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12 Jul 2021
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Remembering Beauty

Today as I was preparing to go for my almost daily bicycle ride, I stopped to glance over at one of our two rose bushes. They are planted in a small strip of ground between our living room window and the fence, and in previous years they have not been doing so well. Poor weather is usually the culprit here in the British Isles, but forgetting the rose food is also another factor. However, during the past 3-4 weeks, they have not only been producing a prodigious number of blooms, but they’ve grown over 6 feet in height!

As I gazed upon the unique orange blossoms, I thought that how easy it is to become inured to the beauty that is so close by somewhere. For a moment in time, all my personal thoughts faded into the background, and so did all the world’s tumultuous activity. Here it was just my consciousness taking in the beauty in front of me, and I became lost in a serenity that there are no words for.

Seems we take so much for granted these days, and most of us are so preoccupied that we just don’t really take in what is right at hand in our lives. It is one thing to look; it is quite another thing to actually see what it is we’re looking at. A mere thought about the to-do list, or a worry or three, and we are turning away from the miracle in front of us and exchanging it for another task, another obligation, and another round of problem solving. If you are an entrepreneur, most likely you live that experience 24/7, and barely come up for air. Marketing, tech hassles, virtual staff issues, grumpy clients…where does it end? When does the good life begin?

It can begin when we choose to slow down enough to take stock of ourselves, check and see if we’re occupying our body instead of hovering near it, and exercise our sovereignty diligently so we honor our own feelings and space to be as we are. Yes, I know…there are obligations aplenty. Working for a paycheck with a family to support during the upheavals of the past 17 months has been a grab bag of stress. Or perhaps you or someone you know has a health condition, or a psychological one. None of this we are experiencing is easy, and we can be so focused on survival mode that we overlook so much that there is to appreciate.

I have a very good book about spiritual seeking called “Doing Nothing” by Steven Harrison. Its focus is on the modern quest for enlightenment and peace, but many of his perspectives could easily be applied to more mundane matters. The other book which I have not read, but recently ordered, is entitled “How to be Idle” by Tom Hodgkinson. The Puritan work ethic, or the work ethic imposed by a jealous God in the Old Testament (“…by the sweat of thy brow shall you earn your bread…”) set the human race on a high-stress path of exertion with a future promise of reward and comfort. The entire dogma of the Abrahamic religions is centered on a perfect hereafter, if we are all good boys and girls, that is.

What is discouraged more today then ever before is that to be idle, or decide to withdraw from the Rat Race, is to be a reactionary. Someone who is anti-societal, and not to be trusted. In China it’s becoming a “thing” and they call it “lying flat”.

At this New Moon in Cancer take an inventory about your own life. Where do you over-commit? Where do you over-give? How do you cope with low-grade anxiety or moments of high stress? Are you happy and peaceful, or anxious and fearful? Are you in your body, and loving your body, or not?

Here’s something to ponder: when there’s a lot of cortisol pumping through our bodies we are incapable of rational decision making. The cost for this is multidimensional too, and as Dr. Gabor Maté states, trauma or living with trauma is the single biggest cause for disease…period!

Your physical and psychic boundaries are yours to employ and maintain. No one else will do it for you. We are empowered, we are capable, and it is not selfish to be concerned with one’s own harmony and wellbeing. Slow down, breathe and look around. What do you see? There’s beauty within and without to appreciate. Remember it often.

About the Author

Isaac George is an internationally recognized intuitive mentor/coach, evolutionary astrologer, conscious channel, self-published author and musician. After a life-altering spontaneous kundalini awakening in 1994 he explored various healing modalities, including hypnotherapy and Reiki. In 1998 he began spontaneously channeling Archangel Ariel and other dimensional intelligences.

Originally from the United States, Isaac currently resides in the UK and offers Spiritual Mentoring sessions and programs and Evolutionary Astrology consultations.

09 Jul 2021
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The Fallacy of Our Carbon Footprint

In 1992, a Canadian ecologist named William Rees coined the term “ecological footprint,” a measurement of how much any entity was impacting the planet’s ecology. A decade later, British Petroleum started promoting a new term: “carbon footprint.” In a splashy ad campaign, the company unveiled the first of its many carbon footprint calculators as a way for individuals to measure how their daily actions—what they eat, where they work, how they heat their home—impact global warming.

BP did not adopt the footprint imagery by accident. In the 30 years prior to the carbon footprint campaign, polluting companies had been using advertising to link pollution and climate change to personal choices. These campaigns, most notably the long-running Keep America Beautiful campaign, imply that individuals, rather than corporations, bear the responsibility for change.

“It was done so intentionally,” says Susan Hassol, director of the nonprofit science outreach group Climate Communication. “It’s a deflection.”

The universal adoption of the term “carbon footprint” hasn’t just changed how we speak about climate change. It’s changed how we think about it. Climate change has become an individual problem, caused by our insatiable appetite for consumption, and therefore a war that must be waged on our dinner plates and gas tanks, a hero’s journey from consumer to conservationist.

The reality is that the future of civilization is being decided at a political and corporate level that no individual can impact.

Yet the reality is that the future of civilization is being decided at a political and corporate level that no individual can impact. Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions. Fossil fuel giants are funding climate change skepticism while simultaneously lobbying for tens of billions of dollars in subsidies. Big corporate names like Costco and Netflix are loudly committing to reduce emissions but unable to set meaningful targets or put plans in place. The Trump administration rolled back more than 100 environmental rules and regulations.

The same way that you give your child a toy to play with so you can finish your task uninterrupted, everyday citizens are busy changing out lightbulbs and buying electric cars while the true cause of global warming continues uninterrupted: a civilization dependent on fossil fuels. As Mike Tidwell, the executive director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, wrote in a 2007 op-ed, “every time an activist or politician hectors the public to voluntarily reach for a new bulb or spend extra on a Prius, ExxonMobil heaves a big sigh of relief.” A complete paradigm shift is needed—both in the way we conceptualize our individual climate impact and in the ways we calculate the emission impacts of those ultimately responsible: corporations and governmental systems.

One of the challenges with the carbon footprint measurement is how few of the factors an individual controls. Most of us have limited options for where we live, how far we have to commute to get to work, what kind of energy is available to heat our homes, etc. If we don’t own our home (and more than 30% of Americans don’t), we may not be able to properly insulate or install high-efficiency appliances. One research report from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that roughly one third of a city dweller’s carbon footprint is determined by public transportation options and building infrastructure. “We build our cities this way,” Hassol says. “It’s system change that’s really needed so that people have better choices.”

The inadequacy of our carbon footprint as a driver of change is painfully highlighted when you look at single-use plastics. Much attention has been given to how much plastic Americans consume (35.3 million tons per year, enough to fill the 104 million-cubic-foot AT&T Stadium in Dallas every 16 hours) and how each individual should be changing their behavior to help combat this waste. Everywhere you look, there’s a campaign to recycle more, or use metal straws, or bring your own bag to the grocery store.

In contrast, there are no public campaigns about the fact that packaging, an area where consumer control is limited, is the top driver of plastic production by a significant margin. The emissions impact of plastic manufacturing itself is rarely mentioned, along with the fact that much of our recycling still ends up in landfills. Some of the poorest nations are left to deal with hundreds of thousands of tons of soft drink bottles. The plastics are often just incinerated, creating serious environmental and health consequences. It’s a question as to whose carbon footprint is making a deeper impact on the environment: the family whose lettuce comes sealed in plastic (and who pays, not only for the product, but also for the waste collection and management services), or the company that is continuing to package food products in plastic materials, and then opting out of responsibility for their disposal.

Even if we just wanted to measure individual impact on climate change, the carbon footprint falls painfully short: “The current concept of a carbon footprint is too narrowly drawn,” Hassol explains. “It’s only the things I’m actively using and doing in my personal life and it doesn’t draw on other actions that are perhaps more important in the big picture as far as addressing climate change.”

For example, the average American has a carbon footprint of 16 tons. The average individual footprint globally is 4 tons. But that calculation doesn’t include who you vote for, how you invest your money, who you work for (and how much you travel for work, versus for leisure), or how you talk about climate change and influence others to get involved. “All of that should be part of the way we conceptualize our impact,” Hassol says.

Instead of obsessing over a single metric, Cameron Brick, a social psychologist from the University of Amsterdam, says he urges people to have an ongoing and evolving conversation between themselves and their chosen lifestyle. “It’s not a single number, because anytime you pick a metric, then we will begin to game it,” he says. Instead, a minimal-carbon lifestyle is a process—one that involves community-building and continuing to make improvements over time, he says. “My lifestyle is not perfect either, but probably better each year.”

Hassol points out that one of the most important ways that an individual can impact emissions on a wider scale is also the hardest to calculate: social contagion. “When people do something, it affects others around them and their emissions,” she says.

Studies have shown that energy-related behaviors are heavily influenced by peer groups, even more than cost or convenience. A study in California showed that every time a solar panel was installed within a certain ZIP code, the probability of another installation in that area increased by 0.78%. Similarly, if you know somebody who has given up flying because of climate change, you are 50% more likely to also reduce your own air travel.

“Your individual footprint is not the full measure of your contribution because you’re encouraging other people through your personal actions,” explains Hassol. She recommends that people who want to do more should research community solar options and ways to buy into clean energy in their communities, and then publicize those options among their families, friends and social networks, in order to create that initial momentum for change.

But what could system change look like? For starters, using measurements that actually hold the decision makers responsible for their emissions impacts, for the entire lifecycle of their product or service. That might look like Big Soda being held accountable not only for the manufacturing and transportation of their single-use plastics, but also for each and every bottle that ends up in somebody’s recycling bin (Coca-Cola is the top producer of plastic waste in the world). The shift also might look like emissions information being printed on product labels and unbiased regulatory bodies certifying the accuracy of corporate emissions reports.

On the policy level, interest in a carbon tax is growing. The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act was reintroduced in Congress this year (as Senate bill 984 and House Resolution 2238), and would force a temporary moratorium on virgin plastic production, require minimum recycled content, and ban some single-use plastic food service items. Many states already have some form of a producer responsibility program, where the producer of hard-to-dispose products such as paints, batteries, and other hazardous materials, must finance proper disposal. This creates an incentive to design reusable or less-toxic products.

When we shift the focus from changing consumer behavior to changing producer behavior, we see where true change happens: in corporate boardrooms and among political leaders. The irony of the carbon footprint is that individual action does have the power to change the world, just not on the lightbulb and recycling level.

“This problem is too big to solve voluntarily one person at a time,” Hassol says. “We need to change the system and you have a role in changing that system.”

About the Author

Emma Pattee covers topics related to climate change and feminism. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Cut, WIRED, and others.

Original article here

04 Jul 2021
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Stealth Spirituality

I was talking with a new copywriting client whose principal markets — entertainment and politics — aren’t often predisposed to metaphysics. Since I’ve long advocated “speaking in the language your audience can hear,” we discussed how to slip transformative messaging under the radar, through intent and light (which is in-form-ation, bringing the unknown into form).

This is especially vital now, as momentous cycles conclude and we face the end of life as we know it — not as cataclysm, but as an ascent into greater self-actualization.

The Alien Perspective

A French film from 1996, The Green Beautiful, is amusingly on point in its perspicacity, depicting how humanity appears to a highly evolved extraterrestrial visitor. The storyline:

No one from Mila’s harmonious planet wants to volunteer for the Earth assignment; we’re considered an incorrigible orb. But it’s been 200 years since they’ve sent an emissary, so Mila steps forward.

To prepare, her brain is encoded with telepathic programs that, when activated, will restructure human thinking. This is where the fun begins.

As the film gently chides us by illuminating standard behavior (“Yes, they’re still using the money!”) the wake-up calls become entertainingly engaging: this IS how we are — and how bizarre we might appear through an “alien” lens.

Yet, who is the real “alien” here? I’ve often felt like Mila since my awakening: reactive to the poisons we consume and expel, unsettling people by verbalizing what they barely think about. In The Green Beautiful, as each person is “disconnected” from their mental programming, they begin hugging trees, hugging each other, speaking their truth, and unwittingly creating pandemonium through paradigm-evanescing conduct.

A Confluence of Clues

When we’re paying attention, the synchronicities in our own everyday lives are strong, and point the way to greater awareness. Consider:

As children, my brother and I loved chasing milkweeds carried on the breeze. “Look, a friend!” we’d exclaim. Years later, through a reference in a novel, I experienced a profound ah-ha. The botanical term for milkweed is Asclepias. This chimed in me. I wondered, could my childhood ally be related to Asclepius, the mythological Greek god of medicine who was trained by Chiron (the archetypal “wounded healer”) — which was conjunct my Sun at birth? Yes. What we know, before we know that we know.

Further intrigue: Asclepius was born mortal but given immortality as the constellation Ophiuchus (“serpent bearer”) after his death. Yet Ophiuchus is not recognized as the 13th sign of the zodiac, even though both the celestial equator and the ecliptic pass through it. The number thirteen, like snakes, is a sacred symbol of transformation that has been debased in order to control the collective through fear.

By unmasking deception, we discover a deeper connection.

Melting the Mind

One more example:

In Mindwalk, a visionary 1991 film that I watched prior to my descent, a scientist, politician and poet discuss how Nature is perceived as mechanistic, modeled on the clock — and then I left on the Journey and reconnected with natural time cycles via Mayan cosmology, living in accord with Nature in the middle of a forest — much like the people in The Green Beautiful, who also enjoy “silence concerts”.

Did you know “listen” and “silent” are anagrams? Living the both/and rather than the either/or expands our perception of possibility.

Mindwalk’s passionate discourse invokes our global focus now: whole-systems thinking. Liv Ullman, as the film’s physicist, declares, “The essential nature of matter lies not in objects, but in interconnections. We are pure potentiality, probability patterns; relationships make matter.” Poet John Heard agrees, “Healing the universe is an inside job.”

Whether through stealth spirituality or out in Rumi’s joy-filled field, this is our moment. As the entire planet incubates in the Asclepeion (ancient healing temple), it’s time for an abundance of subtle shifts: from passivity to passion, from collusion to collaboration, from independence to interdependence.

For our relationships. For our countries. For our connection with All-That-Is. The new reality, morphing into being with every breath.

About the Author:

Amara Rose is Managing Editor of Ascension Lifestyle. Her work is widely published in health, business, lifestyle, and new thought magazines, both digital and print. Visit LiveYourLight.com, where you can also subscribe to her monthly e-newsletter, What Shines.

03 Jul 2021
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State of the Planet Update: Freedom

“…so, there’s rigid and compulsive identification to duty, role, and responsibility, rather than the authentic self is a major risk factor for illness” – from Dr. Gabor Maté – When the Body Says No in Psychotherapy

Freedom…what does it mean to you? Does it evoke excitement or fear? What if you could be and do anything you chose? What if you were suddenly free to roam and live any way your heart wanted to? Heady stuff indeed! You might have an argument with yourself (or with others more likely) that you have many obligations and responsibilities. What about keeping society coherent and following the rules? What would happen if you dropped all your masks, and said exactly what you thought, or acted from your authentic self? Maybe freedom to be who you are is absolutely a key part of larger freedoms

I originally had big plans for this blog. I wanted to share about some pertinent astrology stuff, about the USA birth chart, the upcoming Pluto Return for America spanning from February 2022 till roughly January 2024. These are the last acts of Pluto in Capricorn before the main event…Pluto’s ingress into Aquarius on January 21st, 2024, conjunct the Sun. America has been viewed as a beacon of hope and freedom for more than 200 hundred years, especially to peoples around the world with much fewer options or freedom of choice. What will occur over the next 3 years will be seminal for the USA, and by extension, the planet. Well, as John Lennon once quipped “life is what happens when you make other plans”. Sometimes that is the case no matter the scale of experience, and it has been just like that for me this past week. Intensity does not seem to lessen with time, just the complexion of it changes.

A few days ago, I ran across this video of a lecture by Dr. Gabor Maté, and watching it immensely added to my understanding of what the concept of freedom is all about. Since I have Sagittarius rising and Uranus conjunct the Sun, the twin issues of power and freedom have been constant companions for me in this lifetime. My idealized poster child for freedom would sort of look like a rugged pioneer from the American West, or a character like Captain Jack Sparrow of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. What eluded me was the one quality that drew me, and probably a smaller part of the global population than I imagine, to the heroes and heroines from our history who struck courageously out on their own, sometimes at the very cost of their lives. The figure of William Wallace (movie- Braveheart) is one example of an individual committed to freedom at all costs.

I am rapidly redefining my concept of freedom to be an experience that can only be realized by grounding into one’s own authentic being self so profoundly, that you essentially are out of control. Control by others or other concepts I mean. Living from that ground of being would free you from the lies you tell yourself, the lies you accepted to keep yourself safe and protected, to afford you feeling accepted and loved by others outside of you. My mother use to lecture me, “go along to get along, don’t rock the boat!” Well, that works only up to a point, and then what? You continue betraying your own nature to please others and please the system? That is telling yourself lies.

Dr. Maté’s analysis of such behaviour is that it inevitably leads to illness of some kind, and if not physically, at least mentally, emotionally, and ultimately, spiritually. The Indian mystic Jiddu Krishnamurti put it this way: “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” If we honestly take a deep look at what has been happening around us for the past 16 months, one can easily discern the effects that following the dictates of the herd will do to us in all arenas of our experience.

Learning how to live free in a seemingly unfree world is a discipline and an art. Many never start, and few have the patience to withstand the tide of criticism or ridicule that others will use to dissuade you from the dangerous and heretical pursuit of authentic experience and freedom. If you are grounded well into your being, and in harmony with your own Soul and the Cosmos, it will not matter. You will not hold anything against anyone, for you would only be harming yourself. Nonetheless, you will walk in freedom, sovereignty, and peace, because you will know who you are and never compromise your integrity ever again.

Once embarked on, this is something that will become a lifelong practice. I will have to begin each day by committing to it, and then hopefully it will be the whole of my experience…one full of joy and contentment.