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.
++++ (-; <> ;-) ++++
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
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!
(-: (-: (-: O :-) :-) :-)
(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!
(-: (-: (-: O :-) :-) :-)
Sunday, July 4, 2010
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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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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