Unfulfilled Dreams

Two days ago, in the midst of considering the material I channelled last Sunday, some anger surfaced about my unfulfilled dreams, yes, to sing English church music, to live over there, and last but not least, the vision I've always had of having a comfortable, beautiful home with a cozy library, complete with wall-to-wall bookshelves, an oriental rug, and a big desk. In the midst of everything that is going on in the world, these may seem frivolous, and yet I cannot disrespect my own dreams simply because other people have made the choice to unleash waves of rage, violence, and distress. But I realize that I need to address my personal anger and try to heal at least some of it, before moving forward in any way. It needs to be done before I include more channelling, and much more writing of any kind, in this venue. It also needs to be done before I figure out future housing, and moving or throwing out belongings, especially the dozen-or-so book boxes I have in storage.

Surprisingly, I seem to have very quickly made some progress on all this, which may reflect the intensity of energy in our world right now, or the possibility that I haven't dug deep enough, and that I'm staying too superficial. But I'm in a very different place today than I even was a few days ago (and most of my life, in terms of chronic attacks of bittersweetness and perhaps even all-out bitterness about how things turned out). Here's what shifted, what new realizations came to me:

• Energetically, I've now moved far beyond the cathedral settings, and the specific services, and their "choreography" and music patterns (but not the energetic imprint and beauty of the glorious pieces themselves)
• It may be because I am so centered in the values of the Goddess that I probably couldn't have lived the kind of life over there that I would have wanted (immersed in church and early music, fine arts of all kinds, and history/archaeology), no matter how much these factors attracted me. It is possible that I had already spiritually "outgrown" these things by the time I studied over there, in 1980-81
• To put it another way, it was somewhat more possible to live according to Goddess values over here. Barely possible, but I'm still alive. Even though I didn't always "get" what I was doing, I lived in more alignment with the Goddess the way my life unfolded, and this must have been my divine agreement for this lifetime
• And lastly (for now), it has reached the point where it would be harder and harder for me to even attend choral evensong services, much less sing them, not because of the music but because of the words, the theology

What does all this mean? That at least some of the weight of my lingering sadness/anger/disorientation over my unrealized dreams and preferences has lifted in the last few days. These emotions have informed my whole life, even (I assume) every single blog post that I have written and conversation I have had with friends. I regret this, and yet I simply hadn't yet reached this specific layer of pain until now. For this weekend? Taking part in an online conference, journaling, reading, sleeping and eating. I need to catch up with at least some of the evolution happening within me. The world will hopefully still be here by the beginning of next week...

 

Oracles

Monday, I said I would soon share some material that I channelled in writing on Sunday afternoon. It's pretty powerful, really powerful actually. So I'm trying to figure out if this is the right venue for it, the right timing etc. I hope I won't chicken out entirely, but I guess someone could rightly call me the "reluctant visionary"...sometimes I wish I were anyone but myself!

In a nutshell, though, I can say this. For those of us trying to see the bigger picture behind everything that is happening, trying to understand where this is all leading us in the future, the entire universe is our oracle. Everything we see and experience is arguably an "oracle", a possible window to divine messages and wisdom. Some people may be drawn to the writings of traditional religions, some to new age oracles, some to the oracle of nature -- and some have no inclinations in this direction at all. At the moment, I'm looking without (to the heavens), within myself, as well as to Nature Herself. I'm watching and listening for synchronicities. What is the Earth trying to tell us? The continued brown dryness of the grasses around here (odd for spring) seems to speak loud, as does the fact that my favorite hawk has developed a gap in her left wing, a place where at least one feather is missing. Has she encountered difficulties? Was she in a fight? She seems to be flying all right, but it is still concerning. These anomalies speak.

I guess the key is to listen to whatever or whoever makes the most sense to us personally. There may be several good oracles in our lives, or only one. Making time to listen is the biggest challenge...to hear in the stillness amidst the world's cacophony. And for people who channel as I do, once you hear and record the message, how and to whom do you communicate it? Is this material anyone wants to hear? I think if I knew the answer to that latter question was an enthusiastic "yes", I'd never hesitate. Unfortunately, I have so often been told that my voice is unwelcome, that it's still hard to move forward in a state of flow and courage.

Hmmmm.....

Digging Down On the Weekend

Actually, I'll back up a little further than this past weekend, because around the edges, I've been experiencing a subtle (or maybe not-so-subtle) transformation. I know from the Law of Attraction that you "attract" best when you are most passionate (which, of course, can work against you when you are passionately against something!), and as I guess has been evident, since moving back east last fall, I've continued to feel like I was in neutral mode. Not enthused, not finding my tribe -- thankful to be exposed to new (and old) people, places and events, and yet still not meaningfully connecting in what I sense is more of a future direction for me.

Several months ago, I started to connect online with others at the overlap of spirituality and the environment, and this has actually kept changing and evolving. It led to my feeling more open to listening to lectures and videos in that general area, and then to even more "New Age" material such as astrology, angel channeling, etc. I mean, I am an Aquarian, and while this has been a recurring motif in my life for years, I kept it as far under wraps as I could during the period when I hoped to make new inroads into English church music. Now that this is just simply not going to happen, I feel a little more freedom. 

A broad spectrum of people in these fields say that this whole month from late March through April is likely to be energetically powerful, and these folks are also (overall) much more genuinely optimistic than most other people I am encountering. Like me, they see Love growing stronger and stronger as time goes on, so to that extent, I've been feeling the warmth of knowing that I'm getting closer to my tribe.

But then my feminism kicks in. I genuinely want to hear more about the astrology of this crucial time period, and to feel the waves of Love coming toward me from other dimensions, and perhaps even to feel the presence of archangels or heavenly guides. No matter how nutty it is, is sure beats the actual news! Yet there is still a patriarchal "upwards and outwards" focus to all this that I do not dismiss entirely, but must question as a woman. If Love is increasing in presence and power right now, how is this affecting what is underfoot, below the surface, even way inwards, to the center of the earth? At Earth's very core, as at my very core.

Yesterday, this led to a brief, frenzied channeling of writing that I hope I will share with you, at least in part, next time. I'm probably the last person in the world to expect to take an interest in earth sciences, geology, geophysics, and seismology. And I doubt that I am really going to do that in any normal way. But my inner search for balance just kind of takes over. If Love is increasing throughout the universe, it is doing it at the center of all the planets as well as in ways that we will see with our eyes. Our personal heroine's journey is often down and in (rather than up and out), and perhaps Earth's is as well. 

Outmoded words

This topic has come up at least once before in this blog, but I can't find the post so I'll plow ahead, and ask you to forgive any overlap.

I'm finding that I have become ultra-sensitive to the use of words -- whether they are used to embrace or used to split people apart. At the core of this is the fact that I now understand that I am a "post-duality" being (in a sense, both "post" and "duality" are, themselves outmoded words!), someone who either came into this lifetime pretty integrated, or have come to that place through time. Either way, at this point, I see the world as one, as whole, as undivided -- and (at least increasingly in this coming era) oriented to the Love of the Goddess. 

I don't know whether this evolving new paradigm will have "dictionaries" in quite the same sense as we've known them, but there are increasing numbers of words that I am certain will not be in the dictionary, not because they have been "outlawed", but because they will no longer be used -- the underlying conditions (conflict, war, ownership, greed) will no longer exist. Of course words and word roots specific to war and separation of all kind are on this list (battle, fight, anti-, against, enemies, countermeasures...) as are conditions that have traditionally been necessary for non-combatants during times of strife: security, protection, safety. A truly loving civilization is inherently safe, so there is no need to arm or build walls to protect people. I remember when I lived in Manhattan and walked/bused/subwayed all over town on my own. I was never scared enough to learn martial arts or buy sprays or other protective gadgets. However, I do remember at times gripping my set of keys in my palm in such a way that the individual keys stuck out between my fingers, so that I could lash out if necessary. Such instincts will soon be as outmoded as certain words.

Listening to the news, I have become intrigued by how many of these soon-to-be outmoded words start with "re-" -- perhaps an etymologist could help explain this! Oddly, all of the ones I came up with are verbs. Here goes: retaliate, resent, react, resist, renounce, revoke, renege, remove, repulse, restrict, rescind, reject/eject, retaliate, restrain, reprimand....there must be dozens more, perhaps hundreds. It's like, I hear these words and the feeling in my body is so unpleasant, I know that they represent something that isn't part of me. I suppose it is old paradigm indeed that my body is, itself, "rejecting" these terms. Perhaps as this process we are going through progresses, body signals will feel more like minor nudges, and before too long, I'll hear the words so seldom that they won't really matter any more.

Interestingly, I came up with a few "re-" words that will probably last well into the new paradigm: resonance, respect, and reassurance.

I think when I wrote before, my thoughts were on the avoidance (another outmoded word!) of using "anti-" in the name of movements and organizations, that it is much more forward-thinking, for instance, to be "for peace" than "anti-war". But right now, in our current picture, the whole conflict paradigm has become excruciatingly painful, including all its lingo (wherever it is used, even in sports, spirituality, etc.) Using more love-and-peace-leaning language may at the moment require a conscious effort, but before too long, the outmoded words will quietly disappear from our lives. We won't want to experience the pain.

...and Thinking some More

Although I am incredibly hopeful, joyful even, when I think about the Love-filled paradigm that we are entering (see previous post), that doesn't make this current moment any easier.  Hearing the early morning news (and occasionally watching the evening news) has become by turns heartbreaking, absurd, astonishing, embarrassing. At times the news is even laughable, for about one minute. No amount of knowledge about the "love to come" can take away the excruciating pain of what we see before our eyes.

Yet there is a clear truth at the center of it all about what this paradigm is, and arguably has been for generations. I still cannot forget the moment when (I was in my twenties) a successful businessman said to me, "Our system is 'kill or be killed', Liz. If you can't learn how to kill, you will be killed." Obviously, he was talking metaphorically, how in the world of finance you have to be cutthroat and brutal to survive. I replied that this was ridiculous, but inwardly, I suspected he was right, and, yes, I've been "killed" over and over and over. It is a miracle (the miracle of friends and love) that I am still alive. Yet even in the New Age milieu, there seemed to be this acceptance of the system, and an embrace of goals like bigger houses and cars, more income. All of us have at least taken for granted the conveniences we've enjoyed, and yet we have not wanted to look too closely at how people overseas work for us in near slavery, how Americans have experienced wildly, painfully different economic realities, and how the earth has been pushed almost past the point of complete devastation. This is a teaching moment, a moment of a different kind of brutality -- brutal clarity. It's almost too bright to look at, but this is not the moment to turn away. It is happening because a higher quality of Love is making its way to us, and these old conflict-driven assumptions and beliefs are on their way out the door. These beliefs and people will not be able to tolerate a higher spiritual vibration.

"My" hawk came by yesterday, giving me an extra jolt of joy. Thank you, hawk.

I've been Thinking

I suppose this will come as no surprise to anyone who follows my blog, or even reads it occasionally. Yes, I think constantly. My brain never turns off, or almost never; thinking is my "doing".

In the last few years, during and "after" the pandemic, once I finally acquired a computer again, I was very slow to do what most people had been doing during that time -- using that means of connecting with people and learning new things. I was still doing most of my learning through books (often older ones), and trying to figure out where on earth (literally) I might find kindred spirits, yearning for the physical closeness of a bricks-and-mortar community or partnership. I don't think I went down these old roads simply because of my age. I wanted as much as possible to learn my spiritual lessons in my own life, to learn from within, not so much from the cacophony of ideas without. Of course I've been exposed on and off to a lot of spiritual wisdom for which I am extremely grateful, and when possible here I've tipped "hats off" to these teachers. But I've tried to quickly incorporate what I needed to learn, then move on, on my own path. The downside of this? Too often having believed I am alone in some of my visionary thoughts about the present and the near future. And that has been lonely.

Suddenly, that has changed. Over the course of about five days, one video led to another (you know how that happens), and the next thing I know, I'm hearing some of my most deeply held beliefs and observations coming out of the mouths of one or two other wise ones. I mean, it's out there, a tribe of people really, really on my wavelength in a way I never thought possible. OMG. My vantage point may be a little more feminist and Goddess-centered, but still, there is serious overlap. I have more kin than I thought.

So, before I listen to too much of this material and lose track of where it is all coming from (although in the end, Source is the source, right?), I'm just going to list a few key things about these times, some of which I have written about or alluded to, and some of which I haven't yet because of fear. When you stop thinking you are alone, fear evaporates. "Here goes nothing":

• I knew 20 or 30 years ago that the 2020's were going to be the beginning of a big transition, a time when we would all start to see certain things clearly (with "20-20 vision"), and that this would lead to a complete change in human society by 2050 or so. I gather from what I am beginning to read and listen to that many visionaries are pushing that time frame up to the 2030's or even sooner!
• This whole Love thing -- the idea that, moving forward, the only sustainable creative products will be ones conceived in Love -- is bigger than I realized. Yay!
• I've been thinking for a long time that more love will mean big changes to the scientific world, and that everything we've learned will have to be rethought yet again. Because so many of these constructs (along with medicine, economics, politics, etc.) are based in human notions of conflict and fear, they simply will stop working as models. I also think that our worst inventions (the biggest affronts to the Goddess) will simply melt away, perhaps alchemized into new, more natural products that help our evolving Earth home, not hurt Her. And we will find cleaner, more spiritually evolved ways to travel, communicate, build, etc.
• Those of us trying to reconnect to Earth as we know her to be (under all these human trappings) should not be surprised as She changes. We can't go back to what things used to be like, even in Nature.
• There is a quality in these times of washing the slate clean, starting with a new canvas, like an artist. I personally think that we may (in some technological respects) return to the so-called Dark Ages, and that the current human population may be reduced in numbers by a huge percentage. But we need to remember, there is no death in the divine mind, and spirits will be changing form in order to support the increased level of love throughout the universe. People (and animal and nature populations) who leave us are simply moving on to do other important work in other incarnations.
• I was reminded again that it is not only OK, but actually optimal, to focus as little as possible on the words and actions of the least wise and loving amongst us. Such focus adds to their energy, not the energy of love. Fighting, resisting, even "standing up to", maintains duality and conflict-driven energies. What an amazing gift that we are being given such clear lessons in this regard! So, yes, we need to stay on top of the news and understand what is going on, but for my part, each day I try to pivot really quickly into, "Knowing this information, what part of the new paradigm can I create today?"

Well, that's enough for now. But really, what we see on the news is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Everything on earth is undergoing a (literal or figurative) seismic shift, and somehow we must not be afraid. The shift is in the direction of more love, and if you think about it, what's not to love about that?!

Goddess Words 41: Round

When things are too topsy-turvy, add another Goddess word to the new foundation we are building. Today's word? Round. 

I often try to go back and imagine why a word came to be on the list I created two decades ago. Why "round"? Well, even acknowledging that I am far less connected to my physical body than a lot of people, it is impossible to be a woman on this planet and not notice that there is much that is round (or orb-like) about my body. My eyes, my cheeks (yes, both kinds!), my breasts, my earlobes, my lips, my chin, my stomach, my inner organs, my womb, my knees, my heels, my finger-and-toenails, my shoulders...I've lost weight in recent months, but when I was heavier I was even rounder; pregnancy is round. I remember when I was taking life drawing classes, sketching in the body's underlying circles was often the first step, whether the model was male or female. While I try really hard not anthropomorphize divine beings, even the Goddess, I cannot help but do that just a bit. It isn't even having seen prehistoric imagery of goddesses and fertility figures, it is a feeling of roundness that I attribute to Her. The roundness of arms embracing, of the arcs of the movements of our limbs. It is the essential difference between the shape of roundness and the shape of pointed straightness. Between bowls and swords, between balls and arrows, between cups and knives. 

There are other definitions of "round", of course. When it is a noun, it seems to have a community feel to it -- making the rounds to visit family, a doctor making the rounds of patients, a person paying for a round of drinks at a bar or pub. There is the musical sense, also somewhat communal: a round or canon features the same tune being sung (or played) by different voices, only coming in at different times. A single person cannot sing a round (except, I'm amused to see, in this new internet era where musicians can video themselves multiple times, and overlay them). 

Campfires are round, important discussions often happen around round tables, and as I have said before, future leadership groups will have a round (not hierarchical/top-down) feel to them. While the natural world has some straight lines in it, or seemingly straight lines like the horizon, for the most part, earth's natural shapes are round and orb-like. (I recently did a visualization, where I saw a waterfall within my body, falling downhill among "rocks" that were soft reddish-brown orbs, rather like beanbags. The inner "rocks" were my organs.) Our manmade world, by contrast, seems to be mainly straight, flat, and sharp-edged. 

What can I do today to help support a rounder, more Goddess-friendly world? I can try to stay inwardly soft and round, and not set up a hard wall of fear around myself. I can embrace one person, or bring a few people together in a circle. I can bake (or distribute) cookies or a round birthday cake or bread or pies. I can draw a picture with a circular edge, or search a thrift shop for a round frame to place a picture in. I can walk around a favorite tree, or draw a picture of the sun or the moon, or buy a set of circular oracle cards. It is a good time to celebrate roundness.

PS: On the first full day ot spring, I saw my first robins, two of them!