Nature | Ascension Lifestyle

03 Dec 2016
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Homecoming

Home. Except for love, perhaps no word in the English language conjures more evocative imagery. We crave the cozy, nurturing, roaring-fire scene depicted so effectively on film. Home houses our identity. It’s less about the four walls than what they represent: “the abode of one’s affections, peace or rest,” according to Merriam-Webster. At some point in our lives, many women (and men, too, if they will admit it) harbor a fearful fantasy of becoming a “bag lady/guy,” carting our belongings out on the street. We see the homeless and quake — “there but for the grace of God go I.”

What we’re seeking is a sense of security inside ourselves, a home within that can never be taken away. As national boundaries dissolve and corporations invite poets and spiritual mentors into their boardrooms, the hunger for this broader definition of home has never been greater.

From Me to We

Creating this inner sanctuary will entail a quantum shift for many of us: out of the competitive, “What’s in it for me” worldview into a more collaborative, compassionate perspective in which the operative question becomes, “How may I serve?”

For instance: as record numbers of us skate towards elderhood, home care has become a hot topic. What does this mean? On one level, “home care” is about providing caregiving in the home to enable our elders and homebound to remain in their comfort zones. But the larger view begs our attention. Before we can care for our home, we need to know it viscerally. We must embody the place of wholeness that wants to be born in us.

Our own bodies and the planetary body are inextricably linked. Anthropologist Gregory Bateson speaks of “the pattern that connects,” the common ground of our unity. We exist in relationship to everyone and everything else on Earth. What kind of home care is our aging Mother receiving? Maybe that’s the real key to conscious aging: caring for the personal and the planetary with equal reverence.

Living in Tune with Nature

In other societies, the old ones are the keepers of wisdom. So-called developing cultures that honor their tribal elders also honor the land in which they live. “Home care” is a unified practice for them, as indigenous as the planting and the reaping, as natural as celebrating life’s quotidian rhythms with ritual.

In this visionary view, we’re all caregivers — Earth stewards, some say. Home care for our elders is rooted in how we create home in our daily lives. What kind of home do we want to cultivate and care for, inside ourselves, interpersonally, and as part of the collective “home body” we inhabit?

Try this: for the next week, take a time-out from worrying about the economy, your teenager’s pierced body parts and the latest virus scare to live into the larger questions about the quality of life you’re choosing in every moment, by the way you live, by what you do and don’t honor. Does your definition of home serve you? Is it inclusive or exclusive? Will your practice of home care help create a sustainable future for us all?

Within a decade, for the first time in human history, the number of people in the world aged 65 and older will exceed that of children under five. If you’re not already among this exhalted majority, one day you will look in the mirror and see your grandmother’s or grandfather’s eyes. Will they reflect the wisdom of generativity, of the home that you carry with you always, as a turtle does, caring for it because it is an intrinsic part of you?

Native Americans call this planet Turtle Island. I imagine this is what they mean.

About the Author:

Amara Rose is a metaphysical “midwife” for our global rebirth. She offers spiritual mentoring, e-courses, a CD/mp3 of the journey to awakening, and an inspirational monthly newsletter.

Learn more at LiveYourLight.com. You can also connect with Amara on Twitter and Facebook.

01 Nov 2016
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Living In the Zone

Twice a year, approximately 70 countries worldwide create a collective illusion: saving time. We move the hands of our clocks, and think we’ve harnessed the sun.

Cultures that live in tune with natural rhythms do not alter their clocks, because clocks do not define their time. The seasons and the stars do.

“The stars want to see themselves!”

Thought leader Deepak Chopra, MD, once shared how he explained existence to his three-year-old granddaughter as they walked along the beach at sunset. Essentially, he told her she is made of starlight, and that the spirit of the stars is reflected in her eyes. Tara was silent for fifteen minutes while she digested this information. Then she said, “Nanna, look up!” When Chopra asked why, she replied, “The stars want to see themselves!”

Time is elastic. Athletes know this. When athletes move into the space known as “the zone,” time slows down. They see every move or play with perfect clarity, and execute the correct maneuvers as if in a dream, sensing the triumphant outcome. Something expands within them that translates into successful action.

How many people do you know who never seem to have “enough” time? We are each gifted with the same twenty-four hour cycle to use as we choose. People who are time-deprived are exhibiting one aspect of our pervasive scarcity consciousness.

How limits expand possibility

In The Energy of Money, psychologist Maria Nemeth writes, “Scarcity is a reality in the physical domain. As a minister friend of mine once told me, ‘It’s as though we got bored living without limits. We decided to incarnate — which means, literally, to turn into meat. We further chose to work with the limits of form, time and finite energy. This was to see how much of the divine we could bring into the mundane before it was time for us to leave.'”

As paradoxical as it may seem, says Nemeth, “We reach the infinite through living fully in the finite. The infinite is not reached by trying to ignore limits, as many of us try to do.”

And in Eastern Body, Western Mind, chakra expert Anodea Judith observes, “Manifestation requires an acceptance of limitation. A boundary allows us to contain, and thus collect and build.”

What “enough” really means

So holding the “both/and” is a prerequisite to freedom, whether from the constraints of the clock or the tyranny of the paycheck: We must accept limitation in order to transcend it. This is what zone athletes do.

As we set our clocks back an hour this Sunday (in the United States), let’s look out at the stars and remember what we’re made of. Recognize the expansive possibilities that exist within the limits of form.

There is enough. It’s just a question of consciousness. Choose to embrace the both/and, and you’ll grow with the flow!

About the author:

Amara Rose is a spiritual artisan and “midwife” for our global rebirth. She offers one-to-one guidance, e-courses, a digital download CD, talks and playshops to accelerate your evolutionary journey, and is widely published in health, business and new thought magazines, both digital and print. Learn more at LiveYourLight.com, where you can also subscribe to her free e-newsletter, What Shines.

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14 Sep 2016
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Reconnect With Nature

“We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.” -Alan Watts

I’ve always loved the works of Alan Watts. For a beginner, his writings and personality entice the mind and draw it further into curiosity. This is integral for those trying to find some sort of foundation in Zen. Many Eastern philosophical concepts are difficult for beginners to grasp. There are countless pop cultural myths about spiritual tradition that require a fair amount of reconditioning to reverse. True understanding takes work. Most importantly, it takes daily meditation practice.

Today I’d like to take some time to delve into one of Watts’ favorite concepts— emergence. I’ve decided to call it this after listening to dozens of speeches in which Watts outlines his belief in this concept. It’s the simple idea that, instead of being dropped into the world like an alien, we emerge out of the world as an integral expression of it. We’re a reflection of it, not a product of it. Your initial reaction to this might be, “Duh,” but I think you’ll find it’s an interesting thing to get into. We reflect natural reality and when we deny this reality we deny life.

I find emergence particularly important to think about at this point in history, when man finds himself pitted against nature in a weird technological battle for progress, change, and ‘disruption’. Startups, for example, use the term ‘disruptive’ to describe companies and innovations that are shaking things up and changing the playing field. To merely shake things up is perceived as beneficial, like a toddler tossing sand around on a playground. Rarely is this credo ever questioned. This represents, for me, the crux of a modern technological battle against nature. That which is most disruptive is perceived as beneficial, while that which is understated, simple and peaceful is considered useless or boring. Serenity is overlooked because it doesn’t cause a stir. This is because the cult of progress relies on this concept of man vs. nature. It relies specifically on a false sense of conflict between these two entities that are in reality one and the same. Scientific progress is viewed as a battle against mankind’s natural assailants. Anything that controls us or holds us back is viewed not as a sacred force to be respected but instead as a challenger to be overcome.

When we feel separate from nature, as if we have ‘come into’ this world as a foreign agent, we quite literally begin to feel like aliens. This is where I see the concept of “alienation” begin to emerge. When work becomes about abstracted processes, machinery, numbers and middle-managing, humans feel differently than when work is about respectfully cooperating with nature to accomplish some sort of goal. The further your work is removed from nature, the more prone you are to feeling alienated. Seeing as most people today are not foraging for food, building shelters, farming wheat or hunting animals, we feel varying degrees of alienation every day. The more we take mere survival for granted, the less we respect nature.

When people feel alienated, they get anxious. They get depressed. They feel wholly responsible for themselves and thus the cult of individuality emerges. This causes internal strife because people are not wholly responsible for themselves. It’s not optimal for everyone to think that they can do whatever they want or be whoever they want. Working with nature means working with what you’ve got and respecting your place, not denying it in favor of some sort of ego projection or cultural identity. In recognizing yourself as in-and-of nature rather than as a product of it, you take full responsibility for your circumstances and can be honest with yourself. Trying to find balance and harmony makes life peaceful. Trying to find opportunities to exploit and ways to “change” the world makes life chaotic and artificial.

When nature feels distant and oppositional, people start to think of themselves as gods. They believe that their reality is whatever they decide it is; meanwhile nature is still operating all around them and through them. The truth exists always, but through a sheer lack of wisdom or humility people put their blinders on. This dissonance creates psychological conflict and difficulty. I truly believe that most of the psychological problems that have come to accompany modernity are the result of our feeling completely alienated from the natural world. We may suffer less at the hands of nature, but this lack of suffering has also been accompanied by a lack of willingness to understand ourselves.

When we ‘return’ to nature, we return to our fundamental essence. Like Watts said, we recognize that it is us and we are it. We cannot escape the deep truths of nature. We recognize that maybe barreling forward at any cost is probably not the best way to approach things. In overcoming this sense of natural alienation, we acknowledge that it’s OK for things to operate harmoniously. Humans shouldn’t attempt to “come out on top” because this is an impossible task. People only feel a need to “disrupt” when they are dissatisfied. To attempt disruption is to attempt to overcome or transcend that of which you are an integral part. This is a life-denying act. There is no escaping nature. Even if Earth becomes uninhabitable and we all blast off into space colonies we’re still subject to deep universal laws that we don’t truly understand.

This is where I ask you to simplify your life and make peace with nature. Our ancient ancestors understood the importance of this, but we seem to have forgotten it. Being perpetually dissatisfied with your conditions is a choice and leads to constant struggle and egoism. Finding peace, gratitude and solace in simply being alive leads one towards peace, stillness, and natural balance. Personally, I find exercise, hiking and meditation help me connect with nature and respect it. The key is not to challenge nature as a zealous alien warrior, but instead to respect and work gratefully with nature as a guest or disciple.

Charlie Ambler is the creator of The Daily Zen and @dailyzen on Twitter. He began the site in 2008 as a way to chronicle his study of Zen and practice of meditation. He is currently working on raising enough funding to work on Daily Zen full-time and is also writing a book about Zen practice and contemporary life. Charlie live in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and enjoys playing drums, walking, and petting other peoples’ dogs. You can support his work by clicking here.

01 Jun 2016
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Why We Need the Numinous

We’ve strayed very far from the numinous. In our civilized, industrialized, pasteurized, homogenized world, we’re frozen into form, ossified in the material — and immune to the whisper of leaves, the murmur of brooks, the tenor of life teeming just below conscious awareness. Earbuds in place, we walk on, acculturated to the jackhammer tempo of the 21^st century.

In lieu of ceremony to honor the ebb and flow of daily life, typical Western rituals include texting and working out. Lunch-hour laser surgery isn’t far behind. “Tradition” means the product you’re thinking of buying has been made by the same company for several generations: “A tradition of fine furniture since 1946.” Family meals are an anachronism, eclipsed by a nanosecond lifestyle that equates eating with putting gas in the car: get in, get out, get going. We eat to the beat, and our bodies, soil and soul pay the price.

Slowing down to the pace of health

I know this firsthand. In the early 1990s, stoked on my burgeoning marketing communications business that spelled freedom from the drudgery of nine-to-five, I ignored the growing evidence that my health was deteriorating. I loved the ten-step commute in my San Francisco apartment. I was finally taking piano lessons. I didn’t have time to deal with pain or fatigue. I was too busy; business was too good.

So Spirit took over. “Hello!” my angels roared at 110 decibels. “We’ve been trying to get your attention, but you aren’t listening. You’ve mastered being a successful businesswoman; we have other plans for you now.”

It was a colossal summons. My ninety-miles-an-hour life screeched to a halt.

For me, spiritual emergency took the form of illness. In 3-D, it “looked like” I was quite sick, and I certainly felt awful for a long time. I was dealing with a panoply of strange symptoms and medical labels.

Labels limit us, however. In A Return To Love, Marianne Williamson says spiritual progress is like a detoxification, and that’s exactly how it was for me, how it is for most of us. We have to clear out the old patterns and habits that no longer serve us in order to heal. Environmental restoration begins at home.

Norman Cousins, author of Anatomy Of An Illness, once said, “It’s not just the congestion outside us, of people’s ideas and issues, but our inner congestion that’s hurting us. We gorge the senses and starve the sensitivities.” So the deeper work is about coming to our senses. Beginning to really feel, and to trust what we feel.

How ritual renews our memory of wholeness

In truth, our very beings are hardwired for the kind of care we consider an indulgence. Access to the numinous requires only that we choose it. To sit at table with friends and loved ones, sharing “slow food,” is a simple, sorely needed ritual for a starving spirit. It becomes soul nourishing at a deeper level when we join hands to thank the growers, grocers and cooks who have brought the food from farm to fork.

Moonbaths are another elementary way to get in touch with our essence selves, to slow down to the pace of health and release our inner pollution. Sunbathing is standard. But if you go to a serene spot free from streetlamps and traffic lights when the moon is full, allowing her to shine upon you in all her radiance, you’ll tap into an ancient cellular rhythm.

These are just a few of the myriad ways we can use ritual to remember who we are, as multidimensional beings capable of so much more than societal dictates. Surviving in spiritual starvation, we hunger for sustenance beyond food. Ritual renews our memory of wholeness, of a time when we knew how to cast a circle, call in our ancestors and spirit guides, invoke our intention with clarity and conviction. “Invocation” means, giving your vision a voice.

Crafting a new mythology

Living in harmony with natural rhythms expands our sense of what’s possible. The “reality police” have become our invisible, accepted jailers. We can liberate ourselves by reaching past the pre-packaged propaganda for certified organic thought. The replenishing rituals we create now are one way to re-story our lives, revivifying the myths that have kept cultures through the ages cooking up a cauldron of creative possibility. According to the eminent mythologist Joseph Campbell, a myth isn’t something that never happened; it’s something that is always happening.

Disconnected from the source of this knowing, we pervert our productive energy. For example, without a mythological model for how to resourcefully contribute to the collective, teenagers may resort to gang membership and violence — mimicking their elders, who wage war on their own life support system.

But another way was possible from the start. It’s intriguing to learn that the US Constitution is patterned directly on the Iroquois model of leadership, with one notable exception: there is no Council of Clan Mothers, or Grandmother Council, which is the backbone of Native American decision making. Perhaps if our Founding Fathers had included Founding Mothers in the new nation’s governing body, we’d consider ritual-based decision-making that honors both masculine and feminine voices the natural course for balance and well-being. Just imagine what our culture — and the environment — might look like, if the White House consulted a group of wise women prior to implementing any major policy change.

Follow your inner guidance, even if you look like a fool

During my own “dark night of the soul” journey, I frequently found myself walking alone at night, singing, “fire and water”, not knowing why, but trusting the rightness of my inner voice. Fire is the male essence; water is female. They are yang and yin, sun and moon, perfect polarities, as necessary to one another as all complementary pairings are to balance, healing, wholeness, sustainability.

One useful ritual is to start noticing where you are imbalanced, and to spend time nurturing the flip side of the equation. This is holding the “both/and,” which is about integration rather than separation. Our digital devices are binary. Humans are far more complex operating systems!

Take time to wander and wonder. Sit in a stream and sing. Be willing to follow your inner guidance, even if you look like a fool. When you can descend to the depths of your being and release what no longer serves, beginning anew in defenselessness and trust, you’re on your way to becoming a vessel of wisdom for the tribe.

May you enjoy the journey, and remember to resurface when you’re complete. We all — every species, and Gaia Herself — need your unique gifts from the well.

About the author:

Amara Rose is a “midwife” for our global rebirth. Her services include transformational guidance, talks, e-courses, a digital download CD, and an inspirational monthly newsletter. She is widely published in health, business and new thought magazines, both digital and print. Learn more: http://www.liveyourlight.com

http://twitter.com/Amara_Rose

http://www.facebook.com/LiveYourLight

https://www.linkedin.com/in/amararose

04 Mar 2016
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The Cat Litter People – Getting In Touch With Your Inner Wildness

I’ve done a fair amount of pet sitting over the years. While at the home of one high-brow cat, I spent several days visiting various pet stores in search of a certain brand of cat litter that was odor-free and promised “superior clumping ability,” which was what I wanted according to the empty container I carried on my quest. (For the uninitiated, “clumping” is a euphemistic reference for how the cat’s deposits will interact with the litter, for easier disposal.)

I’m no stranger to synchronicity, yet it always amuses me greatly to see how Spirit uses “the subject at hand” for its teachings. So here I am, having successfully located a sister litter to the one the cat’s human prizes, spelunking gleefully in foreign bookshelves. (As a writer, the opportunity to peruse other people’s books is one of the joys of housesitting.) I fasten on a book with the intriguing title, Deep Play, by poet and naturalist Diane Ackerman. I de-clump the cat litter and settle down to read.

In Chapter Three, “Sacred Places,” I am astonished by the words, “…people seem desperate to clump and bunch, swarming all over each other in towns while most of the land lies empty.” Ackerman is describing her return to Phoenix after being succored by the Grand Canyon, contrasting the Canyon’s ineffable vastness with the matrix of human habitation. Yet what sprang immediately to my mind was: cat litter.

Terror of the Still Point

Human beings have superior clumping capability. As Ackerman so astutely observes, we long for proximity to one another. Yet we bemoan the intrusiveness we thus create, jetting off to remote isles and mountain retreats to renew ourselves in nature’s immense silence.

Perhaps we wouldn’t need to “retreat” if we understood how to advance. Personal evolution isn’t woven into the fabric of Western culture as it is among indigenous peoples; it’s something we must open to on our own. Most of us, having lost touch with the numinous, fear the wilderness within. We cluster noisily with our own kind to stave off this beckoning hunger.

The needs of the stomach come before the trip to the litter box, however. Fast food bows (or meows) to the life force in a carrot or a pear; asphalt makes way for rock-strewn paths. Having clumped and bunched with the best of them, at some point we set out in search of deep nourishment: the sense of the sacred that is everywhere. We seek it in distant landscapes until we learn to recognize it inside ourselves.

There is a defining moment, a dawning recognition (literally, to know again) of “what you know, before you know that you know.” For me, it came when, on a descent to the truth of my being, I began throwing my arms around trees and sobbing from the depths of my soul. I’d never done anything like this before, but it felt like they were hugging me back.

When you can allow yourself to surrender to your own “still, small voice” and behave in a similar manner (that is, following your inner guidance, even if you look like a fool) you begin your journey to wildness.

And then, whether you range across continents or remain in your own backyard (or hi-rise), you’ll know you’re forever free of the litter box. When you carry the replenishment and the release inside you — and know that you do — clumping and bunching becomes optional.

After all, there are no litter boxes in the wild.

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19 Jan 2016
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Fire and Water: The Deeper Meaning Of What We Unleash

When I was deep into my spiritual awakening, I had startlingly prescient dreams; in one, the words, “violent emergency” reverberated through my mind. It was a violent emergence; birth is fierce. There is an ocean of difference, however, between Nature’s ferocity and that which is deliberately inflicted by human beings with their own agendas.

Theologian and author Thomas Moore writes, “Deep in the etymology of ‘violence’ is a strong Latin word, vis. It is the power in nature that we sense in the surging sea and the growth of grass. In our experiences of violence we witness the vain attempt of life to push itself into existence and visibility. This is a sexual power. Sex is not just about making bodies but making souls as well. The people of the world need every opportunity to be creative and visible. They need to enjoy life, not just survive. Without that opportunity, they will turn to violence, in spite of themselves.”

Life’s Novocaine

We tend to go through life anesthetized against our own yearning. The call to claim our power can be terrifying, because it means accepting our invitation to the Dance — and most of us have forgotten how to dance, if indeed we ever knew. We find it easier to lash out in anger: rage, the undiscovered country. If being “outrageous” means getting the rage out, Americans are black belts. Having lost touch with the wilderness within, we savage the Earth and each other in an effort to combat our loneliness.

War is the grand expression of this misdirected energy. It’s akin to our ability, or lack of it, to harness the power of the sun. Yoked to our solar egg, we could shine on in all our ecological radiance for millennia. Yoking means union, but we’re used to living the more limiting definition of bondage. Trussed to our desperation, we sigh, “That’s life!” Since interdependence — becoming what Kenny Ausubel christened “Bioneers,” or biological pioneers, co-creating with Nature — feels so foreign, we stay (un)comfortably in the familiar, pump up the volume, and wearily watch as the world turns.

There is a way out: it’s through. The trees are gods and goddesses who in their stillness keep the Earth’s counsel; the animals are our allies. We can commune with a snake or a sea lion as easily as with the people we call kin. The key lies in reclaiming our wildness — not as violence, but as an abiding, sensuous connection with Nature. Instead of experiencing everything at one remove, we can allow it to enter us.

My Inannic odyssey delivered me deeply into this truth. In illness and vulnerability, I threw my arms around trees and sobbed out my grief, feeling their loving embrace. I began talking to crows, paying tribute to their visceral wisdom in a poem that concluded, “A coded conversation/In guttural cries/Opens my eyes/And lifts me higher.” Stunned from exhaustion, I’d never lived in such clarity. With my brain on an extended vacation, I was forced to access a more primitive part of my being, to participate organically in the instinctual world, not merely watch.

How Peace Begins

This is how peace begins: by singing the wild symphony of Nature back into our cells, feeling the music of the spheres in our marrow, embodying the feminine creative principle. By raising our resonance, we become “the vessel which can contain all blessing,” as one ancient text describes peace. This is also how we heal our bodies, and the body of Gaia: “immune” means sacrosanct, inviolate, whole. In celebrating all life, we pulse a radiating joy that resurrects our daily dance. And you can’t wage war while dancing.

We’ve entered a new era. It is only in recent memory that strong antiwar sentiment (Iraq, Vietnam) has held sway. For much of human history, war has been an acceptable means of “protecting our interests,” “keeping the world safe for democracy,” or any number of other platitudes. If thousands, perhaps millions, of innocents had to die in the process, well, they were war heroes. And the villagers in other countries, slaughtered in the name of whatever deity one invoked, deserved death because they were “the enemy.”

Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to the US House of Representatives and the only member of Congress to vote against US entry into both World Wars, once declared, “You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.”

She makes an enduring point. Did anyone “win” the Indian or Chilean ‘quakes? Are we “winning” the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan?

What’s really going on here? What is the higher purpose of the impulse to violence we all harbor within, to a greater or lesser degree?

Fire and water are complements; harmonized, they elevate consciousness and catalyze healing. I sang these words often during my own dark night of the soul. Instead of the old, tired dominator matrix, using firepower in an “us” vs. “them” scenario, we can embrace the true fire within us, and discover the myriad ways to channel this potent energy for good.

Embracing the True Fire Within

Becoming a spiritual warrior is a profile in courage (which means heart.) Spirit asks, “Have you the conviction to stand by your heart? Are you willing to transmute war in the alchemical fire?” The fire within is the perfect peace of God/Goddess/Creator/Innate Intelligence, which expresses outwardly as enthusiasm (from the Greek, “possessed by God”), inwardly as a calm awareness.

We’ve mastered communicating from our wounds. Now we’re in a pivotal age, creating a context in which it’s safe to share who we are in love, in truth, in well-being. Our collective task is to marry scared and scarred with sacred, density with destiny, jaded with jubilant; to become inclusive not exclusive. Because none of us is truly free until all of us are.

This is one of the meta gifts of these disasters (which means, “against the stars”): they bring us face to face with The Other, in our psyches and out in the world, so we can see how they’re one and the same. All anyone can do is introduce you to yourself. So as you look in the mirror of your brother’s or sister’s face, be kind to your own confusion, criticism, sadness, or fear. Acknowledging your strand in the evolutionary web is, in itself, a giant step on the path to peace.

It’s time for each of us to create a personal crucible: a safe container for our energies. Envision your inner chalice. Then place this cup, brimming with fiery potential and the waters of life, into your heart, where it will become a perpetual font of inspiration and renewal — and, in time, of unconditional love.

As the Maya say, In Lakéch: I am another yourself.

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About the author:

Ascension Lifestyle author Amara Rose is a “midwife” for our global rebirth. Her services include transformational guidance, talks, e-courses, a digital download CD, and an inspirational monthly newsletter. She is widely published in health, business and new thought magazines, both digital and print. Learn more: http://www.liveyourlight.com

10 Nov 2015
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Scared to Sacred: Falling in Love with 13

In high school English I learned a 64-carat word for a common ailment: triskaidekaphobia, or “fear of the number thirteen.” The elevator in my grandparents’ apartment building omitted the thirteenth floor. Apparently the assumption was, nobody would have wanted to live on it. It was a fashionable New York City address; fear and loathing cross all perceived boundaries. I also recall a series of horror movies with “Friday the 13th” in the title.

A society steeped in superstition and a materialistic value system will find it easy to assign anxiety to anything that threatens the status quo. Thirteen is the number of movement, of change — a wild card — and that can be very scary. But it’s our lost connection with the Divine in everyday life that gives rise to such distress. Divorced from our origins, terrified of our own power, we profane the sacred: thirteen becomes unlucky, evil, a curse; symbolic scapegoat of all we’re afraid to embrace.

When we can take the thirteenth step, however, we’re on the first step of the Stairway to Heaven. With the courage to look, we find thirteen stitched into the very fabric of American culture. Thirteen colonies gave birth to a nation. The first American flag bore thirteen stars and stripes. We were on the right track back then, grounded into the roots of our heritage.

Think about it: thirteen has traditionally been cause for celebration. The thirteenth year signifies a coming-of-age, also across all perceived boundaries. In the Jewish religion, boys make their Bar Mitzvah at thirteen. This ceremony, which involves reading from the holy Torah, marks a boy’s entrance into manhood.

Girls generally begin to menstruate at thirteen. Cross-culturally, it’s common to commemorate the first blood with an initiation rite; here in the West, this significant threshold is at last beginning to be recognized as a powerful, sacred passage. (My e-course, Loving Our Lunacy, is an embodied initiation for women.)

In fact, there are even thirteen sun signs in the Real Solar Zodiac — which is not the one used in conventional astrology. Ophiuchus, the serpent bearer, has been omitted from the oversimplified Tropical Zodiac used in the West. Yet the serpent denotes transformation — and on the Winter Solstice of 2012, long prophesied by indigenous cultures worldwide as the Shift of the Ages, Earth directly aligned with both Ophiuchus and the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

Thirteen, then, is a fundamental Earth rhythm, biorhythm, manifested in our physical bodies as well as the heavenly ones. To reject thirteen is, perhaps, to reject or deny some core aspect of ourselves as human beings.

How can we reawaken to our true purpose and potential, beyond the fear and perception of separateness? By reclaiming our native knowing.

One way that resonates for me is following a 13 Moon Calendar. The 13 Moon Calendar shows us a path to walk to restore right relationship in our lives, to re-member (make membership again) our journey as one Earth family. Based on an annual solar cycle of 13 moons (months) of 28 days each (the female menstrual cycle), plus one “day out of time” in which to reflect and regenerate, the 13 Moon Calendar is synchronized with Earth rhythms and human biology. It’s expansive, intuitive, juicy, flowing: life, in all its harmonious chaos.

The beauty of this apparent paradox lies in learning to honor them both/and: life is orderly and messy, pragmatic and unpredictable, spiritual and material. Living in tune with these innate contradictions, we breathe in our own magnificence, and feel nourished and held in the body of the Great Mother.

Our Gregorian calendar, by contrast, models scarcity, so we always subtly feel like we’re starving: if you get what you need, there might not be enough for me. Living a compressed, alienating, sterile existence, our spiritual lungs squeezed for air, we evince these invisible shackles in the way we treat each other and Gaia. Time-is-money, me-first, bigger-better-best, I want it yesterday, are the credos of mechanistic time. Pursued by the clock, separated from our humanity, we’ve forgotten that time is creativity, that women carry time in their bodies, and have come to accept the clock as king.

Another Earth-based analogy may also help: I’ve observed a fairly rampant homeowner disgust with the “lowly dandelion”, scourge of suburbia’s well-manicured lawns — when in fact, dandelion is one of the most healing herbs available to humanity, offering itself in abundance wherever we dwell. It’s a supreme liver tonic, known to help detoxify the body’s “processing plant.” If you want to release that pent-up rage in a healthy way, the remedy is probably available, free and easy, right in your own backyard.

Dandelion is so plentiful that I find it also acts as de facto compost within me: surrounding and helping to decompose back into rich loam that which no longer serves. Yet we curse the weed and uproot it, spray poison to keep the green carpet unsullied. When we can stop “livin’ for the lawn,” focusing predominantly on the external, and make the subtle shift from ego mind to Universal Mind, we see with such great clarity the incredible gifts all around us.

In the 13 Moon Calendar, the number thirteen, like dandelion, grows everywhere; it’s the key thread on which the harmony of the calendar is woven. And on a 13 Moon Calendar, there’s always a Friday the 13th — in a 28-day month, every second Friday is Friday the thirteenth!

As our evolutionary readiness dissolves old superstition around the number thirteen — and all it represents — our collective mindfield makes a quantum leap from mindless fear to aware acceptance of thirteen as the sacred number of the spiral, the energy of kundalini awakening, the step to transformation and growth. Unified in time, living on purpose, a metamorphosis occurs as we attune to a higher frequency.

Metamorphosis means not only change, but going above, beyond what existed before. The Sufi mystic Rumi said, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there’s a field; I’ll meet you there.” In this quantum field, we midwife moth into butterfly. Scared into sacred. Each of us into our true purpose and potential.

What is this time of profound transmutation helping you bring to birth? Whatever it is, may it be in beauty, for the greatest good of all.

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30 Oct 2015
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The God Particle and Wisdom of the Ancients

Before Galileo Galilei and Sir Isaac Newton, the Lakota studied astronomy. Many indigenous peoples did. They were natural scientists. What sets indigenous “ethnoastronomy” apart from mainstream western astronomy is native peoples didn’t feel the need to separate their spiritual beliefs from other areas of their lives. The Lakota truly believed everything was interconnected. As a result, hard science observations and discoveries deciphered by Lakota over millennia are always intermingled with their spiritual beliefs, practices and ceremonies. In spite of frequent attempts by the western establishment to destroy such traditional knowledge, some has survived. Read more!