Wisdom for Cheer and Happy New Year

Merry Christmas, New World!

Christmas is 9 months after March 25, which is the feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary to announce that she would give birth to Jesus Christ the Son of God. It is commonly understood by people of today that Christ paved the way for Christ consciousness, so the second coming is within each of our hearts and minds.

On March 25, 1998, as the 900th birthday of Hildegard of Bingen was being celebrated worldwide, I was visited by Jesus, or more accurately, I visited Mary Magdalene as she witnessed the resurrection of her beloved Jesus. This event still brings tears to my eyes, as it put me most firmly on my track to where I am today, writing the book that I’ve been trying to write since the spring of 1988 when my first big mystical awakening blossomed. In the fall of 1987 after the Harmonic Convergence, which I’d heard of and wondered what good it could do, I went into a trance of being a nun kneeling to pray in the light of my favorite window in a small rough-hewn stone space. Ten years later I fully discovered that my past life was Hildegard, and it’s taken more than another ten years to integrate that. I set out to accomplish so many things, including finding my soulmate (I knew she would be like Elisabeth von Schonau, and voila!), founding a spiritual community, and understanding my mission in life. All these things and more have come to pass and will be explained in the book that I am deep into now, hence my apologies for not putting much effort into this blog lately.

I don’t know where to begin with the gratitude, so many have supported my soul and my life. I will paraphrase one mystic whose name escapes me now, “it was in me to give because I was given so much”. I want to say a big thank you to Rudolf Steiner, in whose lectures at the end of his life he dared to “out” the paths of many great souls, in hopes that one day such knowledge might help save the Earth. It shall. In his time the ignorance was rising; he was himself persecuted and called a Jew by those who would kill six million and more, but who failed of course to kill the World Soul, as the reincarnated return knowing more what to do (Temple Grandin for example knew what to do). In volume 4 of Karmic Relationships by Steiner my own path is described, and he is perfectly correct! Since the First Council of Nicaea I have been trying to understand and promote humanity’s fate to become divine. Rest assured that the Love you would know plays a part, for as my dear friend Fyodor once said and I will quote again here, “Beauty will save the world.”

Many thanks to Emanuel Swedenborg, for so much he got right. You inspired me friend with your own writings on humanity’s angelic evolution; may you be so happily joined with your soulmate now. Many thanks to Courtney Bender, Columbia University sociologist who followed her own bliss to interview the friends of Hildegard in 2002; I would encourage all to enjoy her new book “The New Metaphysicals” best purchased on Amazon (the university press gives no discount to bookstores). Many thanks of course to my friends, to my parents, to Lazaris and Jesus and Goddess and God and Great Spirit and All That Loves (and therefore Is).

Thanks too to the many fine scholars who have worked to revive interest in Hildegard, sister of my soul, since the early 1960’s; they worked without knowing to support my own birth and growing up. Of course I expect them to be horrified when I say who I was, nonetheless they know what it is like to follow the call of the soul and serve the world, so they deserve all the respect we who know why they did what they did can too revive. Anyone who thinks I sully Hildegard's life may rest assured she is plenty active on her own; feel free to call on St. Hildegard, just as anyone should feel free to call on your own grand and glorious Higher Self when the purpose of love and more light is served. If anyone thinks my past life is great, wait til they see their own future self!

I was so grateful to be invited to a special solstice ritual this past week, led by a good Cherokee man. He was so happy and awed to have remembered in the hours or days prior, that it had been long prophesied by the Native Americans, that the old world of darkness would end and the new world of light would begin when the red moon came on the darkest night. The red moon is the lunar eclipse, as the shadow of the Earth, representing humanity’s darkness, covers the guiding light of the illumined unconscious and turns the moon dark with the color of blood. So many have died here in this land in what is surely the largest genocide ever recorded and still not recognized, yet how many good spirit guides come to us as Native American. The love and forgiveness here boggles the mind.

So yes, the prophecy came to pass! On the morning of December 21 this year 2010, there was a full moon on the solstice, which itself happens only every few years. But more, to have a full lunar eclipse, that strange coincidence of the Earth’s shadow being just the right size to cover the moon when too the moon is the right size to cover the sun at other auspicious times, that has not happened on the solstice since December 21, 1638, no doubt predating the prophecy. And so gently, quietly, without a lot of fuss, the world turned from darkness to light. And all at our circle committed themselves to being the best and fullest human they were meant to be, to love and serve the Mother Earth. The I who is writing my book am happy and honored to do no less. Thank you Lady Gaia for the parts you give us to play on your loving and numinous stage, this planetary surface of more miracles and beauty than our weaker but earnest minds can ever hope to enumerate, yet still will we joyfully try.

That night I read to our solstice gathering the following revision of William Butler Yeat’s most dreaded and dark poem The Second Coming, written in 1919 about the end of the world. I’d made an inverted version in June of this year before starting this blog to celebrate the beginning of the new world that I could already feel, at a time when many psychics were dreading the summer which turned out alright after all, thanks to the arrival of more beings of the Love in the Light. I’m not claiming the mystical structure nor the poetry of the following verse, for Yeats was as brilliant as he must have been scared. I only felt the love of Spirit for the opportunity to turn around another great mystic’s forboding’s of the coming disaster called the Shoah, the calamity. Nie wieder, never again, it can be truly stated now. Thank you God.

Second Coming, in the Hope of Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon finally heard the falconer;
Things fell together; the centre always held;
Mere love is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide has receded, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is reborn;
The best recall their conviction, while the worst
have forgotten their passionate intensity.

Every day another revelation is at hand;
Surely every Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Propels my sight: somewhere in the depths of each heart
A shape with angel body and the face of a human,
Its gaze warm and enlivening as the sun,
Is stirring its charges awake, while all about it
Reel starlight forms of the friends of the Earth.
The darkness drops again; and now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were carried in slumber by a rocking cradle,
And what glorious being, its hour come round at last,
Rises in you to be born?

Thanksgiving alignment poem

The mind would explain what the body enjoys,
by false starting plans for more carnal poise.
The heart will align what neither can meet:
the spiritual life in a sensual treat.

Why I'm Tired of Apocalypse Theory

Going on and on about the nature of evil is like discoursing endlessly about the influence of a dead end street to be avoided at the commencement of a glorious and long awaited cross country journey. It is only interesting in the first few moments of venturing forth to make certain that the wrong turn is not taken. I'm sorry, but darling, there is so much more ahead for us to share and see.

My apologies to Vladimir Soloviev, but you know you didn't enjoy that last decade of life as much as you could have.

Vision: Self-determination is a God-given right!

Many blessings on this Veteran's Day to all those who give themselves in part and whole to the causes of true liberty. May the ways of peaceful resistance become ever more illuminated and practicable in this abundant world of many Buddhas, Christs, and countless daily saints.

Please enjoy this trailer of Margarethe's fabulous film about me and my friends, which debuted in Telluride on Jutta's reincarnated birthday and in Rome on mine. I know that the movie offers a subjective and necessarily condensed view of their lifetime, but not only is it based quite faithfully on many quotes, I feel that the director was very spiritually guided to make the experience most resonant and touching. From the opening fanciful scene - "That is the sun! That is the sun!" - I wept gratefully, for appearances of Apollo have become most significant to me ever since a certain return to the wellspring of Greek ideals and the time of Plato.

I know not the details of the German source material nor the latitudes for translation, but Hildegard's statement that "Self-determination is a God-given right!" is most beautiful and relevant, since it is indeed the sacred right of the immortal Soul as given us by God to determine our own past life selves, even as we gather each our present life supports for entering that future of the coming Heaven on the Earth.

Blessed be both One and All, for blessed is the One in All!

=>=>=> Vision: From the Life of Hildegard of Bingen

A day for the rest of us

Happy All Souls day!

Also known as The Feast of All Souls, or The Day of the Dead, this commemoration for those spirits who have yet to attain the beatific eternal vision of God follows All Saint's Day, which commemorates those who have. Primarily observed in the Roman Catholic Church, this is the time to pray for those loved ones in purgatory states whose attachments to sins which occlude heavenly knowing are still being cleansed.

You know, the rest of us. :-)

For most, physical Earth is a difficult school where the bliss of conscious alignment with the soul's path comes and goes. One of the great symbols of God's promise for a new perfect life is the rainbow. Heading into last weekend, for the first time in my life, I observed from out an airplane one of the fruits of the combined efforts of divine and human will. As some travellers will recognize in the photo below, it is possible to see at least one complete circular rainbow around a plane's shadow when cast upon clouds from light from above.



The timing of my notice of this phenomenon had great personal meaning, as harmony with the soul will invite synchronicities that make one feel at the center of all creation. This specialness effect was further enhanced by the incredible observation that the rainbow was centered on my exact seating location, behind the right wing! Since I believe that God creates and works within physical laws, I had no spiritual conflict in wondering what meteorological effects could accout for such a glorious vision. Friends didn't know, so we speculated a bit wildly on what manner of miracle my digital camera had recorded, and what new day it might herald.

It was a special weekend.

The crowning lesson in humility then came to discover on the internet (just google "rainbow around plane shadow", how easy is that?) the extent of this everyman's everday miracle. The circular rainbow is always there! For those would would notice, it is called a Glory. The mechanism of formation is not entirely clear, anymore than it is for any rainbow, but it has to do with water vapor acting as prisms in the air at the width of microns.

But what of my seating position, was it lucky coincidence to be at Glory central?

The most beautiful thing to know is, the Glory is ALWAYS centered on the observer. In fact, if it were possible to see the shadow of your head when you witness a rainbow from the Earth, you would find it is at the center of the great arch which beckons before and above you. The friend or stranger who observes next to you would actually be seeing their own rainbow, shifted slightly to their position.

Imagine that. If it were not for being planted here on the surface of Earth, if we were say angels or sylphs of a material that blocked the light's passage as our denser bodies do, we would observe each one of our shadows below cradled perfectly in a circular spectrum of the living light.

Such ubiquity is truly the mass miracle! Each of our lower selves grows ensconced its own vase, this agar of luminous and colored perfection we call a reality. Each human consciousness creates its own quantum sphere by the grace of God's light from above and within. Mother Earth upholds our lower selves thus cocooned in that spectrum of love, affording us the priveledge to be so good to ourselves and to others that heaven becomes our new home, that place where shadow and light are combined, and the real becomes manifest in this purgatorial illusion that too many suffer when all were called forth to enjoy.

For each other's deliverance to Heaven on Earth, let us pray now.

Strawberry Karma

Today November 1 is All Saints Day, also known as All Hallows or Hallowmas, a Roman Catholic holiday to honor all saints known and unknown. This refers to all those individuals who have attained the heavenly beatific vision, which is the eternal and direct perception of God. The holiday dates to the 8th century, when the Pope moved a feast for saints from the spring season of Pentecost to the fall season around Samhain, the Celtic celebration of the harvest and ancestral spirits. Our modern holiday of Halloween is fixed to the night before All Saints Day, with the name coming from a shortening of All Hallows Evening, the evening before All Hallows. Oh the logic of history!

I can very personally sense that my soul guide Hildegard of Bingen has attained that eternal and direct perception of God. She is often called a saint, even though she was never canonized and remains “only” at the level of beatification, by which the Catholic Church acknowledges a spirit’s ascension to heaven and ability to intercede on another’s prayerful behalf. From the heartfelt 1997 semi-fictionalized biography called “Scarlet Music” by Joan Ohanneson, the back cover promotes Hildegard as having “shattered stereotypes of women, of saints, and of God for all time.” Ah yes, this will become increasingly clear, I can say with a smile. So in this season of celebrating ancestral spirits and spooky weirdness, let’s have some fun talking about what a saint’s karma looks like, shall we? It’s a scoop fit for a tabloid in heaven, so remember you heard it here first!

This is the story of Strawberry Karma, and it is remarkably true. I discovered this curious thread of history just last week before Halloween, when a mutual friend of Hildegard’s found me in the grocery store. That is to say, when in 1997 I discovered my own connection to Hildegard, I was sitting next to a woman on the subway and a voice in my head said “talk to her about Hildegard”. So I did, and was delighted to find that she believed in reincarnation and had discovered her own past life as a Venice nobleman while on tour in Italy singing the Ordo Virtutum, playing the part of Humilitas. Thirteen years later this year, as Hildegard has ascended again so prominently in my consciousness, I’d been recalling this woman and asking the universe to see her again. One evening after work, after thanking Hildegard for guiding my life, I went to the market to buy such things as strawberries and meat and cheese. This woman called me out after us not seeing each other in years, though she had been on the mailing list for the annual autumnal Mystical Art and Talent Shows and had not forgotten our prior associations. She said for some reason she felt called to Trader Joe's that night, despite not particularly needing any supplies.

We renewed our friendship and mystical connection, this friend of some good karma and I. She was excited to note from me the Boston opening the next week of Hildegard’s new biopic “Vision” by Margarethe von Trotta (more about that in another post, for it has many wonderful scenes, though it can make it look like we enjoyed a New Age resort back then). I was delighted to hear that a friend of hers was behind the Ordo Virtutum performance I’ll be attending soon after that, serendipitously timed as it was to the film’s opening.

When I left her she was fondling a strawberry rhubarb pie of remarkably low calories; oh do enjoy it I encouraged her. I didn’t explain that my friend Marjie in London, who knows me so well and knows herself to have been Jutta, loved to bake rhubarb pies for us in the perception that it was a favorite back in Germany. But what of the strawberry I wondered? Not my London friend’s favorite, but to be certain, I loooove strawberries now. I have fond memories of strawberry fields picking forever throughout my life, I’ve packed them on dates as veritable aphrodisiacs, and the vulnerable latticework of external seeds endears me to their sweet ineffable charms. I’ve since learned that though oft regarded throughout history as a lowly food, the native people of my own Massachusetts state prized their succulence and referred to them as berries of the heart.

One branch of Hildegard’s fame is that of personally cataloging plants and minerals for their spiritual healing properties. She was not the first of course to do this, but she did have a knack for exploring and popularizing in original ways those energies that were about to come into greater recognition, and previous to her the knowledge of flora had been rooted in Greek and Roman classics which had become increasingly mistranslated and misapplied. Hildegard’s treatises on plant medicine are consulted by herbalists to this day, but she was at times deplorably subjective in her assessments. Thus she inflicted upon the valiant strawberry a disservice for which a dear friend of our mutual soul would later pay the karma referred to by this blog entry’s title.

Because Hildegard saw a snake among the strawberries in a garden, she decided that strawberries were too easily contaminated by evil and thus poisonous for human consumption. As her fame grew in the late 1100’s, this remarkably narrow prejudice single-handedly caused the noble strawberry to go out of favor in Europe for centuries.

Oops!

500 years later, the North American strawberry (Fragaria virginiana), enjoyed and esteemed by wiser natives, was regaining favor among the colonies for preserves and desserts. In 18th century Europe, the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus was harmonizing with the mission of his soul friend Hildegard, updating the gospel of plants and minerals with new scientific sensibilities, not beholden as she was to the Roman Church but rather aligned to Uppsala University. Unlike the sexually repressed Hildegard – oh let us not malign her for it, because she was so honestly fond of her charges and appropriately loved God more than the flesh, having been given to the church as little girl and knowing no other way to be – Carolus was wed, married to the daughter of a cousin of none other than the great mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (did he attend the wedding?)

When Carolus suffered a gout so painful that was he said to consider not living, his wife Sara recommended to him the strawberry (genus Fragaria of the rose family Rosaceae whose blessings to humanity extend without end). Something about the high mineral salt content of the fruit (which is actually not the fruit but the engorged stem head of the seed receptacle, for around each seed is the ovarian flesh which constitutes the true fruit, scientifically speaking) cured Carolus’ gout. So grateful was our romantically inclined botanist (his first paper was on plant genitalia) that he evangelized the strawberry for the rest of his life, and lived on a diet of strawberries alone for some stretch of time to demonstrate their nutritional wholeness (exactly how long seems lost to history, but I'm certain he enjoyed the period).

And so my friends, that is the karma to the strawberry deva which my soul family has so happily paid, that I might enjoy this luscious fruit with a lover to this day, as you are as well encouraged to do. I will leave as exercise to the reader, and bemused fans of Freud, to piece together what Emanuel would term the correspondences, for what strawberries in Heaven refer to on Earth. ;-)

As for the place of Humilitas, queen of the virtues, to those who would accuse either Hildegard or myself of being too brazen in revealing the secrets of Heaven, I defer to the definition of humility that my great teacher Lazaris taught me. (This becomes most appropriate on this morning of November 6 as I finish tweaking this post, since Lazaris sang to me in a dream, yes, sang for the first time ever.) Too many prize humility as a tool of subjugation, to keep one’s self lowly, and that’s not what it is at all. Humility is the willingness to see things as different from what you expected, thus does it counterbalance trust and open the doors to miracles in realities that are personally created by your own expectations.

In every day terms, humility would certainly indicate the willingness to admit when you are less than what you thought you were, but as well the courage to declare when you are greater than you ever knew. And of this you may rest assured, gentle reader, by the immortal Soul that enlivens you, you are so very much greater than you ever knew. The Saints are merely those who have developed this knowing ahead of others to lead the way and call the suffering home. Following All Saint's Day is November 2, All Soul’s Day, the day for the rest of us who have not yet attained that eternal and direct perception of God which the ascended enjoy. Together we will get there, my human friend, and by the peak lifetimes and moments that you and I are invited to humbly reclaim we shall find ourselves already more than halfway Home.

Blessings to you all, in this season of the harvest and the Ancients’ New Year.


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Happy Halloween

When I was a kid, my mom often got into things I was into, then ran with it in a different direction. One was that I loved the idea of spook houses at the county fairs, I liked the idea of a ride through a little world of strange wonderful creatures. When I was a teen, she actually got permission from our church to hold Halloween haunted houses in the church parlor. She strung wire and made partitions of black plastic and staged six rooms of horror scenes. She would keep them from being too gory, but i remember thinking by that age what I wanted was more of a heaven house, scenes of angels and fairies and extraterrestrial friends. This would be more like the Christmas wonderland dioramas at the local nursery that I loved as a kid. Now that I do the mystical art and talent shows annually in October, I realized that is the heaven house theme I wanted to give people as an alternative to the fearful emotions of Halloween, which has become so big here in the united states that it's being called the second Christmas.

Halloween is really the harvest time when the veil between worlds is thinnest, and it is a great time to decide what other worlds you want to invite into your life and future. The New Earth is welcoming the Hathors, an ascended civilization of love and music, for this halloween, and you are invited to help with the meditation experience now or hereafter as explained at http://tomkenyon.com/opening-the-halls-of-amenti

WWHLT?

What would Hildegard (von Bingen) listen to?

Tom Kenyon

(she worked with the Hathors too)

Who is Emanuel Swedenborg?

Who is Emanuel Swedenborg? We just held the 18th Mystical Art and Talent Show for the 9th year in a row at a 109 year old gothic chapel founded in his name, it might be nice to know. Swedenborg (1688-1772) was a genius Swedish scientist and engineer turned religious philosopher who has been a favorite of artists and mystics for centuries; D. T. Suzuki famously called him the Buddha of the North, Ralph Waldo Emerson listed him among the 50 great men of history, and Carl Jung closely studied his works. Not many know that Swedenborg was one of the two master spirit guides, the other being the Roman physician Galen, who tutored the founder of Spiritualism, Andrew Jackson Davis, in the early 19th century in the Catskills of New York State to prepare for the arrival of modern spirit communication.

The Cambridge Swedenborg chapel in particular is in the neighborhood of many such as William James, who wrote the "Varieties of Religious Experience" in 1902 and whose father was a huge Swedenborg fan. The chapel was visited and blessed by the Dalai Lama more recently for providing a home for the ceremonies and classes of Tibetan refugees for many years before such things were cool. We hold our own events there because we were invited to by Spirit for reasons that become delightfully obvious with a little investigation. I am enormously grateful to Swedenborg's presence and impact which continues to shape the coming utopia of this golden planet, which I call the New Earth and he called the New Jerusalem.

Here's a nice podcast I came across summarizing Swedenborg's amazing life and contributions ahead of his time to both the hard sciences and advanced spirituality. If you get into Swedenborg's writings, they are enormously poetic and wise in the language of his time. Many volumes comment directly on Biblical symbolism, "Heaven and Hell" gives a wonderful overview of the cosmic order, "Other Earths in the Universe" (or similarly translated title) is a spirit tour of other planets as their peoples relate to humanity's place in the universe, and "The Dream Journal" is Swedenborg's bravely honest diary from the year 1744 in which he turned his scientific mind to his dreams to find angels and ascended masters guiding him to his own second coming, which he saw as the personal angelic transformation which everyone will enjoy sooner or later. Swedenborg's spiritual eyes were opened so that he might function equally in both the material and energetic worlds, he was a great shaman in the most wonderful and classic sense.

Podcast on Emanual Swedenborg in the series Stuff you Missed in History Class: http://castroller.com/podcasts/StuffYouMissed/1579238-Who%20was%20Emanuel%20Swedenborg

And if you want to attend the church, what is a Swedenoborgian service like? Kind of like a cross between Unitarian and Episcopalian perhaps, in other words a structured traditional Christian ritual with very open-minded references to wide-ranging spiritual philosophies, plus very good music. Wonderful open-hearted free-thinking people go there for various personal reasons and you will be most welcome too. So if you can just expect it to not be New Agey or Spiritualist or whatever, it is its own lovely experience, then you may well enjoy more value on your own path, particularly if like myself you have strangely fond childhood memories of relating to church like no one else and wishing someday to revisit a more mystical and less judgmental version of Christianity.


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The Angel Message and show report

It's Monday 10/11/10, it's Columbus Day (observed) in the United States, and with that sense of arriving in the New World, I want to exclaim that Saturday's Mystical Art and Talent Show was fabulous, such a blessing, oh my God thank you soooo much everyone who contributed, physically and beyond! For the first time in the 9 years since the shows began, I was really in my center and able to take in all the energy. I was not nervous or exhausted, everything went smoothly and I felt so at home with all the love of all of you. We're truly helping each other Home.

It's like the chapel was bursting at the seams with the light of so many beautiful Souls. Great attendence, every corner filled with inspirational images, so much art and music and poetry from the heart. People were experiencing firsts all over the place, like artists who had never before shown publicly their deepest works, and the young poets who read for the first time who signed up in just the last few weeks when I thought hmmm, we need some poets, Universe can you send us some? And then they came from near and far! Interestingly the classical pianist, who for the first time dared to just improvise on the energies of the people and room around her, found herself pulled to the highest notes consistently.

Oh everyone was just wonderful, lots of great conversations and memories, you all thank me and I thank you, and I'm just so glad we have each other. Visit the website for details of who was there, and I'll get more information and photos up as I can. Remember I'm happy to make permanent displays for all of you on the site, so you can keep sending me stuff!

Now I just want to repeat the message from Archangel Uriel that I got the day before the show, starting with the opening phrase that made me cry so much that I knew I had to share it, which was a first for me. Thank you all for letting me read this and lead the meditation to become your whole and perfect self, which came to me in the healing room of John of God from Brazil at Omega in NY the week before. So many of you enjoyed the meditation that I will record it and put it on the show site soon enough for download. I know that some of you had amazing dreams and meditations the next day as evidence to how much you let in the energies of that special night, so I'm honored to have done all I could for you, the spiritual friends for whom I do everything. Our love transforms the Earth.


Message from the Angels to The Mystical Art and Talent Show 2010

Daughters and sons of the Earth, we greet and welcome you to this special time and place, a place in time made so very special by each and every one of you. Yes, it is you whom we come to see and celebrate, you collectively and you individually, for the Spirit does know you and support you more than you had imagined. Become more of your true selves, we invite you now, for that is what you seek.

Daughters and sons of the Earth, we thank you for your courage to be here, at this time, in this world that cries out for your Love and Light. Remember you are needed here, remember you belong. By the grace of your hearts which you manifest in arts, you have already transformed this world more times than you know, and so you do again. Witness and be changed.

Dearest tender ones, concern yourselves not with much more than having a good time among your fellows at this blessed evening, but rest assured that what you do here has impact far beyond these walls that you can see. This room exists in many dimensions, countless are those who are willing to be touched by the spirits of your Souls which radiate in all directions. You are the creators of the new Earth, a precious jewel among so many worlds, all interconnected by your endless and expansive Love. You are more beautiful and brave than even we had dared imagine, and we are deeply honored to assist you now in every way. Tomorrow will be different because of what you share today.

Many blessings to you, we stay now among you your silent partners, unseen friends, and constant companions in the Light.

Poems for the Show

For the 2010 Mystical Art and Talent Show, the first poem of two that I will read is called Tenebrae '97, from 1997 when one of my spirit guides came clearly to me, the 12th century mystic nun Hildegard of Bingen. She told me the word Tenebrae which I had to look up, it is Latin for darkness or shadows, and it is a distinctive Catholic service in the final three days of the Holy Week before Easter. In Tenebrae, psalms from the Book of Lamentations are chanted as candles are gradually extinguished until the church is plunged into total darkness; later, one candle is restored for the light of the resurrection.

This mood fit with the poem I received, which is about what went wrong in this garden Earth, and the hope that remains in knowing what must be accomplished. The Word must be made manifest; the energy of the Universal Soul must be made visible to guide the lost and lonely home. Fortunately, this is the theme of the Mystical Art and Talent shows, for which Hildegard led me to the Swedenborg Chapel to offer so that we might all feel more of our belonging in this world.

As further evidence of the word becoming manifest, we are blessed in 2010 with the publication of "The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination" by Courtney Bender, a Columbia University sociologist who joined our Mystical Experiences Discussion Group in 2002 to document some of the journey that my friends and I were on. She connects us with the greater lineage of guiding spirits in the Cambridge area, including Emerson, the Transcendentalists, and William James, as well as a current crop of some 60 mystics that she interviewed for the purpose of revealing for further study this new American spiritual movement, loosely connected as it is and intuitively guided to do no less than do our part to help and heal the world.



Tenebrae '97

What sent the wills of the hominids astray?
The hearts of the men in darkness.
What sent the hearts of the men astray?
The souls of the women worshipping lost.
What sent the women worshipping astray?
The Children gone too late before God.
What sent the Children of God astray?
The Word unmanifest.



The Marionette

Oh dear noble puppet,
always did you look,
to where that hand did enter you
and whose it was to love.
Oh dear open heart,
turn your face now prouder all around to see!
My God you have arrived!
They always knew you here;
they were so awkward too.
Oh dear sweet marionette,
ashamed to be alive,
whose strings were but too long.

Reflection: The Little Big Self

As part of the humbling and harnessing that I myself require to serve my community better - the community of souls incarnated in beautiful bodies that so often do not know what greater and glorious plans they are serving until it is too late to not bear some regrets which then call for releasing to the infinite gratitude that is felt in the steps of joyful receiving for our purposeful God-given lives together in this generous and vastly loving fantasia we call the universe - welcome home! – I begin today to share on this blog the lesson themes of the day as I receive them, calling them daily reflections, though how often I’ll find myself aligned to write them daily remains to be seen.

As a boy I remember the movie with Dustin Hoffman called Little Big Man, it was wonderful and haunting. A forerunner to Dances with Wolves and Avatar, the epic saga depicted a white man going native, and the love and sufferings he shared from that decision with the true people of the early Americas. The film is a humbling post-modern experience, mythic and powerful, romanticized and humorous, emotionally devastating. It imparts a taste of the secret history of the soul and those who would go undercover in its many guises to see the world as it truly is. True love and true grieving await the courageous. Dustin Hoffman tells his life story from his death bed; he is old, he is quietly victorious, he is tired, and he remembers.

Sooner or later everyone on this planet we share will awaken to what has always been and what is still meant to be. One by one, pop pop pop. Those who go ahead only do so to make certain that this way is the right way and it is safe for their loved ones to follow. The masters we call ascended are seeking our friendship, they see us clearly as the nascent peers who offer them the opportunity and intimacy of healing and teaching us in our times of need. They do not call for our worship, they call for our openness to receiving their most sincere love from the depths of their being. It’s like the love of the parent who watches so tenderly over the little ones still sleeping in their trundle beds, it’s like the love of the mate who awakens before the dawn to kiss without waking and brush the hair out of the eyes of the one they adore endlessly, it is like the love of the guards who stand at the door to the inner chamber where we are still dreaming together in our great slumber party. Someday we will all see the sunrise together, and we’ll choose our groups and pack our lunches and set off on adventures in this garden universe, the place where the love and exploration of intelligent pleasures and beautiful intelligence go on forever.

It is difficult as we awaken - pop pop pop! - to become the multidimensional divine creatures we always have been. The signs were there, the power is immense. The classic mystical epiphany involves synchronicities and knowings and whispers from the universe that gently place you directly in the center of more power and love than you had ever imagined, but always secretly needed. Not only is there a God, but this God knows you most specifically, always has and always will, and comes to you every day with the most personally of selected gifts. God has planned everything from the beginning of beginnings for your most beautiful unfolding of growth and satisfaction, offering the talents and companions whose perfection make you fall down and weep nearly endlessly with the tenderest of knowing. Oh my God, you loved me so!

From the revelations of your eternal belonging, it is difficult to know who you are anymore, what and where to be. You are a soul of vast power, you are an agent of nature, you are a cosmic beloved, you keep the universe running, you are a guardian angel watching over the ones whom you love more than words can say and yet you must shhhhh let them sleep a bit longer. You want to shout and your voice is still tiny, you want to run and your knees are weak, you want to love the planet when you still don’t know if you can bear to love yourself. There remains wood to chop and water to carry, and the responsibility is both trivial and insufferable, for you have glimpsed upon what simple acts a universe of the most poignant needs and desires revolves.

One time when I was struggling with these kinds of issues – and truly there is great pain and madness potential on the razor’s edge of becoming responsible for eternity – I called upon Archangel Michael for guidance. I heard the words clearly in my head “Go to the level at which you are healed.” So I took a deeper breath, told myself that I am loved by those whose love I require, and that all the great truths I keep inside could be kept safe one more day one more hour, and thus I went to carry a little more water, and chop a little more wood. I wasn’t even very good at it, talk about humbling.

(Metaphorically speaking, I refer to the aphorism “Before enlightenment, chop wood carry water, after enlightenment, chop wood carry water.)

And so we must have the courage to be the Little Big Self. More stuff will come up, it would be easier not to remain small, for the garden feast of the soul remains unmanifest and in the desert we must still wander with the thirst and hunger of more lifetimes than we can yet bear to remember. But the soul knows, the soul knows and thus provides. God gives us not more than we can handle, for one lesson after another, to build up our heavenly bodies and enter the kingdom forever.

As we wake up to the enormous intelligence and perfection of the divine plan and purpose which runs in the blood of us all, the responsibility can be more than we can bear, to stay geared into the cosmic clockworks. The energy is here now, and the potential is there tomorrow, for divine love and beauty beyond the popular conception to become fully tangible and delivered to every human being. Oh my God, the glory of the flowers that humans are meant to become as one who has blossomed ineffably! The pain of not seeing what is felt and known to be real and destined can split and divide our loyalties in ways that perpetuate the suffering, so we must stay humble and aware of the impacts of every decision even after we have been granted the glimpses behind the Wizard of Oz curtain.

We so desperately want to fast-forward to the real heaven that we can skip our own fears and unreadiness, but how very much the universe is trusting us to continue trusting the plan which includes our own needs for healing. We are lent Truths to hold to be the truth holders, so we can ready ourselves for the days when we are called and supported to stand up more visibly and give courage to others. We can build tomorrow’s home today on the rock and not the sand. That journey to tomorrow can be more powerful and humbling and frightening than moving ourselves into the air castles immediately, but at least then we won’t keep getting caught in the cycles of the falling angels we have endured to exhibit over and over. How many limbs have we gone out on and broken. Waking up is one trick, and staying awake to watch over our loved ones is another.

Little Big Self, go to the level at which you are healed. When you function at the right level of power that you can muster, your impact is forever. Chop wood and carry water with your friends, until the day comes to plant trees and stir the oceans.

Politics and Right Place for You

This blog has been about raw and deep inspiration toward the new future of love awaiting, and I’m happy with what has come forth thus far. This month something is different and more personal for me, so it’s looking like that is what I have to offer. If this entry doesn’t float your boat, then sail on by all means, though there are sure to be principles demonstrated.

Two soul guides of mine are Hildegard of Bingen and Carolus Linnaeus. You are welcome to look up their names and find out more about them if you don’t know already. It is my personal experiences that they are very close in energy and thus of the same soul family. I’ve never seen this discussed anywhere else, but to me their kindred nature is perfect and obvious. My connection with Hildegard is the most personal of all, so Carolus is like a dear friend to me.

It’s important to hold your personal truths in life. No one has to know from which soul country you hail, through what spectacles you gaze, but your personal truths become the doors through you which go to new vistas. They are the latches you turn, the steps up the stairs, the toeholds up the cliff; pick your metaphor. To go back and undo (doubt) would bring loss and pain, to go forward is to liberate the soul and receive a new more loving life. By holding to a personal truth, your reality is required to align around you as its center, delivering the consequences of to whom and to what you commit, and how must be filled the roles of support that your divine Being requests to become more of your true Self.

You can test a truth to see what it would gain you, it’s like opening a door without stepping through and noticing if your soul becomes more visible (manifest from latent energy). You say to yourself, this is now true, and you open to what you feel hear and see on that platform of self. A burst of spontaneous emotion and inspiration is pretty tell-tale, that this way beckons the future that you know you will always return to wishing for, until you offer God your courage to become it. To be loved is to be changed forever, it is our gift of true self to the divine universe.

September was for me about being done with doubting my connection to Hildegard and Linnaeus, and seeing what would come next. A starseed soul of Pleiadian heritage became my new shoes to fill, which made perfect sense to me. The new personal truth explained so many more of my life’s mysteries in one graceful swoop, as personal truths are wont to do. The questions arose how this would affect my relationships and writing and source of inspiration, and the intensity of the truth called me to answer quickly in many journals and conversations with my spiritual supports. I am already becoming more oriented to the future, and less inclined to repeat past successes or mistakes. Yes even past successes can become limiting, as the child becomes the adult.

A friend emailed to alert me to Catholic church services around Hildegard. It seems that in addition to her feast day being September 17, this month the Pope has been quoting her extensively. At first I was thrilled to have a spotlight on my hero again, but soon sensed the deeper issue. The usage is political, so for the record and to let know those whose personal truths would be assailed, I am writing here, however imperfectly and intuitively and unschooled in the issues I am.

Politics is about consensus for control. Control is a tool, it's useful when there are soul wounding impulses to limit, such as criminal behaviors. Control is a problem when it becomes the means to every end, the sword that people live and die by. Discarnate teacher Lazaris says that there are three techniques for gaining control: get people to not trust themselves, get people to feel guilt, and get people to deny their sexuality. The sexuality is so interesting because it implies to my mind that our bodies hold the unconscious wisdom of attractions that would merge souls. Clearly all three areas have been specialties of religion and religion based cultures for centuries.

The Pope’s church has been scandalized by sex abuses of the innocent for decades if not centuries, and our more valuing culture has brought this darkness to light. A primary church concern is to retain authority and followers, both of which have been severely eroded. Hildegard has become a folk hero far beyond the church’s purview, and they know it. How much her theology has been romanticized and overextended by the new age is a different extreme to be considered. The Catholic church never even officially made Hildegard a saint, so quoting her now as one may be a shortcut to some desired effect.

Basically, in my opinion, the Pope’s message is twofold for concern. First, he's asserting that Hildegard is a good girl because she submitted her visions entirely to church authority. Let this be a lesson, if you have contact with God you should not believe it or talk about it until a church official tells you it’s right or wrong. There are those in the movement to expose the abuse scandal who can claim divine guidance, and the Pope may be suggesting that they are not to be listened to without his approval.

Secondly, Hildegard herself dealt with church corruption during her time by saying we should not change the structure of the church, we should seek repentence and conversion in the clergy. Are we supposed to be inspired by the folk hero who agrees with the Pope to continue business as usual? We all know how loathe the church has been to confess to and remove any pedophile priests, that’s why the pain of the public has been so deep and so lasting. How many souls are too many, to be sacrificed to keep the same people in the wrong kinds of power? One, yours, if you are in complicit agreements with the sins of others.

It is my understanding that Hildegard’s message was not about telling the public to support your church in its current form, now get back to work and trust us. Her message was to the clergy, to look inside yourselves and reform that which is sinful, that which has left mother church tattered in rags. Saying yes to the calls at the time to restructure would have been a distraction and step away from the real confrontation with evil and its corruption. There are two political solutions that must be avoided – one is to say don’t worry we’ll handle it, the other is to say we’re changing everything but the change is surface for entertainment, nothing really changes in function. One is repression/suppression, the other is revolution/catharsis, neither is evolution.

It is my understanding that Hildegard’s work was toward soul communities, the right places for the right people, allowing the flower of the soul to open. Institutions offer roles, and who fills these roles, and who we can become in the company of our beloveds when empowered in the correct roles, these are the revelation, not that there are alternate forms of institutions. Enter the family, the church, the university, the business, the government, the country to which you find yourself by divine fate given opportunity. The personal truths which you hold for the health of your soul make all the difference, determining how you take in the love or invalidation that is offered to you by individuals in the roles as currently assigned by your karma, which is the consequences of your history of truth holding (beliefs create reality).

When you can hold your higher resonance and still function daily, then the universe has to change around you. Saying no to participating in what you must disavow is your moment of truth that overturns reality, but not until. So often people change for the sake of changing, which becomes avoidance of the future that begins now. We can make more real change in place, by the internal reassessment, than by revolutions in structures that were meaningless without us anyway.

Whom do you trust to love you? If you trust someone who is not supporting your growth at its current level, then you will become more distanced from your soul, and you will feel that pain. It will be a mistake to blame the transgressor however, they simply belonged in the role of the limiter, one whom God told you was no longer liberating for you.

When you trust the right spirit to love you, then your life will transform, and you will know whom to run from and whom to run toward at each opportunity. I say spirit because it is sadly possible that there is not manifest love for you in your current reality, but the energy of love will direct you to the open door of the next step to take into the future of your place in heaven. The flower that opens on the smoldering battlefield, for example, or the cloud sailing by that calls to you, or the shaft of sunlight that gives hope of knowing there is more to the world.

Hildegard worked within the church, because she was given to it from the age of 8. She never had a life that most of us could relate to, except to be virgin (untested) souls longing for the daylight of our right place in loving creation. The church was her world, so she had to find, and often fight, her way through it. She wasn’t saying that the roles were perfect. Clearly the lack of women in authority was challenged by her very God-made existence, and that paradox made her uncomfortable. Hers was also an earlier time in the evolution of human consciousness, so it may be considered that human beings are today more capable of becoming each their own church for the sheparding of their own soul. Yes she did seek validation from an institution that she lived within and defended, but she did not say that the human stewardship of that institution wasn’t rotten, and some roles were not in need of reassignments.

If someone tells you that Hildegard’s message was that you should always go through the outside validation of an institution to tell you what to think and believe in your divine connection, or that you should trust that institution to correct any wrongs done to you and thus quiet your soul in its pain and cries for revolution, then you may wish to reconsider. There is a revolution of self that precedes that of the world, and when you are different in your responses then you know you have won and the future is closer than ever. The future is only a metaphor for the spirit unmanifest in the eternal now, which is where the soul knows its community however separated it may have become across time and spaces. The dream of the right souls in the right positions is your right to heaven. Your needs to have validation and support are genuine, but when you find the pain is increasing, you must be willing to reassign. Have compassion for the souls who cause themselves confusion by asking your trust in what is untrustworthy. You decide, you decide, you decide.

Reference:
http://www.catholicsentinel.org/Main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=61&ArticleID=12524
http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=7505
http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=7419
http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=23209
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/benedict-xvi-at-audience-holy-spirits-gifts-destined-to-edify-the-church/

PS- now 9/21/2010, i'll add this postscript... I just found out there's a book published since July of this year called "The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination" by Courtney Bender. There's a fellow named "Eric" in Cambridge Massachusetts who says he experienced being the reincarnation of Hildegard of Bingen. What luck, I should meet him! :-)

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topic: reincarnation Hildegard of Bingen reincarnation of Hildegard von Bingen reincarnation Hildegard von Bingen past life Hildegard of Bingen past life Hildegard von Bingen past life

Message from the Angels

Awaken and arise little ones, for the time has come to prepare and propel the vision of change that is upon the Earth. Do not covet fear among the chaos but stand true, and you will be upheld by the light beings who have come here as promised to guide you through these momentous times.
Blessings upon you.



Explanation:
The message came to my friend at a concert last Wednesday at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall. This remarkable structure in Methuen Massachusetts was built by philanthropist and art lover Edward Francis Searles in 1909, himself an organ player and instructor, to house the great German concert organ that was purchased to be the pride of Boston in 1856, and installed in 1863 in what would become known only as Boston’s Symphony Hall. This first concert organ in America was admired for only a couple decades before going out of fashion and put into ignoble storage to make room for the orchestra players themselves. Searles lucked into purchasing the organ, originally costing $60,000, for just $1,500. To this day it remains a magnet for world class organists whose remarkable concerts are attended by a handful of those in the know (so now you know too).

After the angels visibly danced for “Sonata in D major” by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, a darker piece by Franz Liszt was played called “Variations on ‘Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen’”. This was offered by organist Stephen Roberts of East Haven, CT, in homage to the instrument itself, since Liszt’s piece was completed the same year as the organ’s installation (1863) and Liszt would have known of the great organ’s construction. The piece was composed by Liszt to mourn the death of his eldest daughter Blandine, and draws upon the cantata by J. S. Bach from 1714 that means “Weeping, lamenting, worrying, fearing” and depicts the affliction of the Christians.

While the powerful music may draw one into the chaos of suffering, the message from the angels clearly calls upon human light workers to release the past and assert for the great future now at hand, that bright and glorious life of the Soul to which this blog of the New Earth is now dedicated.

The photograph reveals the remarkable nine-pointed Chinese balloon flower which blossomed in my garden over the July 4th period when this blog was begun. These joyful plants normally work in the symmetry of pentagons, as the other blossums and bud clearly show. I have never before seen a mutation of more than five, much less this miraculous nine, which clearly evoked for me the 900th birthday of Hildegard von Bingen, the year that she came to me so powerfully that to this day I struggle to incorporate her blessed energy. I believe my guide and kindred spirit Carl Linnaeus would have been pleased as well at this auspicious turn of nature's hand in Platycodon grandiflorus.

God grant me the heart big enough to give thanks for all the blessings I have to receive, and the courage to guide more of my brothers and sisters home. There is unfathomably so much love at the center of the heart of this Universe, that I am compelled to tell you all how it is that this love most especially knows and includes you, that very same long-suffering you that never dared to dream that it was so loved, but always had to hope it was true.

It is true. Rest assured it is true.

the choice, even more boiled down

If something/someone isn't right for you, does it mean that:

A) something else IS right for you

B) something is wrong with you

C) something is wrong with them

D) nothing is right for you

If you answer A, you can get by until you find it.
If you answer B, you can let other people run your life.
If you answer C, you can try to change others and get into battles.
If you answer D, you can give up and die, slowly or quickly.

The universe provides all opportunties for experience. You can spend lifetimes going down one path, or change your choice at any moment.

Guess which One makes you happy.


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Blessings or Curse, you decide

A recurring theme of this blog will be the incredible power of your own singular choice.

To cling with fear to the old world whose illusory control is ending forever, and take your chances on survival. You might live, that is true, but what life is that, when so many of those whom you love will not make it with you, and the planet will be sick and choking as you manage to scrape by.

None deserve such a fate, least of all you. You who hold a light deep inside, you who love more than you know.

Or you can choose to remember the Hope of your Soul, that childhood inspiration, expectation even, that got buried inside. To one day live the life to which you belonged, the one that you're perfect for. The life that you just knew had to exist for you to have ever been born, complete with your destiny to be free in a safe happy world.

We call this latter choice the New Earth, but in truth it was the first and only choice there ever was. Only our eyes grew dim with a loss of recognition, as we layered the thoughts and feelings that said it could not begin here. We felt abandoned and hopeless, our actions turned us against each other and ourselves.

Still, what is left of the dream forgives us, and keeps us alive.

The Light of the New Earth is what we hope to share in this blog, because we have seen its great rosy glow. Suffusing and redefining the magic of every day, New Earth Light is already known, in commonplace ordinary powers. Powers of honesty, trust, revelation, and love. Powers so gentle and strong that they change everything for the remainer of time, which is why tyrants and despots cannot bear to look, for then it's revealed how little strength they themselves own.

They tyranny of the false choice is the final curse that you live under now.

You are so very close to having come Home.

You decide.

The Earth wanted to be your home.

Now, it is true that we live in interesting times. Times of great change, which some will call chaos and others will call opportunity. The dilemma is that there are fewer and fewer rules, because the rules were unfair and got us to where we are now. Increasingly we must rely on love, honesty, trust, and revelation.

Anything becomes possible, to call everyone Home.

"May you live in interesting times". This has been rumored to be an old Chinese curse, but there has been found no evidence for this. The best records show that the curse is the first of three of increasing severity, invented by some British diplomat to China in the early 20th century. The "curses" are, in order:

1) May you live in interesting times
2) May you come to the attention of those in authority
3) May you find what you are looking for

How strange. These three wishes sound like blessings to me!

But I guess that's only if you're sensing the light and you're excited to grow, like a blossom turned to the dawn. I want life to be interesting (I trust it will turn out well), I want the higher divine powers to notice and work with me (we each have so much to offer), and I want us to find what we each came here for, which is to live the life of ours souls upon the New Earth. Freedom, prosperity, and joy for all.

The time has come to recognize home. Some have decided that home is a heaven to which they will be raised, high above the destruction of the old Earth, where the majority of humanity will remain to weep and gnash their teeth eternally for the sins they have committed.

That seems so very sad and unecessary. Have you not cried long enough, for the mistakes blindly made which separated you from the life that you should have known?

New Earth Light sounds like a refreshment to me. New Earth Lite, more delicious, fewer calories, enjoy it guilt-free!

What if the cost of admission to your new life was your cynicism, your pain, your suffering? What if you had to let the heavy stuff go, in order to live a little, laugh a little, get used to more love?

Could the old world, so hurt and scared, have a flip side? Could nature rebound, could you suddenly love, could you know what to do, could you open your eyes?

1) May you live in interesting times
2) May you come to the attention of those in authority
3) May you find what you are looking for

Blessings or curse, half empty half full, coming or going... you decide.

Old Beliefs New Beliefs

I can move with the Spirit, to be safe and secure, to do just what needs to be done.

Some of us are very practical. We do the daily chores, follow the rules, excel in all the conventional ways. Then we fall apart when the little voice calls from inside and beyond, to do something no one else could. Something incredibly personal, something that will expose us to ourselves and the world, something that comes from our Soul. It’s so uncertain and vulnerable, we wish it would go away but it won’t. Something like speak a powerful truth, sing or make art, lead a movement, or just fall in love.

Most of all, fall in love.

Others of us are more comfortable in our ideals. People call us eccentric, we don’t mind. We sing, we make art, we philosophize and observe. We feel safer with God than the people next door. We find patterns to life, poetry in the movements of nature. But when it comes to paying the bills, getting a job, or just reading the news, we struggle to cope, we’re secretly or blatantly terrified.

Please don’t leave me here God!

Most of us learn, some more and some less, to cycle back and forth. But always it’s hard. Hard to change, hard to cope. Hard to meet the increasing demands of a fast changing world, destination unknown.

For all of us, life pushes us on. The people next door might seem to have it all, and then one day we find out the truth. They were scared and alone and struggling too.

Two voices, deep inside, and they’re both really our own. One says keep going, you’ve got to believe, give it all a chance to work out. The other says you know, it might just be easier to give up and die.

Then there are the shining Ones from Beyond, who say that our lives are precious gifts. Receive and believe, love and grow.

What do they know, they don't have to live here.

They say that human needs are gifts too, they help us grow. Cherish your needs, they open doors, ask and it shall be given.

What nerve.

“But how else could it ever work out?” asks the voice which longs to see Heaven on Earth. To live the love, to wake the dream, to be a citizen of the New Earth.

The old belief that we each need to step beyond goes something like this:

I can’t change what I’m doing, I’ll get lost and I’ll die.

The affirmation that I hear, the call to New Earth, is both practical and ideal:

I can move with the Spirit, to be safe and secure, to do just what needs to be done.

God bless your own journey into Love; the future that begins here wants to see you there too.

Come Sail Away With Me

Great song lyrics usually have unconscious meanings that the writer may not have considered but which then resonate for the ages. Some say that the Chicago band Styx with their 1977 hit "Come Sail Away" meant little more than trendy space metaphors for becoming free and inspired in life, but I see a template for the ascension of the human spirit.

(Be sure to hear or purchase the full 6 minute album version)

Come Sail Away lyrics
songwriter Dennis DeYoung, © STYGIAN SONGS; ALMO MUSIC CORP;

I'm sailing away
Set an open course for the Virgin Sea
'Cause I've got to be free
Free to face the life that's ahead of me

The human being feels the need to be more true to their inner self (soul), and looks to the fluidity of the ocean as a metaphor for breaking away from land-locked social conventions. Most esoteric philosophies (theosophy for example) teach four body vehicles or planes of the human spirit, and these are represented in the land as the physical, sea as the emotional (astral), air as the mental, and space as the spiritual (causal).

On board, I'm the captain
So climb aboard
We'll search for tomorrow on every shore
And I'll try, oh Lord, I'll try to carry on

Sailing is setting out into the untested (virgin) potentials and more fluid energies of the greater self. The physical human being dares to be its own master (captain) and explore the emotional waters in an earthly conceived vessel (sailing ship), hoping to reach a brighter tomorrow while calling upon the higher self (Lord) for strength to endure trials. Each higher plane's energies are inherently less controllable, offering more freedom of movement, so surrendering to a higher guiding power is both humbling and required.

I look to the sea
Reflections in the waves spark my memory
Some happy, some sad
I think of childhood friends and the dreams we had

The waves' light reflections are the mirrors of self in reality (the people and events in our lives), which are most evocative and powerful when one lives emotionally. As one aligns with the soul, memories of pure childhood expectations for divine living return to the consciousness, some happy (when life delivered love and dreams) some sad (when failures shocked the spirit).

We lived happily forever
So the story goes
But somehow we missed out on the pot of gold
But we'll try best that we can to carry on

The myth of living happily ever after is a story we tell ourselves, when we know that we missed out on a greater truth of self (the pot of gold). Again, we pray to the higher self for strength to carry on, and comfort comes to know we're not alone in our needs for soul community.

A gathering of Angels appeared above my head
They sang to me this song of hope and this is what they said

They said, "Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me lads
Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me
Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me baby
Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me"

Then the angels appear above the seeker's head. These are the messengers of the mental plane, including sylphs and air elementals who bring hope of the mind's higher existence secure above the emotional waves. There are soul-based reasons and truths for the ups and downs of daily living, there are absolute divine lessons that call us to come sail away, to fly higher than the physical and emotional human can reach.

A higher power is calling us Home, and there is even the allusion in the lyrics to the masculine and feminine energies working in harmony, with a crew of gods and the resident goddess all voyaging together to discover (co-create) All That Is. "Come sail away lads" then "Come sail away baby" calls the captain. Okay sure, I'm a romantic, but unconscious small details seem to me significant.

I thought that they were Angels, but to my surprise
We climbed aboard their starship, we headed for the skies

Singing, come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me lads
Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me
Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me
Come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with me

The seeker thinks the angelic mental plane is the ultimate level, for it gives an empowering perspective from the air on the land and the sea. But to the human mind's surprise, there are worlds beyond Earth, whose visitors are irrational because no human physics can get us there. These are the celestial heavens of outer space and inner spirit, from which whole new paradigms of love and planetary reinvention come.

Extraterrestrials are guides to the human race's potentials, and they come to us energetically, bidding us now to sail in a whole new way, on starships beyond our imagination. The human soul has cosmic origins, the ascension process is about going Home, the home that was called for by the childhood memories of dreams. The child's pure spirit has returned to the seeker, trailing clouds of glory, enabling the ascended seeker to now reach down to more lost souls below, lifting them with the inherited invitation to “come sail away with me.”

Irresistably.

It is interesting to note where this song fits in the career of the band. Styx was a prolific and talented group that had already released six albums since 1972, but success was slow to build, with the single “Lady” only becoming a hit two years after their second album from which it came. Band member Dennis DeYoung says he wrote “Come Sail Away” in 1977 in a state of deep depression for the seventh album “Grand Illusion” after the last two albums still hadn’t sold well despite the hit “Lady”. The mood of the new song was not depressed however but incredibly uplifting, so where did it really come from?

Then everything changed, because “Grand Illusion” went triple-platinum, commenced a series of four consecutive multi-platinum albums, and its signature hit “Come Sail Away” went on to be the favorite to close every concert for the rest of their careers, with ecstatic audiences singing the final refrains. Debate continues whether the lyrics are best taken as metaphorical or literal, with fans of both interpretations. A profound energy had clearly entered the world with this anthem.

For myself, it has taken decades to reach the center of my life and love, where my soul and its companions have always waited for me. After my best friend and I connected more recently with celestial beings in our meditations, the song “Come Sail Away” came back to me in a dream of Styx playing on my high school stage (never happened of course, and the lead singer acted afterward like a side of me unsure of what had just come over him). When I awoke I suddenly remembered how in the late 70's I sang it and felt ecstatic tears for several weeks after I first borrowed the record and heard the lyrics.

Even as a young teen I was functioning at a pretty clear level of intuition, so yes the angels and starship made me think of the vision of Ezekial (1:1-28) which I loved as a child flipping through the Bible at church, and which others have cited with regard to this song (of course Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken made all this stuff popular in the seventies). So the total song experience for me back then was to make my mind feel like it was filled with the white light of a great UFO calling to me, the kind I've dreamt about and imagined many times since.

(Other pop songs in college would touch the feeling again but with a greater sense of what had been lost, like Blue Öyster Cult with "Take Me Away" and the German-Austrian band DÖF with "Codo". These I had already returned to recently before recalling "Come Sail Away" - it is interesting how the soul unwinds the past in the healing of what we call memories.)

When I told my friend of that morning's Styx dream, they remembered the hit song (we’d been reminiscing about our youth lately) but they hadn’t known the power of the lyrics. Impressed, the next day they turned on the radio to immediately hear "Come Sail Away" playing, and catch it again on another station a few hours later. Other synchronicities and mystical sensations demonstrated to us the alignment of a lot of pure energy.

My friends and I continue to develop our connections to each other and the cosmic beings who are here to help heal the Earth with their advanced civilizations of light and love. The song is to us both literal and metaphorical in the highest of senses. "Come Sail Away" feels now like a good shamanic theme for our work together, as we cross and re-cross daily the Stygian boundaries between past and future, actual and potential, lower and upper worlds.

Postscript:

The end of the band's successful run makes a telling footnote as well. Like many rock groups, Styx was absurdly accused in the early eighties by religious fundamentalists of hiding backward Satanic messages in their music. Dennis DeYoung, writer of "Come Sail Away", joked "we had enough trouble to make the music sound right forward."

But DeYoung went further with his theatrical ambitions to push the band respond with a rock opera in 1983 called "Kilroy was here", in which DeYoung played a star musician imprisoned in a future society by robots controlled by a charismatic evangelist who had worked to outlaw rock music. The project spawned several hits, but the exhausting and expensive stage show that followed proved the final straw and the band broke apart. DeYoung continued a solo career, bringing "Come Sail Away" to more audiences around the world, leading them to sing along even in full symphonic settings. The story is not over either.

So I can certainly relate to the evidence that DeYoung, a devout Roman Catholic, was a priest essence struggling to be free within past life church influences, and his mission had always been spiritual. I'm sure he did what he had to do. But the lesson I take is that to maintain the highest energies it is not worth lowering yourself to your critics. Let yourself be called by the heavens, and then call to more who are ready: Come, Sail Away With Me!

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Independence Sunday 2010

"Oh children of humanity, why have you corrupted tender Love, who gazes far into my depths and flows forth in works abounding? Because She flows within me, from Her in turn flow the living waters. She resembles a budding branch, for, as a virgin's embraces are most tender because of her integrity, even so Love's embraces are more tender than those of any other. But now She mourns, because audacious men tear her to pieces with their evil grumbling. Hence, She flees from them to that height whence She came, and weeps because Her children, whom She suckled at Her fertile breasts, fall sick and will not be cleansed from the corruption of their flighty minds.

O wretched humanity! Why do they take on themselves the misery of alienation and exile, tearing themselves away... She is always ready... Yet they separate themselves from the Bride, whence they are darkened and shadowed by clouds as if they had ruptured heaven."

The Holy Spirit as Caritas (Grace/World Soul)
St. Hildegard von Bingen, 1098-1179
thanks to Barbara Newman, translation

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Welcome to the New Earth, welcome to my new blog.

What is the New Earth?

It is perhaps a place you’ve never seen before, but only because you did not open your eyes. It is the world that is real, it is truly your home. It is this radiant globe upon which you live and die, more times perhaps than you wish to recall.

New Earth is not the planet as you know it now, not the troubled place that makes you doubt your own survival and fear the loss of your dearest companions. No, never that, no more than God was not the God of true Light and Love.

New Earth is the world of safety and joy. There you may live and love as you were always meant to be known and loved, as your home before time and space were invented for you by your great and celestial Soul.

New Earth is the world before something went wrong.

Something did go wrong, didn’t it? Yes, gentle one, sadly that is so. You live in the dread of whose fault it was, and the only certainty you know is that you have suffered too long.

Indeed, you were never meant to suffer at all. So the end of suffering is still to be found.

They say that death is the great healer, but this trick you have already known. There are parts of you that dwell happily now in the higher vibrations, heavens they’re called, reunited with friends, immortal and secure. But these sides of you did not know the New Earth during their times in the physical, they waited for death to release their suffering. So let us not assume that dying is what you must do in this time around.

We’re not a fan of apocalyptic predictions. We know from experience that there is a Heaven on Earth that calls you to not only survive but to thrive. Peace, love, and beauty, these are yours to know. Why, because you did a good work, you came to deserve? No, it's simpler than that. Because peace, love, and beauty are from your true nature, indeed they ARE you.

Earth has been patient, and Earth now must change. But She does not want to leave You behind! There is so much that must go, that is true: fear, pain, and loss, disease, hate, suffering and more. But never, no never you child, daughters and sons of the Earth that you are.

You and all those whom you love, She begs you to stay. She implores you through all of us who have glimpsed the Way, to change yourselves just a little, believe and transform. The Earth dreams to give you Herself, upon whom to live and love, forever more.

This baby must not be thrown out with the bath water! So how can your most honorable past be delivered to its rightful future, without inviting the discontinuity that so many call death?

Perhaps the path of your pain and sorrow may yet be revealed to have been but a detour, the longer route that caused you anxiety but was always and is still taking you Home. A little healing here, a little adjustment of attitude there, and the light at the end of the tunnel will come into view.

Is it possible to heal the past as well as the future? Perhaps the past can become perfect if the future is new. Or the past is adjusted when the future is changed. Yes, this and more. All things are possible for the love of the New Earth, that glorious place you were made for and are returning to now.

Did we mention that time and space were invented by you?

Yes, time and space are constructed by You, the you that you are still becoming and will again know. Because your Soul was too great for the awareness you were growing to know all at once, you had to have a plan, a treasure map Home. Therefore you told stories, and subdivided the specializations of your eternal Soul, which knows how to give love and to grow in every situation it may find itself.

You were wonderfully successful in splitting the facets of your great eternal identity across many lands and many lives, but truly these are but the many plays of light cast on the walls of your fabulous Earth home, shining as it does from your radiant gem Soul, which remains the One which knows the True Love, the Love that is and was always Home.

Welcome Home.

Did you not know how great was your Soul? That you were once not bent but tall, that you were once not dark but bright, that you walked as the gods and goddesses of the Light? Do not trouble yourself now for what appears to have been lost, for all will come to be seen again in due time. There are but a few more steps to walk home, and your own treasure map will show you the way.

It is within you to remember what is real and right. Let yourself feel and consider a little more now. If you had a great Soul, it was because you had a great Creator. The Spirit that made you is calling you now.

The miracle of Love is that it never left you. Remind yourself this: “Even though I feel disconnected, yet am I always connected, and sooner than I expect will I see it too”. The loss was not of your place but of you. You lost the feelings and thoughts of being Home, of being your own Soul on your own precious Way.

This loss led to the confusion of doubts and fears, reinforcing the beliefs that weren’t really true, but which many who wanted your power repeated to you. You obeyed and withdrew, became defensive, your neighbors did too. Regrettable speech and actions followed, continuing as habits, addictions, and lifestyles that blocked out the Source which nonetheless never stopped pouring out its endless pure Love for you.

Pessimists lose. Blind faith remains blind. Rebels risk war. Gentle skeptics will recognize truth.

In one perfect moment, and then more and more often, you will see the Love that never left you. You were always a part of a great network of kindred souls that became separated in awareness but never in experience. Much can become new by redefinitions, by repositioning, by turning in place to the sun instead of the moon. The moon cannot grow the flower which knows to wait until day to bloom.

Focus on what works for you in every place you must be, then synchronicities light the way which becomes very smooth. Though there is much that will remain dark and cold, in the people and places you cannot change so much as pray for, direct sources of love become abundant for you on your return to New Earth.

More and more of the best friends await you, those to whom you can speak freely your awakening heart, mind, and soul.

Many are the inspired ones such as my self, who would be so honored as to shine a little more light on a great map, just to help you find your own unique and beautiful way Home. Find what works for you, believe and transform. The whole of the universe is singing to you, there are so many words for this one lovely song. Come home, little one, we kept your place ready, we’ve been missing you.

If my words to this song of the universe touch your heart and Soul, then I might believe you have allowed me this honor, to be just a little further along in describing the New Earth to you. For the joy that is mine is to guide more friends like you home. A cosmic docent if you will, that could be my role. Step this way now if you choose, for it is always your choice. But truly, there are wonders beyond the current imagination yet to behold.

Have you heard of how artists will seek a great Light for their paintings or photographs? Many will rave about the quality of light in a place that is special to them, perhaps evoking a certain time of day too. For example, some might talk highly of the light on the coast of New England or the Mediterranean, and strive to record it with brushes and cameras. Or perhaps it is the light that has already been recorded in their soul which makes an artist immortal, like the light of a painting by Maxfield Parrish, whose works defy categorization and touch countless hearts on their first view.

The Light of the New Earth is like that. It is special, for it is suffused with a love that is infinitely gentle and deep. It goes to the core of your Soul and shows the way home, for it is based on the cooperation that created the Universe long ago and still does to this infinite moment. The tiniest voice inside of you which said at the dawn of creation and just this morning, “won’t you please help me to love, I just want to love more”. That is where everything starts, for everywhere this voice goes it is answered a glorious “Yes!” by so many more voices, and thus it is carried along. True, not everyone says Yes to the tiniest of calls, but someone somewhere always does, and it is to those you must go, to see your way Home, by the Light of the perfecting Love.

Love is not so hard after all. Just very, very, very vulnerable. Ask and you shall receive, sooner or later, in the corridors of time. No means no, and yes means yes, so go to the the yes however small that begins and continues your own journey Home. It could be as delicate as a flower that only you saw, but that flower was waiting for you to be found. Or a dream half-remembered that gave you a hope that was nowhere in sight, but someday, trust yourself, that dream will enter your life.

So this is how you built up your Earth, this most glorious of worlds that you too often do not recognize, by a technique whose power you forgot in your fears that you were not loved. It is time to return, by the sentiment that is expressed in such prayers of humility as “Not my will Lord but thine”. Do not fear this technique, for it is not more of the domination that you have so long suffered from. The Lord’s will is your own, for the Creator in you will show the way home.

The New Earth is calling you now.

In the year 2010, the holiday that is known as Independence Day in my birthplace of some United States (purportedly united I’ll say, for it is a most ambivalent place, and we are playing no favorites in the Light of New Earth) did fall on a Sunday, July 4. On this 1 day 234 years ago, a Declaration of Independence was unveiled to be signed, to create a New Nation, under God, with Liberty and Justice for All. In this grand gesture many could hear the tiny voice of an ideal to love, and so a great arc of history began.

But many others heard only opportunities for the limited self, for their ears were deafened by the roar of manifest destinies that knew only to crush and to conquer. And so the light of Old Earth continued to run red with blood.

Fortunately, there are no official meanings for the colors of the American flag. For some the flag is red with blood or anger or war. For others it can be something more tender, such as the red of the true heart that gives a red Rose, so gently as to not prick the finger of the beloved who receives the heavenly scent from one heaven sent. And the dark blue of the flag would seem to point to an evening sky abundant with stars to guide, signifying the light of those who have been there and returned, to speak of the lands of the New Earth so verdant and flush with nature’s pure love.

Abundance is key, for to be truly that voice whose will is with God, you must expect to enter worlds that are already full. You must embark upon shores where you have no power but the hope to meet one whom you love, and there you ask that you be given a gift to deliver as gently as the red rose. Your willingness to become someone so tender and new is what changes the world.

With the willingness to love must come the question which so many fear to ask or be asked. Am I good enough to love? This is the vulnerability, to ask the question upon which your very existence depends, and to not know the answer until the one for whom you arrived steps forward to answer, so sweetly and vulnerably in their own turn.

The answer is Yes.

You can never fully expect the one who will give the answer you need, because you’ve never been to a new place before, at least not in this form. But when you can surrender your heart to “Not my will but thine”, then you can hear the reply that was always for you. You will see the one who was meant for you, and you will begin the new partnership in whose resonance and love you will hear the Voice of the Universe answering forever more the both of you.

“Oh Yes! dearest Ones! You were more than good enough to love. You are the Great Souls who have returned to us. We expected you, we missed you, we love you both so. Stay as long as you desire, and please, do, make yourselves here a Home!”

In the relationships of love you will know you are Home. The New Earth is so very, very, very full.

So when the night air of July 4 celebrations fills with fire and smoke -- for that is the tradition it seems -- I have to wonder, with what I know now. Fireworks were invented in China long ago, and used to celebrate many things. Truly they can be wonderful. New Year’s in Germany is called Sylvester for example, and I remember fondly watching from one of tallest apartment balconies in Nuremberg in the early 1980's, seeing the city skyline at night light up with many small fireworks. That trip was just darkened by our visit to Dachau on the way from Munich, to the camp and the gas chambers and the ovens, to those unbearable places where the small voice was overruled with disastrous results.

So many beloveds were lost.

Nie wieder! -- Never again! -- is just one rallying cry on the way to New Earth. But if the cry does not become tears, if it turns to war, you’ll know you are again lost.

I have seen the rosy Love Light of New Earth, I can speak of its truth and how much it is here. It touches my heart, it makes my eyes fill. I cry now more in one week than I have in a whole year. I cry with gratitude for what is, I cry with pain for what was, I cry sometimes to just cry and become someone new. “Not my will but thine” is my duty and choice, for when sacred tears flow, there could never have been anything more real.

And then the precious new/old realities arrive, heralded by the little voices that bring joy, ancient lost friends I cannot yet see and barely hear or recall, some who joke about how they call me the crying saint now. So tears turn to laughter, and I’m made whole in one small step giant leap once again. Strength to carry on, to let you know too, gentle reader, the ways of the New Earth that are calling you now.

A dearest friend in a dream once said to me - she looked like my mother outside my elementary school, but she was more - she said, pointing to the sky and then to her heart, “We have a saying where we come from. There’s enough room for a dream out there, and enough room for a world in here”. She was just one of my guides to the New Earth of Love, but she held a great Light, for which I will be ever grateful and shed more tears, whenever the time is right to remember her wisdom which she is so glad to share.

So back to the night sky, of this current July 4 weekend, and the festivities of just last night. My boys 3 and 5 complained of the noise, and I could smell the smoke. I didn’t see many fireworks because the younger child pinched his finger hard in the stroller just as we were about to go down the hill to the bay where they are launched in our town. We went to the emergency room and the x-rays were fine, thank goodness, so we got back in time to miss the show. And I had to wonder, why did things happen that way?

(Always ask why, to find the New Earth, for nothing occurs without some meaning of Love)

I intend no disrespect to the old ways, and I know that the Earth is incredibly strong and merciful. She has tolerated much for her lost children to find their way back to being made whole in the love, and incremental improvements are always celebrated. But I do dream of the day when July 4 will be celebrated by the seeing of the lights in the sky that were always there, coming from the clouds that nature made, with great peals of Love that might boom in the hearts that need to be cracked open to let in more God. Call them angels or sylphs, extraterrestrials or deities, it matters not, for every culture speaks of those that can fly.

There are those who know beyond the shadow of doubt the way to New Earth, a land that is already populated with so many more friends than we ever knew.

Ah, but then there is the pain of this life.

The technique of manifest destiny by force, by not asking but masking the tiny voice, is the tragedy that has played on far too long and too wide. Forcing a relationship can never work, the worst case becoming evident when one party wants the other dead. Oh, you can certainly steal something they might have shared had you asked the right way, keep it all to yourself. But what is left to take by force is an empty shell. Your soul is already gone from that place, and only another who still loves can be found in the ruins for a new friend.

If only my United States had truly declared an Independence of the Soul, way back on July 4, 1776! Then the New World would have been truly discovered. This land was already full, staffed with so many new guides and beloveds. Like my 5 year old child likes to say, the world is full of friends who just don’t know each other.

Holocaust expert and author David Cesarani states that "in terms of the sheer numbers killed, the Native American Genocide exceeds that of the Holocaust". For all the shock to the World Soul that was sustained by World War II, for all the continuing damage of the Crusades, for all the symbolic portent of the fall of Tibet and other peak cultures told or forgot, this devastating fact here at home just blows my mind and renders my heart.

But I know it too, I know that all is not lost, by simple gentle reminders such as how many of those who communicate with spirits today have Native American guides. The sheer numbers must have been vast for there to be so many friends who endured, visionaries who forgave, the ones who held on to love.

They shine the way still, the Way to New Earth.

Do you know the story of Ishi, the last Yahi? It is a very good story, it is furthermore true, and it remains a turning point in the recognition of the Native American plight. It continues to be a tale of how very much the New Earth is calling you, for it is a great door on more hope that is both old and new. It comes from a lineage of soul stories that have touched more people than ever knew from whence came the love.

It is time to reveal more of the soul lines that show the way to New Earth.

In the push of civilization from East to West, the coast of California was reached finally. By the beginning of the 20th century, the native Yana people of California had been reduced to one last group called the Yahi, and the Yahi had by a series of massacres been reduced to one lone survivor who came to be known as Ishi. This name is not his true name but only means “man” in his tongue, for Ishi’s people were killed before Ishi could receive his adult name by the proper ceremony.

Ishi was a shaman, a medicine man, by nature if not by as much nurture as he should have received. Wounded healers, they are called. Ishi was a keeper of the Souls of his tribe, and so he agreed to survive the massacres, to follow spirit advice that he might emerge each time safely from hiding places, so he could remain behind to send his slaughtered kin each on their proper ways into the afterlife.

Sending the dead home usually meant guiding them into the Earth. Shamans do not fear underworlds, and know that deep in sacred ground await many more friends. I have been there myself, at night I have slipped down into the planet and been given tours of so much more than I can recall consciously. There are fantastic new worlds of hope and love, gestating safely for the future in the womb of our planet.

I can picture it clearly, that whenever a human connects with their love of the Earth, a grounding cord drops as deep as their heart will allow, and friends of humanity (shamanic beings, magical lizards they might appear) gently plug these our lifelines of the hope for the future deeper still. Ties to nature is one way that we survive as a race to see the New Earth.

In 1908 Ishi’s job was done, all his kinfolk were dead and sent to the next world. And so, broken hearted but still serving Great Spirit, Ishi asked where he might go next. The answer came, to enter the world of the dreaded white man, and find the new friends there who will help tell your story and carry on the great work.

Friends of your soul can be found on all sides of the conflicted world; do not give up the journey of Tikkun Olam, reassembling the face of God.

So Ishi allowed himself to be captured and taken like a specimen, a curiousity, to ultimately live at the Berkeley Museum of Anthropology for the rest of his life, excepting one summer at the home of anthropologist Thomas Talbot Waterman and his family. Waterman and his colleague Alfred L. Kroeber staked their careers on studying Ishi, preserving his knowledge and way of life, and even taking him out to see the city and theatre and everyday people and events of this strange new culture that had decimated his own. Not every white man was to be feared, as Ishi met women and children and families in homes.

The public was fascinated, and the story of Ishi became a powerful new watershed for native American dignity and rights. The public consciousness was forever changed, as it slowly dawned what been lost in the cost of a manifest destiny led by the men of greed and fear. An entire race of rare human beings, rich in their stories, accomplishments and loves, had been reduced to the traces of what one gentle individual whose name was not even Ishi could bring a few scholars to understand in those twilight years of the Native American genocide, which had spanned centuries.

The legacy of Ishi’s courage, and that of those who came to love him against the tide of their own culture, cannot be underestimated. In 1915 Edward Sapir, a Jewish American linguist of rising prominence, came to California to study Ishi and his language. It was a powerful experience, capping the years of study he had already done on the vanishing native languages of Oregon and California, under the sympathetic direction of his great mentor Franz Boas, who has been called “the father of modern anthropology”.

Sapir’s name you may recognize in the startling hypothesis he devised with colleague Benjamin Whorf. Oft enthusiastically quoted and, like Einstein’s Theory of Relativity arguably over-applied, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states more or less that a language and the culture which it encodes will determine the cognitive limits of a people. You can’t even think or feel what you cannot describe.

This incredibly powerful philosophical position captured the imaginations of millions, and paved the way for the new generations of subjective anthropologists, who would immerse themselves in a culture to become forever changed. From this tradition of such heart-open powers have come the new shamans of the western world, including the debatably fictionalized but immeasurably influential books of Carlos Castenada, and the mind-bending world-healing life works of Michael Harner, Hank Wesselman, and so many others.

The spirits of those slaughtered live on, for the love of New Earth is ever dawning.

The story of Ishi was recorded most faithfully and popularized by none other than the wife of Alfred Kroeber, Theodora, who never actually met the great native man. From her husband’s notes and comments she compiled the book “Ishi in Two Worlds”, which was not published until 1961 after Alfred Kroeber's death. Many more books and movies have followed and will continue to, because the story is so deep and still does not end. The daughter of Alfred and Theodora was none other than the great American authoress Ursula K. LeGuin, who also had not met Ishi but shows the mark of a great Soul lineage.

(I note through my tears as I write this, that Ursula was born on my birthday which is the feast of St. Ursula, and in the same year as Michael Harner. Is that what I do from my soul for you, gentle reader, I make the connections?)

Writing since childhood but published only since the 1960’s, Ursula K. LeGuin is celebrated as one of the most influential science-fiction fantasy authors the world has ever known. Coming from her strong intuitive senses for native mythic storytelling, cross-cultural human rights, and archetypal spirituality, her works such as “The Left Hand of Darkness” and “The Earthsea Trilogy” have guided generations of dreamers and seekers. The titles alone are legendary, subsuming fantastic journeys of self-discovery that include characters who change genders on distant planets, and heros who integrate the shadow self to take back their power and fulfill destinies that recast the world to a much better place.

Though Ursula broke many barriers, including writing from such a strongly feminine perspective, becoming the first science-fiction author to keep her female name was not her achievement. More creditable for that bold statement is Zenna Henderson, who influenced Ursula greatly with her tales of The People, a Shaker-like gentle tribe of extraterrestrial refugees who keep their psychic and spiritual traditions secret in modern America, occasionally revealing themselves to someone they trust, including a new state-supplied school teacher. Zenna began imagining this after being assigned to teach Japanese children in an Arizona internment camp during WWII.

But one of my favorite firsts of Ursula K. LeGuin indeed comes with her story “The Lathe of Heaven”. From it was made the first science fiction movie for PBS, American public television, which had previously considered sci-fi beneath its literary reputation. “The Lathe of Heaven” is about a man who goes to a therapist with a most unusual problem: what he dreams the night before changes all of reality. Since the therapist is changed along with everything else, it takes some clever proving to demonstrate he is not crazy. The therapist then becomes greedy to use this power to remake the planet into a better place, which backfires in an apocalypse that is intervened upon by turtle-like guides from higher dimensions, who reset time to allow our hero to live the life he would have always dreamed of for himself, one of love and personal peace.

I digress of course, but there are so many transcendent themes here that I become enamored with the future and past of New Earth. There are energies of inspiration which have always been with us, from the gentlest and most powerful of ancestors and myths, to the popular works of visionaries living among us today.

The world may be after all, a very good place.

Let there be peace on Earth. Let the God in you bless.

Please, for the sake of you and your friends who just haven’t yet met.

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