Imbolc!

Imbolc has arrived! In the Goddess' turn of the wheel, we now move to the counterquarter of Imbolc that falls between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. That fresh energy of waking up as we notice the days staying lighter a little longer, lambs in the fields frolicking and the first of the snowdrops emerging their pearly heads through the frost to gladden the heart. How glorious to see flowers again! It seems so long since we were blessed with stem and petal growing randomly in their clumps amongst the bare trees. Mother Earth begins to hear the heart song of the sun like a lover kissing the beloved so she may join him and languidly uncurl from winter's sleep.

The Festival of Imbolc or Imbolg - pronounced without the 'b' sound - is sometimes known as Oimelc, means 'ewe's milk' - named due to the birth of the first lambs at this time, and celebrates the return of fresh milk. It is the celebration of the gradual dawning of increasing light, bringing nature to life again. For Imbolc we celebrate the Waking Light of the soul. Our spirits begin to quicken as we anticipate the rebirth of Nature. This celebration commemorates the changing of the Goddess from the Crone to the Maiden.

The Goddess is seen in Her three aspects at Imbolc, as the new-born Flower Maiden; the Mother, or bride of fertility, awaiting the fertilizing Sun God, and the Dark Crone of the dark half of the year. The sun is growing in strength, the Child of Promise, re-born at Yule, is now the growing Child. All is pregnant and expectant. It is the promise of renewal, of hidden potential, of earth awakening and life-force stirring.

Imbolc is a 'fire festival'. Particular attention was paid to the hearth fire and keeping it alight. Imbolc marks the transition and transformation from death to rebirth, as the light of day grows significantly longer and you can be assured that Spring is right around the corner. At this time the animal world comes out of hibernation, the birds fly north again. This is a very holy day for initiations of the priests and priestesses and a day to devote yourself to the God/dess and your own spiritual path. This is also a very powerful time for intuitive and visionary work and to seek inspiration, especially for healers, poets, and artists. At this time if you really tune in, you can just begin to feel and sense the "inner stirrings", the seeds beginning to stir, and the inner light growing stronger.

It is time to let go of the past and to look to the future, clearing out the old. Imbolc is a gateway indicating work to be done inside and outside ourselves before action is undertaken!

This is the time of Bridie, Maiden Goddess in her seasonal aspect of the land awakening. She strikes the land with her fiery staff, creating a shout in nature…'wake up, wake up!' The promise of spring is still a distant echo clinging to winter's chill, but we are feeling the awakening even so... This is the time of Imbolc, a fire season on the great wheel, when the year is as young as a maiden and awakening. Imbolc means 'ewes' milk' and in ancient times our ancestors would bless the land with the first of the ewes' milk, asking the Mother Goddess for a fertile crop for the coming year. It is a time for all things beginning anew. Growth, manifestations and projects begin to take on the energy of form. All things can begin again.

~ Ariel Spilsbury and Holographic Goddess

Have You Paid Your OUTCOME Tax?

We talk about taxes as if they're a cycle of Nature: "It's tax season". (Brace for collective groan.) Maybe that's how spring fever earned its name: from people boiling about the money they give to the government.

However, there's one place taxing is good, welcome even: your mind. The more you s-t-r-e-t-c-h your grey matter, the greater the probability you'll come up with stupendous (as distinct from stupid) ideas, and become more effective, magnanimous, and satisfied, in business and in life. Think of it as the outcome tax. READ MORE

Grace Notes: Other Mothers and The Mother of All

I didn't send my Mom a Mother's Day card this year; she made her transition in January. I did send a trio of cards to a beloved 100-year-old friend who's been a spiritual mother my entire life, from the days when I'd paste my artwork on the kitchen window she'd pass on her way to work (and to which she'd respond in poetry), to our adult friendship spanning four decades. Ellie and her husband never had children, yet I don't think that's why so many "young people" (as she characterized those in their 50s when she was 92!) have adopted her as a surrogate Mom. It's because, by her very essence, she engenders the deep love and appreciation we associate with mothering.

I've been blessed to enjoy this kind of relationship a few times in my life. Another was with a woman whose husband I met in the park, not long after I'd graduated from college. He brought me home to meet his wife as though I were a flea market find, and the three of us became fast friends during the year before I moved to California. I was just launching my life at 22, and Sten and Ethel provided the support and encouragement I needed to thrive — right down to lending me their old car for the final weeks prior to my relocation, so I could get around town once I'd sold mine. Ethel had multiple sclerosis (MS), and her optimism and sunny disposition in the face of her illness seem even more amazing to me now. For her birthday that year I sent a singing balloon-a-gram; the center balloon was shaped like a heart. She told me this balloon kept its helium for weeks and followed her around the house! That's the power of Love.

Another spiritual mother for 26 years and counting is Louise Hay. An old friend gifted me with Louise's signature book, You Can Heal Your Life in 1988, the same year I was blessed to meet Louise in person when she held a "Hay Ride" event in San Francisco. Her breakthrough personal growth work has sustained and healed me on many levels since then. Louise is just nine months older than my biological mother, so in many ways she really does feel like my Mom.

Who are the "other mothers" in your life? Mother's Day is a beautiful moment to let them know how much you cherish their love, their support, their wisdom. Whether they know you personally or are a public figure who's helped you via their planetary service (Oprah springs to mind), take a moment to acknowledge this gift. In the level playing field of the digital age we can connect with almost anyone, yet your thank you needn't be splashed across the social landscape unless you so choose. If you send your message via the quantum field, it will be received — at an even more profound level.

If you can and want to connect in 3D, that's always a delight. I'll call my 100+ year-old friend in the morning, and thank her again for shining her Light in my life.

Finally, there is our collective Mother, Gaia, in all her (wo)manifestations. During my awakening journey I realized how profoundly I yearned to nestle into the nurturing archetypal arms of the Great Mother. I found her in trees, in our animal kin, in metaphysical bookstores and sacred ceremony, and in the wisdom of those who had gone before me and could give a name to this longing.

Reaching our Light means daring a descent into the dark, to the ancient womb of Mystery that lives within each one, calling us to awaken and claim our power. Men and women alike are capable of this kind of birth, which knows no gender — only the willingness to open to the immanent truth of our being.

Everything arises from this awareness: how we move through the world, how we effect change, how we define what "matters" (which comes from the same root as "mother".) Uncloaked, we are cut from whole cloth — "material" in its original sense. When we abide in the Mother, who we are matters — and we are always Home.

Mother yourself, today and every day. That's the greatest grace note of all.

~ Much Love to you ~

Can You Hear the Love?

So you're tone-deaf? Can't carry a tune in a bucket? You can still be a powerful sonic force for Love on Friday, February 14^th: the 12^th annual World Sound Healing Day, which takes place at a throat chakra near you.

Sound is our original sense. The first sound we hear is our mother's heartbeat; the last sense to leave the dying is hearing. On World Sound Healing Day, we each have an extraordinary opportunity to heal Mama Gaia and ourselves with a tool everyone possesses: our voice.

To participate, simply sound a love-filled "AH" for five minutes at noon local time. "AH" is a universal heart sound that, when projected with focused intent, has the ability to heal and transform. It's our sonic valentine for global harmony.

If you're ready to take your sonic sisterhood (or brotherhood) to the next level, visit the Temple of Sacred Sound, an interactive site that enables you to hear yourself within a series of Toning Chambers that resonate to OM, AH, and HU.

This is the essence of 2014: harmony can be as easy as breath, when we approach it with LOVE.

Blessings!

Reimagining Death: The Elephant in the Room

Woody Allen famously said that he didn't want to achieve immortality through his work; he wanted to achieve it through not dying. While we celebrate birth, its corollary, exiting the Earth plane, is feared only slightly less than public speaking — at least, in the Western mind.

As someone with a gerontology (study of aging) background and an abiding love of elders, I've been exploring positive aging and death-related subject matter for years. I'm currently reading two complementary books with mirrored titled: From Age-ing to Sage-ing by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, and Sage-ing While Age-ing by Shirley MacLaine. MacLaine's book has been eye opening, not least because she articulates much that I've discovered/remembered on my own awakening journey, but also because she ratchets up my knowledge to the next level. In Chapter 11 (number of Aquarius), she focuses on soul development and references the work of regression therapist Michael Newton, PhD.

Suddenly I read, "All regressed souls speak of how much easier death is than birth. With death there is a release into the light. With birth there is an entrance into density." Of course! It's easier to expand than to contract.

And this awareness dovetails beautifully with another stunning book I read last year, Deathing: An Intelligent Alternative for the Final Moments of Life by Anya Foos-Graber.

Deathing is the real deal on conscious departure. We're not meant to die alone and afraid, maintains Foos-Graber. This definitive guide — the first of its kind I've seen, and it was published in 1989 — spells out clearly how each person can prepare for an informed death. Since most of us avoid any discussion of the subject, the very concept of a 'how-to' manual may sound frightening. Yet like MacLaine, Foos-Graber maintains that death can be a light-filled, spiritual experience.

We have a lot of help entering the world: we emerge from the body of our mother with attendants such as doctors, nurses, midwives, spouses and friends at the ready to welcome us and tend to the birthing mother. But there is no corresponding death ritual to support us in exiting the body we've inhabited as we return to the Great Mother of All.

Through two teaching stories, Foos-Graber shows us what both a typical, unconscious dying and a planned 'deathing' experience look like. The second half of the book provides step-by-step instructions and simple exercises such as breathing, visualization and remembering the Love that you are, to assist you in releasing the body and making a conscious, even joyful, departure from this life — and to support others in doing so.

Plus, we can rehearse while alive! Foos-Graber writes, "By practicing ahead of time with an eye toward this spiritual life insurance, you can increasingly live in an atmosphere free from fear and ignorance. A correct grasp of how to die necessarily produces an expanded philosophy of how to live more abundantly, however long or short your time of physical life."

As I was reading this book, a friend of mine's husband surrendered to cancer. Here's how she described his conscious death: "He squeezed my hand and left his breath here to begin to inhale the ethers of elsewhere. A gentle wave of joyful contentment spread out in ripples of sparkling delight. He was free again and slowly twirling in the softly glowing wonder of it all. This ethereal mist of farewell whispered through our home for an hour or so and then was gone."

So let us bow to that elephant and embrace its wisdom, rather than indulge in what MacLaine refers to as "amphysteria" ~ a condition of forgotten fear, usually of a place. We have no reason to fear expansion into the Light of All. And the elephant-headed Hindu deity Ganesh is revered as the "Remover of Obstacles". We can ride the elephant of awareness right on into the next adventure.

Ariel Spilsbury is a mystic, an embodiment of the Divine Feminine and co-creator of The Mayan Oracle, a divination tool that assisted me tremendously on my awakening journey. Her Turning of the Wheel transmission reminds us that in emptying ourselves, we receive the gifts. As I've long envisioned my vessel as a chalice, hers is a potent blessing for this auspicious moment in our evolution. I couldn't have said it better:

The Turn of the Wheel Winter Solstice - Dec 21-23, 2012 "Empty your chalice to receive My feast." The Mother

An Invitation from Unity Consciousness for the Wedding Feast: Your participation with the Creation is cordially requested in "the Milky Way Rift", from Dec. 21st to Dec 23rd 2012  to Walk the Road of Awe Xibalba Bey, in Ecstatic Emergence together! Kindly RSVP to the Divine One   Dearest Ones, What if YOU were actually "enough" in this moment just being empty, totally lovable with NOTHING ADDED, NOTHING SUBTRACTED? Just FEEL that possibility in this moment! How many lifetimes will it take to recognize yourself without judgment, as already whole, perfectly lovable as you are in this moment? Imagine right now, who you would be with nothing left to do, strive for, or become. Oh, your mind can come up with a million reasons why that just isn't possible, but at some point in the soul journey through lifetimes, you WILL recognize that you are enough just being an open, empty vessel for the Divine currency of Love to be poured into. Could this Solstice be that moment? Could all of our striving, driving, craving, doing, grasping, have finally led us to realize the truth that lies behind all the changing appearances? What if all this hoopla and mental conjecturing leading up to the Dec. 21st 2012 date has all been merely pointing us to this ultra simple recognition? What if for this short time in human history, in the Solstice somewhere in the window between Dec. 21st and Dec 23rd you were actually to RECOGNIZE IN A LIVING TANGIBLE WAY what the Buddha's Heart Sutra states: WHAT IS REAL IS EMPTY AND WHAT IS EMPTY IS REAL? Form is emptiness and emptiness is form. Folks, these are not just words. This is NOT just another spiritual concept. Most have not experienced this state in a direct enough way to take it out of being a concept... but what I am going to witness with you here, is that we will have an unprecedented opportunity to have a REAL experience of this state, this Winter Solstice 2012. While many will be called into various forms of "doingness", I am here to hold a strong voice for EMPTINESS during this precious opportunity and window... for being simply Empty Vessels for Divine frequency to uplift and recalibrate, through Grace, the vibration of the whole planet, the whole human race. And all that is required is that we are in Emptiness, to receive this Divine gift of frequency that will allow us to have a direct experience of Unity consciousness! Our purpose is to simply be human tube torus electro-magnetic oscillators. (I highly recommend seeing this beautiful video link for a visual of this.) Or more simply put, we are simply resonant tuning forks that will, through our coherence* in Emptiness, ground, transmit, amplify, stabilize and resonate what is being Divinely poured into our planetary Chalice.  The pyramids around the globe are the hardware that we are analogously the software to, in this process of transmission, stabilization and amplification. It is time now to demonstrate our ability to simply BE empty, coherent, resonators! (*Coherence is ordered, focused energy, the difference in effectiveness, between a flash light and a laser beam.) What has been demonstrated to me, over and over as a vessel for the Sacred Feminine in  the  space of my long life, is that if it is simple, it is more likely to be true. What could be MORE simple than this? The mind says, "Ah, it just couldn't be that easy." I have witnessed Her grace personally too many times not to strongly counter that perception. It IS just that easy, as we open to receive the Divine gift of Grace! As Osho so eloquently puts it: "Emptiness is the means, the destination and the attainment!" I have endeavored to live my life from this place of Emptiness being what is REAL, and I am overjoyed to see it coming to bloom in the planetary collective. We are all now powerfully, mythically called to be resonant capacitors, frequency holders, in this emergent, planetary field, in Emptiness! We are also at the same time called to be sacred Witnesses to the holy alchemical marriage of male and female within each of us, the Heiros Gamos, that is now astrologically playing out in the larger field of the Milky Way Rift at Winter Solstice 2012, where Cosmic Mother and Cosmic Father, Christ and the Magdelane, Thoth and Seshat, Isis and Osirus, Venus and Mars are joining to celebrate with us, the Wedding Feast of the release of a new cosmological template of balanced human evolution. Let us celebrate entering into Unity Consciousness, in the freedom of Emptiness! Will things look like we have entered a new world? Yes, if you are looking from the inside out. To some it will appear as if nothing has happened. As the alchemists say: "As viewed. So appears." This is just the way awareness works my beloved dears, since, as you well know, we are the movie directors of the outpicturing of our own consciousness.  In this process, remember, the nature of the Chalice is to be empty in order to contain. We ARE each a chalice. By simply being empty, we are creating a clear station on which the Divine can transmit pure vibrational frequency. Mother's response to me, in all simplicity, in answer to how to prepare for this time was, "Empty your chalice to receive my feast!" We have been doing that over the last months/years with clearing our bodies, our psyches, our shadow material, emptying out, in preparation for this "once in many lifetimes" opportunity. For many, this stripping down to Essence has been perceived as a painful process of shedding, houses, jobs, relationships, but take heart, it was all necessary to "empty your chalice to receive the feast!" During this potent time, continue to be aware personally and collectively, owning, shedding and releasing whatever shadow material still appears to stand between you and embodying Divine Love! It all comes down to a very simple choice, in each moment, each interaction, to choose love rather than to separate from self or the appearance of "other". Is this the lifetime to MAKE THAT CHOICE?    On the other end of the spectrum, as you approach this potent window of opportunity, remember that being in the open eyed meditation that Emptiness represents, engaging in the expanded states implied in open heartedness, joy, unconditional love, gratitude, awe, celebration, (ecstatic process of all sorts), all lift our frequencies to resonate with the expanded frequencies that will be available for us to resonate with during this time. Now, did I catch you off guard? Were you holding a belief/perception that you had to be sitting still in closed eyed meditation, in order to be empty? As Adyashanti says: "If Emptiness isn't dancing, it isn't Emptiness." Emptiness cannot actually be defined, rather can only be pointed to in the description of being a mind without thought to clutter it, a spaciousness, a sense of profound peace and resting in joyful non-doing. And in a culture that does everything in its power to keep us asleep and distracted from embodying that awareness, it is wise to remember that Emptiness flourishes in conscious cultivation. The good news is that in the Sacred Feminine, ecstatic process is what empties us, whether that is dancing, singing, love making, eating with full ecstatic awareness, getting a massage, being in awe in nature etc. Doesn't sound like difficult preparation, right? Easy. Ecstatic. Graceful. Joyful. Praise be, that is Her way. And so, I lovingly leave you with this: STOP STRUGGLING, TRYING, DOING! FINALLY fully RECOGNIZE THAT YOUR ECSTATIC EMPTINESS AND LOVING BEING ARE MORE THAN ENOUGH!! Wherever you find yourself this Winter Solstice 2012, please BE EMPTY, being there! And may you have a direct experience of the truth of the Buddha's Heart Sutra: What is real is empty and what is empty is real and thus ecstatically embrace the wisdom of Emptiness in your daily life! And with Grace may you truly emerge in the ecstatic freedom of the Nada and Her holy Temple of I am Not, Essence as Unity Consciousness! I end this simple Solstice offering with a quote from my Beloved, Rumi: Nothing. We are Emptiness. When you are with everyone but me, You are with no one. When you are with no one but me, You're with everyone., Instead of being so bound up with everyone, Be everyone. When you become that many, you're nothing. Empty.    I celebrate each one of us finding and dancing in Ecstatic Emergence, in the freedom of Emptiness!  And to that end, do I dedicate this offering.       In Devotion to the One Heart, In lakech, Your Sister, Ariel

The Mother of All Releasings Ceremony, Winter Solstice 2011

Pixie Campbell has created a simple, sacred ceremony for December 22, 2011, the final Solstice before we enter the year that's been the subject of endless prophecy (and paranoia!). Since she asks this information be disseminated widely, I'm honored to share her elegant ritual offering:



Who: YOU, and if you wish, your circle, tribe, family, or village.

What: A fire ceremony, to release the old year and shift up into the new.

Where: In your backyard firepit, on a beach bonfire, around your fireplace, (even in your kitchen sink if you can make it scout-safe with a fireproof container).

When: Winter Solstice, December 22nd, 2011.

Why: We release what no longer serves us on the Winter Solstice, because it is the darkest day of the year. We let go so that we can step freely into what is waiting for us, as the light begins to grow brighter with each day. We're doing it as an extended community to raise the energy level of letting go, together!

How: Make a releasing bundle. Gather friends and family around a hearth (or do this in sacred solitary), set the bundle safely aflame, and let the alchemical element of fire transform the old, as it knows how to do so well. Feast on Solstice treats and celebrate the return of the light. View the video created around my tribe's ceremony:

Mother of All Releasings Ceremony: Winter Solstice, 2012 from Pixie Campbell on Vimeo.

2012 is a powerful year to let the old ways go and step fully into creative self-expression and abundant support for our dreams from All That Is. It is a time for visionaries to create reality.

Thank you, sisters. I'm so grateful that you and your energy is rippling out into the world!

Stand! Mother's Day Message for World Peace

This Sunday the United States celebrates Mother's Day, a holiday that was originally not a Hallmark occasion, but a call for women to put an end to war. Poet, author and activist Julia Ward Howe first championed a Mother's Peace Day in 1870. In her Mother's Day Proclamation, she exhorted, "Arise, then, women of this day! 
Arise all women who have hearts…solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
 whereby the great human family can live in peace..."

More than a century hence, women everywhere are heeding the call, thanks to Sharon Mehdi's seminal book, The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering. Written for her newborn granddaughter, the book tells the tale of two grandmothers who chose to stand silently in a local park. When asked why, they responded, "We are saving the world." People laughed at them, even as other women — and men — joined the vigil. Pretty soon more than 2,000 people filled the park, and word quickly spread until similar groups were standing all over the country.

Mehdi's book touched a chord. The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering meteorically morphed from fiction to fact as StandingWomen.org was born. READ THE REST!

The Heart of the Matter

We've entered a quantum realm, where mainstream "realities" of force and fear seem more and more illusory, while living in the flow and in the know feels real. The mental, hierarchical structures and strictures are dissolving, although it doesn't always look that way! Embracing the matrix is key. How do we do this?

In Urgent Message from Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World, Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD, reminds us that the words matter, matrix and material all come from the Latin word for womb, "mater," which means mother. She also uses the evocative phrase, "speaking truth to power."

Reading Bolen's eloquent call to action, I suddenly remembered a play I saw years ago, Mother Wove the Morning. During my own pilgrimage to consciousness, I realized how profoundly I yearned to nestle into the nurturing archetypal arms of the Great Mother. I found her in trees, in our animal kin, in metaphysical bookstores and sacred ceremony, and in the wisdom of those who had gone before me and could give a name to this longing. READ THE REST!