The Art of Awareness

As we move into the next phase of our global renaissance, copious creativity is the axis on which our elevation will turn. How deeply are we willing to tap our inner reservoirs? Can we expand our perception of what constitutes "art"?

Jose Argüelles, who adapted the evolutionary secrets of the Mayan Calendar for the Western mind, saw art as the unifying field, a path to help us move "from biospheric waste to artistic regeneration," by attuning ourselves to a natural time frequency expressed as an equation: T(E) = Art. Energy (E) factored by time (T) equals Art. Energy is essence: a rock, a flower, a star, a human being. Time is a frequency. When we use our energy in concert with natural time cycles, we are living creativity. In other words, Time is Art…not the clock on the wall or the cash in your wallet.

Eye of the Beholder

What this means in terms of cross-cultural energy exchange opens unimagined doors. A woman traveled from Denmark to the tiny West African country The Gambia, toting numerous colorful plastic bags — prized by Gambian women as symbols of status and respect — to use as barter. (Women of The Gambia also recycle worn or ripped plastic bags into one-of-a-kind purses).

In the marketplace, she discovered a hand-carved figure of an African goddess and, through gestures, opened negotiations to purchase the stunning piece.

But the indigenous artist had no interest in money. She wanted plastic bags. The Danish visitor tried to give her all the bags she'd brought, explaining that there was a surplus of these in her country. The Gambian sculptor accepted three, and each woman felt she'd enjoyed the better bargain. Plastic bags or a unique woodcarving: equally sacred art in the eye of the beholder.

Then there is the children's book that became a collaboration between two Jewish translators, a Protestant editor, a Muslim painter and a non-profit publisher in the deep South. It was a collective endeavor all the way, explained one rabbinical writer: "An Arabic Sufi tale (originally penned in what is now Iraq) translated by a rabbi into Hebrew in the Middle Ages and translated by us (into 21^st century language and sensibility), with a Sufi publisher and a Pakistani artist." The subject matter — animals protesting their treatment by humans — transcended all ethnic, cultural, and religious boundaries.

The Art in our DNA

The universal urge toward the aesthetic is coded in our cells. Theologian and author Thomas Moore writes, in Care of the Soul, "Children paint every day and love to show their works on walls and refrigerator doors. But as we become adults, we abandon this important soul task of childhood." When we relinquish this soul expression to professional artists, "we are left with mere rational reasons for our lives, feelings of emptiness and confusion, and a compulsive attachment to pseudo images, such as shallow television programs. When our own images no longer have a home, a personal museum, we drown our sense of loss in pale substitutes, trashy novels or formulaic movies."

Because art arrests our attention, living "artfully" might require of us something as simple as pausing: taking the time to shift from acquire to inquire, to let go of buying more in favor of being more. This is what honoring our collective creative impulse can do for humanity: restore us to wholeness, holiness, health. "Whole", "holy" and "heal" all spring from the same root. To be whole is to be balanced and harmonious in body, mind, soul and spirit.

It's this level of awareness that will characterize the coming Psychozoic ("spirit life") era, says Argüelles, when, having rediscovered who we are, we can create a culture based on the three virtues of true time: autonomy, equality, and loyalty to the truth in every moment. These are strikingly similar to the Three Commitments delineated by The Reconnections: stay free, stay present, follow the energy.

We already have fusion food: a culinary blending of cultures to delight the palate. Now we're primed to feed our deeper hunger, to fuse mind and heart into healing art, and reawaken the sacred dimension in daily life.

And if we make a subtle shift — move the "h" in heart from the start of the word to the end — we create "Earth". We live in a heart circle. Earth heart. The beat goes on.

Imbolc: In the Belly of Wonder

February 2^nd traditionally signals Imbolc, the return of the Light. As a harbinger of Spring, it's one of the most powerful portals on the Wheel of the Year: the exact midpoint between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. A time to honor and go deep with the natural world.

Stephen Buhner's Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm is a Mystery School disguised as a book; a work that opens the doors of perception with wisdom and humor. On p. 301, this piece by William Stafford sang to my Spirit as an ideal invocation for the Return of the Light in your soul:

If you don't know what kind if person I am

and I don't know what kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break

sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood

storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,

but if one wanders, the circus won't find the park,

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,

a remote important region in all who talk:

though we could fool each other, we should consider —

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear; the darkness around us is deep.

    

Do You Create or Maintain?

As I watched a woman in a well-to-do neighborhood open the door to her housekeeper and child at 8 a.m. on Friday morning, I mused, wouldn't we all prefer to be the one living in that house rather than coming to clean it? Perhaps. Yet Nature herself continually creates, maintains and destroys; that's the essence of the life cycle.

While I think of myself as primarily a creator, the world needs daily maintenance — not least because of the mess we bipeds tend to leave behind. I wipe down sinks in public restrooms and often have to clean off outdoor tables before I can sit to eat at places like Whole Foods; even the staff can't keep up with the detritus.

Daily life is one of maintenance, renewal. Poet and novelist Marge Piercy writes,

            "The work of the world is common as mud.

            Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.

            But the thing worth doing well done

            has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident."

(excerpted from To Be of Use, © 1982)

           

Yet I find myself disdaining some whose work entails tidying up the universe rather than contributing something fresh. The maintenance manager at a local community center seems comically addicted to keeping the exterior doors locked and "undesirables" (read: homeless people) out. When I've sat inside to use their high-speed WiFi, I witness him check and lock the doors at least a half dozen times within a few hours. It seems almost a pointless exercise, because people stream into the center for classes, meetings and other events all day long.

Directly across the outdoor quad from the community center is a new senior wing. It's ADA compliant in every way — except the architects didn't take into account seniors' diminished upper body strength and agility. Several women have become trapped in the restrooms, whose heavy oak doors are almost impossible for someone using a walker or wheelchair to negotiate. So the community center's counterpart now has the additional responsibility of constantly making sure all eight restroom doors (two for each gender, at opposite sides of a long corridor in a 2-story building) remain stoppered open each weekday from 9 to 5. There's a poetry to this, and a bit of Divine humor as well.

Years ago, metaphysical teacher and author Louise Hay made many tapes accompanied by the musical group Alliance. One I listened to repeatedly was, "Doors Closing, Doors Opening," and while it focused on personal growth rather than physical structures, I find it amusingly applicable to the situations I've described. The main lyric went, "Doors closing, doors opening, doors closing, doors I'm opening. I am safe, it's only change. I am safe it's only change…"

Are you opening doors or closing them? Do you create or maintain? Does your life weave between the two, and if so, are you growing in ways that feed your soul? Mother Nature is always in motion. It's important to clean up our mess and keep the doors to possibility open. And maybe, unlocking what seems a necessary barrier will let in some surprising gifts that may change your perception and release a fresh flow of creativity.

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."

Primordial Sound: Reflections on the Life and Death of Drummer Layne Redmond

I spent the first year of a three-year healing hegira in New York State, in an altered state. It was a homecoming at a higher level along life's spiral: although I'd grown up just over the border in northern New Jersey, being in New York in 1994 was time out of mind, sacred space in the deepest sense, even as I was remembering what that was, even as my severely ill body brought me to places where my soul rejoiced at finally being unleashed to embrace my purpose this lifetime. Stripped raw, connected only to Spirit, I followed a divine thread to my healing destiny. 

During an extended stay at one country home, I heard about a performance that was to take place soon at The Widow Jane Mine, an underground chamber where the audience would sit on hay bales. It sounded intriguing, inviting, essential. I had to go.

I did not yet know who Layne Redmond was. When the Drummers Were Women, her definitive book about the ancient art of frame drumming, was three years in the future.

At the event, I purchased her first CD, Since the Beginning, entranced by her rapturous visage on the cover. Then I entered the mine, and opened to the unimagined.

I can still hear the invocation as their voices reverberated, reaching us before the candlelit raft bearing the drummers floated into view. "Ah, ah-ah-ah, Ah, ah-ah-ah, Ah, ah, ah ah, ah ah ah, ah ah AH!" This was primordial sound; the drum is the sound of our Mother's blood, the first sound we hear in the womb, and the sound of Gaia's heartbeat as well. It entered me.

I found myself at night for weeks, months afterward, singing this incantation as I remembered the stars, felt the Moon inside my being, began to heal/whole into the truth of Oneness. I was never so joy-filled as during this awakening time.

I was stunned last week to learn that Layne made her transition just before Hallowe'en/Samhain, on October 28^th, a time when the veils between worlds are thin. I was more shocked to realize she was just five years older than me. In 3D she clearly had much left to do; she was in the midst of continuing to expand her global work. But her soul knew a different timetable. Her soul felt her work here was complete.

I am blessed to have witnessed this master of the frame drum and her Mob of Angels in New York in 1994, and again in California in the late 1990s. Layne Redmond played a pivotal role in my awakening journey, though she did not know it. In this moment when all the timelines are merging, as solar cycles and planets dance us awake en masse, I say a humble thank you. Thank you for drumming me to consciousness, for your generous heart, for sharing your manifold gifts as manna for us all.

Blessings, Layne Redmond, now adding her joy to the Music of the Spheres…

Samhain, Spirit and Sacred Story

In the U.S., Halloween is all about costumes, trick-or-treating, and occasionally, mischief. But on the Celtic calendar this day, known as Samhain, ushers in winter and the mysteries of the dark. October 31^st precedes Day of the Dead/All Soul's Day on November 1^st, a paean to the ancestors. The dark side — that which is hidden from view — calls us to remember our transpersonal soulscape.

As mythologist Kathleen Jenks writes on Myth*ing Links, this is an excellent time to explore what is ending or "dying" within our own beings. What do you need to release in order to move forward in your life? Now, when the veils between worlds are thin, is a ripe moment for each of us to embrace personal and planetary transformation.

And the souls of those who have gone before can still share their wisdom with us, if we invite their collaboration. Visionary activist astrologer Caroline Casey likes to say, "We cannot live through the dead, but we can invite the dead to live through us." What gifts are asking, aching to be brought forth through you in this quantum moment, when the entire world is awash in tremulous rebirth?

The real treat of Samhain is the opportunity for quantum growth. The trick, perhaps, would be turning your back on those inner voices begging you to shine your brilliance and step fully into your aliveness, passion, purpose and service.

It's time to remove your mask, and step fully into who you came here to be.

Aleph: Redeeming Your Soul

Novels often herald extraordinary transformation for me; more than two decades ago, a line in Slightly Like Strangers helped catalyze the launch of my own business: "Security isn't something you save up. It's what you find when you take risks."

Now Paulo Coehlo's latest, Aleph, takes us on a highly personal crisis-of-faith odyssey in which the author redeems himself from 500 years of purgatory by asking a young woman whom he condemned to death as a witch during the Inquisition to forgive him. Reading this as the 11:11 gateway opened, I suddenly flashed on a core conversation I've shared numerous times over the past 18 years, concerning a naturopathic doctor who helped me heal during my awakening journey, yet whose devout religious beliefs seemed at odds with her homemade, Nature-based herbal and homeopathic remedies.

In a moment of perfect clarity I realized our interaction was exactly what Coehlo describes: in merging devout faith with "paganism", my naturopath enabled me to question my own beliefs and learn to stand in my truth, to hold the "both/and" ~ God and Nature, God in Nature, God as Nature ~ and to truly embrace "no separation" as my embodied mantra. My personal credo became, "If it works for you — and harms none — it works for me."

The lines one of the "witches" speaks to Coehlo 500 years earlier seared my soul and brought tears of recognition to my eyes; veracity does that. Here is what one of the girls says as they are being led to the stake:

"The time for fear has passed; now there is only the time of hope. Are we guilty? One day, the world will judge us and we will not be the ones to feel ashamed. We will meet again in the future, when your life and work will be dedicated to those who are so sorely misunderstood today. Your voice will speak out loudly, and many will listen to you.

"Love will conquer hatred. When the time comes, those who are burned today will be exalted. Wizards and alchemists will return, the Goddess will be welcomed and witches celebrated. And all for the greatness of God. That is the blessing we place on your head now, until the end of time."

Synchronicity Rising vs. Shopping Away Your Soul

On Thursday, the cross-quarter gateway known as Lammas, with a full Aquarian moon lighting up the sky and the Olympic rings, I had an incredible encounter with a man ahead of me in line at the grocery store. We casually commented that the lines seemed to be moving slowly, and I said, "I think most of the checkers are new; it's not easy to master all those codes on the register. I had to use one at my very first job when I was 16 and (I imitated the hunt and peck motion)." I laughed and said, "Now, of course, we all have computers so we're fast on the keys."

Then I looked at him and said, "Are you old enough to remember what I'm talking about?" He said, "Oh, yes, I'm older than you." 

Naturally, I had to take the challenge so I asked, "How old are you?" He said, "55." I said, "Dude!" and high-fived him. Then I asked, "When's your birthday?" He replied without missing a beat, "2/4/57" ~ which is exactly the way I always say it! I got what I imagine was a look of incredulity on my face and asked, "What time?" Meanwhile he's still processing what's happening, and says, "Wait ~ you're an Aquarian too?" And then he says, "It was sometime early in the morning, like 1 am." I was born just after 1 am. I said, "We're twins!" It was the coolest connection, though I think it flipped him out a little. For me, it was simply "synchronicity rising!"

Contrast this with some construction that's been going on for quite awhile next to the community pool here. The pool is located not far from the freeway onramp, but a stand of trees afforded a measure of privacy and peace. I noticed the greenery was slowly morphing into bulldozers, but had no idea why. Over the weekend I happened to mention some other nearby construction to a young Whole Foods employee, and he referenced the swim site construction by saying, "I'm designing the benches for the mall!" I thought he was making a very dry joke.

But no: the construction by the freeway is a new shopping center underway. Incredulous in a far different manner than during Thursday's heart-sync'd encounter, I said sarcastically, "Oh, I'm sure we need another mall!" That was when he repeated the information about the bench design, and I realized he was serious. I congratulated him on landing the project ~ I always support art, in all its guises ~ but the desecration of nature for human consumption galls me.

In this kairos moment when reclaiming our soul connection is key to personal and planetary evolution, the trees are our allies and guides. We won't realize our life purpose by buying the leopard print tights, but by becoming our wildness ~ not as violence; as an abiding, sensuous connection with Nature and all our planetary kin.

Hey, I grew up in a town that had more shopping malls per square mile than any other; I thought the trees planted inside the mall grew there! And I enjoy a beautiful new outfit as much as the next woman (or guy). The difference is, I know materialism isn't the path to what we might term synchronicitree.

I invite and invoke your primal need to be in natural surroundings, so that the synchronicity I experienced in the market knows how to find you. When you're living in the flow, such encounters will tickle you into joy everywhere ~ and you won't rely on shopping as a way to remember your soul.

Managing Those Weird Cosmic Aches and Pains…

We're in the birth canal of the greatest shift humanity has ever known. Becoming a light body isn't easy, though it can be a lot more manageable once you understand what's going on! Celia Fenn offers some wise reminders about how the cosmos is affecting us multidimensionally. Excerpted from Radical Shift: The Venus Transit of 2012:

"Venus is the Solar System level of Consciousness that resonates with the Goddess Energy, with Love and Relationship, with Money and with Passion and Beauty. At this time, all these issues are being highlighted and transformed. On a Planetary scale we can see how the Economic system is crumbling, especially in the 'First World' of the USA and Europe, and how it is making space for the 'New Economy' that will take us into a sustainable and co-operative way of living. On the personal level, many people are finding that they are making radical shifts in their attitude towards money, and that the desire for conspicuous consumption has been replaced by the desire to live in an balanced way and in harmony with the Earth. Money is simply a means of achieving a balanced lifestyle, where the focus is on living in the energy of beauty and harmony with all beings and with the Earth.

"In close connection with this is finding work that ignites your Passion for life and is harmony with your soul purpose and brings you Joy. Many of you will be feeling the urge to let go of past ways of work and reaching out for work that is an expression of your Soul and your Passion.

"As far as Personal Relationships are concerned, there will also be tension in partnerships whose basis is no longer in alignment with the purpose of your Soul and the energy of the New Earth. At this point, you will be guided to reconsider your contract in your relationship, or to simply move on to a new partnership that is more aligned with what you are becoming and what you wish to create in your life.

"These energies and challenges will build towards the transit on the 6th, and you may find around that time that there will be some very deep and fundamental changes in your life. Don't panic! This is all leading you towards something better and deeper, and more suited to where you are heading in the time after the 2012 portal!

"You may also be feeling quite intense physical symptoms as your Light Body makes its final adjustments for the Transit and for the later Portal transit. As you bring your Soul Star and Earth Star chakras 'online', you may experience pains and discomfort in the legs, or dizziness and nausea and disorientation, or bouts of flu and colds. These are all part of the process as the DNA activates and the Light Body surges energy through the system to bring everything into harmony and activation. This also activates the Template for Human Divine Perfection in the DNA and activates the ability to go the 'next step' in this ongoing process of Spiritual and Physical Evolution."

Oh, Baby!

Out for a walk on Easter, I met a young woman holding a very cute baby. The mother seemed tired, and the baby wasn't that cheerful, either, although I surmised she (the baby) had perhaps recently awakened from a nap. The mom told me she also had an 8- and 5-year-old, though this child was more difficult for her, because she was raising her alone. The little girl was only four months old, so I thought, either her partner didn't plan on a kid, or, as seems to happen often in these extraordinary times, the couple came together just long enough to combine their DNA, because this little Light was needed on Earth.

As her mother and I were conversing, and after I mentioned the baby's subdued demeanor, she looked at me in the way babies do: staring, never breaking eye contact.

And then she began to laugh.

Huge, rollicking, endless laughter emanated from this tiny bundle. I stood transfixed, feeling my mouth curving irresistibly into a smile and then into my own laughter ~ it is contagious, after all!

Her mother said, "She likes your soul," and I appraised the mom as clearly a conscious being, equipped to raise a Light such as the one she held, and I said as much.

I felt blessed, renewed, in some way redeemed, by this infant's unquenchable laughter. I was in the rapt presence of a baby Buddha, and received her sustenance as manna. What an amazing gift on a day of rising: Yeaster, a rite of passage. It is a benediction I share with you through our cyber connection. May you receive the pure holy joy of laughter in your life when you least (or yeast) expect it, and may it renew you in every cell.

As I walked away, I offered the baby's mother, "May you have an easy raising." I didn't even realize the full significance until this morning.

How to Defy Gravity

With Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, Franciscan priest Richard Rohr has written an eloquent book about the journey to self-knowing that's decidedly non-religious; a refreshing loom of spiritual authenticity on which to weave your own awakening odyssey. He gives voice to that which doesn't translate easily into language, so powerfully and truly that from the Introduction alone, I was nodding with inward recognition. I wish I'd written it!

In the Coda, he quotes Thomas Merton with a poem written a decade after his fabled The Seven Storey Mountain, when Merton had moved into his own "second half." The piece encapsulates the essence of Rohr's offering with such spare significance that it will be a deep acknowledgment for those on the far side of the journey, who understand viscerally what it means to own "poverty" as success ~ and an inspired meditation/guide for those yet to travel and unravel:

When in the Soul of the Serene Disciple

When in the soul of the serene disciple
With no more Fathers to imitate
Poverty is a success,
It is a small thing to say the roof is gone:
He has not even a house.

Stars, as well as friends,
Are angry with the noble ruin.
Saints depart in several directions.

Be still:
There is no longer any need of comment.
It was a lucky wind
That blew away his halo with his cares.
A lucky sea that drowned his reputation.

Here you will find
Neither a proverb nor a memorandum.
There are no ways,
No methods to admire
Where poverty is no achievement.
His God lives in his emptiness like an affliction.

What choice remains?
Well, to be ordinary is not a choice:
It is the usual freedom
Of men without visions.

What Does It Mean to "Live Your Light"?

When I was first feeling my way into a new reality — before my "dark night of the soul" journey that would transfigure my life and catapult me from marketing communications maven to "midwife" for the soul — I'd begun a women's spiritual circle, and had attracted a few coaching clients, though the term "coaching" wasn't even on my radar at the time. (The coaching profession has only been a formalized entity for about two decades).

I was in love with the Emile Zola quote, "If you asked me what I came into this world to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud." I was yearning, burning to live out loud, even as I struggled to understand what this might mean. I bought a box of greeting cards bearing this epigram and an exuberant figure, arms upraised, and used them to write a personal message to each client at the close of a session, as both affirmation and exhortation.

Then one day my carefully constructed life crumbled, eclipsed by a health crisis that halted the old in its tracks and called me to live experientially what I'd heretofore only grasped from books and workshops. It was a three-plus year initiation in the wilderness of my soul, and I e/merged (energy and emotion merged) on the far side as a lighthouse for others walking this path of personal awakening. I won't detail it here, as my website, numerous articles, CD and monthly newsletter cover this and much more. What I will share is how the name for my service evolved:

On the far side of the journey, I created Metamorphosis: The Center for Creative Change as my service vehicle. And while this was accurate, "Metamorphosis" was already the name of a type of healing work (hence confusing for some people) and the name itself was declarative. I felt called to invoke (literally, "give voice to") the possibility inherent in every human being. And then I housesat for a woman who had the book, Bringers of the Dawn, on her shelf.

Barbara Marciniak channels the Pleiadians, a collective of multidimensional star beings. In the book, they apprise us, "You must live your light …" The words chimed in my soul as a remembrance, and when I began to develop my website a year or so later, this was the invitation and invocation I chose.

When you live your light, you are living out loud, in tune with your highest purpose and service, as a beacon and resource for others. It doesn't matter what your 3D "assignment" is: whether you're an auto mechanic or mother, company president or country president, impoverished pilgrim or billionaire: when you live it, you shine, and this radiance is what uplifts and shifts humanity, and the planet we all share. This is what it means to become the gift.

Thanks for Living Out Loud ~ and for Living Your Light!

Blessings!

Firework: An Ecology of the Mind

I can't get the lyrics to Katy Perry's Firework out of my head. While the tune is catchy, the first time I actually listened to the words, I marveled at her perspicacity. Who hasn't felt "like a plastic bag drifting through the wind, wanting to start again"? I sure can remember when I had no skin, "so paper-thin, like a house of cards, one blow from caving in." And that part about feeling "already buried deep, six feet under screams but no one seems to hear a thing"? She knows the journey, all right.

This is how I felt when I thought no one understood what the awakening process looked like for me, when they thought I looked fine, unable to read the wildness in my eyes. And as I embarked on a three-plus year dark night of the soul, questioning my very existence, I didn't yet know how to "ignite the light and let it shine." Yet this became my life purpose, and the name of my service — Live Your Light — on the far side of this healing adventure.

How does Katy carry such insight at such a tender age? She penned Firework in her mid-20s — a time when I was still fast asleep spiritually. Given the accelerated pace of personal and planetary evolution, it doesn't surprise me that Katy is conscious far earlier in her life than I was. What's exciting is how cleanly she's managed to encapsulate personal evolution into a few spare lines, offering guidance and upliftment to multitudes on their quest.

Another song that riveted me in a similar way a few years back is Crazy, debuted by Gnarls Barkley in 2006. I was driving, idly listening to the radio, when the DJ offered, "Pay attention to this one," and I was astonished to hear, "I remember when, I remember when I lost my mind. There was something so pleasant about that phase. Even your emotions had an echo in so much space. And when you're out there, without care, yeah, I was out of touch. But it wasn't because I didn't know enough. I just knew too much. Does that make me crazy? Does that make me crazy? Does that make me crazy? Possibly."

This is exactly how I felt, what the journey looks like: you do "lose your mind," your ordinary, rational mind, as you embrace the multidimensional realms of existence. Everything in your life echoes, because you've pried your mental fingers loose and are free-falling into the depths of your soul. I speak to this in detail on my CD, What You Need to Know Now: A Road Map for Personal Transformation.

How amazing it would have been to have heard such songs in the blackness of that dark night. And, in fact, they were probably there, had I been able to hear them, or known then what I was experiencing.

So as we enter this corridor of global rebirth en masse, know that you are not alone, even when you feel like a plastic bag drifting in the wind, having lost your tether to reason. It's exactly what needs to happen now, and it's all good. Surrender to the journey of a lifetime; on the far side of it, you'll ignite the Light, and let it shine.