New Moon Meditation, in great enthusiasm, of the Future yet to Come!!

'But when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money--booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!'

~W. H. Murray in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition

Wild Women Ways: Imbolc Celebration

Tonight is Imbolc, or the festival of the Goddess Brigid, patron Goddess of the Hearth and Poetry. Celebrated traditionally on Feb 2, this ancient holiday is today recognized as Candlmas, Tu Bi-Shevat, even Chinese New Years. The point is, all traditions are moved by the same earthly rhythms, no matter what the society or culture defines it as. Now is the time of mid-winter; classified by the Aquarian Full Moon. It is the time of first light. Winter Solstice marks the longest night of the year and too the return of the sun with solar entry into Capricorn. Capricorn is an earth sign, its energy is initiating, which means ushering in of change, of a new tide. So at the peak of darkness, in comes new energy in earthly--or physical form. The alchemy of the darkest time--and all the darkness peaking, bursting forth with the initiatory energy of Capricorn births new levels of consciousness within us. Now, at Brigids Day, or Candlemas, or Imbolc--emblazoned by the peak energy of Aquarius with tonight's full moon, that energy is given full light. In our quiet time, now is a powerfull, powerfull time of intention setting, prophecy, and empowering our new ideas. Aquarius is an Air sign--a mental energy with ties to our etheric or spirit selves. It is Fixed, meaning what is energized now in our spirit or ether form will between now and the summer solstice come to full fruition.

Take the time to be conscious, whoever you are, whatever you celebrate, about this!

In honor of my own Intentions, and with perfect love trust and gratitude over the tides that have flowed me to just where I am at this time of year, here is a poem. It appears in this years We'Moon, and is reprinted with permission by author Pesha Joyce Gertler, recipient of Seattle's Populist Poet Award for 2005-2006. Ms. Gertler was so very, very kind in our emailing--thank you Wise Mama, thank you!! This was the poem opposite the page of my birthday this year!

The Limping Goddess:She-Who-Survives©1983
She limps into the room
bent with the cargo of rape, battering
single-parent mothering and bureaucratic neglect
if she is fat or gay or nonwhite or Jewish
the pains multiply;
she has carried them all.

Her lotus feet have trudged this planet
for aeons; torn tennis shoes tell
how far she’s traveled. She hunches
against the winter wind, her second-hand
coat like a blanket she wraps around
her golden body. Occasionally, she flies
over buildings, lands on tree tops,
is mistaken for a fat bird.

And occasionally, she falls,
intensifying her limp. But make no mistake;
that golden skin was mined in the black earth,
her feet, though limping and calloused,
are the lotus feet of She-Who-Survives.
A broken yet shining forgotten deity
returning, and there are millions
like her, multi-colored, limping
Goddesses returning to lay down our cargo
and reclaim our own.

Sittin still in the prime

La luna mama at imbolc--wow

View out back the shaman shack between the bones of the tipi


front of the shaman shack

Kelly-kel sittin still in the prime

First, before I forget, today was a lunar eclipse. These occur a couple times a year, and like solar eclipses, affect us in a varied bunch of ways. For most it will go unseen, yes...but for those of you walking around today feeling like a pinpoint puncture in your consciousness happened and now for some reason you see clearly, or have "been relieved" suddenly or whatever aha experience of clarity has come, this is eclipse in action. Recall: la luna is our light in the dark, the shining into the unconscious or creative substance of our dream selves, and that light went out, briefly transmuted as it was by the perfect alchemy of the earth and sun in harmony....So this is sudden change on the soul level--the intuitive level. Sudden clarity, or riddance, if you will. Eclipses of the moon may remove something mental--the old detritus of no longer needed ideas (and how cool, too, as it is those very things that create all our reality!) in a quick quick way, or maybe the beginning of some perception come undone...

Remember, all endings are beginnings; as with beginnings an ending is sure to come.

As for me, I am choosing to stick with an old adage some friends of mine taught me once: More will be revealed. Had a chill day next to the Chop River yesterday and then at a singing bowl meditation at the Shaman Shack. Def got me some light in the dark, but I for one am quite content for now to sit still in the prime (allbeit warm!!) winter quiet and continue to witness within....

What I'm enjoying right now:

Teena's sick flippin brownies that somehow taste like toffee, too

&, the blog of this cool chic Kasey from the beach who is a foot reflexologist/massage therapist.

(this is a link not to her blog but to her wellness center in oc)
http://www.coastalwellnesscenter.com/reflexology.php

Here's her digs: Kasey can't deny it any more and ends up voicing several times a wild instinct in her heart space pulling her for some unknown reason to go to Thailand. Her husband finally remind her she's terrified of planes and hasn't travelled by air in close to 30 years. The next day an invitation from a reflexology school in Thailand invites her, expenses paid, to come teach at their institute for a month...Ahhhh serendipity. Read about her trip--she's there now--here

and to thy own self might you be true....

Goodnight Chop....Goodnight me...

What a fulfilling day. The weather was warm enough for a hike at Adkins Arboreatum and the air, the trees, the breath of all the decaying leaves--it said spring, spring. Lunar Imbolc starts tonight, through the next 24 hours aaaaahhhhhh. And being outside under sky feet on earth, hard and frozen as it all still was, it was so clear to me in an inside way all the little wakefull bursts of life that could be felt. But ahhh, to be in February.....time to sleep, most important time of all for sleep in fact. Feb is like that last hour before waking when your dreams are most electric--this is crucial time for incubation. Everyone's sick right now, too--all your energy is hauling together towards jestation time. So if your all caught up in the temporal day to day chances are you're probably ill or with cold right now. Cuz your soul needs its time....

So sleep, sleep,it's sleeptime to finalize the dreams within....

ahhh Perfect Poem for first seed

Poem for the day by Liāna Langa

Untitled

tares and anemones have finished blooming

under the skin of turf I, cocooned, lie, trying to understand,
where the colors of blossoms have lain, what are the steps of seeds

my casing is quiet and musical,
yellowed, rich

nowhere is the sky closer than underground,
among the roots of hyssop, the juice of dead time

I filter these along with the clay,
refusing the sparking of memory

am in opposition, vibrate, whine

becoming ready

ps friends, i blew it w the info before about the lunar celebration of imbolc, which actually occurs a week from today with the full moon--it is the full moon that occurs in the sun sign aquarius--Feb 9. Enjoy your day!!

Remember the Oregon Dialogue? I Get Esoteric on that Ass...

(skip down to get the esoteric highlights for the next several days!!)
Ahhhh, my dear friends.

Here's where I wax nostalgic and take us a back a mere three years ago to when Brandon and I, freshfaced and PacWest-eyed, returned home from the West Coast and sought to empower the ideals we learned and lived on the road and out there right here on the Eastern Shore, Chestertown, USA.


We began with gathering in our living road at Truslow Road--remember that joyous spot--and eventually created a newsletter around our efforts. Our "efforts" were largely principal-based, concerned with lots of potluck-inspired meetings of the minds. We were educating people, and each other, on environmental stewardship and community building. For me the substance of this always was ethical responsibility first, thus self-knowledge and personal accountability--inner development--were integral to such a movement in my mind. Likewise, the importance of the arts, of self-expression, of inner-reflection through practice of submitting to the impulse itself and then further, sharing one's experience with each another, this all was equal to me in the foundation of community building. Eventually during that time I stumbled on to Starhawk and started reading her stuff--we have a lot of the same viewpoints--(you can read her thoughts on ethics and accountability and earth spirituality here) and also met Regina at LightPaths in Centreville around that time, too. She turned me on to nightlightnews.org, where the author, Risa, gave me permission to disseminate her great esoteric insights. Esoteria to me means the hands-on walking of self-development, in other words utilizing the symbolism in various myths and messagry to apply to your own inner growth. For me, further, it has to do with an autonomous understanding of all things being universal, or divine, of all energies rising and falling and influencing and blending one with the other with the other as the ultimate reality is we are all one energy, blending and surging in chaotic harmony.


The Oregon Dialogue, our short-ran newsletter, and the community gatherings around it evolved in to the oregondialogue emails, where by I would network, invite people to community events, keep people informed of issues, and most of all share my esoteric thoughts at certain opportune, or energetic, times of the year.


Dig it: for those of you first finding yourselves opening up to this tip, let me just tell you, this self-development esoteric trip has been, in a conscious way anyhow, going on about 10 years now for me. It's so common I don't even know any other way to live anymore--like as example I don't even get it anymore that people don't know about Imbolc coming up, or the influence--major!--of Mercury Retro right now. To me it's all so natural a part of my understanding of the oneness of things--of GOD if you will--that it puzzles me to have to remember that to most people this is new, or even not true! information.

So to those with their own wonderings: I Speak To You. It's there, it's real. The transformation, the new consciousness, all of it. It's tough though, it's a step by step you being the change from day to day process. There's no wizard with a magic wand who's gonna appear in your steps all a sudden and tap you on the shoulder and say Hey, It's On!! It's a gradual thing, and we are all here to wake up to it. So if this message is coming to you, good! Welcome! Say yes! Then begin to look, and listen, to within....

Important Esoteric Highlights:
1. Monday was New Moon with a solar eclipse. In terms of inner-development: our sun is our light, think daily awareness. Our moon is our night, think mystery or unconscious, as in sleep with dreams. They come together, the subconscious to block out the regular awareness for a brief, deep jolt. Each voids the other out, then begin again together, having merged, in a dancing and magical blend--starting for you and your soul a whole new spiral of energy and light. Think DNA double helix, vibrating with not yet formed thoughts through-out your whole soul. New moon is new beginning, solar eclipse is new beginning in the physical world--remember--it's "light of day" stuff. So actual real new thoughts, ideas, opportunities etc. What newness came to you? Think about it. Woohoo!

2. Mercury ends its retrograde this weekend. Thank gawd! Hope you made no major decisions the past three weeks (at work we are changing everything!! I've had to try so hard to keep my mouth closed about it, wanting to say ahhhh!!!just wait til were out of Mercury cuz all new information will surface and change everything!!) You've been in deep, almost unconscious soul review. Running over and over those double helixes. Anicha anicha, the nature of everything, changing changing. If your head's been loud that's why. Pay attention to the messages you got. For real.

3. Most important! To me bewitched as I am anyway--Imbolc is Monday. This is the old Druid or pagan holiday of first light, benefactor of the Goddess Brigid who is my patron. Later she was claimed as a St. so if you are more comfortable with Christian symbology this week coming is St. Brigid's day, Saint of the Hearth, of fire, midwifery, and poetry. Any way it's a celebration of the first light of life--of fire, of new idea or passion or spark or creativity. For old agricultural societies it was literally time of first seed when they celebrated with the last food of their Harvest and got ready for the growth of the year to come. Also known as Candlemas, this is really archaic Christian/ancient Judaic (with clear roots in the politics of misogyny evident) in application--where in old earth traditions Brigid venerated passion, arts, fire, life, all things symbolic of fertility and creativity and the natural cycles and gifts we each embody within; Candlemas, or Purification of the Virgin, was a time for new mother's to cleanse through various offerings, including that of sacrificial animals, in order to receive the blessing and cleansing of the priest after the dirtied experience of child-birthing. Ain't mythology a trip!?!? Anyhow,

Two Important things about Imbolc. One)I have, in my own life, learned that these old energies and archtypes behind holidays are real, and if you dig the earth as oneness thing, look back to the Full Moon of January 11. This is the traditional lunar celebration of Imbolc. What new energy, new thoughts, new ideas, new passions were sizzling around in you? I just realized myself that that important moon passed unattended by me. So, retrospective learning it is...consider what new passions your soul shined its first light on for you, what is it that your deep self wants for you to grow? Two) This message from the full moon will revisit you this coming week. Because merc is out of retrograde it will seem like ahhhh fresh air. PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR CLARITY. If you experience anger or stuckness in the early week these are old archetypes (see the explanation just above) that you are meant, indeed you were sent here, to heal. Go within. Rebirth, reclaim yourself. Listen. Listen.

4. There is a stellar sooper cool alignment coming up on Valentines's Day. I'm gonna be with my sistas no doubt raising up the power. Read about it here. Or, go put on that cheesemonger song from the old show Hair, This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius...and listen to the words. You know, about the moon in the 7th sign and stuff. Yea. That's what's happening, literally.

5. That's all. No, it's not. One more thing from my soapbox. Ever ask your self just what the hell you're doing here? Like really looked in to your darkness, disheartened, afraid. Well this is the answer. Wake-up to your self. So we can all help all of us people do the same....

What I'm listening to (support independent music people!): The High and Low outta Cincinnati. They remind me a little of when I first realized my riotgrrrrrrl soul....

Now, that's it....enough outta me.

Cycles & Wisdom & Sometimes Getting to Know

In my wyld and at times crazed round about head there is lately an almost daily flash of new thought or insight that I am noticing floating on by.

It's always a wonder to me the way that my thought process, thus my growth goes: how I'll spiral along with these little randoms of new passing thoughts, fresh and clean as a classroom at the start of September. How they delight by my mind's eye dancing from all different slanted and quik-passing directions, til BAM, along comes one of those days when the fluid is so flow, when everything is so right that it all falls together in a tapestry of perception and oneness-of-living that it so brand new and fresh that it is clear that my soul, big and bright, and my subconscious have been busy at it making sense of things for me all the while. How on those BAM days I can be moved to tears in joy over the simple serendipity and obvious blessed harmony of things.

How I want that, all the time. What a sucker I am, you know, for feeling good...

And so what's on my mind today: how I am aware of being in one of those upturns of my own cycle right now. New growth and taking things in. And since I can see it, little flashes of original thought here and there, and have seen this before--I know that it will eventually culminate in a whole new understanding of things. Which increases my amped-ness to know what is on the way....

But then at once such anticipation also births the awareness in me of what it is to be dull: in the lax period, the time of quiet or void that feels like to me nothing but mud, to be with confusion and no dreams...and how this always pre-empts a period of great wonder and new lease, and also always follows a new level of heightened perception and increase.

This sounds manic-depressive, yes? I know I know. But the truth is I believe this to be quite naturally the cycle of the Creative. And I am heartened at how this triumph, this great seizure and breath of life itself, then the inevitable exhale and release so naturally and rythmically follows the world. The earth itself, the flux and flow of the seasons, the living and dying of every breathing detail, of even the moon. My god even the economy, the stock market, it all goes up, and, what the market-eyes will tell you: so too will what goes up come down.

It is Anicha time right now. Time of Great Changing. The time the earth dreams long of what she soon will grow. In this dreamtime is the unmanifest energy of all that you shall be in the year to come. Feel it, magic and subtle as breath passing by your hair. All artists can feel it right now. Unless they're drugged or drunk-numb...(it's hard at times to trust all that sizzle of magic! hell this I know for sure)...You're sure you feel just behind the air--it's almost like a tingle on your skin. The Dreamtime in your subconscious...the slight rush deep within.

Mercury retro will pass at the end of the month and then Imbolc will come. And then, all us earthly people so consumed with our daily lives will, if we are in a place with Winter, forget that Spring shall come. February will hit us hard with the hurt and we will forget: that our daily acts of living indeed are our only form of prayer. Trust this friends and trust yourselves, trust the natural ebb of quiet and rest for what it is--the downtime before the great release. And it follows naturally this spellbound rush then gone, rush then gone, sometimes electric sometimes Still, time of January when your soul-stuff is letting off little glimmers of all that it deeply dares you to Dream.