A Passover Question: Are You Fleeing — or Returning?

"You were once wild here. Don't let them tame you."

~ Isadora Duncan

Today marks the beginning of Passover, a holy week on the Jewish calendar that commemorates the Jews' exodus from Egypt and freedom from slavery. Yet the Jews were not only fleeing subjugation; they were also making a pilgrimage home.

Every encounter with what we might call the Divine presence within is a call to return home — not necessarily to a physical location, but to the truth of who we are. In a stunning essay on Moses' encounter with the burning bush, Rev. Charles Hoffacker declares, "The encounter with the Eternal is the essence of every call story … Eternity calls out to us through a moment of time, and though the moment disappears, Eternity leaves its impress and we are not as we were before."

T.S. Eliot poetically concurs in Four Quartets: "Quick now, here now, always — A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything)." READ THE REST!

Health, Wealth and Wisdom: Health care reform a step in right direction

"The greatest wealth is health," said the Roman poet Virgil. Ben Franklin noted, "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man, healthy, wealthy and wise." Both men clearly possessed the wisdom embodied by the 44th president of the United States, who is bringing greater health and well being (an older definition of wealth) to more than 30 million uninsured Americans.

I am one of them.

Except for a few brief years when I had coverage through a visionary, now-defunct plan that paid for visits to alternative medical practitioners (e.g., chiropractors, acupuncturists), I haven't had health insurance in close to two decades. A protracted health crisis for which mainstream medicine was actually harmful, made paying for such coverage superfluous. Instead, I paid out of pocket and through the nose to reclaim my health, and have funded my own health care ever since.

Of course, a few items tend to fall through the cracks. READ THE REST

Atom and Eve

[Originally appeared in What Shines newsletter Issue #22, April 2003]

"Regard the universe often as one living being, having one substance and one soul;

and observe how all things act with one movement;

and how all things cooperate as the causes of all that exists;

observe too the continuous spinning of the thread and the single texture of the web."

~ from Meditationsby Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor, AD 161-180

It's official: the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, fueled by a mysterious substance astronomers call "dark energy". Satellite maps reveal the universe to be just four percent atoms by weight, 23 percent dark matter (presumably, elementary particles left over from the Big Bang) and 73 percent dark energy.

This turns what we used to believe about the composition of the cosmos on its ear. All this time, we thought the universe was mainly atoms, yet this is only the tip of the evolutionary iceberg. We've been looking at ocean froth, thinking it's the ocean.

Here on Earth, we're in an era of diving deep, mapping a new world as a planetary organism. In the midst of our collective birth process, the astronomical course correction suggests a macro-micro view: "as above, so below."

The journey to self-knowing is frequently referred to as the "dark night of the soul." We descend to the depths of our being, releasing the "ordinary world" of everyday awareness to discover what has been hidden in the "Underworld." It's an initiation. The successful navigation of this often arduous passage signifies a quantum shift in consciousness.

The dark also equates to the Feminine, because it embodies the rhythms of Nature: a dwindling and replenishing, an ebb and a flow. It's an instinctual process: trees shed their leaves in fall and bud again in spring; we heed the call and step into an inner wilderness. This transformation awakens our cellular memory. Like a snake shedding its skin, we leave behind what no longer "fits" as we expand into the fullness of remembering who we are.

Is the mass of dark energy the cosmic oversoul, ready to reveal itself to a species on the brink of deeper development? If we are collectively at that liminal place between the worlds, we might think of it as the Eve of our planetary emergence into unity. Reunion means no duality. Dark and light are simply aspects of The One, life's spiral, the yin/yang. "Uni-verse" is, quite literally, one song.

It's a concept. Since scientists have no idea what either dark matter or dark energy is, these substances that comprise 96 percent of the universe ... maybe it's us, along with the highly probable life out there in other star systems. Perhaps dark energy is our readiness and intention to evolve.

© Copyright 2010 by Amara Rose. All rights reserved.

Equinox Wisdom: A Solar Wave to Heal Earth and Us

This Saturday the Sun enters the sign of the Ram (Aries), creating an equal balance of dark and light on Earth. We call it Spring. The Vernal Equinox (Autumn Equinox for our Southern Hemisphere allies) is a time of rebirth and renewal.

Aries likes action. The first sign of the zodiacal wheel initiates a physical, spiritual, mental and emotional renaissance. It's time to plant the seed, invoke (give voice to) your vision, conceive the next steps in our personal and planetary unfolding. READ THE REST!

"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!

Daylight "Savings" and the Truth About Time

This coming weekend and throughout the following six weeks, approximately 70 countries worldwide will participate in an annual illusion: saving time. We move the hands of our clocks ahead and think we've harnessed the sun.

Time, like space, is elastic. Athletes know this. When athletes move into "the zone," time slows down. They see every move or play with perfect clarity, and execute the correct maneuvers as if in a dream, sensing the triumphant outcome. Something expands within them that translates into success.

How many people do you know who never seem to have "enough" time? We are each gifted with the same twenty-four hour cycle to use as we choose. People who are time-deprived are exhibiting one aspect of our pervasive scarcity consciousness. READ THE REST!

Earth changes, eruptions and empathy: it's all good

Been flying off the handle lately? Feeling spacey or ungrounded? Or as though time seems to be speeding up? Relax. It's only ascension.

A lengthy channeling from the Ashtar Command, excerpted below, reminds us that what is happening in the Heavens, on Earth and in our own beings is all cosmic mirroring. Each of us is a Sun, carrying the Light of the Great Central Sun within us, and "being the bridge of this Light between you and the Earth, just as your solar sun is the bridge between the Central Sun and your solar sun." As above, so below.

Ashtar counsels, "As you witness solar sun eruptions and flares, look at the other 'suns' about you and you will see these same flare-ups and eruptions taking place. As you witness this mirror effect, look below you and you will also see all kinds of erratic behavior and eruptions taking place upon the Earth." (Such as our recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile). READ THE REST!