Dropping Our Masks II

Small, complex, red Crystals of Galkhaite, a Sulfide made up from three substitution groups – Cesium or Thallium, Mercury or Copper or Zinc, and Arsenic or Antimony.  These components are mostly poisons, but in homeopathic quantities.

Adjuncts to the Uranus T-Square

Here we need to consider the Configurations that relate directly to the Uranus T-Square…

• The T-Square itself – dark red in the picture below – endures till May 9.
• The Pluto-Uranus-Pallas dark red/green/blue Tricolor lasts only till February 3, and the green-and-blue Pallas Yod with Uranus and the Sun only until February 1.
• But the Big Orange Box hangs around till the end of March.

We’ve never dealt with a Big Orange Box before.  A Mystic Rectangle has the Sixth Harmonic on two sides and the Third Harmonic on the other two, and it’s primary characteristics are determined by the two Oppositions, or the big red “X” inside it.  The Big Orange Box has the Fifth Harmonic (Learning) on two sides, and the Tenth Harmonic (Fortune) on the other two.  More specifically, the longer sides are three tenths of the way ’round the Zodiac, Tridectiles, so they combine elements of the Tenth Harmonic and the Third Harmonic (Love with Wisdom).  I think we’ll call it a Quintile Box.

How would we interpret such an animal?  Well, we know Learning is involved, as well as Fortune and Healing.  And extrapolating from the Mystic Rectangle I think we can safely assume that the two Oppositions from it’s corners are important.  So let’s make a stab…

Ignoring for the moment that the Jupiter-Pluto Opposition is the base of the Uranus T-Square, we can just think of a Jupiter-Pluto Axis as an Accelerated (Jupiter) Transformation (Pluto) or a Compulsory (Pluto) Growth Spurt (Jupiter).  Don’t be surprised if your bones ache.  With Uranus adding the tension of course, it’s likely to be an Accelerated failure of our Masks and a Compulsory Growth into Authenticity.  Since it’s often Trauma or Shame or both, or debilitating Fear, that has caused our Authenticity to hide out under the couch, it’s an excellent idea to start practicing being Loving and Gentle with our Traumatized Inner Little Ones as soon as possible.  You don’t want to be caught by surprise out in public, unprepared, when deep Shame arises.

Which is bleeding into the second Opposition, which is the Nodal Axis.  Abetted by Ceres on the North Node.  The Nodal Axis, as we’ve averred frequently, is the path from Karma to Mission, if you’re willing to accept it, and of course if we run that movie in reverse, from Failure of Mission to more Karma.  But it doesn’t really work that way, because as we know from working with our T-Squares, every Failure is a step toward Mastery.  Here’s how Paul Wheaton puts it…

” ‘Do or do not.  There is no try.’ — such bullshit.  Trying stuff is about all we ever do here.  Look at Picard and the gang on the enterprise, they are constantly weighing probabilities and trying stuff.  So maybe Yoda is a bit like what Morphius says about the Oracle: she tells you stuff to nudge you onto a particular path.  It doesn’t mean that what she says is THE TRUTH. “

And Gar Alperovitz…

“The recent economic failure of one of the most important units of the Mondragón cooperatives offers an opportunity to clarify the issue and begin to think more clearly about our own strategy in the United States.  Mondragón Corporation is an extraordinary 80,000-person grouping of worker-owned cooperatives based in Spain’s Basque region that is teaching the world how to move the ideas of worker-ownership and cooperation into high gear and large scale.”

We frequently say that the Nodes are prone to swap positions, North to South as well as South to North.  By that we don’t mean accumulating Karma, though that’s always possible (remember that by Karma we mean Inertia, not Retribution) through avoidance.  We mean that like Frodo our goal shifts from Achieving our Mission, to Acquiring the Tools necessary to Achieve our Mission.  You know how something gets a lot easier when you have the right Tools.  So rather than hammering away at our Mission with the wrong Tools, which most of us are wont to do much of the time when we Follow Our Passion directly, we would hammer away at our Limiting Beliefs and Deferred Emotions, knowing that hidden underneath those are exactly the Tools we need to Accomplish our Mission effortlessly in the Lifetime.

In fact it could be easily argued that this is our Real Mission.

But everybody’s Mission is different, and everyone’s conception of their own Mission is different.

It’s short notice, but there’s a free webinar by Rick Hanson at 8am PST on January 30 pretty much on this topic, at

http://www.onlinemeetingnow.com/seminar/?id=1daf2b00f4

It’s kind of a talking-head lecture like they peppered you with at school, so you might get more out of his book, Hardwiring Happiness…

http://www.rickhanson.net/books/hardwiring-happiness

and you wouldn’t have to worry about missing the webinar.

Back to our original point – how would we interpret this particular Quintile Box then?   Including Ceres (Sustainability) on the North Node?  Well…

For the next two months we’ll be Learning a great deal about Rapidly and Permanently Transforming our orientation toward our Mission and toward our Limiting Beliefs and Held Emotions – and Learning how to profit from what we Learn.  After all, while Avarice won’t do you much good, self-deprivation will do you even less good.  There’s nothing Compassionate about self-deprivation.  When you remember that Abundance is Having Enough to Share, you understand that self-deprivation just deprives everyone.

When we speak of Rapid Transformation, we start to edge into Miracle territory, Chiron’s province.  Well, don’t forget that the Chiron Mjolnir runs through April 2.

The Tricolor would be something like…

The Challenge is to manage Rapid Transformation of our Identity in its shift from focusing on the Ego’s orientation toward Other, to focusing on the Ego’s relationship to our own Soul.  The key to this Challenge lies through paying Attention to our Edges, to the places where we Judge rather than being open to Learning and Collaboration.  That will open us to Grace.

The Yod just adds emphasis to this Energy.

The Jupiter-Uranus and Jupiter-Pluto Cycles

We’ve looked at Jupiter-Pluto before…

The Jupiter-Pluto Cycle began in December 2007 at 29 of Sagittarius…

“A fat boy mowing the lawn of his house on an elegant suburban street“

A Jupiter-Pluto Cycle would be about Accelerating Transformation and I’m not sure why, but every time I run across this image it feels like the drama is about to break wide open.  Maybe because the lad is overweight and thus out of tune with the lawn order implied.

Sagittarius 29 is the Galactic Center.  That explains the fat b0y – in the same sense that the Nagasaki bomb was nicknamed Fat Man.  Meaning an Energy of consequence.  So the current Jupiter-Pluto Cycle is a vehicle for carrying the End of the Mayan Calendar Energy.  December 2007 was a high point in the “Sub-Prime Derivative Crisis” that led to the collapse of the then-current World financial system and it’s replacement with direct taxpayer funding through unlimited debt borrowed from current and future generations and handed to the gamblers who had already gotten rich destroying the former house of cards – the gamblers who mostly lived on elegant suburban streets in Connecticut.

This is the Exposition phase of the Jupiter-Pluto Opposition; the Can-Opener phase occurred at the initial Jupiter-Direct Uranus T-Square of August 2013, and the Confidence-Builder will occur at the Pluto Station in April.  How do we make constructive use of this Energy?

By unhooking ourselves from the tattered ghost of the old debt-based World financial system and orienting ourselves toward Sustainable Collaborative Community.

As long-time readers know, I don’t consider the Opposition to be the Fruiting of a Cycle, I call it the Blooming.  I consider the Phitile to be the Fruiting.  The Jupiter-Pluto Phitile occurs July 2015.  It will be an interesting test of the Phitile to see if the ghost of the World financial system collapses between now and April, or waits until 2015, after the seventh and last Uranus-Pluto Square.  I suspect both will prove relevant.

The timing of the three Waxing Squares in the current Jupiter-Uranus Cycle is the same as that of the Jupiter-Pluto Oppositions – August 2013, now, and April.  Uranus Initiated Jupiter in June 2010 at the Aries Point, the first degree of Aries, “A Woman just risen from the Sea, embraced by a Seal.”  Like 29 Sagittarius, this is a major milepost of the Zodiac.  At the Waxing Square the Energy becomes permanent and reaches the mainstream.

We could see Jupiter-Uranus Cycle as Accelerated Self-Realization.  The Aries Point represents the Zero-Point Field, where nothing is Manifest and all Potential resides.

So anything is possible, limited only by the inertia you’ve created since June 2010.  What is that?  It’s probably about to break open and leap forward.

Dropping Our Masks I

With our usual three degrees of Sensitivity, the Big Event of late Winter and early Spring of 2014 starts January 30, when Retrograde Jupiter backs into a T-Square with Uranus and Pluto, emphasis on Uranus.   The T-Square hangs around till May 9.  In the northern hemisphere, the T-Square brackets the Spring Equinox, running from Imbolc or Brigid – the Pagan celebration of the Return of the Light, to Mayday or Beltane – the celebration of Estrus…

From Brigid (February 1) to Beltane (May 1) we’ll be Challenged to Drop our Masks and “let it all hang out,” as we were wont to say in the ’60s.  For most of us most of the time this means letting go of being “Nice” and being Honest instead.  That’s not really the tradeoff, but it feels like that’s the tradeoff.  Suppose you want to spend less time with someone but don’t want to tell them, for fear of hurting their feelings.  There must be fifty ways to be honest about that without being hurtful. 

PIAVA that you’ll come up with several creative ways to keep an excellent Acquaintance Relationship with the people who you like but you don’t have time to be Good Friends with.  Think about the best networkers you know, the folks who still have positive contact with almost everyone they’ve ever met or known.  Not all of them do that by always being “Nice.”  Some of them do that by always being Authentic.  Any Judgments in your quiver about good networkers?  Maybe time to trace those back to their source and love them into oblivion?   

So we’re basically looking at a Compulsion (Pluto) to Expand (Jupiter) our Yintegrity (Uranus).  Just to review, Yangtegrity is doing what we said we were going to to, so folks can depend on us.  But Yintegrity is doing what we feel like doing, moment to moment.  Now, in order to survive in a World that’s mostly still Yangtegrity – though changing – we’ll probably have to reduce our Commitments and be willing to Renegotiate our Agreements when our Yintegrity makes unexpected shifts.  And even occasionally Make Amends when the shift is too sudden for Renegotiation.  With practice we’ll get very efficient at Renegotiating our Agreements and Making Amends, especially as we substitute Authentic for “Nice.”

Remembering that we want to be Authentic-and-not-hurtful rather than “Nice.”   Using “I-Statements” helps a lot.  Talking about your own Feelings helps too, as long as you remember that “I Feel like…” is an interpretation (a thought, actually) and not a Feeling.  “I Feel…” has to have an Emotion as it’s object, not a suppositional phrase.  “I Feel upset when X occurs!” rather than “I Feel like you did X to hurt me!”

It feels like (this is a thought) we’re going to be Compelled in the New socioeconomic Paradigm to make our way in the World by Doing what we Love.  Or Yintegrity will get awfully difficult, especially for Introverts. 

This is an interesting example of Yintegrity within Community…

http://www.wired.com/business/2014/01/zappos-tony-hsieh-las-vegas/

It’s a cross between an updated version of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Watermelon Sugar.  I’ll bet Tom Wolfe is already working on the book.

Being Authentic isn’t anything like being Political or Diplomatic.  The latter is all about being very careful not to surrender any Power to Other.  The former is about being Vulnerable.  It would probably be a good idea to PIAVA that, when you explore Expanded Authenticity, you become more Vulnerable AND more Safe.  Both/And.  Boundaries are a double-edged sword.  They keep you Safe from Others who are hurtful, but in their guise as Edges, they have to Expand in order to allow you to distinguish between Others who are hurtful, and your own Oversensitivities. 

When you feel hurt, is it because Other is naively touching an old wound of yours that you need to Embrace and Heal?  Or maybe because you’re using words differently, as often happens between generations, families, neighborhoods, and subcultures?  Or because they enjoy hurting people?  You may not be sufficiently intrigued or interested in this particular Other to take the time to find out.  So you need to PIAVA fifty ways to remove yourself from the situation efficiently, without being hurtful.

The guideline I use, not because I read it anywhere but because it’s what experience taught me about what’s useful, is to attend to Boundaries first, and Edges second.  When you feel pain arising in an interaction, excuse yourself.  Don’t get Vulnerable when you aren’t Safe.  A trip to the washroom is a good neutral situation-breaker, mood-changer, and subject-changer.  While you’re there you can attend to your Edges – 

Hmm, what am I Feeling and why?  Is this my wound, or their aggression?  Or both?

Could well be both – even if it’s your wound, don’t get Vulnerable when it’s not completely Safe to do so, and only when you Want to invest your scarce Time and Energy and Attention in the transaction.  Otherwise, get off the bus, Gus.  Just tell them your mother called while you were in the loo, and you have to get home post haste. 

Authenticity doesn’t mean you have to be Honest in the sense of betraying yourself to avoid contusion with Other.  It means being Honest with yourself about your True Desires and Preferences, putting your own agenda ahead of everyone else’s.  Your Honesty is situational – the Safer you are with someone, the more Vulnerable you can be.  If you aren’t Safe, a lie isn’t a transgression, it’s a Boundary.

Once you’ve been Loving and Gentle with any old wounds and adjusted your Edges, if you still think it’s worth your Time to interact, you can adjust your Boundaries (making them softer or harder, depending on your deliberation), and explore further.  If you need to recruit a friend to maintain your absolute Safety, by all means do so. 

Safety First. 

Without Safety, even if you succeed in stretching your Edges, any degree of trauma will snap them back tighter than they were before you started. 

Use the same strategy when you’re approaching someone you want to explore.  Like training a wild animal.  Offer a boon, then withdraw to a distance that seems Safe for them, but stay available.  Rinse and repeat, as many times as necessary.

There are several other things going on besides the Uranus T-Square, including a Tricolor with Pallas – which conveniently symbolizes Boundaries and Edges – and an intriguing new Quintile Configuration we haven’t found a good name for yet.  We’ll cover those in Part II.  Wouldn’t hurt to look at the Jupiter-Pluto and Jupiter-Uranus Cycles too, to see what it is that we’re working on.

Plus the New Moon at 20 minutes before 2pm PST January 30 will Sextile Uranus and create a Pallas Yod…

Which will be a great opportunity to practice our finesse with our Boundaries and Edges!  Choosing which to work on when, making the Choice quickly and Instinctively (that part is important – Boundaries are what Instincts are for!), and making Safety paramount.  Then practicing strengthening our Boundaries, and Expanding our Edges, in turn.

We should probably also begin to ruminate on what it means that all this action occurs at 10-14 of the Cardinal Signs.  Just for starters, we can say that if your birthday is in early April, early July, early October, or early January, you can expect significant Trance Reformation by the time we get to High Summer.  But it’ll impact a lot of other birthdays too.  Maybe we should save this for Part IV.

The Mystic Rectangle that we’ve already talked about hangs in there till February 6, and the Chiron-Juno Mjolnir is with us until April 2.  Those are both Big – even while we give the Uranus T-Square it’s due, we don’t want to discount those powerful Energies.  We’ll review those in Part III, when we dissect the Venus Station that’s coming up at 1pm PST on January 31.

So you can do some advance planning – to attack, retreat, or avoid – if you need to…

• The February 6 Mercury Station is Decile – Tenth Harmonic – to Uranus, and its February 28 Station Septiles Uranus.
• The Jupiter Station in late February-early March will set the T-Square afire.  There’s other action galore in that time frame as well – Stations of Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and a New Moon on Chiron, for starters.
• The Uranus-Juno Initiation of mid-March (peaking around March 26) will be huge.
• A New Moon on Uranus March 30.
• For the last couple weeks of April, Mars backs into an Opposition to Uranus and transforms the T-Square into a Grand Cross.
• In mid-April Pluto goes Stationary during a Lunar Eclipse Opposite Eris, within a few days of when Uranus, Pluto, Jupiter, and Mars are all making exact Angles to one another.

All of these will make for some very powerful Changes – personally, socially, and Globally.  We’ll be giving these, and their many permutations, a lot of Attention over the next few months.  Like the old Chinese curse – May you be born in interesting times.

Woodchips and Eris

Petrified Oak – though it would be far too hard to use for compost or mulch.  Even before it was petrified, oak would take forever to decompose.  As a Stone it would be useful for edging a bed and retaining heat though.  And it might verrry slooowly leach minerals.

Well, I’m a convert.  Haven’t actually tried it yet, but I have enough experience with planting the mulchbed between our yard and the neighbor’s, to believe it.  Even if I did hear about it from a Tree-Service guy, and it could be a clever infomercial for helping Tree-Service folk rid themselves of their excess by-product, kinda like the chemical industry and Fluoride.  Anyway, here ’tis – the DVD is highly recommended…

http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/

Amazoo sells it for $5 bucks more if you want to avoid risking your credit card number yet again.

The fellow in the DVD suffers from the delusion that God is a boy, but otherwise he is right on!   Even without the Gardening story, the DVD is more than worth the time as a fantastic illustration of Listening, Integration, Sustainability, and Gratitude.  Who cares where he gets his inspiration – the way he puts his religion to work is fabulous, a model for any mythology.

There’s a very clever line in the DVD about how a wise person might consider having a load of woodchips dumped in their yard now, so the chips can age properly, then if they need to grow their own Food in ten years because that’s the only way they can get it, their woodchip Garden will be ripe and ready.  The way things are trending so far this year, that advice may be nine or ten years late.  Though as I understand it, the chips will begin storing Water and suppressing Weeds right away, it’s just that they get more fertile over the years as they decay.  So you may have to fertilize for the first few years.

We may need the effortlessness of woodchip Gardening because we’ll be busy hand-pollinating everything…

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/01/25/queen-of-the-sun-documentary.aspx?e_cid=20140125Z1_PRNL_art_1

While we’re on the subject of Food, this is interesting…

http://www.motherjones.com/print/243341

And the graph is created by the US Department of Agribusiness, so it probably only goes halfway toward healthy eating.

With China and Japan yelling at one another in Davos, developing-World currencies crashing, and nuclear Israel pouting about the possibility of peace with Iran, one wonders if early 2014 is indeed when the fertilizer hits the fan.  Snowden’s deepening of the spying scandal by including industrial espionage asks us to look at the Mars-Eris Opposition.  It’s exact at 8am PST on January 27.  Mars usually takes two days to cross one degree, but it’s slowing for its March 1 Station, so one degree of Sensitivity spans four days here.  The Mars-Eris Cycle was hatched in mid-April at 23 Aries, “A pregnant woman in light summer dress” – a familiar degree these days.  Mars-Eris?

Secrets leach out, and like it or not, somebody could get hurt in the process.  If they’re your secrets, now’s as good a time as any to find out who loves you for who you really are.  If you get hurt by someone else’s candor, the Main Event here is Personal Growth – expand your Consciousness to Forgive and make room for other people to not have to live up to your arbitrary standards.

Chiron and Juno

Manganotantalite helps us phrase difficult communications in ways that makes them easier to actually hear our intent.  It’s the same Crystal that keeps your cellphone on the right frequency so it can be distinguished from all the other calls on the airwaves.

At 12am PST January 25, Chiron Initiates Juno at 12 Pisces – “In the sanctuary of a Mystery School newly initiated members are examined and their character tested.”  The Greek and Roman Mystery Schools were basically secret societies with complex rituals and rites of initiation that members were forbidden to talk about with non-members.  Of course we’d never know, but testing the character of new members probably involved making sure they could keep secrets.

For most of us these days, our Mystery School or secret society is our family of origin.  We all have a secret list of things that “decent” folks do without fail (make the bed, mow the lawn, etc etc) and a secret list of things that “decent” folks would never do.  As Bonnie Tyler (or Meat Loaf) put it, “I’d do anything for Love, but I won’t do that!”  But since our programmers hypnotized us before we were able to stop them, our families-of-origin aren’t so much secret societies as Unconscious societies.

Which is what Juno is all about – the Edge between Consciousness and the Unconscious.  When we’re merged with someone we can’t tell where we end and they begin.  In fact, it usually doesn’t occur to us to ask the question – it’s Unconscious!  How many relationships have we lost because we or they (or both of us) did or said – or didn’t do or say – things that were in our, or our ex-partner’s, secret catalog of decent and indecent things.  How many wars?  How many Olympic Games even.

Chiron here should snap us into Consciousness about some of these self-sabotaging secrets.  Especially if we PIAVA greater Consciousness, and especially if we PIAVA greater Consciousness about the topics that are giving us grief.  This is an especially powerful Initiation into Consciousness because the Juno-Chiron Conjunction sits at the peak of a Mjolnir – which itself symbolizes Epiphany.  The Juno-Chiron Cycle is being born here, so we can use the chart of the Initiation to plot the disposition of the whole four-year Cycle.

The other two corners of the Mjolnir are Lilith and Vesta-Ceres.  Lilith says that what we bring into Consciousness here will help us collaborate more fully, and help diminish the subjugation of Women.  Vesta is about what we consider to be Sacred – here we don’t just have a list of what decent folks would do or not.  We have a list of what constitutes blasphemy!  And Ceres is about what’s Sustainable – it’s hardly Sustainable to live in close proximity with folks who blaspheme as a matter of course, who may even blaspheme because they actually believe that’s what decent folks do!

These planets suggest that over the next four years as this Cycle unfolds, there will be a great deal of global reconciliation – probably instigated by a great deal of global conflict, since it’s conflict that will push these secret codes into Consciousness.  If we never met anyone who did anything differently we’d have no reason to suspect that there was any other way to be!

That of course is in addition to our personal work around mutual awareness and tolerance with our neighbors and cohabitees and colleagues – especially around the way Women are treated.  We can safely assume that over the next several years…

Women will become more Conscious of their disempowerment and simply make the decision to be otherwise.

Remember that a new Energy is lit up at the Initiation, then sort of moves underground until the Waxing Square – which in this case occurs rapidly, in mid-July of this year.  The next Cycle is Initiated in 2018 at the Aries Point, the first degree of Aries.  In other words…

This whole business of becoming Conscious of our Judgements and Intolerances is lit up during 2014-2018 so we can clear them in preparation for a whole new orientation toward Planetary Cooperation.

And as we’ve pointed out, the Juno-Chiron Conjunction is also one corner of a Mystic Rectangle.  Pallas, Goddess of War and Wisdom, Opposes the Conjunction.  We regard Pallas as Boundaries and Edges – Goddess, please grant me the Power to Change what can be Changed, the Serenity to accept what cannot, and the Wisdom to know the difference.  Consequently…

We’ll be Changing our Rituals and Patterns to promote and protect our growing Consciousness.

Not only that, but the Juno-Chiron Conjunction sits Trine-Sextile across the second Opposition in the Mystic Rectangle, the Jupiter-Pluto Opposition.

Which means…

Our Growth in Consciousness is not optional – it’s part of the shift in the Global Trance.  All these Epiphanies will make out Growth easier.

And we can’t forget that the Jupiter-Pluto Opposition is the base of a Uranus T-Square…

It’s not just about Growing Consciousness and dropping Intolerance; it’s also about dropping our Masks and becoming more Authentic and Vulnerable. 

Do you remember Eris?  Anytime we’re talking about getting more Honest, especially about things we didn’t even know we were Dishonest about because they were Unconscious – you know Eris is going to be involved.  And what do you know, there she is, Opposed by Mars!

That means we’ll be confronting people when we can’t stand their Denial any longer.  And vice versa – they’ll be confronting our Denial as well!  But look at those blue lines to Mercury…

We’ll be blessed with skillful communication when we confront and when we’re confronted.

And the Tricolored Triangle – with Moon Conjunct Saturn…

Everybody will be pretty Focused and constrained Emotionally, so we’ll probably be able to confront without everybody freaking out.

Even if it is Square to Mercury…

Yes, there are major challenges here.  How to confront lovingly and gently.  How to be direct and stay true to your purpose.  How to set aside your own intolerance and focus on what’s actually sabotaging your relationships and endeavors.  How to hear what others have to say without getting Defensive.  How to verify whether they’ve heard what you intended to say, so you don’t have to rephrase it.  How to reframe everything that’s going on so it’s about Win-Win.

But look there – Mercury is Sextile to Eris!  Remember that a Sextile needs to be primed before the Grace flows.  How to do that?  The green line (Quincunx – Curiosity) tells us!  Like so…

I Wonder how I can stay Focused on what I need to say and what I need to hear, without getting Emotional about it.  If this adventure can help me break through self-sabotaging Patterns, I’ll be eternally Grateful!  I guess if I approach this as something important for me to Learn, that might help.  But mostly I just need to keep my Ego in my pocket, and Ask the Goddess to lift me over this hurdle!

Astrophyllite will help you pull Clarity out of a large quantity and variety of inputs, many of which are quite fuzzy…

The Mystic Rectangle

Wulfenite – Lead Molybdate.  Lead helps release Held Emotions and other toxins, helps us move from hopelessness to Excitement, and helps us create the kinds of structures that facilitate self-confidence.  Wulfenite connects to the Dynamic Creativity that we don’t usually recognize in ourselves.

A Mystic Rectangle is no slouch.  It brings substantial Grace and Balance, and the current one – which runs through February 4 – will help ease our transition from our old rigid Either/Or Ego-shell to our new more flexible Both/And Ego-shell.  I think that’s the most blatant symptom of personal Growth or Growth in Consciousness – we go from Either/Or about something to Both/And.  That’s usually as much an Emotional experience as it is intellectual.

We could interpret the four Grace-full Angles in the Mystic Rectangle, but let’s instead follow the “textbook,” and look at the two Oppositions.  A Mystic Rectangle, after all, is a big “X” that’s two Signs wide (Sextile, Sixth Harmonic – Creative Grace), and four Signs tall (Trine, Third Harmonic – Dumb-Luck Grace).  You get the Rectangle by putting the X in a box.  The opposite corners of the X and the box, are six Signs apart (Opposition, Second Harmonic, Ritual).

Sobonfu Somé, in her lovely little book The Spirit of Intimacy: Ancient African Teachings in the Ways of Relationships, has a lot to say about Ritual – a whole chapter in fact, pp.40-54…

“A ritual is a ceremony in which we call in spirit to come and be the driver, the overseer of our activities…  In ritual we call in spirit to show us obstacles that we cannot see because of our limitations as human beings.  Ritual helps us to remove blocks standing between us and our true spirit or other spirits.

“In the village, everybody is addicted to ritual…  They need to be constantly involved in ritual because it’s like an energy that gives a high that lasts, perhaps three or four days, and as soon as they start coming down… they need the high again.

“Every ritual must have a very specific purpose, a clearly stated intention.  It must have something to resolve.

“Every time you want to move into a ritual, you need to recognize that there’s a whole line of ancestors behind you, there’s a whole spirit world around you, there is the animal world, the ground world, the trees, and so forth.  If you have a way of saying to these forces, ‘Come and be with us in such a way that we can feel and do such-and-such,’ then you’re already in ritual.

“Next you must state your purpose, being quite specific about your needs or goals…  All you need to do from then on is go deep into your heart and listen to the rhythm of it…  Usually, if you ask one spirit to come, it will not come alone.  It gathers its friends, its relatives, friends of its friends, and so on.  And all these spirits will come to you.

“A ritual has to be made specific to the people who are involved in it…  We think that someone must bring a secret book of ritual recipes so that if we have a toothache, we go to page 129, read paragraph 2, and that will take care of it.  When in fact, you are page 129, paragraph 2!  So I’m saying, trust in yourself, believe in your ability to hear.

“Emotion is very hard to resolve intellectually.  That’s because the mind doesn’t know how to feel; its logic cannot fulfill the heart’s desire.  And this is why it’s so important to realize how ritual, the feeling within ritual, can be a helpful tool in resolving crises…  Spirits love to intervene in our affairs.  But they don’t do it against our will.  They are waiting over there for us to give them a job to do.

“We cannot begin by figuring out in our brains exactly how a ritual will work before we get into it.  We have to start by telling spirit that we recognize we don’t know.  There’s nothing wrong in not knowing.  There’s something wrong in not saying you don’t know.  Actually spirits love to hear that you don’t know because they do.  And they will take it as an invitation to do what they have to do.”

So, which rituals are involved in our Mystic Rectangle?  Jupiter Opposite Pluto, and Pallas Opposite Chiron-Juno.  How to wrap words around these?  Maybe…

Spirit, I can tell from the dissonance in my World and the discomfort in my Body, that you’re demanding (Pluto) that I Grow (Jupiter).  But I don’t know how.  Help!

and

Spirit, I’m up against Edges (Pallas) where uncomfortable (or worse) feelings and thoughts live (Chiron).  I don’t feel confident that I will succeed here.  I can feel that there are so many dimensions that are wanting to Change that I feel overwhelmed!  Will you help me restore my Faith in myself and in you?  Will you remind me frequently that I don’t have to do everything myself, I can actually relax and let you do your Magic! 

The rest should take care of itself.

Dreams

As many have reported, there’s an enormous opening to Dreams now, with Juno crossing first Neptune and now Chiron.

We can see Juno as the Edge between Consciousness and the Unconscious, Neptune as the Unconscious itself, and Chiron as a steam shovel or wrecking ball poised just beyond Consciousness, ready at the slightest invitation to smash a hole through any rigidity in the walls that keep the Unconscious Un.

A Huperson that Consciously lives Both/And has a very fluid Boundary between what’s Conscious and what isn’t yet Conscious.  For such a person Chiron is no wrecking ball, but a powerful source of Intuition and Insight.

We want to very highly recommend a book by Eugene Gendlin called Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams

(or Amazon of course, if you don’t want to donate the extra $6 to the Focusing Institute).

This little book has too many choice jewels to be repeated, but it teaches several easy, fast, effective, and clever techniques to guide you past the mind’s Either/Or bias and the Ego’s bias toward the status quo.  The World status quo is changing fast, and we need to keep up with it.  You can use these techniques not just for Dreams, but also for everyday events and circumstances.

I’ll let you go through the exercise rather than doing it myself, but take Breaking the Shell and apply it to some larger Entity.  Maybe to several larger Entities.  Such as Syria or Ukraine.  Or gay rights.  Or Inequality.  Or the US, or EU, or China.  Imagine that the status quo plays the role of the Ego, and the Real World is changing around it.  We didn’t really talk much in Breaking the Shell about what happens when we don’t lovingly and gently step outside and assist the Ego in its molt.  But as in Syria or Ukraine, imagine that the Ego is heavily armed.  Or as in Inequality, imagine how easily the Greedheads will voluntarily agree to higher taxes.

Our own personal Ego will dig in its heels just as hard, and the techniques in Gendlin’s book will let you lovingly and gently loosen the shell many times a day, in small steps, so you can avoid having to have it cracked wide open like a pinata when the imbalance gets too great and it explodes.

The way our personal Ego responds to larger Entities like Ukraine or Inequality, is a small panel in a composite mirror for the larger Entities.  When we change, the larger Entity has to change to match the mirror.  This is true on the Spiritual/Energetic level even if our only connection to Ukraine is a headline or two – or less.  We are All One.   You saw how the World stopped Obomba from cruisemissiling Syria.  Compared to how we tried and failed to stop George II from nuclear-bunkerbusting Iraq.  We changed the mirror.

Breaking the Shell Lovingly and Gently

We have two primary Configurations going on for the rest of January, the Chiron-Juno Mjolnir, and the Pluto-Chiron-Jupiter-Pallas Mystic Rectangle.  Significant embellishments develop over the next couple of weeks – such as the Mystery School Chiron-Juno Initiation on January 25, and the Uranus T-Square across the Pluto-Jupiter Opposition that develops at the end of the month.  But the Main Events are the Mjolnir and the Mystic Rectangle.

The Mjolnir

The Chiron-Juno Mjolnir has Lilith and Vesta-Ceres at its roots.  You can think of these folks this way…

• Chiron – they’re chasing you, and you run around a corner only to find that it’s a blind alley.  You’re just turning around and surrendering hopelessly to getting robbed and beaten mercilessly – when Spiderman rescues you!  And you thought he was fiction!  Whoa, that’s a teaching, isn’t it!
• Juno – just who the devil are you anyway?  Are you a list of adjectives?  Are you a wispy and mystical Entity that sometimes acts in ways which causes some people to see you as an adjective?  Are you a Noun?  Or a Verb?  A Subject, or an Object?  Or are you a prepositional phrase?  Of a hanging preposition?  A work in progress?  Maybe a question mark!

Chiron and Juno are the apex or focus of the Mjolnir – this is where the action is.  The supporting actresses are…

• Lilith – Don’t call me an adjective!  My roots are so deep in the Unconscious that if you make me mad, you won’t stand a chance.  Lucky for you, I don’t anger easily.  But I won’t hesitate for a minute to cut you out of my Life.  If I do that you’ll be nothing but a hollow shell.  Yes, that‘s precisely why you’ve been feeling like that!
• Vesta – Cold out, isn’t it – and wet!  You’re hungry?  Lucky you, these are my specialties.  What?  You think you can warm and dry yourself by my magical fire, and eat the delicious food I lovingly cooked for you from weeds and dead animals, and then hide your Gratitude by calling me a Bitch?  I know that bullying Power trip, and it doesn’t work here.  Bruno, throw this lout out!
• Ceres – Damn!  That glyphosphate burns!  And now Dioxin?  You guys are really pushing your luck!  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not angry.  I’ll just work harder, I know how to do that.  I’ll put all my nutrition into those weeds you’ve been rejecting, they’ll thrive in the places that you haven’t poisoned yet because it’s too barren.  I know you can figure out how to live on Thistles – you’ve learned how to cook my Nettles.  It’ll take me several million years to reseed those Deserts you’ve made by cutting down all the Trees, but I have the time.  Do you?

All of which we can boil down to…

We can expect some pretty drastic revisions to our Identity over the next few weeks.  One reader refers to it as being shattered, which is apt, because in order to grow, the Ego really does need to crawl out of its shell somehow.  If you were a master at pysanka, you wouldn’t need all the king’s men – could step out of your Egoshell, puncture it with a pin, suck out the innards, and redecorate it beautifully. 

The rest of us are more like Crabs – we have to crawl out of our shell (in the chivalrous King Crab, the male holds the female’s shell so she can crawl out more gracefully), then hide out while we’re incredibly vulnerable, till we can firm up a new shell.  Newly molted Crabs make undefended and very tasty morsels for hungry neighbors.

Or, in most cases, we have to crack the old shell open like a pinata – or watch terrified from within while someone else cracks it open!  Ego Death is no fun, but it’s actually easily identified and addressed.  Worst case, you identify it because it feels like you’re dying, or like you’d rather die!  And you address it by recognizing it and being gentle and loving with the process.  It’s actually easy once you learn how to do that.  Well, easier.  Still hurts, but not nearly as much.

Of course, if those I’d rather be dead feelings are triggered by Shame or Powerless Anger or Abandonment or Anxiety or any other nastily difficult Emotion, then it can be a huge challenge to just find the edges of the barrel so we can pull ourselves out of the regression.  When we regress into those feelings, we lose everything we’ve learned since they first overwhelmed us.  It’s not our fault – those are completely separate and isolated circuits in the brain.

We can PIAVA that we recognize our worst feelings as feelings, rather than as statements about the World and our failure to fit into it, but we have to do that before we get into the barrel.  If you know you’re vulnerable to being overwhelmed by negative feelings, but you aren’t overwhelmed at the moment, then PIAVA that you learn to recognize them and heal them.  I guess it would be helpful to do that even if you are overwhelmed.

But mostly we just have to practice, practice, practice NOT getting completely overwhelmed by self-sabotage.  If we can do it once, we’ve got a toehold.  That Shame or Abandonment is a sealed chamber, with no exit.  We need to somehow step outside of it long enough to see that we’re trapped inside it, and then extend a loving and gentle hand back into the barrel, to help lift ourselves out.  The Self you pull out of the barrel will be extremely vulnerable, so you need to be ultra-gentle with them.

The sooner we notice that we’re in Hopelessness or Shame, the easier it is to rescue ourselves.  Once we recognize that it’s what we’re feeling and not who we are, then a critical next step is to congratulate ourselves for noticing, rather than beating ourselves up for feeling that way again.  When we can get positive reinforcement into changing the Pattern, it starts to build upon itself, and it becomes easier and easier to Respond to our noticing when the Pattern is starting.

Until we start to recognize the Pattern and Respond to it constructively, we won’t even be Present enough to remember that we know how to Tap.  Tapping will accelerate the Healing, but before we can even start to do helpful things, we need to notice the Pattern and congratulate ourself for noticing.  Until we can do that, there isn’t enough of a Self left outside the barrel to be helpful.

The Self who noticed, who congratulated, who extended a loving hand, who was Present enough to be gentle with your old Self that was stuck in the self-sabotaging Pattern, who maybe Tapped or otherwise amped up the Healing – or simply was willing to be Present and sit with you lovingly, that Self is part of your new Ego.  When we’re split into a Confident Self and a Dissolving Self, the two of Us have no Empathy for one another, and it’s Empathy that heals.

So we need to start by creating some fertile ground for a first date between them, so they can meet without mutual repulsion.  PIAVA has an immediate effect on the Unconscious, and the Unconscious is where each of them take turns living while they’re in the Shadows.  So PIAVAing a loving and gentle introduction between them is one way to initiate the Healing.

Since there’s an excellent chance that they hate each other, and feel as though they’ve ruined one another’s lives, sometimes there needs to be a third party to keep our Confident Self and our Rejected Self from retreating in horror.  That can be someone we trust completely, or it can be another part of ourSelf.  Our Rejected Self, as helpless as they seem, also has a tool chest full of Skills – the very Skills we need to accomplish our Mission, actually.  But those Skills are inaccessible to us as long as our two Selves are split.

The Spiritual Purpose of all these Regressions and nightmares of Emotion and Separation, is to teach us Compassion.  In order to have Compassion for the World, we need first to have Compassion for our Rejected Self.  In order to do that, we need some way to escape the blind alley that She finds herself in.  That process starts with a noticing –

Oh, look!  I’m feeling Shame!

Oh, look!  I’m feeling Abandonment!

Oh, look!  I’m feeling Anxiety!

Oh, look!  I’m feeling Powerless!

It’s in the language.  When you ARE Powerless or Anxious or Abandoned or Shameful, then you yourSelf and the sabotaging Emotion are one and the same.  But when you FEEL Anxious or Shameful or Powerless or Abandoned, then you yourSelf are separate from the Emotion.  That Separation gives you the Power to be able to help Recover your Shameful or Powerless or Abandoned or Anxious Self.

Once you reach back into the barrel, you’re Recovering a Self who’s very young and very vulnerable, who knows little about the modern World.  You need to treat Her the way you would treat a distraught child that you found lost in the woods – very lovingly and very gently.  Since this child is You, you don’t have a choice, you have to adopt Her and raise Her.  Don’t be surprised if you break down in tears – this is a long-sought reunion.  She’ll grow fast, once you retrieve Her.

There are more subtle signs of Ego Death.  You’re where you’ve been a thousand times before, but somehow it’s different this time.  You aren’t sure if you’re actually lost, or if something has changed.  You’re doing something you’ve been doing for years, but it’s as if you’re outside of your own body watching yourself do it, or as if it’s someone else doing it.

We’ll look at the Mystic Rectangle next time.  In a nutshell, it brings us a lot of Grace, and will help us a great deal to grow our shells.  The Mystic Rectangle is focused on Awareness – that’ll help with our noticing.

Exceptionalism

Okay, we’ve established that a New Paradigm is well underway.  But it’s still an unanswered question whether there will be a liveable Planet left by the time it takes center stage.  The Nightly News gives us occasional glimpses of Reality, just enough to keep us believing that they’re on our side, rather than propaganda outlets for their Big Greed advertisers.  We can align with our optimism and capacity for Miracles, and believe that somehow Humanity will get it together before it’s too late – it always has, right?  Well, there was Rome, and Sumeria, and Atlantis, among the long list of “civilizations” that weren’t Sustainable.

The Alexanders and their spokespersons advise us to keep our focus on The Most Important Thing – namely What We Want.  Which is good advice, that’s how we C0-Create it, we start with Attention.  We definitely don’t want to align with our pessimism.  On the other hand, what we Deny has a nasty habit of sneaking into the Unconscious and putting down roots there.  It’s not good when that happens, because for almost all of us, the Unconscious has a lot more power over what we Manifest than our Attention does.  You’d almost think if we Attended to our pessimism, then our optimism would sneak into the Unconscious and work its Magic!  But like Eeyore, we’d probably go around not noticing that our glass was half full.

So I think it best to spend most of our time focused on the Future that we Want – but occasionally check in to see what’s really going on down on the street, away from our reverie.  If nothing else, we might see someplace were we can help to move the Planet toward the Future that we Want.  For instance, before we can Co-Create a Local Community and Economy, we need to stop giving our money to the Big Greed players that are destroying the Planet to serve their avarice.

So what follows is bummers.  But Real.  It will have to stop before we can Create a livable and Sustainable Planet.  Shall we start with Monsanto?

Monsanto’s GMO Corn and Soy work by making the Corn or Soy immune to glyphosphate, a toxic chemical that kills almost everything else.  By planting Monsanto Corn or Soy, a farmer can greatly increase the quantity of toxic glyphosphate that he or she pours into the environment, without hurting the crop.  Hurting the neighbors’ crops is another story, but this is Capitalism, where whoever maximizes profit most while shunting damage to the neighbors, wins.

Well, plants aren’t as dumb as Monsanto makes them out to be.  A few of the Weeds turn out not to be bothered by glyphosphate – so they thrive.  So of course Roundup, the primary glyphosphate product, is doomed to eventually fail.  What to do?  Well, G-Engineer your Corn and Soy to make it immune to more powerful toxins!  Like 2-4-D, a common carrier for Dioxin.  Nobody lives around Dioxin.  Not even you and I.  Dow Chemical, furiously trying to outcompete Monsanto, is doing just that.  Here’s the story on Dow’s efforts…

http://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/50865/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=8850

And here’s the story on Dioxin…

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2013/07/22/3806111.htm

Long, not to mention horrifying, but worth the time.  It’s Real.  And next they’re after the Animals…

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/ready-to-eat-the-first-gm-fish-for-the-dinner-table-8430639.html

A lot of people are “blowing the whistle” on Fukushima, blaming it for all sorts of ills in the Pacific Ocean.  Well, the bad news is that Fukushima was a drop in the bucket.  Don’t get me wrong, Fukushima can still fairly easily degrade into Chernobyl’s big brother, but it hasn’t yet.  Look at some of the problems that folks are blaming on Fukushima…

http://thetruthwins.com/archives/what-is-happening-to-alaska-is-fukushima-responsible-for-the-mass-animal-deaths

http://finance.boston.com/boston/news/read?GUID=26035020

But unfortunately, while Fukushima hasn’t helped, the damage created by our Lifestyle is far far greater…

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140164/alan-b-sielen/the-devolution-of-the-seas

Here’s the primary cause of many of the disasters cataloged above…

http://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-sardine-crash-20140106,0,7084864,full.story#axzz2pjjdqvsY

http://kuow.org/post/whales-dolphins-are-collateral-damage-our-taste-seafood

Stories like the last one make it look like the “First World” is victimized by poor regulation in the “Third World,” but that’s just more propaganda.  Like the way Apple is victimized by those Chinese workers who commit suicide because their working conditions building your iPhones are so brutal.  Poor Apple, victimized by those darn Chinese.

Even localized, Community-based Economies can have negative impacts if they’re conducted without considering how they fit into the larger ecosystem…

http://kuow.org/post/californias-pot-farms-could-leave-salmon-runs-truly-smoked

That doesn’t mean only large corporations have the wherewithal to “do it right” – some of them might, but when they’re profit-maximizers they probably won’t, if they can get away with shunting impact to others, especially small disorganized others.  And it doesn’t mean that more regulation is needed.  What’s needed is more education and more cooperation – potgrowers taking a turn at fishing, and fishers helping potgrowers find ways to prevent negative impacts.  Adjacent Communities, especially upstream-downstream Communities, working together to find and propagate working solutions.

http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/

And then there’s food, that’s pretty important…

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/01/11/food-documentary.aspx

The main theme for the next couple of days is the Juno-Chiron Mjolnir built on a foundation of Lilith and Vesta-Ceres…

Bringing Miracle into Consciousness by Reframing our notions of what’s Sacred so these notions can become a stable foundation for a Sustainable Community that doesn’t depend on the Olde Male structures.  We need foundations that are easily communicated, that make sense to most people, and that make it very clear that the Olde structures are not working.

Some researchers a while back alleged that “Conservatives” were as Compassionate as “Liberals,” but Conservatives had an unshakeable faith in Authority, while Liberals were more likely to trust their own views of the World.  So as long as the Conservatives are taking their Authority hit from corporate-sponsored television, we’re screwed.  We need a new Authority, one based on Cooperative Survival rather than screw-your-neighbor Survival.  It’s starting to form, as more and more people are seeing how much damage the Tea Party, Climate Denial, and short-term profit maximizing are doing to Community and Livelihood.

Change and the Full Moon

Kelley Hunter’s new Full-Moon blog is as usual filled with insights…

http://heliastar.com/cosmic-news/currents-crossing/

Her emphases are a bit different from mine, which is fabulous – Both/And, right?  My sources give 9pm PST January 15 for the Full Moon.  It’s not only right on Lilith, but the “true” and “mean” positions of Lilith are together, which occurs only every several weeks.

As Kelley points out in Living Lilith: Four Dimensions of the Cosmic Feminine, there are four different astrological phenomena that are linked to Lilith.  The one we usually refer to as “Lilith” is the mean Black Moon Lilith.  Mean as in average, not wicked – that’s an Ole Male perspective.  Lee Suyterman suggests that when the true Black Moon indicates an effect, the mean Black Moon can implicate the cause.  In that context, a Full Moon at and on their Conjunction would create an opportunity for immediate manifestation.

Kelley says (Living Lilith p.22)…

“I first heard of the Black Moon at a lecture in Montreal.  Mark Beriault described the energy of Lilith as a sword, deadly penetrating, sharply cutting through the veils of illusion, challenging our perception of reality.  She will close all doors but the one true passage.  She will not open it but pushes you right to the threshold and dares you to go through, offering no security as to the outcome.  At the lecture, there was a woman dressed in a witch’s black pointed hat in attendance.  She must have known something about Lilith!  This is how Lilith works.  She is right there and gives you hints.  She can be subtle in how she reveals herself, but you have to know how to listen and look.  She offers no models to follow, she simply is.”

In other words, Change, continuing our recent theme.  Kelley emphasizes Ceres in her reading of the Full Moon, because Ceres creates a T-Square across the Full-Moon Opposition.  That tells us that the one true passage is toward Sustainability…

Let go of what is unnecessary.  Keep only what can be nurtured and maintained within your Community.

And of course, along with the Moon and Lilith, Ceres is the other foot of the Chiron Mjolnir.  So the one true passage is also the one that allows…

A big shift in your perspective, the one where suddenly everything is different.

But even if Chiron is a Magic Wand that replaces Despair with Miracles by opening a bottomless sinkhole beneath your stuck places where you haven’t found any exits, it still involves Loss, and all Losses must be Grieved.  Maybe.  That’s the way it used to be.  But rules change in the reaches.  Dolores Canon says (The Three Waves of Volunteers, p.550)…

“In some cases, there have been those that have left early, and are working on the other side of the veil.  You’re aware of that.  But some of those that disappear, after a period of time, you think, ‘I wonder what happened to this person?’  But you don’t have the urge to contact them like you would normally.  You don’t have that driving urge, ‘Oh, I’m concerned, I must call, I must reach out.’  It’s not the same.  You find that your need to connect with them just isn’t there.  It just falls away.  You forget.”

It may be like that with things and circumstances, not just people.

Anybody with a strong Pluto (Rising, on the Midheaven, Stationary, Out of Bounds, on or Square to the Nodes) knows exactly what I mean – your Life has been like several separate Lives in sequence.  A phase ends and another one starts, and there is very little connection between the two.  When you run into someone from a prior phase, they look familiar, but you may not even be able to remember their name.  After a little while, plugging back into a prior phase is simply inconceivable.  It’s almost as if you hired a Walk-In, but it was you, you just extinguished that Karma and moved on to a different phase.

It won’t happen all at once, but as the New Chiron-Neptune Paradigm takes hold, there will be processes like this.  These kinds of circumstances, common now, will be gone…

http://www.upworthy.com/people-should-know-about-this-awful-thing-we-do-and-most-of-us-are-simply-unaware

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/446709-west-virginia-chemical-spill-a-predictable-water-crisis/

http://www.livescience.com/42564-doomsday-clock-set-five-minutes.html

Not because of “more regulation,” but because people will become more aware of their unintended consequences, and stop supporting the psychopaths and sociopaths that willfully destroy the Planet for their own personal avarice.  We really will be “thinking globally and acting locally.”  Like this…

http://www.shareable.net/

http://www.ncba.coop/

http://www.localharvest.org/csa/

http://www.indiegogo.com/

http://www.kiva.org/

http://www.kickstarter.com/start?ref=nav

http://www.co-operative.coop/corporate/aboutus/ourbusinesses/The-Co-operative-Food/

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-ces-2014-why-3d-printing-matters-20140109,0,2759022.story#axzz2qS8szgxG

http://www.etsy.com/

http://www.toms.com/

 Click on a couple of those.  We live in a different World that the one that the nightly news tries to project.  Let’s all move over there, now.  The new baby needs to be fed and nurtured.

Change and Shame

Uranocircite – Barium Uranyl Phosphate.  Normally Oxides are indicated with an -ate ending, as in Phosphate.  You wouldn’t want to do that with Uranium, so -yl is used instead.

Shame is also damn good at creating a wall between us and What We Want.  Often because it makes us feel unworthy of our Desires, but in some subcultures we can even be made to feel Ashamed of What We Want!  That’s a nasty double bind that can literally kill us, as it produces a horrific level of chronic negative Stress.

While I usually find Fear down in the pelvis and belly, for me Shame sits more in the center of the trunk, between the solar plexus and heart, or Third and Fourth Chakras.  It’s like an iron corset, clamping the Breath off into the top of the lungs and leaving us virtually gasping.  It helps to get down under it, and breathing from the belly, stretch out the solar plexus.  Even when you’re lucky enough to notice that you’re in Shame and Breathe your way out of it, it still leaves a lingering hangover of very nasty-feeling unworthiness.

And of course that’s the key, to notice that you’re in Shame, rather than focusing on the content of what you feel shamed about.  If you live with someone or work for someone that’s into Shaming, on the one hand you’re in trouble – and on the other – you get lots of opportunities to practice noticing. 

Fear is actually constructive, once you develop the habit of Witnessing it.  Shame is nothing but destructive.  You still need to develop the habit of Witnessing it.  Nothing lovable about Shame, though you still want to Locate it in your Body and be Loving – soft and warm – with that place in your Body.  If you Love the Shame itself, it feels a lot like pride, and a pride that swiftly leads to abusiveness.

“When we talk of guilt, we need to be clear not to confuse it with shame.  Often the two terms are used interchangeably when, in fact, they are quite different.  While guilt can trigger empathic distress and the desire to reach out and make amends to another whom one has harmed, shame denigrates a person’s being, making them feel worthless and inhuman.  To be shamed is to be rejected.  Shame is a way of isolating a person from the collective we.  He or she becomes an outsider and a nonperson. 

“Shame has the effect of turning off the innate empathic impulse.  If one feels like a nonbeing, socially ostracized and without self-worth, he is unable to draw upon his empathic reserves to feel for another’s plight.  Unable to emotionally connect with others, he either shrinks into withdrawal or acts out his sense of abandonment by exercising rage at others.  Why rage?  Because it is often the only way he has open to him to communicate and engage his fellow human beings.”

–Jeremy Rifkin, The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis, pp.119-120

Don’t lose sight of a key point from the Recovery Movement of the 1980s – Teasing is a form of Shaming.  The Olde Male Culture uses Teasing as a means of keeping the hierarchy in place.  If you react you’re a poor sport.  If you don’t react, you eat the Stress and add it to all of the other daily Stresses that eventually sum up to hypertension, autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular difficulties, cancers, and a host of other modern surrogates for Despair. 

Perversely, a lower-tier male even accepts Teasing from a higher-tier male because it’s evidence that the relationship is still valid – which is preferred to being outcast.  There’s no question of equality; to react to the Teasing is to challenge the alpha male to a dominance-clarifying fight.  It’s a gang mentality, and it permeates male cultures, whether it’s in a police department, an office, a prison, a football team, or New Jersey politics.

It’s very difficult to set a Boundary against Shame.  To do so feels Life-threatening, and in many situations it literally is dangerous, because you’re challenging the authority of an authoritarian who Ego-Identifies with their dominance.  A threat to their dominance is felt as a threat to their Life, because it threatens them with Ego Death. 

It takes a great deal of Creativity to weasel out of a Shaming situation with a Bully.  It’s a great place to PIAVA Self-Respect and Safety – and a Gentle and Loving release of course.  Basically, whenever we want something and it seems hard to get, or we don’t know how to go about reaching for it, that’s when PIAVA is most valuable, because if we succeed in Changing the Subject and Paying Attention, it opens us to new ways of seeing the World and newly creative ways of acting upon it.  Chiron personified!