Here we are again, on the cusp of a new cycle of days around our wonderous sun. Many cultures hold the new year as a sacred passage, a time for putting worldly concerns aside and focusing within one’s heart and soul. When you allow yourself the space and silence for inward reflection, your inner wisdom will reveal its secrets to you.
What were your biggest learnings from 2021? In which ways did you stretch and grow the most? Did your personal hardships serve to make you stronger, more compassionate, kinder and more tolerant? Or did life’s plot twists instead harden your heart, make you more bitter or angry? No matter what you endured during the past year, this moment is a fresh start. Humans have the unique ability to change our minds, to choose another way to view life, each other and ourselves. If the past year was so rough that you’d prefer to not remember what happened, that is your choice alone to make.
I have never been one for New Year’s resolutions. This seems mostly a futile exercise, to tell yourself that from here on out, I will perform x,y and z each day (or week) until I’ve ______(fill in the blank). However, the start of the new year is a perfect time to reflect on what in your life you’d like to improve upon, habits that could make you feel stronger and healthier in body, practices to heal your heart, and ways of being to create more stillness and space in your soul. Without dogma or “have-to” as requirements, taking some time to jot down a few practices you’d like to weave into your days can be extremely helpful to create a happier, more peaceful life.
Dear Readers, I think we can all agree that humanity is on the roller coaster ride of our lives during these years of the 2020s. 2022 is promising to continue the ups and downs, with plenty of surprises and upheaval. I have heard that the next three years, in fact, will be pivotal years for Earth and for us all as the changes keep coming on all fronts. The best way to prepare yourself for all that is ahead is by training your mind to be calm, to learn how to breathe properly in order to stay grounded, and to work on being equanimous in all situations.
Mindfulness practice supports calming one’s mind.
We have come to raise up humanity to the next level of evolution, and to save our beloved planet, Gaia, from total destruction. So pay attention as the new year of 2022 unfurls. As a regular practice, ground yourself, still your mind, and do what you can to add to the Light quotient on the planet. I wish you all the strength and support you need to do your part in serving humanity in the unique ways that you can. Remember, you are never alone. The spirit guides are here and ready to help, all you need do is to ask.
Happy holidays, Dear Readers! This post has been a long time coming, my apologies for that. The past four months have been—let’s just say A LOT—and I have struggled with writing on this blog.
Now comes the end of 2020, a year in which so much changed for humanity and our beloved planet. No matter where you were on Earth this year, most likely you felt the changes in myriad ways. We were changed from subatomic to cosmic levels—literally the atmosphere, the air we breathe, the way we live our lives, and the way we see one another all shifted during 2020.
Those we have lost this year have left Earth, but they live on through our memories.
This year we collectively became aware of the presence of death in a whole other dimension than previously. Never before in living history were so many humans taken from their lives on Earth at once as this year. The Covid-19 virus has taken over 1 million, 642,000 people from the Earth this year. Depending on who you talk to, which news outlets and social media sites you read, and what your personal belief system is, this information will affect you in various ways. Regardless, I think we can still agree that an enormous number of souls left the planet, and the sheer number of deaths is a force that humanity has been reckoning with in ways large and small this year.
Along with the natural grief and sorrow that death brings, I believe that having to face so much death this year has forced us to grow up somewhat about this subject, especially in western countries. I live in the United States, which has by far experienced the most infections and deaths from the virus. It seems that death has been a weird, taboo subject for Americans. We don’t like to talk or think about it, and in fact many people spend most of their lives doing everything possible to deny and avoid the subject altogether. Which is really quite strange, considering that it is surely going to happen to every single one of us at some point in our lives. Why then, is there such terrific fear around such a natural process? Everyone is born, lives for a limited amount of time, and then dies. Is it really such a frightening experience? We humans experience death all the time. We squash bugs, run over squirrels, cut down trees, and eat many millions of slaughtered and processed animals every single day. Others hunt for their own food, or raise and slaughter their own poultry, hogs, cattle and sheep. This has been humanity’s way of living for untold thousands of years. Most people don’t even think twice about killing another life in order to further their own. Death is present all the time in the world. Why then, is it so uncomfortable for us to face our own, or that of those we love?
Perhaps you have experienced death during 2020, of someone close to you or someone you knew slightly. Or you read and heard many stories of people who died this year. Some stories were tragic, others were poignant and beautiful. Some died while still quite young, while many who died had lived long lives. Death, like birth, is a uniquely individual experience, and simultaneously a universal one. It is a process, and depending on how it is experienced, can be beautiful and simple, or painful and complicated. Or both. Many of the stories I heard this year mentioned how grateful the narrator was for their beloved and the time they had with those who passed on. The biggest lesson to come out of this year filled with global death, seems to be the lesson of making the most of the time you’ve got while you are alive. Nobody knows exactly how long we’ve got in these physical bodies once we arrive. The absolute best thing we can do with our time on Earth is to make the most of every day. We needn’t do incredible feats to awe the masses (although that’s great too), because I think the whole point of being alive is to appreciate that fact and learn how to love yourself and everyone and everything else.
Dear Readers, I wish you the very best life you can imagine living for the new year of 2021. Appreciate everything, from the moment you awaken in the morning, until you fall asleep at night. See everyone else as your brothers and sisters, both human and non-human. Notice the incredible quality of the sun’s light now as it shines upon us all. Feel reverence for the night sky and all our star families who are helping those of us living on Earth’s surface. Become increasingly aware of the amazing gift we are given to live on this gorgeous planet. Help and love your family, friends, neighbors and those you don’t personally know. We are one family, and have one planet which is our common home. Make the most beautiful life possible for yourself and your beloveds in 2021. Become fearless and love it all.
According to Merriam-Webster dictionary online, dissonance is defined as:
1 a: lack of agreement, the dissonance between the truth and what people want to believe; especially : inconsistency between the beliefs one holds or between one’s actions and one’s beliefs; b: an instance of such inconsistency or disagreement; “the mingling of bitter comedy and stark tragedy produces sharp dissonances”— F. B. Millett
2: a mingling of sounds that strike the ear harshly : a mingling of discordant sounds; especially, music : a clashing or unresolved musical interval or chord.
As any skimming of news websites clearly shows, Dissonance is now the buzzword of our current times. Those of us living in the United States are immersed in our collective dissonance 24/7, with no relief save for turning off all devices, airplane mode or taking an off-grid getaway.
Case in point: President Trump travelled to Mount Rushmore National Monument on Friday, July 3, to hold a political rally for the Independence Day weekend. I guess one could argue it was a savvy marketing campaign—the backdrop for his barely veiled, White Supremist propaganda was the faces of four American presidents carved into the granite rocks of the monument. The link to the NYTimes article is here.
As America’s POTUS denounced “dangerous left-wing fascists” who are defacing “national heroes” by toppling many statues of White Supremists (including confederate heroes) across the country, he conveniently neglected to mention that the Coronavirus infection rate increased by 90% over the past couple of weeks. Dissonance. As the Trump administration continues its deliberate denial, fact twisting and blatant lying about the pandemic’s effects on all aspects of American life, the tones and cadences of dissonance reverberate ever louder throughout our collective souls.
Then there’s America’s national shame about racism that continues to lay bare the core wound of its founding and accumulation of wealth through the slavery of and violence against Black people. Since the George Floyd murder by police at the end of May, a tidal wave of protests, opinion pieces, journalists, political voices, writers, and scholars have clamored to amplify this collective moment of dissonance in the hopes that finally, finally, White people will get it. Systemic racism is everyone’s problem, perpetuated by White silence and complacency to the status quo. One of these voices, Marvin Blakely, a civil trial lawyer, in this weekend’s NYTimes opinion section, writes,
And how could I calmly describe how people of color are penalized for not knowing and adhering to the culture of white America, while no value is placed on our culture, which they so freely appropriate for profit? How do I help these friends understand that the solution to the race problem lies with them? Ultimately a conversation is just more talk. What about taking action, no matter how small?
If they truly wanted to be of help and have meaningful conversations, with me or anyone else, I decided to tell them, they should begin by acknowledging that the problem lies in the hearts and minds of them, their brothers, sisters, parents, and in-laws.
I told them that a conversation in which you acknowledged years of undeniable oppression and then suggested Black people “move on” was as offensive as taking no action and remaining silently complicit. After the acknowledgment, I would ask that they educate themselves (and others) and, before engaging in those conversations that white America suddenly finds necessary, listen. After completing Steps 1, 2 and 3, you are ready not just to talk, but to act in a manner consistent with our mutual humanity.
Dissonance. Discord. Disharmony. Dissolution. Disrespect. Disregard. Disease. Dis. The prefix is defined as: negation, reversal. It is undeniable to the vast majority of us by now that we are smack in the middle of a collective Dark Night of the Soul. Our collective soul is being forced to face its shadow. In Jungian terms, the shadow of the soul is made up of all the unresolved, denied, repressed, hidden and shamed elements of our ego. Until the shadow is exposed to the light of acknowledgment, clearly seen and somehow forgiven, it remains as a force of negation, a receptacle of humanity’s sewage. We are in the midst of shining the strongest, most piercing light yet on our collective, core wound and its devastating consequences on entire sections of the human race. This is the most important work we must collectively do now. No matter how frustrating, horrifying, nauseating, disgusting, or dirty, facing our collective shadow is imperative for healing the unspeakable wound we must all heal.
Dear Readers, the moment we are living through now defies description. Though many (including me) attempt to describe what we are facing, ultimately we are rendered speechless. The dissonance runs so deeply through the core of our humanity, that it is tearing us apart, quite literally. What can we do, how can we hold the dissonance without breaking into a million pieces?
One suggestion is to simply surrender and let the pain of our collective wound open you. You may experience what feels like dying, a pressure so tremendous that it is unbearable. Yet, if you are willing to let the forces of dissonance break you open, what you find within the heart of that pain will astound you. Rumi once wrote of a field that exists beyond the pain of the world. And that field absolutely exists, waiting eternally for anyone curious and brave enough to find it. It is a place of utter calm, of peace beyond human understanding, and of constant love. It is not far from each one. Just as the composer understands the supreme importance of silence within a symphony, we too must learn to understand the importance of finding the depth of wisdom within the heart of pain. Dissonance leads to eventual harmony when one is willing to do the work.
interrelated planet 