Tag Archives: Rats

Releasing Old Stories, and Reworking New Scripts

Posted on by under Consciousness, Native American, Shamanism, Uncategorized

A New Moon arrives on January 24.
And then after that, the Chinese New Year of the Rat on the 25th.

The duality of an old world dying, and a new one
birthing is laborious, and painful to watch at times.

This transition into a new age and paradigm
goes by different names, just like the moons.

Does that early leaf falling in late summer,
bring you into your fears about the waning light,
and cooler temperatures?

Like all transitions, many people are
questioning where they have been,
and where they are going in their lives.

Some say they don’t want to live on the planet anymore.

There are many forms that people play with to do
that in their consciousness by way of escapism, fantasies,
hitching a ride to another galaxy in a spaceship, running from
our feelings, or retreating into a personal bubble.

One of the ways people give up is through death by suicide.

Killing yourself is certainly one of the 10,000 ways into
the valley of death.

But there are more purposeful ways to expand our souls,
and liberate them, rather than by ending your body’s experience here.

Besides, it’s a really traumatic experience, and terribly confusing.

That’s why I try to be mindful of killing with kindness, and
remember to meditate on Groundhog to die without dying.

It makes sense to me that our ancestors celebrated the Imbolc,
because it marked the mid-point between the Winter Solstice, and Vernal Equinox.

The popular American holiday of Groundhog Day reflects
this symbolism because energetically Spring is starting already.

It’s good medicine to celebrate the light rising at the end of the tunnel,
and the wisdom to see light, and dark balancing each other out again.

As dark of a topic as suicide is,
it does not discriminate.

It doesn’t care if you are rich or poor, what your race,
ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation is, what political
party you belong to, or if you are an introvert or extrovert.

Suicide is something most people contemplate.
But most people don’t do it.

And one of the reasons people don’t end their lives is that people think about
the impact it will have on the survivors, and the holy hell it leaves behind.

One of the complexities of suicide is that people
who try to end their lives, or do end their lives
are sick of the pain, don’t want to deal with it anymore,
and wish their pain would go away.

As a survivor of a completed suicide,
it has been a long journey in working through my own healing process.

It hasn’t been easy to look forward to this month in a new way.

Anniversaries can bring all those feelings,
and old stories right back to the surface –
regardless of how deeply submerged or buried they were.

I can still remember getting the call that my mom
had left this Earth 25 years ago, like it was yesterday.

As you can imagine, that wasn’t an easy call to take,
even though I had tried to prepare myself for it from her previous
attempts, and knowledge of how extreme her shifts
between internal order and chaos could be.

I feel thankful to my family, friends, and fraternity brothers
who were there to cushion the blow, and help me see that
a safety net was there when I needed it.

There have been many ebbs and flows along the way,
regarding how I have handled this tragedy, or not handled it.

Like Sting, I have worn the royal crown of the King of Pain,
and traveled through Dark Knight of the Soul.

For a long time, I’ve been good at hiding that side of myself.
Wearing masks can do that.

But it can also show you who you really are before you are
ready to show your dark and shadow sides to others.

The old survival of the fittest paradigm is
part of a dying process, just as are old stories.

On some level, we have believed that “it’s just the way it is.”

People have been put into boxes, and believed in those boxes.

If you didn’t identify with one version of yourself,
or what someone told you about yourself.

Perhaps you’ve rebelled by becoming the opposite side of the same coin.

The grip of those old stories can be hard to let go of.

We humans have believed in them,
and developed attachments to those stories.

Like with all new moons,
this new moon coming is associated with new beginnings.

And so it is with the lunar energy of a new year.

Rats are shrewd creatures, and can symbolize prosperity,
according to Chinese astrology.

What shrewdness, and prosperity do you want to bring to the table,
and manifest on our Planet in the year ahead?

In social science, rats are associated with behaviorism,
and applied behavioral analysis.

Like humans, rats are intelligent creatures.

Sometimes, behaviorism gets a bad rap about
wanting to manipulate, and control people.

But any knowledge that gets in the wrong hands
embodies that kind of stupidity.

I recently saw an old you-tube interview with B.F. Skinner.
And it was illuminating to see him talk about how he
saw his psychology as a way for individuals to empower themselves.

And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that country rats have been
identified as smarter than city rats.

We all do better in smaller, more intimate circles where we feel
part of a community, and organically connected to Nature.

If you can see the maze for what it is, you can then
see yourself rewiring new cognitive maps.

These are the days of creating amazing portals into new ways of being.

Till we tweet again peeps,

Ari

The Howlin’ Wolf Full Moon, and the Chinese New Year of the Rat

Posted on by under Consciousness, Native American, Shamanism, Uncategorized

A Full Wolf Moon blows in the cold winds on January 10th.

The distractions of the holidays have passed, and the
Sun driven Gregorian New Year eclipses us.

And now many are feeling depressed, as the void of coming down
into the wake of winter’s slumber is setting in.

These feelings are natural, even if demonized, and
feared in our glamorized world of being up all the time.

But we can look forward to a New Moon on the 24th, that is followed closely by
the arrival of the Chinese-Lunar Year of the Rat on the day after that.

Meditate on the tracks of Wolf government . . .
Wolves embody a delicate balance of hierarchy, and democratic principles.

Be mindful of the shrewd inspiration of rats to remember
our intellect to reflect, and evaluate on our current human plight.

Legend has it that even the Buddha was impressed when
Rat was the first one to come learn when he
invited all the animals to his teachings.

You don’t have to look very far to see
the climate of changing tides on the Planet today.

There are many things to grieve about the suffering
we see among our human brothers and sisters.

Yeah, it might be hard not to get seduced by the
enemies of hate spreading like agent orange across
the sands of time.

Watch the dinosaurs of the old paradigm fight tooth and nail
to protect a dog eat dog conditioned mentality that is oppressive.

Remember that those people are suffering the most are afraid
that their power is slipping away by believing that they
don’t have a place in a New Earth.

But everything about that kind of thinking
are merely examples of erroneous zones.

Even if you don’t understand what polarity consciousness,
or diversity in unity means, you probably already realize that
people are more divided nowadays more than yesterdays.

That’s why we souls have come here at this time,
because we must heal the illusion of our perceived separation.

But then again, every soul’s waking up process happens in
its own way, as does their personal transformational process.

As long as I have been on the planet, I have seen this
more pronounced now more than ever.

This is part of our awakening, spiritually speaking.

I was born right around the time that Richard Nixon resigned –
probably right before he would have been impeached.

People forget that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
left his comfort zone of black churches.

He did that with great courage by venturing out into the unknown
to protest the Viet Nam War, and social injustices by crossing over into
the the dominant White, Middle-Class America, and the world at large.

Civil Rights is about asserting the right for everyone to
have equal access to resources. It is about asserting
that we all deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.

Now we have a Billionaire Class gangster at large in the White House.

But he is just part of the Old Testament Goliath
that represents a dying old world.

The vanity fair of the ego should be our servant
but not our master.

A tao centered way of an Aquarian New Age is on its way,
but we are in the labor pains right now.

It is a similar feeling to when you experience loss
when someone you love dies, moves out of your life,
you go through a death of your old self, your child leaves
for college, you go through a break-up, a divorce,
or leave a job, along with coworkers you see everyday, etc.

Perhaps the gender identity, or your sexuality has
changed, and you now view that part of you as dead,
and a new part of you as born.

Out of the great void, arises a new light, and energies
that come alive inside of you when you
let them flow through your Being.

But around here, part of playing the blame game,
and being a blamenator, is to take things personally.

In this sphere, we see criticisms as personal attacks,
and then become defensive.

I know this because I have been good at those things during my lifetime.
In fact, I have been gifted at it.

At some point, you have to get sick of being sick, and realize
that by softening your will, and by surrendering to the
will of the Universe, you aren’t losing or selling out.

If you can access faith and trust, it will shed light
in the tunnel of darkness – however dimly lit.

By not drawing your sword, and going to war with another person,
you are actually getting in touch with yourself on a deeper level.

Remember that the definition of insanity is to keep doing
the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.

And here we are with our weapons of mass destruction, wars, cyberbullying,
and deleting each other because we fear our apparent differences.

We have to stop attracting this kind of energy if we are
going to stop creating it.

We can have our philosophical disagreements, and work
them out through peaceful, and non-violent means.

If you want make a difference, like Ghandi said,
you have to become the change you want to see in the world.

Instead of being seduced by your anger, hate, fears, etc.,
listen to your internal informers, and be curious about why
you are really feeling that way.

Respect isn’t an entitlement.
It may be earned, but it should be given no matter what.

Might as well make respect a daily habit.

Do you remember the Golden Rule?

Heaven and hell are inner states of consciousness.

You always have a choice about which gate you go through.

You can heed the call of your lower self (demons), and make
the transition into your Higher Self (better angels).

It isn’t about walking around with a yoke around your neck,
or following the dictates of what society says you should.

You’ll know when your head and heart are in alignment when
you do the right thing just because it’s the
right thing to do out of your own goodness.

It doesn’t matter who agrees with you, or who is on your side.
Just try to see souls over roles when you co-mingle with our human family.

Till we tweet again peeps,

Ari

November Rain & A Full Beaver Moon

Posted on by under Consciousness, Native American, Shamanism, Uncategorized

November has arrived, and days are becoming darker
in the Northern hemisphere.

We are moving closer to the Winter Solstice,
our darkest day of the year.

But following that, we begin coaxing back the light.

When the shades of Mercury in Retrograde are drawn,
it can fog the left brain, and leave you feeling cloudy.

Here in Maine, November is traditionally the gloomiest month of the year.

Given the thinning veils between spirit and material realms,
and the end of daylight savings time, there are many natural feelings
associated with the dark energies around death, dying, and darkness in general.

Of course, we have been taught to fear the dark in our modern world.

In fact, religions have demonized the dark –
even at times enslaved, and burned people at the stake out of fear.

Just look at how we glorify our attachments to our bodies,
and fear the extinction of them.

But our souls, like the yin and the yang have both sunlight and dark nights.
Every soul has masculine and feminine energies living within it.

You do not have to be seduced by your fears or your dark side.
If you are, then you will become consumed by them,
and attract more of the same.

The opposite is true if you focus on the positive,
and look for the silver lining.

The key dynamic to embrace your oneness with everything,
and celebrate the diversity that makes you unique.

How do you see yourself right now?

Do you see yourselves as separate from others?

Are you becoming the change you want to see in the world?

In my experience, Winter has been a hard time for me,
as the date of January 25, marks the tragic date of my mom’s
death by suicide many moons ago – 25 years to be exact.

Sadly, it is getting harder for people to live on the planet,
and more people are ending their lives.

I feel their pain, and I get their plight, as most empaths do.

The trick is not to cut yourself off from the gift to feel, nor
take the pains of others personally, and also to know discernment with
relation to boundaries.

But according to the Chinese Lunar New Year,
January 25 signals the Year of the Rat.

The social science geek in me appreciates the connection between Rat, and
rat psychology – a derivative of behaviorism, a form of the
science of psychology.

We have been conditioned to buy into a material world that
peddles a dangerous game of rewards and punishments.

Many people that don’t fit into that paradigm,
feel left out, lost and alone.

But the spiritual power of Rat invites meditation onto another possibility.

Do you remember the story about when the Buddha welcomed
the arrival of all the animals to his teachings,
and the first one of 12 to show up was the rat?

At the precipice of a New Age and Paradigm,
the time is now to redefine our idea of success.

We need to become more shrewd in our doings, and awaken strategies to
more effectively tame our nervous woodland creature energy.

Mindfulness is a way out of our suffering that allows us to breathe
in the power of now as it awakens in the present moment.

Meditation trains us to leave the depression of the
past alone, and calm the anxiety of the future.

It is not a cure, but it is a skill that can be developed,
and improve with practice.

The Beaver Full Moon rises in the skies on November 12.

Given their industry, and creative exit strategies,
the energies of Beaver can help you spring the traps in your consciousness.

Remember that consciousness is behind everything,
even the most advanced human brains,
and other intelligences at play.

So you might as well forget about outwitting Nature, or getting caught up
in the manipulations of the egoic mind’s behavioral traps.

The Universe is not out to get you, nor is it an enemy that needs to
be beaten up, subjugated or killed.

At the end of the day, we all need to build new neurons, neighborhoods,
and make friends with our own inner space.

When we do that, alternative energy is cultivated in a way
that is based on the Universal pillars of Love and Truth.

Till we tweet again,

Ari

With Rat, We Find Success and Press Onward, While Leaving Behind Familiar Woodpiles

Posted on by under Uncategorized

I remember the energy of rat entering my consciousness this week and thought it poignant to reflect on our Nervous Woodland Creature friend for this week’s journal entry.  At school, we are reading the book The Rats of Nihm to our students, while they sit captivated by how shrewd the countryside rats are, with relation to their lab rat counterparts. However, it isn’t that country rats are superior to city rats or white lab rats, as elitist intellectuals might secretly suspect from positions of judgment.  Rats have been popular among social scientists, as they have shown an ability to form cognitive maps and reason.  In fact, if a rat learns where to go to get a tasty morsel of cheese as a reward and when the cheese is removed, the rat will learn a new pathway to the Promised Land.  We humans, on the other hand, tend to keep going back to the once Fertile Crescent, even when it is no longer serving us.  Rats are adaptable, restless, shrewd and are oriented toward success.  But getting attached to any energy, in the spirit of human ego, is somewhat akin to a rat developing an attachment to the comforts of familiar woodpiles.  Further, egotism seeks to strengthen its identity through the relentless pursuit of happiness, rather than knowing inner joy as a way of life.  Sometimes living authentically takes staring fear square in the face, stepping outside of familiar woodpiles and taking it to the edge for growth to occur.  And then blue jay flies in and reminds us that we have the right to become master illusionists, skilled politicians or pretenders to the throne.  But we also know that blue jay will show us how to become true wizards, real magicians, if only we allow for it.  Perhaps meditation on rat will help us succeed in becoming that.

Here in Maine and the nation throughout, we are restless as rats in our drive to level the playing field with gay marriage and voter registration being hot ballot-box items.  Some folks, particularly the dimensionally challenged dinosaurs of the old world want to hold folks back by scaling down human rights by blocking the expansion of certain rights to our human family.  I get a chuckle, in the black comedy sense, when so-called Christians pontificate about protecting the sanctity of marriage and right wingers cite protecting the sanctity of the voting process by finding clever ways to keep the riff raft out, so to speak.  And I get that some heterosexuals that sit on top of the majority have a sense of entitlement about their privileged status.  But what about when you are on the receiving end of deliverance?  What are these folks afraid of?  Was Jesus a bigot?  My understanding of Christ’s fundamental teaching was modeling Love as a way of life and His inspiring us to spread it liberally and unconditionally.  Moreover, the devilish fixed idea of hating the sin and loving the sinner is inconsistent with His message, though I can empathize with the compartmentalized indoctrination of the masses, particularly here in America.  Remember that Hitler sang Christmas carols to children as jews, gypsies, homosexuals and other fringe groups were incinerated.  Remember that Hitler commented that he wanted to come back to America, given our far greater harness on propaganda than Nazi Germany.  Forget not that America’s very own IBM literally made a killing through an exclusive business arrangement with the Nazis, by selling them the technological profiling precision that allowed for strategic genocide.  Prior to that, it was the sound economics of slavery, stealing land that was not for sale and cannot be owned.  How do we own what gives us life?  Do you realize that biological and germ warfare  nearly wiped out First Nation folks?  If “We The People” are going to heal our Nation, Planet and Universe throughout, then we need to clear our Karma.  All Karma means is the Higher Spiritual Law of Cause and Effect, which can be transcended.  When we step into the realm of Infinity, we know the realm of Intention and infinite possibilities.  Perhaps Dick Cheney has had a change of heart since he has had a change of heart and will see that elements of the 2005 Energy Bill that allows for underground pollution hurts all of us.  Where did you get those high cheek bones, Dick?  Maybe Mitt Romney will authentically see himself as one of the biggest welfare recipients around and realize his dependency on the liberal welfare state by his active participation in the Morman-LDS church, which takes in more government welfare dollars than non-Mormons in Utah.  Remember the Preamble to the US Constitutions speaks of promoting the “general welfare”, or a safety net that everyone should benefit from.  The only difference is that Mitt and his followers want the net to catch the welfare for his family, religion and the opulent minority, but not for the rascal multitude.  In his view, the overwhelming majority needs to be contained or else our natural leveling impulses are a threat to Country Club living.

Rats, now the cat is out of the bag and the rat is tempted to scurry back to familiar woodpiles.  But with rat consciousness, we are equipped to use our collective intellect and transcend the comforts of old securities in consciousness by releasing old, dysfunctional energies and patterns of behavior.  With the arrival of Autumn, an election coming up and the end of the Mayan calendar coming down the pike on the Winter Solstice in December 21, 2012, we are officially in transition.  Yes, there is forceful opposition to co-creating a more egalitarian New Earth, we have the spirited Universal winds at our backs that cannot be stopped.  Nature reminds us that change is inevitable.  True, we have two republicans running for President.  Barak Obama, being the moderate and Mitt Romney being the right-winger.  Both are candidates of Wall Street and carry allegiance to a dying world, but one offers a slightly more paved causeway to a New Age and Paradigm.  Regardless of who wins, please remember to focus on your own inner spiritual growth and evolve in that light.  Just be, let go and enjoy the ride!  And remember to step up to peace by standing your ground when bullies try to prevent you from getting out to vote!

Stay True,

Ari