I am living

between

If you stay

or

If you leave

I am surviving

between

with

or

without you

I face two paths

and travel

none

For you are still in my life

but not really

And you are out of my life

but not quite

I did not grow up in the energetic environment of my parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents so I can’t say how they felt in their lives. I do know that their lives, at least until my parent’s generation, were ruled by the roles society had carved out for them. They seemed to have their ‘place’ and the ‘place’ that they could aspire to. I really can’t say whether or not they were happy once they arrived in their ‘place’. Were wives generally happy serving their husbands and catering to the needs of their children? Did they have needs of their own? If they did, did they believe that the sacrificing of those needs was a worthwhile price to pay for what they received in return? Did they honestly believe that the Church was an ordained pillar of righteousness and all who served were above reproach? Did they honestly believe that our elected officials were moral and honest leaders above and self-serving desires or ulterior motives? In the age of Pisces, illusion is real. And obviously the set up was all an illusion. With all of the rugs being overturned and all of the closets being opened today, it seemed that on the whole, they either closed their eyes, fooling themselves into believing what they were told, and not looking behind closed doors or asking too many questions, or, they told themselves that their lives would be better off if they just lived as if it were right. I imagine that the whole ‘person fit the mold’ thing, rather than, ‘the mold fit the person’, worked for generations.

What I have noticed in people that I have counseled is a profound unhappiness within seemingly happy lives. In other words, I keep hearing people say that they have everything that others say should make them happy, everything that they believed would make them happy, but they are deeply unhappy. This unhappiness is compounded by the fact that they feel ungrateful because they have what others seem to want. So they feel ashamed of their pain and as a result, too guilty to seek help. If they do seek help, the help that they seek is help in fixing themselves so that they can find the happiness that they are supposed to have with the lives that they are living rather than finding the courage to look within their souls for keys to the true life that would contain their happiness. I am seeing people who either have what they believed would make them happy, or what they were told would make them happy but instead it is the cause of their pain. It is this widespread inner discontent that changes the world. This sense of dissatisfaction – this intense need for some kind of change grows within the collective unconscious until it reaches critical mass and something happens to force a change. We are accustomed to quick fixes, but we need a lasting resolution. Humanity is entering an age that is taking it from the surface to the heart, from the world to the soul, from a world of greater and lesser beings to a world of equality, honesty, freedom and brotherhood. All of the boxes are the same as they always have been, there are still the many ‘things’ out there, the many awards, achievements and ways to find self-gratification – and goodies to buy to advertise our personal greatness, so that we are not overlooked, but God moved the cheese - the happy – to another place.

Everyone wants the brass ring, but we are conditioned to want the brass ring that we can have. Everyone can’t be the queen of England, but some people can, for a time, be the queen of Broadway. So it is to that, which they aspire. Up until about seventy years ago, people were able to be happy because their expectations were very limited. If you were a woman – then you had your list of achievable goals. If your father was a coal miner, you had your list of achievable goals, if you were Black, you had your list of achievable goals and to get to the top of your list, or even close, left most people at least content and usually happy with their lives.

It seems to me that World War II pretty much blew that boat out to sea. Suddenly, people found themselves in strange new roles – roles that were believed and accepted as beyond their reach, or just plain unnatural for them. Women went out to work, formed sports teams, took over supervising positions, supported the country, brought home the bacon and cooked it. Whites had to fight with and often found their lives in the hands of Negro soldiers, all lines, including the color lines were temporarily but still irrevocably crossed. Factory workers became Sergeants, bosses became privates, all in all, everyone found themselves living somehow outside of the box that seemed before to be set in stone. Although the world expected everyone to return to their original roles -and most had to – the taste of the possible never left their palates. Soon, ‘Equality’ was to be the never-ending hum in the background of life from then on. The first key-word for Aquarius was ushered into the age.

Of course, the first harbingers of change are always met with violent opposition, so the shouts for equality were labeled Communist, and the McCarthy era showed that those in power would do anything to combat the massive changes that a movement towards freedom and equality would bring. The generation of children born during and after that war was, as would be required, the “Me” generation. If you think about it, this was the perfect and timely reaction to all of the “everything but me” generations that came before. It made sense because we had to come from ‘what is good for the whole is good for the parts’ to ‘what is good for the parts is good for the whole’ in order to get to our destination of ‘the whole is equal to the parts’ – Aquarius. Change – this kind of change – is not something that happens, like walking out of one room into another. We must transition. For more than two thousand years, power has been held by those who maintained the greatest secrecy. Sometimes it was the manipulation of the ignorant populace by the few who understood the workings and cycles of nature, to pretend to create miracles, such as eclipses, lightening, or droughts. Or, it was by the use of the fear of the gods or God to manipulate the people into submission. Today it is still done, but more through covert actions of institutions, governments, covert deals made with those who manipulate the world’s economies.

The church has always governed in secrecy the Vatican contains vaults of secret writings, hidden documents etc. For so many years the perverted actions of the clergy went on, hidden and protected by the accepted secrecy so pervasive in this age. Government officials hid their true identities and true motives behind vast networks of cover-ups for as long as we can remember. Then suddenly, bit by bit, the truths have been unearthed, perhaps beginning with the Dead Sea Scrolls and the scrolls found at Nag Hammadi. This, followed by expository journalism, tabloid press, cell phones, hidden cameras, whistle blowers and the internet has made for a growing overall transparency. This is a time of revelations. Everything hidden is being revealed. It is this truth – this revelation – that will ultimately set us free of the shackles of deception and illusion. People said one thing and lived another. We idolized our celebrities as perfect and they had to maintain a public persona. When I was a child I heard the fear of one day having “Big Brother” watching our every move. Today, big Brother is watching us, but we are also watch Big Brother. Everything and everyone is being exposed, more and more. It will only continue to grow. We ourselves are being exposed to ourselves and any lives that we have been living that are not true to our hearts, and our souls, will cause more and more of us heightened levels of pain. I once looked at the supermarket counters loaded with tabloid papers as a part of the degeneration of our society. Until I saw a headline in one of those tabloids saying that two actors, renowned for their humanitarian efforts were going on a spending spree, flying doctors over continents, spending upwards of eight figures for a home and I realized that if we admire people if must be not just for what they do but also for how they live.

Today, with the world as small as it is, it seems a bit obscene to live large, while others are struggling just to live. And living large is ok, for those who claim with all honesty and candor to be card carrying members of the greedy few. It’s honest. But if you profess a sense of responsibility to the world and the suffering within it, if you believe that to whom much is given, much is expected, and want your name in that book, then you must not just do charity but live a charitable life. It is time for us to be ourselves, live as ourselves, wear one face, and walk our talk. This is what the Age of Aquarius is all about. When everyone says, “This is who I am and I am proud of it”, tabloids will have nothing to expose. When we no longer put people on pedestals, we will no longer feel the need to knock them off. There are no pedestals in Aquarius. As we draw nearer and nearer to that Age we will learn that death is not the only great equalizer. God has moved the cheese. The power box is now empty, the material wealth box is now empty, the public adoration box is now empty. The sooner we figure out that God has put the cheese in the box of love given, time shared, selfless service and brotherhood, the sooner we will find the transition into the new Age a rewarding journey of gain, and not a painful succession of losses.

Secrets require darkness. A life that cannot stand up under the Sun twenty-four hours a day is a painful life lived in fear and darkness. But sometimes we are more afraid of what will happen to us in the light than we are of the continued fear of the darkness. When we are here, then the Universe must intervene and expose us to the light that we have hidden from and regardless of what we lose from exposure to the light, it pales in comparison to the sense of joy and freedom that comes from not ever having to hide again. When no one has to hide, when no one wants to hide, when no one will hide – we will know that we have officially become a part of the Age of Aquarius.

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.” Samuel Adams

What is a building without its foundation? The ability of a building to stand the tests of time and nature lies in its foundation and its structure. Well, the foundation of this country is the spirit instilled in it by the founding fathers. The structure of this country is the Constitution. One depends upon the other. One cannot be disconnected from the other for the building to stand; yet, the building is getting closer and closer to falling because we have caused the structure to lose its original integrity. It is being separated from the foundation and when that separation is complete, the building will collapse. The foundation of this country is the 28 principals, which united the founding fathers. The principals that they deemed vital in the success of this, “Experiment” in self-government that was to be the hope of mankind, in the words of Thomas Jefferson:

“We feel that we are acting under obligations not confined to the limits of our own society. It is impossible not to be sensible that we are acting for all mankind; that circumstances denied to others but indulged to us have imposed on us the duty of proving what is the degree of freedom and self-government in which a society may venture to leave its individual members.”

Most Americans, and in this group I include lawmakers, do not understand in their hearts and souls the nature of the country that they are serving. Nor do they understand the importance of the form of government for which the flag stands. Many say the pledge of allegiance by rote memory never considering what they are saying for when asked what form of Government we live under they inevitably say, “Democracy”. However, it is clearly stated in the, “Pledge of Allegiance”, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of American AND TO THE REPUBLIC, for which it stands….”, this is not a democracy it is a Republic.

For the past eight years I have been trying to figure out which country I want to live in when I can afford to move. I felt helpless in effecting what was happening in this country and so I felt that living in this country was in essence being a part of the problem that is destroying the world. Then suddenly, I was guided to the writings of the Founders. Then I read a quote by Gandhi which said “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” In the same book, he recounted this story:

Gandhi and Reverend Andrews, a Presbyterian missionary, were walking together in South Africa.  “The two suddenly find their way blocked by young thugs.  Reverend Andrews takes one look at the menacing gangsters and decides to run for it.  Gandhi stops him.  ‘Doesn’t the New Testament say if an enemy strikes you on the right cheek you should offer him the left?’  Andrews mumbles that he thought the phrase was used metaphorically.  ‘I’m not so sure,’ Gandhi replies.  ‘I suspect he meant you must show courage – be willing to take a blow, several blows, to show you will not strike back nor will you be turned aside.  And when you do that it calls on something in human nature, something that makes his hatred decrease and his respect increase.  I think Christ grasped that and I have seen it work.’

This, and everything that I was hearing about this being, ” un-American”, and that being, “unconstitutional”, made me seek a deeper understanding of what is American, and what is Constitutional. I realized that the problem was not America, just as Gandhi saw that the problem was not Christianity, America is a beautiful ideal, one unlike any other in the world, it was Americans and their ignorance of this country that made them so unlike America. We have underneath all of the muck, corruption, prejudice, greed and hatred, the most precious diamond on earth – and if we are going to survive as the human race, we will need to uncover it once again, and use it as a new foundation upon which to build, once again, a new world.

We need a deeper understanding before we decide what is Constitutional and what is Unconstitutional.  We need a deeper understanding of the framers of that document and what they meant, the constitution is not to be interpreted, it is to be understood.

“I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people’ (10th Amendment). To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to any definition.” Thomas Jefferson

So I am going to being a series of blogs covering the 28 principals upon which this country was built. Understanding the foundation, will, begin our journey, however, long it may be, to the place where we were born as Americans. And perhaps, we will understand that we must see the Constitution, and interpret it in the way in which the founding fathers had seen it done.

“On every question of construction [of the Constitution] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or intended against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed. Thomas Jefferson

I have already covered the first Principle in the blog entitled, “In God We Trust”. The second principle, which I believe is the mortar which holds all of the other principles together I will cover in my next blog, but it is this:

Principal 2: A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong.

When we are babies, we make our decisions based upon our natures.  Do I take that?  Do I try this?  Do I stick this thing in my mouth?  Our inner natures are as unique to us as our fingerprints, or a zebra’s stripes.  Then, we make our next tier of decisions based upon the outcomes of the last.  Did it hurt?  Did it incur disapproval?  Did it taste like #$%^?  The outcomes of those natural impulses guide our next level of choices.

Later, as children, we begin to make choices according to our natural instincts, tempered by the outcome of our prior choices and now, further tempered by the norms established in our home environment.  Steps, one step leading to the next, and to the next, and so on, always following a natural order.

Then, we go to school and encounter peers.  They add a new layer to our decision making process.  Any decisions that we make at that time, are based upon the progression of each of the previous steps.  Each of those steps colors our perception of the world of choices and decisions that we face each day.  And each step adds a tint to the world that we perceive. 

I don’t know where it came from, but, as far back as I can remember I felt an overwhelming sense of duty and responsibility.  As a child, I was to ‘good’ one.  This was not the one that I wanted to be.  Clearly, I envied the ‘bad’ ones, they had so much more fun.  But I felt compelled to be good.  And it was a thankless choice.  I was like the brother who stayed home and did his chores while the Prodigal Son had a ball, blew his inheritance and then was thrown a party for coming home broke (that one was my sister).

After escaping my Cinderella childhood, my mother and my grandmother both lost their ability to walk and so, I bought a house and moved them in.  One day I was complaining about how horrible it was reliving my childhood in spades, at 33 years old my friend said to me, “Well, it was your choice!”  Never for one minute, during the entire process of inviting them to live with me, did I consider it to be a choice.  For me, for who I was and my perception of the world, it was not a choice it was what I had to do.

Now, I could say that if I had it to do over again, I would have done it differently.  But that is not true.  There are only two possible ways that I would have made a different choice.  One way would have been if I had known how badly it was going to turn out.  The other, would have been had I been born someone else, and raised by other people.  I made no choice.

You see as much as we believe that we make choices, in retrospect, it has to be clear that we do not.  Whether we know it or not, we are doing what is the only clear thing to do based upon our perception of the issue.  It is just like voting.  We choose to vote for a candidate who best represents what we perceive as the right things.  Humans do not make choices.  We take the next logical step based upon who we are and the life that we have lived.  If we had it to do all over again, with no future insight and no additional input from some new sources, we would do it all over again in exactly the same way that we did it the first time.

This means, that we act in accordance with who we are, and what we believe is the best way to act within the options that we perceive available.  We never make the wrong choice, we never make a mistake, we act, at all times, appropriately.  We make our decisions in a manner that is completely consistent and appropriate.   If a fiction writer is good, he or she will develop a character that is complete enough, that we believe his choices and can foresee the direction that he will take.  A good writer will give a character believability – which means that his or her actions will be consistent with that character.  This means, that in real life, unless we are crazy, our decisions will also follow a consistent path, a path that is true to who we are and how we have incorporated the outcomes of prior actions into ourselves.

Understanding this, understanding that I will always follow a path that is true to who I am, and where I believe that I fit in my perceived world, means, that I do not make choices.  I do not make mistakes, my actions reflect who I am and what I see – through the eyes of who I am.  Today, I would not make all of the choices that I made yesterday – only – because I know how they all turned out, only – because the way that they turned out has given me new experiences from which to draw and grow into who I am today.

So, don’t buy into failure, don’t buy into mistakes.  Believe, that each step appears before us to lead us to the next – no errors – no missteps – only lessons.  The outcome of each step is  not the result of our choices but the next step that Spirit places before us.

It would be very easy to say that based upon the nature of man as he has shown himself throughout history, the only destination is self-destruction.We are in an escalated time of war, hatred, greed, and all of the things that spell disaster.

I see things symbolically.When I was working for the man who would later become my partner, for a business in New York, I remember walking down the halls feeling as though the file cabinets on either side of the hallway were falling in on me.I felt the same urgency as Chicken Little in the story saying “The sky is falling, the sky is falling”.It was this sense of urgency that caused me to push my boss into opening our own business, and we did.Not a month later, the company that we worked for went bankrupt.

During George W’s second term as president my friends would complain that he was going to get away with everything, it seemed that everything was working out for him.Yet, my vision this time, was of a dam with a hole, and like the story of the little Dutch Boy, he had his finger in the hole.However, in my vision the holes kept coming – more and more until the entire dam collapsed.This was, to me, what began with Bush and would continue with whoever became president after him.The impression that I was left with was that there was no system, not corporate, not governmental, not environmental, not social and not religions that would be sustainable for much longer.What we needed was not just change, but transformation from the ground up.The dam could not be salvaged or patched, it had to be demolished and rebuilt.

I used to paint furniture.As an artist, I would use furniture as my canvas.One day I found this perfect desk.What I should have done was sand it down to the bare wood, then prime it and begin painting.But that was too overwhelming a task, so I just primed it.The paint was not holding, so I would pile on another base coat.I kept putting paint on top of paint and although it looked beautiful when I was done, I could not sell it – or even use it because I had added too much good paint to the bad.Some things need additional coats, and others need to be stripped down to the bone and built up from scratch.This is where we are.

Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. “Regardless of a new administration in the White House, the solutions to our economic problems are being sought at the same level of consciousness that created them, which has been – take care of the corporations and they will take care of the people.Make sure that the banks have money and they will spread it down to the people.I guess it is just a continuation of trickledown economics.What would constitute change – real change?It would be working from the bottom up.You see, even if the banks are willing to give people credit cards again – the people are not going to be so willing to take them.We are becoming debt phobic.

Between the years of 1988 and 2006 the average wage in this country rose a total of about one percent.During that same time period the average cost of living rose over ten percent.How was that gap supposed to be filled?I know, credit!Credit that we could not pay because of the gap, if we could not afford, on the average wage to life, how could we afford to pay a credit card with growing interest rates?Why did no one look at these figures and anticipate a problem?The answer is greed.And it is that greed that prevents the kinds of change that we need now to guarantee the future.

The government should not loan money to investors to buy the bad debt from banks, the government would take the bad debt itself, declare a moratorium of up to two years on foreclosures and renegotiate the loans so that the people could catch up.The government would focus all of its attention to creating jobs and keeping people in their homes.Nothing would stimulate the economy more than for people to have disposable income, not more credit.Nothing would improve consumer confidence more than to feel safe within their homes and with their healthcare.We are giving the thieves who stole the cookies from the cookie jar, money to replace the cookies.There is no change here, just a new twist to an old knot.With the number of homeless and unemployed expected to continue to rise, I wonder who the economy is picking up for.But it doesn’t matter.

There is something else happening that is an deeply difficult issue to tackle and therefore an issue that is not addressed.People have paid money into social security and into their pensions in the belief that these were up there with death and taxes in terms of things that we could count on.Today people are reaching retirement age with nothing, social security that is not enough to live on, Medicare that is not enough to keep one healthy, and a pension that has been stolen by the same corporation that promised it.

We have no trust, we have no reason to trust.A terrorist attack is only one of many threats to our lives that we live with, losing our homes, our ability to feed our families, our ability to provide the education that will safeguard our children’s future, and the healthcare to keep them alive should they become ill.Keeping the homeland secure should be much more far reaching.

The only thing that the people are able to count on is that they have the power, the right and even the duty to change the system.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.-

We are a skyscraper that is on fire on the first two floors, the occupants of those floors are dying, but the people in the penthouses are feeling safe and secure.But soon the fire will eat its way up to the top, and although some people on the lower floors are close enough to jump to safety – that can’t be said for the high income floors.But we won’t address the basement until those in the penthouse are affected, which of course will be too late.

Add to this we have a growing climate emergency, which the huge coal and oil industries do not see that it can be addressed adequately for at least a few decades.The scientists tell us that we don’t have one decade if we don’t start transforming our way of life today. North Korea is desperate to attack someone and prove itselfas a major military power.Israel is desperate to bomb Iran.And all of the fundamentalists of all religions are excitedly awaiting Armageddon.

If this were a novel, no one would be anticipating an happy ending.But there could still be one, a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a new generation of Senators and Congressmen.President Obama was not just elected by those who were of voting age.He was elected because of the hard work of many young people who were not yet old enough to vote but will be not only old enough to vote, but interested enough to run for office in the year 2012.Those who will be voting in that election will have a different agenda and enormous power over communications through the internet.

The generation of the sixties had great promise and hope of a world in which there was peace, brotherhood, and an end to war.Sadly, their hopes were dashed and their faith was shattered when their candidate for President lost the election.They became cynical believing that they were up against a system that they could not, with all of their work and enthusiasm – defeat.Some just withdrew, some decided that if you can’t beat them, join them.This is not the case today.The young people of today did win, and they did change the face of the country.They are empowered.

Seeds are being planted now in every area of life.The technology exists to end consumption of fossil fuels.These young people are growing up in a time where greed is not good.They have a voice and they will use it loudly.

Things change, the world changes, and it is very hard, even in our own personal lives to know the exact date that it happens because we are not aware of the change until we are well within it.From there we look back and say, “yes, it was around that time that….”

Monopolies were one banned because they inhibited free competition.We decided free competition was not really necessary.The next generation of law makers will rid the world of monopolies, not because of their impeding competition, although that will always be a part of it, but because by their sheer size they threaten the global economy, as is being proven today.They will create the kinds of far reaching changes that will pave a new path for the world, a path to sustenance.It will be a world where everyone having some, is more acceptable than some having everything.I see the new government supporting education, healthcare for all and self sustaining communities.Where fossil fuels with be the alternative and fuel created by the Sun, the Water and the Wind will be the norm.The new leaders around the world will come to see that if everyone has the same size guns, they become a useless weapon.Then a handshake and a helping hand will be the weapons that end hostility, instead of life.After the darkness of path that we have set before us, I see a new path, and I see the first steps on that path coming in 2012.

2012, Age of Aquarius, Changing Times

If we understood that we are all cells in the same body, whether I am a brain cell, a heart cell or a cell in the rectum.  The body requires the use of each cell in order to survive, therefore each cell shares the same I in every way that matters – each cell shares the same “I” in every way that matters to the ultimate survival of the body.  Every cell in my body is not in a me, you, them relationship with each other cell but in an “I” relationship in the only way that really matters.  If the liver goes down, soon the pancreas will follow, then the kidneys, the lungs, the heart and the brain.  One day, we will realize that the health of our bodies and all of the diseases that seem to plague it are closely tied to our sense of separateness that would logically pervade every cell sharing the same body consciousness.

If I was taught from an early age that I am because you are, which is because they are, which is because we are One.  If we were taught to believe that the illusion is our separateness and not our connectedness – we would have not fear of the “other”.  We do not see the air, but we are taught to believe that it is there even if we cannot see it.  Ants, bees and many other insects function as one body – we may say colony but that is only our vision of their reality.  To the ant and the bee, they are only separate in function and contribution but not in being.  Therefore the one is never alone, and the whole is never unguarded.  There is no fear of each other, and together they act upon that which should be feared.  There are places in the world where it is only a matter of minutes before one bee becomes one thousand bees.  One bee may seem threatened, but with those odds, it soon becomes the threat.

The Golden Rule tells us to do unto others as we would have others do unto ourselves.  In Genesis, we are told that, yes, we are our brothers keepers.  In Leviticus 19:33-34 it is said, ³³ “And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him.  ³⁴ But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”Jesus and other spiritual teachers tell us that we are to go further – that we are meant to go further.  Jesus, in Luke 10:25-28 ²⁵ “And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? ²⁶He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? ²⁷And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself. ²⁸And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do and thou shalt live.” 28 And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.  29 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour? “

30″ And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.   31 And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.   32 And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.   33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,  34 And went to him , and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

35 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.   36 Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?   37 And he said, He that shewed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.” To understand what God means by “neighbor” or “brother”, Jesus uses this example which, at the time, would be the equivalent of telling the story to an Israeli and instead of Samaritan – using a member of Hamas.

I consider myself to be a very spiritual person, yet, it has taken me until now to understand the full import of loving my neighbor as myself.  I have heard so many people, Christians, say to me that they live a certain lifestyle while there is such poverty in the world because, “They worked hard for what they have, they earned it.”  Or, they may say that they, “give to the poor” or to charity.  But that is not what Jesus is saying here, it does not say give what is left after you give to yourself. Or, give what is comfortable, after you give to yourself.  It is saying, think of others in the same way as you think of yourself.  Care for others as you would care for yourself, not after but in the same moment, in the same breath with the same love.  It says give to others what you would give to yourself, because you earned it for yourself and for your brother. If we all did this, then no one would be without enough.  This could be called many names, it could be said that I am talking about socialism or even worse, communism – but I am quoting the Bible, I am speaking about religion.  Yet, I am really speaking about the topic I began this with, fear.  Fear is as responsible as greed and selfishness for the mess that we are in.

We fear that we will not have enough to share, yet in truth, if we do not share we will not have enough.  No one rises up with a full belly.  No one steals when his needs are met.  The storehouse is dwindling and if the owners don’t begin to share, the peasants will take it over.  It is a story that is repeated time and time again throughout history.  We must begin to allow ourselves to open to the belief that we are not separate unless we separate ourselves.  We are all connected by the Spirit that runs through the One Body. We are One in reality, we are One in necessity, and we are One in God.  The only way that we will guarantee our own health and survival is to care for the health and survival of the entire Body of which we are all a part.  Here is another of my favorite stories that exemplifies this point.

There is a story told in Kabbalah:

“With an angel for his guide, the visitor is first ushered through the gates of Hell, which, he is surprised to find, are made of finely wrought gold. The gates, in fact, are incomparably lovely, as is the verdant land­scape that lies beyond them. All this is quite astonish­ing to the visitor, who turns to his angelic guide in disbelief. “It’s all so beautiful,” the man says. “The sight of the meadows and mountains . . . the sounds of the birds singing in the trees … the scent of thousands of flowers. . . .” And then another scent catches his atten­tion: the aroma of food being prepared.

The angel leads the visitor toward an immense ban­quet table laden with every sort of delicacy. However, something is terribly wrong. Hundreds of people are seated around the table, but they all appear to be starv­ing. Their emaciated condition is painful to see in the midst of such bounty, but even worse is the frustration and anger they are obviously experiencing. Each person at the table has a long-handled spoon chained to his wrist. The handles are so long that no one can place food in his mouth. But that does not prevent the con­demned souls from trying. For all eternity, they are struggling to feed themselves a meal that is right before them, but that might as well be a hundred miles away. Taken aback by the tragic spectacle, the visitor is now more than ready to visit Paradise, and the angel immediately complies. At once they pass through an­other set of golden gates, alike in every detail to the gates of hell. In fact, a great deal about the two locales seems to be identical, including the banquet table and the diners chained to their utensils. But the people around this table are well fed and happy, despite the fact that their circumstances are identical to those of the damned. The difference is not in the physical situa­tion, but in how they respond to it. As you might have guessed by now, instead of trying to feed themselves, each of the souls at this table feeds the one across the table.”

In the beginning what we call God today was considered incomprehensible.  All ancient belief systems saw God as being so great that we could never name or even begin to conceive of it as anything but an awesome mystery.  The best that we could do was to acknowledge that God was in all that existed in the world around us and attempt to worship aspects of God through the different natural examples around us.  All of the religions that we considered to be polytheist were not, they were worshipping the unnamable Source of the Universe through its aspects.  There had been, since the ice age and awe and fear of the Unnamable because it could not be defined or named but could be experienced in everything in our Universe.   But with the formalizing of religion we lost the awe and mystery of our Source because contrary to what we knew – we named It and believed It to be contained in whatever name we chose – even god with a capital “G”.  We gave It names, Yahweh or Jehovah, Allah, Jesus, etc.  In essence, with each new name, we created a new god that only a chosen group could access.  Although we say that there is only one true God, that one true God is Allah if you are a Muslim, Yahweh or Yod-He-Vav-He, if you are Jewish, Jesus if you are Christian.  In truth, we have numerous one true Gods.

What was not understood was that anything that has a name has limits and boundaries.  It becomes something to understand, to figure out.  So, through our formal religions we became accustomed to gods that we have limited within names, thereby given a material quality to – thus, offered to science something to disprove.  In order for each religion to distinguish their one true God from all other one true Gods was by giving them different names.  This was something that would not have even been considered before.

We relate to time through clocks and calendars.  Neither is not time, and neither can explain our experience of time – how it seems to move faster when we are running late, and move slower when we are anxiously waiting.  During all of this the hands of the clock seem to move at the same pace.  Although the clock can never express time as we perceive it, therefore time is much greater than the systems that we use to measure it.  And, any name or label that we give to the Source of all that is, describes it as much as a grain of sand contained on the beach describes the earth that contains all beaches.  With each name and character that we ascribe to our Source we distance ourselves further from Its true awesome power and glory which was felt, honored, loved and feared by our ancient ancestors.

Science and Spirituality once were one in the same.  They described the movement of the clock and honored with awe the essence of time as one whole.  There was a completeness that gave peace to our understanding of the world in which we lived.  Science contained an awe and acknowledgment of Spirit.  It contained the understanding that the world is made up of an understandable how – and a mysteriously incomprehensible why.  With the formalizing of the Institution of Religion, science was evicted and Spirituality was left like time without the clock to contain and express it.

With the separation of Science and Spirit we were forced to make a choice that either discounted our spiritual beingness or our material beingness.  We have lived a disjointed life in a disjointed world, fractured, fragmented and unable to reconcile itself.  This is because the spirit of the Life and the form of life were separated by a fork in a road where neither path led anymore to wholeness.  God became a name representing something superhuman that was real only in relation to its connection with a specific religion.  In my mind, God, by each name, became no more than the Spiritual Leader of each religion – each religion contained a God, rather that all religions being contained within the One Source of All that Is – the eternal I AM.  In truth, It is beyond comprehension, beyond description, and therefore – beyond name.  When we say God – with or without a capital “G”, we are not referring to That which is nameless.  We do not fear God because we have not only give God a name, but a gender – something that is only assigned to the things of earth.  We have made our Source into a man, albeit a superman, but a man nonetheless.  Therefore, science has scoffed at God, each religion has turned God into its own mascot – and mankind has ceased to evolve, living like the fish symbolizing Pisces – connected, yet swimming in opposite directions and going nowhere.

Now there is this new science.  It is real, because it is through this science that we have, as I mentioned above, nuclear energy, microwave ovens, television, and the internet and on and on.  However, this new science tells us that everything in the Universe consists of atoms, and atoms are not “things”.  Atoms are comprised of 99% space.  According to science, as much as we consider ourselves solid forms, we consist of formlessness.  It tells us that the world in which we live is the world that we collectively and individually perceive.  Its journey is taking us Home – returning us to the wonder, awe and mystery of God.  Reading about the discoveries of Quantum theory and quantum mechanics is like reading an ancient mystical text.  Science and Spirit are returning to the point of oneness.  Form and Spirit are reuniting and we are returning to the connection with the Unnamable Source of all that is.  The Quantum Sciences are mysterious and meta-physical; however, we can no more live without them today than we could live until this time without Newtonian physics.  Albert Einstein, one of its fathers said,

“A human being is part of the whole, called by us “Universe”, a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of delusion of consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us t our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.  Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievements is in itself a part of the liberation, and foundation for inner security.”

The world of quantum physics is not solid, it is not a world of things but a world of the “no things“.   These “no things” are what the entire universe is made up.   They are energy and that energy is consciousness.  The Source of all things, spreads itself through the universe as consciousness, as atoms…as “no things”.   This is the science that will be the foundation for the future description of our world.  In this context, the origins of the world and of the species are then placed in what can only be viewed as a spiritual context.  There is no avoiding a new paradigm.  It is one that begins where our most ancient ancestors left off. The ancient wisdom that the Mayans claimed would be resurrected is being resurrected through scientific discoveries, the uncovering of ancient texts, and the sudden spiritual inspirations that many are having now.  The science that will take us through the 21^st century and the New Age, is one in reverence for the Source of all that is.  It is one that resonates with the earliest mystical traditions.

Through science, we will come to understand that the world is a Spiritual Universe that appears to be a physical one.  This will open up new ways of understanding every aspect of our lives, the meanings hidden in the scriptures that we study, and our connection with each other and with all life on earth.  From the fourth century CE., until less than two hundred years ago, the world was flat and the Sun, Moon, and stars revolved around it.  We were certain that disease was caused by evil spirits and the use of herbs for healing was witchcraft.  All of this began to change slowly with the Enlightenment.

Although we see the world today in a radically different way, many of the other superstitions and beliefs are still tucked comfortably under the guise of religion.  We have opened a new cycle with the entrance of quantum physics into our everyday lives.  It is not real, so we will be forced to listen to what it has to teach us.  It will become a part of our consciousness and form the foundation for the new age that we are entering.  The Hopi say that we are leaving the cycle of the animal and entering the cycle of the human.  This coincides with the fact that Aquarius, the age that we are poised to enter, is the only sign in the zodiac represented by a human.  It is the water bearer – the bringer of wisdom, and the glyph that is used to represent Aquarius is › a symbol that could be seen as two quantum waves moving together through the Universe.

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Once we give something a name, we have given it a definition.Once we have defined it, it no longer has room to grow.What we call a relationship and what we call marriage must grow to meet who we have evolved into.When my first husband and I returned home from our marriage I did not recognize him.He had become a ‘husband’, which bore no resemblance to the man that I had been engaged to.I, on the other hand, did not know how to become a ‘wife’.And, I have to add that the husband he became was his father, a man that I would never have married.So even if I had known how to become a wife, I would have had to become his mother to make the institution function.We did not form a relationship, we entered an institution with strictly defined roles, at least, the ones that worked for my husband.

When two people enter into a committed relationship they create an extension of themselves, a midpoint where they unite. So, the relationship is not a thing, or an institution as marriage is called, but a place where lovers join, share, love and grow together. It is the third entity. It is the form of the bond through which their love flows, through which they share themselves and experience each others growth from that sharing and that bonding. This does not describe most relationships and it does not describe most marriages. The reason begins in childhood.

Children have their first and most important lessons in relationships in their family homes. They learn by watching their parents with each other, they learn by watching their parents with themselves and their siblings, and they learn through their interaction with their siblings. One of the first challenges that we are faced with when we enter into an adult relationship is that it is destructible. The relationship with our parents and siblings is indestructible, for better or for worse – they are always there. Even if we run away, they are still always there till death do we part. The relationship between parents and children is the only relationship that is relatively certain to be till death. Yet, somewhere in our subconscious minds we form, and act based upon a belief that a few words repeated before an official creates the same unbreakable bond. It does not and it has not for a very long time.

Divorce statistics show that eighty percent of marriages that end in divorce do so because of irreconcilable differences. Any relationship, including marriage will last as long as the needs of those involved are being met. This makes sense, but understanding those needs, grasping the importance of those needs and realizing how the survival of a marriage can hinge on the smallest thing is a little more difficult. This is because the smallest slight, or cruel word said in a fight never leaves the relationship. It never leaves the memory of the one who was slighted – never – ever, no matter what the person says. Put a person under hypnosis and you will find that throughout that person’s entire life there was not a leaf that blew by that is not remembered. We are, for better or for worse, memory keepers. No one knows for sure where all of the memories go, but what is a fact is that if the incident is repeated, the original one flies out to meet it and grow.

They say God is in the details, well, a relationship is strengthened or weakened by the details, the little tiny details and sometimes no one is aware of its condition until it snaps. One partner says, “What did I do”, the other partner says, “I don’t know, just a lot of things”. It is just a lot of little things. So many people think that the work ends when you say “I do”. This may be when we stop working, but it is also the time when the things that must be worked on begin to accumulate.

From the beginning of any relationship, we need to understand that if we have, ‘fallen in love’, then we are under the influence of a heavy intoxicant, maybe the heaviest.We are not in our right minds.The more that we struggle to see beyond our need for the next fix of the other person’s energy, the better chance we have at success.Clarity is the most important thing in having a successful relationship, make your needs clear – especially to yourself.My hand is a zillion times more mine than my husband will ever be.When it comes to another human being, we can’t take the word ‘mine’ too literally.No one abandons a relationship that makes them happy.No one cheats on a relationship that fulfils his or her needs.No one can be held down, held back, or controlled indefinitely.The only way to guarantee that the one you love is going to be there is to seek to make that person feel important, appreciated, loved, and most of all respected.

There are always two complete individuals and the relationship.The part of you that enters the relationship is the part of you who thinks first of the other – first my love, then us, then me.If you do this there will be times when you sacrifice what you want for your partner, but there will be equal times when your partner does the same for you.You don’t need to be in a relationship to worry about yourself, you can do that alone.

Forget about being right and never even consider winning. In a relationship if one person wins the fight, both lose the war. Sometimes we want our partners to think the same way as we do about everything. Only, if they really begin to do that we begin to feel that the person we fell in love with has been possessed by a member of the Stepford community. And sometimes if they don’t, we fear that we will lose our partner to someone who thinks the way that he or she does. If you are on opposing sides of an issue, respect the other’s right to see things from a different perspective than yours. If you have left your ego, and your baggage outside, an explanation, or saying, “These are the reasons that I feel this way…” may or may not convert the other person, but at least that person will have an understanding of why your beliefs are what they are and understanding in itself should make honoring your right to your beliefs easier.

Some beliefs, often religious or political are never going to become one.However, they are deeply charged with emotion and should not be criticized, discussed perhaps, but never critically.If there are little things that your partner needs that to you seem ridiculous – honor them.You will have you own share of ridiculous needs to be honored.

At some point in a relationship we realize that we do not want to continue without the other person. Not too long after that we have our first fight and realize that this unbelievable, one of a kind, made in heaven relationship is not indestructible. This causes that monster fear to raise its head. We become possessive, and jealous. At which point we remarkably do everything possible to alienate the person that we feel we can’t live without. We forget the most important thing, for some reason that can be articulated, this other person decided that he or she wanted to commit to us. What is important here is that whatever made that person, come to that decision was something about who we were, and what we did. It was never a specific thing, it was a mode of behavior, a way of being – what comes from the heart that beats inside of us. If you love someone and want to keep that person by your side till death do you part, be who you were when that person fell in love with you, and even more, when that person chose you to commit to.

We want to go to heaven but we don’t want to die.We want a guarantee that our partner will never leave us, but we don’t want to do the work to make them stay.If you are not sure as to what you should do, or if you have been fighting for so long that you have forgotten, ask your partner this, “What was it that made you want to spend your life with me?”“What can I do to make you want a life with me as badly as you did in the beginning?”This is not asking who else you should become, or, who else you should act like, it is asking what part of who you are that you have not been lately, or you could be more of.

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Wash yourselves, make yourself clean.
Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes;
Cease to do evil.

Learn to do well.
Seek justice,
Relieve the oppressed,
Judge the fatherless,
Plead for the widow.

Isaiah 1:15—17

Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto the Lord what is the Lord’s”.

The Lord gets the soul and Caesar gets the taxes.  This is very important because we have come so far from being able to clearly make that distinction.  It may be easy to say what is Caesar’s—it is the price, in coin, that we pay for anything material. It is the rendering of that which is of the material to the material.  Yet, when it comes to what is the Lords we become a little lost.  So, let us specify some of those things which belong to the Lord.  These things are: our compassion, our faith, our hope, and above all—our adherence to the most important of Commandments, “Love thy neighbor as thyself”.  This commandment translates into the Golden Rule, “Do unto others that which you would have others do unto you”.

When we do not live up to that Golden Rule, then we are rendering unto Caesar what is the Lords.  When our material gain requires the loss of someone else’s faith, or hope, or even life—we are rendering unto Caesar what belongs to God.  So it is also when we are not living our lives with compassion, love and forgiveness.  For what is Caesar’s is not simply those things of Mammon—gold, silver, or wealth.  What is Caesars are greed, envy, judgment, hatred, and revenge.  If we take from others or cause directly or indirectly their harm for the sake of those emotions, then, we are rendering unto Caesar what belongs to God.

If, to succeed in the world of Mammon, as it was known then, or Capitalism as it is known now, we feel that we must render unto Caesar what belongs to God, then, regardless of how we justify ourselves we are stealing from God.  This is why Jesus said that man cannot serve two masters:

No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

Luke 16:13

This was not an admonition—it was a statement of fact.  Yet, He also says that if we first seek the Kingdom of Heaven, all else will be added unto us.  What this means is that if we live by the Golden Rule, show justice, compassion, love and forgiveness—whatever material gain we do receive, and we will receive it, will be blessed by the Spiritual.  This is the blessing of the age to come.  It will be that of balance.  All will give and therefore all will receive, all will share therefore all will have—and what they have will be imbued with the qualities of generosity and love.  The Lord and Caesar will be one—the essence of the Lord in the world.

How do we get so lost?  It happens little by little, like all paths that lead away from God.  We make little, almost unnoticeable compromises, that we, perhaps promise ourselves that we will later undo, or make right.  Then it is as if we become lost in a fog that becomes thicker and thicker the farther we go.  Soon, the compromises grow larger and larger and our resolve to make right transforms into our justification that we are right.  Finally, we are either too lost to find our way back or too mesmerized by the glitter ahead of us to want to.

This is where man is today.  We have over the past millennium become so lost in the world of the senses that we have decided it is where we should be.  It makes no difference whether that world consists of our mansions, our corporations and our big cars—or the superiority of our religion over that of any other.  It is only a matter of exchanging one worldly obsession for another because in all cases the cost of sustaining our obsession is born by our souls.  Whether we are willing to kill for oil, kill for country, or kill for God—the result is the same—a broken commandment.

Yet, mankind’s destiny of harmony is fated to be learned through conflict—it is how we grow as individuals, as families, as nations and as a species.  Over the past two thousand years it has been the conflict between the spiritual and the material, and between the heart and the mind, good and evil.  Yet in the new age we will unite heart and mind to form Wisdom and through that wisdom we will unite the spiritual that is within us with the material that we are made of and spirit will truly inhabit the flesh and God will inhabit the world.

The lessons of this age have been carried in through the words of Jesus Christ for He ushered in the age of Pisces.  Many times in His sayings He mentions the “end of this age”, that phrase is synonymous with Judgment Day.  It is the day that this generation graduates.  I believe that this day is not a day but a time—a period of years, perhaps decades—which will fully bring us into the Age of Aquarius.  Christ said, “…For there are five trees for you in Paradise that remain undisturbed summer and winter and whose leaves do not fall.  Whoever becomes aquatinted with them will not experience death”. The trees are Faith, Charity, Joy, Peace and Hope.

His teachings were the same teachings as all of the prophets before him, yet, they were like the mustard seed in their growth around the world. Many people now, in the Christian world are talking about the ascension in flesh.  This certainly seems like the best time to ascend.  I believe that we do not really understand what that means. The physical world is a world of death.  It is the valley of the shadow of death, because death is all around us, yet our souls walk through the shadow of death because our souls never experience it.  By this time many of us are realizing that heaven is within not in some place out there.  Since heaven is within, then we must certainly ascend to Heaven while we are in the flesh.  This ascension is finding God or Spirit within ourselves and living it in our lives.  Christ says, “For he (man) did not find it in the day he was in the body, so that he will not find it in the Day of Judgment”. It is stated in other words in Hebrews 12:14 “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord”

We must live this commandment that was stressed by Jesus Christ:

The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. And then You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

He said, ”Get behind me Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men”.  Here again it is the same choice, either the things of God or the things of Men.  We have been battling this choice over the past millennium.  We reached a point in the 80’s where the God that we worshipped was Satan.

If you look at the devil in the Rider Waite Tarot Deck, you will notice that the devil is holding the man and woman with chains.  However, the chains are not locked, representing the fact that they can leave at any time.  That card called the Devil represents our being chained to the material world.  In reality the devil is not some horned creature in physical form.  It does not require weird ceremonies and the sacrifice of virgins.  The devil requires corporate downsizing to increase profits, factory closings to make more money, and the sacrifice of people’s livelihoods for the sake of greed.  The Devil requires us to build ourselves up by putting others down.  The devil requires that we hate and steal, whether it is a purse or someone’s business, or walking over the homeless on the street without even acknowledging their existence.

It requires that we condemn people because their beliefs are different to ours, or they look different to us.   It is an energy that tempts us with the material world and binds us by our passion and our greed for possessions.  It is that passion for worldly things, and for power over others, that is the fire of hell.  Jesus said, “A grapevine has been planted apart from the Father. Since it is not strong, it will be pulled up by its root and will perish.” Gospel of Thomas

For those things have no soul and cannot lead us in any way to God, but in fact, lead us away.  The devil is all things that are void of love.

Many say that there is a battle going on between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.  This causes a kind of imagery that I am not at this time comfortable with.  Yet, there is a battle being waged now between the Spiritual and the Material.  However we describe it the energy is the same.  Yet a battle between darkness and light feels like a battle that is going on outside of us.  The battle is not outside but is really being waged within.  Energy is energy it has no form.  We give it form and we direct it.  Our choices will decide either which side wins, or if we can find the Wisdom to make peace between the two.  There is an Hasidic Quotation that goes as follows :

On the day of destruction, power lies at the bottom of the deep and grows. If a pregnant woman goes into labor in the eighth month, when the time is not yet come, doctors try to stop her labor. But not so in the ninth month. If the woman goes into labor then, doctors try to increase it, so that she may soon give birth. That is why, formerly, when people called to heaven, begging God to free the earth of some misery, their prayer was granted, for the time was not yet come. But now that redemption is near, no prayer which ascends in behalf of the sorrowful world is of avail, but sorrow is heaped upon sorrow, so that the birth may soon be accomplished.

This is the same as saying that while we are learning, if we ask the teacher a question we are immediately given the answer.  However, on the day of the final exam we will not be given any answers for now it is time for our knowledge and our ability to learn to be tested.  If and how the end comes will depend upon our choices, but it is certainly clear that sorrow upon sorrow is being heaped upon the world.  Yet we cannot pray for God to make things better, we must pray for God to give us a chance to make ourselves better.

Everything is catching up to us now.  We are destroying the earth and the things of God, so that we may make more room and have more resources for the things of the material world.  The more life that we destroy the more nature is destroying us.

Some delusional being decided one day that if we are created in the image of God, then we have to power of God.  Over the past two thousand years we have built our own Tower of Babel.  We have treated Mother Nature as though she were a thing to suck dry.  She lives, and as we are seeing in the Gulf and around the world through disaster after disaster…she reacts.

All of the hatred and prejudice that we each repress is being played out by the racists and terrorists.  Yet they are not acting in a vacuum, they are absorbing what has been hidden, the emotions that motivate those who move to segregated neighborhoods although they do not consider themselves prejudice, those who do not approve inter-racial or even inter-religious marriages, yet they do not consider themselves prejudice.  It is all of these hidden feelings that are becoming manifest.  Christ said, “For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. [And there is nothing buried that will not be raised.]” Gospel of Thomas.  In Ecclesiastes 3, there is a time for every purpose under the Sun.  This, is the time to reap.

There are those of us who realize that in order to effect change we must open our eyes, however unpleasant, to that which must be changed.  There are those who will hide from what is front of their faces and seek a liar to tell sooth them.  The ancient alchemists knew that the world “out there” and the world within ourselves is the same.  They saw that my separateness from you is the illusion.

Most people have resentments and prejudices that they hide, perhaps even from themselves, but now those feelings are being acted out within our society.   We can no longer profess love and compassion we must become love and compassion.  We can no longer consider ourselves alone.  As an astrologer, I am one of those who believe that the Judgment Day began officially on August 11^th 1999, the day of the Great Millennium Eclipse.  This is our last chance to connect with our spirit.

We must begin to consider our immediate family one that is global.  This generation of souls entered in the Age of Leo, and it is love in its highest form that we must learn.  Up till now we have been learning to develop our individual abilities and our individual sense of self.  Now in the Age of Aquarius we will be asked to take that love and sense of self and use it to serve the greater good of all.  We were not meant to learn this the easy way.  Yet how hard it is depends upon us.  As it stands, we must learn it through terrorism, disasters, wars, hatred and disease. The good thing is that we still have a choice.  We can still change.  This moment in history is critical.

The earth is attacking us with a vengeance; we are attacking each other in the same way and will continue to do so until we learn what we are here to learn.  Christ said,

Men think, perhaps, that it is peace which I have come to cast upon the world.   They do not know that it is dissension which I have come to cast upon the earth: fire, sword, and war.  For there will be five in a house: three will be against two, and two against three, the father against the son, and the son against the father.  And they will stand solitary.

To stand solitary means to stand united as one.  This is the purpose of what we are experiencing and will continue to experience into the new millennium.

Our collective unconscious, the fabric that holds us together has begun to tear apart, to have holes in it, just as the ozone layer has on the physical plane.  We no longer have agreements to rely on.  We are lost and seeking some firm ground to stand on. People see three sides of every issue, question every rule and break or ignore every law.

Things will change and we will be a part of that change, whether it is through disaster or through love.  We have history for us to learn from.  How many empires crumble because they become too heavy on top for the foundation to support.  We must evenly distribute material of our world because there are cracks in the foundation and it soon will collapse.  We can create that change if we begin within our own hearts.  The world that we live in is the one that we create.  Not merely by our actions but by our true intentions.  We must change the world outside by changing the world inside.  We must become one in truth.   We must find the one truth, because we can no longer agree on any facts.

We are at the end of an Age.  We must connect with those five trees, eat their fruits and become them. So it is important to know what the core curriculum was, and that core curriculum has been taught by sages and prophets since the beginning of time.  It is the Word of God, spoken in all languages and by all of His incarnations.   In this millennium, our teacher in the west has been Jesus Christ.  It is time to love.  Love someone each day, help someone each day and just give of your heart.  We must make the changes in the world by making them within ourselves.  It is never too late, not as long as we are here.  There is no help that we cannot receive for us to be saved.  But we have to choose who we will serve.  Heaven will be on earth when it is alive within the hearts of man hearts.  We must make every season the season of giving.  We are the lost sheep, and when we return to our hearts we will be found.  Jesus said:

The (Father’s) kingdom is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep. One of them, the largest, went astray. He left the ninety-nine and looked for the one until he found it.  After he had toiled, he said to the sheep, ‘I love you more than the ninety-nine.

And those who assumed the form of my type will assume the form of my Word.  Indeed, these will come forth in light forever and (in) friendship with each other in the spirit, since they have known in every respect (and) indivisibility that what is, is ONE.  (Gnostic Scriptures, The Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Jesus speaking about himself, 65:19-33)

Having done a number of past life regressions for people, I have found a whole new appreciation for and understanding of karma, sort of karma for dummies. Karma is really something that we have to learn – plain and simple. Here is an example of karma for myself, in this life. I have carried over into this life a feeling of extreme vulnerability in the physical world. My father was one of those larger than life characters, someone my husband would call a “Mans’ man”. I grew up feeling completely safe with him around. I did not take into considerations his character flaws, I just saw him as a MAN who was tough and strong and so he could keep the monsters away and insure my safety.

As I began dating, I was attracted to men who could protect me. The type of man that many woman are attracted to – MACHO. I was attracted to dragon slayers. I liked men who kept the masses at bay either through their financial power, or that physical energy that some men just emit. I met these men, and, as was my karma, they were equally attracted to me. We would even fall in love, or, more aptly put when referring to karma, we would fall into obsession. After countless disappointments, and sometimes a little violence, I found that the men I attracted to my life were not strong, at least not when it came to a strength that required more than lifting heavy rocks. In the end it always came back to my own strength. It was my karma to take responsibility for myself. Each time I handed over responsibility for my well-being to someone else, I paid a price, in love, in business, in anyway. Another karma that I had was with my self-worth and my lovability. Each time that I turned to someone else to show me that I was worthy, they challenged my worth. Karma is not necessarily about something that you have done to someone else, or to others in general – sometimes, very often, it is about something that you have to do for yourself.

My grandmother believed that she could not be loved for herself; she believed that she had to buy it, or place herself in a position that others needed her. She couldn’t give, although that is what she thought that she was doing – but there was a debt to pay for her giving and somehow in her mind this exchange was as close as she could come to being loved. My grandmother held on to every penny that she could. She did nothing, went nowhere and only used her money to hold on to the people that she loved. She believed that no one really loved her or could love her so she saved every penny. In her mind, no one would be there for her when she was old so she didn’t want to be in a position to have to depend on anyone, who she believed, would only reject her. After an unfortunate and unforeseen karmic turn of events she lost everything and had no choice but to rely on the kindness of strangers. However, those people that she was so sure would not be there for her when she was in need, turned out with open hearts blessing her with all of the love that she never believed possible in her life. That too was karma. It was the karma of learning. It is all the karma of learning.

I have a friend that I regressed to a number of past lives. In each one she was some kind of slave. Someone who was not given any value, except for one life, in which she did find and relish her own value and her own accomplishments after a childhood of being devalued. However, old habits die hard and she brought that same unworthy mindset into this life and was treated as a lesser being by the same souls who had done it to her in her past lives. However in this life she is learning and beginning step by step to assert her own power. And with each experience in which she does this – she finds that those souls who once intimidated her begin to treat her with greater respect. This is karma also. Perhaps with this karmic reinforcement she will become one with her own power and her own worth and the lesson will not require more lives, the karma will have been released. Most times we return to learn our lessons with the same souls but wearing different costumes in a different set. I believe that we choose to experience these lessons with the same souls not because they owe us, or we them, but because that soul level contact awakens in us those feelings that we need to rise above. We are innately intimidated by those who have left us with scars of feeling less than in past lives. Just as we awaken in them a need to treat us in a way that they may not really understand themselves in this lifetime. It is not so much that they do it to us, and then we do it to them. It is better explained as they do it to us over and over again, lifetime after lifetime until we do not allow it anymore. I have often heard someone say to me, “I don’t understand it, I only act this way with you”. It is because this drama is between us. Generally, this drama, repeated over lifetimes on different stages teaches a lesson to all parties involved, and it is repeated until the lessons are learned.

Of course there are the karmas that involve race, religion, social status, and power. Someone may be very poor in one life, and feel enormous resentment towards those who have more. That person may come back again poor, but in the next life that soul has the opportunity to amass great wealth. The lesson is in how they handle that wealth, just as there is a lesson in how one handles poverty. All roads lead to love, compassion, empathy, understanding, acceptance and brotherhood. All of these things must be learned but not just for the benefit of others but equally for the benefit of ourselves. Karma is ultimately about learning the lessons of unconditional love which inevitably leads us to the knowledge that we are all One, and that the totality of that One of which we all are is God.

We write our karma as we go along. We write the plot for our next life in this one. Reincarnation is about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes. Karma is the path that we walk that mile on so that we may learn the true love of God, of other and of self and know that there is not differentiation between the three. That is the trinity that has existed since the beginning of time and before. Karma is not complicated. It contains no judgment, no punishment and no reward, except perhaps the reward of becoming the Love that we so desperately seek.

When I was young, I was deeply affected by the emotional pain experienced by the people around me. I was especially sensitive to the fact that it was not inescapable pain but really self-inflicted. The greatest pain seemed to be caused by those we care for and sometimes even by those who care for us. My reaction to the pain of those around me and to my own, was to determine to live my life in a way which would focus on helping those in pain, and trying not to be the cause of pain for others. I was naive enough to want to see people happy. I grew up in an environment so devoid of trust and faith that I was going to carry enough for everyone. To me, it was so important to trust and to be trusted. Although I was often hurt or disappointed, it did not stop me from being true to the person that I believed I should be.

One day, in my early twenties, I was with a group of co-workers, speaking openly and honestly, when a friend pulled me aside and told me that everyone was not laughing with me they were laughing at me. She told me that I was kind and trusting, and people just saw it as stupid. She said that I had to change to protect myself.

A few years later, I had a friend who started calling me a weak ass. It bothered me but I wasn’t comfortable confronting her about it at first. I knew she thought I was too nice especially to people she didn’t feel deserved it. One day, I asked her why she called me that and she told me that if everyone in the world was like me—it would be a beautiful place, but since everyone was not, I was a weak ass. I respected her honesty and I also knew that in her way, it was a compliment. In the end, my being what she called, a weak ass was the reason she had chosen me as one of the few people that she really trusted.

During my early twenties, I did a great deal of soul searching. The truth was, that people were very difficult for me to deal with. I didn’t find it easy to make friends, because most people saw me as someone to take advantage of. Each group was somehow formed around its sense of superiority to other groups. I didn’t feel superior to anyone, and that affected my ability to fit in. At some point, probably during one of those painful times, I thought of the ways in which I could change and so avoid the endless hurts and disappointments that seemed to be a permanent part of my life. I realized that I could put up a cold wall, I could expect the worst from others, and take before I was taken. I could choose my friends based on how much they had to offer me, or how good it made me look to be with them. I could do those things that I had for so long been advised to do—or I could accept that who I was, was who I had always wanted to be. Because I realized that I was the person I would have wanted as a friend, and that, was the highest goal that I ever wanted to achieve within myself. I would rather have been who I was—alone—than to have allowed the experiences of my life to control me and to determine who I was as a person.

This is what is called dharma. It is living the life that is truly natural to your soul. It is really being your true self and living in accordance with that true self. There is a story of a Bodhisattva who was sitting by the water’s edge. A priest who was approaching him heard him saying “ouch” repeatedly. As he drew nearer, he noticed there was a scorpion that was drowning. As he watched the scorpion and the Bodhisattva he was astonished to see that each time the scorpion began to drown, the Bodhisattva reached into the water and pulled it out. And each time after each time it was being pulled out of the water the scorpion would sting the Bodhisattva’s hand. Afters it was pulled out the scorpion would return to the water and the scenario would be repeated.

The priest looked at the Bodhisattva in frustration and asked, “Master, you know that the scorpion is going to sting you, why do you repeatedly lift it out of the water?” The Bodhisattva responded, “It is the dharma of the scorpion to sting—and it is my dharma to save.” In this lifetime “to save” is not everyone’s dharma. There are even those humans whose dharma is to “sting”. Yet many, whose dharma it is to save, to help, and to love his fellow man—hold back out of fear of rejection or ridicule. So instead, they do what others do and, in acting against their dharma, they sadly create unnecessary karma.

It is my belief, and this is very personal, that it is the innate desire of each person to be loved unconditionally and to be allowed—regardless of past actions—to be the best one can be. I once read somewhere that loving is giving what you most need to receive. And this is why I say that this is personal, because it is what I would want to be given to me. So I chose to give others an opportunity to be trusted, even if they had not shown themselves to be trustworthy in the past, and to create a non-judgmental space for people to feel safe enough to change if they chose to do so. Perhaps, eight out of ten times this proved disastrous for me, but it wasn’t a personal loss because, having given something consciously, it was not taken from me. When I claimed my power, I claimed my right to give, to love, and to succeed in what I measured as success which was to be the best human being that I could. I no longer perceived myself as being a victim because I made the choice. I no longer perceived myself as being used or taken advantage of because I made a choice. Regardless of the perceptions of others, within myself I was becoming successful and that feeling was empowering.

Someone said that there are no bad people—only bad choices. I believe that because society is so fearful and so judgmental that some of us become forced into living out the persona of those bad choices in spite of an inner desire to rise above them. This is what happens to us during the Christmas season. It is a frozen moment in time when we may safely, without fear of loss or judgment, bring out what is best within us. We may experience the joy of giving and of sharing without feeling foolish, without fearing that we will be used or taken advantage of. The fears of our society have made those for whom giving and loving are the source of joy feel weak and defective. We have equated kindness not only with stupidity but with what this society considers to be the most detestable fault that one can have—that of weakness. My own father went to his grave fearing for my survival because of those exact traits that most endeared me to him.

For too long, people who do really care about the welfare of others have been made to feel ashamed of that feeling. They are either labeled, “Bleeding Heart Liberals”, or made to believe that they suffer from some form of inferiority complex. And to a large extent they do suffer from a complex. This is because there has been no place in the everyday world for good people. Even hearing the word in my head as I write makes me almost feel as those I am describing a leper. Good people have to find their own path and fight the world, their loved ones, and even themselves so as to stay on it. It has been very difficult after goodness lost favor with the general public in response to the sixties. So, unless one fits into the category of being an aged hippy, or a left over love child—good people have little or no support for their beliefs about life and the way to live it. I found that it is easy to feel confident when you believe in who you are. It was the believing that took some time, but it always does when you are swimming against the tide. The thing to remember is that it only takes one person to make a path—anywhere—and everyone else will eventually follow. It takes belief to develop confidence, and a willingness to walk alone to make that path, but once the path is made, you are not alone for long.

Now, it is time for all of the bleeding hearts to be proud that their hearts are not too cold, or too hard to bleed. It is time that we acknowledge that it is neither bad nor stupid to be good. It is spiritual. And one does not have to join an order to be spiritual and to live a life that exemplifies the spiritual principals taught by every Light that God has sent down to earth to lead us. For too long, we have bought into that dog eat dog world. We are not animals we are spiritual beings. We are meant to rise above survival of the fittest and that dog eat dog belief. We are meant to love, to care, and to be our brother’s keeper. We don’t have to wait until it becomes cool or in, to be good we have to be good long enough, and with enough courage and conviction that it becomes cool. There are no catchy phrases which praise being a good person. There are only phrases denigrating it. If someone is too good—then they are not true, or they are a stupid, a wimp, an easy mark, or a sucker. It actually amazes me that one can’t be too thin, or can’t be too rich, but one can be too good! We have gone so far down the wrong path that when someone does something right or is too decent, or humane, either their motives or their intelligence are immediately suspect.

It is time to lift ourselves out of the jungle where only the strong survive. It is time to leave the kingdom where dogs eat dogs and enter the kingdom where mankind can love and care for all living things. It is time for us to rise to the position that is befitting those who were created in the image of God, that image of the loving, caring, and forgiving caretaker that God is. How can we speak in His name, when we ourselves celebrate the animal in us and demean the God in us? God is goodness. If enough people find the courage to be proud of caring, proud of giving, and proud of trusting, then others will find it wise and cool to do the same. The world is in sore need of all the loving, giving, caring people it can support. And that does not mean confined in a religious order, but out in the world living an example that others can be encouraged to follow. There is an infinite distance between nowhere and the first step, but once that first step is taken, we find that the universe takes our hand the rest of the way.