The Middle Step

Ever since my post the other day, I have been ruminating some more (in the middle of the night!) about the whole concept of "loving your enemies". It seems like this might be a key place where the old and new paradigms diverge.

Of course, just the concept of "enemies" alone is very old paradigm, born in duality and its need to fight contrast rather than celebrate it. In the new paradigm, people won't want to fight and have "enemies". There will be no benefits to this kind of polarized, angry energy. People will simply be closer than ever to genuinely loving other people just as they are.

But in this transitional moment, what is the middle step between out-and-out conflict (1) and loving your enemies or rising above conflict and creating beauty with no reference to evil (2)? The word that comes to mind -- as sort of a 1.5 in that list -- is compassion. I have never been attracted as much as I should have been to the notion of compassion. My dated dictionary definition is "pity inclining one to be helpful or merciful", and I guess I never found that pity overlay to be empowering to either person in the equation.

But newer and more thorough definitions and etymologies stress more of a state of empathy, understanding others' conditions and sufferings, and it occurred to me that it is a good bridge concept here: if I have the ability to warmly acknowledge that the world is filled with people who aren't like me, I can accept or embrace that some of them won't like me one bit. They might even want to "fight" me. The transitional step between fighting back and saintly disengagement is the ability to look directly at that person and compassionately understand that they are exactly the person they came to be in this lifetime. In the great drama that is 2026, this person (or group) has exactly the set of characteristics they needed to have in this unique moment in history. They are, if you will, playing a role. I'm just another player in the cast -- I shouldn't force anyone to switch roles, any more than I would wish to become a different person under pressure from them.

There's peaceful acceptance in this. I accept that these people and phenomena are what they are. I cannot change them, or try to change them. I can lay down that fight at least!

Part of it is that compassion and acceptance have to start within. I am who I am. I passionately embrace my own right to be who I am, and by extension, others' right to be who they are. Yet that can be scary -- what if that person attacks me? Well, there is no death in the divine paradigm. An "enemy" cannot kill my soul's essential, eternal spirit. I don't need to protect myself. I neither fear death, or the "hell" of that person's rage.

From that stepping stone, it may be easier to evolve upward into genuinely loving more people, or, at times, cutting the tether to extreme negativity completely. 

A New Pattern

My new pattern seems to be to handwrite my essays in the middle of the night. I don't know if this will make for better writing, but it may make for writing on different topics, updating old topics, or expressing myself in a slightly different way. 

I've been mulling over the protests and riots in France, and suspect that we will be seeing similar movements all over the world in upcoming months and years. There has been too much oppression, and people are fighting back. This action-reaction pattern has been a hallmark of the Piscean Age, hasn't it?

Back in the 80's, there were groups and individuals protesting logging in the North American West and Australia, and although some of the events were reasonably nonviolent (blocking roads, people chaining themselves to trees), I still knew I could never take part in this. I am passionately "pro-nature", so what was wrong with me that I couldn't act? Even more recently, I haven't been able to stomach any form of protest "against" anything, even the most despicable people, events, or trends. It is so hard knowing that some good, committed people may see you as weak, passive, or even quietly supportive of the worst humanity has to offer, when nothing could be further from the truth. I know I have touched on this before, but here's my middle-of-the-night take.

As we reach the end of the Piscean Age, patriarchy, and several other ages, the fact is that protest can never really "work" the way it might have in the past, simply because from an energetic standpoint, it throws people and movements downwards, not upwards. Protesters end up matching the phenomenon they are protesting. In this "yes"-based universe, passionate attention props up the thing you oppose. Even efforts to follow the biblical injunction to love one's enemies bring the focus to those enemies and their misdeeds, thereby making these negatives bigger and more visible. Unless we are operating at an amazingly high level and our enemy wishes to be more loving, forgiveness of this kind may not work at all. 

I am convinced that in this Aquarian age there is only one way to deal with violent and oppressive people. First, trust that their energy is so inconsistent with the all-love new age that they will soon be disempowered, and perhaps even dematerialize. (I don't mean this violently or literally -- just that there will be less and less power in rage, and it will melt in a way we cannot yet know. We don't have to "do" anything "to" them.) Secondly, hold yourself in the highest, most loving place possible without any reference to what other people might or might not be doing or thinking. Third, from that high energetic place, create beauty, love, and genuine peace. It doesn't matter if it is art, or poetry, an hour of meditation, a delicious meal to feed the community, or gathering friends for a walk in nature. Just create peace and beauty. Period. That energy will ripple out into the larger world.

So there is no longer any need to reference, fight against, or protest "evil" in any way. Low-level phenomena cannot inspire, usher in, or catalyze higher level phenomena in this emerging paradigm. Those of us who can be genuinely peaceful have probably been like this all along. It's such a relief to enter a time when the pattern that is "us" matches the new overall pattern!

Every Little Journey

As you have gathered, in the 1990's and the early 2000's, I moved around and traveled a lot. While I never drove all the way to California, I took a number of long solo car trips around the country, the most memorable of which brought me to Duluth to live. I also took long train and bus trips, in a few cases not knowing the potential outcomes of my explorations. And of course, over the years, I've flown to England and Europe at least a dozen times. So I am not entirely sure why I've reached the point where it is so hard to travel, perhaps a combination of my age, the times, post-COVID fears, and an awareness of calamitous conditions around the country and the world.

So it was an unusual weekend of two little journeys. One, by train, took me to meet a friend in the Hudson Valley, destination: a crowded, wealthy, artsy, touristy town. On the second trip, I rode with a different friend to an event in a tiny, almost empty, Mohawk Valley hamlet on the first weekend of hunting season. The weekend was a refreshing break. These two little journeys encapsulated some of the intense contrasts to be found in upstate New York, and followed well-worn paths along two great rivers. To that extent, it was very grounding.

At the same time, my longer physical journeys over the years (as well as nonstop down-and-in and up-and-out spiritual journeys) always keep me from grounding entirely. There's a part of me almost flying out of trains, buses or cars, wanting to sing "Wake up, wake up!" to everyone around me! There's a bigger reality upon us, immeasurable changes of every possible sort. And I sense this almost panicky effort of people around me to maintain "life as we know it", a stressed forced gaiety and confusion that ultimately may not be much different from what populations around the country and the globe are experiencing.

So it took more courage than it used to to say "yes" to these little journeys, just as it does to walk into big box stores that completely overwhelm me, or to stand with homeless people waiting for the bus downtown. Billions of humans take billions of little journeys every day. Every little journey is a courageous one, whether you are 7 or 70, stepping out to school or the corner store, or sailing across the Atlantic, or climbing a mountain, or commuting to work by car or subway. Ultimately, we don't know where the journey will take us...we set out thinking we know. We take a deep breath, and we say yes, and we leap -- into a swirling energy that more-than-ever is changing us and our world in real time. Even the little journeys may transmute us. This weekend did just that, and I am glad I had the courage to say yes and not stay "home", now that I finally have one!

A Dream, but no Haiku

The other night I had a dream that I think may be quite significant, but I'm still not entirely sure what it means.

I was in a situation that reminded me of the "letters tests" I took when applying for the Letters departments at Time-Life Books and Time Magazine. (In those interviews, I was given sample reader letters and back-up research/reporting for the passages or stories involved, and was asked to write the kind of letter I would send back to the reader.) In the current dream, I was in a huge room with floor-to-ceiling windows, but just a large desk. I don't even remember a computer or chair, to be honest. A woman presented me with a hand-written document, but here, it was not a letter to be replied to. I was being asked to rewrite/edit the document using my higher spiritual insight, I guess you could say. My knowledge needed to be folded into the essay or story or whatever it was. I don't remember the whole dream -- when I came and went over a few days, people at the door questioned why I was doing this. The woman who had given me the material was well, but not ostentatiously, dressed, and I was the same. I remember feeling quite confident, as if this job were "right down my alley". And I remember saying to her that, as there was a passage in French, we would need a native French speaker to look it over too. That's all I remember.

All I can think of is that my post-70 "job" must involve translating current thinking into more forward-thinking material, in some way that goes beyond this blog. The dream felt good overall, and my aura of confidence felt good. So I look forward to seeing how it all unfolds!

On a completely different subject, yesterday I was at a certain big box store, waiting for the bus. I was going to have a rather long wait, and unfortunately I had not brought with me the crossword and small notepad I usually keep for these moments. I do have a "new" flip phone, however, that has a "notes" function, so even though I couldn't remember exactly what constituted haiku, I decided to write a few short haiku-like poems. Here they are, in the order written:

Outside the bog box store

smokers' smoke wafting,

no bus

wondering what it all

means

Every aisle

too, too much plastic

an affront to the 

goddess

The bus

must have come early

or i came late

Three crows in a tree

isn't that supposed to

mean something?

Goddess Words 68: More Magic

Two years ago (8/14/24) I wrote about magic. Interestingly, my Goddess list includes "more magic" as well, and I've decided to write without looking back to see what I wrote then.

I handwrote this in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep, and it is significant that the definition in my 50-year old Concise Oxford Dictionary (which is always by my side) is exceedingly negative: "the supposed art of influencing course of events by occult control of nature or of spirits, witchcraft." Yikes. Clearly written before the last forty years or so of creative visualization, thinking and growing rich, and the like. A fear-based definition. And the feminist in me cannot help but wonder, when Edison created light (using his specialized knowledge), why was that considered science? In 2026, I am constantly doing things that would have seemed magical in the 70's, from calling up a company and having them already know who I am before I open my mouth, to wondering, "What's the population of Schenectady County?" and simply needing to type the question and then press a button. The line between magic/miracles and the everyday has become very blurry indeed. [I see that newer online definitions are generally a little less subjective.]

Today, the shelves of bookstores are packed with trendy books about spells to create X, and rituals to create Y. They leave me cold, uninterested. It isn't fear, although the "w" word can still instill a little of that. It's just that I have never been drawn -- aside from choral evensong -- to spiritual rituals. The Goddess exists for me in a completely post-duality place (and I realize that this is a paradox in itself!) She is in a place beyond having and not having, beyond something being "wrong" and wanting to make it right by psychic or physical means. I don't know, this is middle-of-the-night rambling, but nowadays, "magic" is letting go of specific desires and aligning with the all-love dimension of life -- and watching what happens. Sure, there are still dozens of things about my life that I wish were different, and yet I've learned from long experience that trying to "change" them from an energy of separation and fear only creates more separation and fear. Focusing without -- wanting to change events, people, or physical conditions -- simply doesn't seem to work for me. Heck, we've all read about this in multiple spiritual books and videos (I can hear Esther Hicks speaking as I write this!) Our "work" is within, to align with love, to align with our highest possible self, to be love and a conduit for love, and then, yes, more magic happens spontaneously in and around us. We attract what's on that love wavelength; people and situations are drawn to us. At moments when it feels like we are stalled, perhaps we are. We've gone as far as our current level of love can create. To get back in the flow, especially now in the Age of Aquarius, we won't get far from any non-love place. We won't get far trying to "use" magic, spells or rituals to "get" things. The river will start flowing again when we expand our ability to love, when we know deep down we are part of the larger love-based universe. We won't use "more magic". We won't receive "more magic". We will be "more magic".

Trees Turning

This will be very short. Eight years ago, I mentioned that one of the only poems I had ever written had a line about "the first tree to turn into September". I guess this illustrates the change in earth's climate, because it really is now, early October this year, that I am noticing substantial color changes. Of course the timing is different here than it was in Duluth. And there is something unique about the smell of autumn in New England and upstate New York. I am ready for it. And I guess I like the idea of "turning into" October. 

I am loving getting around more, mostly by bus, but it's also somewhat exhausting, with all the waiting for buses and transferring. I understand why people my age hold onto their cars as long as possible. But even if someone handed me a nice new car on a silver platter (think "The Price is Right"!), I don't think I would want it. The roads are so stressful around here, maybe everywhere, and it has been too long since I did extensive driving. At the moment it seems unlikely that I'll get back to it.

On this long weekend, where nothing we do can adequately honor indigenous peoples, may all of us perhaps just spend a few minutes with those bright red and orange trees. I'm going to try to listen to them, maybe touch, not just look and smell. Take care, all.

Two Years

Several years ago, when I was still in Duluth ("Forgiveness" 3/27/24), I asked Schenectady and this region for forgiveness. Out of the blue, I understood that I had been blaming my home town for a host of things that, frankly, weren't its fault.

I guess this isn't entirely uncommon...in literature and song lyrics, people speak of wanting to leave their prosaic place of birth for the lights of the big city, sort of thing. For me, by age six or eight, it wasn't the big city, it was the chapel of King's College Cambridge, wasn't it? My heart and spirit were gone, "outta here". Day-to-day life in upstate New York under the shadow (metaphorically and literally) of the big circular GE logo, was foreign to me. It was a coat that didn't fit, even our anglophile Episcopal church. The music at church had connected me energetically with the music of my lifetimes-long home, and now nothing else around me was right. If you had asked me at 17 (as I was heading off to college), will you be living in Schenectady at 70, the answer would have been a resounding, "No!" (Of course, at that age, I didn't understand that in this yes-based universe, my passionate "no" was essentially a "yes"!)

Over the years, I have periodically come through Schenectady en route elsewhere. It is the perfect pivot point, like an elbow. Trains from the west stop here heading south to New York or north to Lake Champlain and Montreal. It is near where the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers meet, where the Thruway meets the Northway and the Mass Pike. Perhaps at times I needed the reminder that this wasn't where I wanted to be, before following a thread forward to where there were bigger lessons to be learned.

Yet two years ago, I threw up my hands and gave in. No, I never made it permanently to Cambridge (or elsewhere in England), and I didn't have the energy to try again, but I also couldn't start my "old age" in the upper Midwest. I knew instinctively that the spiritual work I needed to do now was with the place I'm quite sure my soul deliberately chose for my birth in this lifetime. So here I have been for just gone two years.

The "happily ever after" movie version would have me firmly rooting here, finally finding the love, purpose, and prosperity I have never experienced elsewhere -- and heck, that could still happen. But something just as valuable has already transpired: today I completely embrace and accept that this is where I am "from" in this lifetime. The chronic resistance that I carried around with me, the inner "ugh" I used to feel at the thought of this place, has just about completely melted.

The other day, I was in the Stockade, and happened upon an unusual vista, which I had to take a picture of: the spire of St. George's, and, half-a-block in front of it, the roof and top floor of the carriage house my grandmother lived in when she first moved to Schenectady. A year or so later, she moved to an apartment a stone's throw away -- but as I snapped the picture I was aware of this almost literal arrow between the church of my baptism and childhood, through -- what? -- 1959 or 1960 and the grandmother I felt the most at home with, to me today in 2026. These things were and are aligned at this moment. While the coat still doesn't really fit, I'm not squirming to throw it off. I'm still alive. I have the privilege of seeing an old place through new eyes. I am soaking that in as best I can, being present as best I can. That's a lot of growth in two years. Thank you, Goddess.