Tag Archives: Politics

Blending in gray areas with Fox

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Foxes are good role models in that they teach us how to effectively blend in to our surroundings. Moreover, they teach us how to adjust our Auric energy fields to effectively connect with our peers in community. Foxes typically backtrack, so it can be difficult to understand the timing or direction of their travels. Although they are members of the Dog family, Foxes also exhibit characteristics of Cat. Symbolically, Fox radiate the darkness of feminine energy. Given their keen sense of smell, we learn a sense of discrimination and discernment in our relationship with self and others.

In our work with children, we know the job of parenting is no easy task.  Such as with Life, balance is key. Being too permissive or too rigid might be a receipt for disaster.  Maturation does not kick in until our children learn to effectively pass through developmental changes.  Most parents want our children to have a better shake of it than we did and protect our children from pain and suffering. In that primal desire help them grow and connect with our children, sometimes we enable them and teach them ways that we did not intend and backfire. Our children frequently show us reflections of ourselves, sometimes without our awareness. When we are unconscious to this process, we tend to react to what we see them doing–often in negative ways. Those of us that feel we are more “spiritually enlightened” than our parents were, might act on the strong impulse to minister spiritual values to our children through lecture. But modeling is the most powerful form of teaching. We want our children to behave when we are not around in a similar way as when we are. Thus, it’s no secret that when an autocratic parent or teacher leaves the room, the ballyhoo starts when the dictator energy is not in the immediate area to “rule with an iron fist.”

In our global village, we are curious to see whether our Imperial friends in Congress will vote for discrimination or level the workplace playing field for our GLBTQ brothers and sisters with the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Will current leadership vote for more of George Orwell 1984 like technological surveillance in our lives or will we see more transparency in our relationships with business and government? Regarding the Monsanto Protection Act, our hats off to Connecticut when our beloved Constitution State became the first state to pass a GE labeling law. Before we proliferate Frankenfoods, shouldn’t we plant seeds into more organic farming methods, where we pay our environmentally conscious farmers a livable wage for doing the right thing that is in alignment with Mother Nature? And let’s call a spade a spade here . . . Dumping raw sewage in any community on Earth is discriminatory. Why do we still have communities divided by railroad tracks and other barriers to equality? “Can’t we all just get along?” We humans have really struggled with coexistence. It is time to move forward into an awareness of mutual aid in our relationships with one another. Imagine a foxy world where a freedom fighter like Natan Blanc can freely come out into the open field for being a conscientious objector, rather than be locked up in prison by a criminal Empire.

When we respect our self and others, we disarm our entanglement with ego and allow Spirit to manifest in our physical vessels. Being with Fox is not about hiding or being sneaky, although that is working its energy in the negative. Rather, working with the energy of Fox in the positive is staying on track and being discrete within our own footsteps, without stepping on the toes of another. When we wake up to the reality of inner peace, we know a Higher quality of respect than what the lower vibration of what fear and violence yields. Becoming an embodiment of inner peace sows the seeds of love that cross-pollinate across the plane of our beloved Mother Earth.

See you further on down the trails,

Ari

Hey Bald Eagle, Please Feather Our Universal Ripple

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Out on the trails last week, the sound of Catbird amplified our communication skills. The week prior to that, Duck helped us paddle through our emotional waters. This week, our spirits are soaring with the powerful mage wings of Bald Eagle, yet keeping a strong Earthbound connection with its powerful talons. Meditation on Eagle is powerful energy to consume for our spirit, soul and Life’s journey. Its medicine reveals seeing from all directions and resurrects the sound of “Instant Karma”. Great Spirit reveals itself in mysterious ways. With an Eagle Eye view, we see deep within our inner tapestry and observationally hover over and glimpse into what presents itself and needs refinement in our soul’s development. During this process of reflection, we develop heightened senses of vision and hearing, both physically and spiritually. Eagles are predators and help keep balance in Nature. As such, they effectively hunt and fish in water. Not coincidentally, water and fish symbolize psychic phenomena. In the spirit of that, consumption of Eagle facilitates our capacity to work with emotions, psychic space and consciously navigate spiritual realms with greater effectiveness.

On the surface of Mother Earth, we really need Eagle to feather the collective ripple of our Planetary consciousness. There appears to be a political movement to roll back legal justification for the Empire to use drone strikes in Afghanistan and Iraq by some of our friends on Capitol Hill. But there are mixed messages being reported on whether the Attack of the Drones will end anytime soon. Will we see an exit strategy to bring our troops home? Will we support their reintegration into our society when they return? Will the US flood Syria with more weapons to ignite Middle Eastern “tinder boxes”, or show restraint in that region by increasing humanitarian aid and supporting the same of Russia, China and Iran? Will we press Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel in that light? The Obama administration recently lifted “consumer communication tools” in Iran, but sanctions on medicine reaching its citizens continues. The US Justice Department is arguing in court that “vulture funds threatens US policy regarding international debt restructuring.” The World Bank appears to maintain its “business as usual” commercial that says what is good for business is bad for our Planet vis-a-vis encouraging countries to “deregulate in harmful ways in order to get better funding.” Whacking already miserly social services, education and health care is self-destructive for everyone, including the upper echelon. Moving onward, we raise our fists to the beat of Equal access to concrete services! And what about our extraterrestrial and underwater brothers and sisters? Are you reading between the lines regarding what the “man behind the curtain” is slowly unveiling on the corporate media?

Waking up to Eagle’s teachings is a clarifying reminder that we accept an increasing responsibility for our spiritual path. We are ready to see opportunities with our vision and snatch them up with our talons. Our efficacy to use our voice improves, knowing when to express and when to yield in authenticity and respect. We feed our soul with Eagle in the sense that we heed the callback of Spirit, by allowing it to radiate through our Being organically. The voice of Spirit likes to speak to us through the “Universal Pillars of Love and Truth”, rather than the ego’s trickery of negative and discouraging messages. Are you willing to legalize freedom and follow the joy that your heart desires? As a spiritual Being having a human experience (or otherwise), do you see that you are “of the Earth, but not in it?” “As more and more people see from these new viewpoints, we collectively end an old world of fear, illusion, and mistrust. We come together to build our Aquarian Age.”

See you further on down the trails,

Ari

Staying Afloat with Duck as an Emotional Guide

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Whatever our circumstances might look like in this lifetime, our human brethren are emotional creatures that feel a strong yearning to belong and be included in fraternal sisterhood. Some of us, try as we might appear hellbent on avoiding and killing that aspect of ourselves. Living authentically however, is sobering us up to our need to regulate our emotional plight. Sure, we have plenty of things to distract us from our emotional bodies, like “work to do and bills to pay”. But those distractions only make it conveniently inconvenient to suppress and repress our emotional tides that inundate. During this powerful eclipse season and Full Moon coming soon to a theater of life near you, our emotional realities are intensifying. Between the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice, the masculine energetic light of day is rising, as are our spirits. Meditation on Duck is a free guide to tune in to. Its energies want to share its spiritual wisdom with you. When we allow Duck’s Chi to paddle into our souls, we are given emotional comfort and protection. We are in our element with water and given assistance while floating in the astral and emotional realms. Duck helps us drink in the waters of life and swim effectively and stay afloat in our emotional waters. Duck is a powerful spirit guide to maintain our Earthbound connection and let things roll off our backs when things get heated. If only our CEO-Government friends running the business of our military-industrial-complex would marinate on consuming Duck’s free-spirited teachings.

As the world burns, soapy pundits on the tele remain engaged and driven to distraction vis-a-vis the pontificating of ego-centered debates. Admittedly, fascism has its romantic undertones, but we need not choose to buy it. Words are used as weapons of mass distraction, but we have weapons of mass destruction that we need to clear. The time is now to shift our focus away from looking at our Mother Earth as a finite resource to deplete, to a living Being that gives us sustainable life. The engrained business as usual model that has been indoctrinated into our brains needs a new cognitive map. When we are identified with our minds, an endless sea of mental concepts and incessant accompanying emotional reactions are typically dominated by unrealized anxiety. And this hypnotic trance has a tendency to propagate a sleep walk through life. But in every breath we take, we have an opportunity to wake up. Rather than check out, we all have our part to do. For some it’s putting down the 40 ounces to slavery. For others, it might mean seeing through the veil that capitalism and socialism are really just opposite sides of the same coin. Instead of concretely looking at one another as separate and disconnected, one religion being right and the others wrong, qualifying the winners and losers mantra–we become in touch with our strong impulse to shift toward unity in our consciousness. We are leaving behind a bi-polar world of angels and demons, while co-authoring a New Chapter that includes a pluralistic and multi-polar New Earth script.

Ducks are sound creatures of habit and are good reminders to return to safe and comfortable aspects of ourselves when we need to feel safe within our Being. Their energies help us cope with our emotions gracefully. Meditation on Duck helps us acquire and access strategies in the areas of balance, emotional comfort, adaptability and adventure. Life is a journey, not without its labor pains. We all feel that right now, especially during these changing times of transition. The old world is burning, while stoking the embers of the Phoenix Rising. Do you need to establish balance, increase or pay more attention to your emotions and close relationships? Meditation on Duck is ready to help you receive consultation to those questions without charging a bill.

See you further on down the trails,

Ari

Weaseling Our Way Out of a Rock and a Hard Place

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The energy of Weasel is powerful medicine for us to ingest right now on Nature’s cycle. We are standing at a crossroads. Our old ways, old world and collective hold of the ego are losing its firm grip on us. But there are still many, particularly those in positions of high power, who are fighting tooth and nail to resist the arriving of massive changes coming soon to a theater near you. With Climate Change, Mother Earth is growing more vocal against the raping of Her by an overindulgence in masculine-yang energetic perspective that is depleting our natural resources, trashing Her and us according to the gospel of the Almighty Dollar. Yet at the same time, we are experiencing a flowering of consciousness that is cross pollinating humanity and our connection to our beloved Mother Earth. Looking back on the Spring Equinox, we remember Nature being a healthy role model of harmonically balancing our masculine and feminine energies in a sweetly satisfying spirit-mind-body soulful dance step. One powerfully green and free form of alternative energy is Weasel. When consuming the energy of Weasel, we are equipped to access and acquire its spirited teachings of ingenuity, stealthy, sly and secret circumvention pursuit of our goals. Do you remember when the Americas were forcefully taken over by European colonialism? It was Weasel’s medicine that revealed to our Native American brothers and sisters the hidden intention and agenda of the folks coming over on boats to the New World. In this light, what are our shadowy friends in clandestine meetings up to in their moving and shaking? As we move further into spring and closer to the Summer Solstice, more spirited energies are streaming into our consciousness in the form of an astrological showering of eclipses. The more aware and in alignment we are with this information, the less reactive we are to it. What we are talking about here is tunneling beneath the pop headlines that disseminate information we are intended to see. But even in the dark, there is light.

Perhaps Weasel was helpful to a Federal Appeals Court recently, by standing up to Mega-corporations, when oil and gas leases were denied access to scenic public lands in Wyoming and Utah. Was it Weasel that assisted David-like local municipalities by enacting local bans or moratoriums on Goliath-like oil and gas companies to prevent gas drilling and “fracking” that pumps millions of gallons of chemically treated water into the ground to extract gas from deposits deep down in our Mother’s veins? Synchronistically, Weasel parallels a recent movement of politicians that are beginning to see through the Fog of War by taking a stand against the War Hawk mentality in American foreign policy. In short, Hawkish agenda du jour seeks to push for more Drones and robots that popular films such as the Terminator and Robocop showcased in the entertainment industry, under the guise of a self-fulfilling prophecy back in the 1980s and 90s. Do we want to reenact the warmongering history of the Old Testament or do we really want to manifest a New Covenant by co-creating a Divine marriage between Heaven and Earth? Great Spirit is helping us wake up to a higher quality of respect. Rather devolving into a reptilian-brain, fear-based respect that mirrors a gangbanger mind-set, we need to clear our Karma by earning respect back from our more vulnerable populations. The oppressor must welcome the oppressed to the negotiating table with transparency and trust so that we may heal our wounds. With great freedom comes great responsibility, as the same systems that oppress can liberate. Taxation with Representation in part looks like crafting legislation that eradicates our Weapons of Mass Destruction without blowing things out of proportion. But we all need to do our part. Weasel’s medicine can silently help us pursue the process of inner peace by dissolving our internal warheads, so that the waves of this energetic Tsunami are felt across our Planet and we are universally inundated.

When remembering to consume the free-spirited energy of Weasel, we learn how to pursue our goals, while staying out of trouble. Do you need to weasel your way out of situations that don’t appear to allow for it? Do you need to develop your own observational skills? Are you being too vocal in your pursuits? Do you need to dig deeper into your soul? Are you and others being honest? Weasel is powerful medicine that aids us in developing our observational skills, read between the lines, see beneath the surface and perceive the truth behind the smoke and mirrors. We are able to hear what is really being said and see multiple consequences to an event, much like playing chess. May we use its medicine to shine our light in a discreet fashion for mutual-aid. The time is now to ascend from a dimensionally challenged perspective, so that we may open up to a multi-dimensional worldview that values a deeper heartfelt connection to one another.

See you further on down the trails,

Ari

Diving with Pelican into the bay of Forgiveness

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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

With Gulls, We See Beyond Red Herrings

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Sea gulls, or more properly herrings, symbolically represent powers of perception and the subtleties of communication. Hailing primarily from shoreline communities, these creatures understand what it takes to navigate the mystical union of land and sea. While communicative nuances such as empathy, telepathy and other psychical abilities are flying below the radar, even conservative psychology recognizes that humankind predominantly communicates on this level, whether realized or not. Meditation on Herring is good medicine for us to heed their wisdom so that we communicate more effectively with one another. Given our modern technological advances, such energetic patterns are being measured with rigorous scientific data and machinery. While some folks in the healing arts community rely on technology to listen to energetic signals within a client’s body, others prefer using their intuitive faculties as practitioners. Of course, striking a balance is key. Using technology is a tool, but developing ourselves as spiritual Beings is a primary ingredient to a healthy Life diet. Waking up to a multidimensional awareness is not always easy, particularly for those of us who are dimensionally challenged. Awareness leads us toward integrating our emotional bodies, by releasing blockages, with our intellect. Living authentically means that we nourish our souls, while navigating the elements. Consuming a walking meditation way of living is a key ingredient to effectively digesting our soul food.

Waking up recognizes the experience that we have much drama and toxicity on our dying old world. We hear stories about UFO’s and USO’s on air, land and sea. What is going on beneath the surface of our material reality? Whether confidently dismissed or believed as real, we must understand that on some level, there is a reality to the perception that there is more going on here than meets the eye. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, we know the oppressive, Establishment Majority prefers to remain unexamined and hidden. Although concentrating wealth further toward the top of the pyramid is a developmentally delayed perspective, arrogance and greed are powerfully blinding dark emotions that carry a vampire like venom to their bite. We all experience this, but thankfully a growing number of us are allowing maturation to kick in and gather fair and balanced information about what this news has to inform us. Even our more provocatively bullying friends in Congress must be seen as mirrors for our sociopathic, predator like ways that insidiously feed on mass carnage. Humanity all shares predator and prey qualities within our Being–we are all living embodiments of the yin and the yang, masculine and feminine and light and dark flowing within ourselves. Our freewill allows us to live in denial and get stuck in victim consciousness by maintaining blaming and judgmental attitudes. But by continuing to live in this nightmare, even our Nervous Woodland Creature friends would assert that we would be swimming in a familiar old river in Egypt, ma’ chucka. It is only when we are unconscious, spiritually speaking, that we act out in the cannibalistic manner that our Global Leaders are modeling to us from the top down. What is so terrifying about leveling the playing field? Sure we have color TV, but how much better off are folks of color and the overwhelming majority of us in real-time? The privileged few have more now than ever and are relying more heavily on military might to protect that way of life. If corporations are people too, then why can’t they be held accountable for their crimes? Those of us that understand good discipline recognize that natural and logical consequences are powerful teachers, rather than ineffective punishment that foment more terrorism and violence. We have so much Karma to clear. Many of us in the healing profession understand that our system is sick and in dire need of systemic treatment. When the California Coastal Commission asserted no thank you to the Navy’s plan to proceed with their underwater sonar blasts and bombing, Great Spirit and our oceanic cetacean friends were pleased with that vote. Human beings are inherently good and when cultivated with love, sometimes tough love, we learn to effectively integrate our shadow sides into living in harmony with all sentient beings and machines alike. With Mercury in retrograde, it’s a good time to make amends with past relationships and remember patience with respect to the communication signals we are sending and receiving.

Remembering to consume Herring’s spiritual therapy is a sound way to ingest a hearty and medicinal energetic diet. Why not wash our spirited food down with a Divine cup of Sacred Feminine water element? Their spirited teachings help us develop our communication abilities with one another. Welcoming the energy of gulls into our consciousness helps us tune into the harmonic convergence of the Planetary and Universal sound of Great Spirit. Given the spirited energies coming down the pike, it is especially important to stick in alignment with Nature’s shifting tides, while heeding the Universal heartbeat. And it is a sound that resonates in our collective souls.

See you further on down the trails,

Ari

Swimming in Dolphin’s wake

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Remembering when to go with the flow, not push too hard against the river, be soft, gradually allowing momentum to build and let go of our left brain, logical-rational minds is not always easy. Especially, when many of us feel the shifting tides and spirited energies flowing into our consciousness. Swimming with Dolphin is good medicine for that. Authentic living asks us to take a fair and balanced gaze onto Life. Some of us might not like hearing the news that our lower selves deliver us–especially when arriving in the broadcast of negative emotions. But information is what it is and we have a right to give ourselves permission to grieve during the dirge of our old selves. In that light, it sounds true that we are washing away the toxicity, breathing in fresh air and watering the seeds so that they may blossom into new growth. For some of us, we might be doubting Groundhog’s forecast for an early spring. However, Winter is waning and coming soon Spring almost here. At this time, light and dark, masculine and feminine energies will share an equal marriage, if only briefly. Dolphin’s teachings resonates within our inner waters and its medicine serves as Universal Manna for our soul’s nourishment. In the beginning, there was sound. With Dolphin as our guide, we see and connect with our greater global community. Water symbolizes creation, passion, sexuality and new dimensions. Beyond nostalgia, sometimes when looking back on our past relationships, we notice past regrets and feel sad about that. Sending telepathic messages to someone is one way to heal, while opening up our hearts to a deeper sense of empathy, understanding and bringing in more heartfelt compassion into our Being.

Has anyone out there seen the film, The god’s must be Crazy? In that vain, Coke is suing to block a recycling program that will help facilitate our transition through Climate Change. On the other hand, the Violence Against Women Act will now protect all women from abuses. But why do we limit our protection against violence at all? From a developmental perspective, it is easier to identify with the perspective of an abuser-bully than the experience of a victim because of the misconceived power that entails. Why are friends on Capitol Hill so terrified about allowing maturation to kick in here? We all have growing up to do and Karma to clear, but leadership serves as a role model to our World. The so-called sequester cuts are killing programs that serve as a safety net that have protected the “General Welfare” of hundreds of thousands of our mentally ill and formerly homeless brothers and sisters and kids in Head Start. And our politicians continue to push for a self-fulfilling prophecy for yet another world war, when they promised the first one would end all wars. This time, Israel is being encouraged to taunt Syria and Iran, as things continue to heat up in the Middle East. Wyoming opened up lands to unrestricted wolf killings that threatens their recovery. While we hear political-business rhetoric about how government should stay out of our lives, at the same time Facebook gobbles up $430 million in government subsidies so that they don’t have to pay a Red Cent in taxes. The clear channel says consumption is being pushed on us and then we are punished for taking the bait and getting hooked–even though it is a scientific fact that punishment doesn’t work and isn’t a form of discipline. If we have to petition to stop the killing of our underwater friends, we have a right to ask why our Navy is conducting an underwater sonar program in the first place. Who are you serving here? We all have a right to the Truth and a need to trust that we can live harmoniously with one another. We will all win as we move away from fear and stay as close to Love as possible.

When swimming in Dolphin’s wake, we remember to integrate playfulness into our walking meditation. In the spirit of that, we receive guidance to pay attention to our body rhythms and energetic patterns fed to us by Great Spirit. Ingesting Dolphin’s medicine helps us access the hidden caverns and underwater cities within the depths of our souls. Classroom lessons are teaching us how to build a bridge between our material realm and Dreamtime. Meditation on Dolphin helps us dive into our primordial history, remember the power of our breath and communicate more effectively with one another.

See you further on down the trails,

Ari

Slowing Down with Turtle’s Medicinal Teachings

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When we remember to integrate Turtle’s energy into our consciousness, we welcome a conscious intention to retreat back into our shell from the chaos around us for a spell.  In this place, we are more connected to our Mother Earth and to the darkness of feminine-yin energy.  In much the same way as our oceans, we learn to stay low and kneel before our bounty, rather than constantly striving and trying to make things happen through force.  Instead of trying to “push the river”, we gently allow Turtle’s spirited traits of wisdom, longevity, patience and perseverance to flow into our awareness, take root and connect to our primal essence.  Turtle is the oldest symbol of Mother Earth in Native American teachings.  In this light, we are encouraged by Her teachings to give back to our Mother, as she has given so much to us.  It will not be long before Spring arrives and Life abounds.  We all win when we sow the seeds of Love and reap the fruits of Truth.  This music to Great Spirit’s eardrums.

Here on our dying old planet, there is a New Earth blossoming.  But during the stormy weather of Climate Change, chaos is in our midst.  Living authentically recognizes that we are given permission to grieve, to shed our tears and raise our fists to the developmentally delayed world that our souls have incarnated into right now.  We have so much help available to us from the spirit realm, but with much resistance and unconsciousness that serve as roadblocks.  The toxic systemic programming we have in place in the modern world no longer serves us.  Although I deeply empathize with the desire to avoid or escape from looking at these alarming messages being revealed to us, we need to remember not to shoot the messenger and only kill with kindness.  We are right to powerfully assert to our bullying friends in Congress and leaders of First World nations to stop the insanity.  We need to develop equal access to resources so that we have a viable safety net to catch our global citizenry.  Moreover, we need to treat one another with dignity and respect.  Sleepwalking through life, while armed with blocked and negative energy kills in a subtler than the increased probability of killing another by packing heat with a concealed weapon might.  When we walk around trigger happy, while plugged in to the voice of the trauma, we are more likely to perceive things as a threat and shoot from the hip.  We assert that all souls are entitled to a safe and healthy childhood.  Our souls naturally desire to embody happiness as a way of life and follow its bliss.  Isn’t it is good news that meditation as a way of life has the potential to free you from bondage?  In our business run society, there is almost always a fee for service, a price to pay and a debt to incur.  In this madness, isn’t it attractive to know that meditation is free and now more accessible in a variety of forms to explore.  By shifting our focus on our breath, we return to the present moment without projecting onto or attaching stories to the past, future or situation at hand.  Staying calm in the pocket is helpful to both yourself and everyone else.  Accepting what is and even having the courage to embrace whatever arrives on our path, is ultimately much more pleasant than resisting what is.  This concrete awareness is our call to nurture one another, while moving forward.  It is paradoxically both a challenge and an opportunity to understand that this process feels too slow, while at the same time everything feels too fast.  There is much polarity to heal so within as without.  Perceiving ourselves as interconnected to one another helps us celebrate our diversity within our unity, while increasing our empathy.  In this light, we can become the change we want to see. 

Turtle’s shell represents protection and a friendly reminder to turn yinward, honor our feelings and pro-socially assert them when we are called to do so.  When we attune to the Mother-goddess within our Being and ask Her for help, we awaken to allowing abundance to flow into our lives.  Our reptilian friends are essentially living dinosaurs and embody amazing survival instincts.  They are omnivorous and opportunistic, so their medicine teaches us to slow down, pay attention and see the opportunities that fleetingly pass us by during our daily walkabout.  Our journey to Heaven is through the Earth.  When we step into the realm of Infinity, we know Oneness and see that we are all interconnected.  Isn’t that a drumbeat of empathy we can all rock on?

See you further on down the trails,

Ari

Dreaming a New Dream with Groundhog

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Here in the Northern Hemisphere, it is a hump day of sorts.  In America we celebrate Groundhog Day, but its precursor is otherwise known as the Imbolc, the mid-point between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox.  Many of us feel the cold wind whistling deeply in our bones and get uncomfortable with the deep silence reverberating within our souls.  But we also know that in stillness, there is a wisdom that speaks of an arriving light from the heart of darkness.  This is a time in Nature’s cycle when we are “pregnant with the seed of the sun.”  Groundhog is good medicine for waking us up to that.  With Groundhog as a guide, we understand death without dying and the metaphor of reincarnation.  Moreover, we are at a powerful time to rise above our egotism and heed the call of our soul’s purpose.  As spiritual beings having human experiences, our priority while traveling here is not merely to make money and become a celebrity.  It is only when we become identified with those goals, where the ego feeds on our Being like a psychic vampire.  Rather, our purpose is to wake up to the reality that we are one with All-That-Is.  We all have star-dust in us, are influenced by the energies of the planets, their moons and we all rock.  In that light, Groundhog helps us dig through the mysterious underground tunnels of our souls and bring back hidden treasures of the Dreamtime to seed into our material world.

In our digging, We The People are waking up to our soul’s prompting that America needs to model effective leadership by shifting Her values away from bottom line profits and violence.  Instead of liberally funding corporations and Pentagon pork projects, we shift our resources toward the health and safety of our global citizenry.  We are moving into a consciousness that is waking up to celebrating our Diversity in Unity.  In this process, we are co-creating a world where we are all entitled to knowing the power of Love and being treated with dignity and respect, regardless of how much material wealth we have accumulated or privilege we were born into.  But there is great resistance to the Climate Change we face.  Like anxious rabbits, our friends in Congress are fleeing from enacting effective legislation that will take military assault weapons off the shelves.  The more that we resist gun control, the more the movement will persist.  If we don’t proactively adopt some Common Sense discipline here, like a parent setting a limit with an acting out child with a toy, our right to bear arms will be taken away.  This is a paradox that the NRA and folks that pack heat because they can must understand.  There is a far greater and sustainable fire power in peaceful and non-violence strategies for societal change.  The violence is waking us up to that, as evidenced by the Peace Movement being larger than we have ever known.  But you probably won’t see that on the News tonight.  In Maine, there is a grassroots movement to stop Tar Sands oil from flowing through pre-existing refined oil pipelines.  Also, there is movement for ranked choice voting, or ‘run-off’ elections that will impact our legislature and Governor that represents the manifestation of spiritual values into politics.  But we must let go of our addiction to war as a way of life and let this die without killing ourselves.  We have a war on hunger, poverty, crime, obesity and drugs, etc.  Last time I checked, we are losing all of these wars.  As we have discussed, there is a way out of this insanity.  My mom didn’t whack herself because she wanted to die.  Rather, she took her life because she wanted to escape, avoid her pain and the dramatic, ego-centered suffering she attached to her pain.  Although there is Freewill, our actions have consequences.  In her case, she created much more pain and suffering, not less.  She has since walked into the Light, though it has taken hard work that was a missed opportunity for her to do while she was breathing.  How many folks could stand to tap into the energy of Groundhog?  How many premature deaths could be prevented and lives sustained with the help of Groundhog medicine?

When we keep Groundhog in our meditations, we are equipped to learn how to die without actually physically leaving Earth.  Groundhog has great power to guide us through the darkness, so that we see light at the end of the tunnel.  During this journey, there is a restful sleep during the dirge, a parallel process to the slower heartbeat deep within the Earth right now.  May Groundhog help you allow the light illuminate the shadows within your souls so that you see this reflection in your outer field of vision.

See you further on down the trails,

Ari

Riding Nature’s Thermals with Turkey Vulture

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Do you remember heeding the cadence that calls for us pass on judging a book by its cover?  If we look beyond a cursory first glance, Turkey Vulture personifies this metaphor.  Have you ever got a rise while watching these birds effortlessly riding thermals by using Earth’s energy centers with minimal effort? Their message to us is that when we effectively integrate spirit into our Being, we can transcend matter.  Rather than focusing on our limitations, we levitate our consciousness toward perceiving infinite possibilities.  Instead of looking for forecasts that call for doom and gloom, we make a conscious choice to see the silver lining and make only positive interpretations.  On the spiritual path, we become the change we want to see in the world by doing the inner work necessary to actualize those changes we want to see.  We cannot co-create sustainable energetic changes in ourselves and our world, unless we choose to do the inner work.  Otherwise, the changes in climate are merely external and cosmetic.  Winter is a powerful time to stoke the embers within, as is meditation on Turkey Vulture waking us up to that.  Turkey Vulture helps guide spirit into our Being with its medicine of purification, death and rebirth and new vision.  Collectively, we need all the help we can get with that right now. 

On the surface, many storms are brewing and Climate Change is the new normal.  We are giving birth to a New Earth, but not without the accompanying labor pains. Some folks describe this transition as moving from a Pisces age to an Aquarian age.  It’s kind of like when your old self dies.  During the dying process, a new identity is emerging as a rebirth.  It takes time before the dust settles.  Rome wasn’t built, nor destroyed in a day.  Last week, we watched a US campaign to end the occupation by holding Israel accountable to US and International law.  Wal-Marts in Ohio and Texas continued breaking their company promise to keep assault rifles off its shelves.  Whether its BPA’s in foods or PED’s in humans, capitalist doctrine, based on primarily maximum economic profit tries to convince us that we should augment ourselves.  But there is a deep place of self-esteem that reminds us that we are OK just the way we are.  In sports news, linebacker Manti Te’o admitted to having a fantastic relationship that appears to have been a figment of his imagination.  Haven’t we all done that?  While fantasy and alternate realities are real on some level, we have to learn how to stay grounded in this reality.  Meditation is a healthy strategy for us to become the change we want to see in the world, but it can also become a skillful avoidance tactic.  At the end of the day, we all have to act.  Martin Luther Kind, Jr. didn’t just sit around and dream.  He took it to the edge and realized that his dream was bigger than his physical life.  MLK wasn’t just spinning dreams of who we might be.  He lived it.  Going to jail and risking his life to do the right thing was horribly uncomfortable, while staying on the pulpit and receiving liberal doses of applause was ego-gratifying for sure. 

We are living in hard times.  There is much pain and suffering on our Planet.  But what an opportunity for us to wake up.  If you find yourself having a sense of entitlement that you should have a better life, then take the action steps to change yourself on the inside first.  There is a sense of Armageddon here.  But you do not have to get stuck in that place, nor do you have to overindulge in it.  With Turkey Vulture as a spirited guide, we use whatever natural resources are available to us to nourish ourselves and continue onward’.  If only our friends in Congress, World leaders and everyone else on the Planet would make this internal shift.  It is going to take hard work to shift our consciousness and tip the scale.  Believe it is possible and take action.  Even if it is gut wrenching to watch a predator eat an innocent prey, take a closer look and examine why Great Spirit revealed this moment for you to notice.  What message(s) does the predator and prey have for you to apply to your life?  Pay attention to your feelings and dreams and take notes.  It requires taking inventory on yourself, rather than getting preoccupied with the distractions and giving away your power to those distractions.  This is not about being ego-centered.  This is about getting to know yourself on a deeper level and therefore enriching your understanding of others.

See you further on down the trails,

Ari