Archive for the ‘Spirituality’ Category

Two phrases frequently repeated on the spiritual path are “the ascension process” and “paradigm shift.”  Often repeated… but not often understood. 

The ascension process refers to a period when the consciousness of a Soul, or many Souls, is elevated to new and expanded realms of understanding and possibility.

A paradigm shift is movement out of, and beyond, one framework of reality into another.

We are currently in the middle of both the ascension process and a paradigm shift.  Therefore, there are four qualities and characteristics that apply and that we can count on during such a transition. 

Infusion of Light

Light is energy.  Light illuminates.  Light obliterates darkness.  Light is intelligence.  Where the Light goes, obscurity is revealed.  “Darkness” in the context of spirituality is manifested as deceit, greed, arrogance, misuse of power, and oppression… among others. 

With the infusion of spiritual Light during the ascension process all that does not support higher consciousness is revealed.

No more secrets

General McChrystal … BP … open microphones for Joe Biden and Carly Fiorina …  Bernie Madoff … Obama appointee and jobs czar Van Jones having co-founded  the militant and revolutionary organization STORM… brothers John and Tony Podesta : John, CEO of the Center for American Progress advising President Obama on off-shore drilling in the Gulf and brother Tony, lobbyist for B.P. (can anyone say “conflict”?)…and the list goes on and on. 

So why are so many things surfacing that clearly were supposed to be kept secret?

It’s because during the ascension process there are no more secrets. 

Personal responsibility

Being unconscious is a little like being a child. Someone else needs to take responsibility for your actions.  Not so when we’re spiritually conscious and awake.  Now is the time to own that our every thought and action determines, in a literal sense, the reality in which we live, the quality of our relationships, as well as the world we are bequeathing the next generation.

Duty to question

Being responsible means questioning the status quo.  It’s no longer productive to be part of a “herd” mentality… to go along to get along.  Courageous inquiry is the watchword of the new paradigm into which we are moving.  

So why write about corruption and you?

Because it’s up to us now.

A good friend recently expressed being overwhelmed by it all and his feeling that, other than the ballot, we individuals are helpless in the face of so much obvious governmental and political corruption.  I would tell him this.

Things are probably no more corrupt today than they have been for a very long time.  What has changed is 1) access to the information; 2) the speed of dissemination of that information and, 3) the paradigm shift.  For just as the new paradigm has no room for that which is not in the highest good, so too does it require that each of us, on a daily basis, demand the highest integrity from ourselves and never fail to speak truth…your truth… to power.

I’m optimistic.  Change, while scary, is always for the good.  It just takes us awhile to gain the distance, and corresponding perspective, needed to be certain of this fact.

In the meantime, while you’re waiting, be the Light.

This morning I not only see the silver lining I can actually feel it. 

Yesterday, the United States House of Representatives passed universal health care. Today, much of the fear that had been plaguing so many people in this country has shifted.  Against all odds, and almost in defiance of reason, the immobilization and concern that are hallmarks of fear have been replaced with a call to action and optimism.

Why?  Because Life has its own agenda.  And as the saying goes, “Man plans and God laughs.”   There’s a parable that’s instructive here:

A horse and cart were being driven down the road when the horse tried to veer off to one side against the wishes of the driver.  So, she lightly pulled on the reigns and the horse returned to the original path.  Moments later, the horse once again veered off the road and this time the driver jerked on the reigns much more aggressively.  Reluctantly, but quickly, the horse resumed the direct path. Finally, on the horse’s third attempt to stray, the driver cracked the whip. Whereby, the horse immediately, and thereafter, stayed on the straight and narrow.

We have had countless “tugs on the reigns” as we, as a nation, have strayed from the direct and intended path.  To each of those we have responded in a way that returned us to where we needed to be… but only temporarily.  We are a “stiff-necked people” with a short memory, it seems.

So, yesterday, we received a miracle! 

The House of Representatives, at least 219 of them, cracked the whip…and while that was not their intention, God was laughing.  For the miracle of passing universal health care is that it has awakened a sufficient amount of people to conscious evolution that we have reached the tipping point.  Now, enough people understand what tyranny looks and feels like.  Now we can actually begin to move in the direction of real change… toward individual freedom, personal responsibility and the kind of oneness that reveals the perversion of socialism and other political systems that purport to speak and act for the best interest of the people.

The best interest of the people is best spoken and acted by the people.  Yesterday, 219 of our elected officials ignored that Universal Law in a push to pass the law of universal health care.  They’ve declared victory.

Listen.  Can you hear that sound?

God is laughing.

    

Our history has been selectively written for as long as we’ve been writing it, with the most selectivity occurring around the deliberate exclusion of the Divine Feminine.  There are more examples than I have space or time for here, but let me point out a few:

1.     Archaeological artifacts subjected to carbon-dating have identified worship of female deities as far back as 10,000 years B.C.E.

2.     Cleopatra spoke 9 languages, inherited a bankrupt country and turned it profitable, allowed women to be property owners and granted citizenship for meritorious service to the country.

3.     Victoria Woodhull, not Geraldine Ferraro, was the first woman to run on a Presidential ticket… and she ran for President!  Her V.P. running mate was a freed, black slave, Frederick Douglas.  It was 1872. Woodhull was also the first female stock broker on Wall Street.

But let’s revisit the archaeological finds for a moment.  Somewhere between 10,000 B.C.E. and the compilation of the Hebrew, Christian and Muslim religious writings, those female deities were unanimously and deliberately written out of our heritage… or at best relegated to minor, and sometimes troublesome, characters.

There is a spiritual (and I believe also religious) adage that goes “As above so below.”  Following that logic, what we see manifested here, in our world of matter, must necessarily exist on higher spiritual planes. 

So, here’s my understanding… and my dilemma.

But for the amoeba, wherever there is reproduction in the physical world, there exists a male, a female and an offspring.  If you’ll allow me, more commonly thought of as a father, a mother and a child.  Not once have I ever heard anyone say that an offspring was created by a male and a holy ghost. That being the case “below”… why is it that for 2000-3000 years, or more, we have been repeating and perpetuating a creation story (“as above”) that ignores and even denies the existence, role and contribution of the female?

I like to play with words.  Its a lifelong pastime.  Yesterday I was thinking about all of this and the word “mother” kept going around in my mind.  As I was pondering “why” this obvious omission of the Divine Feminine pervades our history, I was asking “why” when the letter “y” suddenly inserted itself in the word mother… between the “m” and the “other”… so it now read “my other.”  And I paused.  “My Other.”  The Father, the Son and My Other (Mother)!!! 

Much more plausible, isn’t it?

We are living through troubled and transformative times.  We need all the help we can get.  Even someone as near prophetic as Glenn Beck has been on unfolding events, was asking yesterday on-air where is a contemporary George Washington to lead us out of this mess. Beck then said, “Where is he? Where is that leader?”  Immediately followed by my yelling at the radio, “Or she Glenn…or she!”

Yes, we need help.  To that end, I have looked around thoroughly and cannot find one holy ghost anywhere.  But we have a globe populated with Mothers.  If we are pressed for time and cannot re-write the history books, perhaps we can make history instead by resurrecting to full status the Divine Feminine and the necessary contribution She was intended to make, and the role she was designed to fulfill, in maintaining the ongoing balance and harmony of all existence.

Now, I also have an issue with the whole “Son” thing… but that’s another blog, isn’t it?

I’ve always been a believer that Nature has a great deal to teach me.  Now I have to add that history does, too.  I’ve been following the relationship between President Obama and Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and quite frankl>y that relationship is, at best, disturbing. 

The President, Mr. Stern and SEIU have a long and entwined history that has generated a lot of mutual indebtedness.  Mr. Stern has a lot of White House access.  The Union, in the form of Mr. Stern, wants universal health care and they want it now.>  SEIU has a “chit” its calling in from the President for having donated $27 million dollars to his campaign.  Mr. Stern has not been shy about making that clear.  One need look no further to understand the White House’s push to force passage of health care legislation and impose it upon a nation where 52% of the population oppose it.

Its made me think about some historical figures.

Pharaoh, for one.  You know, the one of Moses’ fame who liked having organized labor do his dirty work and whose sweat kept him and his cronies in total control.  Or the Pharisees, also of biblical notoriety who, along with the Sadducees, corrupted the Priesthood of ancient Israel and are those who Jesus railed against when smashing their money-changing tables for doing business in his Father’s house on the Sabbath. 

When special interests get too close to corrupt power, much perversion is done both in the name of good and the name of God.> 

I think we’re there.

History is replete with similar analogies. And Nature is replete with as many “corrections.”   Flood, famine, tsunami, earthquake, volcanic eruption… Her list is lengthy.  Of course, there’s always that brief lull, or pause, between our awareness of the problem and Nature’s need to act on our behalf.  Its in that pause that we get the chance to self-correct… which much less overall trauma than if left to Nature.  At times we have seized that moment.  More often than not, we have not.

What will we do now?

We are in the pause.  You can feel it because things are speeding up and slowing down… all at the same time.  Its a moment… our moment… to self-correct.  We can now make some important, and at times difficult, decisions… or we can abdicate responsibility for what we know in our hearts is wrong.  Seriously wrong.

The choice belongs to each of us.  Step up or step down.  One way leads to higher ground.  The other leads to…. well let’s just say that in a difficult economy that continues to spiral out of control, ark building might soon be a very lucrative career choice.

I hope not.

It comes as no surprise to anyone who reads my posts that I like Glenn Beck.  If there was any doubt about that fact it was put to rest last night, Saturday night, when I turned down an invitation to go to a movie and dinner because the timing would have interfered with FOX’s live coverage of Beck’s speech as keynote at the CPAC conference.

I am willing to go out on a limb here.  I think Beck is a prophet.  Prophetic as in the biblical sense?  Yes and no.  Now, before you think this is all about Mormonism, Christianity or any other religion, let me tell you what I mean by that statement. 

In the biblical sense, I believe he is facing down the entrenched “powers that be” and speaking truth to power… even if the message is at times dire.  He is showing us the “pug-ugly” side and consequences of our poor choices while holding out hope that by combining faith with a course correction we can embark upon a higher road that will lead us to a grander view.

I believe his strength, insight and courage come from profound inner guidance.  He is Self-sourced and Self-directed.  What I mean is that through a personal and treacherous inner journey, he has accessed a voice within himself whose origin is the Source of All That Is.  For millennia, we have been taught that the Source is outside of ourselves.  Its not.  Its our birthright, as individual aspects of All That Is, to tap into that energetic Source and know for ourselves what thoughts, words, and deeds support the ongoing growth of life towards Its highest good. 

Beck has gone within and opened that line of communication.  Which is why I call him a prophet.  While he might not see or describe that Source as I do, I think we could agree on one thing.  He seeks the highest good for all concerned.

Where I would differ with him, and enlarge his message, is that its not just political in nature or application.  The messages of liberty, individualism, charity, forgiveness, dedication to higher principles, respect for differences, integrity and truth are universal and timeless.   They need apply and be the priority in every moment and in every nation. We are not just at a critical juncture in the story of the United States… we are at a critical juncture in the story of human consciousness. 

We, each one of us, is being given the opportunity to awaken to a new reality.  To understand our inherent connectedness and responsibility to everyone and everything else.  Not in the individual-deprecating manner of socialism…but rather in the full expression and celebration of individuality and personal responsibility within a framework of Oneness.

If the prophet analogy makes you uncomfortable, try Paul Revere. 

Beck is, and has been for several years, figuratively riding from town to town ringing the bell of awareness shouting “Change is coming. Change is coming.”  So much of what he has presaged thus far has turned out to be accurate.  Whether that prescience will continue or not, I don’t know.  What I do know is that if we step back and see the larger picture, he can be of enormous value in two ways.

The first is by his example of inner guidance.  The second by his fearlessness.

If we allow him to teach us nothing other than those two lessons, I think history will find a worthy place for him… regardless of whether he turns out to be a prophet or not.

While recently contemplating all the disappointment surrounding President Obama’s performance during his first year in office, I thought about the national need for change and how the promise of it resonated so strongly that it propelled him into office.  Then I thought about where we are at the moment and how we haven’t quite gotten what was promised… or what was expected.

So what went wrong?

I think the key word is “need.”  We needed change so badly we grabbed onto the first person who looked and sounded as if he understood our need.  But neediness is tricky business. When you act out of need, and strike a deal based upon it, there is always a back-end price that turns out to be more than you were willing to pay.  And like it or not… pay it you will.

Change has several characteristics.   Its natural, necessary, takes time, and requires sacrifice.  It can’t be gifted, bought, or bargained for. Its the stuff of Life.  In fact, its the paradox of Life because the only thing you can count on for sure in Life is change.

But as with anything else, when you need it too badly, you tend to overlook a lot to fill the need.  We do it all the time in personal relationships.  We overlook qualities in another that would otherwise be deal-breakers simply because they have something we need.  Thinking their presence in our life will somehow change it for the better, we proceed throwing caution to the wind. 

We do it with acquisition.  We buy things we can’t afford because we need whatever it is that thing represents to make us feel or look better… or to fill a void we’d otherwise rather not explore.

So, when in 2008, we all innately knew we were living on the edge in too many ways, we also knew it was  time to change that fact.  We were right to think it.  We were foolish to think that the necessary change would come so easily by way of bumper sticker and a charismatic speaker.  Anyone who has ever watched or studied how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly knows better.  It’s a slow, and at times, painful process.  It requires loss and letting go.  It also requires endurance and the ability to survive adversity. 

It happens one caterpillar at a time. 

There is no top down solution to what ails us.  No one is going to legislate, adjudicate or mandate us out of this one.  As Barry Manilow once wrote, “This One’s For You.”   This one is for each of us to go within, find our values, our determination and the strength to endure change…and then to live it all in every facet of our lives…each and every day.

Knowing your core values, having unwavering determination and garnering inner strength you become exempt from need.   Exempt from need you need not cut any deals for which you will later find yourself unable to pay that back-end fee.

If the man we elected President in 2008 now seems to have disappointed us, and our plight no better and perhaps worse than he took office, remember that we cut a deal.  We needed change and he promised to bring it. 

I think the lesson is to be the change you want to see in the world.  I didn’t originate that realization, it was Gandhi’s mission statement.  He lived it and so changed the future of India.  Not by promising to give change to his countrymen but by showing them, by example, how to do it themselves… one person at a time.

Mr. President, I’m still waiting.
 

I was flipping through the Sunday morning news shows today…Chris Matthews, This Week, and Face the Nation…and found it rather incredible that all those educated panelists are so out of touch with what is really happening in this country. It’s as if they are incapable of changing the context in which they evaluate the state of things. 

Maybe its just me but I don’t think so.

From where I stand, and consequently how I see things, most people have reached a saturation point in their lives concerning materialism, self-gratification and, yes, even technology.  Its been a nice ride but when all is said and done we came up empty.  Empty and yearning for something more.  Something that can’t be bought or even held onto..unless its what we give away. 

You see, that’s the paradox.

Our national search for “more”…be it whatever “more” we wanted…turned out to be a quest for fool’s gold.  Or false idols, depending on your belief system.  All the doing, getting and having solved nothing and, in fact, created more problems than we can apparently handle at the moment.  It’s a lot older that Ivan Beosky’s University of California Berkley speech in 1986 where he told the graduating class “Greed is healthy” …although I think his words were a seminal moment by the absence of public outrage that failed to follow his pronouncement.  Our silence spoke volumes about us and the future direction of our country.

Now, almost 25 years later, after proceeding down the path Boesky and we by our silence condoned, we have arrived at an unintended and undesirable destination. 

The People get it. But those who govern, and most of those reporting upon it, don’t.  They’re still talking about fixing the economy or closing the information leaks or creating jobs or lowering foreclosures and reinvigorating the housing market as those things that will return our lives to some recognizable scenario.

But its not about any of that. It’s about balance and unity.

It’s about lives that are balanced between what we take in and what we give out.  It’s about relationships that honor and respect differences.  It’s about bringing children into the world and then actually devoting the amount of time it takes to raise them with commendable values.  It’s about truth telling in our personal and professional lives.  It’s about compassion as the highest form of love.  It’s about pursuing technological development but not at the expense, or disregard, of ethical and spiritual development.  It’s about knowing how connected we are to everything on Earth and beyond… so that we think and act with the realization that our every thought and our every action matters. 

So, to the people who govern and those who report upon it all: You can try and resurrect the past, or project how well your opinions and ideas will shape the future.  But in the only analysis that matters, there is only the moment in which you are living.  If you refuse to see and sense it for what it actually is you are living in an illusion and, therefore, part of the problem… not the solution.

Which is why I don’t often watch Sunday morning news show.

It seems that its becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with all the news.  You pick the category and there’s some breaking story in it.  It really is information overload. 

What’s a person to do?

Well, may I suggest silence.  Its a beautiful, and healing, alternative.  I know because lately I’ve begun to meditate.  Now please don’t write me off as some mystic, or former hippie, who is looking for some way to “drop out.”  I am, and always have been, a Type A personality.  If I’m not in motion, or using my brain in some challenging way…well such reckless frivolity has always been the very definition of “lazy” in my book.  No, what led me to meditation was a combination of 1) coaxing from a dear friend and 2) more “news” than I could handle. 

What I’ve learned from meditation is that there’s more to learn in silence than in all the news that’s fit to print…or broadcast…or telecast…or tweet.  In silence exists an internal knowing that transcends words.  Really. You can’t describe it.  You have to be it. When you are being it, what you feel is everything you’ve ever sought.  Truly.  Now my assumption is that what we all ultimately go in search of is inner peace. I mean, really, isn’t all that we aspire to and seek done in the hopes of acquiring some satisfaction that always seems just beyond our reach…or so transient it was hardly worth the getting?

Well, here’s breaking news.

Inner peace comes from within!  Duh!  You’d think that would be self-evident.  However, we humans with our opposable thumbs and high tech world are still running around trying to find it outside of ourselves. Duh, squared!

So I could have posted this blog entry about Iran’s launch into space, or the White House leak about the cooperating terrorist who tried to blow up a plane Christmas day with explosive underwear, or the yet again declining DOW, or the rumor that the Jolie-Pitts are on  the rocks…but here’s the thing.  I’d just be adding to the information overload.  So instead, I decided to share with you the sound of silence. 

Once in a while, its really sweet to have nothing to say… and even less to listen to.

>
It has become increasingly difficult, some might say nearly impossible, for dishonest and corrupt politicians to keep their lies and greed confined to back room deals and off-the-record conversations.  Have you noticed? 
And why is that?

Its because the pendulum can swing only so far before it swings back again.
>
The Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal was the real turning point, or in the pendulum analogy, the point beyond which the corruption could go no further and had to necessarily reverse itself.  I call the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal “corruption” because it’s occurrence was a corruption of decency, dignity, and integrity. The “outing” of that descent into moral depravity and betrayal of trust on so many levels was significant not for the act itself but for the outing of it.  For in the outing, the pendulum finally reached that critical point where it changes direction.

The directional change we took was away from alienation and apathy for all things ethical and spiritual towards a remembering and rekindling of those same values.

So what does the Obama Administration and secrets have to do with all of this.  In particular not much. In general quite a bit.

This Administration is no more corrupt, greedy or lacking in conscience than those that preceded it.  However, because it is as corrupt as its predecessors, and because the pendulum has changed direction the corruption, greed and lack of conscience will no longer remain undetected or unaccounted for.

And so, no more secrets.

Every day there’s another breaking story about a new back room deal, a quid pro quo in order to get a vote, legislation that’s intended pay back the few at the expense of the many and much, much more.  While its  easy to chalk it up to dogged investigative reporters or the ease with which the technology makes it difficult to keep such things hidden, I think not. 

May I suggest another reason?

Yesterday on television, Glenn Beck interviewed Governor Sarah Palin.  When asked about the soulless behavior of the politicians in Washington, and how it may be impossible to serve in government without losing one’s soul, she replied (and I paraphrase)  “We live in a fallen world and other than our spouse we are not supposed to put our trust in another person, especially not politicians.”

I take issue with Governor Palin’s observation.  By her reply she is obviously religious.  If you read my blog you know I am obviously spiritual.

They are not the same thing.

I do not see the world as “fallen.”  I do not believe there is original sin. Nor an avenging God.  I do believe like the Universe in which we live, We are part of an expanding Consciousness moving towards evermore enlightenment and understanding.  And as you move towards en-Light-enment, things that do not support the expansion, and cannot withstand the Light, are exposed and seen for what they truly are.
 
Hence, no more secrets. That which has been hidden from us is now emerging into the Light of day.  It is no longer possible to keep such behavior obscured among the shadows. 

This is not a bad thing. However, it makes for a difficult transition.  We have lived in the shadows for quite some time now and so the light of day presents us with challenges.  For one, our “eyes”… how we see things…have to adjust to a clarity and brightness we are unaccustomed to. 

It would be wise for those with apparent power in positions of authority to realize what is happening.  For unless they do, and change their values and behavior accordingly, they will go the way of the dinosaurs.  

We are spiritually going through the equivalent of a cataclysmic change. A new environment is the natural result of such profound change.  It isn’t the strong who will survive.

Its those who understand Oneness.

  

It was just two days ago that I posted about the drought in Venezuela and its potential impact on the government of Hugo Chavez.  The point of the post was to call attention to the power of Nature in relationship to the power humans like to think we wield.  Now comes a devastating earthquake in Haiti with massive destruction and as yet untold numbers of lives lost.

Its all Natural law at work.

I’m not certain about global warming and whether we’ve created the problem, exacerbated it, or if it even exists at all.  There seems to be a plethora of science on all sides of the argument.  What I am certain of is that for thousands of years we have, at best, ignored the other forms of life with which we share planet Earth and at worst, exploited them for our personal pleasure and gain.

All bills come due, not just our national deficit.

While we are myopically focused on trying to stay afloat during an economic downturn and pass universal health care, we’re neglecting to notice the warning sign emanating from Earth.  She has had enough. I say “she” because “giving” is a characteristic of the Divine Feminine.  The Earth, and all of Nature, know how to give.  They give repeatedly and without demand, thus ensuring the cycle of life and all that it takes to sustain it.

In a groundbreaking book titled “The Chalice and The Blade” Riane Eisler explores, with specificity and over 50 pages of source notes, the archaeological discoveries and historical records that now point to both Paleolithic and Neolithic societies previously believed to be patriarchal which, in fact, were matriarchal.  Matriarchal… without wars, and deeply aligned with and respectful of Nature.

So somewhere we went off track.  Somewhere we decided that it was all here for our use and abuse.  That self-satisfaction was the goal and greed was the means of attaining it.  It has gotten us only so far. 

It appears we’re arrived at a critical evolutionary pause. Unlike those who see Armageddon, or some other cataclysmic event as the obvious outcome, I believe we have an alternative. 

We can restore the Divine Feminine and all that She stands for to Her rightful place alongside the Divine Masculine.. and by that restoration reinvigorate our values, behavior and language with the dignity and respect due every living human being and thing.

In having denigrated and abandoned the Divine Feminine we also abandoned ourselves.

The bill is now due.  We can pay it with our lives or we can enter into a repayment plan whereby, over time, we replenish through thought, word and deed the abundant bounty that was our birthright and which we so carelessly undervalued and exploited. 

It is time to stop taking and start giving.

No one better exemplifies this quality of giving for the highest good of all concerned than the Divine Feminine… Mother of All That Is.  In Her restoration, we restore ourselves unto ourselves.  And in so doing, discover not a tragic end but rather a glorious new beginning.