Mel

Mel says,

Yes, yes, yes…excellent insights and just what I was looking for, especially this blatantly simple, direct explanation of the HOW TO:

“…take one situation a week, first ask whether we’d be safe speaking up, then ask whether the result might be constructive, then pray to speak in a way that is loving and gentle but clearly communicates, and then ask if we feel like it at the moment, and then, if all systems are go, to speak up.”

Thank you for including HOW, in addition to WHAT. I can tell you that I will come back to this post repeatedly in the days to come. And that I will do my best to REMIND YOU, as requested, in the days leading up to your publishing of the long post in your queue that continues the story. What is your targeted time frame for getting around to this post, so I can time my reminders to something besides thin air?

The stone provided with this essay is magnificent, and I can feel its energy clearly. I will spend more time partaking of this stone’s energy via the picture provided, and I appreciate your great suggestion to squint when looking at it.

Reading about the Baltic Amber was terrific, and thanks for the leads on great stone-related written material. It’s no wonder that I felt such a huge connection to the Amber, since it’s a Stone Spirit and since the ancestor’s on my mother’s side are literally named Stone. Clearly, I carry the stone spirit in my life’s blueprint. As a Scorpion, stones also represent my preferred hiding places where I can rest, rejuvenate, and wait out the “heat of the day” until conditions are right for my productive and comfortable re-emergence.

As for the crown-chakra opening properties of the amber, this opening of mine is already the size of a gargantuan pipe…a ‘condition’ that seems to cause as much trouble as it solves, but that I still wouldn’t trade away for anything. Perhaps it is my ancestral Stone connection that created this condition in the first place, based on this particular explanation of the Stone Spirit’s properties. Whatever…I intend to get my hands on a piece of this stone.

Giant hugs to you for directing some of your flow to my questions! As we know, all the answers already surround us in their entirety…the only thing missing is the questions that will reveal them. I’m always at the ready with good questions, but this is worthless unless the right receivers are in place to pick up on their exact frequency. You’ve done a fine job of receiving my questions to expose the answers held within them.

I better make a list of queued posts.  Easy to lose track in the torrent.

It’s a lot more pleasant to keep all of our Chakras open equally, especially Crown-Root and Heart-Solar Plexus (“mind” actually resides energetically in the third or Solar Plexus Chakra), but all of them really.  Intention is one method, or visualizing, or working with someone who sees energy.  Adjusting any of the Chakras, whether opening them more or closing them more, can involve some physical or emotional pain, so it’s great to have an adjunct like Tapping to use while you’re adjusting.  Loving and gentle and We have all the time in the World are good background music for the process.

A while back I used to, unintentionally, alternate between wide-open Heart and wide-open Solar Plexus when dealing with a particularly difficult person in my life.  Once I started learning more about energy, I decided to try keeping both Heart and Solar Plexus open wide while talking to them on the phone.  They had no idea how to deal with me – I could tell how puzzled they were.  And I sat there sweating like a pig (no lipstick) during the whole conversation.  It wasn’t discomfort of the sort we usually associate with Stress, but it sure was a state that my body didn’t know what to do with!  A great resource for Chakra exercises is Julie Henderson’s book The Lover Within.

Both/And

Which is not to say that political action isn’t appropriate, and for some folks it’s clearly part of their Soul Path.  But if we can get clearer about who we’re being, then what we’re doing is more likely to have the influence we desire.  We’re less likely to end up being somebody else’s Astroturf.  Who we’re being has more influence on the results of our actions than what we’re doing.

To me, in order of importance and time, it’s (1) Stay Safe, (2) as much as possible deal with what’s coming up internally, and then (3) deal with what’s coming up externally.  While Staying Safe might smack of Lawn Order, it keeps one from acting in Fear, which of course the Universe will mirror in kind.  Who needs to get beat up by the Corporate Cops.  Let the Adrenaline Junkies be the bait for the Nasty Violent Left-Wing Protest headlies in the Corporate Media when three people make it past the cordons of riot-geared Staasi guarding the Elite.  Dealing with the Internal first can minimize the times when we act in Anger, which just creates more War.  As for dealing with what’s coming up Externally, I believe we need to be very selective about where we place our energies.

I’ll be otherwise engaged for the next few days, and then in March, unless the Torrent pushes boulders on us, we’ll shoot for posts on Uranus-Pluto and 2012; Uranus in Pisces; Saturn-Chiron-Uranus-Harmonic Convergence; Chiron and Virgo.  I’m not sure we need more about the Saturn-Pluto Cycle, though it will revisit, mildly, this Spring.  Any other blogus interruptus topics?

We haven’t really finished reading the 2010-2019 Decade and 2010 Year charts (Solstice, Eclipse, New Year), and it’d be very useful to review the 2000-2009 Decade to better understand the context of where we are and what we’re unwinding – especially since the chart for the 2000-2009 Decade is also the chart for the Century; the 2010-2019 charts just embellish the Century chart, they don’t replace it.  And while we’ve given the Chiron-Neptune initiation a great deal of attention, we haven’t looked at the rest of the Chiron-Neptune chart.  And as part of any Decade reading I like to consider the major Harmonics going on throughout the Decade; I’ve hardly even looked at that yet.

Plus, anything else anybody wants.  And, we haven’t had a chance yet to follow up on nude’s fascination with the Eclipses.  Gonna be a busy year.  It’s hardly even a firehose, this Chiron-Neptune energy, ’tis an all-out Flood.  Anybody seen Noah?

Stone Full of Light

I know, that is an amazing photo, at the beginning of Getting Real, isn’t it!  It’s a Baltic Amber, so it’s a Plant Spirit as well as a Stone Spirit.  I’m not yet lucky (if that’s the right word) enough to have Stones talk to me, I feel them instead.  For choosing Stones for a specific purpose, when I don’t do it intuitively, most of the time I use one of two books, because of all the books I’ve used, the descriptions in these two most closely match my own experiences of the Stones.  We always need to choose channeled material so that we resonate with it while it also expands us.

In this case, I chose this picture because Dorothy Roeder in her Crystal Co-Creators says that

Amber is a connector between Humanity and the Plant and Animal kingdoms in physical existence.  It removes confusion and imbalance among the bodies.  It helps the emotional body accept its place in physical existence and functions as a connector within the four-body system.  It can be very useful in helping you to feel more secure as a part of physical existence.

which sounded very relevant in context, and because the photo does a great job of capturing the Light in the Stone.  By and large, Red Stones are considered grounding, as Red is a Root-Chakra color.  But that’s a reductive viewpoint; Reds can be anywhere.

The second book I use most is Collen Marquist and Jack Frasl’s Crystalline Communion 2000. Of course a person can’t get by without Medody’s Love Is in the Earth, because it covers exponentially more territory than either of my favorites.  And Michael Gienger’s Crystal Power, Crystal Healing contains a number of wonderful perspectives that no one else does.

Collen and Jack tell us that

Amber strengthens tissues of the brain and nervous system, and draws toxins from body tissues.  It purifies the etheric body by absorbing negative energy.

Melody:

It is a stone dedicated to the connection of the conscious self to universal perfection.  It helps one in the art of manifestation to bring that which is desired to the state of reality.  It stimulates the intellect and opens the crown chakra.  It also transmutes the energy of physical vitality toward the activation of unconditional love.

And Michael (slightly edited),

Amber encourages a nature which appears gentle and pliable, but is actually very self-confident.  It makes the wearer spontaneous and open but a respecter of tradition at the same time.  It is the source of easily obtained success.  Amber dissolves oppositions, making us more flexible, and encourages creativity.  Motivation arises from personal wish fulfillment that will often become the main drive in our lives.  Amber enhances healing of wounds.

Words are useful, but doesn’t it take a lot of them to convey what a glance at the Stone, or even the picture, can send?  Fabeku‘s been trying to get me to abandon this kinda booklarnin’ for years, but I’m too dense.

Now, speaking of healing wounds, with regard to

What is Chiron-Neptune telling us right now, in this very moment of time, about how we can finally step out of this critically-wounded aspect reality and into a new place where this particular wound is no longer central to our lives?  Does healing the wound involve ministering to it directly, or removing our thought focus from it entirely, under the premise that what we focus on becomes our reality?  What is Chiron/Neptune telling us about how to respond to this collective wound that Joe so obviously pointed our attention toward, if we were paying attention to the big picture instead of the particular little  parts that allow us to feel gloriously RIGHT?

This, I think, is core.  Here are some of the things I know.

The new energy extends rather than replaces what we already know well (Fresh Violets in an ancient pottery bowl).

It’s not that we will transform the culture, it’s that the culture will be transformed.  A successful strategy will be about surviving well amidst the changes, not trying to direct the changes (Chiron-Neptune in the Aquarius dwad of Aquarius).

The approach that will work, to help us survive well, is Just Fix It – our survival must be approached from the simplest possible perspective (Pluto in Capricorn).

One of the core characteristics of the Century is consciousness of sustainability (Ceres Rising in the 1/1/2000 chart).

2012, along with whatever else is in store for us, involves trusting our individual Soul purpose and allowing ourselves to be our True Self as much as possible, and operating intuitively as much as possible (see Uranus-Pluto).

So I don’t believe there is one answer to this wound question which applies to everyone.  There are as many answers as there are Souls.  Conformity will no longer have survival value, and attention devoted to anyone else’s survival is misplaced, except in the case where our Soul-connection to that person means that we’re sharing the same Path for a while.  Notice I said that person, not those people.  Groups will be temporary, assembled for a specific purpose, change membership frequently, and dissolve on their own.  In other words, Ayn Rand was right, but she was right about our personal directions, not about our economic regulations.

Knowing Truth, you can use your own judgment to discriminate between my personal bias, my own projections, information that many not apply to you, and information that is useful to you.  Pick and choose.  I’m just sayin’.

So, my conclusion from all that, is that any focus on the external is a projection of the internal.  We heal the external by healing the internal, like Gandhi said.  Eugene Gendlin had an extremely important insight about this.  Just because we see a cruel and angry World, that doesn’t mean we have to seek and destroy all cruelty and anger within ourself.  If we don’t like the cruel and angry World we see, then we ask ourself, what is it about ourself that we don’t like, especially having something to do with cruelty or anger?  It’s not about the cruelty and anger – that’s the intellectual content that’s the smokescreen which shelters us from the black emptiness beyond our Birdcage.

It’s loving and gentle to allow ourselves the safety of our Birdcage.  Sitting in judgment is not loving and gentle, but it keeps us Safe.  So we change the World by being loving and gentle with our judgment.  Not our judgment of what’s “wrong” with the external World – that’s part of the smokescreen – but our judgment of ourself.  What part of ourself is it that we judge?  The external World is a funhouse mirror – it’s seldom a clear mirror, because it’s seldom a clear projection.  It’s always contaminated with other people’s material, especially that of our ancestors and other significant elders from our formative years, and contaminated with archetypes from the Collective.

“Contamination” equals trance.  We were literally hypnotized by our parents’ programming, and by our culture’s programming.  So it’s very difficult to see even the simplest elements of our own projections.  So Gendlin’s insight was that we can never be certain about our self-judgments, and that we need to take the external-World mirror with a very large grain of salt.  In other words, if we have a dream where someone is violent with us, or we live in a World that violates people, then yes, we can look for something that looks sorta like violence in ourself, and rather than trying to be its opposite, then moving a little bit in that direction.

So okay, we see injustice and violence in the World.  Then we Ask, is there some part of myself that I don’t provide full justice to? Then we change the subject, or use what if I did know – what’s the first thing that comes to mind, whether it seems related or not?  Maybe we think of the time we saw someone mistreating their kid at the grocery store and we didn’t speak up and regretted it later.  So rather than

vowing henceforth always to speak up at injustice,

we decide to

take one situation a week, first ask whether we’d be safe speaking up, then ask whether the result might be constructive, then pray to speak in a way that is loving and gentle but clearly communicates, and then ask if we feel like it at the moment, and then, if all systems are go, to speak up.

That’s what we mean by moving a little bit in that direction.

It’s not easy to make up examples that might be useful to many readers, and also speak directly to you, Mel, so we turn to our primary helper on speaking in a manner that allows us to be clear and understood, which is a Manganotantalite crystal:Manganotantalite crystals are used to set the radio frequency in your cellphone.  It’s our contention that gazing at the photo can have some of the same effect as holding or gazing at the Stone itself.  The Stone is a homeopathic – it’s the frequency of the Stone that carries it’s influence, and a good photo can convey the frequency, at least to some extent.  Actually, if it’s truly homeopathic, the more dilute the photo of the Stone, the greater its impact – see if squinting helps.

Like homeopathy, the aim is not to remove the symptom, but to change the root cause of the larger dysfunction.  Like our earlier spectrum of commentary on Amber, and as you point out so well, there’s a larger and wholer issue occurring than our narrow wordpoints pick out.  The Stone moves us into our bodies, where we can integrate with more systems than just the mindbone.

Several people have postulated that the Planet will split in two, energetically, in 2012.  It may be more true that the Planet energetically splits into many.  In a multidimensional World with a foundation of energy rather than hardcopy matter, this isn’t far-fetched at all.  The reflection into matter of such an energetic shift could take many forms, including several that look like severe woundedness.  I’ll have to add a post on Uranus in Pisces, because Uranus in Pisces changes our empathy, and changes our Integrity.

To me, trying to have a direct impact on other people’s Reality is dangerous, from the perspective of Responsibility.  That’s the integrity error of the Greedheads and their screaming “anti-socialist” dupes that Jim Hightower speaks of, and the integrity error that Obama makes when he tries to ram a dysfunctional sick-insurance system down the throats of people who have no use for an allopathic “medicine” that obeys the Hypocritical Oath to above all do no harm to the profits of Big Pharma and the income of surgical hyperspecialists.  But more on this later.

Rotor

An addendum.  Here are two additional Texas viewpoints related to the Joe Phenomenon that I think add important perspectives, one on Corporate Money, and the other on Ralph Nader.

Helicopter Trips

I’ll do this in a series of short posts.

First, though, I want to point out that Greg Braden‘s giving a free interview on his new book, Fractal Time, starting Wednesday at 9am PST.  In this Science for Life series, all interviews are recorded so you can play them back free any time.

One thing you describe, Mel (I feel completely torn about whether…), is what I used to call a helicopter trip – loop, loop, loop ad infinitum.  I used to spend most of my time there, and I can still make several loops before I catch myself.  This happens when we have two conceptualizations about the nature of Reality that seem to conflict, and they argue with one another.  I was helicoptering across campus one day when a fellow student noticed my vortex and stopped to talk.  He simply pointed out that linear time is a trance, it’s not real.  Shook me right out of the helicopter.

Last I heard of this fellow, he was heading a foundation to welcome visitors from other Planets.  Men in Black is still my favorite documentary.  Not that I expect this will be helpful to you – it’s just the story of my first helicopter-stopping event.  It was many years and adventures later, I believe when I spent a year with Angeles Arrien’s Tarot Handbook while I was Recovering my Intuition, that I came to realize that dualities exist only in the mind.  Consequently, conflict and contradiction exist only in the mind, not in Reality.

So exactly that feeling, of being completely torn, is the very cue we need to drop out of the Head.  Lotsa places we can go instead – Heart, Belly, Root.  Out of Thought and into Emotion and/or Intuition, or Guidance.  A useful place for What if I did know.  A great time to go meta as my First Teacher called it – that is, step up onto the cloud that’s floating above the helicopter, and ask ourself what the Eagle up there sees.  From that place, we can PIAVA (Pray or Intend or Ask or Visualize or Affirm) that we approach a little closer to Reality itself so we can see the real issue, then change the subject. Or do it Fritz’s way, and put the two contestants into two chairs, while we sit back and watch them try to negotiate a win-win. Or walk a block with one contestant facing forward and the other in the same space facing backward, then switch.

All that’s fairly cryptic – lemme know if you want more stories about any of the techniques in that list.  Any one of them can make years of helicoptering stop dead, and literally change our life in an instant.

I first discovered that I was trapped in the Head, when I took the quiz in David Keirsey’s Please Understand Me and noticed that there were two people answering – an honest one for internal use only, and a carefully crafted one for public consumption.  Whoa!  That was a Stopper!  Fortunately (coincidentally, right?), it was Pluto-in-Scorpio time, and Recovery was in full bloom.  So I spent the next five years Recovering my Emotions.  You know the drill, once in Recovery, always in Recovery; like the rest of Life, it’s an ongoing process, not an event.  Once I integrated a little, I discovered that I was also in dire need of Recovering my Intuitions.  Still working on that too, obviously.

Now, the second big insight for me in the helicopter chain (holding the idea of them both at the  same time quickly generates massive confusion) was that Confusion means we’ve escaped from the birdcage of Limiting Beliefs that keeps us Safe but Frozen.  Not even sure where I learned that one – Fritz?  Maybe Jack Rosenberg.   I used to get angry every time I got confused.  That was a great way to keep myself Safe.

So yes, confusion is exactly where you want to be.  It means you’re growing beyond the helicopters.  Now, we need a strategy for getting comfortable with it.  Tapping would be fab.  Just creating the habit of being loving and gentle with it could work.  Locating it in your body and immersing all of your Attention into it’s dark center could disarm it.  Recognize its kinship with Fear, and embrace it as you would a frightened child.  Of course it’s always both/and – attend to your physical Safety first, then blow yer mind.  Pull off the freeway before you try to expand your Consciousness.

The genesis approach can sometimes be useful, because it can allow us to be loving with our Inner Child – who is the one that’s confused after all.  My own helicopter patterns were generated by parents whose own childhood did not allow them to accept real parts of myself.  When I was myself in certain ways, they couldn’t handle the regression, so not knowing better, they punished me.  My response was to develop a completely insoluble helicopter trip about whether they were wrong to punish me, or I was wrong to be me, and I spent most of the next 40 years perfecting my helicopter.

Genesis is always relative, never absolute, so even though we often pass through a Blame stage when Recovering an aspect of our Inner Kidderoo, Blame is not the destination.  Of course our childhood traumas are but mirrors for “past life” traumas, or practice sessions for our mission on the Planet, or exercises in developing the competence we came here to externalize.  Any specific acute or chronic childhood event or process is just a metaphor.

Again, all that’s pretty cryptic; more stories on request.

Now, how does all this relate to Chiron?  It’ll be next week before I get to it, but there’s a long post in the queue about the relationships between Saturn, Chiron, Uranus, and the Harmonic Convergence.  Remind me.  Plus, another long post on how Chiron rules Virgo, and how Virgo does not have an honored place in Western society, unless your childhood hero is Mrs. Grundy.  Remind me.

Briefly, Chiron in its 50-year orbit goes out and touches the orbit of Uranus (Individual Unconscious or Soul), then comes back within the orbit of Saturn (Identity, our Birdcage).  Chiron is actually closer to the Sun and Earth than Saturn is for a good portion of it’s journey.  Now, Chiron is probably a captured Comet, and dancing as it does with the orbits of these two Gas Giants, its orbit is probably far from permanent.  Either one of them could easily fling it into the Sun or into Oblivion, if it happened to cross their orbit while one of them was passing by.  Planets are very territorial.  So our Earthbound opportunity to accept the Grace of this Cosmic Healer is precious.

So Chiron goes out and picks up a packet from our Soul, the energy imprint of what we’re ready to grow into next and brings it back to offer it to our current Identity Set as an easy way to add rooms to our Birdcage.  We just need to be present with the Confusion and Fear that live in the blackness and gravitylessness of Space while we’re outside the Cage pouring the new foundation.  That’s why we get to see the pictures of these Spacewalkers repairing the Hubble – that’s what we need to do with our own Birdcages, and while we’re doing it we need to be very loving and gentle and thorough with how we tether ourself to the Olde Cage, lest HAL send us away.

Fresh Violets in an ancient pottery bowl.

And the real possibility of a psychotic break – for better or worse – if we aren’t loving and gentle with how our current Identity Set opens the window to too much Unconscious Content at once.  Like Susan Boyle caterwauling in the airport – a totally precious event in a World of Freedom, but highly condemned by the Corporate energies of Lawn Order – which energies are so often internalized by parents and others as the very mechanism to keep their own Birdcage from bursting open.

So yes, if we allow the mindbone to grab hold of this Safety or a new Sunroom dilemma that Chiron continually offers us, we can lose many of ourSelves in building fabulous helicopter gunships – Apaches and Blackhawks and even Ospreys O My.  The mindbone doesn’t have a loving and gentle option.  We need to drop into the Heart to find that.

In most cases a conflict between two courses of action can’t be resolved by action.  The Eagle up above usually points out that it’s not about doing one thing or another, it’s actually about being someone else entirely.  The doing that’s called for is to build that new Sunroom, so the new Identities that are begging for liberation can live in peace and prosperity.  Which leads us to the whole Abrahamic mirror thing.  Not that the Abrahams or the Hicks’s created it, they just PRed the heck out of it, and good for them.

So, what we promote here, is to encourage us to open up the Sunroom, with tapping and/or any combination of the simple magic tricks we describe, so our new Identities can have their peace and prosperity mirrored back to us.

Short, he said?  Well, he tried.  That’s post number 1.

I haven’t listened to it yet, but I’m sure the Steve Wells interview on Unlocking Your Hidden Power: How Your Identity Shapes Your Reality in the World Tapping Summit series complements this post very well.  Unfortunately, it’s no longer free, as they post two new interviews every day.  If you happened to upgrade to the downloads or CDs, I recommend it.

Getting Real

Wow again!  Thanks, Mel!

Here’s Mel’s response, in full.  The only change I’ve made is to add a few new paragraph breaks, to make reading easier in this indented format.

Okay, now we’re talking Jim!  I thank you for your choice to show up very personally,  instead of hiding behind the editorial We that has the effect of depersonalizing the  conversation and inviting more of the mental masturbation that most people are engaged  in.  In titling your post Heart to Head, you have acknowledged the impact I hoped to  create from the beginning.  In fact, you have acknowledged me and everything I stand for,  which is a gift of the highest order.

Your opening paragraph alone fulfills my heart’s Chironic desire in talking about Joe  Stack in the first place:  to assist in getting others unstuck from the grooves they have  worn into their thinking patterns, in favor of of the vast and all-encompassing awareness  resident in their hearts (aka the systems view, if using mental terms to describe this  state).

And since I’m talking to an astrologer here, I will also offer another key piece of  information:  you are talking to a woman born with Chiron retro in Aquarius in the 3rd,  which goes so much further in explaining the nature of my drive to communicate about the  particular collective wound Joe’s act is pointing at with utmost urgency.

I read your very first sentence with great delight, as it brings this entire discussion  full circle.  “Well, Mel, you force us into drastic action”.  This is exactly  what Joe Stack gave as his motivation for doing what he did.  So now, you are coming from  the same place he did — even if your choice of action is entirely different.  Common  ground between you, me and Joe has been established.  The common thread that I mentioned  as needing to be unearthed in general is now on the table.  Good work, Jim!

This common thread represents the challenge faced by all individuals within our society  in this moment.  As we watch the sinister circus acts unfolding under the big tent – and  in way too many “rings” to take in at once –  we “ring” our hands and  hope some drastic act will appear in one of the rings that finally forces some of the  changes we feel ill-equipped to confront or take on effectively ourselves.  We hope it  will play out in front of us, rather than within us.

Joe made himself a symbol of the  drastic action we all secretly hope for, and I honor him for this sacrifice.  Those who  are unable or unwilling to step up higher than their mental grooves, to acknowledge that  their own heart secretly longs for drastic action that appears out there in one of the  rings, are actually more deluded than they are most certainly claiming Joe to be.  He at  least acknowledged his own heart’s urgings, by becoming the action himself.

Speaking only for myself now, and for the first time in this conversation, I feel  completely torn about whether my own soul’s task is to shine light into the existing  darkness of others’ hearts to show them what lives there — or to focus the light of my  awareness purely on creating visions of what a heart-centered world would look and feel  like.

These are two radically different aims, and holding the idea of them both at the  same time quickly generates massive confusion; since the larger part of knowing what we  DO want involves developing a clear view of what we DON’T want, it seems necessary to  look closely at what is wrong with the current picture.  Problem is, looking at what I  DON’T want seems to trigger my Chironic urge to take on the collective wound in a direct  way, which sends visions of a better way into the back seat.  And round and round it  goes.

The most difficult part of this personal struggle is my sense of knowing that it  shouldn’t be such a struggle.  I look to my natal Chiron placement as the main instigator  of my dilemma, and try like hell to understand where it is trying to guide me personally,  today.  When combined with my 11th house Scorpio sun, this particular intensity glows  even hotter.

This is why I specifically choose to open a discussion about Joe’s act with  an astrologer:  the promise of a larger cycle and archetype-oriented conversational  palette, combined with pure selfish interest in learning more about what Chiron is trying  to tell me personally, right now, about the dilemma I’m struggling with.  A dilemma that  was so perfectly depicted by Joe’s action:  take drastic action against what IS, or  ignore it entirely and focus on what CAN BE, which also involves drastic action in the  form of ignoring reality altogether.

You have touched on my dilemma directly, in your mention of the friend who quietly  focused on giving birth to the environmental movement, when confronting the reality that  society was not ready to accept in-your-face calls to drastic change.  I hope you will  speak even more directly and specifically about what the current Chiron action is telling  us in this regard.  I am absolutely asking for guidance in understanding this transit, in  the context of the dilemma I have described here.

To answer your additional questions about the crash itself:  yes, the wreckage of the  plane is clearly visible in the building’s face.  This one involves no hints at  conspiracy, and what you see is what you get.  It’s worth noting however, that  immediately after the crash, rumors circulated that the FBI knew this was about to happen  and that this was the reason all the first responders were already in place (Haz Mat,  Fire, EMT, Police, FBI…all sitting together in respond mode across the street when Joe  made impact).  These rumors died as quickly as they began, and didn’t live nearly as long  or spread as far as new rumors typically do.  Then, we were informed about the training  exercise that was underway at that time.  As a person with an unfailing ability to  recognize truth in the moment I hear it, I heard truth in this reporting and knew without  a doubt that an amazing example of higher forces at work was at hand.

In fact, it was this truth–this beautiful example of divine protection being associated  with Joe’s action–that caused me to look much deeper than I might have for the real  questions being highlighted by Joe’s explosive sacrifice of his own life.  I wish to use  this shocking event in the most personal and positive manner possible, by understanding  what it is showing us…and I believe the biggest clue relates to the Chiron/Neptune  connections.

Other than as a means of opening conversation, who cares how this action of Joe’s relates  to historical events, or media bias, or political affiliations, or any other small part  of the whole?  What is it telling us right now, in this very moment of time, about how we  can finally step out of this critically-wounded aspect reality and into a new place where  this particular wound is no longer central to our lives?

Does healing the wound involve  ministering to it directly, or removing our thought focus from it entirely, under the  premise that what we focus on becomes our reality?  What is Chiron/Neptune telling us  about how to respond to this collective wound that Joe so obviously pointed our attention  toward, if we were paying attention to the big picture instead of the particular little  parts that allow us to feel gloriously RIGHT?

I can’t close without saying, “thanks for hanging in there with me Jim”.  It’s  not a simple nor an easy conversation to drive forward, but in my view, there is such  great potential available if we take it on.

I’ll post this as is, and reply in several separate posts, in order to keep the window open while I write.

Head to Heart

Well, Mel, you force us into drastic action.  First, we have to move from Head to Heart to read your response, let alone reply.  Thank you for that.  Second, we’ll drop the editorial we.  Ain’t no editorial we in the Heart, only in the Head.  Third, your response has reshuffled my approach to life, so I’m regarding this whole encounter as prime Chiron-Neptune energy.  Fourth, everything you say makes absolute sense, and matches my own values.  Fifth, okay, I get it, political.  That puts Martyr Joe on the same level as the Palestinians, and while from my limited viewpoint I don’t see us as nearly so oppressed as the Palestinians are, it is clear that Justice is no longer blind at all, it’s Congress that is.  Obama made an effort to explain a health-care proposal today, so at least we know he’s listening.

Three related stories present themselves, one from the incipient Chiron-Neptune Cycle, one from the previous Cycle, and one from a couple of years ago.  Last night I listened to Carol Look’s audio on Abundance, in the first day of the Tapping World Summit series.  She put quite a bit of emphasis on the sources of our Limiting Beliefs, and I tapped obediently, though she didn’t trigger any strong emotions for me.  That opportunity is under the bridge, but Carol does offer a free newsletter that covers the same ground.  Currently (free till 5pm PST Tuesday), Steve Wells is giving a free session on Unlocking Your Hidden Power: How Your Identity Shapes Your Reality and Judy Byrne one on Healing the Critical Internal Voice.

Both of the two previous Chiron-Neptune Cycles began with economic recessions.  My father built Liberty Ships during World War II, and he was very much caught, with three young children, in the 1945 Chiron-Neptune recession.  Between the time when the shipyards closed and the time I left for college, the town I grew up in lost half its population.  The town of equal size across the river was literally washed away in a flood a few years later, and never rebuilt.  (People had some time to escape, so few drowned.)  My father didn’t leave, but instead cycled from job to layoff and back for the next twenty years, building tugboats, tankers, dams, and whatever would put food on the table.

A coupla years ago I took a workshop on Irish folk magic by RJ Stewart.  The foundational concept is that only a collaboration of the Fairies, the Animals, and the Humans can restore the Planet.  None of the three can do it by themself, and in the process the Humans follow, they don’t lead.  The related book included a CD of guided meditations, one of which introduced me to some of my other-dimensional guides.  Their appearance during the meditation was more what if I did know than cinemascope.  I listened to the CD in my car when I had a few extra minutes prior to an appointment.

When I returned to my car, there was a flyer on the windshield for a free showing of The Corporation, several days hence.  I went.  The sponsors wanted folks to stay for a consciousness-raising after the showing.  I couldn’t, I was too busy imagining how I’d have to reorganize my life if I went back to the protest barricades.  As I left the showing I walked past a storm-sewer grate.  At the bottom of the grate was one of my guides from the meditation, a 7-foot Green Fellow.  I saw him with an other vision, but this time it was definitely cinemascope!  The message he transmitted in an instant, was it’s not like that any more.  From there to my car, with each step, even on a paved sidewalk, I could feel the Planet breathing.

At another workshop I related the story to RJ.  I expected he might humor me a little, at least not call me crazy.  Instead, he launched into a story of his own, about manning the anti-nuclear barricades in England in the 1960s, and how six women who tried to start an environmental movement in the 1920s were hounded out of England.  They moved to California and started a meditation circle that initiated the energy vortex that fifty years later became the American environmental movement.  It was clear to me from my Green Friend’s transmission that we now need to work on that level, not on the barricades.  Whether that’s also your level or not, Mel, I dunno.

I didn’t know that EMTs “happened to be” picnicking just across the street from Joe’s target.  When you mentioned this, though I’ve only seen a few pictures of the building, what occurred to me, as with the Pentagon 9/11 pictures, was where’s the plane? Are any traces of it visible in pictures you’ve seen, or evidence of wings or tail?  I’m well aware of who might have staged 9/11 – their manifestos were clear.  But who might have motivation to stage this?  The Tea Party?

Jung’s premonitions of World War were in his dreams, not in the movies or Fox News.  I have a hard time seeing the corporate media as manifestations of the Unconscious.  It’s too easy to see them as manipulations of the Consciousness of the Lizards, preying on our vulnerability to Fear.  Who planned the 3-day delay between the Haiti earthquake and the arrival of aid?  The TV cameras could get there to show us how helpless we are, but not to help?  The Lizard program is straight out of the Goebbels playbook, augmented by NLP.  We know it works.

But the problem with conspiracy theories is that they’re all rhetorical – they appeal not to our common sense (which by the way I find closer to intuition than to C&E) but to our pre-existing Beliefs.  Did Jung interpret his conflagration dreams before War broke out?  Or did he develop the notion of the Collective Unconscious after connecting the then-current reality of War with his prior dreams?  I’ve forgotten, but I’m guessing it was the latter.  Forty years ago the media was more reliable as a reflection of external reality.  Today it reflects only what the Corporations want us to believe.

I won’t preach at hardship.  I don’t know whether the tools offered here will be useful for any given person at any given time on any given issue.  I often think of Freud the Taurus, Jung the Leo, and Scorpios Adler and Reich – they all looked at the same phenomena and projected their own very different preconceptions into them.  My First Teacher taught that Truth resides in the Heart, in each individual’s Heart, and it’s not subject to debate.

Mel’s Response Try 2

Wow!  Thanks, Mel.  we want to put this in the mainline rather than the comment thread, because it’s huge (we mean in content, not in size).  We don’t know if it’ll end up formatted correctly; it might take us a try or two to get it right, so we might end up deleting and re-posting.  We added your second comment at the end.

And you’ve given us much to chew on – it’ll definitely take us a while to respond completely!

I accept your invitation to say a bit more, and must begin with this:  I am not in the least rattled by this act of violence (or that in Ft. Hood).  From what I can see–using pure common sense, aka cause and effect, as my main filter–violence is a perfectly logical and to-be-expected outcome of a highly politicized environment like the US.  And that sentence contains the elements of my own definition of “political”:  a perspective that discards common sense in favor of self interested filtering and action.

Let’s pick any one of thousands of examples from the current economic landscape…say, banking.  Common sense informs us that bonus compensation–by its very definition–is a reward for performance above and beyond base expectations.  And in business, base expectation consists of delivering REAL profits.  So then, bonus compensation would be attached to delivery of REAL profits well above and beyond expectations.  Clearly, and as indicated by the need for a bailout of historical proportions, real profits were not delivered by the companies that make up this industry.  Instead, a giant shell game was played until it threatened to collapse under its own deception.

So our collective common sense suffers an in-your-face assault…a direct hit, just like Joe’s… as we watch our hard-earned tax dollars being used to reward banking “leaders” for absolute failure.  Collectively, we stew in our anger and shock (unless we are a banker).  Feeling helpless to stop this direct assault on our common sense, we resort to political discourse and align ourselves with others who seem to be saying the things we feel.

From here, it’s a short jump to absolute polarization and division based on nuances that take into account less and less of the whole picture as the conversation progresses. Soon, we have abandoned holistic systems thinking in favor of the discrete issues that hit closest to us as individuals.

As example, the issue that hits closest to home for me personally at this moment in time happens to be tax related.  As one of the long term unemployed, I am trying to live on unemployment compensation until I can somehow solve the problem of being “over-qualified” for every job I apply for.  I can barely pay my very modest bills, and must make up for my monthly shortfall in the only discretionary areas available:  reduction in food and going without health care.  And yet, my meager unemployment income is fully taxed, and I must either come up with a way to give part of this money BACK to the government or face either imprisonment or future wage garnishment.  I am one of millions.

Common sense flies in the face of this reality.  Common sense says unemployment compensation should not be taxed, since unemployed people’s very survival is at risk. Common sense says that if we as a nation can afford to not only bail out bankers who have failed, but also heavily reward them with bonuses, then we can surely afford to bail out those like me too–by simply recognizing that we without jobs are in no position to contribute to the pot of gold being handed to bankers, which is where the taxes I am asked to pay now go.  I have already cut out food and health care in an attempt to survive, but I am also supposed to find some other essential to cut out in order to save the wealthy.  What is wrong with this picture?

As I face this very real in-my-face assault that flies in the face of common sense, I feel no surprise at all when I wake up to learn that a Joe Stack has perpetrated an in-your-face assault that consists of flying in the face of a building.  Instead, I comment that he has converted an invisible reality into one that is now highly visible, for all to see.  I do not have to agree with his actions or his perspective in order to see that they clearly point to the glaring departure from common sense that now absolutely defines our nation.

We have lost the systems view entirely, and in the process, have also discarded basic common sense.  Instead, we have settled for political discourse that focuses on individual parts of the whole–a choice that guarantees absolute failure of the system, through neglecting to consider the whole in every examination of its parts–Systems Theory 101, and yet, even this simple common sense reality seems too complex for our “smartest minds” to comprehend.  I have used a single example to illustrate this landscape, but every other hot political issue of the day will end up here when analyzed back to root cause.

I do not agree with violence as a means of resolving problems–and this means I do not agree with the wars being waged by my country.  Yet I am made to pay for these wars, even if it means I have to cut back to one meal a day instead of the two I can currently barely afford.  Even as I am told by the government that that I must pay my share so we can afford to wage violence in other lands, I am faced with government characterizing Joe’s individual violence as that of a disturbed individual who sadly used violence to avoid personal responsibility.  A first grader could see what is glaringly wrong with this picture.

Every person constructs meaning from events uniquely, yet there is always an underlying universal archetype to be unearthed…a systemic view that points to the thread of truth running among all the individual constructs of meaning.  In my view, and even if Joe’s actions were totally self-serving at one level, it is still true that his act was designed to point attention back to the system as a whole–a view that represents the only way back to unity, no matter how you slice and dice it.

As a more spiritual side note, notice the great “coincidence” (as it’s being called) that all of the emergency responders needed to prevent great loss of life associated with Joe’s act just “happened” to be gathered together in a parking lot across the street for a collaborative training exercise when this event unfolded. Notice the reports that this planned training exercise was uncharacteristically held in a central city location instead of its normal location in a more remote area.  Notice the similarity to the “coincidence” associated with 9/11, when the military just “happened” to be conducting a war game on 9/11 that exactly mirrored the events that played out that day.

If you don’t believe in “coincidences” either, this detail alone stimulates a much deeper look into what is playing out for those who wish to see the whole, instead of focusing intently on the parts.  The great “coincidence” surrounding Joe’s act reeks of divine protection, and no one feels this protection more than those who almost magically escaped death in that building.  But this apparently pre-ordained protection raises a critical question that deserves attention: who and what was being protected? Was it simply those people in the building, or was it Joe’s ideal of bringing our attention back where it belongs–on the essential brokenness of our holistic view of our world?

One more point, regarding that deeper look into the “coincidences” associated here.  Using Jungian methods of constructing meaning, notice Joe’s actual name.  First, the name Joe.  Think of the meaning that was assigned to Joe the Plumber…a regular, every day Joe who was held up to represent the concerns of regular, every day people. The name Joe has always been used in this manner.

What do we make of the last name Stack?  Does this represent a stacked deck?  One injustice stacked upon another until the stack reaches critical height and comes tumbling down?  Perhaps a stack of money?  Put it all together and we have a person whose actual name seems to represent the message his life was given to delivering.

Is this just another “coincidence”?

Olive Branch

Thanks for your comments and kind words, nude.  You’re getting us intrigued by these here Eclipses.

Mel, we’re hoping we haven’t been too argumentative or smug.  Austin’s just down the road from Fort Hood, and in retrospect, we’d probably be rattled too if all this Violence was happening in our backyard.  The Fort Hood event was also a long-simmering temper tantrum, but the religious dimension made it seem more political.  Would you be willing to say what it is about Mr. Stack’s manifesto you regard as political?  The beaurocracy?  The bailouts?  The bankers?  The illegality of the IRS?

Whether or not Joe’s defiance was political, our discussions are political, simply because, since it’s our blog, the balance of power between us is grossly unequal.  So we’d like to offer you a better opportunity to speak your mind, where our intention is to listen and understand, rather than defend our own positions.

It’s fascinating to us how the Right and the Left are merging at the opposite side of the Circle.  With Obama solidly camped in the Center, Mr. Change ends up defending the status quo!  Much of this apparent irony derives from the corporate media’s simplification of the rhetoric, as if the political spectrum was really one-dimensional.  That may be a major source of the apparent political Chaos these days – it simply no longer works to pretend that there’s only one dimension, as the internet allows people to communicate with more bandwidth than the old rhetoric allowed.  If winner-take-all collapsed in the US, and the US moved toward a more multidimensional form of politics, it would be a huge advance.

Remember the Alamo

Thanks for providing more detail in your comment, Mel.  Wethinks we’re using different definitions of the word “political.”  Our fingers were on the wrong keys when we typed that, and it first came out closer to “plotline.”  When someone gets confused, the English say they’ve “lost the plot.”  And reading Joe’s rant, he does sound confused, like someone who’s never learned and accepted the reality that Justice is spelled J-U-S-T-U-S.  On the other hand, we respect your suggestion that it’s US that’s lost the plot, and we’re taking that seriously.  So let us mull this over out loud, if you don’t mind.

First, if Joe Stack becomes the Martyr that finally spurs someone into taking constructive and nonviolent action to take the USofA back from the Greedheads and give it back (? – did they ever have it?) to the people, then we’ll be delighted to fall in line as Monkey #73.  In general we don’t choose to be an earlier Monkey (assuming youall know the story of the Hundred Monkeys), because of the principle of Shamanic Power – we need to save our effort for the moment when it will have greatest influence.  Or because we’re Chicken #3 – why doesn’t matter really.  If we were going to self-immolate, it would have to be over an issue that we really held sacred, and where we believe we might be able to make a difference.

From what we read of American history (we don’t pretend to be “expert” on the subject), there were two lines of thought in framing the Founding Documents – one that would give Power to the People, as they used to say in the 1960s, and one that would prevent “the Masses” from taking real Power away from the Landed Gentry.  The Documents themselves seem to be an ingenious amalgam of doublespeak, so that if you use the Constitution or the Bill of Rights as the basis for your arguments, either side can win handily.  The difference in America post-Ronnie Reagan, is that the Greedheads no longer feel they need to disguise their superiority to “the Masses,” having duped large portions of “the Masses” into believing that they too can aspire to be Greedheads.

One of the most profound lessons we’ve gleened from HIStory, is that after the French Revolution removed the monarchy, the power vacuum was ultimately filled by Napoleon, and it was Napoleon who invented bureaucracy, which has characterized government ever since, and which is now much criticized.  Not to mention Napoleon’s urge to do a Genghis Khan number on the rest of Europe.  Which is to say, it’s often good to consider whether the medicine is worse than the disease.  Lotsa folks find bureaucracy to be far superior to monarchy, but we’re not sure Joe’s level of emotional maturity would have found greater success with the Duke than with the IRS.  The Duke would probably have just flattered Joe’s anger into the infantry.

To us, politics is a version of the word power, and both are all about ego.  If we have confidence that we’re right, and we believe we can win friends and influence people effectively, then politics fits our temperament as a way to assert our power in the World.  A critical element is whether we also grant anyone else’s right to be right when they disagree with us.  Most folks who believe they’re right, and also have room in their Worldview to allow others to believe themselves to be right, just do their work on their own, without needing to go into politics.  There are some great examples in the business world – Zappo, Costco, Unfi, to name a few.  Warren Buffett also comes to mind.

Starting in the 1980s, we discovered that our Senators used their newfound word-processing capabilities to respond to their constituents with pablum.  For instance, after writing to our Senator objecting to Ronnie’s plan to clearcut the US Northwest, we got back a letter with “We are Conservation personified” in paragraph 2, and “Log we must, to create more jobs” in paragraph 3.  It was obvious that the Senator didn’t really care what we thought, he just shuffled his paragraphs depending on how he thought he might best pacify us.  It’s been that way ever since.  One of the most illuminating comments we’ve seen, is that Republicans learned NLP, while Democrats didn’t.

We’re building up to the point that making space for someone else to have different values than our own is the single most glaring lack in Human “nature” today.  Joe Stack doesn’t make a very good role model on that score.  Joe would have been much more effective at political action if he’d first read Barbara Mongomery’s book on Bullying.  There’s a huge difference between a temper tantrum and political action.  Just because some or many people interpret a temper tantrum as political, doesn’t make it more than a tantrum.

If Joe had written about how he hoped to inspire people to claim their power, rather than writing about how he rationalized his rage, and if he’d have chosen civil disobedience rather than murder as his method of acting out, that might have rendered the event more political.  Compare this event to the movie Yes Men, for instance, or The Corporation, or any of Michael Moore’s movies.  Now, if Joe’s act of defiance eventually inspires some form of effective and meaningful process toward changing the way Humans treat one another, then that would qualify in our mind as political action.  If it just inspires more rationalization of rage and murder, then we’d say it’s closer to criminal than political.

Growing up, we believed that everyone had the same needs and wants.  So, in order to have anything scarce for ourself, we would be taking it from someone else.  The old Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom view of the World.  When we discovered astrology, it was liberating.  Everyone was unique!  So everyone had different needs and desires!  Suddenly a marketplace made sense, where one person’s abundance could meet another’s need.  This is an epiphany that the Planet needs.

We’ve always maintained that Bureaucrat and Greedhead are personality types which may not be amenable to rehabilitation.  It won’t do us any good to send them to the guillotine, because we’d just be cutting off our own hand.  We need to make space for them to be useful without producing misery for the rest of us.  If we react so strongly to the external mirrors for Bureaucrat and Greedhead, it’s a huge red flag that we’ve somehow been cut off from our own right to reasonable and healthy amounts of Control and Abundance in our own lives, and we need to find a way to be loving and gentle with that part of ourself.  Yes, effective and constructive political action may be one result of that.  But as one master of political action put it, we need to BE the change we wish to see in the World.

Unfortunately, Violence might also be a personality type which may not be amenable to rehabilitation.  Channeling Violence into wearing a uniform can easily produce oppression.  Sending it overseas no longer works either.  The victims of Colonialism now have a voice, and the mirror is getting closer and closer as Time accelerates.   The PTSD victims from Iraq and Afghanistan don’t have the 40-year lag that Agent Orange gave Vietnam vets.  What does this mirror show us?  Are we to believe Avatar and Star Wars that tell us oppression and resistance and Violence are simply the nature of Reality?  As the Planet approaches carrying capacity, competition for resources could get very fierce.

We could recognize that our egoic identity is merely holographic, settle into our parallel lives, and just realize that the life of any given individual (this is, us) at any given time may not matter that much.  Since few of us have ever gotten off this Planet alive, accepting that Reality as part of our collection of Identities would be a useful process.  But a zillion other Identities inside us scream in protest at the idea of making that our primary Identity.  Those Identities are very willing to be Monkey #73 in the process of bringing Peace to the Planet.  That means finding healthy and constructive ways to release our rage, without murdering people, and without trying to pretend that rage is political.

Which diminishes not at all the urgent need for the US to find a way to take the government out of the pockets of the Greedheads.  But you betcha we don’t need to hand it to the Hotheads instead.