Tag Archives: Taoism

Diving with Loon into the depths of the Soul

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Loons give their Penguin friends a swim for their bills in their depository to dive deeply into the water’s abyss.  Winter is a time that we turn yinward and dive deeper into our soulful inner sea of consciousness.  Winter and water represent feminine energy, the dark Yin on the Chinese symbol of the Yin and Yang.  Loon medicine helps us wake up to lucid dreaming or becoming more conscious of our dreams and visions.  Paying attention to our dreams helps us take a reflective look at our waking lives and empowers us to living more authentically.  We all dream, whether we remember our dreams or not.  If we want to have more of a say in our lives, then it stands to reason that we might take note of what our dreams are saying to us.  Winter also represents darkness and the death cycle in Nature.  Mother Earth’s heartbeat slows down at this time. Given that we are a living embodiment of Nature, we are meant to slow down too.  However, many of us have a tendency to resist our natural internal orientation during Winter by trying to stay up in our activity level.  Although balance is always important, your soul will know the deeper acoustics of harmony if you allow yourself a bit more rest and get in touch with the deeper feelings that accompany Winter’s energies of death, grief and loss.  Now is the time when our dreams and visions germinate, somewhat akin to the seeds underground that are beginning to start thinking about waking up as we approach the Chinese-Lunar New Year in early February.  Like buds on our trees, the dreams and visions we are pregnant with now will begin to fruit around the Spring Equinox in March and their manifestation power intensifies as we approach the Summer Solstice in June.

In modern society, especially here in America we get pretty fired up about our guns.  Many folks are citing our Constitutional right to bear arms and some even openly carry a piece by asserting their right to do that and don’t see anything alarming about it.  During my childhood, I grew up in Michigan–boy do we really love our guns there.  Some folks believe that having a gun will keep them safe.  But we have more gun related deaths, many accidental within the privacy of one’s own home, than anywhere else on the Planet.  The NRA is a powerful organization with a lot of money to assault our friends in Congress to shoot down sensible gun control laws.  We have a chock full of military style weapons that end up in the wrong hands out on the street where there are dangers of bullying, desperation and poor impulse control.  Since we love our wars, the resistance energy behind the mind-set of war predictably promotes more storms brewing ahead.  Instead of real homeland security and crime prevention by funneling our resources into positive community connections, treatment, education, healthcare, infrastructure and creating good jobs for the 20 million folks who want to work, our leaders balk at this by concentrating monies at the top of the food chain.  Beef:  It’s what’s for dinner.  I remember visiting my dad as a kid and on some of those visits, he taught me to shoot a 22 by the time I was 6 years old.  Although my dad liked to shoot from the hip and lacked an adequate understanding of childhood development, I do appreciate that he was strict about teaching me the basics about gun safety.  Guns symbolize power and security, but they often manifest danger.  Those of us in touch with our deeper feelings are  grieving the terrible tragedy that happened in Connecticut recently.  I once lived in Connecticut and still have close friends there, so the tragedy has weighed heavy on my heart.  But in the grieving process of this tragedy, I know in my heart that it will lead to an awakening as we move onward.  Even in death, there is rebirth.  I have gone through this process many, many times.  Haven’t we all?

When swimming with Loon, we dive deeper into our souls, as our collective consciousness shifts onward.  Instead of God Bless America or Allah Bless Muslims, we dream God Bless Mother Earth and all living creatures.  Loon helps us understand the depth of our connection to the Dreamtime and reminds us we are all cut from the same cloth of Great Spirit.  Creator’s original Blueprint was a loving One.  Sadly, but understandably, that got distorted.  Given that we are all a reflection of that image, meditation on Loon helps us perceive this in our Being and make friends with that.  We are all living embodiments of All That Is.  Since we are all One, albeit diverse expressions of that oneness, killing someone else is ultimately directed at the self.  Although this truth is mind-boggling, I came to a point where this made sense to me intellectually.  But now I am arriving at a deeper intuitive understanding of this truth in my Heart.  That is why we speak of killing with kindness.  When we come out of our inner peace bubble and remember that there are no enemies, then we truly co-create a New Earth together one step, one breath, one moment at a time.

Stay True,

Ari

Getting Back on the Horse, while riding Freely, Powerfully and Responsibly toward the Winter Solstice

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We humans have been paying attention to Nature’s cycles, like our time-tested traditional celebrations with Solstices and Equinoxes for at least 45,000 years.  When time traveling in our spirit-mind-body vessels, we watch our ancient Sumerian ancestors saddle up with horse’s power and venture outward.  Moreover, Western astrology reveals the sign Sagittarius as a man-horse hybrid (centaur), while Chinese astrology showcases the horse as one of its 12 signs.  In shamanism, ingesting horse medicine allows a shaman to fly through the air and reach Heaven.  On December 21 2012, we mark the end of the Mayan Calendar, signaling the death of an old world and a birth of a new one.  Will we observe a major global event that we all bear witness to or will we remain in the dark?  Is it the end of the world as we know it?  Will extraterrestrials come out of the closet to humanity?  I don’t know about that, but I believe we are in a process of a radical transformation in our consciousness, our Planet and the Universe throughout.  It is hard to deny that more energies are streaming in–particularly for those of us sensitive to them.  We are consciousness, rather than what consciousness identifies with.  When we wake up to that, we become the change we want to see in the world around us. Historically, horse has been seen as symbolic of burial rites and birth, which synchronizes with the death energy of Winter.  Somewhat akin to tracking animals, we might not actually see physical evidence of heavenly activity here on the ground. However, when staying alert, we awaken to perceptual shifts that allow us to see and hear our spirited friends speak to us.  In our modern world, particularly in the West, perhaps this means that we kill less, give inner peace a chance and stop fueling wars that are destined to lose.  What we resist, persists.  When co-creating a New Earth, individual and collective egos wane and spiritual powers wax on.  In this Love and Light, we invest in loss–less inner pollution and more renewable clean energy radiating from within our Heart centers.  Horses represent freedom and power and remind us that we always have choices.

I remember when a past teacher from the old school once confidently asserted that we live in a causal and deterministic Universe.  Further, he argued that freewill wasn’t scientifically plausible, master illusionist that he was.  On the surface that might be true, particularly when identifying with victim consciousness. Responsibility is the price tag of freedom–sobering but empowering.  Moreover, it isn’t always easy to see the reality of our choices and accept the consequences that follow the choices that we make–especially when we are unconscious of them, spiritually speaking.  When horse gallops into our energy field, we ingest powerful medicine to get back in the saddle and blaze beyond the surface area of cause and effect (karma) and leap into the realm of infinity, where intention, abundance and possibility await. While there is science to this phenomena, we probably won’t find it in Establishment science as reported on the corporate media.   How long will it take for the movers and shakers of our Planet to giddy up with horse’s energy by modeling a balanced medicine shield to facilitate the movement toward power to the people?  Is bullying workers by threatening to cut their hours to pay for healthcare fair and balanced news?  Isn’t blaming an abused person for making poor choices in relationships an example of the same criticized victim behavior?  Isn’t a parent who enables their child’s behavior partly responsible?  Don’t we all bear some level of responsibility for school shootings, given the culture we are part of?  Demonizing is part of devolution and victim consciousness.  However, hitching a ride with horse helps us evolve our collective awareness by trotting  into a new frontier of egalitarian freedom and responsibility.  We are taking back our ego-centered projections and authentically looking within our own inner state of consciousness in a respectful way.  Spiritually speaking, when we eat like a horse, the ego shrinks as personal power grows.  We hear a lot about Christ this time of year.  Who was He?  When we understand our Divine Nature, we understand that Great Spirit gave birth to Christ as an incarnation-embodiment of Christ Consciousness, the Divine Marriage between God/Goddess and masculine and feminine (yin-yang) energies that flow inside all of us.  When standing in our I Am Presence (consciousness), we know this experience of Love and Light.  Christ arrived to show us that the Kingdom of Heaven is within all of us and inspiring us to Love one another.

Developmentally, humanity is struggling right now.  We can all stand to develop the social skill of empathy by remembering the experience of walking in someone else’s moccasins, slippers, boots, etc.  We all win when we remember the spirit of compassion, caring, teaching, loving and sharing our gifts, talents and abilities with one another.  But many of us don’t know how to effectively emote, govern our own behavior and have difficulty accessing and acquiring a sound repertoire of social skills.  At any given moment, many of us still position ourselves as inferior or superior toward our fellow brothers and sisters, while clinging to a belief that we are separate and disconnected from one another.  There are enemies to kill and wars to fight and win.  This is how we  justify the subtle and provocative violence we commit against one another.  When we feel right inside and wronged by someone else, we tend to act out by attacking another person.  We have different preferences in this regard.  Some of us prefer cutting someone up by way of a sarcastic comment that is cleverly cloaked behind an angry edge, while others bully by physically threatening or assaulting another human being.   Some folks make a killing by hiding behind desks, while voting for more weapons of mass destruction and rationally arguing this insanity as doing the right thing.  However, when we humans remember that we are all beautiful black stallions, while saddling up with inner peace and sending Love to one another, we help blaze heavenly trails on Earth for all to share.

Stay True,

Ari

Flying high with Eagle, staying grounded with Racoon and keeping it real with Blue Jay

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I remember walking out of school the other day, while joining in with some co-workers gazing at a bald eagle soaring the heavens over a near-by stream.  I couldn’t help but snatch the friendly reminder to pay close attention to our spirited encounters with our animal friends and open up to their cadence to walk with one foot in the material realm, while also stepping into the realm of Infinity.  In much the same way as an eagle flying over a valley, our ripple was feathered to pause to reflect on its teaching that we need to remember to see the big picture in the Book of Life and see all directions.  Moreover, eagle has strong talons that remind us to keep our feet on the ground, so that our spirits don’t soar too high.  In this way, we maintain perspective and balance when bringing back wisdom from the Dreamtime, for effective integration into our Earth Walkabout.  But with this great power, comes great responsibility.  Some moments later, blue jay sent an assertive and positive tweet to remember to stay true to ourselves.  Somewhere in time thereafter, a dead racoon reminded me that Fall is leaving us behind and the veils are thinning at this junction in Nature’s Cycle.  Raccoon helps us remember that it is a good time to wear masks while exploring primal knowing and accessing wisdom from Unknown realms.  Raccoon medicine helps us become true master martial artists in the sense that we cleverly know what mask to wear to tap into our inner power.  Further, raccoon helps us balance our intellect and intuition to effectively sort through this process and relax and allow what we are looking for to appear organically.

Does anyone else out there in the participatory audience wonder why these free offerings aren’t all over the mass media to assist us in an effectively transition into a New Age and Paradigm?  I know some of the top dawgs at the top 1% experience a high concentration of Nervous Woodland Creature energy when considering this possibility.  From a position of empathy, some folks might wonder where they fit in, when barking up a more colorful tree with deeper roots.  And I know many folks that pass for white privilege in America feel that they are losing their country.  Some folks remember their working class parents having good jobs, more leisure time and nice vacations away at camps with access to waterways and outdoor fun.  But when we open up to the realm of Infinity, we know that abundance is there for all of us here in our nation, the Americas, planet and Universe throughout.  Although I believe in a philosophically free-market, based on bartering and sharing of resources–a simple shift in taxation with representation means less money for weapons of mass destruction and equal access to eco-friendly resources with special emphasis on the human factor.  We need to remember that what is good for the goose is good for the gander, ma chucka.  What would happen if humanity were to embrace the amazing power within us and send love to everything?  I have been practicing this skill when observing how polarizing politics have become, especially here in the USA.  In fact, many of my liberal and progressive friends out there became enraged when some Republican candidates said that pregnancies resulting from rape are part of God’s intention.  And of course folks on the religious right argue that God would never allow a woman to choose to abort her child.  With all this bickering, what gets lost is that free access to quality health care co-creates less rapes and less unwanted births.  However, the Hidden Hand wants the prize-fight to continue, while distracting us from the truth that there are devilishly dominant forces that wants to remain unexamined–the Great Deceiver, if you will.  Some of my closest friends sarcastically laughed me out of a room when I accurately pointed out that President Obama, when it comes to policy, is really a moderate Republican, business candidate of Wall Street.  Mitt Romney, the other pop candidate is right-wing white guy that speaks in a paternalistic tone and sprays himself to look darker to appeal to folks of color.  What a chameleon.  Really, master illusionist Carl Rove and company don’t scale back to buy our vote!  Can’t you hear the thunderous W.C. Fields energy commenting, what a catastrophe.

So what can we do about this mess?  Checking in with our inner voice and voting with our conscience is typically good medicine.  With open hearts, we send love everywhere.  We are pre-wired by Great Spirit to let our inner light shine and illuminate the shadows within our inner space and without our orbit.  Like Jim Belushi’s character in Animal House once said, “it don’t cost nothin’.”  If you find yourself disillusioned during this election year, with the ways of the world, or more importantly what is going on within yourself, just send love to it.  Take an honest look at your thoughts, how you are feelings right now in this moment and simply send love to whatever arrives in your field of vision.  Yes, feeling shame and guilt are important to own so that we may move forward in our journey.  After taking an authentic look at why we feel shame and guilt, we become ready to send love to the shame and guilt, so that it can be released for healthy compost.  Then notice what happens.  I welcome your experiences with that.  Also, please enjoy powerful energies of the Full Moon without getting a fever or too nervous and try to stay calm in the pocket during the hurricane.

Stay True,

Ari

Falling Back, Bees Are Leaving Us Behind

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I remember taking in a sweet breath of life recently and couldn’t help but notice a bee entangled in a spider web.  Some moments later, I felt tangled up in blue as I observed the spider drinking in life by draining the bee’s righteous Chi.  Perhaps some folks would judge the spider as a killer and sentence him to a death sentence as well.  But Nature has Her own way and in this case and as I look back, this experience past was the death of all of us.  In fact, Autumn has arrived here in the Northern Hemisphere and the leaves greenery are waning, while the vibrant colors are waxing.  Masculine summer’s light is also waning, as we are naturally slowing down and welcoming the darkness of night rising.  Light and dark are in equal alignment with one another, reminding us that balancing our energies is natural, if not normal.  We all have masculine and feminine energies waxing and waning within our Beings, always in flux, whether realized or not.  Nothing against cosmetic surgery and performance enhancement drugs, but I wonder how costly these enterprises would be if human beings were supported and encouraged to naturally find comfort in our own skins?  Would it be so challenging to find that deep place of self-esteem that says to thyself, I’m OK.  Although watching a bee get whacked was unsettling in the sense that the bee was part of me, at the same time, I thanked the bee for bringing balance to the Force by offering itself to spider and sharing its consciousness with the rest of us.  Perhaps we won’t see any bees for a while, but we are still capable of ingesting their medicine by meditating on the sweetness of life.  Maybe burning a candle made of beeswax will rekindle their power and facilitate the cross-pollination process in raising the consciousness of the planet as we approach the Winter Solstice in December, the darkest day of the year.  What will happen at this significant time on Nature’s cycle? 

Does anyone in the participatory audience remember when Beatles founding father John Lennon sang the anthem Give Peace A Chance?  Well, as I reflect on the Autumn Equinox and Peace on Earth, let it begin with me.  And if you are reading, let it begin with you.  My soulful wife once gave me a card that reminded me that peace does not come from being in an environment of comfortable bliss surrounding me like a security blanket.  Rather, peace is found in the depths of a calm heart, even when chaos abounds.  For the record, I know some of you appreciate and enjoy the way this blog playfully weaves the spirited animal energy into the material realm, while conjuring up positive vibes that feel good.  If that is the case, then perhaps it conjures up empathy for the drug addict that tries to stay high all the time in the ether because hitting the ground is too painful and suffering, though inevitable, is avoided at all costs.  But a key dynamic in the spiritual path is that meditation shows us inconvenient truths about ourselves in that quiet space.  We have the potential to get to know ourselves on a deeper level and make friends with that.  However, I also recognize and appreciate that some readers, like the drug addict, do not like the smack down that they feel when this blog explores the harsh realities that are happening on our planet today.  While I appreciate this position, the mystic swims in the waters the addict drowns in.  This blog will continue to explore healing the polarity consciousness that currently divides us on Mother Earth and co-facilitate the transition into a New Age and Paradigm, where we celebrate the good times of Diversity within Unity.  Instead of God Bless America, we say God Bless The Planet and Universe throughout.  When I gaze on the lyrics of Genesis, it’s almost as if I can hear Peter Gabriel singing let us create humankind in our image.  Now I realize that everything should be taken with a grain of salt.  Moreover, a conservative interpretation of these lyrics, for those who like to take things literally, could be that we were genetically engineered by advanced beings from another planet.  Perhaps a more liberal perspective might view God as a transcendent Collective Energy that allows for the evolution of His-Her co-creation that illuminates as we wake up from our slumber, here on Mothership Earth.  Yes, there is a concrete sense of security in a dogmatic fixed idea of believing in a white man sitting up on a hierarchical throne with a gavel deciding who is permitted to join the Country Club and whom will be punished in a slow roast.  But Heaven and Hell are subjective inner states of consciousness that are reflected in our outer reality.  All we really have is right now, this precious moment that is always eternal.

As humans, when we get stuck in our fixed ideas and box ourselves in the ghettos of the mind with intellectual concepts and emotional reactions thereof, we tend to experience security in our consciousness that tastes like comfort food.  However, as we move onward in our collective assent, we expand and open up to the increasing spirited energies that are streaming in our planet right Tao.  Some folks will react to these energies unconsciously and that is their right.  Yes, there are more natural disasters, wars, poverty, famines and disconnection among the human factor with relation to Nature, though paradoxically more technologically connected.  But there is security in knowing that there is predictability in unpredictability.  If one way doesn’t work, another way will.  Together, we climb onward in surface and depth, one breath, one moment, one step at a time. 

Stay True,

Ari

With Bat Medicine, The Dark Night Walks In Sunlight

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I remember when Mark Twain observed that “there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”  Here on Classroom Mothership Earth, we are living in a land of chaos, confusion and tragedy.  If we look beneath the surface symptoms and acting out of our human family, we realize that our provocative behavior is clearly speaking to us.  In the USA, our friends in Congress are still balking at leveling the playing field that promotes more equal access to concrete services such as affordable health care and housing.  Further, a horrible massacre somewhere in Middle America took many innocent lives away from folks who merely thought they would escape for a spell by watching a film called the Dark Night Rising.  Front and center of our planet’s hot mess, is the Middle East, where a Perfect Storm is brewing in the land once called the Fertile Crescent and home of Abraham–paradoxically the father of the world’s three dominant religions.  Given all this shit hitting the fan, flying with bat is a good remedy for cross pollinating our transition into a New Age and Paradigm.  Alas, the Joker in me notices that this town needs an enema.

I know times are tough and the tides are changing.  And it is painful to watch folks make jokes out of anxiety with relation to tragedy.  However, without that roaring laughter, there would be no Tao.  So, why not stop the insanity by invoking the energy of bat to help us fly with our transitions during the process of becoming something new.  Moreover, bat can help us effectively navigate the darkness by facing our fears and laying to rest the death of the old self.  When we let go of who we were and accept what is, we then clear space for new energy to take flight into our being and prepare for changing tides.  With bat, we are equipped to spread our wings and fly onward in our soul’s infinite journey through birth, death and rebirth that is akin to the Buddhist idea of reincarnation.  As humans, we have not learned how to effectively emote.  Rather, we tend to react to the weather outside instead of mastering our own internal weather patterns.  In our outer directed culture, we have been well-trained to play the blame game and indulge in victim consciousness.  But remember that as participatory audience members in the theater of life, we are all mirrors for one another that reflect back aspects of our one  human family.  Sometimes, we like what we see and are attracted to that.  Other times, we do not like what we see and tend to react with an attitude of judgement and avoidance.  Or maybe we become a martyr and carry a heavy ego-centered burden. 

In our dying old world, we have trashed the beautiful park that was given to us by Creator.  As humans, the time is now to take responsibility for our creative selves and for our shared land that we live with.  The age of viewing ourselves as separate and disconnected from one another is disappearing into the dead of the night.  The New World will reveal itself when each individual sees the Light of Day in his consciousness.  This is what god-realized humans have modeled to us in our human history.  When enough of us reach this Critical Mass, we will come about by balancing our part Divine, part creature being into living authentically and respectfully with one another.  In the meanwhile, we humans really need to heal old wounds and learn new ways to live in harmony with one another, our planet and Universe throughout.  By listening to bat, we hear a callback that echoes a message that even in death, there is rebirth.

Stay True,

Ari