Tag Archives: Reiki

Lammas, Eclipse Season, New Moon Shining In Leo & Swimming Into A Full Sturgeon Moon At The Tail End Of August

Posted on by under Consciousness, Spirituality, Uncategorized

Blood moon lunar eclipse with orange glow over ocean and mist
A Full Sturgeon Moon rises above a mist-covered ocean at night

“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change… We need not wait to see what others do.” 

–Ghandi

August kicks off on the 1st with the Lammas, which our ancestors honored as a marker for the first grain harvest in the Northern Hemisphere. The Lammas celebrates the approximate mid-point of summer between the Summer Solstice and Fall Equinox, and gratitude for the bounty of food the earth provides.

In the Southern Hemisphere, it will be the Imbolc, or the approximate mid-point between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. At this time, it’s as if the seeds underground are starting to think about waking up in their neck of the woods.

Wherever you are on the Planet, astrological eclipse seasons are major cosmic reset periods that trigger rapid personal growth and sudden life changes, which represent karmic past and spiritual identity.

Nothing to be superstitious about. Sometimes, especially during eclipses, it might feel like we are tempted by fate. During times like these, it can feel like we are being guided rather than in control of our destiny.

And yet, we can transform the heavy luggage that has been passed down to us by our ancestors by letting it go and giving it back . . . So that we can become the change we want to see in the world.

In much the same way as letting go of any dark edges of old selves, we can release and envelop old stories in the Mirror of the Mind meditations.

We can consciously work with the energies of eclipses that have the power to permanently close doors that no longer serve our spiritual evolution. Picture them sealed up in a black hole where they can transform into the light.

Eclipse season is a friendly universal reminder to nudge us back on the path of deeper and higher soul purposes. Their energies inspires us to let go of stagnant habits, emotional baggage, and limiting beliefs.

Furthermore, a Total Solar Eclipse on August 12th kicks off the final leg of 2026 seasonal eclipses by way of a New Moon in Leo. The energies of this New Moon are fuel injected by the Solar Eclipse. New Moons are always associated with new beginnings.

Keep in mind that new moons during eclipses are like new moons on steroids.

Moreover, these energies amplify radical new beginnings, light a spark of external changes, sudden breakthroughs, and unexpected shifts in identity. Talk about a Thunder Road, if you’ll pardon the Boss pun.

Leo’s energy loves the spotlight and thrives on feeling safe in moments that allows Leo to impress and receive praise and admiration from others. That’s a natural state for them.

But what about when the red carpet is rolled out, the spotlight shines brightly on your soul, and you are still feeling at a loss?

Like Leo, this writer can relate to having a hard time with criticisms.

If we can accept feedback however, we can use it for visibility, creativity, confidence, and self-expression. Deep meditation can be a good ally during this process.

And then on August 28th, a Partial Lunar Eclipse in Pisces shines on a Full Sturgeon Moon. These energies trigger internal emotional releases, exposing hidden truths and serves as a catalyst to break toxic patterns or relationships.

Keep in mind that Full Moons during Lunar Eclipses are like Full Moons on steroids.

Like a sturgeon’s spiritual significance, we can awaken the power of resiliency by trusting the flow of life, and surrender to the changing tides of universal oceanic waves.

Setting aside time for non-linear, non-localized and non-productivity is truly important, especially during intense energies. Some folks like to take a forrest bath, so to speak. Getting out in Nature, connecting with the animals and nature spirits is good energy medicine.

If you’re into rocks, it’s always a good idea to recharge them outside under the Full Moon cycle which lasts a few days before and after the actual Full Moon.

Do whatever you can to rest so that you can effectively integrate the energies of this last eclipse season of the year.

Remember that the aftershocks of the Eclipse season can be felt for quite some time.

Try not to push the river. Rather, let go of the oars and let the flow of the Universe guide you to wherever you need to go.

Pisces energy associated wiht this full moon breathes in sensitivity and perceptiveness of surroundings. The Fish love to go with the flow. Yet paradoxically, engaging in creative and spiritual forms, awakens imaginative waters. This lunar eclipse releases illusion, boundaries, and emotional truth.

Remember that Sturgeons are tough fish that can live over a century, grow up to 20 feet, and tip the scales by weighing nearly a ton. They are the largest freshwater fish, and have especially thrived in the American Great Lakes.

Their peak catch is traditionally in early August, which is in alignment with the harvest of plentiful seasonal crops that are on their way. As such, their energies reflect abundance that want to yield to your bounty.

Because of their natural ability to survive and thrive, meditation on the energy of sturgeon can help you build resilience in challenging times; particularly in preparation for darker days ahead, and also while diving into the deeper waters of Climate Change.

May all Beings be free from suffering, awaken to God Consciousness, Cosmic Consciousness, Unity Consciousness, Diversity Within Unity, Inner Peace and the Universal Pillars of Love and Truth.

Ari

Podcast Episode: Shared Constellations With Bear

Posted on by under Consciousness, Spirituality, Uncategorized
Brown bear standing in a green forest clearing with mist
A brown bear stands alert in a lush, mist-filled forest clearing.

Pip: Classroom Mothership Earth — where the bear is a philosopher, the moon is a market analyst, and somehow it all holds together.

Mara: Today we’re looking at a piece from Ari Joshua Bouse that moves through Bear Medicine, seasonal cycles, inner stillness, and what it means to come back down to earth — in every sense of that phrase.

Pip: Let’s start with the bear.

Shared Constellations With Bear

Mara: This segment lives at the intersection of the natural world and the inner one — Bear as a lens for examining where we are in the cycle of expansion, contraction, and return.

Pip: The post sets up Bear Medicine as a guide for introspection, and then lands this: “Standing in the space of knowing is a marketing free zone. When we enter the center of a circle, there is nobody to convince or sway.”

Mara: So the upshot is that stillness isn’t passive — it’s a place beyond persuasion, beyond the noise of markets and elections and outcomes. That’s the ground the whole piece is standing on.

Pip: And then it gets economic. The post asks whether we remember when the wealthiest Americans paid around a 90% tax rate — right after the stock exchange crashed. Bear market as literal bear market.

Mara: The Taoist framing ties it together. “Investing in loss” means letting the bullish, expansive emphasis go into hibernation — not as defeat, but as a natural rhythm. Winter Solstice isn’t failure; it’s the season for it.

Pip: There’s a real tension the post holds without resolving: do you withdraw, or come out of the cave? It asks both, directly.

Mara: And it distinguishes prayer from meditation along those same lines — prayer as yang, outward, intention-setting; meditation as yin, receptive, listening. “Walking with one foot in spirit and one foot in ground,” as it puts it.

Pip: The political moment is there too — post-election, beyond cheers and jeers — asking whether you can see the good inside all situations. Revolutionary zeal, the post says, but without the hate.

Mara: It closes on bears themselves: our treatment of them mirrors how seriously we take the environment. The animal and the archetype stay linked throughout.

Pip: Patience, plasticity, planted seeds. The cubs want to come out and play — but not yet.

Mara: The thread running through all of it is that contraction is productive — hibernation isn’t absence, it’s preparation.

Pip: Go quiet enough and something starts growing. We’ll see what comes out of the cave next time.

Shared Constellations With Bear

Podcast Episode: We Are Only One Song Away From Spring

Posted on by under Consciousness, Spirituality
Rows of small green plants growing in a field with sunlight rays.
Sunlight beams illuminate neat rows of young plants in a rural field at sunrise.

Pip: Classroom Mothership Earth — where the astrological, the political, and the deeply personal all share one frequency, and somehow it holds together.

Mara: Today we’re working through a piece by Ari Joshua Bouse that moves across a lot of terrain — political transition, the Aquarian Age, disclosure, and the spiritual calendar between winter and spring. Let’s start with that overarching question of where we actually are right now.

We Are Only One Song Away From Spring

Pip: The frame here is a moment of overlap — a political transition happening inside a much larger cosmic one, and the question of how those two timescales interact when you’re trying to stay grounded.

Mara: The post anchors that overlap in the seasonal calendar, and near the end it lands on Groundhog Day specifically: “Meditation on the in between times, mystical, mysterious energies, inner planes, echoing silence, void, and heartbeat” are offered as the right callbacks for this moment.

Pip: So the upshot is that Groundhog Day isn’t a punchline here — it’s the midpoint between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox, and the post treats that threshold as genuinely instructive about how change actually moves.

Mara: Right, and that’s the structural argument running through the whole piece. The political relief of a new administration fades fast — the post is direct about that — because the chattering monkey mind starts up again quickly. The deeper shift is astrological: a move from the Pisces Age to the Aquarian Age, measured in millennia, not election cycles.

Pip: Which is a useful corrective to anyone who thought January 20th was the finish line.

Mara: The post makes a careful point there about the people on different sides of that political moment. It says that most Trump voters “are not Nazis, Klan members or racists” but have been shaped by a divisive mindset that pushes everyone toward an us-versus-them frame — and that neither progressive nor conservative values hold a monopoly on the way forward.

Pip: And then it pivots — genuinely pivots — into UFO disclosure, which lands as less of a detour than you’d expect, because the argument is that ET concern for Earth is tied to humanity’s development of nuclear weapons. The stakes are planetary either way.

Mara: The post treats disclosure as a process, not an event. And it closes with something practical: I-messages, feeling statements, the right to say “I feel offended by that comment” and stand there without having to defend it. Personal authority as the ground-level version of the same sovereignty the post argues for cosmically.

Pip: Spring is underground. It’s firing, just not visible yet — which is maybe the whole thesis in one image.

Mara: The thread through all of this is the in-between — politically, seasonally, cosmically. The darkness isn’t the destination; it’s the passage.

Pip: You can’t get to the light if you won’t go through the dark. We’ll be back with more from Classroom Mothership Earth.

We Are Only One Song Away From Spring

Releasing Old Stories, and Reworking New Scripts Revisited

Posted on by under Consciousness, Spirituality, Uncategorized
Hiker with backpack standing on rocky cliff overlooking ocean and sunset
A hiker stands on rocky cliffs overlooking the ocean at sunset.

“The early Buddhist texts view death not as a final end, but as a transitional gateway within a continuous cycle of existence (samsara). The Buddha taught that while grief is a natural response to the arrow of loss, true transformation occurs when we stop fighting impermanence and recognize our deeply interconnected nature.” 

Moreover, a growing body of scientific research is further reinforcing the old spiritual truth vis a vis the quote above; as you will see in the video clip below:

Furthermore, notice that the Imbolc will be happening in the Souther Hemisphere in early August.

Remember that the Imbolc is the approximate halfway point between their Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. Some folks celebrate the Imbolc on the first or second day of the month, while this year some focus on August 7 as the sacred date.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the Llamas will be honoring the approximate mid-point between the Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox at this time.

Given that Mercury is still in Retrograde till July 23rd, check out the revisited related original past poetic prose by clicking on the link below.

Releasing Old Stories, and Reworking New Scripts

Additionally, in much the same way as meditation, Pete Seeger’s pro-humanitarian civil rights protest music recognized that a good folk song can get the job done without the frills.

Together, we can co-create a more welcoming, accepting and fair and just society for everyone when we unplug from old scripts and co-author new narratives:

And just yesterday, I saw a bumper sticker that featured a picture of a Monarch Butterfly with the accompanying lyrics, “the only orange monarch I support.” Got a full bellied laugh out of that one!

Photo by Steven Purdy on Pexels.com

Keep in mind that spirituality as a way of life embodies a playful, light-hearted, and healthy felt sense of detachment from the heaviness of the world.

We are all interconnected.

Besides, the heavily orchestrated shadowy program that parrots that we are separate from one another is merely a finely flat tuned illusionary chorus, if you’ll pardon the music pun.

May all Beings be free from suffering, and awaken to Unity Consciousness, Cosmic Consciousness, God Consciousness, Universal Pillars of Love and Truth, Inner Peace and Diversity within Unity!

Till next time,

Ari

A Full Strawberry Moon On June 29th & Then Tracking A Firecracker Felt Sense Of Independence With A Full Buck Moon In Late July

Posted on by under Consciousness, Spirituality, Uncategorized
Sleeping lion with glowing floral decorations under a crescent moon in an enchanted forest
A magical lion adorned with glowing flowers sleeps peacefully in a mystical forest at night.

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Please enjoy the following videos below that capture the sentiment. Perhaps listening to them together in peaceful alignment, will be music to your ears, if you’ll pardon the pun . . .

We Shall Overcome

A Full Strawberry Moon on June 29 reflects lineage connections to the Algonquin and other North American nations who noticed the connection between the wild berry harvest to this Full Moon.

Also, Mercury will be in Retrograde on June 29 – July 23. These energies are in alignment with slowing things down, reflecting on the past, and focusing on the here and now.

Energetically, Mercury in Retrograde is a good time to be mindful of subconscious thoughts, including past programming. These energies can be a healing and highly intuitive time when we work with its energies intensionally.

Moreover, our psychic abilities and dreams can become triggered so that we can tap into deeper insights by working with our subconscious minds in ways where the unseen realms yield useful information to light our way.

A colorful New Moon in Cancer rises in the skies on July 14, 2026. Cancer season continues till July 22nd.

As always, new beginnings are in the air. And specifically, the new waves coming into the shores bring back feeling safe in family matters of the hearth, and other related activities like cooking and gardening.

Crabs are known to weather their emotional fluctuations. Might as well be mindful of co-creating a sense of belonging in the world.

Cancer the Crab is a time when we are encouraged to focus on nourishment, self-care, and our emotional health that breathes in a softer tone that supports reconnecting with ourselves and our hearts. Crabs reflect emotional sensitivity and tapping into the feeling realm.

Remember there is God in forgiveness, and it can be good to get out of our heads; especially when getting seduced into negative self talk narratives.

Or perhaps merely an atheistic appreciation the mysterious forces of Nature are enough to be shelter from the storm.

Looking ahead, a Full Buck Moon will happen on July 29. This Moon gets its name from the Native American observation that male deer antlers began growing in late spring and reach peak growth in July. Many Native Alaskans called this moon the Salmon Moon for its timing with salmon runs.

Whereas in Celtic culture, this moon has been known as the Wyrt (Wort), Mead or Herb Moon because most herbs can withstand harvesting by July. And in Anglo Saxon lineage, this moon was known as the Hay Moon. Bees buzzing out and about reinforce that honey is the elixir of life.

It is important for all humans to remember our shared history. This includes our lineage connections to our indigenous ancestral roots that are part of our planetary history before Colonization. This has impacted everyone and continues to do so.

Of course knowing our spiritual roots connects to that truth as well. Because we all have stardust in our DNA, not to mention oral traditions passed down about our cosmic connections to the Sky People.

Speaking of cosmic connections, a growing body of people are talking about Disclosure these days:

Late July’s full moon cycle amplifies a strong need for emotional freedom that can heighten emotional complexities.

Whether you’re an ET, human or otherwise; the resonate point is that harmonizing with groups can be challenging for everyone till you get into the right vibe, if you’ll pardon the multidimensional pun.

Moreover, Aquarian energies that also constitute July’s full moon cycle can intensify in those of us with strong rebellious streaks, our need to assert ourselves, and can make getting along in groups feel more challenging.

But then again, that’s just part of the human condition.

Speaking of the human condition, fear, anger and jealousy aren’t particularly healthy emotional cravings. And yet, all emotions are fleeting and transient, so we might as well see them as they are; no more or no less.

Besides, the power of community shows that people can be good mirrors for each other to reflect on what triggers us, and can shed light on better understanding of our humanity.

Finally, the tides of Leo season roll in from July 22-August 22. Tis the season to broadcast radically confident self-expression through the heart chakra, and a friendly reminder to nurture our inner child. Leo’s energies encourage movement out of the shadows, and stepping into the light with courage and passion.

Of course dominating the spotlight and always stealing the show can be blinding; as is self-stimulation as a form of meddling into the affairs of others. Besides, it can come across as an arrogant form of defensive pride.

Truly, the 3D realm we live in still carries a strong identification as an outer directed culture. Might as well see this reality as a friendly reminder that we stand in a deeper and higher personal authority when we stop chasing after happiness in the form of “praise, likes, or applause.”

May all Beings awaken to God Consciousness, Cosmic Consciousness, Unity Consciousness, Diversity within Unity, Inner Peace and the Universal Pillars of Love and Truth,

Ari

Podcast Episode: Letting Go Of Getting Stuck In Life By Being Present With Our Stuckness

Posted on by under Consciousness, Podcast, Spirituality, Uncategorized
Woman practicing Tai Chi barefoot on stone path with yin-yang symbol in garden

Check out this newly created experimental AI Podcast feature that aligns with my writing, compliments of WordPress.

Full Disclosure: Truly, I do take pride in my writing, and have yet to use AI for the written word. However, I have been having fun with playing around with AI for illustrations.

This version of 1 of my more recent writings stars 2 AI created characters named Pip and Mara.

Please enjoy the podcast & transcript below:

Pip: Classroom Mothership Earth — where getting unstuck, staying present, and surrendering to the universe are all on the syllabus, and somehow the homework is actually worth doing.

Mara: Today we’re covering work from Ari Joshua Bouse — one extended meditation on what it means to stop fighting your own stuckness and find your way back to the present moment. Let’s start with the heart of it: surrender as a path through.

Letting Go: Presence, Surrender, and Getting Unstuck

Mara: The central question here is deceptively simple — why do we get stuck, and what does it actually mean to let go? Not as a motivational slogan, but as a lived, embodied practice.

Pip: The post opens with a Rhonda Byrne line that stops you cold: “You can’t feel good when you’re feeling bad about feeling bad.”

Mara: That’s the trap in one sentence. The secondary suffering — the judgment layered on top of the original feeling — is often what keeps people frozen far longer than the feeling itself would.

Pip: And the post gets specific about what that looks like in practice. The reflection on getting stuck on other people’s stuckness, and taking it personally, is one of the more honest things you’ll read about how entanglement actually works.

Mara: The post frames it plainly: “experience teaches that it is freeing to stay centered, and observe those entanglements soften and relax.” Letting go of victim consciousness is described as a process — peeling away layers of an onion, not a single decision.

Pip: Which is where Tai Chi enters — not as a detour, but as a structural argument. Ancient meditative movement practices, the post says, integrate the brain’s hemispheres and re-pattern the neurological system toward emotional regulation. The body is part of the solution.

Mara: The post profiles Professor Cheng Man Ching, who brought Tai Chi to the West against the explicit orders of his masters. He once said he was approximately seventy percent Confucius and thirty percent Lao Tzu, and that learning how to be human takes a very long time.

Pip: Seventy-thirty is a surprisingly precise self-assessment for someone also teaching surrender.

Mara: The post also weaves in bibliotherapy — a medium using reading, film, podcasts, and other materials to support therapeutic change, especially between sessions. It traces back to an independent study in college exploring how clients get unstuck outside the therapy room.

Pip: That thread runs all the way to Pema Chodron, whose work the post closes with — a veteran Buddhist teacher the post credits as a leading force in bringing these principles to Western audiences.

Mara: The throughline is consistent: whether it’s Tai Chi, bibliotherapy, or sitting meditation, the practice is always about carrying the insight off the cushion and into ordinary life.

Pip: Stuckness, it turns out, is less a destination than a habit — and habits, given enough momentum, can be re-patterned.

Mara: Surrender as a technology for change — that’s the real thread running through all of this.

Pip: Next time, we’ll see what else the mothership has on the curriculum. There’s always more to unpack.

Please enjoy the original post that inspired this podcast at the link below:

Letting Go Of Getting Stuck In Life By Being Present With Our Stuckness Through The Power Of A Sweet Surrender

Take care of yourselves everyone,

Ari

Podcast Episode: A Crazy Business Idea For Co-creating A Beautiful New World

Posted on by under Consciousness, Spirituality, Uncategorized
Child standing in a futuristic classroom looking at Earth through large space station windows
A student gazes out at Earth from a high-tech space classroom

Check out this newly created experimental AI Podcast feature that aligns with my writing, compliments of WordPress.

Full Disclosure: Truly, I do take pride in my writing, and have yet to use AI for the written word. However, I have been having fun with playing around with AI for illustrations.

This podcast version of 1 of my more recent writings stars 2 AI created characters named Pip and Mara.

Please enjoy the podcast & transcript below:

Pip: Classroom Mothership Earth — where the daily writing prompt is “come up with a crazy business idea” and the answer turns out to be: civilization, but better.

Mara: Ari Joshua Bouse takes that prompt seriously, and today we’re following the thread — from a vision of shared consciousness and cooperative economics to what it actually looks like to clear space, inside and out.

Pip: Let’s start with the business idea itself.

—

A Crazy Business Idea For Co-creating A Beautiful New World

Mara: The post opens with a genuine question: what does an economy look like when the underlying operating system shifts — when interconnection is the default, not the exception?

Pip: And the answer isn’t a product or a pitch deck. It’s a paradigm. The post lays out what falls away when people genuinely feel their connection to each other.

Mara: The list is specific: “the institutionalized isms, trashing the park, wars, violence, gang banging, organized crime, the so called legitimate maximum-economic profit capitalist conditioning, economic strangulations, and the need to control each other fades away, and is released into a black hole in the Universe.”

Pip: That’s a sentence doing a lot of heavy lifting — and the point underneath it is real. The argument is that these patterns aren’t permanent features of human nature; they’re symptoms of a particular kind of disconnection.

Mara: Right, and the post is careful to say it doesn’t get killed or die — it transforms. The balloon metaphor follows: letting go of a thought form so it floats away, rather than fighting it.

Pip: There’s a friend in the piece who’s been sober from the news for over a year and reports genuine levity — less charge around politics, less reactive energy. That’s offered as a small proof of concept.

Mara: The post connects that to The Celestine Prophecy — James Redfield’s intention, quoted directly, was to inspire readers to “reclaim their power from dominant authorities and dysfunctional relationships: not via political or legal action but through a personalized spirituality that portrays life as a meaningful journey toward self-actualization.”

Pip: So the crazy business idea is essentially: skip the legal filing, go straight to the consciousness upgrade.

Mara: The post also gets concrete about physical space — imagining trash compressed in a way that literally opens up room, turning what looked like a landfill into ground for new growth. It’s the same logic applied materially.

Pip: And the T’ai Chi section earns its place. Professor Cheng’s instruction to “be like a ghost” — to create spaciousness — maps directly onto the economic argument: lead, follow, listen, don’t force.

Mara: The upshot is that cooperative competition, in this frame, isn’t naive. It’s more like push hands than a zero-sum match — sensitive to the other’s energy, not trying to overpower it.

Pip: Which makes the closing meditation clip feel less like an appendix and more like the actual deliverable.

Mara: That thread — from inner clearing to outer structure — is what the whole piece is building toward.

—

Pip: Clear the space, transform the pattern, don’t fight the balloon — it’s a coherent through-line once you follow it.

Mara: More from Classroom Mothership Earth next time.

Please enjoy the original post that inspired this new podcast version at the link below:

A Crazy Business Idea For Co-creating A Beautiful New World

Take care of yourselves everyone,

Ari

Podcast Episode: A New Moon in Gemini, Solstices, Full Strawberry Moon & Mercury in Retrograde

Posted on by under Consciousness, Podcast, Spirituality, Uncategorized
Full moon rising over fields and a country path with a farmhouse nearby
A glowing full moon rises over a peaceful countryside at dusk

Check out this newly created experimental AI Podcast feature that aligns with my writing, compliments of WordPress.

Full Disclosure: Truly, I do take pride in my writing, and have yet to use AI for the written word. However, I have been having fun with playing around with AI for illustrations.

This podcast version of 1 of my more recent writings stars 2 AI created characters named Pip and Mara.

Please enjoy the podcast & transcript below:

Pip: Gemini season, a solstice, a strawberry moon, Mercury going sideways — June is apparently doing a lot.

Mara: This episode covers one post from Ari Joshua Bouse, mapping the celestial events of late June and what they invite us to pay attention to — new moons, seasonal turning points, a full moon with Indigenous roots, and a retrograde worth taking seriously.

Pip: Let’s start with the sky.

A New Moon in Gemini Through Mercury Retrograde

Mara: June opens with a New Moon in Gemini on the fifteenth, and the question this post is really asking is: what does the sky this month want from us, and how do we work with it rather than against it?

Pip: The post frames the Gemini New Moon as a prompt to balance thinking and feeling — and it puts it plainly: “Harmonizing with our heads and hearts helps support effective communication.”

Mara: That’s the throughline for the whole month. The New Moon opens a window for setting intentions, connecting socially, and letting communication projects move more freely. The post specifically names storytelling and sharing topical truths as things that can come to life with greater ease right now.

Pip: Then June 21 arrives carrying two things at once — the Summer Solstice and Father’s Day, a pairing that won’t repeat until 2037.

Mara: The post draws a real contrast there. In the Northern Hemisphere, the solstice carries what it calls Grandfather Sun-Yang energy — outward, expansive, growth-oriented. In the Southern Hemisphere, it’s the opposite: the longest night, Grandmother Moon-Yin energy, a turning inward.

Pip: The planet literally experiencing opposite seasons at the same moment — that’s the kind of thing that makes the phrase “duality of living on this planet” feel less like a bumper sticker.

Mara: The Full Strawberry Moon follows on June 29. The post traces that name to the Algonquin and other North American nations who connected the wild berry harvest to this moon, and notes that other cultures named it for whatever mattered most to people on the land at midsummer.

Pip: History embedded in a calendar. That’s not nothing.

Mara: June 21 also opens Cancer season, running through July 22. The post frames Cancer as a softer emotional register — nourishment, self-care, reconnecting with feeling. Then Mercury stations retrograde on June 29, lasting through July 23, and the post treats that as a genuine invitation: slow down, reflect, and pay attention to subconscious patterns.

Pip: So the month ends with two overlapping energies asking for the same thing — quiet and inward attention.

Mara: And the psychic and dream life, the post says, can surface real insight during that window if you’re working with it intentionally rather than just waiting for it to pass.

Pip: Which points straight toward how we actually tend our inner lives day to day.

Mara: A month of thresholds — new beginnings, a solstice, ancestral moons, a retrograde. The invitation seems to be: meet each one with some awareness.

Pip: More sky ahead. We’ll see what it asks for next time.

Please enjoy the original post that inspired this new podcast version at the link below:

A New Moon in Gemini, Summer Solstice, Full Strawberry Moon & Mercury in Retrograde at the End of June

Podcast Episode: Plato’s Allegory Of The Cave

Posted on by under Consciousness, Podcast, Spirituality, Uncategorized
Empty classroom with wooden desks and chairs arranged in a circle under natural sunlight.
An empty classroom with wooden desks arranged in a circular formation bathed in sunlight.

Check out this newly created experimental AI Podcast feature that aligns with my writing, compliments of WordPress.

Full Disclosure: Truly, I do take pride in my writing, and have yet to use AI for the written word. However, I have been having fun with playing around with AI for illustrations.

This podcast version of 1 of my more recent writings stars 2 AI created characters named Pip and Mara.

Please enjoy the podcast & transcript below:

Pip: There’s a site called Classroom Mothership Earth, which is either a philosophy blog or the most ambitious field trip ever conceived — possibly both.

Mara: Ari Joshua Bouse writes here about education, consciousness, and the ideas that stay with you long after the bell rings. Today we’re following him back into a high school classroom and into Plato’s cave. Let’s start with what that cave actually meant.

Plato’s Allegory Of The Cave

Pip: The post opens with a prompt — describe something you learned in high school — and the answer isn’t a formula or a date. It’s a philosophy class that apparently rewired the writer’s entire sense of reality.

Mara: The Humanities course had a teacher who, as the post puts it, “embodied his humanity” — theatrical, philosophical, running the room like a group rather than a lecture. The layout shifted between rows, clusters, and horseshoe configurations to keep energy moving through the space.

Pip: So the room itself was part of the pedagogy. The furniture arrangement wasn’t aesthetic — it was functional, designed to open something up in the students.

Mara: And what got opened up, specifically, was Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The post describes it this way: “the metaphor of humanity being asleep and trapped in own own darkness lit a fire in my neurons and energy field.”

Pip: That’s a sentence doing a lot of heavy lifting across several centuries of philosophy.

Mara: What it means in practice is that the allegory didn’t stay abstract. It landed as a personal reckoning — the post connects it directly to protective instincts, survival dynamics, and what it calls “death and rebirth” taking root in the psyche. This wasn’t intellectual exercise; it was identity-level disruption.

Mara: The class also covered Plato’s Republic against Pericles’ Democracy, the teacher’s own Theory of Good, and Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha. The curriculum was genuinely wide.

Pip: And the post notes that metacognition and superconsciousness weren’t yet common language — but that didn’t stop anyone from having those experiences. The concepts came later; the experiences came first.

Mara: The image that closes the reflection is the teacher drawing a diagram of the Cave on a blackboard, and the writer connecting that chalk sketch to ancient cave art. The visual form of the idea outlasted the lesson itself.

Pip: Turns out the cave has good acoustics for anything that echoes.

Mara: The throughline is that a single classroom encounter with one allegory can reorganize how a person understands consciousness — and keeps doing so long after graduation.

Pip: Shadows on a wall, seating arrangements, a teacher with chalk — small things that turn out to be load-bearing.

Mara: Next time, more from the mothership.

Please enjoy the original post that inspired this new podcast version at the link below:

Plato’s Allegory Of The Cave

Take care of yourselves everyone,

Ari

Podcast Episode: Embodying Paradox, Change & Humor In The Everyday Moments Of Life

Posted on by under Consciousness, Podcast, Spirituality, Uncategorized
Abstract swirling streams of water twisting around glowing blue and teal geometric crystals
Swirling water streams intertwine with glowing geometric crystals in an abstract composition.

Check out this newly created experimental AI Podcast feature that aligns with my writing, compliments of WordPress.

Full Disclosure: Truly, I do take pride in my writing, and have yet to use AI for the written word. However, I have been having fun with playing around with AI for illustrations.

This podcast version of 1 of my more recent writings stars 2 AI created characters named Pip and Mara.

Please enjoy the podcast & transcript below:

Pip: Classroom Mothership Earth — where the curriculum includes falling off your bike, losing on purpose, and calling all of it wisdom.

Mara: That’s actually a fair summary. Ari Joshua Bouse has a new post up exploring resilience, paradox, and how everyday stumbles become the practice itself. Let’s start with what it means to stop fighting the dark and work with it instead.

Embodying Paradox, Change and Humor In Everyday Life

Mara: The central question here is how resilience actually gets built — not by avoiding difficulty, but by changing your relationship to it. The post argues that resilience is cultivated, not inherited, and that the everyday moment is where that cultivation happens.

Pip: And the frame for all of it comes from a Taoist concept the post calls Investing In Loss. The setup is direct: “you might lose a game 99 times out of a hundred. But if you lose 99 times and you are paying mindful attention about your partners moves, you can learn their tricks, and spring the trap to win the 100th game.”

Mara: So the upshot is that losing, done consciously, is actually data. The mindset shift the post is pointing at is the difference between defeat and apprenticeship — same outcome, completely different relationship to it.

Pip: The bike and the swimming pool make the same case more viscerally. Most of us got water up our nose and fell off the handlebars and somehow did not develop lasting trauma from either. We just got back on.

Mara: Right — and the post uses that to ask a genuine question: how do we stay present in everyday life the way we were present when we were learning something genuinely new and a little scary? That’s where Dan Millman enters. The Way of the Peaceful Warrior gets name-checked as a long-running personal touchstone — a book recommended in high school, not fully read until after college, but never forgotten.

Pip: There is something quietly honest about admitting the book sat on the to-do list for years before it landed. Delayed absorption counts.

Mara: The post opens with two epigraphs that frame the whole thing. Eckhart Tolle on bringing in light rather than fighting darkness, and S. Kelley Harrell going further: “bless the darkness, hold the light, because the two aren’t divisible.” That’s the paradox the title is naming — not resolving the tension, but inhabiting it.

Mara: The shadow-boxing image the post offers — awakening to shades of your hidden self in a mirror — suggests the inner work and the outer stumbling are the same practice, just different angles.

Pip: Lose on purpose, get back on the bike, and hold the light and the dark at the same time. Straightforward advice, if you don’t mind the bruises.

Mara: That tension between difficulty and openness seems like the thread worth pulling next time.

Please enjoy the original post that inspired this new podcast version at the link below:

Embodying Paradox, Change & Humor In The Everyday Moments Of Life

May all Beings be free of suffering, and awaken to God Consciousness, Cosmic Consciousness, Unity Consciousness, Diversity Within Unity, Inner Peace and the Universal Pillars of Love And Truth.