Here in Austin,

The Dragonfly Gallery, at

4007 Marathon Drive, is hosting its second annual

Holiday OLE Bazaar on

Dec 2, 9:30 am – 6:30 pm.

A large variety of artists and craftspersons will have material you can purchase for Christmas gifts–or just for YOU.  And what’s best, EVERYTHING is $99 or less!

I will have handcrafted baby sweaters, baby blankets, scarves and shawls for sale, and welcome you to come see my stuff and all the other wonderful creations!

March 3, 2011; 6-8 pm at the Unitarian Church Gallery; 4700 Grover Avenue; Austin, TX

Featuring Thirty Five Miniature Tapestries by Anne Beversdorf  (including five brand-new ones).

Please come to this modest reception, bring your friends, nibble and drink, and enjoy the first opportunity anywhere to see ALL my unsold works in one place!

These tapestries, are made of silk and metallic thread and embellished with beads, faceted gemstones, and freshwater pearls.  They depict sacred images adapted from medieval imagery and other sources from Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions.  Each image is smaller than a piece of typing paper and takes an average of 400 hours to make, with over 500 stitches per square inch.

This is a blatant and free advertisement for my friend and healer, Evelyn Talmadge.
Evelyn has been an amazing catalyst for me.  This has been one of those “growth years”… and Austin-based Evelyn Talmadge has turned chaos into new patterns for me.  She has a process and a name for what she does, but as far as I’m concerned, her skill is in asking the right questions.  Her questions have turned up issues I wasn’t even conscious of, and her process transforms them.
Here are two examples.
1.  Evelyn’s questioning made me aware that I was afraid of people in some deep way–that my behaviors were based on a fear that I would be “discovered” for something which would place me in danger, and that I had to trust myself only, and couldn’t trust others to help me.  As she probed for when I began feeling like this (pre-verbal stories about my infancy even showed this trait) I suddenly had a FLASH vision.   I saw myself as a slave girl in ancient Rome who was doing Everything Possible to get free.  This probably included blackmail, kidnapping, and other actions that could get me killed.  I finally did get free, living a long and comfortable life in the country–but in that entire lifetime I was always afraid of meeting someone who would recognize me, and always kept my story hidden, in case I’d be captured and killed.  After this vision, my experience of others has changed.  The San Diego trip felt like a love-fest–I was able to receive the love freely given to me rather than fearing and not trusting it.  This shift is holding, too.
2.  More recently, a sense of “emptiness” was traced to my Dad’s feeling that he got the short end of the fairness stick in his own childhood.  This made him feel empty and unrecognized.  Even though I had a blessed childhood, I was carrying my Dad’s issue.  Feeling unrecognized (this was also probably related to hiding, as in the previous issue!), I tried to fill the emptiness with unnecessary snacking, worries, and even by picking up his asthma.  Immediately after this session I was able to Choose whether to snack late at night (and said No several nights in a row), and am sensing a shift in my sense of fulfillment.
The bottom line is, I’m recommending Evelyn to anyone with issues, large and/or small.  She has a way of shifting you into a new experience which immediately feels more natural and less stressful.  You can contact Evelyn Talmadge HERE. Her Facebook page is HERE and her web page is HERE.

Here’s what I’ve been thinking:  The powerful planets lining up in repeated collision patterns this summer are important, I know, because they are all crossing “Zero Cardinal” in the tropical zodiac: The World Point.  But of course, I’m also a Vedic astrologer, using the sidereal zodiac.  In that system, these planets are playing around 23 degrees of mutable signs.  So why do we consider these important degrees?

Wheels within Wheels

Because….  These are the cornerstones of the earth in time.  The planets of this summer are crossing and recrossing the solstice and equinox points: The four corners of the year.  The foundation stones of Earth.  Solstices and equinoxes link our planet to the sun and moon and solar system.  They measure our earthly calendar, orienting us in both time and space.   THESE are the points that are being rocked this year.

The planets involved in this pattern (Pluto, Uranus, Saturn and sometimes the faster planets) were tangled up with each other in the mid 1960′s as well.  Certainly those were years of tumult, change, and new ideas entering the zeitgeist.  But at that time none of these big planets were crossing the Solstice/Equinox points–what I’ll be calling the “cornerstones” here.

The Mayans describe the end of a world age as a “changing of the hearth”.  Suddenly I’m seeing that they are speaking quite literally.  The cornerstones of our understanding of time and space are very much our spiritual “hearth”.  And the summer of 2010 is the peak point of applying metaphorical planetary sledge-hammers to the cornerstones.

To put this into an even larger perspective, let’s look at some more issues of the Mayan system.  Their calendar was based on the cycle of Venus.  (Venus has an interesting geometrical cycle, by the way.  It’s path through the solar system creates a perfect 5-pointed star.)  A notable part of the Venus cycle is its periodic “occultation”.  Basically you can think of this as a Venusian/Sun eclipse pattern.  It takes 184 years, and the cycle ends with two “eclipses” within 8 years of each other.   The most recent one was in 2008, and the next is 2012.

Something else happened in 2008.  This was the year that Pluto crossed the cornerstone point, went backwards over that point again, and then moved forward over the same point again.   If you visualize the cornerstones as the edges of a giant concrete slab, Pluto spent months sitting on this slab with a metaphorical jackhammer, then rested, then went back for more, then rested, then went back for more.   This was the beginning of the pattern of 2010, where many other planets started ganging up on the other corners.  This was the beginning of tearing down the old hearth in order to install a new one.

There’s another interesting piece to the dynamic of these years.  All of the planets (except the Sun and Moon) have periods of retrograde motion as seen from the earth.  At various times, if you’re a sky-watcher, you’ll see them move backwards, against the normal rotation of the stars and planets in the sky.  When measured across the 30-degrees of each sign, there isn’t a

It was the early 1980′s when I first started reading about past lives and recovering memories of them.  These were pretty traumatic years in my life.  My dad died in early 1981 and my marriage was a mess.  In 1984 my husband gave me an ultimatum:  Move out and give him space to get his head together, or he’d simply file for divorce and force the issue.  I was addicted to this patently dysfunctional relationship, and I was still fighting to keep it, so I moved into an apartment complex close to my work.

One evening, lying in bed in the early evening in abject misery, I asked to see a lifetime that would shed light on the relationship between me and my husband.  I had been lying there, quietly pondering the state of my life at that time.  I wasn’t meditating, and can’t explain how I was simply “dropped into” a very clear vision.  Oddly, the images that came did not directly answer my question at all.  They simply showed me a different time, place, and life experience.   If I were to relate it to my current life, it seemed specifically to address my relationship with my second sister.  Sarah was born when I was a physically mature 11-year-old (so I pretended she was “MY” baby), and she died of an accidental drowning when I was 13, shattering my life and that of my family, and turning my faith in the goodness of life upside down.  This has been the defining “issue” in my life.

So here’s what I saw.  At first, I saw myself from outside, like watching a movie.  Then the perspective shifted and I was inside my body, experiencing the scene from the first person, including the surprising sensory experience of smelling the environment.

First, I saw myself, heavily pregnant, getting ready to cross a narrow street.  I was dressed in “plain” clothing:  homespun material in a dull grey-brown, with a white cap tightly covering my hair and a white apron, worn high over the great mound of my belly.  My clothing was not the popular style, but was a proud signature of my religious beliefs.  Unfortunately, I was pregnant without a husband.

I looked across the narrow street.  This was a proud city–no dirt pathways here.  It had cobblestone streets and impressive (to me, though to my modern mind they looked primitive), two-story, graystone buildings on each side.  The streets were no more than 10-12 feet wide, and while there were curbs on each side, there weren’t exactly sidewalks.  The curb was no more than a narrow step off the streetlevel:  barely enough room for walkers to get out of the path of oncoming carriages.   There was a shop sign I could see clearly, although it conveyed its message wordlessly.  A bright red painting of a tomato on a brown wooden sign announced exotic foodstuffs.

I was visiting this small city from a countryside home.  I’d ridden in on a rough wagon with someone–my mother?–driving it, and this shopping expedition was meant to be swift and practical.  Right now I was on my own, my attention directed to a shop across the street where I meant to finish my business.   As I crossed the street a great noise and clamour precipitated the “story” that would unfold before my consciousness.  Faster than I could think, a carraige with four horses raced through the street at a madly reckless speed.  In shock and fear I ran the last few steps to reach the curb and get out of the way, but my skirts were caught by the horses hooves and I was pulled under the carraige.

Now my center of awareness shifted.   I was inside my body, looking up.  I could smell the pungent and rotting combination of horse dung, night-soil, and rotting vegetation in the street around me.  I could see the chartreuse green satin breeches of a “fancy” man and sensed that he was trying to get the gathering crowd to step back to give me air.  Then I lost consciousness.

When my awareness returned, I was in what seemed like a hospital ward, under street level.  There was a row of very narrow cots under a series of high windows through which you could see the feet of passersby on the pavement level above.  The ward smelled much worse than the street. The street smell was alive, even though it smelled bad.  The ward smelled of death: seriously rotting flesh, a sharp, throat-biting smell that could have been fresh blood, perhaps combined with some pungent chemical–lye perhaps?  [The words "carbolic acid" came to my mind, though my subsequent research indicates this wasn't known til the mid 1800's and my imagery seemed much older.  I'd guess the late 17th century.]

Then I could see someone carrying away my baby.  She (I think it was a girl) was wrapped in a white cloth that trailed on the floor.  (My modern mind thought it must have been a sheet, but years later I learned that in early enlightenment England, babies wore long white gowns that trailed on the floor.  My vision wasn’t focused enough to be able to discern the difference.)   I saw two women, also in “plain” clothes, who seemed to be related to me–mother and sister?–holding each other and weeping.  I kept calling for someone to bring me my baby, but no one could hear me.

Then the ‘vision’ ended.  I lay there astounded by the smells and the vivid realness of what I’d just experienced.  Little did I know that this was only the first of my travels through time.

I googled images  for 16th and 17th century villages.  The scene I saw would be kind of a combination of these two images.  The narrow street was similar to the French village picture, but the color of the stones is wrong and the street seems to be unpaved.  The British picture shows a modern highway, but the buildings are more like what I was seeing.

The stones are not as dirty-gray as those in my vision.

This narrow sense of streets, with no curbs or sidewalks is similar to “my” village.

• “Wow. This aging thing may be the most universal of stories, but it is nonetheless shocking to witness. Transformation before our very eyes, but without our seeing it most of the time.”

Reminds me of the time my much much younger brother, on seeing pics of Mom when I was a kid, saying to her…

“Mom!   You used to be a Beautiful Lady!”

Well!  I guess “facts is facts”.  Oh dear.

The cost for the whole series is $45.00.  If you’d like to listen to a sample, check out the podcast called Knowing Pluto, in the drop-down list under Podcasts.

Here’s the link to the recordings

As an astrologer, I sometimes tell people our future is pulling us toward it.  This is a different tweak on the idea, which combines the concept of multiple future possibilities which “condense” into actuality.   (Which is why astrologers see possibilities, strong possibilities, or weak possibilities, and can characterize the energy footprint of those possibilities, but the details are being created by the sequence of NOWs between the present and the future event.)

Anne

Click HERE

That said, what I CAN do is describe the aroma of the energy soup we’re all traveling through, and I can tell you, there’s a lot of jalapeno in this soup!   Thursday, the 29th, Saturn entered tropical Libra, creating an even more tense pattern with Pluto.

Saturn is the “fear things won’t be the way I think they SHOULD be” planet, and Pluto is the energy of “fear of loss of control.”  Additionally, each of these planets ramps up fears in general, so there is an increased generalized tension having to do with fears that the world is running out of control in a way you don’t personally like.   Since this is a very strong energy pattern, and it WILL be impacting many people, we are likely to see public acting out of this fear pattern.  Sometimes this can take the form of outside agencies promising that taking certain socially disruptive (or even violent) action will help restore the status quo.  The problem is, this is inchoate energy.  There is no single focus of discontent.  There is simply a large number of people who are strongly unhappy about their own idiosyncratic issue.  We’ve seen this lack of focus in the “Tea Party” movement, where largish numbers of people gather to protest… well, to protest almost as many things as there are people standing there.

This Saturn/Pluto/fear energy pattern doesn’t affect everyone directly, but each of us will be standing in the general energy “soup” and watching others react as this energy pattern gets stronger and stronger through the month of November.

If these energies do happen to affect you personally, you will be aware that things in your own life are moving in a direction you believe is WRONG, and as much as you may try to control the situation, you can’t.   Pluto’s purpose here is to get you out of the rut that has so completely stunted your vision that you literally can’t see beyond it.   If you are in one of these crisis-like situations my advice, going against every grain of passion in you, is not to fight the situation.  Winning will cost you more than surrender.   And surrender will lead you to your own personal Elysian Fields once you leave the rut that’s binding you.

After writing this to the group who requested it, someone wrote me privately asking when the Elysian Fields come, how we get there, and how we recognize them.   First, the “Elysian Fields” as a metaphor is a bit hyperbolic.  Generally what I hear is “That was the most difficult thing I’ve ever lived through, but I have to say I’m not sorry it happened.  As a result, I got shifted into a whole different place in life that I could never have imagined before all that, and which is a much better, happier, and more authentic place for me.”  (The “Elysian Fields” doesn’t mean “happily ever after”.)

The metaphorical Elysian Fields comes after the surrender.  We’re dealing with situations that are literally beyond both our control and our understanding.  One effect is to push us into an area where our horizons are expanded, and we can see new possibilities.  The path to the Elysian Fields is deliberately and (with Saturn’s help) with discipline, to recognize when we’re in the obsessed fighting state and do anything possible to find one activity that brings joy.   Maybe it’s walking by the creek.   Maybe it’s staring at the moon or dancing with friends.  It’s not about something that gives you escape, or that your automatic pilot thinks is joyful (like ice cream or just another mystery novel, or even an expensive cup of coffee).  The key is the experience of joy, not the “rule” that something ought to bring it.

So if you’re in the depths of a personal Pluto-Saturn crisis, drop the struggle, surrender the battle, and make your spiritual path the immediate, present-tense experience of joy.

Sabian Symbols can be used to determine one’s life path and direction, and to fine-tune goals and resources for each year of your life.   The lecture offers background on the symbols and uses audience charts to demonstrate the process.

Saros Cycles are based on eclipse patterns.   Your prenatal eclipse will “present” certain personality and event situations for your life.  What makes this so amazing is that the interpretation of the prenatal eclipse is based on the chart for the first eclipse of that Saros Eclipse cycle—which could be almost 2000 years ago!   What a thought–an event 1500 years ago, or 900 years ago (or whatever is the original eclipse in your own case) is actually affecting your life today.  Again… audience charts provide examples.

I have clients all over the world, who educate me on different perspectives, quite without meaning to.

In this country, a health care crisis in the family ALWAYS means financial pressure, if not a full-blown financial crisis.   This is so pervasive that we are quite unable to think in terms of health crises without thinking financial crisis.

Recently a young man from Sweden called me with concerns about the financial crisis he was experiencing.  He mentioned how difficult the past year had been, including the multiple bypass surgery of his unusually young father.   I sympathized with him on his father’s health and the additional financial pressure this must have brought to him.    His reaction was total surprise.   He said there was no financial burden at all—it was all covered by national health.  He was concerned about his father’s health, and it was a stressful year, but his father has recovered now and is doing better than he had been for years.   He just mentioned it because it was an emotional stress.

I was shocked!   In this country a family with limited resources would have been bankrupted by a multiple bypass episode (if, indeed, they even managed to get the surgery… chances are they would have just waited for the heart attack to kill the father).  But this man was solely concerned about his father’s health.  Not the financial life-or-death of the family.

What a Dickensian world we live in.   (Where is Charles Dickens now, when we need him!)  We could write story after story of families remortgaging homes, falling behind, being thrown out on the streets in futile attempts to pay for medical care to save the life of a parent, or a child.   I had been so immersed in this Dickensian culture that the very idea that a dire health crisis would have no effect on an impoverished family was inconceivable to me until my client pointed it out.

I have had clients from England with similar stories… total freedom from financial catastrophe caused by medical expenses.  I know this freedom exists in ALL the industrialized countries of the world except for ours.   And yet I was still so embedded in our cultural assumption that WE have the best of everything here that I was shocked when my clients, in their intimate and personal tales of worry were entirely free of the fear of the catastrophic effects of getting life-saving health care.

My god—when are we going to wake up!

According to the Mayan Calendar, we are already in the period of time leading to the close of the Fifth World Age.   And according to the evidence of your senses, we are clearly living in a time of profound global change.   Forgetting for a moment all the apocalyptic hysteria, what might we expect from this shift?   A world age shift doesn’t happen overnight.  Despite having an “end date” in mind (and there is scholarly argument about this exact date), the years preceding that date imply the ending of the old age, and the new date is only the beginning of the new.   What can we realistically expect to change?

First, we need to understand the nature of the “old age”.  According to Mayan cosmology, the existing world age began approximately 3000 BCE.  Interestingly, this coincides closely to our consensus western understanding of “world history”.   Most contemporary historians still look to ancient Sumeria for the beginning of writing.  Interestingly, this was also in the 4^th millennia BCE—the beginning date for the current Mayan world age.  In fact, some fundamentalist Christians claim that the entire world began somewhere within that same era.  In this sense, they’re not too different from historians, who claim that non-written records of the past are unreliable and therefore don’t qualify to be called “history”.  These “undocumented” versions of the past are called “prehistory”.  Of course, this assumes that written records are more accurate than oral histories, which is just another result of intellectual dependence on what can be pinned down to a physical source.

Not coincidentally, the earliest Sumerian records were records of trade—the records of buying, selling, and making (or losing) money.  It seems reasonable to characterize this age of “written history” and “buying and selling” as an age of materialism.   Even our science has been based on what can be seen, measured, and touched, and the extent of materialism has been growing ever more dense during this world age.

Scientific materialism has become the dominant world view witin ithin the last two hundred years.  This paradigm enshrines the materialistic worldview into the sole source of Truth.  Let’s explore our recent history to track this theme.  Until the mid 19^th century, for example, anyone who thought about the world and how it physically worked was called a “philosopher”, not a “scientist”.  Those who thought about the physical world were called “natural philosophers.”   But since natural philosophers were holistic thinkers, meaning their thoughts included the unseen world of thoughts, of forces like “gravity”, the idea of what held the stars in the sky, their thinking soon ran them into collision with the power of the Church in the western world.   The church as an institution can be dated back to the middle of the first millennium CE.  It’s a pretty new part of the existing world age, and historically had a lot to do with buying and selling and making money, as well as gathering worldly power into its own purvue.

The Church and Natural Philosophy collided in a way that concretized the materializing trends of this world age.  How did this happen?  The Church claimed all authority over unseen things.   Natural philosophers were relegated to measuring the HOW of the natural world, but were prohibited from addressing any questions of WHY it worked.   The WHY was only the province of religion.   This division led to a divorce between philosophy (holistic) and “science” (physically measureable world).   Therefore Galileo could LOOK at planets through his telescope, but was prohibited from offering an interpretation of what he saw.  A natural philosopher who continued to philosophize about the whys and the unseen interconnections of the natural world was at risk of torture and death by the Inquisition (which was not dissolved as an arm of the church until late in the 19^th century!).  This was a profound shaping of how the scientific mind works.  The message was loud and clear:   “Think about more than the measurements and you may be tortured to death.”

This led to what Stephen Schwartz (via Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) called the “Grand Material Worldview”, or the “The Materialist MegaParadigm”.   A paradigm is the shape within which all thinking must fit in order to be considered “acceptable” thinking.   The current Materialist MegaParadigm posits that

1. The mind is a result of physiological processes.
2. Each consciousness is a discrete entity
3. Organic evolution has no specific goal
4. There is only one time-space continuum, providing for only one reality. (ref. Stephen Schwartz, The Secret Vaults of Time, p. 269.

The resulting of this thinking is the tautology, repeated by many “scientific thinkers” of our time:    “If it’s unseen, it’s not science.  I’ll stake my life on that.”    (This is pure PTSD [post-traumatic-stress-disorder] on the part of rational thinkers, caused by latent memories of the Church’s promise:  “If you offer thoughts about the nonphysical you may be tortured to death.”)

But the fifth world, the world of the material, is coming to a close.  We are leaving behind the divorce between science and Nature.  We are leaving behind the divorce between This and That; Self and Other.  The new paradigm sees the universe as a whole, full of promise and mystery, and guided by what is good for all.

THIS is what is shifting in our shift of ages.   The material world is beginning to reflect our dawning realization that the Materialist MegaParidigm is tattered and broken.  The infrastructure lies in tatters and the megalopoly of buying and selling is disintegrating around us, but the new paradigm hasn’t yet birthed our “new world”.

Wayne Dyer tells us “a change of thought precedes a change in society”.  Obviously, the structures of society have not yet accepted a new paradigm.  Those people whom Ray and Anderson (authors of The Cultural Creatives:  How 50 million people are changing the world) call the “cultural creatives” are already aware of the new paradigm.  Their values and impetus toward change actually pull society in the direction of the new paradigm.  While the bureaucratic structures of society may be resisting this change,just as obviously, the system is breaking.   We are likely to reorganize ourselves around what the cultural creatives would recognize as the dawning paradigm.   New breakthroughs in physics are leading the way to a new way of understanding the world around us—a way in which the previously materialistic and deterministic interpretations are expanded and eventually discarded.   These new breakthroughs show us a new way of envisioning our environment in which thoughts, previously unthinkable, are forming a new organizing principle.   Here are a few of them.

1. The mind is separate from the body.  The brain is the vehicle for the mind in the physical world, but the mind exists independently.  Mind may be the preeminent operating principle in the universe.   (Oddly, this is not a new idea.  The Corpus Hermeticus states that the first creation of God was The (universal) Mind.)
2. Everything is connected.  The entire universe is a single organism, and the fate of any part affects the whole.
3. Organic evolution is shaped by the Mind of the Universe for the goal of the universe’s well-being (e.g. the well being of all, since all parts of the universe share in the wellbeing of the entire cosmos).
4. There are multiple, overlapping time-space continuums, and time is a dimension in which may be able to move as easily as one does in space.  In fact, time itself has many qualities, and is not simply the strictly linear ticking of seconds that we once thought it was.  (Pre-clock cultures already recognize this.)

What will be the results of this kind of paradigm shift?  Clearly there are many more than I could list or you’d wish to read, but just to get your juices flowing here are some results of such a paradigm shift:

1. People will realize that all their actions affect all others.  Actions causing pain to any part of the cosmos will cause pain to the individual taking the action.   Therefore testing cosmetics on animals would be unthinkable.  Not watering your plants (or planting things that don’t naturally grow in your environment) would be unthinkable.  These would be things that cause pain to living beings.  Conversely, caring for and nurturing and giving joy to any living being adds to the joy quotient of the universe, and the person taking the action quite literally would feel this increase in joy.
2. Government organizations would truly focus on the good of the all, because pain in any part of the world would truly and immediately affect the lives of leaders and lawmakers, and the positive results for others would bring joy to the actors.
3. Short-term gain at the cost of long-term suffering would not be possible, since the long-term suffering will cause a ripple of pain in the universe.
4. The health of the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, would all be important.  (Space junk may not be a viable way to decommission old satellites.)
5. The exploration of the entire cosmos may be possible through meditational and psychic means.  These means will become acceptable tools for discovery.
6. The holographic link between every part of the cosmos (physicist Nassim Haramein’s new black hole theories) provide evidence for the psychic link between all of us.

These are just a few thoughts about where the new metaparadigm might take us.   As we remove ourselves from a strictly materialistic “truth detector”, we will become open to other ways of knowing, honoring the information gained during meditation, holotropic work, and other altered states of being.  Our understanding of the nature of reality itself would expand from only what can be measured by instruments of our devising, to include valuing the metaphysical and wisdom experiences of those whose contributions to the world increase its well-being for the long term.

If the Mayan ages do shift within the next several years, we can’t expect this new Meta-Paradigm to emerge, full-blown, from the chaos of the dissolving world.  Children being born today will be lucky to see the beginnings of a new social structure based on these concepts.  Still, it seems reasonable and consistent with current patterns of change to anticipate this kind of intellectual and consciousness revolution to become ever more apparent as we cross the divide of anciently-measured world ages.  And as we move into this ever-more-chaotic period of changes, it is useful and comforting to have a sense of where we may land when we reach the other shore.

The ONE is The Many. VANDORN (see http://www.lightweavings.com)

Here’s what happened to me, and here is the visualization that was created/resulted from what happened.  The resulting visualization I have shared with clients and friends and which has created dramatic results–so I’m sharing it with you now.

For those of you who want to cut to the chase, I’ll tell you the technique first.  For those of you who want to understand how it came about, the “backstory” will follow.

Manifesting change with spiral energy.

1. First, imagine and feel fully the situation you are in now–the situation you want to change.  Feel the limits to your sense of possibility–allow yourself to stretch to the limits of your beliefs until you bump against the ceiling of “this is just wishful thinking” and then settle into a place that you absolutely and deeply feel is possible.
2. Now imagine a HUGE (and insulated) electrical wire with a live and open end spiraling up your body.  In my experience, and counter-intuitively for me, this wire travels up your body in a counter-clockwise direction.  But don’t worry a lot.  Just allow the wire to spiral up your body without worrying which way it goes.
3. Spiral the live wire up your body to about solar plexus level, and grab the loose end with your left hand.  See the ‘sparks’ of live electricity coming from the end of the wire.
4. Now fully imagine the situation you’d like to bring into your life, without worrying about whether you believe it is possible.   Imagine it as fully as you can, with the feelings and details that would be in place when this happens.
5. With the desired situation in mind, imagine another huge electrical wire spiraling down from above your head.  Some people see this as counterclockwise also, others see it as clockwise.  Allow whatever feels right for you.  Let this wire spiral down til it reaches your solar plexus.
6. Reach out and grab the downward spiraling live wire with your right hand and “see” the ‘sparks’ of live electricity at the end of the wire.
7. Now it’s time to bridge the gap.  Imagining bringing your current situation to meet your desired situation–so the desired situation becomes the current one, bring the two live wires together til they join.  Watch the shielding move over the join until they are seamlessly connected.
8. Check your body for any physical reactions.   Some people feel a jolt, some people feel a rush of energy, some feel a “click”.  This is telling you that the connection is made.  If you don’t feel the jolt, don’t go “cut” the wire.  Live with the new alignment for a while.
9. I’ll repeat here, whether you do or do not feel an energy surge, do NOT repeat the process.  Repeating it implies that you’ve cut the existing connection, because how can you bridge these wires if they haven’t been separated.   You can remember the experience of joining them, but do not repeat the exercise.
10. Wait and see!

Backstory: How this came about.

In June I realized that not only was the monthly income I received from astrology not enough to cover my expenses, but that in my mind I couldn’t imagine how it would reach a point where that was possible.   I needed to increase my income by half again… for example from 2000/mo to 3000/mo gross income.   I realized that one part of the problem was my failure to feel the possibility was real, so I set to work on changing that.    What happened inside me was energetic and visceral, not visual at all.   What it felt like was twisting, writhing inside my skin to shed an old energy form and to bring (the twisting) a new understanding into connection with my old limits to “cross the bridge” from an old way of thinking to a new way of thinking.  When “it” happened, I felt an energetic click.   The immediate result was more focused energy on my work, my clients.  Now, two months later, I can say it definitely worked.  The first month was a success–I succeeded with the additional half-again income.  The second month (not yet over) is already 10 percent higher than the previous month.  So yes, it worked.

Then I set about trying to figure out how to tell someone else what I did.  The twisting and writhing on the inside and the click of something joining (it felt like the click of one of those light sticks that you have to twist until something clicks and the light turns 0n) was really hard to describe, so I wanted to develop a visualization that contained the elements of my experience in a visual form.

At this time I was reading a lot of new physics about the power of spin–the spiral, the vortex that many are now saying is the creative energy within the universe.  I could see the correspondence in my experience of “twisting” on the inside, so I started playing with idea of spirals, and of energy… and the electrical wire came to mind.  From there it was automatic to see the old way coming up from the earth, the root chakras and the new way from above the crown chakra.   I suppose if you are left handed you might want to shift the handedness of the patterns, but I leave that to your instincts to try (instincts are visceral, not mental/intellectual).

I tried the new technique on myself, with the goal of bridging the gap between what I believed was the love that could come my way, and the love that I want to come my way in life.  Within days I had a totally unexpected heart-healing experience that echoed back hundreds of years and forward through many experiences in this lifetime, and made me feel re-embraced by my “tribe”.   (I’ll write about this later).   So I can see that the visualization technique also works.

Now the only thing left is for you to use it.

I wish you the very best of  love, life, and wholeness!

What I’ve noticed is how very many people I encounter have something to offer—wisdom through experience, teachings, techniques for life, and even land and property, a home, etc.   Me too.   People tell me about the class they are teaching, the land they want to turn into an intentional living community (kinda upscale adult version of what we used to call communes… but this time thought through a bit more).   Everyone wants others to come to THEM for wisdom, community, etc., and at the same time these folks aren’t wanting to go somewhere else.

There’s a Leo/Aquarius polarity here:  Leo is the king, the leader.   Aquarius is the coordinator, the community itself.   People are coming up with Aquarian goals but wanting to be the Leo personality.  (Leos love having company more than Being company.)   There’s another polarity here, which is about giving and receiving.  Everyone is offering something, everyone resists receiving what others offer.  (Obviously I’m exaggerating.)

I can’t begin to tell you how many friends and clients tell me they want to open some kind of wisdom/learning “center”.   They aren’t telling me they want to work at a center someone else is running.   Of course, if someone were to offer…

What interests me here is the upswelling of wanting to share meaningfulness.   If a certain way of looking at life has helped you, it’s great to want to share it.   This is really a nice thing.   I also wonder if more and more people now are actually getting great insight, so these wisdom experiences may not be as rare as they once were.  I don’t know.   I’ve surely been hearing more about them, and more frequently, each year.

I guess at some level I’m hoping that those of us with something to share would think in terms of coming together, so it’s not MY wisdom/healing center, or YOUR wisdom/healing center, but instead is an organic tide of sharing.   I don’t know how to help this tide to rise.   The skills necessary for running a business are not the same skills as those of a person seeking to share his or her wisdom or healing skills, and even if one person had all the requisite skills, taking time to run a business takes time away from sharing one’s wisdom.

At one level, it may be the “too many chiefs and not enough indians” syndrome, though I don’t believe that.   I think I may be running into more chiefs than indians.   And every chief will attract a different “tribe”.

OK… those are things I’m thinking about.   Love to hear from others here.

These are all themes we share with the 60′s, and both periods are characterized by the conflicts of hard astrological aspects between Uranus, Saturn, and Pluto.    And we can see that many of the social issues of that time are in front of us again.  Even health care for everyone, as a bookend to the 1960′s Medicare legislation that now no-one wants to give up.

But what is the larger picture?   When these aspects move around the circle for another round of events, it’s typical to see the same issue come up.   But there is a deeper theme.

Remember the old line “Never trust anyone over 30.”???   WHY was that a theme?   What was it about passing the Saturn Return that made people untrustworthy to young people?   Well, that’s the time people settle down to responsibilities.   More importantly, to the youth of that time, 30 was the point at which people sold out their ideals in favor of money and security.   They “sold out”.

Anderson and Ray, in their fabulous book, The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People are Changing the World point out how many of the “weird new ideas” of the 1960′s and early 70′s are totally mainstream now.   Back then, Yoga was “like really WEIRD man”.  Now there’s a yoga studio in every strip mall.  Meditation, organic food, eco-consciousness, even mind-altering experiences are part of mainstream reality and have merged into a new conciousness.   If you want to open a new yoga studio, you’d better put your advertising on recycled paper (or no paper) using eco-friendly (or electronic) ink, and you’d better serve carefully selected herbal teas and bottled water in your snack bar.   These trends got started in the 60′s, but they are very much alive today.

But what was the big deal about the “sell-outs”?   It was putting materialism over consciousness.  Putting matter above spirit, soul, conscience.   That was the big deal.  Selling out your conscience for power and money.  Now, in the 60′s, these change-producing planets were in mutable signs.  They could change feelings but they didn’t change the whole world.   Now our changes are coming in Cardinal signs… and at zero cardinal at that!   Why is this important?   Zero degree of a Cardinal sign is considered to be the degree that brings matters to WORLD attention.   Pluto is dancing around zero Capricorn.  Saturn is moving toward zero Libra, and Uranus is moving up on zero Aries.   This change will be forced on the world at large.

So what is the most pressing problem in the world today?   The staggering greed of rampant capitalism, which created “consumers” out of citizens.  This gluttony of overconsumption on the part of the rich (which includes the entire western world) and of businesses who sold out conscience in every way to grab as much money as they could in any possible way, has now brought the world economy into a tailspin.   Again, we are seeing the sell-out of values for money.   And this time we’re seeing it on a vast scale.

Those who were young people in the 60′s did their own sell-out.   They grew up to lead companies through this time of exponential greed.  And it’s interesting to think about the “over 30″ expiration date.   It’s at age 29 that we experience our first Saturn Return, and decide how we want to spend our adult life.  Young people from the 60′s are now beginning to experience their Second Saturn Return… and we are now deciding how we want to spend the rest of our lives.   Let’s hope we can all stick together, old, middle-years, and young people, to reduce the materialism of our culture and bring spirit, soul, and conscience back into our world.

Out with the anti-materialism of the past, which brought us hippies and communes, and IN with the anti-materialism of now, which says that ALL of us need to live in a smaller footprint, with respect and reverence for all the natural forms of life on this living earth–including our fellow human beings.

Joyful Anticipation:
Converging Trends towards a Changing Future

(and how to get where we want to go)

Anne Beversdorf

June 2009

(Part Four:  Synthesis.  How do the destructive and creative trends combine to make a perfect “caterpillar goo” of new possibilities, and what these might be.)

This is the exciting part.   We are changing our image of the cosmos itself, and when we change our understanding, our deepest approach to the world, the world itself changes.

Figure 10: The Cosmos (NASA photo)

“Imagine…” says Richard Tarnas in his groundbreaking book, Cosmos and Psyche, “that you are a deep souled, subtly mysterious cosmos of great spiritual beauty and creative intelligence.  And imagine that you are being approached by two different…suitors, who seek to know you.

Figure 11: NASA photo of a distant galaxy

“To whom would you open your deepest secrets?…  Would you open most deeply to the suitor…who approached you as if you were essentially lacking in intelligence and purpose, as though you had no interior dimension to speak of, no spiritual capacity or value; who thus saw you as fundamentally inferior to himself…who related to you as though your existence were valuable primarily to the extent to which he could develop and exploit your resources to satisfy his various needs; and whose motivation for knowing you was ultimately driven by a desire for increased intellectual mastery, predictive certainty, and predictive control over you for his own self-enhancement?

Figure 12: Saturn—NASA photo

“Or would you, the cosmos, open yourself most deeply to that suitor who viewed you as being at least as intelligent and noble, as worthy a being, as permeated with mind and soul, as imbued with moral aspiration and purpose, as endowed with spiritual and mysterious depths as he?”

Richard Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche, pg. 39

Figure 13: NASA photo of cosmos—Stars and Galaxies

The answer to Tarnas’ rhetorical question is clear.  Despite Dick Cheney and his minions, most people today know that treating conscious beings with respect for their very essence—with namaste—is far more effective for learning their deepest secrets than is treating conscious beings as something that can be exploited and abused.   The only real question is whether the cosmos itself is a conscious being, and even this question is being answered differently in recently decades.

Ever since James Lovelock envisioned the earth as Gaia, we began to seriously consider the earth herself as a conscious, living entity.  To those with this mindset, that awareness can extend into infinity itself.   For some, understand the vast consciousness of the infinite space and time of the multiverse itself is as close an understanding of the concept of God that can be reached.  Truly, this envisioning of God-ness (goodness) being everywhere and everywhen is a change of vast proportions.   As more people sense this new conception of the universe, the way humans treat each other, animals, plants, the earth, and the cosmos itself will change—and is changing.

Let’s look at some of the vast emotional, spiritual, conceptual and, yes, material changes that are placing us firmly on a path to a new world.

Signals on the Path to Change

1. Time Unhinged:   TIME itself–or our understanding of it—is changing.   This is a note of significance when we consider the Mayan 2012 prophecy of “the end of Time as we know it.”   In what ways can we see this shift?

• The PEAR’s Random Number Generator experiments.   PEAR, the former research lab at Princeton (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) is quite famous for many researches involving their random number generators.   They have demonstrated that whenever vast numbers of people are simultaneously focused in the same thing, random number generators no longer produce random numbers.  This was observed for televised Superbowls (except for TV ads, when numbers reverted to random for the duration), for international events such as the wedding of Diana and Prince Charles, the funeral of Princess Diana, the OJ Simpson televised car chase, and then, most spectacularly BEFORE the bombing of the World Trade Center Towers and BEFORE the tsunami of December 1995.   In those cases the random number generators ceased to generate random numbers up to A DAY before the event.   For one thing, this speaks to the ability of consciousness to operate outside of the timing of events.   For another thing, it speaks to the consciousness of humans to change the functioning of physical equipment.   (To drift a bit from the TIME topic, but to make this even more WOWIE, Gregg Braden points out that these mass-consciousness events also have measurably strengthened Earth’s electromagnetic grid in the earth’s stratosphere—the energetic system that protects us from dangerous cosmic energy bombardments.)

• Delayed Choice Experiments:  A series of experiences have suggested the possibility that a decision made AFTER the fact can actually change the results of an experiment already performed.  Originally an extension of the particle-wave experiments with a double-slit and a photon, it appeared that if, after the experiment was complete, if you looked for a particle of light you found the particle, but if you looked for a wave you found a wave.  Later this experiment was changed to change the charge of a subatomic particle going through an electromagnetically sealed box.  A charged particle going through the box could be changed from positive to negative (or vice-versa) by flipping a switch in the box before sending the particle through.  However, it was discovered that the particle would also change polarity if the switch were flipped AFTER the particle went through, even though it had no physical connection with the switching device or its energy.   The PEAR’s lab reported time-delayed experiments completed AFTER the printout of random numbers from their famous random number generating computers.   Groups were told to meditate on changing the numbers on printouts for particular past time periods to make them show a majority of odd numbers or a majority of even numbers.   When the experiments were completed, the papers (previously never seen by human eyes) were examined, and they indeed showed a shift in the direction the focus group intended.  In once sense, this appears to demonstrate that current actions can change past results, but in my opinion, it actually shows that ALL time is simultaneous, and the focus group’s efforts, in a larger sense, was actually synchronous (because ALL time is synchronous).   And in a further set of experiments, Larry Dossey reports a similar results with medical tests:   If, after a medical test, but before the results have been read, a group prays for a particular result, there is a statistically valid shift in the percentage of outcomes to match the prayers.  In other words, if several people had blood tests for leukemia, and after the blood was drawn and the test completed a group prayed for no leukemia in those patients, there was a statistically higher percentage of healthy results as compared to a control group without prayers.  (The specific leukemia example is made up—the tests were more complex and for different illnesses).

• Half-Past Human Language predictor.   The Half-Past Human web project has been running ALL internet language through computer counters, counting how many times various words and kinds or words are introduced into the WWW, on average, each day.   Then they’ve been analyzing the words that defy the averages over a small group of days.   They have found that the unconscious increase of certain types of words are actually predictive of upcoming world events.   For instance, if there is a sudden and significant above-average use of words like floods and tsumani and other watery-disaster words, there is a high correlation to an event of that type occurring in the world in the next few days.  Google Half Past Human to find out more about this site!

• The WHETHER MAP of the Arlington Institute.   This project from the futurist research group, the Arlington Institute, is a voluntary collection site for dreams, intuitions, etc.  They are tracking future events on the basis of a finding a confluence of intuitions/dreams peaking before significant world events.   It’s a new project, but Arlington Institute head, John Peterson reports that there is a significant correlation for some kinds of events.   On the other hand, Larry Dossey reports that horrible disasters seem to have FEWER than normal precognitive “hits”.  In fact, the “test your ESP” web sites show a market decrease in people’s ability to test well just prior to major disasters.  Apparently horrible future events on the subconscious awareness horizon set off warnings to people to shut down their awareness abilities!  I suppose that dramatic drops in ESP scores could themselves become predictive of world disasters—but then, of course, we’d not be able to predict the nature of the disaster because we’d be shut down!

1. Sheldrake’s Morphogenetic Fields.   This is the theory behind the “hundredth monkey” syndrome.   Sheldrake has amassed a ton of evidence that once a newmeme enters the awarness field of a specific animal, and once it affects a significant number of individuals in that group, it suddenly becomes part of the awareness pattern of the entire group.   In the hundredth monkey example, washing tubers entered the field –what Sheldrake calls the morphogenetic field—of “monkeyness”, so that once enough monkeys started learning it by example, other monkeys, I suppose you could say, “intuited it” or “downloaded it” from the field of monkeyness!   I think similar things have happened to techniques like Reiki and the whole field of hands-on energy work, where once people had to be trained, but now more and more people are simply downloading the techniques from their own intuitive awareness—or from the field of “humanness”.  What does this have to do with Time?   Once something has entered the field, there is no time lag between the knowers and the non-knowers becoming knowers.  Once the need is there, so is the information.

• The Knowing Field of Family Constellation work.  Sheldrake once said of this, “I developed the theory of morphogenetic fields, but this is the first time I’ve knowingly been inside of one.”  In the experiential healing work developed by Bert Hellinger, strangers are asked to step in to represent people, often dead for generations, about whom they know nothing at all.   In the service of healing living people, it appears that the ancestors step into these strangers, demonstrating their own need for healing.   In doing dozens of these constellation healing sessions, it seems that the healing that takes place actually affects those long-dead ancestors, which shifts the living descendants into a different modality—we could almost call it a parallel universe, in which the family issues have been modified and corrected to some extent.   The experiences of watching others reflect one’s own family dynamic, and of representing someone else’s family members and thereby feeling emotional issues new and unfamiliar to oneself is profound.  It stretches one’s own humanity and suggests strongly that our ideas of time and space, of the known and unknowable, are sadly restricted.  (for more information about this process, go to www.stariel2.com and click on Family Constellations.)

1. Superfluids, Super-conductors, Coherence. This sudden-ness of transmission in the morphogenetic field is a lot like the Bose-Einstein condensate we discussed in part 3… where at a certain point in the development of a superconductor, ALL the molecues immediately reach the high-spin state.   For a condensate of Hydrogen, it only takes 3% to reach superconductor status.  At this point, the group (molecules, monkeys, humans) are said to reach Coherence.  At this point, messages, whether simply the energy output of a superconductor or new information or understanding in animals and humans, saturate the entire group.  In a coherent group of atoms (superconductor), there is more energy put out by the group than is required to power them.

Figure 14: Tarot Card.   We must enter our new reality with the trust, innocence and confidence of the Tarot’s FOOL.

• How does Coherence affect human beings?  The Heartmath Institute has actually measured coherence in individuals.   It is a state that comes about when one’s heart rate is regular—characterized by a smooth sine wave rather than a jagged line of irregular peaks and valleys.   When one lives in this state of coherence, whether for 5 minutes or a full lifetime, health improves dramatically, peace of mind improves, and the state of joyful anticipation is a given.  In this state, the electromagnetic field of the heart increases, so that the coherent individual is actually sending out these waves of joyful anticipation to everyone within reach of this highly extended field of energy.  For an individual, being in a state of coherence is characterized by

• Excited Relaxation

• Joy

• Hope

• Optimism.

And this state of coherence actually produces specific results:

• Health

• Happiness

• High Creativity

• Increased Productivity

A group of people in Coherence are in a state of Resonance.  Resonance is characterized by:

• Harmony

• Optimism

• Joy

• Creativity

And Resonance produces these results in a group:

• Cooperation

• Peace

• Creative Solutions

• Increased Energy

• Social Responsiveness

• Obviously, these are qualities that we need.  Equally obviously, if we can create a resonance field in which these qualities are actually infiltrating our immediate environments, these qualities can spread.   It’s one thing to say we can develop these qualities in one or two people.   It’s quite another to realize that, quite literally, each person who develops coherence will resonate with others and contribute to the instant shift to a unified field of consciousness.

Our Changing Consciousness Changes Worlds

When we talk about a unified field of consciousness, or a “global mind”, we aren’t talking about becoming zombies or mindless automatons controlled by a central authority.   We’re talking, on a global level, of something we’ve seen many times in small communities.   At a time in history when communities were small and relatively unchanging, when you knew your neighbors and indeed, the whole community, if one person’s house burned down everyone knew about.   Not only did the whole community know, but the whole community cared.  And within minutes the community would pitch in, first trying to put out the fire, then offering food, shelter, and then time and labor to rebuild the home.   This kind of resonance wasn’t dictated from the community officials:  it was a participatory and automatic response.  It was a recognition of the essential brotherhood of humanity.

Our world today is getting smaller and smaller.   Just today, as I write this, the emotions and experiences of individuals in Iran, have been shared with the entire world because individuals there blogged and twittered to other individuals who, in turn, volunteered to share these communications with the rest of the world because the Iranian government had shut down regular news and communications channels.   This was an organic and resonant response of people all over the world to try to help other human beings who were trying to reach out.   As we continue to reach coherence within ourselves and resonance with each other, we will (without any Pollyanna stuff here) naturally become a world in which the cares of others are important enough to us to naturally and organically reach out: where the health of children, the safety of earth’s animals and plants, the care for earth itself speaks so deeply to us that each of us comes together with others to nurture this tiny speck in our galaxy.

When all is said and done, no one can deny that we’re in a period of huge change.  When we consider how many malfunctioning systems may totally break down over the next several years, it is easy to become frightened.   It’s also easy to get frightened considering the big roller-coasters at the amusement parks.  Fear is a very uncomfortable end of a scale that begins with anticipation and continues with excitement.   Most roller-coaster riders feel excitement, not fear.   I suggest that we look at the next years with a deliberate attitude of Joyful Anticipation.

Tadpoles and Caterpillars

What can we expect?   As all these markers of change come together in the Perfect Shift, we quite literally are unable to imagine what will result from it.   We aren’t like the tadpole, swimming around in the pond as the fish shape grows legs and turns into a frog.  We are in the position of the caterpillar, who, once it’s eaten itself into a stupor splits itself open for the last time to reveal a cocoon and then just trusts, as only caterpillars can trust.

Figure 15: Monarch caterpillar

The thing we forget about caterpillars is that they don’t “grow” wings.  A tadpole may grow legs, but the caterpillar experiences a less gradual and more drastic metamorphosis.  First, it splits open and sheds its skin for a last time to reveal the chrysalis.

Figure 16: Monarch Chrysalis

Inside the chrysalis, the amino acids and cells of the caterpillar become an amino acid “soup” of imaginal cells, which are almost like stem cells.  The caterpillar’s insides literally melt down into soup:  “caterpillar goo”  and reform themselves into the butterfly.  The chrysalis is almost like a black box. Inside this black box are processes we can’t see or completely understand, but they take place anyway, disintegrating the caterpillar totally before it becomes a butterfly.

Figure 17: Mature Monarch Chrysalis

Applying this metaphor to society during this period of huge change, we can see our society splitting itself open to reveal the black box of the chrysalis.   We can’t SEE what’s going on inside, but this “caterpillar goo” is also destined to become a butterfly.

Figures 18 and 19: Monarch Butterflies.

When I was a child, I would go through cycles of what I now recognize as depression.  To me, at the time, all I knew was that it was a cycle of turning inward that was often very painful.   But somehow I knew that if I mined that darkness instead of turning away from it, I would find some tremendous “aha!” that would lift the darkness and light my way for months.  I remember entering the slide into darkness and reminding myself to be excited, because I could get something valuable there.  Now I think of these slides into disarray as “caterpillar goo”.   The old structure (psychological or physical or structural or societal) is dissolving into a soup of amino acids and imaginal cells.   Out of this soup will emerge the free and beautiful butterfly.

The Power of Awareness

The changes taking place in our world now are physical, structural, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual.    As we understand and experience the world in different ways, we are literally creating a New world.

Even scientific and technological changes can contribute to this shift in perception and concurrent shift in reality.   In a remarkable book by Glenda Green (You Are Truly Loved), a master remarks that (I’m paraphrasing here) “Ever since humans discovered fire, they started down a course that equated energy, heat, and power with an act of destruction [burning resources].   The result of this has been war, and destruction of every kind.  But it IS possible to get energy, heat, power from love—from sources of attraction instead of destruction.   The moment humans turn to this source of power, the destructive nature of humanity will vanish in an instant, and humanity will find that love and attraction are the most powerful energy of all.”   I think it’s quite instructive to examine the “source of power”, and it’s quite likely that the language equating energy power with power over others is not an accident, so that when power comes from attraction rather than destruction, a great shift is an obvious result.   The shift is from the “love of power” to the “power of love.”

Ancient Prophecies

This time period contains a confluence of ancient prophecies regarding a shift between one world age and another.   From the Hindus’ Kali Yuga (age of darkness, the end of a cycle, which is followed by a new Golden Age), to Hopi prophecies of a new world age, to the Mayan prophecies reflected in the flat-out ending of their calendar, representing the “end of time as we know it”, we are seeing a message repeated again and again.   In addition, we are at the end of multiple cycles of astronomical time:  We are at the end of a 248 year period represented by the cycle of Pluto (the last time Pluto was at this position was in the years of discord and unease leading up to the American Revolution); the end of the precessional age of Pisces, a 26,000 year cycle bringing our galaxy to a recognizable “point” in the circle of the galaxy, and a 215 million year cycle represented by the turning of the galaxy to align our sun quite exactly with the Galactic Center (the black hole power point which is the power source for our galaxy just as the sun the power source for our solar system).

Figure 20: The Milky Way.  Photograph taken in Hawaii by Wally Pacholka (www.AstroPics.com)

Humans have long recognized the importance of these cyclical changes.   We still celebrate the solstices and equinoxes that mark the turnings of the seasons.  It is fascinating that the highly likely date for the end of the Mayan calendar 12/21/2012, is also the day after the winter solstice—the day the “sun stands still” for three days as it does every winter solstice, as it begins its movement back to a higher position in the sky.  It’s this movement upward in the sky that makes the days finally longer than the nights again.   The ancients recognized this as the Returning of the Light.   It’s also interesting that this date, 12/21/2012, is the exact date when the sun will be dead-center in the trough of the Milky Way galaxy.  This 12/21/2012 position is marked by South-American monuments.  If you can imagine a football goalpost made of massive stones, on each winter solstice the sun shines exactly through the center of this goalpost.  In the Milky Way, there is one spot where stars are few and far between.   This is what is seen as the “trough”.  For the last 15 years or so, it has been possible to see, each solstice, the trough of the Milky Way move into the goalpost “viewfinder”.  It is well within the goalposts now, but on 12/21/2012 the day AFTER the solstice, the sun will be dead center in this trough.  This means energy of the Galactic Center will be transmitted directly to the Sun without the interference of other stars in the galaxy.   It is our Sun’s “day in the Sun”!  According to John Majors Jenkins, this is a once in 215 million year event.

Let’s go back to combine some previous discussions here:   Remember Nassim Haramein’s new mathematical theories proving that black holes are CREATIVE points:  condensations of all the information in the universe.   Remember his point that every being contains a black hole energy:  We are ALL holographic creative points in this universe.   Now think of Heartmath’s coherence patterns and the resonance these coherence points create.

And now, for the cherry on top, think of the Galactic Center’s energy reaching our solar system directly in December of 2012.   This is a resonance moment in the clock of our galaxy.  Moments of extremely high resonance create changes in our magnetosphere that are very protective to Gaia herself (and thereby to the interdependent creatures and lives living in Gaia’s space).  It seems to me that our job is to increase our coherence, increase our resonance fields, so that we can create the joyful and peaceful new age by our own efforts.  This is “create our own reality” time.

Are there disharmonious elements on earth?  Of course.   Will there be in 2012?  Of course there will be.   But disharmony, hate and fear are NOT creative principles.  They can’t create anything at all.  They can only destroy.  We are in a “birthing the new world” process… and as a wisewoman once said, “all births are accompanied with blood and pain, and the new child is greeted with great joy”.   I suggest that one tool in the process of creating a resonance field of Joyful Anticipation is to understand that the disharmony in the world today is the unavoidable pain of labor as we move to the future.

I do want to say something about this “create your own reality” thing.   On a superficial level I am highly suspicious of anything that suggests our tiny little wills are wise enough to demand multi-million dollar mansions and expensive cars and still be in harmony with the needs of our planet.   To me this kind of demand-for-gratification may work, but I don’t know if it’s wise.   On the other hand, I do think there is strong evidence that when we all stop demanding, but simply LIVE IN an attitude of Joyful Anticipation—expecting plenty for all, harmony with nature, energy sources that supply our needs without endangering earth and its creatures, we can create the environment that nurtures this infant we wish to birth.  Think of it:  the largeness of one’s home or price tag on the car makes NO difference at all to the child in the womb.   But the attitude and emotions of the mother and others in the environment clearly do help nurture the child-to-be.   We CAN affect our future—each one of us, acting individually.

Why Each Of Us Matters

1. We can add to coherence, or we can add to fear.
2. Our individual “energy systems” create the world each of us lives in.
3. Our individual energy system fields have a resonant effect on our environment.
4. Our coherent creative energy is being multiplied by our sun’s alignment to the black hole at the creative center of the galaxy.
5. We are at the cutting edge of the most powerful creative time shift in millennia.  Each of us is “the butterfly’s wings” capable of causing subtle shifts that magnify positive change in the entire multiverse.

Figure 21:  Chinese pictogram: CHAOS–  “Before a great vision can become reality, there may be

difficulty.  Before a person begins a great endeavor, they may encounter chaos.  As a new plant

breaks the ground with great difficulty, foreshadowing the huge tree, so must we sometimes push

against difficulty in bringing forth our dreams.   Out of Chaos, Brilliant Stars are Born”

I Ching Hexagram #3

So how do we nurture an attitude of Joyful Anticipation?   It may be simple, but it’s also one of the greatest spiritual challenges of our time—and probably the most rewarding to master.

The steps are easy:

1. Remember that Joyful Anticipation is the attitude needed at the chaotic boundary of change.
2. The change itself is just “caterpillar goo”!

SO….

DON’T WORRY

• and don’t worry about your worrying!
• It’s all OK.
• Everything is a beautiful part of the unfolding.

OK.  That may sound too easy.   Here are a few more tips:

• Attitudes are Habits.
• Habits are Decisions.
• Deciding to change deep habits is a profound spiritual practice.  To change habits:
  • Notice your thoughts.
  • Notice your body tensions.
  • CHOOSE uplifting thoughts.
  • CHOOSE physical non-resistance.
  • REPEAT
  • Change your Habits, Change the World.

Figure 22:   Butterflies, All Together.

But I’m ranting here about the huge numbers of emails about astrological conditions that are all “once in a lifetime” events and are presented with great urgency.  This rant has been prompted by the huge outflow of such emails associated with the series of eclipses this summer–2 lunar eclipses and one solar eclipse within about 4 weeks of each other.  (Usually there are 2 solar and 2 lunar eclipses a year.  On a regular basis a solar eclipse will be associated with 2 lunar eclipses instead of one.   This is a regular and not terribly rare pattern.)

The thing that “gets me” about all these astrological emails is that, in truth, every single DAY of eternity is a “once in a lifetime” occurence!! So all of these “once in a lifetime” astrological days are really pretty meaningless.  The other thing that bugs me is that these emails tend to note the “fact” (once in a lifetime) and then basically tend to forsake astrological reasoning altogether, going into such wildly metaphorical interpretations as to loose all touch with reality, making assertions which at best are totally unverifiable.

Astrology offers certain definite and verifiable energy signatures.   When you take the MOST metaphorical interpretations of these patterns without mentioning the mundane interpretations, you truly lose your connection to reality.  They become psycho-spiritual “riffs” on astrological patterns.  There is nothing one can see in every-day reality that will confirm or deny the validity of these types of claims.

This doesn’t mean I don’t believe inspired communication, channelled communication or totally metaphorical interpretations of astrological patterns can’t be true (but the regular attempt to apply metaphorical interpretations to real-world conditions is usually a huge failure.  This bricks and mortar world responds to bricks and mortar interpretations).

Back to the eclipses.   We have 2 solar eclipses a year.   Some are more active than others (and this one is more active–I’ll tell you why in a minute).   But I’d estimate that way over a third of all solar eclipses are pretty active.

The world rarely changes in a day.   I can think of only only a few days that would qualify as world-changing days:   The bomb-drop on Hiroshima was one.   I think the fall of the Berlin Wall was another.   I think Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are in a lesser category… they set up conditions for war.  Unfortunately, set-ups for war happen a LOT.  Might as well include the assassination of Arch-Duke Ferdinand, and who remembers that.  So there are 2-5 days that we can say changed the world.   This eclipse is not going to be one of them.   I DO think it will contribute to the changes the Iranian people are seeking for their government.   It won’t happen on a single day, and while it will change Their world, it won’t make a huge difference to ours.

This eclipse in particular IS a very strong energy pattern.  The eclipse pattern started in the 1300′s with an eclipse with an exact conjunction of Mars and Pluto, which is a signature for rage and outrage.   The original eclipse was at 26 tropical Aries, which happens to closely square (crisis of action) the 29 tropical Cancer eclipse of July 21-22.   So this is an action oriented event that will force an old obstacle to release, and the release may be violent.   The eclipse day Sun will be trine to Uranus, the pattern of rebellion and suddenness, so the pattern is duplicated.   The cardinal nature of the eclipse is an aid to new ventures, though they can only be seen in seed form at this point, so this isn’t “verifiable” information.   And the metaphor of a 29 cancer tropical degree is one of urgency having to do with clearing up unfinished business about home, homeland, family values, food, and security.  So we may see a breakdown/breakthrough in those arenas.  An eclipse pattern is highly active in the week or two before and after the exact eclipse day, and the degrees involved can be triggered by transits for quite some time afterwards.

It’s always good to support the energy of an astrological pattern, “befriending it”, so to speak.   You can do this by looking up AstroRemedies on my site and going to Sunday, and doing some of the activities listed for that day.   You can do them on any day at all.  Sun-day activities support the Sun, which is being eclipsed by the Moon.   You might also want to do Monday (Moon-day) activities, as the Moon is “eating” the sun (old mythologies) and is the afflicting planet here.  Befriending the Moon might make her afflictions to the Sun less difficult.

End of rant!

We are looking at a classic Jungian shadow issue, this time of the entire identity of the fundamentalists who have taken over the republican party.   When one demonizes basic human drives, it causes us to fracture into the “good self” who would “never” do that; and the “bad others” who do these horrible things.   This is exactly the danger of religious fundamentalism.   It’s the cause of religious wars (well, all wars, for that matter).   All the things we can’t face in ourselves are attached to the “enemy”, who are therefore less than human and deserving of death.

Religious fundamentalists are people who would “never” do bad things, and if they did, they would surely “punish” themselves by resigning their office, or by whatever other punishment they imagine.   But guess what.   Everyone has a shadow side.  Everyone has attractions to people they aren’t married to.   Mature and healthy people notice this and pass on the opportunity. Shadow-boxers will deny the very possibility of serious temptation.  And what happens when we deny natural parts of ourselves?   These parts grow in the darkness of our denial.  The more they are denied and repressed, the more energy they have to grow in darkness, until suddenly they take over.

Other Republican fundamentalists have pretty much acted as if something had taken them over (it had) and this behavior is NOT who they really are (but it IS part of who they are).   These people have continued to deny their behavior, and since it wasn’t “really them, just a lapse” they refuse to take the punishment they’ve prescribed for others.  Unlike his predecessors, Mark Sanford is doing something different and quite remarkable.

Until he was “caught”, it appears that Sanford struggled to continue to deny parts of himself that were buried and repressed.  He attended workshops and regular Sunday marriage meetings to strengthen his marriage… as he so tragically put it “to try to fall in love with my wife again.”  He hoped the “bad” part would somehow go away.

Once “caught” and forced to face the music, he at first struggled to toe the party line, but it wasn’t true for him.   He will not deny his love affair.   He considers this woman his “soulmate”.    She clearly unveils for him parts of himself that he has denied and repressed.   This puts him in the position of a man who now MUST integrate disowned parts.  Yes, he IS a man who will break the sacred vows of marriage.   And he’s a man who is sorry that he hurt others, but he is NOT sorry he fell in love with his “soulmate.”   Looking at the psychological principles at work here, we can say with certainty that she unlocked the door to many of his shadow issues–issues that he had not previously faced and/or integrated into himself.   We can guess that some of these issues have to do with soulfulness, poetry, sensitivity, tenderness–all of which are not easily integrated into the life of a successful politician.

I haven’t tried to find Governor Sanford’s chart.  I don’t know what his public future may hold, but I can predict that this man is on the way to becoming a more soulful, more fully human, and more completely honest person than his other republican fundamentalist colleagues who have fallen off the fidelity wagon.   And while there is no question that this is also a difficult time for his wife and young sons, I cannot blame him for their discomfort.   In becoming a more honest person, he is modeling for his children a better way of growing.   They may be angry and blame him now (aided, most probably,  by their mother), but his determination to become a whole person instead of a half-person is a model they can’t banish from their awareness.   It is a heritage of value.

Click Here for video

REPORTS and SOFTWARE

The Panelists:

On the importance of studying shift: Mark Iberg, lecturer on humor and humanity, from multiple perspectives. Mark encourages us into action and asks, “What does shift mean to you?” His website http://www.lcsvs.com/ presents his perspectives on how to keep one’s health strong for any shifting that may take place.

Overview of paradigm shift, from a timeline perspective, both horizontal and vertical: Looking at times past, Roberta Shoemaker-Beal will give an overview of the predictions for paradigm shifts around the dimension of time, from various wisdom teachers who have alerted us to anticipate changes in this decade, especially. She will talk of the work of Edgar Cayce for a long horizontal view of a timeline. The vertical view of time is from the ancient Greeks who wrote of and defined different “kinds of time” such as chronos and chiaros. How do we shift to accommodate to the changing nature of time? Is life things speeding up? Is that a good thing?

The Nature of Time: Katya Walter will speak on the “nature of time, now and anytime,” as a core element in our reality. Her books have defined dimensions of time at the core of our reality, down to the Planck level, where time and space interact in the space~time continuum. Her book and web site, http://doublebubbleuniverse.com/ give extensive information on “the nature of time.”

Focus on time to prepare: Anne Beverdorf, local educator and astrologer will share current predictions defined by those who looks at vast timelines, with the ability to predict the nature of timely events, we can anticipate through astrological studies. The use of time awareness, by studying cycles of time, can be used to plan our lives. Anne will share predictions for upcoming events for May 2009 and other relevant time we need to consider for the future. Her website at http://www.stariel.com/ leads us to more information.

Planning for the future: Jan Blevins will be traveling to Peru this summer to study about a suggested change from the Gregorian to the Mayan calendar, as suggested by Dr. Jose Arguelles. His studies demonstrate that the Mayan calendar is a more accurate time keeping system than the Western European one used by the majority of our population. Read “Open Your Mind to a New Time” on the Internet at http://www.philzone.com/interviews/jose/jose.html for an Arguelles interview on this dynamic and controversial topic.

Consider: What shifts in our foundational paradigms, for time and space, are we ready to shift? Is the ancient pairing of Mother Nature and Father Time offering us an opportunity?

(and how to get where we want to go)

Anne Beversdorf,  May 2009

[Part Three. Bracing for Change: Multiple Strange Attractors in Existing Systems. (No astrology here.) Science and society in the whirlpool…]

Bracing for Change: Multiple Non-Linear Systems in Chaos.

We talked before about the nature of chaos. The irony of chaos is that the MOST chaotic time is the ONLY time when something totally new can arise. Mild chaos only pushes us into adapting old systems, but total chaos creates a breakdown because so many substructures are interacting in such chaotic ways that they actually form brand new, previously unthinkable systems. Right now, in 2009 and probably for the next several years, we are looking at not just one system reaching a chaos-point: We’re looking at almost every system in our society undergoing dramatic change. Having this many systems in chaos doesn’t just double, triple, quadruple the chaos around it—it amplifies it in logarithmic ways. This is intuitively obvious, but there’s a scientific explanation as well.

Each of these systems has its own strange attractor, and as each system is stretched, little-used pathways in its strange attractor become engaged. As each system is developing its underused pathways, each of these systems is now interacting with other systems in brand new ways. If you change something in your life—say your job—you notice a sense of excitement, perhaps apprehension, and you begin to meet new people and make new connections. Sometimes it’s tricky to develop new relationships in an organization where everyone else already has their procedures, routines, and expectations. But what if EVERYONE is brand new, as in a brand new organization. In that case every single person is being asked to stretch and grow, and the excitement of newness is palpable. In that case we could say that each person is using a rare path in their personal strange attractor, and the interactions between people will take a brand new form as these new paths interact.

At this time in our civilization we have multiple systems at chaos points, and while some of these systems are clearly in the process of breaking down, others are in the process of new creations. What’s breaking? The list is long, and just so you don’t get depressed reading it, remember two things: One is that there is another long list that follows of things that are already in the chaos of CREATION (including many of the items on the break-down list), and Two, each of these chaotically breaking systems is interacting with the others in totally new ways, and these new ways of interacting is exactly what is required for totally new systems to develop. OK. Ready now?

Competing Strange Attractors in Existing Systems: Chaotic Breakdown List

· The global economic system is clearly at a chaos point.

· There is growing social unrest, as economic pressures create greater divisions between the “haves” and the “have-nots”. Many people, feeling their lives are running out of control, tend to take reactionary, divisive, and sometimes violent political positions in an attempt to gain some kind of psychological control.

· There is a growing tax revolt in this country. It comes in four flavors:

o Unreported tax revolt is called “failure to file”, and the IRS says it’s growing fast. These people, for whatever reason, have decided that their money is theirs, and not filing a tax return will make their legal liability disappear.

o Under-reported income on tax returns also appears to be growing, according to IRS estimates. People, forced to earn “under-the-table” income to make ends meet, simply don’t report the excess. This happens at all income levels.

o The most concerning is the growing anger against taxes, fueled by the huge taxpayer bailouts of corporations. This could lead to an outright tax revolt.

o Property tax revolts. The current economic crisis is making states and municipalities even more dependent on property taxes at a time when landowners are even less able to pay. Cities don’t want title to these homes, but as people default, this will raise the stakes on property tax anger.

· We’re still experiencing a global population explosion with its concomitant increased demands on all resources.

· Demands on energy systems are growing among newly developing large nations (China, India) just as global energy supplies are running out.

· There is a growing concern about the increased number of antibiotic-resistant diseases. The ease of transportation through the global village makes the possibility of a global pandemic ever more likely. Even if such a pandemic isn’t deadly, it will add to the economic crisis, as Mexico’s experience with the recent flu virus demonstrates.

· The medical/healing establishment the west has grown to rely on over the last hundred years is breaking down for various reasons. One of the biggest is the cost/benefit ratio. Another may be related to the fact that, in the United States, the NUMBER ONE cause of death from any source is the medical system itself: incorrect drugs or dosages, or hospital-acquired diseases or medical errors. Those old-timers who refused to go near a doctor or hospital for any reason are now looking less stubborn and maybe smarter than we realized!

· The calcification of the age of “science” is beginning to crumble. When battles with the Catholic Church resulted in the tacit (backed up by the inquisition) agreement that the church handled all the unseen, and science dealt with only the physical world, we got an artificial divorce. New scientific discoveries are proving that there is a very strong scientific connection between the seen and unseen realms, but science has long been stuck in a mode of “if we can’t explain it, it doesn’t exist” which of course is the antithesis of the scientific method of inquiry. The real equation is a leftover imprint of the idea, “if we can’t explain it in physical terms, we can’t call it science or we may be tortured to death.” Either science will lose its credibility or it will begin to grow up and address these questions in modern terms.

· Global climate change. It doesn’t matter what causes it. Almost everyone knows we’ve got “weird weather” now. And those looking closely can see just how close we are to total upheaval due to rising seas, declining gulf stream currents, conditions ripe for super-storms, and unpredictable (and therefore non-producing) farming conditions.

· Related to the global climate change is the largest species die-off we’ve seen since the dinosaurs disappeared.

· There are rumors of water-wars on the horizon, as the distribution of weather patterns puts water where we don’t need it and dries out places that have depended on local water. And increased population demand puts even more pressure on these systems.

· Not surprisingly, the global infrastructure is breaking down at the same time. Highways, water systems, bridges, power delivery systems, electricity grids, sewer lines—not a day goes by without reports of some city being flooded with water (or worse), or having a lengthy electrical blackout.

· And not surprisingly, our faith in all the institutions we’ve relied on for centuries is at an all-time low. All the old structures: government, religion, educational institutions, medical institutions, corporations, banks, the infrastructure—seem to be failing us just when we think we need them most.

But is that true? Do we really need them to be as they’ve always been? Of course not! They must change to meet changing situations.

Figure 7: The Universe: The Four Winds and the Four Elements (tapestry by Anne Beversdorf based on undated medieval illuminated manuscript)

Ready for the good news? Here’s another list:

Competing Strange Attractors in Existing Systems:

Multiple Nonlinear Systems in CREATION

· Right now, we’re seeing dramatic breakthroughs in energy sources. And the information explosion caused by the Internet is making the science behind these techniques available to anyone interested (whereas in the past, these techniques were closely guarded, and often “shelved” secrets.)

o The prematurely debunked fusion experiments of 20 years ago are getting new and positive attention.

o Magnetic and electromagnetic engines are being developed

o Hal Puthoff’s Institute for Advanced Studies has proven the availability of zero point energy (the ability to pull energy from a vacuum) in practice as well as theory.

o Concept cars have been developed using compressed air for fuel; water; and hydrogen.

o Solar, wind, and water energy systems are being combined with breakthroughs in storing and delivering this kind of energy over distances to make sustainable and renewable energy resources available over large areas.

o Fuel cells as energy storage devices can make it possible for individuals to live anywhere they want.

o With freely available energy through renewable and storable resources, no longer will people have to cluster together where energy systems are delivered. You could take your fuel cells into the desert, pump water over long distances, and heat and cool your home without depending on the “grid” of wiring that limits comfortable living to clustered areas.

o New plastic wires have been developed by a California company that have NO energy impedance. At present, over half the energy that goes through our wiring systems is lost because of impedance. This new wiring alone doubles the available energy to homes and businesses.

· New technological breakthroughs in many other areas, including nanocomputing, medicine, genetics, that can aid us in adapting to rapid change.

· New paradigms of health and healing are challenging the supremacy of allopathic medicine’s “medicine as warfare” concepts. Spiritual/mental/emotional states, herbal remedies, essential oils, homeopathy, as well as energy healing, both technologically and spiritually mediated, are beginning to encroach on accepted medical practices, immediately enlarging our resources for personal health and wellness.

· Dramatic new understandings of the universe present us with models for understanding global change initiated at the personal level. Astrophysicist Nassim Haramein, for example, has published peer-reviewed articles that mathematically prove that black holes are present in every bit of matter and, rather than being sink-holes that swallow universes hole, they are quite literally the creative point of EVERYthing. This is because a black hole is density of information to the point that all information in the universe is being sucked into it. And since these are everywhere, including in us, we ourselves have universal knowledge and information available to us, with which we participate in creating the universe. Furthermore, we have new information about the creative power inherent in the dodecahedron (sometimes called the star-tetrahedron). Katya Walters’ theories in her work The Double-Bubble Universe also give us access to new levels of consciousness that work both on the scientific and on the emotional/spiritual level.

· The nature of time itself seems to be morphing. Even the young are commenting on how time itself seems to be speeding up. More and more people are reporting time anomolies, where time no longer seems to be predictably linear. Physicists report that the reason time seems to be going in only one direction is because it is linked with space, and in an expanding universe, space is traveling away from the big bang point. But as the universe begins to contract, the physics of time say time will start running backwards. Interesting to think about, isn’t it. Will we have a “redo”? or perhaps better, a “re-Undo”? On the other hand, physicist also tell us that all time exists simultaneously, and advanced states of meditation or prayer (and sometimes near-death experiences) can throw us into experiences of other places and times. Perhaps a flexibility in understanding and experiencing time will allow us circumstantial “re-dos” as we revisit choice points in the past with a fresh perspective of joy and healing.

· the Maharishi Effect and Heart-Math studies prove that our own internal emotional/spiritual state has direct and measurable influence over the world around us. The Maharishi Effect meditators changed crime rates in major cities and in a case of “mediation by meditation” diffused a near nuclear war in the middle east. Heart-Math researchers along with NASA measurements of the Global Magnetic field have demonstrated that global emotional congruency actually changes the protective magnetosphere of our planet. By finding our joy, our bliss, we actually and literally protect the earth.

· If we can extrapolate from what we know of the Bose-Enstein condensate, it may not take many humans living in joy and bliss to affect a global change. Bear with me here, so I can explain this.

o The Bose Einstein Condensate is actually a NEW state of matter. We are all familiar with matter as solids, liquids, or gases. The BEC is a “Boson Wave” that is none of the above.

o At low temperatures, Bosons can behave very differently than ordinary matter. When a small number reach a “high spin state”, it triggers a “condensation of the probability state,” in which, suddenly, ALL the bosons in the condensate reach high-spin in the same instant. In hydrogen Bosons, only 3% of atoms reaching high-spin will trigger the whole condensate to become high-spin. What’s so great about high-spin? It’s a superconductor! A superconductor puts out more energy than it takes in.

o Some researchers believe that Bosons in a superconductor state are partly in the physical world, and partly in the non-physical world of limitless energy. Usually Bosons require energy-sucking cold conditions to turn into superconductors, but a few researchers have identified conditions not requiring super-zero temperatures.

There seems to be an analogy between the Bose-Einstein condensate state and the widely-reported “hundredth monkey” phenomenon. Rupert Sheldrake refers to this as a morphogenetic field. When enough monkeys (100, in the story) on one island started washing their tubers in the ocean to remove the sand and enjoy them more, monkeys on other islands spontaneously started washing their tubers, too. According to Sheldrake, the concept of washing tubers entered the “field of monkeyness”, where all monkeys could have access to it. The principles seem to be a macro-level example of the Bosons-turned superconductor at the micro-level.

· On a social level, new communications tools have created the foundation for new socially conscious community-activist advertising. Carrotmob is the name given to a marketing technique designed to create environmentally sensitive businesses by rewarding those who do it. In the first instance of its use, a liquor store agreed to spend thousands of dollars reducing packaging waste and recycling everything in sight in exchange for “nine thousand people coming to your store next Saturday.” Through cell phone messaging, internet viral messaging, and Twitter, the marketers asked everyone to spread the word that THIS liquor store was going green, all the way, and to reward and thank them, please show up next Saturday and buy something. The crowd was much larger than the promised 9,000 and the store, the marketing team, and the community were all pleased with the results. The store changed because of the carrot of the mob dangled before them, giving the marketing technique the name “Carrotmob”.

· Paradigm shifts in international leadership models are not only showing up, but are being appreciated and are spreading. First, there’s Bhutan’s model of “Gross National Happiness” as a measure of economic well-being. Their 2008 conference on Gross National Happiness attracted top government policy makers from the US and Western Europe, as they explained the metrics of the 74 measures of well-being that run their economy. As an example, they state that people must have quiet time to reflect on their life in order to be happy, so the well-being of the country is better served if people work fewer hours a week but earn enough to live on. More dollars at the cost of quiet reflective time is not good for the country or its people. They also state the people are happiest when they have natural beauty to gaze upon, so logging industries that threaten their forests are discouraged as being against the well-being of the country, and city landscapes with trees and plants and flowing water are encouraged. A second change, and one with more publicity, is President Obama’s total rejection of the politics of fear and divisiveness in favor of a policy of hope and inclusion. To the frustration of many of his former supporters, his refusal to embrace divisive politics continues even as his political opponents have demonstrated their commitment to their “no to everything” policies.

· The population explosion itself seems to be triggering a unified field of consciousness among humans. Ervin Laszlo’s theories show a fractal development of single entities multiplying to form group consciousness at a certain critical population level. From atoms that coalesce to form molecules, wherein atoms work together for the purpose of the molecule; molecules that coalesce to form cells, where molecules work together for the larger purpose of the cells; cells that form ants, wherein cells work together for the larger purpose of the ant, ants that form colonies wherein all ants choose to act in ways that support the whole group, cells that form humans, where all cells work together for the well-being of the human; to eventually humans to form the human group, wherein all humans work together for the well-being of all. These turning points in group awareness seem to come at about the 10 billion population point. At present, the earth’s population of humans is somewhere around 8 billion. Our population explosion could be leading us inexorably toward a unified field of human consciousness.

· Somewhat related to this is a growing understanding of spirituality as a non-dogmatic, experiential state. In centuries past, one’s religious orientation was directed quite specifically by the organization of one’s religious affiliation. Now more and more people identify themselves as “spiritual, but not religious”, meaning that they believe in direct connection with the spiritual world, but are not willing to cloak this in dogmatic explanations or directives. This is related to an increased awareness that the world and the explanations of our world are a matter of “this AND this” instead of “this OR that.”

· And while we are caught up in the awareness of the monumental changes in front of us, a growing number of individuals are, privately and collectively, actively and deliberately choosing to celebrate life itself. Certainly a massive catastrophe bring about the joy of seeing oneself alive. I was blessed to visit Hawaii just after a category 5 hurricane, Iniki, had devastated the island. While over 90 percent of the roofs on the island had been torn off by the force of the winds, the only fatality was an elderly man who had a heart attack. The attitude of the islanders after the storm was a huge celebration of life. To have experienced such a powerful force of nature that the very leaves were stripped from the trees and still see ones’ friends and neighbors alive and well put into perspective the value of life over the “things” that had been lost. As global changes threaten much of our lifestyle, I believe we are simultaneously seeing a reclaiming of the values of life, and love, and community, and kindness towards our neighbors, both local and global.

Figure 9: God, Creating the Universe (miniature tapestry by Anne Beversdorf, based on French illuminated manuscript from the early 13^th century)

When, as a culture, we start to experience simultaneous total breakdown of known structures and total re-invention our culture, what happens to our ideas? Clearly our ideas change. This is what we sometimes call a “global mind-change”. And what do new ideas create? New ways of being… in fact new ideas create whole new worlds, and new ways of relating to the rediscovered and newly created cosmos.

(continued in Joyful Change: FOUR)