December 2, 2008

Coming Soon: 2009

Numerologically, this year has been a 1 year for the world. It's the dawn of a new beginning. Seeds are still being sewn, while some of the tiniest buds and blooms are beginning to show themselves.

2009 is an 11 year - a master vibration bringing tests and trials and tribulations to see how well we can walk the talk and, once again, evolve beyond our habitual reactions. We have already entered this "energy" and as the new year begins we will be more fully immersed. We'll have occasional moments of coming home to rest and renew before heading back out again to practice our mastery. It is less about the personal level and more about a global one.

We have coming into office in the United States our first New Age president. A forward thinking person heralding a movement of change. The change he speaks of is not "his" change. This change was coming like a freight train without a conductor.

December itself will bring more transformation. We still have Uranus and Saturn facing off in the sky. (stock markets and so on) By April they will go on their merry ways, bringing relief to all who are currently in panic.

In a few days we have Mars deciding to get into the fray, squaring off with both Saturn and Uranus. The Sun in Sagittarius gets involved, and even Jupiter jumps in. In the past days we had Uranus turning direct, Jupiter and Pluto moving into Capricorn, and well, I know many of you aren't sure what this means, but it means this: life is changing. It is perpetually changing, but at this moment in time, it is really moving!

This is the perfect time for you to harness the new energies that we have available to us. Put your thoughts on what you want to feel. How do you want to feel in life? Focus on that. Ask for it. We are riding a new wave of manifestation energy now and it's time we create more of what we want to see.

At the same time, you'll notice that the old victim energy that family, friends, and yes, even you sometimes, love to use is not working so well anymore! That vibration is less effective now. So, it's time to take responsibility for our own feelings. No one to blame, though we try.

It's an exciting time, even with all the strange happenings with the "economy" and such. We are witnessing and experiencing a huge shift in consciousness which I am glad to take part. It's a great time to be alive.

Opportunities to Awaken

"The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further."

That quote is by Pema Chodron taken from my recent copy of SageWoman (#70). It introduces my thoughts today on opening further to life; how the difficulties we perceive are nothing more than whispers saying, "How can you surrender into life with an undefended heart?"

The whispers are not shouts demanding you to surrender into life with an undefended heart. That isn't their style. They just bring a question put simply, which you can ignore for centuries until one day you (okay, we) evolve beyond our former reactions.

Negativity and misery go hand-in-hand with a nicely defended heart center. All negativity and misery, by the way, are self-correcting. We need not even work on ourselves at all in dedicated self-help style if we don't want to because life itself will twist our arms hard enough to make us change. "Whether in this lifetime or in twenty from now," my friend Carmela adds.

My arm is already too sore! I'm ready now! But meanwhile, we hard-headed humans toughen our shells. From there we either retreat into them, or use them as shields from which to emerge fighting. A seemingly endless pattern that repeats itself well into old age and onward where eventually one finds it too burdensome to carry around the shell any longer.

But the question is when? How long do we remain in our self-imposed heart-locked-up prisons? Have you tried to get out? Of course you have, but did you escape? Have you given yourself the opportunity to be free of hard, heavy shells? If so, can you answer yes to the following?


When criticized do you see the criticism as the other person's defensiveness?

When you criticize yourself, do you see it as your own defensiveness?

Do you recognize defensiveness as fear? This includes justifying your actions.

Do you know that fear is a powerful emotion that causes all kinds of hard, heavy shells to be built so that humans cannot live with or love one another?

Are you ready to be free from this form of fear?

We have an opportunity to finally complete a cycle of seemingly never-ending defensiveness. Once the realization comes that it's not about you, that your work is to simply live from your own truest nature, that words, actions, and behaviors from others are about them, not you, then you might, maybe, do it.

Soften into it - your undefended heart - and see what happens. I'll be doing it too. I'm not 100% yet, but I'll be practicing. After all, my arm is still being twisted.

So I'm just putting it out there - you might want to give it a try. The world is a-changin' and we might as well change along with it. To quote Thich Nhat Hanh, "Peace and happiness in your daily life means peace and happiness in the world." My contribution to world peace is softening up my own rough spots. How else do we begin?