilight Zone curtain?
(With or without the applications of technology)

An Empire burns while the Cosmic Chakra Wheel in the Sky turns . . .

Peace in the Middle East
Peace in the Americas
Peace in Africa, China, Tibet and Planet throughout

We are the Dali Llama
We are Malcolm X
We are Universal spirits in a material world

Healing our polarity consciousness
Integrating our Yin-Yang soulful feminine Moon and masculine Sun
Tunneling inward into the dark toward the Winter Solstice

And from the ashes a Phoenix Rises –
Clearing dust settles with meditation as shelter from the storm

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

Diving with Pelican into the bay of Forgiveness

I remember hearing a spirited earworm singing there is God in forgiveness. It’s as if the energy of Pelican nourishes our soul with this food for heartfelt thought. During this week’s digestion process, why not marinate on that during our walking meditation through Life? Spring begins on hump day. As such, we begin a new season and have a whale of a time while dancing equally with masculine and feminine energies in an egalitarian marriage between light of yang and the dark of yin. Right now, it is natural to grieve the loss of Winter and the dying old self. At the same time, feeling the intensity of Spring gaining momentum is blossoming within. Organically, we feel mixed and conflicting emotions vibrating within our Being. Pelican’s medicine is a good reminder to let go of judgments of self and others. This does not mean we forget or condone. It means that we co-create win-win realities with one another when arriving in this place. We are all connected and expressions of Great Spirit’s unfolding. The perception that we are separate and disconnected is real, although in the sense that it is an illusion. Intellectually, we know that our sciences and spirituality have teachings that inform us of this truth. But understanding this truth further down in our souls, it means that we have to dive deeper to get a closer look at what is going on underneath. During our travels, Pelican symbolizes a buoy so that we may stay afloat. Remember the mystic swims in the waters the crack-up drowns in. And it is easier to look outside and make a judgment at some perceived external target. While there is freewill in staying in that place, a growing number of us are realizing that the object of our affection, or the demonized enemy is merely a mirror reflecting back a shadow Self for us to take back and release for healthy compost. In this light, we look at our darkness with a gentle, forgiving and judgment-free gaze. This is how we take back our projections without hurting ourselves. Instead of us and them, there is we that celebrates our diversity. If only our World Leaders would kill with kindness, rather than feeding off the souls of our planet, while justifying that it is good for business.

On the surface, Frankenfoods are being touted as a preferred way to eat. Students borrowing monies to access higher education are about one trillion in debt. Why isn’t education free? This sounds like a lot of money, but pales in comparison to America’s national debt. Paradoxically, the nice guys running the dog and pony show continue to funnel and accumulate more wealth at the top of the food chain. Our friends in Congress, bribed by bullying megacorporations, turn a blind eye to a 30 year trend that has fueled an underclass and nearly whacked a Middle Class. We are witnessing this wheel spinning insanity that parrots a mantra that says a trickle down will somehow benefit the masses and is in our best interests. How is the absurdity of this paradigm working for us? Is the model of a hard-working CEO making 380 times an average working person fair and equitable? Have we given peace a chance? I hardly think a Totalitarian State could convince us of that, with the proliferation of remote control drones bombing our human family to protect a way of life that is lose-lose. Instead of Europeans spreading disease in the Americas, under the guise of freedom, we have Nepalese spreading diseases in Haiti, under the guise of freedom. Instead of citing England as the model for democracy, Exxon is professing to believe in education by spending millions on advertisements by slickly asserting their stock in education, but balking at paying their full tax bill that would allow for more equitable resources in education. But the idea of Elizabethan Poor Law remains constant–that those in power should view sharing as a charitable duty and a sacrificial act of alms to the poor. This intellectual concept that serves as a security in consciousness does not understand that greed and arrogance cannot be bypassed. When these underlying feelings are owned, processed and made friends with, we will see a waning of our wars, addictions, pretending and collective egotism. Through trust, we will see more Love and Truth. Rather than ego-centered arguing, defending and throwing temper tantrums on C-SPAN, our Senators and Congressmen will heed the call by honoring the will of the people. In the meanwhile, it is going to take every one of us to do the inner alchemy to co-create a pyramid that looks more like an equilateral triangle. If corporations are people too, then where is the love guys? Our souls demand cleaner energy to feed our spirit-mind-bodies during our journey here. America was built off the backs of free and low-wage labor, making some entrepreneurial folks very wealthy. The time is now to give something back in an open and honest way, without the cloaks and daggers of yesterday. Like we learned in kindergarten, it’s time to start sharing our cookies again.

On the trails of Life, when we remember to consume the energy medicine of Pelican, the New World of inner peace is revealed. Pelicans demonstrate team work when competitively and cooperatively catching fish. There are no enemies and we are all playing on the same team, whether realized or not. In a harmonic convergence, navigating in their waters resonates in our souls by helping us stay afloat, rather than sinking like a stone in these changing tides. Are you inspired by the clean energy of Pelican and their message to dive into the bay of forgiveness?

See you further on down the trails,

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