earth | Ascension Lifestyle

20 Jul 2022
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A tale of two realities …

Yes, I know there are many realities, but let’s just for a moment distinguish them as two … normal reality and NEW reality.

In “normal” reality …

We garner as much knowledge as we can from the pool of current collective understanding.
We have reactions and sometimes feel powerless to effect the change we’d love to see spring forth in the world.
We work to find out who we are, to discover a greater sense of purpose and to make a difference with our lives.

In NEW reality …

There’s a grand relationship with the Universe, the Earth, Nature, Forests, Oceans, Animals, Stars and more.
There’s a sense of being in sync with Life which brings deep stirrings of new breakthrough ways to see the world and evoke the power to elevate us all.
The pulses and powers of the Universe flow through you with breath-taking awe.
You know you are the source of what is yet to come for us all.
You become an ALLchemist, evoking possibilities that shape a brilliant future for this world.
You make friends with the miraculous and discover that the impossible is possible.
You love yourself so spectacularly that you don’t even care about finding out who you are because you’re constantly in a state of quantum becoming, reveling in the infinite possibilities of yourself and all life.

To move from normal reality to NEW reality is simple actually, no more complicated than raising your vibration to match the universal power flows that are itching to come your way.

Do this and the world suddenly appears awesomely different to you. You see with fresh eyes. Magic fills your life and the miraculous floods your every cell, awakening you to just how brilliant life on Earth can truly be.

You become a creator of the NEW, sharing the enchantment while pouring yourself wildly into the joy-filled creation of a brand new world where all life thrives and soars.

About the Author:

Soleira Green is a visionary author, quantum coach, ALLchemist & future innovator. She has been creating leading edge breakthroughs in consciousness, quantum evolution, transformation, innovation, intelligence and more over the past 25 years, has written and self-published eleven books, and taught courses all over the world on these topics.

20 Apr 2022
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To Save a Forest, Look to the Women

Sara Inés Lara, leader of Colombia-based bird conservation organization Fundación ProAves, got her first taste of conservation’s potential more than 30 years ago. She grew up in one of the most biodiverse places in the world, seeking refuge in the forests, mountains, and pools of the Andes. Then, in 1998, she learned about the yellow-eared parrot.

It was once a common bird near her hometown and across the Colombian Andes, but its population had dwindled to a flock of 81 individuals. Captivated by the fate of the little bird, she abandoned her career as a civil engineer and, along with British ornithologist and her now-husband Paul Salaman and a group of other conservationists, founded ProAves to protect it.

With the help of nearby communities, especially local women, the group successfully fought for an end to the logging of wax palms—the bird’s nesting and feeding site—and hunting of the parrot for sport. The yellow-eared parrot was adopted as a regional emblem. Soon, the population started growing rapidly. Today, there are more than 2,800 individuals, and a couple of years ago, a flock of two dozen parrots was spotted near Lara’s hometown.

It was a huge win, and it taught Lara an important lesson: Women are instrumental in conservation. Women often feel the adverse effects of environmental degradation hardest, and their participation in ProAves’ work quickly demonstrated that they were essential to the success of community-based conservation projects. In many rural communities in Colombia, women are responsible for meeting their families’ most basic needs from nature, including water, firewood, and food—all of which become increasingly difficult as the environment suffers. But the women she encountered needed support, too.

“Many of the women I met were exhausted from childbearing, they did not have any food to feed their children, and they were desperate to have access to family planning,” says Lara.

In 2004, Lara founded Women for Conservation to increase access to public health, family planning, economic opportunities, and environmental conservation. The nonprofit organization aims to build the health of the communities bordering nature reserves, so they can be more economically independent and better able to protect their local environment. The organization runs workshops and trainings, ranging from environmental education to sustainable livelihoods and family planning, for women in 10 communities. It became independent of ProAves in late 2019, and reports that it has since directly reached more than 2,200 people, mostly women and young girls.

Women for Conservation also teaches women to produce wildlife-friendly artisan crafts to replace dependence on cattle ranching and prevent deforestation. In Puerto Pinzón, for example, as part of a broader project to protect the blue-billed curassow, the organization taught women to collect tagua nuts, the seeds of palm trees that are known as “vegetable ivory,” and to produce jewelry that they can sell on the market. Women for Conservation also encouraged the local community to ban hunting, use fuel-efficient stoves to decrease deforestation, and start a tree nursery.

Women for Conservation also runs workshops aimed at training women for careers in conservation and ecotourism.

Ninfa Estella Carinialli was the first woman forest ranger trained and sponsored by Women for Conservation and ProAves. She obtained the International Ranger Award from the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2021, and she works in the Águila Harpía ProAves Reserve, which is located in the eastern Colombian state of Guainía.

Carinialli’s first few years as a forest guard were hard. “My son drowned and my husband passed away from COVID,” she remembers. But, as it had with Lara, the forest proved a refuge. “I felt a deep sadness, but I am thankful for the memories I have with them, and for the opportunity to work in conservation, which makes me happy and fills me with peace.”

Overcoming Myths and Barriers

One of the most important—and sensitive—tasks Women for Conservation has taken on is a focus on reproduction and family planning in local communities. Lara initially had to deal with pushback from local communities. “When we started talking about family planning, we had a couple of incidents where women were severely beaten up for participating in our workshops,” she says. “I learned in a hard way that we need to present women’s empowerment not as a threat, but as a benefit for the family.”

In partnership with the reproductive and family health organization Profamilia, Women for Conservation organizes reproductive health workshops and provides family planning services. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the organization reports it has facilitated 360 contraceptive implants and 27 surgical procedures, including tubal ligations and vasectomies.

The ability to plan pregnancies becomes vital for women and girls when they can’t depend on the natural environment for basic survival needs, says Kelly Donado, who organizes logistics for the family planning brigades at Women for Conservation.

“When there’s ever-less food, jobs, and water, it scares me to think of bringing more babies into the world,” she says. “What kind of situation are we bringing them into? When girls have unplanned pregnancies, they cannot be adequate carers, and often, they’re not able to provide for their babies.”

Donado is leading a campaign in Zona Bananera, a municipality of Santa Marta, which suffers from water scarcity due to diversion for banana and palm growing. Her sister is a local nurse and has offered her home as a center for the clinics and workshops, as there are no medical clinics in the area. Ana Marquis, an 18-year-old from the area, is one of those who participated and decided to get a contraceptive implant.

“It lets me decide when to have my children,” she says in Spanish. She lost two pregnancies in recent years. “Right now, I’m looking after myself so that I can study and not have to worry about getting pregnant.”

In February 2022, Women for Conservation provided 72 women in Zona Bananera with contraceptive implants, in addition to offering cancer screenings, follow-ups, and reproductive education workshops. By the time the group’s representatives returned in March for checkups, more than 190 women and girls had added their names to the waiting list. Men also began requesting contraception from Women for Conservation, which resulted in the first vasectomy procedures in the Zona Bananera region in February 2022.

“Family planning has myriad social, economic, and environmental benefits: It improves the livelihoods and well-being of people and the planet and relieves population pressures on the natural environment, as well as on food production and water scarcity,” says Catriona Spaven-Donn, the Empower to Plan project coordinator for the British charity Population Matters, which supports Women for Conservation.

While Women for Conservation has made significant progress destigmatizing family planning, resistance remains. Marquis says her family forbid her from getting the implant until she was 18, as they have for her 16-year-old sister.

Some families believe that denying teenagers access to contraceptive resources will prevent them from engaging in sexual activity, a belief that has been widely debunked.

Women for Conservation also faced resistance from its peers in the environmental world. Lara remembers other conservation leaders telling her that working with women was nice, but it was not a priority. Whenever she spoke about the link between a growing population, increasing poverty, and environmental impacts, she was told to avoid talking about population.

That’s a trend in recent decades among development, environmental, and reproductive rights community groups. The focus is instead on sexual and reproductive health, choice, and rights of individuals, rather than addressing demographic factors.

“In the past, people wasted a lot of time stereotyping our planetary crises, asking whether the main problem is population or consumption,” says Phoebe Barnard, professor of global change science and futures at the University of Washington, and founding director of the global Stable Planet Alliance, which aims to stabilize and reduce consumption and global population. “Well, of course, it’s not either–or. It’s both. Investing in women’s education, leadership, and opportunities remains a really powerful way to bring benefits not only for women, but for families and children, nature, and the future of our whole civilization.”

Still, even the issues of reproductive health and women’s rights can be difficult to raise among poor, rural Colombian women living in communities where maternity and a large number of children are often viewed positively, and where men may feel a loss of control over women’s sexuality when women use modern contraceptives. In such contexts, contraception is sometimes seen as undermining the traditional gender roles and the stability of the couple and is therefore not trusted or not used.

What’s clear is the close tie between women’s empowerment and environmental outcomes. Recent research found that 80% of people displaced by climate change are women. The U.N. made gender equality an integral part of its Sustainable Development Goals, from equal access to education to family planning.

That link has pushed Women for Conservation beyond family planning to providing basic services to ensure Colombian women are healthy and safe. Breast cancer is the most diagnosed form of cancer in Colombia, so last year, the NGO started providing mammograms and training women on how to conduct a self breast exam. With a drastic increase in calls to domestic violence hotlines during the pandemic, Lara has also started leading workshops and education on the subject.

Original article here

24 Feb 2022
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What If Legal Personhood Included Plants, Rivers, and the Planet?

“People think of laws being so objective and serious, and almost separate from the social norms,” says investigative climate journalist Amy Westervelt. “But it’s really just a handful of people’s beliefs that have gotten baked into law.”

Uncovering whose beliefs have shaped existing environmental law led her to report on an emerging legal arena that has been making headlines around the world: rights of nature laws.

The idea behind the rights of nature approach extrapolates on the Western legal system’s insistence that a corporation is considered a person. If that’s legally true, then why not grant legal personhood to a watershed or a forest? For those who grew up indoctrinated by the existing legal system, Westervelt says their initial response is often delivered with a scoff: “So, what, like, a tree could sue me?”

But beyond this initial skepticism, she sees a lot of practicality and possibility to the approach. Take, for example, a polluted lake. “It’s almost impossible to say my cancer was caused by this chemical in the water,” she says. “But it’s super easy, scientifically, to say this chemical in this water is destroying this watershed.”

And in this way, granting nature its own rights could provide an avenue to protect specific environments—and the communities that depend on them. Because, she points out, “Humans actually need ecosystems to live a lot more than we need corporations.”

The Proof Is in the Pushback

When it comes to protecting the environment, most existing laws are human-centered. They focus on the rights of people to a healthy environment. Westervelt says that well over 100 countries have these kinds of laws on the books. Still, since they require making a direct, causal connection between a pollutant and a human health outcome, winning a case in court can be difficult.

Rights of nature cases, in contrast, are “playing the long game,” as Westervelt puts it. They approach legal arguments with a completely different philosophy and timescale. Incorporating the rights of nature into the constitutions of municipalities, states, and countries could shift the foundational approach to how environmental cases are litigated, Westervelt says.

And it might just be working. She says the proof is in the pushback.

“We’re starting to see pre-emptive laws get passed to block rights of nature legislation,” Westervelt says. Ohio, Florida, and most recently Missouri have passed laws to this effect. “That’s always a key indicator that something’s working, right?” Westervelt says. “They’re not passing pre-emptive laws against calling your reps—let’s put it that way.”

The other strength of this rights of nature approach to environmental protection is the surprising coalitions it creates. “The Lake Erie Bill of Rights is not a bunch of hippies in San Francisco. This is suburban moms in Toledo, Ohio,” Westervelt says. “I think that’s actually what scares the industry folks and the right wing about the way that [rights of nature laws have] progressed in this country, is you’re seeing it really pop up in the Rust Belt, in working-class towns in the Midwest.”

Take fracking, for example. A person in Pennsylvania might be upset their neighbor has a fracking well that has ruined the water in the surrounding wells, making their land essentially valueless. So, Westervelt says, you have right-wing, anti-government libertarians fighting in defense of private property alongside Indigenous leaders arguing to protect the watershed’s right to live.

The motivations may be very different, but Westervelt says the outcomes they’re fighting for are actually quite compatible.

Take the example of the Te Urewera rainforest in New Zealand. She says this case is the one that international organizations point to as a key success story for the rights of nature, because the government recognized the rainforest as its own legal entity and the Tūhoe people as its legal guardians. In a lot of ways, this is a victory, but at the end of the day, it’s still a compromise on what the Tūhoe actually want: simply the return of their land.

The idea that the government had to grant these land rights is almost offensive to those who live there, Westervelt says. Still, she sees these cases, which aim to bring an Indigenous approach to both nature and justice, as a way to “give Western law an instant upgrade on the environmental front.”

Wild Rice for the Win

One unique aspect of Westervelt’s approach is the way it frames Indigenous science, which she says is all too often viewed as myths or “woo-woo mystical nonsense.”

Westervelt shares an example of a water protector she spoke with in Hawai‘i who was working to protect his people’s sacred mountain, Mauna Kea. He told her the reason it’s sacred is because half the island’s ecosystems are affected by it. Western watershed science eventually came to the same conclusion, but centuries later, after colonization had already caused great harm.

The same goes for why wild rice is sacred to the Ojibwe: it’s an indicator species. They knew its ecological importance and therefore came to reflect that in their cultural values.

In this way, Westervelt says, storytelling—be it through Indigenous knowledge-sharing or a podcast—is an effective way to explain why it’s important to protect water.

Of “Manoomin v. Minnesota,” she says, “This case looks at the rights of wild rice to survive and thrive in local waterways, which the Ojibwe added to their 1855 treaty with the U.S. government. The White Earth Band of Ojibwe, based in present-day Minnesota, has since sued Enbridge Energy’s Line 3 pipeline, which they say will violate the rights of the rice and threaten the health of the ecosystem at large.”

This case could have a major impact on many other potential pipeline fights across the U.S.

“Whatever decision they come down with will be pretty monumental,” she says. The case is currently in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, and if its decision is appealed, Westervelt says this could be “another case where the Supreme Court is deciding whether the U.S. is going to honor these treaties.” And that has far-reaching implications for the treaty rights of tribes across the continent.

“Every time I tell people, ‘Yeah, wild rice sued the state of Minnesota,’ it helps to get people to let go of the idea that the way things are is the way they’ve always been and always have to be,” Westervelt says. She believes exposing people to that idea by way of a story is less threatening than arguing with them about water clarity or carbon emissions. “Showing people a different perspective and what it can look like, I think, is helpful in opening people up to other possibilities.”

Original article here.

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.

20 May 2021
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Vivaxis, the Axis of Life

A few years back, I went hiking in Dogtown with a friend and our dogs. As soon as we reached the woods, the dogs bolted ahead, and in running after them, we became hopelessly lost.

Unfortunately for me, but fortunate for us that day, I am sensitive to frequencies from telecommunications infrastructure, towers, and antennas, particularly on the site of a previous injury on the left side of my head and body. At the beginning of our walk, I had noticed (and felt) a large number of antennas mounted on the water tower near our parked car, so to help find our way back I began systematically turning my head and following the trails in the direction of the most discomfort, realizing that the dogs were also helping us navigate in that direction. Hours later we found the car…and I had a massive headache for days.

On that afternoon, I used an injured part of my body and energy field to find my way. But according to researcher Francis Nixon and her student Judy Jacka, humans are, in fact, endowed with an energetic signature that marks the place where an individual is born. Francis Nixon named the phenomenon the vivaxis, meaning the “axis of life.”

Does it make sense that before humans relied on satellite-enabled GPS systems, our ancestors, who were the most resilient and who survived the demands of challenging environments, were also the ones who had the best-developed navigational skills? And what if those skills were not just intellectual, such as navigating by the stars, but were also housed in the energy body itself as another inborn physical sensory system, designed by nature, to help ensure our survival and ability to find our way home? Do humans, like other animals, possess a forgotten inborn navigation sensory system?

In her Vivaxis Manual, Part 1, Frances Nixon writes, “The radiation energies of Earth form a massive network of energy waves traveling in both horizontal and vertical directions. When a fetus is subjected to these energy waves or currents, it pulls the horizontal and vertical energies into a common axis or point. The fetus then becomes magnetized to that exact geophysical point, and a permanent magnetic pattern or alignment is introduced into the atomic structure of the bones as they solidify. It is thought that the baby’s vivaxis is generally created about the time of the mother’s first labor pains and is approximately the size of the fetus just prior to birth. This same dynamic is replayed throughout all creation.” Francis Nixon’s work was synthesized by her student Judy Jackma in her book The Vivaxis Connection.

Energy medicine teacher Donna Eden, who possesses the ability to see energy, also noticed that some clients would become weak when faced in a particular direction. Using magnets, she synthesized a simple technique to test a person’s response to the energy field in all directions, as well as to demagnetize a compromised vivaxis, which she demonstrates in videos and describes in her book Energy Medicine. Recognition of the vivaxis acknowledges Earth as a complex living being that communicates with receptors in the human energy field and that supports transcendent balance and health.

Current economic growth is riding hard on a wave of techno-optimism, as well as a sense of entitlement to what Vandana Shiva refers to as “the Commons,” which are communal resources that belong to us all. Already there are plans for launching nuclear power on both the moon and Mars, while back on Earth the launching of 5G telecommunications requires the installation at increased densities of microwave antennas on light poles in neighborhoods, with no biological-based safety testing or monitoring for this increased exposure.

The plight of individuals already ill or disabled due to wireless exposures has been denied and ignored in favor of affirming the manifest destiny of industrial and economic interests. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find places that are free of wireless exposure, as even sensitive environments like Mount Everest and Yellowstone are being blanketed with microwave antennas to meet the market’s demands for infinite coverage and faster downloads. Higher elevations, including mountaintops and rooftops, are among the most desirable infrastructure settings for the industry.

Juxtaposed against humanity’s pursuit of increasing transmitting sensors to generate more data to power smart devices to create artificial intelligence are the extraordinary sensory capacities within the human energy field and all of nature. These inborn sensory systems, including the vivaxis of each individual, are sounding the alarm that the artificial, man-made electromagnetic environment is becoming uninhabitable. Within these sensory systems — codified through observation alone by earlier cultures, including the meridians of Oriental medicine and the layers of the auric field — are rhythms that choreograph radiant health. From when to eat to when to sleep to which herbs to harvest at the full moon, modern culture has become further and further removed from chronobiology and harmony with nature as the basis of a balanced life. Artificial frequencies are scrambling the healthy synthesis of the life force.

Rudolph Steiner cautioned that technology would usher in an age where individuals are increasingly detached from their soul forces. German blogger Michael Berstecher explains, “Our cell metabolism, our nervous system, and the pineal gland are optimally electromagnetically stimulated by the imperceptible and subtle impulses of nature — especially the Schumann-resonances and Sferics. Our physical organism wants and needs to ‘hear’ these frequencies in order to…experience inner peace, bliss and love as a state of consciousness. Nowadays, artificial radio waves, trillions of times more powerful than those found in nature, are superimposed upon natural electromagnetic stimulation fields severing all beings from nature’s electromagnetic conductors.”

Artificial intelligence lacks connection to the intelligence of nature. As we have outsourced the collection, analysis and application of global information to a concentrated elite who already have chosen to override the canaries in the coal mine — those who are reporting harm to themselves and/or nature from these wireless technologies — we place ourselves at great risk of further separation from the brilliant intelligence, as well as Earth stewardship responsibilities, that are our birthright.

A yogi master said, “All the ailments that human beings suffer are simply because we have lost the awareness of how to be in sync with the forces that are making us who we are.” Like biodynamic gardening, a form of regenerative agriculture that recognizes a reverence for all land, water, food, plants, animals and people, we need to choose communications that harmonize with the whole ecosystem. Our physiology is wired to take us there and to bring us back home again and again.

About the Author:

Patricia Burke works with Stop5G International, MA4SafeTechnology, and other groups worldwide calling for increased regulation of wireless technologies, with a focus on human rights, environmental justice, and the rights of nature. She can be reached at stopsmartmetersMass@gmail.com

Original article: Spirit of Change magazine

06 May 2021
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Learning to Listen: Liberating Myself From Lyme

In 2001 I lived in Marin County, a rural area north of San Francisco Bay, where I worked as a field biologist. While taking a shower, I found a tick embedded in my armpit. Two weeks later, I noticed a rash on my stomach. Maybe it’s poison oak, I thought? But it didn’t itch. I let it go.

A month later, I noticed creeping, itchy arthritis in my right hip. Then not long after, I was playing guitar, and my arm would not move as commanded. My friend said, “Dude, there’s something wrong with you!”

I went to a doctor friend and flipped through his book of diseases. When I got to L, I knew what it was. I got tested for Lyme (Borrelia). It came back positive. The treatment was 30 days of the antibiotic doxycycline, which cleared out all my symptoms. Cured, I thought.

Little did I know it was just the beginning of a near 10-year nightmare.

Lyme worms its way in

Lyme lays “eggs” or encysts. The cysts can be dormant for months, then hatch and mutate. The tick can dump other bacteria and parasites into your body that need different kinds of treatment. Long-term sufferers will tell you the illness can be interminable if Lyme isn’t eradicated early. It transforms into “persister” cells and can create an autoimmune situation where your immune system is trying to play catch up.

A few months later, all the symptoms and much more came raging back. I was hospitalized, receiving intravenous antibiotics because Lyme had developed into a kind of meningitis ravaging my brain. As I lay in the hospital bed, I began to cry. I was in a state of utter despair. What was going on? Why was I sick again?

I focused on my breathing and prayed. Lyme was jumbling my brain, I couldn’t think, but I could feel. If I can still feel and breathe, then I can love and exist, I thought. I felt into my brain and asked, What’s the matter?, as if my brain were a baby. With all of the love and tender feelings I could muster, I cradled my brain and asked again: What’s the matter? I love you, brain. What’s wrong?

Trusting my inner wisdom

A miracle happened. I had a vision. I saw a beautiful large oak tree in the woods, and up the side of the trunk, shelf mushrooms were spiraling up the tree toward the sky. I need these, I thought.

I recognized two kinds of mushrooms from my work as a field biologist. One was reishi mushrooms, another was turkey tail mushroom, and there was a third kind, but I would have to wait till I got out of the hospital to look it up. It was chaga.

I researched the mushrooms and discovered reishi mushrooms have been used in Chinese medicine as an immune booster for thousands of years. Turkey tail mushrooms are also immune boosters and are part of an anticancer drug currently being developed and tested called PSK. Chaga turned out to be another incredible immune booster, according to research by world-renowned mushroom expert Paul Stamets. While these mushrooms are now quite popular, in 2002 they were unheard of.

I began to hone my intuitive skills and practice the art of intuitive sensory perception inside my body. I noted what I was seeing, tasting, smelling, and hearing during my motherly loving meditations with my brain.

Then I had another breakthrough. While inward viewing, I saw cysts inside my body. Lyme can lie dormant for up to a year or more, and those cysts — nasty little eggs — were inside my brain. I saw rows of them like peas in a peapod. They were coated with a biofilm and with what looked like a pencil on top. I couldn’t understand what this image was. I worked with my sensory perception and realized my body was speaking to me symbolically.

Deep healing begins

About a week after this vision, I wandered into the supplement section of the market. In the homeopathic aisle, I saw a little blue tube labeled Graphites. That’s in pencils, I thought. What do graphites do exactly? According to the homeopathic pamphlet, “Graphites can dissolve toughened skin, scars, boils, and cysts.” Holy Moses! Pencils over eggs! My intuition told me that graphites and similar homeopathic remedies could dissolve Lyme cysts. Graphites became a crucial component of my healing. It was a huge breakthrough.

After this, I started trusting the more profound wisdom that came through the senses from a place deeper than my mind. I wrote down a multitude of foods, herbs, and antibiotics my body identified for me. I also started seeing stuck feelings and other things that were dampening my immunity.

I used the intuitive information I received along with the science I researched to affirm what I was intuiting, and worked closely with a few Lyme specialists to liberate myself from Lyme. I used both sets of knowing to collect information and facts. I would often be shown a remedy and then find the medical research that confirmed what I had intuited. This method helped me validate what I was seeing and sensing. In addition to many common antibiotics and herbs, I discovered several unusual medicines and techniques for Lyme that I had never heard of.

Loving the messenger

However, the most profound healing came late in my near 10-year journey. I went to the Mono Basin in the eastern Sierras in California on a vision quest. Any Lyme suffer knows there is a tremendous amount of fear and anxiety with Lyme. I would often wake with panic attacks, not being able to sleep.

On the 8th day in the desert, I went into a massive panic attack. I thought I was going to die and lose my mind. Why was I so terrified of this bacterium, I asked myself. How could a little piece of life devastate my life? Anger and fear swirled around me. Then I had the thought that changed me forever.

What if I love Lyme? What if I love the monster?

It was like a million light bulbs went off.

With all the love I could muster, I cradled an imaginary worm-like bacteria; I blessed it. Although at the bottom of the karmic totem pole of life, Lyme is still alive. I thought, what if I were Lyme? A lowly, evil little creature, just trying to survive. I had a sense of compassion for the Lyme, sadness for its life. At that moment, it lost its power over me. By blessing the enemy, it no longer had control. I had weakened it, and this moment was the real healing. The Lyme became my teacher, showing me how to reclaim my power and remain symptom-free.

About the Author:

Vir McCoy works as a healer and a field biologist and botanist, focusing on endangered species, and is the co-author with Kara Zahl of Liberating Yourself from Lyme (Healing Arts Press, 2020).

Source: Spirit of Change

14 Apr 2021
Comments: 0

The 20-Day Mayan Ascension Process Begins: 4/14 -5/3/21

On the 14th of April 2021, for 20 days, humanity will travel through a cosmic chakra system and activate our kundalini. These days are powerful and activating as we merge the past, present and future. They are more powerful than an equinox, or a class X magnitude solar flare… but continuously for 20 days straight! The center column of the sacred Mayan calendar, the Tzolk’in, represents the spinal column of the human body and the core of the Earth running from north to south.

An ascension process begins in these 20 Core days, which will burn a holy fire through our chakras. This energy descends to Earth from the great central sun and God / Hunab Ku. Every 260 days, these energies return over and over, but each time with an ascending frequency. These 20 days will be beyond powerful at this pivotal and unique time where we have been pushed beyond of our comfort zones, and we have no reserve energy to control the things we try not to face. Yet… the Mayan Core days, if worked with conscious intent, can help anchor and manifest new frequencies into form. This is what we want to explain here. It is bit complicated with words, so I hope I don’t lose you.

These 20 powerful days are beginning on 4/14. We are being asked to absorb this trial by holy fire, by raising our frequencies to contain more energy and light than ever before. We will be asked to discover a new equilibrium and anchor our higher self’s orientation point. It is a time to become self-empowered and protected, and not get distracted by failing old programs.

There will be 5 pulses of energy that will burn though 5 Mayan chakras: the crown, throat, heart, solar plexus and root chakras. Each pulse will hold 4 days each, and each day holds one of the 4 directions (east, north, west and south).

What happens during these 20 days is this… Fresh cosmic energy, coming from the great central sun, begins to descend into our physical body starting at our crown chakra.

At the same time, newly upgraded energy, coming from the core of the Earth, begins to rise up into our physical body beginning at our root chakra. This process is very much like when a lightning bolt strikes the Earth. When a lightning bolt descends from the sky, the Earth’s energy also reaches up to meet the descending bolt. This merging point of descending cosmic energy, with the rising physical energy, reaches each other at a very powerful center point … our HEARTS! I just love this. The heart is the center of centers.

Then the new cosmic energy descending from the great central sun will continue down through our chakras until it is grounded within our physical body and anchored into the core of the Earth. Our ascending physical energy will also pass up through our heart and rise up through our crown and beyond until it reaches and anchors to the great central sun. This process will take 20 days.

The beginning of most traditional Mayan ceremonies begins with calling in, and sending love, to 7 cardinal points.

Great creator of all life, Hunab Ku.
Heart of the Heavens.
Heart of the Earth.
Heart of the East.
Heart of the North.
Heart of the West.
Heart of the South.
Heart of the Hearts, or center.

We suggest you start each day with honoring these cardinal points and God of all creation with great love and humility.

The FIRST PULSE will be from 4/14 – 4/17. These are the days of 4 IMIX, 5 IK, 6 AKBAL and 7 KAN. This first phase will activate your crown chakra, from the Great Central SUN, and your root chakra, from the core of the EARTH. These days will initiate a great ocean of creation, breathe life into this process, release an immense wisdom from the depths of our inner temple, and plant a seed for the intent of this process. This begins the process of merging heaven and Earth within. If we are paying attention, we could experience flashes of enlightened consciousness, and we may feel quite elevated.

The SECOND PULSE will be from 4/18 – 4/21. These are the days of 8 CHICCHAN, 9 CIMI, 10 MANIK and 11 LAMAT. This second phase will activate our throat chakra from the descending cosmic energy, and activate your solar plexus from the elevating energy from the core of the Earth. These four days begin collecting foundational wisdom. We will begin to let go, like a death of the past, and align with pure healing creation activating and transducing wisdom into a useable form. We exit the mental world and enter the world of spirit.

The THIRD PULSE will be from 4/22 – 4/25. These are the days of 12 MULUC, 13 OC, 1 CHUEN and 2 EB. This third phase will activate our center point, our HEART, now in balance between the cosmos and the Earth. These days are initiated with the energy of the cosmic moon of creation. Information is refined through spirit in a way to make it accessible. Some deeper issues may be triggered with emotions and heightened sensitivity. We can either destroy or create within the vastness of the heart. It will begin a starting over process. Health will need attention.

The FOURTH PHASE will be from 4/26 – 4/29. These are the days of 3 BEN, 4 IX, 5 MEN and 6 CIB. This fourth phase will now activate your solar plexus from the descending energies of the great central sun. It will also activate your throat chakra through the elevating energies from core of the Earth. These four days will begin with an activation called the pillars of light. It is where the Earth’s energy will begin to knit together with the energy from the great central sun. This phase will also be embedded with shamanic-like wisdom that is timeless. We will have access to higher forms of natural forces from the cosmos, and we will be able to anchor it into a more usable form on Earth. This is also where the real work will really start to kick in. Complex human relationships could feel unwieldy as we soar with broader vision and clarity about our service in the world. We will gain new boundaries that rise to a higher standard. This will trigger a more honest self-confidence, assisting us with being comfortable with authority figures without giving up personal power. During these days, we can learn to foster true community if focused upon.

The FIFTH and final phase will be from 4/30 – 5/3. These are the days of 7 CABAN, 8 ETZNAB, 9 CAUAC and 10 AHAU. This fifth phase will activate your root chakra from the descending energies of great central sun. It will also activate your crown chakra with the elevating energies from core of the Earth. These four days are the highest frequency of all 20 day signs, and they offer the most evolution â€¦ but they can also trigger the deepest work. Progressive and controversial creations could be birthed with strong convictions, but the challenge will be to hold it together. We might need space to face many new things that are reflecting back in the world mirror to us. If your focus is on community, we can develop cooperation skills instead of it having to be limited to self-interest vs self-sacrifice. Lightning flash clarity can come regarding accessing your own inner truth. We may be able to receive wisdom from physical or ethereal sources. We could be disappointed with unrealistic expectations triggered by our refined idealism. These are four very spiritual days where purification will rise to the forefront and even trigger our inner healer

The end of the 20 core days always leaves us a little frazzled, and we may feel a bit overwhelmed. We have absorbed so much in such a short amount of time that we may need to stop and breathe and just let it all settle in. Don’t try to force yourself to understand anything at first, because when you do, you push the wisdom away. Just allow all this to settle into your body, while the great central sun and the core of the Earth anchor inside of you. Once you gain some distance from these 20 days, you can look back and understand where you have grown and what transpired in these powerful days.

Keep in mind that these 20 core days could be viewed from many perspectives. There are layers within layers, and cycles within cycles, within infinite spherical time. This is only the front page of a huge book of knowledge that we all have access to. Keep your eyes and heart open. This is the energy that we all walk through together.

Source article: AlunaJoy.com

25 Mar 2021
Comments: 0

Project Drawdown: 100 Climate Solutions in Real Time

It’s easy to get depressed and feel helpless in the face of the cascading effects of climate change we’re experiencing today: mega-wildfires, extreme heat and drought, flooding, hurricanes on steroids, and melting ice caps, to name a few. However, it’s not hopeless; we can change the trajectory of our future if we make the right choices individually and together — beginning today.

Back in 2017, Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming was published. Edited by environmentalist and best-selling author Paul Hawken, the book presents 100 different ecologically sound ways to “draw down” carbon from the atmosphere by working in cooperation with natural systems. This was the first product of Project Drawdown, which was co-founded in 2014 by Hawken and fellow environmentalist Amanda Joy Ravenhill to uncover the most substantive climate solutions and communicate them to the world.

Drawdown refers to the to the time when greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to steadily decline, thereby stopping catastrophic climate change. Before Project Drawdown, the most widely stated climate goals were to slow down or stop greenhouse gas emissions, but to Hawken these were necessary but insufficient goals. “If you’re traveling down the wrong road, you are still on the wrong road if you slow down,” he opined. The only goal that makes sense is to reverse global warming, he believed — and there was no roadmap for that. Project Drawdown was the answer.

The solutions presented in the book and on the website were sourced from individual farms, communities, cities, companies and governments. A coalition of researchers and scientists selected those with the greatest potential to either reduce emissions or draw down and store carbon from the atmosphere, reviewed the literature on each solution, and devised climate and financial models for each. Then outside experts evaluated their work.

Both book and website are organized into eight sections: Energy, Food, Women and Girls, Buildings and Cities, Land Use, Transport, Materials, and Coming Attractions; and every solution contains information on its history and science, examples, a ranking in terms of its global emissions-reduction potential, an estimate of how many gigatons of greenhouse gases it avoids or removes from the atmosphere, and its costs.

Who would have guessed that refrigerant management would be in the top ten? Or that educating girls and family planning would be the second most important things we could do to reduce carbon emissions? It turns out that hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs, the primary current refrigerant) have 1,000 to 9,000 times greater capacity to warm the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. As for making the means of family planning more accessible and educating girls, these two rights-based solutions are projected to reduce the future global population by about a billion people, with commensurate savings in greenhouse gas emissions.

It’s hopeful to see so many natural solutions already in practice, but even more hopeful to see how many of them we can individually affect. For instance, we can all reduce the amount of food we waste (the #1 emissions saver), we can add more plant-based food to our diets and reduce our intake of meat (#3), and we can see that our old refrigerators and air conditioners are recycled properly (#4). And those SUVs? Last year the International Energy Agency found that SUVs were the second largest cause of the global rise in carbon dioxide emissions over the past decade! An analysis commissioned by The Guardian found that all the SUVs sold in the U.S. just in 2018 will in one year emit 3.5 million tons more in CO2 than if they were smaller cars. Over a 15-year lifetime of the vehicles, the extra pollution is on par with the entire annual emissions of Norway — a huge hit to the climate.

This year Project Drawdown published their latest update — the Drawdown 2020 Review — available for free download from their website. Their bottom line: the world can still reach Drawdown by mid-century, if we make the best use of all existing climate solutions. Ultimately, we can build a completely regenerative society, because when we implement natural solutions to solve the climate emergency, we produce a plethora of added benefits to human and planetary well-being — such as clean air and water, more nutritious food, less disease, and more productive and meaningful jobs.

The main challenge with the Drawdown solutions is that scaling them up will require international cooperation and coordination at unprecedented levels — and that depends on our leaders seeing global warming as the existential threat it is and acting with the requisite speed and determination. Achieving the needed global transformation will require a new paradigm of cooperation, a vision of possibility, and the collective will to address the issue.

Project Drawdown has produced a framework to guide us on a new pathway of ecological recovery and sustainability, but to act, we need to be able to touch, see, and feel the existing solutions at hand. In “Drawdown 2020 — The Time is Now,” the virtual event that introduced Climate Week in New York City in September, 2020, we experience the sight, sound, and feel of just a few of those solutions, and watching it for free on the website is electrifying.

There is so much in this inspiring presentation that one can get overwhelmed with possibility! At the end, clips of Academy Award-winning filmmaker Louis Psihoyos’ film “Racing Extinction” were shown as they were being projected onto the Empire State Building and then on the Vatican during the COP 21 international climate conference, creating 4.4 billion media impressions worldwide. Psihoyos says that, “Once you get 10 percent of the population 100% committed to a cause, it’s unstoppable.” With his films he aims to get 10 percent of the planet aware of the extinction crisis, and he’ll be doing similar projections of his film on iconic buildings worldwide in 2021.

Project Drawdown ultimately is a response to environmentalist Rachel Carson’s pioneering work beginning in the 1960s: “The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery — not over nature but of ourselves.” Rather than feeling climate change is something that’s happening to us, Paul Hawken asks us to consider that “global warming is happening for us — an atmospheric transformation that inspires us to change and re-imagine everything we make and do.” If we do that, he says, we begin to live in a different world.

About the Author:

Cher Gilmore is a community organizer, writer, and editor living in Southern California.

Original article here

22 Mar 2021
Comments: 0

The Dandelion Principle

One spring I volunteered at a botanical garden, spending many days uprooting what to my untrained eye looked like lovely flowers and plants, because they were “non-native.” This particular garden cultivates only indigenous plants, so any errant seeds that have the misfortune to blow in and bloom are routinely removed

I found myself apologizing to the blossoms I pulled, innocent flowers who happened to settle in the “wrong” location. And I began to contemplate how much of our sense of borders and boundaries trickles down to everything we express as a species. While I’m not a horticulturist, my sense of deep ecology evolved out of my own healing journey.

Living Beyond the Lawn

Growing up in suburban America, I observed fairly rampant homeowner disgust with the dandelion, scourge of suburbia’s well-manicured lawns.

Much later, I discovered that dandelion is one of the most healing herbs available to humanity, offering itself in abundance wherever we may dwell. It’s a supreme liver tonic, known to help detoxify the body’s “processing plant.” In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the liver equates to anger. 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 can act as de facto compost, gently 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 great clarity the incredible gifts all around us. Our teammates are everywhere, in the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms — if we have eyes to see.

Reimagining Inclusivity

As we move ever deeper into our collective rebirth process, we’ll be releasing people and places that no longer resonate with our lives now, and preparing to welcome in the new. Doing this with lovingkindness is our mandate. It’s a ripe moment to ask, who or what in my life seems like an outsider? Am I willing to look again, to enlarge the lens, to see beyond imaginary borders, to become inclusive rather than exclusive?

The Dandelion Principle says that where some see a weed, others see an herbal ally; a tonic not a toxic.

Where in your life is the medicine you need staring you in the face, masked as an undesirable…and all you need to do is shift your perception?

Below are seven practical steps to enlarge the lens this spring (fall, for our southern hemisphere allies): to slow down and look with the eyes of wonder, like a child. You’ll find many more on my mp3/CD, What You Need to Know Now: A Road Map for Personal Transformation:

Keep a journal. Buy a beautiful blank book and a pen that feels comfortable in your hand. Then allow yourself to write whatever and whenever you want. No one else need ever read it unless you choose to share, so send the censor packing! Journaling is like ingesting dandelion leaves with your pen — a great way to purge emotions and discover what really matters to you. And writing by hand is very different from writing on a digital device.
Dance your evolutionary process. Do you instinctively sway as you talk, or dance around the room when you get excited? Express your change process as flowing movement. Maybe it’s yoga, or tai chi, or free-form dance.
Make art. Are you a natural with a paintbrush or clay? Splash your emotions onto canvas, pour them into a mold, sketch them into being. Remember, this is art from the heart: done for the sole/soul purpose of enlarging your own vision.
Sing! Is your voice your most powerful expressive tool? If you love to sing but don’t know any songs, make up nonsense words to tunes you like, and sing them — in public. This is also a fabulous way to break free of the “What will people think?” trap.
Be in Nature. Sit by moving water. Sit inmoving water. Sing while sitting in a stream!
Prepare a meal that is as aesthetic as it is nutritious. As you combine ingredients, imagine that you are cooking up a grander vision for your life.
Hush. Spend a day, alone or with others, in total silence.

About the Author:

Amara Rose, Managing Editor of Ascension Lifestyle, 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.