Saturday, April 30, 2011

Beltane: Celebrate Your Planet, Yourself

May 1st is Beltane: a time for celebrating the beauty and sanctity of all life. Today is a moment for reclaiming your power, balance, and inner strength.

Beltane is one of eight Shabbats on the Wheel of the Year. The others include the Solstices and Equinoxes, Lammas (August 1st), Samhain (October 31st), and Imbolc (February 2nd). Beltane breathes renewal into our cells as we acknowledge the Nature Kingdom and the advent of summer. For our Southern Hemisphere allies, the Wheel of the Year is reversed: they now celebrate Samhain.

In the West, we often water down our sacred days to become mere children's celebrations: Samhain, ushering in the dark half of the year, becomes a specter of itself as Halloween; Imbolc, heralding the return of the light on February 2nd, morphs to Groundhog Day; Beltane becomes a chance to dance around the Maypole. Yet the deeper meanings reflect our lost connection with natural rhythms, with the seasonal shifts we actually embody.

As Samhain honors the power of death, so Beltane honors the cycles of life and rebirth. Beltane takes place in Taurus, the zodiac's most earthy, sensual sign, and focuses on exuberant sexuality: the pollinating of flowers, the lush cornucopia of fruit-bearing plants and trees, the reproductive cycle of the entire natural world, from birds and bees to humans. It's a celebration of fertility in all its forms — and thus we dance in homage to Aphrodite, the Goddess Herself.

Although traditionally observed on May 1st, astronomical Beltane arrives about the 5th, a nice sync-up with Cinco de Mayo, giving us an entire week in which to renew, dance the fire back into our beings, and open once again to a sacred reUnion of our masculine and feminine selves. Mythologist Kathleen Jenks provides a page rich in Beltane lore from around the globe.

Renowned ritualist Ffiona Morgan says of an anticipatory Beltane celebration, "As I walk through the blooming earth to join friends, I realize that passionate love takes many forms, and that the earth is my greatest lover. I bless my blue planet, vowing unchanging devotion and care for Her. Seeing Earth as a living, breathing female has changed me, and become the cornerstone of my commitment to Her." (from WeMoon Datebook © Mother Tongue Ink)

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Radiate: To Emit Light

The Unity Wave is turning fear on its ear, in every sense. Since Japan's cataclysm, the entire world has been sending love to the affected area and prayers for healing. Then I learned about the women of Chernobyl (see Meltdown), who returned to their native land not long after the incident, and have survived against all odds for 25 years, thanks to their love for the Motherland and abiding community, which appear to trump radiation for health and longevity. But in all this, we were still seeing radiation as "the enemy".

To radiate means to emit light. A few days ago, Jean Hudon sent this extraordinary tale via his Age of Awakening compilation: how radiation itself can be a path of spiritual emergence.

During her many years working in the former Soviet Union, and exposure to Chernobyl radiation, Rama Jyoti Vernon discovered one group of children who were doing exceptionally well. She asked their doctors the secret to offsetting the radiation poisoning, and they told her:

"Radiation is light and has a high vibratory frequency. Through our spiritual practices of meditation, prayer, Yoga, eating less dense foods and faith and love of God, we can raise our own cellular vibration to that of radiation to offset the harmful effects.

"'You see,'" one Russian doctor bubbled with excitement, “We are using radiation as our spiritual guide. It forces us to be more fully conscious each moment of every day. If we have a negative thought it reduces the vibratory frequency of our cells and we become more susceptible. If we are angry or critical, our cells vibrate at a slower pace and we can become ill. If we become lighter, we become light and become one with the light of radiation. You see,'" they beamed, "'radiation is our spiritual practice.'"

This flies in the face of everything we believe and "know" to be true; that's why it's all the more imperative to pay attention. Nothing now is as it was, and this is a profound teaching.

I read this story as I was being gifted my own opportunity to put it into practice: not with radiation per se, but in terms of transmuting my beliefs. A week ago I suddenly became very fatigued, and it lasted for four days with no apparent origin; I didn't feel sick, just exhausted. However, given all the evolutionary upgrades taking place in 18-day cycles now, that didn't seem so odd.

Then Sunday night the hurricane hit.

Wrenched from a peaceful sleep at 1 am (which corresponds to liver, the body's main organ of detoxification in Chinese medicine), I was fevered, sweating with chills, and had an overwhelming urge to release from two major orifices (that's about as delicate as I can say it, lol.) On Monday I went for a Network chiropractic treatment. I felt somewhat better by Tuesday (the fever was down) but still very sick. I ate nothing these two days, just some water and grapefruit juice. As I lay in bed, I had the clear sense that I wanted to embrace a raw food diet. I know very little about how one actually lives the raw food lifestyle, and don't own the requisite dehydrator, juicer, etc. Yet I suddenly knew I wanted to eat lighter ("eat light"!) — and I've been eating a healthy, organic diet for decades.

By today, though, my throat was still red and swollen, my tongue bright white, and I spiraled into fear: what if it's strep? I often had strep throat as a child, and took loads of antibiotics. The last antibiotic to pass my lips was 18 years ago when I had pneumonia. It did nothing except give me diarrhea, and I vowed that I would never take another unless it was a matter of life and death — and I was not complete here. My body does not handle drugs of any kind well.

Yet here I was, contemplating a pill. First, however, I needed a throat culture. Muscle testing myself, I got that I did NOT have strep. But I was in memory. Minus any primary care physician or health insurance, I contacted a few local urgent care clinics and learned that the fee for a throat culture for an uninsured individual is — wait for it — $3-400! Excuse me? A discussion about health care in America is a topic for another day. Suffice it to say, I turned them down.

I then called an acquaintance who works with clients holistically, prescribing nutritionally-based remedies that work at the cellular level. Her husband picked up her phone — she's out of town for two weeks! Oh, I should have called yesterday!

Then I began to smile. All the paths to diagnosis, traditional or alternative, are blocked. What's this really about? Radiation! Raising my vibratory frequency! I am ready and willing to emit more light. One of the supplement specialists at Whole Foods says she's been feeling the exhaustion, too, and numerous people have been coming in complaining of severe throat pain. Maybe it's a call to raise our collective voice in service to the highest, to speak our truth and honor all perspectives to a greater degree than we ever have before!

There has never been a year like 2011. We are in the New Earth Birth Canal, and the alchemical fires are licking us clean. I know I can withstand this, even as I surrender to the Light more completely than I ever have in my life — and I've been through the fire a few times!

When I think this way, feel this way, it brings tears of joy to my heart. If you are feeling these or other ascension symptoms, please share your story. It will benefit us all. Because we are, of course, All One.

Be the Wave of Now. Blessings, abundant health and much love to you, Beloveds!

Saturday, April 02, 2011

Meltdown

My April newsletter, Nuclear Family, focuses on how to create a "nuclear reaction" that heals all, using "nuclear" as metaphor. But I didn't consider the word "reactor" until I heard Caroline Casey discuss it on her Visionary Activist radio show this week, in which she reminded us that in lieu of being "reactive," we could seek solutions.

"Reactive" is one of those delightful words that lends itself to a subtle shift, like scared into sacred, density into destiny, nowhere to now here: simply by moving the "c", we morph reactive into creative — and we're able to "c" clearly!

One inspiring group of women who see clearly demonstrated with their very lives that love and connection supersede radiation. Known as the "babushkas," this determined group of elders, all past 70, chose soon after the Chernobyl disaster to return to Ground 0, despite warnings that the area was contaminated and permanently uninhabitable. They have survived and thrived in the "Exclusion Zone," eating contaminated food, breathing contaminated air and drinking poisoned water, for a quarter of a century.

On the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl, More magazine did a story about these plucky people who chose their Motherland over fear, proving by example that love can transmute toxins. (Intriguingly and presciently, the interviews were conducted last December, prior to the Japan 'quake/tsunami/reactor breach).

How can we each become a "nuclear creator," choosing from our very core to heal our individual and collective problems through Love? It adds a whole new dimension of meaning to "meltdown," in which we liquefy into the heart of Oneness.

Feel free to Tweet me your ideas! Or post them as Comments here, and I'll relay them to the Twitterverse and beyond. Blessed Be.