Ley Down Fear, Lift the Light!

February 2^nd is Imbolc (literally, "in the belly"), a sacred moment when the Light returns. Imbolc is a powerful portal: the exact midpoint between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. As the first "cross-quarter day" on the Wheel of the Year, it heralds the Equinoxes and Solstices, as well as Beltane (May 1st), Lammas (August 1st), and Samhain (October 31^st).

This year, February 2^nd is also an auspicious moment to connect, clear and heal the ley lines of the planet. You're invited to join with your galactic brothers and sisters at the time and place you choose (sunrise or sunset are optimum, but your heart focus is what matters most). The Ley Lines Project says, "It is as if Gaia appears to be especially invigorated by a low elevation Sun. Her ley lines appear to dilate and increase both in their energetic and information carrying capacities during this twice-daily solar aspect. So, with the pathways enlarging to at least double their capacity, is this not an opportune time to purge them of unwanted energies and replace them with the light of compassion?"

Mystic Ariel Spilsbury writes, "This year, Imbolc is presenting us with a 'gateway', indicating work to be done inside and outside ourselves. Let us use this sacred time to reflect and confront what is hidden in ourselves, what must be exposed and examined before action is undertaken at Spring Equinox.

"Imbolc is a 'fire festival'. Imbolc marks the transition and transformation from death to rebirth, as the light of day grows significantly longer and you can be assured that Spring is right around the corner. At this time the animal world comes out of hibernation, the birds fly north again. This is a very holy day for initiations and a day to devote yourself to the God/dess and your own spiritual path. This is also a powerful time for intuitive and visionary work and to seek inspiration. At this time if you really tune in, you can just begin to feel and sense the 'inner stirrings', the seeds beginning to stir, and the inner light growing stronger.

"It is time to let go of the past and look to the future, clearing out the old, making both outer and inner space for new beginnings. This can be done in numerous ways, from spring-cleaning your home to clearing the mind and heart to allow inspiration to enter for the new cycle. What was born at the Solstice begins to manifest, and this is the time for individuation, as we each light our own light, and set ourselves tasks and challenges. We nurture and kindle our resolutions and begin to look outwards again, do outer activity, although first we look deep within to discover what potential lies there waiting to be fulfilled." 

Reimagining Death: The Elephant in the Room

Woody Allen famously said that he didn't want to achieve immortality through his work; he wanted to achieve it through not dying. While we celebrate birth, its corollary, exiting the Earth plane, is feared only slightly less than public speaking — at least, in the Western mind.

As someone with a gerontology (study of aging) background and an abiding love of elders, I've been exploring positive aging and death-related subject matter for years. I'm currently reading two complementary books with mirrored titled: From Age-ing to Sage-ing by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, and Sage-ing While Age-ing by Shirley MacLaine. MacLaine's book has been eye opening, not least because she articulates much that I've discovered/remembered on my own awakening journey, but also because she ratchets up my knowledge to the next level. In Chapter 11 (number of Aquarius), she focuses on soul development and references the work of regression therapist Michael Newton, PhD.

Suddenly I read, "All regressed souls speak of how much easier death is than birth. With death there is a release into the light. With birth there is an entrance into density." Of course! It's easier to expand than to contract.

And this awareness dovetails beautifully with another stunning book I read last year, Deathing: An Intelligent Alternative for the Final Moments of Life by Anya Foos-Graber.

Deathing is the real deal on conscious departure. We're not meant to die alone and afraid, maintains Foos-Graber. This definitive guide — the first of its kind I've seen, and it was published in 1989 — spells out clearly how each person can prepare for an informed death. Since most of us avoid any discussion of the subject, the very concept of a 'how-to' manual may sound frightening. Yet like MacLaine, Foos-Graber maintains that death can be a light-filled, spiritual experience.

We have a lot of help entering the world: we emerge from the body of our mother with attendants such as doctors, nurses, midwives, spouses and friends at the ready to welcome us and tend to the birthing mother. But there is no corresponding death ritual to support us in exiting the body we've inhabited as we return to the Great Mother of All.

Through two teaching stories, Foos-Graber shows us what both a typical, unconscious dying and a planned 'deathing' experience look like. The second half of the book provides step-by-step instructions and simple exercises such as breathing, visualization and remembering the Love that you are, to assist you in releasing the body and making a conscious, even joyful, departure from this life — and to support others in doing so.

Plus, we can rehearse while alive! Foos-Graber writes, "By practicing ahead of time with an eye toward this spiritual life insurance, you can increasingly live in an atmosphere free from fear and ignorance. A correct grasp of how to die necessarily produces an expanded philosophy of how to live more abundantly, however long or short your time of physical life."

As I was reading this book, a friend of mine's husband surrendered to cancer. Here's how she described his conscious death: "He squeezed my hand and left his breath here to begin to inhale the ethers of elsewhere. A gentle wave of joyful contentment spread out in ripples of sparkling delight. He was free again and slowly twirling in the softly glowing wonder of it all. This ethereal mist of farewell whispered through our home for an hour or so and then was gone."

So let us bow to that elephant and embrace its wisdom, rather than indulge in what MacLaine refers to as "amphysteria" ~ a condition of forgotten fear, usually of a place. We have no reason to fear expansion into the Light of All. And the elephant-headed Hindu deity Ganesh is revered as the "Remover of Obstacles". We can ride the elephant of awareness right on into the next adventure.

Birthing a New World: As Above, So Below

I've been playing with the Mayan Calendar since it first engaged me on my awakening journey 15 years ago, yet I NEVER grasped the incredible cosmic connection Gregg Braden elucidates in his compelling new book, Deep Truth: Igniting the Memory of Our Origin, History, Destiny and Fate. Braden says the Mayan sacred cycle of 260 days, known as the Tzol'kin, approximates the length of a human pregnancy — this much I knew. But he then points out how this 260-day cycle is a fractal (a pattern that is the same at every scale) of the grander 26,000-year cycle that is now concluding: the precession of the equinoxes. 

This is the true value of Mayan calendrics: they provided a "map" of what to expect; it's only been our inability to correctly decode it that has led many people to believe the world is "ending." Cycles do not end; they simply repeat, albeit at a higher level along life's spiral. This is why our birth, and Earth's rebirth, are One.

Braden writes: "The Maya knew that for each birth, the conditions would shift to make way for the new life. In the case of world-age cycles, the shift is the breakdown of things that don't work in the face of the changes, in order to make way for the things that do. This is precisely the way our indigenous ancestors thought of our time in history: as a cosmic birth into a new cycle of life."

He goes on to explain how in light of this awareness, we can better understand that "the world of the mid-20^th century was a stepping-stone, a point inaugurating a learning curve, which has led us to another way of life. We can't stop the change, but we can guide it to a gentler landing.

"This is where Deep Truth comes in. We're all better equipped to make the choices that define our future when we understand the cycles, failures and successes of our past."

I highly recommend this book. Braden's scientifically supported findings will blow your circuits on many levels, such as: humans did not induce climate change — but we ARE responsible for creating a sustainable environment now! — and, perhaps even more astounding: we are not a product of evolution, but of an intelligent design (ID) put into place at once.

Never before has the aphorism, "We are the ones we've been waiting for" been so abundantly clear.

The Beginning of the World

"To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour."

~ Auguries of Innocence, William Blake

Have you been feeling a sense of urgency for a while — as though an invisible undertow is pulling you in over your head? The Hopi prophecy about these times begins, "There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and so swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore…"

We are all swimming in an emergent sea of consciousness — and, since this is so new, we may tend to fall back on old models to try to understand what's happening. "Oh! This must be an emergency!" Remember that emergency equates to crisis — and crisis means turning point. Emergence (minus the "y", or "why," of our scrambling, questioning minds) means to come out, to gush forth — like flowing waters. The cosmic comic Swami Beyondananda calls it, "Emerge and see." Let's take a slow, luminous look at where we are now.

September 11, 2001 was a wake-up call, our planetary initiation into a higher way of being. If 9-1-1 was the conception, our global gestation has been underway for the past decade. Because we've never experienced a global birth process before, there's no template for how to do it, or what it might look or feel like. Some of us are responding with hyperactivity; others are exhausted; we may fluctuate between the two. Some people are feeling ravenous all the time; others have little or no appetite. An expectant mother knows that the baby growing inside her affects all aspects of her life for the nine months she carries the being in her womb.

How strange and wonderful to be part of a collective birth, a worldwide rebirth of consciousness, here in the body of our Earth Mother! On October 28, 2011, the 26,000-year cycle of the Mayan Calendar concludes, initiating us into a higher dimension. (This evolution is also affecting animals, especially cats, which are helping to anchor the vibration of transmutation.) The more we can take care of ourselves and of one another as we prepare for our emergence, the more joy-full it can be.

Once again, a subtle shift in perception may help. Consider the word n-o-w-h-e-r-e. It's usually pronounced "no where." If we subtlely shift our focus, however, we arrive at the key to living in the present moment, which is where all gifts reside: now here.

This is a new dawn, our collective inauguration. The word inauguration contains the word "augur," which means to predict, to forecast. What do we want to vote for, as a planetary people, in this ripe moment of rebirth? What augurs well for our growth as a species? Blake's "Auguries of Innocence," quoted above, suggests one positive pathway.

Radiate: To Emit Light

The Unity Wave is turning fear on its ear, in every sense. Since Japan's cataclysm, the entire world has been sending love to the affected area and prayers for healing. Then I learned about the women of Chernobyl (see Meltdown), who returned to their native land not long after the incident, and have survived against all odds for 25 years, thanks to their love for the Motherland and abiding community, which appear to trump radiation for health and longevity. But in all this, we were still seeing radiation as "the enemy".

To radiate means to emit light. A few days ago, Jean Hudon sent this extraordinary tale via his Age of Awakening compilation: how radiation itself can be a path of spiritual emergence.

During her many years working in the former Soviet Union, and exposure to Chernobyl radiation, Rama Jyoti Vernon discovered one group of children who were doing exceptionally well. She asked their doctors the secret to offsetting the radiation poisoning, and they told her:

"Radiation is light and has a high vibratory frequency. Through our spiritual practices of meditation, prayer, Yoga, eating less dense foods and faith and love of God, we can raise our own cellular vibration to that of radiation to offset the harmful effects.

"'You see,'" one Russian doctor bubbled with excitement, “We are using radiation as our spiritual guide. It forces us to be more fully conscious each moment of every day. If we have a negative thought it reduces the vibratory frequency of our cells and we become more susceptible. If we are angry or critical, our cells vibrate at a slower pace and we can become ill. If we become lighter, we become light and become one with the light of radiation. You see,'" they beamed, "'radiation is our spiritual practice.'"

This flies in the face of everything we believe and "know" to be true; that's why it's all the more imperative to pay attention. Nothing now is as it was, and this is a profound teaching.

I read this story as I was being gifted my own opportunity to put it into practice: not with radiation per se, but in terms of transmuting my beliefs. A week ago I suddenly became very fatigued, and it lasted for four days with no apparent origin; I didn't feel sick, just exhausted. However, given all the evolutionary upgrades taking place in 18-day cycles now, that didn't seem so odd.

Then Sunday night the hurricane hit.

Wrenched from a peaceful sleep at 1 am (which corresponds to liver, the body's main organ of detoxification in Chinese medicine), I was fevered, sweating with chills, and had an overwhelming urge to release from two major orifices (that's about as delicate as I can say it, lol.) On Monday I went for a Network chiropractic treatment. I felt somewhat better by Tuesday (the fever was down) but still very sick. I ate nothing these two days, just some water and grapefruit juice. As I lay in bed, I had the clear sense that I wanted to embrace a raw food diet. I know very little about how one actually lives the raw food lifestyle, and don't own the requisite dehydrator, juicer, etc. Yet I suddenly knew I wanted to eat lighter ("eat light"!) — and I've been eating a healthy, organic diet for decades.

By today, though, my throat was still red and swollen, my tongue bright white, and I spiraled into fear: what if it's strep? I often had strep throat as a child, and took loads of antibiotics. The last antibiotic to pass my lips was 18 years ago when I had pneumonia. It did nothing except give me diarrhea, and I vowed that I would never take another unless it was a matter of life and death — and I was not complete here. My body does not handle drugs of any kind well.

Yet here I was, contemplating a pill. First, however, I needed a throat culture. Muscle testing myself, I got that I did NOT have strep. But I was in memory. Minus any primary care physician or health insurance, I contacted a few local urgent care clinics and learned that the fee for a throat culture for an uninsured individual is — wait for it — $3-400! Excuse me? A discussion about health care in America is a topic for another day. Suffice it to say, I turned them down.

I then called an acquaintance who works with clients holistically, prescribing nutritionally-based remedies that work at the cellular level. Her husband picked up her phone — she's out of town for two weeks! Oh, I should have called yesterday!

Then I began to smile. All the paths to diagnosis, traditional or alternative, are blocked. What's this really about? Radiation! Raising my vibratory frequency! I am ready and willing to emit more light. One of the supplement specialists at Whole Foods says she's been feeling the exhaustion, too, and numerous people have been coming in complaining of severe throat pain. Maybe it's a call to raise our collective voice in service to the highest, to speak our truth and honor all perspectives to a greater degree than we ever have before!

There has never been a year like 2011. We are in the New Earth Birth Canal, and the alchemical fires are licking us clean. I know I can withstand this, even as I surrender to the Light more completely than I ever have in my life — and I've been through the fire a few times!

When I think this way, feel this way, it brings tears of joy to my heart. If you are feeling these or other ascension symptoms, please share your story. It will benefit us all. Because we are, of course, All One.

Be the Wave of Now. Blessings, abundant health and much love to you, Beloveds!

METAmorphosis: Going Beyond

For years, I've been saying we're all cells in the body of the Goddess. This one-minute video metaphor of how a butterfly is born is a potent message for what's happening on our planet: we are becoming ONE.