Weeds Help Us Flower

We're verging on the Vernal Equinox, which means the Rite of Spring that one friend dubbed The Mowing is about to begin in earnest. Not a blade of grass — certainly not a weed — is safe.

I understand this obsession. Growing up in suburban America, I observed a rampant homeowner disgust with the "lowly dandelion," scourge of suburbia's well-manicured lawns. Much later, I discovered that dandelion is one of the most healing herbs available to humanity, offering itself in abundance wherever we dwell. It's a supreme liver tonic, known to help detoxify the body's "processing plant." In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the liver equates to the emotion of anger. If you want to release that pent-up rage in a healthy way, the remedy is probably available, free and easy, in your own backyard.

Dandelion can act as de facto compost, gently surrounding and helping to decompose back into rich loam that which no longer serves. Yet we curse the weed and uproot it, spray poison to keep the green carpet unsullied. "Living for the lawn" keeps us focused predominantly on the external.

When we can make the subtle shift from ego mind to Universal Mind, we see with such great clarity the incredible gifts all around us! Our teammates are everywhere, in the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms — if we have eyes to see.

As we move deeper into our collective rebirth process, we'll be releasing people and places that no longer resonate with our lives now. Doing this with what the Buddhists call lovingkindness is our mandate. It's a ripe moment to ask yourself, Who or what in my life seems like an outsider? Am I willing to look again, to become inclusive rather than exclusive, to see beyond imaginary borders?

Below are seven practical steps to enlarge the lens this Spring: to slow down and look with the eyes of wonder, like a child. You'll find many more on my CD, What You Need to Know Now: A Road Map for Personal Transformation:

• Keep a journal. Buy a beautiful blank book and a pen that feels comfortable in your hand. Then allow yourself to write whatever and whenever you want. No one else need ever read it unless you choose to share, so send the censor packing! Journaling is like ingesting dandelion leaves with your pen — a great way to purge emotions and discover what really matters to you. And writing by hand is very different from blogging online.
• Dance your evolutionary process. Do you instinctively sway as you talk, or dance around the room when you get excited? Express your change process as flowing movement. Maybe it's yoga, or tai chi, or free-form dance, such as Contact Improv.
• Make art. Are you a natural with a paintbrush or clay? Splash your emotions onto canvas, pour them into a mold, sketch them into being. Remember, this is art from the heart: done for the sole/soul purpose of enlarging your own vision.
• Sing! Is your voice your most powerful expressive tool? If you love to sing but don't know any songs, make up nonsense words to tunes you like, and sing them — in public. This is also a fabulous way to break free of the "What will people think?" trap.
• Be in Nature. Sit by moving water. Sit in moving water. Sing while sitting in a stream!
• Prepare a meal that is as aesthetic as it is nutritious. As you combine ingredients, imagine that you are cooking up a grander vision for your life.
• Hush. Spend a day, alone or with others, in total silence.

How to Use Your Life

I read The Alchemist perhaps fifteen years ago, but never fully grasped Paulo Coehlo's journey until today, when his semi-autobiographical The Zahir presented the key clue. In The Zahir, Coehlo chronicles his lifelong resistance and eventual surrender that allowed him to craft and publish The Pilgrimage at age 40. The Pilgrimage, his first novel, depicts his journey along the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the transformational route in northern Spain that Shirley MacLaine also eloquently described, in The Camino.

I decided to read The Pilgrimage in 2012 after ingesting Coehlo's latest autobiographical masterpiece, Aleph. But it's only now, learning the order in which he wrote his books (The Pilgrimage first, then The Alchemist, beloved worldwide) that my ah-ha erupted: In The Alchemist, the young protagonist is named Santiago! With this brilliant literary echo, Coehlo conveys how he has become the path, his experience informing his journey and infusing the reader with faith in the outcome.

This is the essence and purpose of my own life work: to use what I have understood at each stage of my unfolding in service to the next, and to all with whom I come in contact. Are you using your life to its maximum potential, pouring the elixir of who you've been into who you're becoming?

It's stretchy, it's fluid, and we've worn it unaware … until now

Ever since I was a child, I've been fascinated by the nature of time. The phrase, "time seems both elongated and compressed" rippled through my consciousness years ago, though I couldn't explain what it meant; only that time wasn't what it appeared to be: a unidirectional progression from birth to death, marching inexorably forward. Instead, I felt a taffy-like quality to it; a pliable, stretchy, deliquescence, like Dali's famous clocks. Certainly anyone who's ever melted in a lover's embrace or suffered a public humiliation is intimately acquainted with the one-minute hour and the 24-hour minute!

Gillian Macbeth Louthan's latest transmission carries confirmation that my intuitive perceptions were not only accurate: they'll now be experienced by everyone.

She writes (all emphasis is mine):

"As you are quickened into bonus time cycles, you are also able to access your pasts that stand within the frequency of the future. In the expansion of time, there is a contraction of time. In the moving forward there is a simultaneously moving backward. Forward stretches are always paralleled by backward movement. Getting to the destination of the future can only be entertained through the nuance of the past. All time runs hand in hand. Moving forward is the same as moving backward, and moving backward is the same as moving forward. 

"In the time of the eclipses, there will be a sequence of numerical encodings that are shifted within the common denominator of earth. The numbers held hostage within your chronological age will change. The numbers of your biological age will change. The number sequences that you know and hold within your DNA will shift and change. The number sequences that hold time together will change. The latitude and longitude of where you reside will shift. All will be tweaked. There is galactic movement and time will move backwards. Backward movement is needed in order to re-calibrate the near future. 

"It is similar to times in history when calendar days were deleted and added in accordance with the wishes of those in power. There will be corrections in time and space as deemed by the time lords. Your earth Time has been as a man riding on horseback running beside a train trying to catch up with a airplane. Eventually one horsepower is going to slow. The locomotive represents the galactic perceptive of time. The man on horseback represents the human understanding of time. The plane represents possibility. Nothing in your galaxy runs in a straight line. Everything is curved to gain momentum. Curvatures in time and space are necessary for planetary shift to happen. At the time of the May 20^th eclipse, you will gain momentum in a time alignment.

"The time periods of your earth are limited. The 24-hour day, 60 minutes, 60 seconds and 12-month years were created to confuse and limit you. This time nuance that you are to enter will help you understand that Time as you know it is pliable, malleable, stretchable, and contract-able. Each person will create Time in accordance with their personal wants and needs, sculpting it to fit the situation.

"The energy that your world is based on is holographic of nature, like water that fills a container it fits your personal expectations. Your imagination sculpts the outcome of your life. Allow these nuances of time to escort you into probabilities that go beyond the calculation of what is deemed Pi. The symbol of Pi opens a doorway. This solar eclipse activates dormant light encodings and then you yourself will become as Pi. You will become as a portal, an entranceway for energies of a higher dialogue.  

"Until you actually experience the energies, you will not be able to decipher the language of light. Know that you are the doorway for the light, for the future, and that you are a white hole and a black hole. Know that you are as every sacred place that has ever existed through all time and space. The light shall walk through you and you shall be as a beacon, an airport of light for the higher octaves of the celestial beings and the divine beings to enter into. You escort this higher light to earth by your desire, by the light that is in your heart, and by the light that is in your intent. 

"The 'portal' that you all seek is who you have always been. The key that unlocks the doorway to gaining entrance to the heavenly sphere is you. You are the key in human form. You are the doorway in human form. You are the light of the divine that you seek.  Now it is time to prepare your bodies, your minds, your homes, by releasing what is not of a higher vibration. Whatever is not of the highest Light will scream and kick and bite you until you recognize it and set it free. On this night as you sleep give permission to release all that is not of the highest good. For behold – the Light Comes. Are you ready?"

What the Upcoming Eclipse Can Teach Us About Torture

There's something more insidious than any malevolence we inflict on others: what we do to ourselves, using the one instrument of torture that's available to everyone, every day: our minds.

We become adept at berating ourselves for imperfections, whether physical, mental, or emotional: Why don't I weigh less/earn more/control my temper/have more friends/attract a lover/have a great job…? And that's just for starters.

However, we're living in a fulcrum moment for quantum change. This is the time that's been prophesied for millennia as the Turning of the Age, and so it is. The Mayans were correct, although not as those who interpret their calendars through a linear lens believe: the world is not ending; a world age is. We are moving into a time of consciousness, which is what their calendars measure: human evolution on a vast scale, which in one sense is time. But neither the world nor the calendar "end"; we simply continue, albeit at a higher level along life's spiral.

The upcoming solar eclipse on May 20^th, followed by the Venus transit June 5-6^th, offers us a slightly-more-than-two-week window of omnipresent opportunity. While being in the actual path of the eclipse will enhance its potency, there is no one on Earth who will not be affected — and profoundly changed, whether you're aware of it or not. Anyone who is incarnate now is de facto part of the shift, so no matter what your life "looks like", this is one area in which you can surrender the whip: if you're here, you're helping the planet and all her inhabitants to transform. Thanks for agreeing to play your essential part.

And there are multiple levels working. A few luminous takes on the eclipse include the current newsletter of Gillian Macbeth Louthan, whose Quantum Awakening site has been a beacon for 26 years and counting; this message from the Star Elders through Aluna Joy and this brilliant piece on the esoteric aspects of aligning with our Great Central Sun, Alcyone, in the Pleiades. I expand upon these topics in my own inspirational newsletter, What Shines. You can read the current issue on the Venus transit in Second Rock from the Sun, and a reprint of the eclipse issue on SpiritCrossing.org: Down to Earth.

A personal ah-ha: According to the 13-Moon Calendar (interwoven with the Mayan sacred calendar known as the Tzol'kin), which helps us attune with natural rhythms and return to biospheric alignment, the eclipse takes place on a 5Eb day. Eb, or Yellow Magnetic Human, happens to be my galactic signature/solar seal, which means it is my personal Mayan "sign". Each solar seal also has a "guide", and on 5Eb, the guiding energy is (drumroll): the Sun! (The Sun is one of the 20 Mayan solar seals; its Mayan name is Ahau). So, do I feel internally held and guided by the imminent eclipse on May 20^th?  You know it!

Finally, for all of us regardless of solar signature: each month in the 13-Moon Calendar consists of 28 days, or one moon cycle, and is thus referred to as a Moon, also carrying a specific energy. The life-altering May 20^th eclipse takes place during the Spectral Moon of Liberation, whose core question/action is: "How do I release and let go?" And the totem animal is the Serpent.

We're evolving Eden anew. This article delineates each of the 13 Moon inquiries: Embracing Paradox Can Help You Beat the Clock and this web page introduces you to each Mayan glyph in depth.

One more piece: The sacred Mayan cycle known as the Tzol'kin is 260 days long: the same cycle as Venus, and also the exact length of a human pregnancy! I expand upon these themes exponentially in my e-course for women on awakening to the Divine Feminine and celebrating life in a female body, Loving Our Lunacy.

So, dearhearts, let us release our attraction to suffering and free ourselves from self-inflicted torment to rise in love, eclipsing what no longer serves our growth, both individually and collectively, as we allow the planet of love to bathe us in her radiance and complete our journey into a greater awareness and allowance of union than we've ever known.

Blessed Be!