At our core is our own consciousness, our True Selves, the only escape and remedy for mass consciousness. Think of how many times today you heard the words “groundhogs day” and “Punxsutawney Phil” and “six more weeks of winter.”  Technically, there are always six more weeks of winter, because the ancient festival of Imbolc is on the first of February, the cross-quarter day between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, March 21, the official beginning of Spring, regardless of Punxsutawney Phil prediction.

Mass consciousness is easy to align with–makes you wonder if people will actually manifest six more weeks of winter due to a photo-op with the groundhog of the day. All the various media and the Internet have to pick up on the topic of the day, just as I am, to ride the wave of mass consciousness.  If enough people believe it, they will believe it happened, regardless of the facts. Does anyone ever go back and see if the groundhog was right?  No, he’s just a photo-op.

This Groundhog Day in South Carolina was 72 degrees–warmer than some April days even here.  I’ve heard a number of people commenting, almost if they feel guilty, that somehow we must pay for the very unseasonable weather we’re enjoying. Some people here have said in passing, “Well, we get our bad weather in March,” which is both true and yet a self-fulfilling time loop. If you expect it, and think it, and say it aloud, it will happen, and even if it doesn’t, you remember it that way.

You can have what you say.  What have you been saying to yourself?  What does Punxsutawney Phil–or Dr. Phil for that matter–say about that?  What does it matter?

Do you ever wonder why you repeat the same actions, day after day, like Bill Murray in his Groundhogs Day time loop?  Being able to respond in a different way was his lesson, and that is only because he gave up his cynical attitude towards life.  Mass consciousness keeps us in this kind of loop, doing the same thing over and over, and expecting results to be different.

We are creatures of habit, flowing along with mass consciousness, the thoughts of those broadcast around us, much like winter’s meltwater runs downhill in the spring. It’s appropos that the Bill Murray character was a broadcaster, that he added cynical negativity to the audience and the whole crew, leaving himself no friends and only himself to live with repeating every day in Punxsutawney until he could find the heart within himself– learning to save a child from a fall, picking up a new skill, and making the best outcome possible of the one day in his time loop. He changed his life so he could live with himself, and that got him the girl–and the escape from Groundhogs Day.

It’s not possible to change the media–it’s a gaping maw that swallows all the “content” the population of Earth can feed it, whether it’s global warming or groundhogs day or elections or wars or who’s doing whom,  just like a time loop.    Some people–ski resorts, for example–are praying for more snow and cold to bless their slopes. Others, like me, are enjoying the dent the sun makes in my heating bill.  How many people does it take to shift mass consciousness away from the groundhogs day report to focus on their own individual moment?

Each of us can learn to turn inside, as Bill Murray learned to do, to live with ourselves  and be present in the moment, doing here and now what we can to live our dream and make it come true.

I like to think of Punxsutawney Phil taking a look outside and saying to himself, “to heck with this crap. I’m going to hibernate for another month.” He’s dropping out of the time loop.   I’m going outside to smell the crocus blooming in my front yard, and I’m not thinking at all about the grass that is starting to grow again.

eudaemonism, also spelled eudaimonism, or eudemonism, in ethics, a self-realization theory that makes happiness or personal well-being the chief good for man. The Greek wordeudaimonia means literally “the state of having a good indwelling spirit, a good genius.”

The indwelling spirit of each of us is that Genius, that which is called variously Source, Spirit, Spark of Divine or simply God/dess.  That conscious ness that is you is the consciousness of the Universe experiencing life AS YOU!

Umair Haquesays here about the classic Greek principle of eudaimonia: “Eudaimonic prosperity, in contrast, is about mastering a new set of habits: igniting the art of living meaningfully well. An active conception of prosperity, it’s concerned not with what one has, but what one is capable of.”

To grant one’s own wishes is more than making a few tweaks in one’s lifestyle. It is a transformation, magical and spiritual, of your perspective, of your purpose in life, of your goals.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Bucky Fuller

What are you truly capable of?  Whatever you dream of , it is the Genius Within that dreams.  Dare to make that wish. Dare to find and fulfill your purpose. Listen to that genius within.

Take the baby steps in the direction you want to go–even if it’s only putting geraniums on the porch or writing that first sonnet or making a new game [social chocolate]

You Daimon You!

Radio Active and Invisible?

Sometimes I get truth from the least likely places.

“Do you ever feel invisible?” asked the woman on the radio.

She assured me that her skin cream would make me radiant, and people would see me again.  I wondered for a minute if I would be radiant as in radioactive…shining blue in the night.  Would people be able to see me, or only hear a faint Geiger counter sound as I walked by.

I walked past two women today at my favorite garden, and they acted as if they didn’t see me. Maybe they are just not from the Southern USA and don’t know that they should acknowledge other people.  But I think I was invisible.

I’m not that hard to see. In fact, I’d be hard to miss. One of my challenges is to have a normal sized body, not to be fat.  However, one of my deepest fears is that if I lose weight, down to what the weight charts say a person my height and age should weigh, that I would disappear. That I will be invisible.

This is obviously some deep-seated neurosis, but the commercial had me thinking.

What would make me invisible? I think the answer is that I have not been full of myself lately (no comment on what I might be full of).

Think of a child playing in joy and exuberance:  she’s full of herself.

If your are full of yourself, you are not invisible.  It’s not the noise you make, or the application of emollients or any other outer circumstances.

Being visible means being full of yourself, being fully present now and here.  How can you receive the gift of the present if you aren’t present?

My answer to my weight problem is to be full of me…not chocolate, fried chicken or banana pudding.  I need to be full of myself, fully present, and thinking about what I do want, instead of what I don’t want. One, I would not notice if someone else did not acknowledge me, because I would be busily involved in living my own life.

More importantly, however,  in being fully present myself, I might notice others, acknowledge them, and let them know they are not invisible.  Or I might just observe them and write them into my next novel.

Insight is the perfect title for these perspectives on reality because they teach how to see the Universe within oneself, and oneself within the Universe.   Each insight is linked to a totem animal:  Snake, Jaguar, Hummingbird, Eagle.  What I found coincidental –or more likely, synchronistic– is that as I have studied energy work, magic, and manifesting, I made associations with Snake (feminine earth magic of renewal) and with Jaguar (community, relationship, creativity).  Both of these associations happened years–even a decade before I read this book this weekend, but Villoldo’s explanations of how these insights work and what their gifts are align perfectly with my experience of them.

My magical name, Snake Dancer, came to me as I studied the feminine mysteries in a Dianic circle. I came there to learn about the divine feminine and to make my transition from mother to crone. This experience was very helpful in learning new stories and new perspectives on stories I knew, not only about goddess wisdom, but about my own stories. Yet it did not free me from my old stories, but added a victimized feminist layer to them, and an angry energy of retaliation.  It was not the peace I had been looking for, the peace and happy acceptance of my femininity.The Laika are based in a divine feminine relationship with not only the earth, but the connection to spirit.

Five years ago, I decided to go to graduate school to study mythology, and on the first day of class, our group became the Jaguars, or the Jags, because of a dream one of our professors had the night before.  This group, which over the two years we were in school together coalesced as eleven women and one man, is now my sisters and brothers.  Each of us has experienced the community of a new family, and each of us has found a source of energy for our creativity, our expression of the life force as it comes through our talents and training, through teaching, leading spirit journeys, or finding new vocation.

On my next reading, I will be working through each exercise, focusing first on the Snake energy of the first chakra, to understand more deeply the focus on the physical realm, but my goal will be to learn how to move my consciousness from one insight to the other and to know from experience which to use for what purpose. Then I will focus on getting a clearer vision from the Jaguar level, the level of relationship and creativity, to be more consciously aware of what I know subconsciously.

Reading this book tells me that I will be moving into the energy of the hummingbird, seeing with the third eye, and better able to visualize my dreams and remove my blocks to making them happen–being my own fairy godmother. Finally, I can reach to the Eagle perspective and begin to be more aware of myself in the flow of the energy of the Universe, and to recognize in an experiential way how I am related to  All That IS.

It can hardly be coincidence that a friend urged me to buy this book and read it at this time when I am feeling stuck and not sure where to aim myself. Gaining the four insights will help me look into the future and find the future I want, and to clear out the blocks of the past that have so far kept me from even knowing what I want.

If you don’t know what you want, you certainly can’t wish for it. I do not want to limit myself to the survival wishes of the Snake–food, shelter, money, security. Instead, I want to complete my destiny for this lifetime,  to do what I came here to do, to learn what that is, and to accomplish it. Villoldo will be one of my guides along the way.

NOTE: the link  to The Four Insights is an Amazon affiliate link. I will get a kickback from Amazon if you purchase the book from them through my link.

In the box was a plain, white ceramic pot, a disk of what looked like a thick coaster of compressed pencil shavings, and a dried-out bulb the size of a large onion. Two pale nubs, like giant fingernails, stuck out from the bulb, and only their waxy fullness showed that the whole thing was not completely dead. But what a difference now that I’ve added water, set it in the window, and waited a couple of weeks.

When I put the disk of shavings into a cup of warm water, it expanded into more medium–it isn’t dirt–than would fit into the pot, even without the bulb.  I made a hole in it for the bulb and packed the damp medium around the bulb, letting the nubs and the collar of wrinkled skin stick up into the air. It didn’t look promising.

Two or three days later, the nubs turned green and then grew so fast I could almost see them stretching, half an inch or more a day.  Now the flower stalk is up, the bud like the head of a crane taking off from a lake.

Just add water. That’s all I have done, add water and made a small space for it in my life amidst the clutter on my desk at home.  The life force in the bulb has done all the work.  I’ve seen these bulbs in the stores after Christmas, sprouting out of their boxes where no one is watering or watching them.  They strive for life, growth, bloom, fruit. but with no care, the leaves wilt and die. They just need a bit of water and light.

What about that  life force within us that strives to bloom, to push up out of the boxes where we are stuck, waiting for someone to put a  little water on us?

Unlike bulbs, we can do this ourselves, by watering our inner spirit with listening, in silence, with natural sounds, with soothing music, with time to let the spirit move–spirit needs exercise as much as body.

The life force is there within us. Our beautiful flower waits impatiently to burst forth and stretch to the light, to open to share fertilizing ideas and interaction with other spirits. It wants to bring forth its fruit, a quickening of renewal.

Marion Woodman says that people who turn to drugs like amphetamines and cocaine are looking for light in their darkness, that people who abuse alcohol are looking for spiritual peace.  How much spiritual damage starts with lack of water from ourselves, from our families and friends and institutions that claim to support us?

I think much of the spiritual starvation of our times is based on the substitution of spiritual snack-food bumper stickers, artificially-sweetened platitudes, and over-processed entertainment that keeps us perched, dried out, on top of in our compressed disk of time management and frenetic activity.  No water is there, or only water that is contaminated with the equivalent of high-fructose corn syrup, artificial colors, and unpronounceable preservatives.

Listening is water to the spirit. Listening takes time and space away from the clutter of the modern world. Writing, drawing, playing music, walking in nature, practicing craft, stretching talent, petting the cat or dog, doing the work at hand, all of these things water the spirit if done with intent to listen, for spirit strives toward the light, towards life.

Spirit is waiting to talk. Are you listening?

I  whined grumpily that I was tired, and she said something brilliant.

“Why don’t you raise your vibration so we can keep working on this?  Then you can find out what you need to do today., and you’ll feel better.”

At moment, I could only think dark and cloudy thoughts. I didn’t want to do the work anymore, even though I had asked her to help me. I wanted to just give up and escape.

“Think of it this way,” she said. “If your mind was a machine, and there was a piece that was broken or worn out, you could just stop for a minute, take out the bad part and put in a new part.”

I could see it in my mind–a sort of grimy, greasy machine with a lot of gears, and a handle that I was having to push very hard to turn. When I stopped to look at the imaginary machine,  I could see that one piece was missing some cogs. I took it out–it was conveniently located at eye level and not constrained by serpentine belts, bearings or safety covers–and replaced it with a bright, shiny new one, which of course magically appeared in my hand.  It was a new thought.

Even that seemed like a lot of work, just imagining it. But I did feel better, just for thinking about something else for a few seconds.

Then Rachel told me how she could always find that feeling, any time she needed it. She said, “I just imagine flying…soaring around a thermal…” She stretched out her arms. ” or swooping around, not doing anything, no strings, not looking for food or doing anything but enjoying being in the air. ”  She once drew a picture of a happy harpy several years ago, and the image of it came into my mind.

The Happy Harpy By Rachel H. White

Just watching her was uplifting. My grumpiness was not completely gone, but it had lightened enough that I would at least imagine standing on top of a mountain or sitting up in a tree, always a place of peace and calm for me.

I can remember dreaming of flying. I decided that such a daydream would be a good one to cultivate and practice for when I was feeling weighted down.  So I’ve been spending a fem seconds every time I think about it , just imagining soaring in the sky, with the sun on my feathered back and the wind rippling the edges of my pinfeathers.

Try it. Soaring like the eagles beats the heck out of hanging out with the turkeys.

Posted using ShareThis

Regardless of your politics or your opinion of the outcome of the elections, please read Ms. Walker’s words of wisdom as if they were addressed to you personally. This letter will inspire me for many days to come:

Open Letter to Barack Obama from Alice Walker
Nov. 5, 2008

Dear Brother Obama,

You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history.

But seeing you deliver the torch so many others before you carried, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, only to be struck down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is almost more than the heart can bear.

And yet, this observation is not intended to burden you, for you are of a different
time, and, indeed, because of all the relay runners before you, North America is a different place. It is really only to say: Well done.

We knew, through all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the spirit of Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would actually appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and character, is a balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only sung about.

I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on.

One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax.

From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.

I would further advise you not to take on other people’s enemies. Most damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion.

We must learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise. It is understood by all that you are commander in chief of the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we understand, completely.

However, as my mother used to say, quoting a Bible with which I often fought, “hate the sin, but love the sinner.” There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people’s spirit. This has already happened to people of color, poor people, women, children. We see where this leads, where it has led.

A good model of how to “work with the enemy” internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet.

Because, finally, it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies.

And your smile, with which we watch you do gracious battle with unjust characterizations, distortions and lies, is that expression of healthy self-worth, spirit and soul, that, kept happy and free and relaxed, can find an answering smile in all of us, lighting our way, and brightening the world. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

In Peace and Joy,
Alice Walker

Amen. –Charlotte

For a mere $15, you can learn

I’m not an affiliate, but this looks like a great idea to me.