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

14 Jan 2016
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Mercury Retrograde: A Deeper Look

25% of the world population was born under a mercury retrograde. Mercury typically goes into retrograde 2-3 times a year for 2-3 weeks.

To find out if you were born under a mercury retrograde, input your data here. Scroll down to your planetary table to see if there is a “R” next to degrees of Mercury. For example:

Even people who do not pay attention to astrology are aware of mercury retrograde and its effects. Why? Because Mercury rules communication and technology, it is the messenger of the planetary bodies. All religions and mythologies line up at some point, because we all inhabit earth under and above the same sky.

COMMON MERCURY RETROGRADE EVENTS

Phones fuck up, wi-fi is down, devices go haywire, people argue, people tend to be either reclusive or explosive, repressed emotions are exposed, appointments are missed, friendships disintegrate or are strengthened through testing, people say things they cannot take back, old hoes pop up, new friends seem eerily familiar, you remember things you once forgot about, staff and faculty goes through changes, new research breaks ground, people bring up the past, debts catch up if you don’t, everything is reassessed, etc.

BORN UNDER A “BAD SIGN”

People who were born under mercury retrograde embody the effects of a mercury retrograde throughout their whole life, and feel at “home” when mercury goes to its returning position. Most of the astrological-oriented population take an ominous stance to mercury retrograde. During a retrograding mercury, things that you typically would not make time for, demand your immediate attention. It is advised not to sign contracts, travel and avoid making solid long term plans around this time. However, being born under a mercury retrograde means this period has favorable effects, you can use this planetary influence to your advantage either way.

NATAL MERCURY RETROGRADE CHARACTERISTICS

If a person was born with mercury in retrograde, the person encapsulates the tendencies of this eccentric period. They tend to be very shy in youth, developing star qualities in extreme isolation. In adulthood, they possess a spitfire wit and a penchant for controversy. This aspect produces very strong articulation and captivating eloquence that often feels out of its timing and context. Natal Mercury Retrograders are rebellious messengers, usually highly developed in areas of perception and communication, but refusing to go along with the flow of collective conversation just for the sake of being heard. Indeed, people born under this time love to shake things up, and effortlessly dominate conversation just like the nature of the retrograde. Mercury deals with communication and perception so they may struggle with being understood, not quite self-delusional but having a self-concept that may seem a little off to others. They love throwing curve-balls, a good round of mental sparring and get along paradoxically well with people they disagree with. Often widely misunderstood just like the mercury retrograde itself, people born under this aspect often feel like an anomaly, like they were born in the wrong time period. A deep sense of intuition makes them natural visionaries, able to foresee the course of events before others but also clinging to the sentiments of a past long gone, using their memory to preserve evidence of different worlds. The mercury retrograde period asks us to put down our to-do list, our plans, look away from our vision boards and deal with the unyielding unpredictability of life. This lack of control is what gives natal mercury retrograders a sense of control. People born under this period will casually respond to text messages from a month ago, and will leave the state on a bus at the drop of a dime. An autonomous mind, flash impulse and deep calculation mark those born with a Mercury that refuses to budge.

Planetary aspects affect moods within timing, different planets are believed to have different rulership over different domains. The sun rules ego, willpower, status. Venus is the planet of love, feminine energy. Mars represents war, masculine energy. These are very simplified explanations.

WHO IS MERCURY?

Mercury is the name for the Roman messenger god, who had wings on his feet. The Greeks knew him as Hermes. The archetype is also personified as Hermes Trigemeistrus. Below is an ancient Roman bronze coin called a “semuncia”, depicting Mercury with a winged pegasus around his head.

Mercury is the ruling planet of Virgos and Geminis, both of these signs embody the eloquence, wit and charm of mercury’s swift movement. Virgos are earth signs, making them more writers, historians, teachers. Geminis are more oriented towards adventure and variety, their quicksilver articulation makes them fantastic orators and entertaining conversationalists.

What does it mean when mercury goes into retrograde?

This is an (alien) bird’s eye view of what mercury retrograde looks like. It doesn’t actually move backwards. Planets only appear to be moving backwards because of the earth’s spin. In astrological actuality, every planet is on their own orbit. Mercury retrograde asks us to apply this concept philosophically, and to not take things so personally.

A breakdown of mercury retrograde is explained in the beginning of this song. “Kamikaze love, self destructive patterns. Mercury in Retrograde, 4th house in Saturn…”

Mercury retrograde gets a bad rap from the technological disasters and the scheduling mishaps and misunderstandings that tend to happen under its influence. Mercury retrograde does not give a fuck about your calendar, your vision board, your to-do list, your reputation, your sleep schedule, or your appointment and reminds you that you shouldn’t care so much either. Life will go on.

When the planets are in the same position as they were when you were born, this is considered fortunate. Your solar return is your birthday, your birthday is the day that the sun returns to the same place it was when you were born. The calendars are based on the orbit around the sun, each day is a degree.

If you were born under a mercury retrograde, use this to your benefit!
Mercury goes into retrograde four times this year, very rare.

2016 MERCURY RETROGRADE DATES

January 5 – January 25 starts in Aquarius, ends in Capricorn
April 28 – May 22, 2016 in Taurus
August 30 – September 22, 2016 in Virgo
December 19 2016 – January 8, 2017 Capricorn to Sagittarius

P.S. People commonly die around the time of their birthday or half-birthday. RIP David Bowie, born January 8th, and died January 11th. He also was born under a mercury retrograde, and died under one too, shortly after releasing a new video.

A few other notable people born with Mercury in Retrograde are Prince, Beethoven, Fyodor Dostoevsky.

P.S. Sending warmth, love & ease to my fellow mercury retrograders Ciarra Ross & Mika Ziv, two awesome reflections I constantly learn from and always catch up with in divine timing.

How has Mercury Retrograde effected your life? Join the conversation in the comments below.

About the Author: Mreeuh Chang

Mreeuh Chang is a 24 year old tattooer, painter, children’s book author and illustrator. A multi-faceted and extreme personality seeking universality, her work blends the foreign and familiar, ancient and modern, imagination and intellect.

blog: www.everythingweneedisin.us

book: www.dronesdontdream.com

online shop: www.store.mreeuhchang.com

twitter: https://twitter.com/mreeuh

24 Dec 2015
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Miscommunication Is Our Biggest Flaw

Why is miscommunication our biggest flaw and why do we pay so little attention to it? Through a new understanding of miscommunication, how and why it happens and how to recognize it within ourselves, we can fix relationships on all levels. This starts with visible and audible communication and moves right down to spirit communication. Misunderstanding someone when they’re trying to communicate to us can be caused by many reasons. It is not just as simple as “they just do not understand me.” The first step in solving the misunderstanding between two energies is quieting the physical sensations that miscommunication can cause. Frustration, irritation, anger.. and the next step is understanding that we don’t all learn in the same way and we all have individual ways we’ve been raised which leads us to very different ways of perceiving life and its situations. Many of us have a mistaken assumption that there is an “average” or “common” understanding of simple concepts, but that is far from the truth and is what leads to most miscommunication.

Our creation and connections to our surroundings in the way we learn is key. Association, and what we choose to associate with in a particular conversation, is eventually where the outcome of the conversation will lead us. It is almost too easy to assume a reaction in someone else through our own eyes because we’ve been thought it or we’ve seen someone go through it. Assuming does not necessarily mean that the outcome will be the same, but more often than you think the outcome becomes the same because the assumptions trigger reactions in us that lead our spirit towards the same finish line. Once we cross that finish line we feel accomplishment, but if we do not learn to trigger different, more emotionally effective responses we keep our self in a loop of the same outcomes over and over.

Whether “good” or “bad”, if the outcome is to be different in a positive way our reactions have to change and we have to be more aware and in tune with our self through others by paying attention to our own reactions. Meaning, to learn about self, pay attention to where your thoughts go when anger is triggered. Anger sometimes puts us back to the beginning. It is like starting a level all over again, everything is good in the beginning because we’re familiar with this part, but once we enter the realm where we failed before and enter into a nervous state we start triggering the same emotional outcomes that we have so many times before. Some emotional outcomes start opening the same doors toward anger and we end up where we started again.

The point is, if we continue to approach the same problems in the same way, the same results will follow. We have to change our emotional state and listen openly to the person trying to communicate in order to understand them better and vice versa. Miscommunication is the root to a lot of the current world problems. By listening to the communicator and being aware of our reactions as they’re trying to communicate, we in return become better communicators. Listen with the intent to understand, not with the intent to respond.

By Ascension Lifestyle Contributor Mirza Babic

Mirza “Prince” Babic is a co-founder of thebigpictur.com, a media group that empowers individuals through photos, design and teaches social media branding tactics. Photographer by profession Mirza is a lover of arts. With a BA in Audio Engineering Mirza is also involved in the music industry field composing and producing music for known artist, short films and commercials. Currently he is working on a few projects including a book which he believes will lead him to his ultimate goal of getting closer to world peace. You can find links and some of his work on his website www.thebigpictur.com and his Instagram page: instagram.com/theprinceofpeace

09 Dec 2015
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The Gift of Goodbye

In order to make room in our lives for the new, we often have to release something we’re attached to — mentally, emotionally, physically, or spiritually. Letting go with grace may be the hardest task most of us will ever master. And it isn’t necessarily people we’ll be called upon to release.

Twice on my evolutionary odyssey I lost jewelry that was precious to me — both times, when I was at a crossroads in my growth and needed to relinquish a way of being that no longer served me. Each time, I was walking along the beach with a male companion who challenged my self-concept in a major way.

In the first instance, I’d placed my driver’s license and some money in a small change purse in my pocket. Just before we stepped onto the beach, not wanting to risk getting sand in my beloved onyx ring, I put my ring in the purse, too. When we reached the car after our stroll, the change purse was gone, and my ring with it. We retraced our steps along the beach, to no avail. An elderly man, observing my distress, asked what was the matter. As I related my tale of loss, he said sagely, “You lose something today, something better comes tomorrow. That’s the way it works!” But I was inconsolable.

A year later: another beach walk, another challenging relationship. I was wearing my favorite pair of rhodonite and onyx earrings. (Onyx was an important gemstone to me then. Interestingly, according to a crystal and gem awareness guide, onyx is said to assist one in mastering detachment…). At the conclusion of our walk, my right earring was missing.

Several years later, I participated in Angeles Arrien’s Four-Fold Way training at the Esalen Institute, on the ruggedly beautiful California coast. Part of our initiation involved making Native American “prayer arrows” and offering them to the Earth in whatever way we chose.

I elected to give my prayer arrow to the sea. Crawling carefully out onto one of Esalen’s magnificent rock formations, I suddenly became aware that I was wearing all of my “replacement jewelry”: the custom earrings I’d had crafted after the above incident, and an onyx and pearl ring I bought to assuage the loss of the old onyx ring. I hesitated, uncertain whether to continue and perhaps lose my new jewelry, too. Yet I felt differently this time. I was conscious in the moment of what was happening, and knew it would be okay.

I completed the release of my prayer arrow and later, when I shared my experience with the group, Angeles said, “This is an important story. The lost parts of ourselves always return when we are willing to attend to what we ignored or were attached to, and integrate it into our being.”

I’m continually amazed at how kindred our lives are. A friend in the midst of his own soul journey shared how he went dancing (another great form of release), first carefully placing in his pocket a treasured beaded bracelet that he considered his “power object.” At the close of the night, the bracelet was gone, and though he combed the dance floor, it did not materialize. He recognized the call to let go, and did so. A few days later, the woman who had made the bracelet resurfaced in his life, though they hadn’t been in touch for years.

We are all cells in the body of God/Goddess/Spirit/Source/Universal Mind. (Add your own favorite term.) Every goodbye is also a hello.

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

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07 Dec 2015
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Season of Stories

“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.”

~ Muriel Rukeyser

As we enter the year’s prime shopping season, stores tend to replace stories as the gift source of choice. I grew up in Paramus, New Jersey, the shopping capital of the known universe, where it’s easy to get “malled”, so I understand just how seductive — and soul diminishing — the material mindset can be.

Emerson said: “Rings and jewels are not gifts but apologies for gifts. The only true gift is a portion of thyself.” How do we put the “I” back in “stores”, supplant material-eyes with empath-eyes? How do we create the new story of Now? We can begin by sharing who we are, as keepers of culture, guardians of wisdom traditions, members of a vast community belonging to something greater than ourselves. In re-storying the holidays, we restore a sense of continuity that is soul nourishing for us, and everyone around us.

I suggest a trio of powerful vessels for re-storying our lives. The first is Ho’oponopono, a Hawaiian teaching that means, “to make right” with all our relations, past and present. It encompasses the idea of forgiveness, along with a rather extraordinary premise: that by looking deeply within to correct “errors” in our own perceptions, we can heal emotional, mental, and physical dis-ease in others, since we are all expressions of the One Being.

Haleakala Hew Len, PhD, calls this taking “100 percent responsibility” and, indeed, it elevates the idea of being our brother’s keeper to an entirely new dimension.

Another example of re-storying in action is The Secret, the mega-popular DVD about the Law of Attraction (LOA). Most of us are familiar with the LOA concept: what we think and feel creates our reality. Seeing life as a basket of broken eggs is much less fun than viewing it sunny-side up. The latter mindset aligns us with our highest aspirational vision, and enables us to take positive action in the direction of our deepest dreams.

While on one level, the information The Secret presents is elementary, the film’s engaging scenarios and healthy dose of humor highlight its core message, making it a useful refresher in how to create the life we want — personally, professionally, and planetarily.

And this brings us to the third re-storying vehicle: Espavo. Steve Rother, channel for The Group, brought through this term, which literally means, “Thank you for taking your power.” The ancient Lemurian acknowledgment is akin to the Indian greeting “Namaste”, which means, “The Spirit in me recognizes the Spirit in you”, and the Mayan saying, “In Lak’ech”: “I am another yourself.” The distinctive difference is that, like Ho’oponopono and The Secret, Espavo carries an implicit call to action.

So as you prepare to gift those you love this holiday season, I invite you to invest in some new threads from the stories you visit. With autopilot turned off, it’s easier to reclaim your Wonder Wings. You already know how to fly. Espavo.

About the Author:

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12 Nov 2015
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Before I Go: A Neurosurgeon’s Final Reflections On Mortality

Time warps for a young surgeon with metastatic lung cancer

In residency, there’s a saying: The days are long, but the years are short. In neurosurgical training, the day usually began a little before 6 a.m., and lasted until the operating was done, which depended, in part, on how quick you were in the OR.

Time at home. Time well spent

A resident’s surgical skill is judged by his technique and his speed. You can’t be sloppy and you can’t be slow. From your first wound closure onward, spend too much time being precise and the scrub tech will announce, “Looks like we’ve got a plastic surgeon on our hands!” Or say: “I get your strategy — by the time you finish sewing the top half of the wound, the bottom will have healed on its own. Half the work — smart!” A chief resident will advise a junior: “Learn to be fast now — you can learn to be good later.” Everyone’s eyes are always on the clock. For the patient’s sake: How long has the patient been under anesthesia? During long procedures, nerves can get damaged, muscles can break down, even causing kidney failure. For everyone else’s sake: What time are we getting out of here tonight?

There are two strategies to cutting the time short, like the tortoise and the hare. The hare moves as fast as possible, hands a blur, instruments clattering, falling to the floor; the skin slips open like a curtain, the skull flap is on the tray before the bone dust settles. But the opening might need to be expanded a centimeter here or there because it’s not optimally placed. The tortoise proceeds deliberately, with no wasted movements, measuring twice, cutting once. No step of the operation needs revisiting; everything proceeds in orderly fashion. If the hare makes too many minor missteps and has to keep adjusting, the tortoise wins. If the tortoise spends too much time planning each step, the hare wins.

The funny thing about time in the OR, whether you frenetically race or steadily proceed, is that you have no sense of it passing. If boredom is, as Heidegger argued, the awareness of time passing, this is the opposite: The intense focus makes the arms of the clock seem arbitrarily placed. Two hours can feel like a minute. Once the final stitch is placed and the wound is dressed, normal time suddenly restarts. You can almost hear an audible whoosh. Then you start wondering: How long till the patient wakes up? How long till the next case gets started? How many patients do I need to see before then? What time will I get home tonight?

It’s not until the last case finishes that you feel the length of the day, the drag in your step. Those last few administrative tasks before leaving the hospital, however far post-meridian you stood, felt like anvils. Could they wait till tomorrow? No. A sigh, and Earth continued to rotate back toward the sun.

But the years did, as promised, fly by. Six years passed in a flash, but then, heading into chief residency, I developed a classic constellation of symptoms — weight loss, fevers, night sweats, unremitting back pain, cough — indicating a diagnosis quickly confirmed: metastatic lung cancer. The gears of time ground down. While able to limp through the end of residency on treatment, I relapsed, underwent chemo and endured a prolonged hospitalization.

I emerged from the hospital weakened, with thin limbs and thinned hair. Now unable to work, I was left at home to convalesce. Getting up from a chair or lifting a glass of water took concentration and effort. If time dilates when one moves at high speeds, does it contract when one moves barely at all? It must: The day shortened considerably. A full day’s activity might be a medical appointment, or a visit from a friend. The rest of the time was rest.

With little to distinguish one day from the next, time began to feel static. In English, we use the word time in different ways, “the time is 2:45” versus “I’m going through a tough time.” Time began to feel less like the ticking clock, and more like the state of being. Languor settled in. Focused in the OR, the position of the clock’s hands might seem arbitrary, but never meaningless. Now the time of day meant nothing, the day of the week scarcely more so.

Paul Kalanithi savors moments with his daughter, Cady.

Verb conjugation became muddled. Which was correct? “I am a neurosurgeon,” “I was a neurosurgeon,” “I had been a neurosurgeon before and will be again”? Graham Greene felt life was lived in the first 20 years and the remainder was just reflection. What tense was I living in? Had I proceeded, like a burned-out Greene character, beyond the present tense and into the past perfect? The future tense seemed vacant and, on others’ lips, jarring. I recently celebrated my 15th college reunion; it seemed rude to respond to parting promises from old friends, “We’ll see you at the 25th!” with “Probably not!”

Yet there is dynamism in our house. Our daughter was born days after I was released from the hospital. Week to week, she blossoms: a first grasp, a first smile, a first laugh. Her pediatrician regularly records her growth on charts, tick marks of her progress over time. A brightening newness surrounds her. As she sits in my lap smiling, enthralled by my tuneless singing, an incandescence lights the room.

Time for me is double-edged: Every day brings me further from the low of my last cancer relapse, but every day also brings me closer to the next cancer recurrence — and eventually, death. Perhaps later than I think, but certainly sooner than I desire. There are, I imagine, two responses to that realization. The most obvious might be an impulse to frantic activity: to “live life to its fullest,” to travel, to dine, to achieve a host of neglected ambitions. Part of the cruelty of cancer, though, is not only that it limits your time, it also limits your energy, vastly reducing the amount you can squeeze into a day. It is a tired hare who now races. But even if I had the energy, I prefer a more tortoiselike approach. I plod, I ponder, some days I simply persist.

Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described, hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed.

Yet one thing cannot be robbed of her futurity: my daughter, Cady. I hope I’ll live long enough that she has some memory of me. Words have a longevity I do not. I had thought I could leave her a series of letters — but what would they really say? I don’t know what this girl will be like when she is 15; I don’t even know if she’ll take to the nickname we’ve given her. There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring the improbable, is all but past.

That message is simple: When you come to one of the many moments in life when you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.

By Paul Kalanithi

Paul Kalanithi, MD, was an instructor in Stanford’s Department of Neurosurgery and a fellow at the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. He passed away on March 9, 2015. More information about him is available at http://paulkalanithi.com.

Photography by Gregg Segal, syndicated from stanmed.stanford.edu

05 Nov 2015
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DOCUMENTARY OF THE MONTH – November – HUMAN

What is it that makes us human? Is it that we love, that we fight ? That we laugh ? Cry ? Our curiosity ? The quest for discovery ?
Driven by these questions, filmmaker and artist Yann Arthus-Bertrand spent three years collecting real-life stories from 2,000 women and men in 60 countries. Working with a dedicated team of translators, journalists and cameramen, Yann captures deeply personal and emotional accounts of topics that unite us all; struggles with poverty, war, homophobia, and the future of our planet mixed with moments of love and happiness.

The VOL.1 deals with the themes of love, women, work and poverty.

The VOL.2 deals with the themes of war, forgiving, homosexuality, family and life after death.

The VOL.3 deals with the themes of happiness, education, disability, immigration, corruption and the meaning of life.

The inspiration for this film started a few years ago for filmmaker Yann Arthus-Bertrand, when his helicopter broke down in a rural part of Mali. While he was waiting for his helicopter to get fixed, he spent a day with a local farmer, talking about the farmer’s hopes, concerns, priorities, and examining the basic questions about life that transcend all cultures. It was the first time the filmmaker threw himself into the experience of someone else from a completely different part of the world. Fast forward, with the help of Google, the United Nations, and 2020 everyday people around the world, Arthus-Bertrand is bringing his experience to all of us. HUMAN has become the first film to premeire at the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations. It premeired to an audience of over 1,000 people, including U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

During the film’s creation, Arthus-Bertrand interviewed 2,020 people in 60 countries with his team of 16 journalists. Every interview comprised of the same 40 questions, discussing heavy subjects from religion and family to ambition and failure.

The visual elements of the film include single-frame interviews with a black backdrop, interspersed with signature sweeping shots of deserts and mountains which Arthus-Bertrand is known for, all of which is blended with a soundtrack of Armand Amar composed world music. The filmmaker’s intention was to portray the world through three voices: people, landscape, and traditional music.

“Getting at the heart of what it means to be a human can be a little heavy” Arthus-Bertrand

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!

17 Oct 2015
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DOCUMENTARY OF THE MONTH (October)- Billions In Change

The world is facing some huge problems. There’s a lot of talk about how to solve them. But talk doesn’t reduce pollution, or grow food, or heal the sick. That takes doing. This film is the story about various groups of people trying to make the world a better place through the elegantly simple inventions they have made to change the lives of billions of people, and the unconventional billionaire, Manoj Bhargava spearheading the project.

Manoj Bhargava is an entrepreneur, philanthropist, founder and CEO of 5-hour Energy. When 5 Hour Energy was introduced to the market in 2004, retail sales skyrocketed to over $1 billion by 2011, and now the company owns 90% of the energy shot market. The genius of his innovation included the 2 oz. packaging, stating that people who needed energy were also not necessarily thirsty enough for an 8 ounce drink. The smaller size packaging enabled retailers to strategically place the product near checkout counters and point-of-sale locations.

Bhargava’s foundations include Knowledge Medical Charitable Trust and Rural India Charitable Trust. The charities have funded medical research in the United States and over 400 charities in India. Two of the major initiatives are hospitals for the poor and education for disadvantaged women in rural areas.

The Hans Foundation is solely supported by the Rural India Charitable Trust, and in five years it has given $48.1 million U.S. In November 2014, Bhargava committed $80.2 million to develop villages in Uttarakhand, India. In September 2012, Bhargava joined “The Giving Pledge” and has pledged 90% of his wealth to charity, with an emphasis on a common sense approach to philanthropy. Rather than simply giving money to charity, Bhargava believes that personal involvement is necessary.

The Center for Public Integrity dubbed him the “political kingmaker nobody knows” after finding out that “he makes donations through several of his more than 70 limited liability companies”. Michigan politicians have said that Bhargava has never tried to influence a piece of legislation nor has he asked for anything in return for the donations.

Check out his documentary above and leave a comment. If you want to get involved with his organization you can join the movement at:

billionsinchange.com

facebook.com/billionsinchange

twitter.com/billionsnchange

15 Oct 2015
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Deep “E”-cology: Coming Home to Ourselves

There’s a war going on, and it’s not with Iraq. (Or Afghanistan. Or Syria.)

This war is on a scale so vast it’s difficult to see, so ancient we’ve taken it for granted.

It’s a war that has been gathering momentum since humanity first became conscious. It cuts to the very core of existence. It’s what drives the corporations and the deep ecologists, the religious right and the lovers. It’s woven so tightly into the fabric of our lives that we’ve accepted it blandly, without knowing there was ever a choice. It’s caused untold human misery for millennia, and still it burns on, more vividly in the digital age than ever before, as our collective awakening arches toward Armageddon — or quantum evolution.

It is the struggle between truth and heresy. Between subservience and sovereignty. Between opening our minds to wisdom, and clinging to what we’d prefer to believe. Between following a well-worn path, and cutting a swath through the wilderness of our souls.

This war marshals all of our natural resources. Passion and commitment. Love and communion. Faith and ecstasy. If we use them well, our stores will increase. If we use them foolishly, a barren landscape is certain. Because this war is taking place inside each one of us.

World Wide Web

$fractal-ying-yang-jaroslaw-grudzinski$

It is a clarion call to yinify: to wed our masculine and feminine energies for internal and external balance, harmony and peace at every level of co-creation.

Becoming whole — embracing our assertive/dynamic/solar/yang side and our receptive/magnetic/lunar/yin side, both within ourselves and as a planetary organism — is the creative quest of our time. It’s a homecoming, a re-membering (making membership again). As we are able to celebrate this marriage first in our own hearts, the joy and the love we then have available to share with our sisters and brothers increases exponentially.

Evolution through relationship defines the true “world wide web”: weaving our oneness through the meeting of minds and the holding of hands.

No lasting outer peace is possible without this inner reunion. The absolution of duality is the key to living Heaven on Earth, because it means the end of judgment. As the cosmic comic Swami Beyondananda says, “Nonjudgment Day is coming.”

With nothing to choose between, we are integrated, living in integrity, whole. In the seventh century, Zen master Sengstau expressed this potential eloquently in Verses On The Faith Mind:

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.

When love and hate are both absent
everything becomes clear and undisguised.

Make the smallest distinction however
and Heaven and Earth are set infinitely apart.

Understandably, this is not an easy task for most of us to master — or to choose to master.

Many have run, continue to run, for apparent refuge, either into religious doctrine, which tells us how to think and what to believe, or into other well-organized movements masquerading as paths to freedom. Some groups purport to focus solely on spiritual love, ignoring the truth that matter is Spirit in form. Others emphasize sexual union as the ideal path to oneness, omitting the sacred element, and once again it is a lie.

It can be comforting to be a foot soldier in someone else’s army. You don’t have to do any real thinking. You don’t have to take responsibility for the outcome you help create. You can externalize your role: it’s terrorists, it’s the government, it’s anybody who looks or acts or sounds different from me. This is the old, patriarchal view that’s held sway for five thousand years. This Weltanschauung has run its course and is completing its earthly cycle, now.

If you choose not to acknowledge the war at all, you can still go on raising a family behind a white picket façade, with Sunday suppers and comfortable routines that mark a life. But the time for hiding out in this delusion is deliquescing, like Dali’s famous clocks. The light of universal fire is bleaching falsehood from our souls, enlightening and enlivening us, one by one, cell by cell, bringing more joy to the journey.

What we can learn from the limbic brain

The truth is, we’re all equal backstage, when the make-up and the costumes and the constructs come off. We are all rays of the One Being, sharing the same life support system, Mother Earth. Our similarity is the great leveler, because it humbles our unique, snowflake selves into awareness of a greater whole.

This was brought home to me recently when I was having dinner in a Chinese restaurant where I’ve eaten many times. I like a certain dish on the menu, substituting a sweet and sour sauce for the standard garlic sauce. One waiter, who is Chinese, knows my order so well he even “recognizes” me over the phone when I place a to-go order.

The other evening, dining at the restaurant, I ordered that same dish. The place was bustling. When I went up to pay, the waiter, who happened to be standing by the cash register, did not know me as the woman who always orders the dish with the different sauce.

I had a flash of insight and asked him kindly, “Please don’t be offended, but Caucasians — do we all look alike?” With a relieved grin he said, “Yes.” The Caucasian cashier was amazed by my question, but I understood. I told her, “It’s like this for every race, every culture. Isn’t it more difficult to differentiate between Asian or African-American people whom you don’t know, than other Whites?” She admitted it might be.

We’re coded with an innate affinity for our own small portion of the whole. This is the ancient, limbic brain in action, defending our “territory” against invaders; limbic means, “forming a border.” To bridge this chasm is the beginning of world healing. Recognizing the Other through conscious understanding takes both patience and practice.

To see the big picture we have to widen our scope, extend our artificial boundaries. There are no actual map lines on Earth, delineating this country, this language, this religion, this culture from the next. We’ve created it all. It’s our collective game. As we become technologically proficient, the playing field shrinks to a more agreeable size, and the game starts to seem superfluous.

A meta-field is beckoning. We’ve called it outer space. Again, we put the cart before the horse, our eagerness ahead of our readiness. Inner space is the foreign territory we must master first. Yinification begins at home.

Deep “E”-cology

This is the potential of the Internet: to help us come home to ourselves, as a species, as a people, as one culture united through whatever we choose to call the animating energy that informs our existence. The ‘Net is a universal connector, a universal translator, the key to deep ecology in the most profound sense. “Eco”, from the Greek oikos, means home. “Logy” is a branch of learning or study. Ecology is, literally, learning about home!

Coming home to ourselves means owning the truth that there is no separation, except what we allow to exist, through fear. Fear contracts our hearts and minds; love expands them. Many of us learn to open our hearts through sacrifice, which means, “to make sacred.” Releasing our deepest attachments is a crucial part of the initiation on our journey to self-awareness. Our gift is as great as our grief. The poet David Whyte says, “The rest of creation is waiting, breathless, for you to take your place.”

We can start by detaching from what numbs us (like television), and focusing on what feeds us — like “tell-a-vision,” a subtle shift that transmutes suppression into inspiration. The price of freedom is your voice. Begin to share your vision of the world you want to co-create! As you do, you become a “rainbow warrior,” awakening and balancing your energy throughout your being in order to realize the full spectrum of your purpose and potential.

Heaven on Earth exists in being fully alive in the infinite Now. This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, as The Fifth Dimension sang ‘way back in 1969. They were early messengers, carrying our Divine blueprint via the medium of music.

Let’s revisit the lyrics: “When the Moon is in the seventh house”. In Western astrology, the Moon is symbolic of feminine, receptive energy, what we draw in; the seventh house is about intimate interaction with other people. I’ve dubbed this new way of relating a call to yinify: to unify in the Divine Feminine essence. “And Jupiter aligns with Mars”. Jupiter is the planet of expansion, of expressing our truth through storytelling; Mars is the planet of pure desire and, when dishonored, of war. To have them align means telling ourselves a new, expansive story: transmuting war in the alchemical fire into spiritual warriorhood.

Then, as the group sang, “Peace will guide the planets/And love will steer the stars.”

How clear the message becomes, once we are able to truly hear. The battle cries dim; the masks fall off. A layer of separation evaporates as we become transparent to the truth of who we are. People start to seem somehow familiar, even though we’ve never met them before. It’s the resonant déjà vu of realizing there are no strangers. “Service with a smile” suddenly takes on a whole new meaning.

Getting there calls for a subtle shift in perception and behavior: from acquire to inquire, from escalate to elevate, from scared to sacred. As we cease consuming planetary resources and each other at the speed of greed, let go of buying more in favor of being more, we reclaim our true heritage as Earth stewards. And then barrenness transmutes into bounty. Separation into synergy. Fear into faith. Longing into Love.

We use the expression, “Live and learn.” Implicit is the understanding that what we learn, we will also teach. We become self-renewing by gathering knowledge from our experience, forging it into wisdom in the alchemical fire, and serving as vessels to share the gift that is uniquely ours, but not meant to remain arcane.

Conscious evolution favors the curious and kind mind. Truth nourishes us in ways we might never have imagined. Synchronicity takes us by the hand and we laugh in child-like wonder as we witness Spirit-in-action, again and again and again. This is the Garden, and it is good.

Welcome Home.

By Ascension Lifestyle Contributor Amara Rose:

Amara Rose is a catalyst for quantum evolution. Her services include transformational coaching, talks, e-courses, 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
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amararose