Of Two-Way Streets and Enriching Dichotomies

  

Our world of apparent duality offers a wealth of disguised enrichment opportunities. Consider:

A cyber buddy who currently lives creatively without residence wondered why a stranger would open her home and heart to her. She emailed, "I don't understand why she's being so amazingly generous. I keep telling her she just blows me away."

I responded, "You never know what her own journey is…she may have needed to serve someone in exactly this way, and you are providing a golden opportunity, so it is a mutuality."

This is the way energy works. When my lifelong friend Ellie fell and broke her hip at 96, requiring a lengthy convalescence in a rehabilitation center and later at home, I initially despaired about why Spirit didn't simply call her Home.

Then I had a flash of insight: the enforced passivity enabled my fiercely independent friend to learn to receive, and blessed those who assisted her with the joy of service. I told her, "You would never have allowed it otherwise." With wonder and her trademark humility, Ellie exclaimed, "Amara, you're right!"

The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful

What appears adverse can be advantageous. I needed to park my car on a different street due to an upcoming festival, and planned to be out of town the following week. I gave the young man who acts as my "car surrogate" the spare key, and asked him to please move the car back once the festival was over.

Unbeknownst to me, a road crew was about to repave the street; tow-away signs went up the day after I left. If the festival hadn't been scheduled (and, therefore, if I hadn't given Danny my spare key) my car would have been parked in its normal spot — and towed during the week I was away!

More profoundly: A dear friend was in a near-fatal motorcycle crash earlier this year. After a month in the ICU, he learned he'd need a walker once out of bed, and would have only minimal use of his right hand for the rest of his life (he's a southpaw, but still…). Eight months later, Rick says, "The accident was the best thing that ever happened to me."

During his convalescence he lost seventy pounds, and began exercising several hours a day as part of his physical therapy program; the combination reversed his adult-onset diabetes. He's grateful every day for the gift of life, and more open than he's ever been. He says, "I cry if I'm happy, I cry if I'm sad.

"And you know what? It feels amazing. I have nothing to hide now; what others think of me is no longer my concern. I can be emotionally honest. I feel like this is another piece of the silver lining surrounding that terrible trauma."

Sustained by his new outlook and the outpouring of love and support from friends and family, Rick's regained almost full use of his right hand, and returned to work — as a practicing physician. Practice makes perfect.

Once you've been through the fire, you're recast as pure essence; the superficial no longer holds sway in your life.

How Your Light Is Spent

Milton's sonnet, When I Consider How My Light is Spent, exemplifies the nature of life's dichotomies, and how we choose to interpret our time here. The full text reads:

When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide;

"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"

I fondly ask. But Patience to prevent

That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts; who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o'er land and ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait.

"Apprehension" means both anxiety ­and understanding. If you apprehend the meaning behind Milton's final line, you will understand that simply being is what matters most.

Whoever or whatever your messenger is, listen deeply. Once you apprehend the message, invite yourself to let go, so that you may embrace this wisdom farther along life's spiral. Allow yourself to be amused by the alchemical nature of any apparent dichotomy that shows up in your life. And know there's an invisible cosmic trampoline beneath you, so you can rebound from pain's mirage, spread your wings, and fly.

© Copyright September 2017 by Amara Rose. All rights reserved.

Where's the Survivory?

Welcome to the second year beyond prophecy (which ended when the world didn't, in 2012). We are now in a time unwritten, and everything is possible — although, as I said in a recent radio discussion, Embodying Your Deepest Truth, not necessarily easy. 

Fourteen in numerology equates to 5, which has always been "my" number. The fifth element is about going beyond: the ancient Greeks called it quinta essentia, the pure and concentrated essence or invisible connector that allows earth, fire, water and air to communicate. While the grounding energy of four is significant, five takes us into unexplored territory. It's pure Spirit, the marrow, the core of creation.

There's a lot of power in five, which configures a star. Cross-culturally, five is a centering and balancing element. As the center of the Native American medicine wheel, five signifies the place of transformational possibilities. Five symbolizes access to the Spirit world in the Mayan tradition. Coming to balance and resonance means learning to honor the both/and, becoming inclusive rather than exclusive.

In her January newsletter, Gillian Macbeth Louthan nails it: "Number 14 is a karmic number and not the easiest of energies to walk through. The receptive quality of the 14/5 allows change and freedom.

"2014 will offer the opportunity for magnetic communication. Both gains and losses are temporary, due to the strong currents of change. In 2014 you will need to rely on self. It's a mistake to rely on others. Everyone is in their own wind tunnel. Rely on the intuition of the self, the voice within."

All of this is prelude to this morning's brief encounter. Since I wrote about how we can learn to listen at a deeper level in my January What Shines newsletter, this was especially amusing. As I was walking back to my vehicle, parked around the corner from the library, a woman in a wheelchair rolled by and asked, "Where's the Survivory?" I micro-processed her inquiry, translated what I thought I'd heard, and pointed, "It's right there!"

She had asked, of course, "Where's the library?" But pondering the medical drama unfolding with my birth family, along with some of my personal challenges, I was in my own wind tunnel. Seeing someone with a disability approach, my creative brain heard what resonated with my thoughts. Fortunately, I mentally clarified (like butter) or I might have answered her with a bewildered question of my own.

So be prepared for this astonishing and potentially rewarding double-seven year. Macbeth Louthan says, "Seven in all of its forms is the vibration of the spiritual warrior. One who walks a fine path within self and Soul. Seven works for the light, by the light and with the light. Seven is a place where wonder, magic and miracles are seen as natural events. Seven is your natural state of being. In 2014 see all this times two, opening unpredicted doorways of opportunity."

This IS A Test: Commemorating 9-1-1

[My first posting from 9-11-01]:


This IS A Test!

Dear Ones,

We are six days from September 17th, a date heralded as being an opportunity for planetary initiation. An initiatory crisis, personal or global, catapults us out of our prior way of life in an instant, and demands a creative response born of trust in the process. Crisis actually means "turning point," as well as opportunity. So while this morning's air attacks on key U.S. "nerve centers" (the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon) surprise me only in terms of form, the actions themselves were, in a sense, predictable. It was only a matter of when. The time is NOW. The question is, how will we (the United States, and the world) respond?

I believe it was Einstein who said, you can not solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created it. From stunned pain, shock and anger, the instinctive response is retaliation. The first person I talked with today, upon hearing the news, spoke of hoping the President would threaten a nuclear attack. This would clearly be the end of life as we know it.

Later, as I listened to reports on radio, I was struck once again by how rapidly people always pull together in an emergency to help one another. Tragedy is a great leveler. We all do need to come together, not to fight a common enemy (which is within) but to begin creating the Global Community we've been inching towards for decades. It's a spiritual emergency, as we emerge from the cocoon of complacency, the old paradigm, into a courageous new world.

We must now choose to go beyond the old, reptilian, limbic brain (the same impulse that drives materialism, separation, self-interest, and misuse of power) into the higher realms of consciousness, where love, wisdom and power are synthesized into service. This is a test of the highest order. It's not about who's at fault, who orchestrated the attacks, or whether we should now place sanctions against the Middle East or other groups. It's about recognizing this attack for what it is: a colossal wake-up call.

This event is a volcanic eruption, and in hindsight, the rumblings many of us have been experiencing the past few weeks presaged it. Several players on the path have been sharing stories of total strangers (as well as of acquaintances and friends) suddenly, savagely and inexplicably dumping truckloads of mental trash on them. Everyone has been feeling "the quickening" of these end times, but, since we're at different stages in our growth, those who have no context for what they're experiencing also don't know what to do with these volatile energies. The anger's been leaking out, and finally, here's the explosion.

It is, in a very real sense, a planetary birth process. Something old has to die in order for the new to emerge. Please understand, I am not in the least condoning the tremendous loss of lives or the tragedy itself, yet I do feel that some major catastrophe to serve as a worldwide summons to awareness was cued to occur. It also took place on a Tuesday, which correlates astrologically with Mars, the God of war. We are all learning how to transform the war within ourselves into spiritual warriorhood.

It is interesting that the attack on the Pentagon made it impossible for U.S. officials to meet in the Department of Defense, the War Room. Our old defenses have been dismantled, big time and instantly.

Consider, too, that the Pentagon is a five-sided structure. There's a lot of power in five, which configures a star. The number five, as the center of the Native American medicine wheel, signifies the place of transformational possibilities. Five symbolizes access to the Spirit world in the Mayan tradition. It is a unifying element in Tibetan culture. The Greeks called the fifth element quinta essentia, the pure and concentrated essence, or invisible connector that allows earth, fire, water and air to communicate. Five is, cross-culturally, a centering and balancing element. Think of the alchemical phoenix that could arise from this apparent tragedy…

The 13th century Sufi mystic Rumi wrote, "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there's a field. I'll meet you there." This is the field of higher mind, of creative possibility, of the One Love. The moment is now. This is a call to conscious unity. Sisters and Brothers of the Light, please join me.

May this Invocation, sent out from World Goodwill in New York City to commemorate World Invocation Day, June 5, 2001, inspire and support you now. Many blessings and much love to you all, Amara.


The Great Invocation

From the point of Light within the mind of God
Let Light stream forth into human minds.
Let Light descend on Earth.

From the point of Love within the Heart of God
Let love stream forth into human hearts.
May the Coming One return to Earth.

From the center where the Will of God is known
Let purpose guide all little human wills—
The purpose which the Masters know and serve.

From the center which we call the human race
Let the Plan of Love and Light work out
And may it seal the door where evil dwells.

Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.

"Beware the Ides of March!" Does the day signal danger — or opportunity?

Five centuries after the astrologer in Shakespeare's play counseled Julius Caesar, "Beware the Ides of March!" we still shudder at the thought that March 15th might harbor some hidden hazard.

But it's just another day, albeit one that was part of a convoluted calendar. In ancient Rome, each month had an "ides," a mid-month division of the calendar based on phases of the moon; "ides" means, "to divide." In March, May, July and October, the ides fell on the 15th. In the other eight months, the ides fell on the 13th. READ THE REST!

1/26: Opening to Power

Monday heralds a rare solar eclipse that will transform the sun into a ring of fire. Unfortunately, it'll only be fully visible to those in the Indian Ocean at the time. That doesn't mean we won't feel the effects, however.

As astrologer Allison Rae observes in the current issue of her ezine, Cosmic Time, "Eclipses break up energy, including long-established patterns that are ripe for removal. Solar eclipses are super-charged new moons signaling major new beginnings.

"In other words, this is a gamma-dose of transformational energy for planet Earth. The January and February eclipses happen in Aquarius-Leo and could easily be interpreted as an entree into the Aquarian Age. Both the New Moon Solar Eclipse on January 26 and Full Moon Lunar Eclipse on February 9 feature five planets in the sign of Aquarius."

It's also the first day of the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Ox (no time to be bull-headed!). Mercury is still retrograde (through the end of the month), and Jupiter's in Aquarius all year, expanding unconventional opportunity across the board.

Clearly, this dark moon, total solar eclipse, Chinese New Year gateway is a crossroads call to, as a We'Moon calendar creatrix writes, "come unfurl at the cusp of possibility!"