Beltane: Light Night of the Soul

We're all familiar with the classic "dark night of the soul", even if we don't know the terminology: the last few years, especially these past few weeks, everyone's felt the energies ramped up to gale force as lunar/solar eclipses, meteor showers and a Cardinal Grand Cross (the 5^th of 7 Uranus/Pluto squares plus) buffet the planet and liberate us from old beliefs and behaviors. We're being cleaned out and burnished to roar our "YES!"

May 1^st ushers in Beltane, one of eight Shabbats on the Nature-based Wheel of the Year. [The others are the Solstices and Equinoxes, Lammas (August 1st), Samhain (October 31st), and Imbolc (February 2nd).] Beltane breathes renewal into our cells as we acknowledge the elemental world and the advent of summer. For our Southern Hemisphere allies, the Wheel of the Year is reversed: they now celebrate Samhain. 

As Stargazer Li reminds us, May 1^st also commences the time cycle known as the Night, "to source what is from our own deep dreaming depths... which carries us the following day into the Moon of Liberation, to release the old stories and live at the next level...

As Samhain honors the power of death, so Beltane honors the cycles of life and rebirth. Beltane takes place in Taurus, the zodiac's earthiest, sensual sign, and focuses on exuberant sexuality: the pollinating of flowers, the lush cornucopia of fruit-bearing plants and trees, the reproductive cycle of the entire natural world, from birds and bees to people and trees. It's a fire festival of fertility in all its forms — and thus we dance in homage to Aphrodite, the Goddess Herself.

Are you ready to dive into a Light Night of the Soul, a sacred reUnion of our masculine and feminine selves? The temperatures are soaring into the 90s this week, welcoming the solar eclipse and activating our solar/cellular recognition of the Light we are.

Ignite your Light, and let it shine. As Pharrell sings, clap along if you feel like a room without a roof…

How to Grow New Feet

"My feet are killing me!" "I'm dead on my feet." "Have you got cold feet?" "Don't drag your feet!" "Are you back on your feet?"

We bipeds depend on our locomotive appendages a LOT. So it's only natural that our feet might get weary from all the wear and tear and decide to take a vacation. Not our actual physical feet, perhaps, but the ones belonging to our digital appendages. Such as my laptop.

After replacing the little hard plastic "feet" that keep the machine positioned just slightly off the desk, allowing airflow, I soon noticed that all but one had again gone AWOL. I assumed they were gone forever, like one half of a pair of socks after a wash cycle. But while mischievous socks seem to time travel, never to return, laptop feet apparently visit an alternate universe for a while and then magically reappear.

It might be akin to what happens at puberty: kids have a growth spurt and "grow a foot" seemingly overnight. But even the most ambitious teen has yet to grow three feet in a matter of weeks. That's what my tiny plastic computer feet did.

After at least a year, they began reappearing on the carpet — where they absolutely had not resided before. I don't have pets or children; no one else could have moved them or replaced them. Yet here they were, one by one over the course of several weeks, mutely calling, "I'm home!" (None of them sported a tan or souvenirs, so I can't verify where they'd been.)

I'm waiting to see whether the fourth will arrive, though I'm delighted to welcome the trio home. I discovered each returning foot accidentally, either by stepping on it, thinking I'd tracked in a pebble, or noticing what I thought was a chocolate chip. Amazing and amusing, because of course I was completely unattached to something as negligible as laptop feet. Yet here they are.

It's easy to manifest what we have no attachment to in our lives. I've proven this in my own life time and again with items similar to laptop feet, which can appear as soon as we envision the request. Yet this complete faith that the universe is always answering is the great challenge most of us are still aiming to master — myself included. We believe the grander requests will take a long(er) time to show up, so they usually do.

This is a fulcrum moment to grow new feet — or kilometers, if you choose — so we can leap into parallel realities and timelines and return with alacrity. Stand up for the true magnificent YOU. That's the feat we can all grow into, now.

Worth

Owning our worth, whether as an entrepreneur, planetary change agent or life partner, means standing in our value proposition. This is who I am. This is my worth. This is my wealth. 

What is the connection between health and wealth (which also means well being)? "Misfortune" means you miss your fortune! It's playing with old paradigms (pair o' dimes) until we cut the cord, choose a new path. Read the rest!

Here Comes the Judge...

Distortion …disruption … fluctuating field … these are some of the keywords for now, and while I've just written about the explosive energies April is showering upon us, I was still caught without my frequency attunement wand, because we're all playing the game:

On Friday evening, after singing the praises of the organic hot bar and deli at a food co-op that just opened in my town, I went there for dinner. I sampled a few of the evening's dishes (the menu changes nightly, as the Culinary Institute of America-trained chef likes to experiment) and was ruminating about my choices when a young woman with a nose ring and toddler approached me. I'd seen the child cavorting earlier and smiled when the woman asked, "Are you going to buy something?" I thought perhaps she was going to ask if I could get some cash back for her, so considering in a fraction of a second whether I wanted to do this, I replied "Maybe." Then, to my surprise, she added, "Well, I've just seen you sample everything…"

I said, "Oh, do you work here?" She said "Yes, and we've had a lot of problems with people tasting the food for free and then leaving." Starting to get annoyed (especially as I'd just spent weeks telling everyone in town how terrific the place was), I told her I was a regular, and that she was welcome to ask the kitchen staff to vouch for me. She said, "I already asked them." Incredulous, I asked, "And they said they don't know me?" I then named a certain male cashier, who has been my checker virtually every time I've shopped there. She said, "He's off tonight." At that point I lost it, and went to the kitchen staff myself, asking if one of them could go to bat for me. Rachel (names have all been changed) said helpfully, "Well, you do look like a homeless person" — I was wearing a flannel shirt and loose capri pants.

By this time I was livid, and Melissa (who'd launched the inquiry) had disappeared. Rachel eventually found her in another section of the large market and told her I bought food from the deli "at least once or twice a week", but the damage was done. I ate my dinner in a cortisol flood.

Fast-forward to last night, after I'd regained my equanimity. The sweet young deli worker, who had told Melissa, "Oh yes, she comes in here all the time!", shared an amazing story of her own: earlier on Saturday, she (Celestia) had been "profiled" when she went shopping at our local hardware store, which offers a 20% discount on Saturdays. Celestia has a part-time job as a gardener, and Ace Hardware offers an exceptional outdoor division. The store was very busy, and Celestia didn't need any assistance, yet, she told me, an employee shadowed her while she shopped — even following her up to the register, where she spent $125! Oh, did I mention that Celestia is young, wears dreadlocks, and sports a nose ring and facial tattoo?

So we both saw the humor in the entire episode: I'd thought Melissa was panhandling me because she was young, had a nose ring and a toddler; she'd thought I was freeloading because she saw me sample several dishes, my clothing was loose and casual, and she heard Celestia's "She's here all the time" as sponging! We were all judging from misinterpretation.

How do we grow beyond assumptions based on race, age, appearance, and other external differences that make us the unique souls we are? We have white-collar crime, and blue-collar saviors who create programs that uplift and heal communities. And we're still so quick to cast the first stone.

How do we segue from being nuclear reactors to becoming seedlings for a new humanity, a New Earth Nation, learning from Gaia how to live relationally? It's a challenging time to hold our center while holding change; the more we can appreciate the humor of the moment and respond not from habit but from a story re-write, the faster we evolve to a 5D, heart-centered species.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go get a nose ring.

Novels and Cartoons and Bands, Oh My!

I've written often about what you know, before you know that you know: i.e., the intuitive awareness we all possess that signals the inner wisdom available to us throughout our life, if we pay attention — and trust it.

But I've learned as much from music, fiction and even clever television that's woken me to how much we take for granted, never knowing a term's origins, like the preteen inquiry from a few decades back, "Did you know Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?"

This whack on the side of the head happened again yesterday when a novel discussed Mount Parnassus ~ the second book to mention the iconic Greek landmark in as many weeks. This time, though, it triggered me to look it up, since I lived on a street intersecting Parnassus for 11 years. This is where I launched my writing career — and the name "Parnassus" in literature is metaphoric for poetry, literature, and learning: Mont Parnasse in France. So I guess it is a "what we know before we know that we know" moment after all.

How about Led Zeppelin? The name was suggested as a joke for a lead balloon, which is how Keith Moon of The Who predicted the new group would fare. But the yoke was on him: Jimmy Page loved the name, the band dropped the "a", and a megagroup was born. Yet I never questioned the origin or meaning of Led Zeppelin while listening to their music growing up.

Finally, how about that scwewy wabbit? The writers of Bugs Bunny cartoons were notorious for embedding adult references into kids' TV programs, so the cartoons worked on multiple levels. In one memorable episode, Bugs is being chased by hounds (nothing unusual there) when suddenly he halts, holds up a sign that reads, "A Tree Grows In Brooklyn," and all the dogs race off in another direction. It's funny to a child — but it was decades before I learned of (and read) A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, a famous 1943 novel by Betty Smith. The title itself is a metaphor for the Tree of Heaven.

So question reality, especially now, when signposts of the new are embedded in everything, and we're attuning to a higher frequency. You never know what you'll read in the music or hear in the words that guide our lives.