2012 Solstice Reset

This channeling knows no other dreamtime but that of the now, in the making, in the celebration of self which is all, of the act which is any act, of the words which are any words, of the motion which is ongoing however one might attempt to slice it into two or more segments of frozen time, time nonetheless beats on, wings and thunder.

Again the chorus speaks, the deal is struck, the provisional makeshift tent of the world circus is erected on the dusty square around the fountain, the gypsies arrive and the banksters retire and the camels smile in their dry dung aroma.

Again the lines diverge, converge, swim in the undulations of a greater force. Again and again, I come to surrender my own dissatisfactions, the larger failings, the grievous state of affairs of affairs of state, to come home to this always this and only this moment in time no time between you all you and me not me to face the mirror of understanding which stands under the banner of All-That-Is.

No new god or religion, this sense remains provisionally attached to a conscious being who happens to pass by here long enough to get a read from the oscillating compass, the fluttering timepiece, and reckon where next the wind might buffet everything in its merry way.

Towns thrashing in the surf of the ages; silent apocalypses rendering all miraculous in the morning of the new day. Again the surf rises, and again the volunteers encounter and override their own resistance and fear, to join the incoming tide.



With the following I offer snapshots of three spiritually-oriented events I was privileged to attend, marking this solstice season:

Sitting with Claudio, Lemuria

The place was packed on the 21st, the morning of the world UNIFY meditation set to raise the planetary vibration by the power of mass intention. The usual speech was given to bring to our busy minds the peaceful acceptance that we are already universal consciousness, universal being itself, no other separate self except in our illusions, or for temporary entertainment. We are the ant, the papaya, the billions of galaxies.

Beware the gurus in pointy hats and clown suits. Beware the hoary traditions thousands of years old, in which women are excluded from positions of power. Beware the fixations on this or that name of "God," the names themselves becoming idols of prejudice, limitation, separation.

The new world is the world we awake to any and every moment, the world available to us even if we forget or refuse to be aware. Any categorization of it as a new religion or belief system is fraught with inaccuracy, shades of contentious interpretation, endless commentary; so we must trust our individual expression of it to others as needed, in the new moment arising, spontaneous and therefore honest and direct - even if words themselves can only approximate direct experience, understanding, realization.

Activation with Kartron, Ha'iku

Inspired to manifest our highest possibility in the crystal light grid of electromagnetic resonant frequency in the star chamber of the god-gate vortex, azure-blue forty-four feet high and forty-four feet across to channel the necessary energies of transmutation overseen by Archangel Michael and St. Germain, a half-dozen of us came together on a rainy Ha'iku night preceeding the 1:11 ascension time of the solstice itself, bypassing the prescribed Mayan movement meditation on inverted triangles to activate the torsion magnetics of the soul template to anchor the eight-minute transmission for three months in which humanity will solidify on earth what has been brought from heaven...

The delivery is English arch and comical, Monty Python meets Kryon the Interdimensional. Yet the critique is incisive, uncompromising impatience with powers manipulating earth and life itself, their time now finished and due to fade away, as we take courage to banish them, refusing their overtures, consigning them to prison or exile as consequences of their own dark choices.

We are the warriors of light, the initiates of god-training, who must embody and act upon the heavenly decrees of those who have gone before, those who watch from above and those committed over eons to see the fulfillment of the paradigm of harmony set to replace the paradigm of discord and chaos and worse, coercion and falsification of life's innate imprints for the wellbeing of all.

Zikr with Leilah, Makawao Union Church

This knowledge of soul unification is mystic-old, from the Sufi seers and spinners and poets, so we celebrated in large concentric circles and singing this practice of oneness with the spirit of all, Al-lah, but one of the names of all-that-is. The time come for the world of oppression and exploitation and separation to end, a separation or rather integration of that ruling paradigm into a new flowering of old wisdom.

We bring to rebirth in our practice together the knowledge of inner truth, which connects in spirit all things and all beings. Our voices resonate with gratitude for such spirit, for the divine manifestation that we enjoy in this temporary stay in the garden of immanent splendor. Our prayers are our voices and swaying bodies, our joined hands and hearts. Our feet step the codes of grace and commitment, marking the journey not outward or away, but circling the territory of the sacred which we share.



And what of that supposed phenomenon, this world-staged upheaval and transformation, the signal to new time or no time?

It fades with the world it claimed to recycle, giving rise to what comes instead.

It brings nothing in its wake recognizable as a suitable replacement, because that very standard of replication has been relegated to the settling basin of the hourglass.

It ceases control as the objects and subjects of that ill-gotten bargain opt out for clearer arrangements, direct dealings over the trade of those tokens we value in advancing the game forward.

Projects multiply, sources corroborate, invitations beckon, dead ends sprout weeds, fallow fields grow what they will, and the chorus takes another deep breath before the chant of the new day.

Paradise Alive, Revolution Afoot

Here in Maui nearly a month, and difficult to generate any impetus to create something other out of the bubble of suburban comfort, experiential paradise in the outer and inner realms: loving relationship, nurturing warm ocean and air, sunshine and earth, ample drumming and social opportunities, fresh local organic food, time to work on paying jobs and our own projects. The first week, true, posed challenges settling in. We had to futz with furniture arrangement, household supplies, wireless upgrades, computer glitches, phone plan options, car registration, assorted errands in mall-ville. On the fun side of daily life we've been reacquainting ourselves with familiar places and people: sampling beaches with good snorkeling, taking walks on our neighborhood streets interlaced with golf fairways, attending zikr, kirtan, and 5-rhythms dance, and playing drums and percussion at drum classes, dance classes, beach jams, house jams, jungle jams.

Rising out of this swell of material contentment is an inner thriving, yet striving to create more, a reaching out and connecting to glimpse a bigger picture, at risk of contamination by endless conspiracy and unraveling, threats to peace and well-being, real or imagined. At every point of input is a questioning, a partial truth with another truth on its darker side, or a lighter truth hidden by the walls of projection. There is a risk of sheer reactivity, of responding in kind, of feeding polarity by leaning on one side or the other. Equanimity holds the balance, either with a balanced, classic "liberal" view, or a radical vision beyond dualistic assertions competing for attention.


The natural world serves as the testing ground for what is real: flowing currents, blowing breezes, burning sun, lava and coral, with its attendant life forms that judge our actions as valid or remote by sheer comparison. Last week we were escorted in turn by a couple of turtles for an extended swim along the coral: one turning suddenly to eye us face to face; the other, a six-foot giant, content to match us stroke for stroke for a full half and hour. Today the turtle that appeared out of "nowhere" under our plasticked noses lay mute and stone-still on the bottom, nestled in a trough of old coral, only blinking to signal its questionable hold on life. Was it poisoned, injured, dying? Scared, or bored? Or just napping, extending the long moment before its next brief breath? What story unfolded that eluded our imagining utterly? On the sign to the beach was depicted a cute couple lounging on the sand: monk seal with flipper on the leathery turtle by its side. So, missing that lost love?

In other news, we hear the revolution is afoot. Monday will reveal its truth or fantasy, forewarning or false lead. Or radiation about to bloom, sending us all to doom. Or, ascension at hand, holographic transformation an act of divine will. Or, more of the same mass diet of concocted terror, machination and mounting control, the mad dreams of a dying elite. Or, back to the basics of suburban life, outfitting the kitchen, walking the dog. Or, greeting the new sun each day with a smile, stretching the body under its unbending rays of glory.


The beauty is, there is considerable choice in the channel to tune to, the show to create. One, two, a network and multitude at a time. At the speed of coral, turtle or seal, flower or sunset, slow shared meal.

Finding Home

Finding Home

The taste of wild Pacific salmon mellow in my mouth, I reflect on the blessings of home that greeted me on my return to British Columbia five days ago...

• The cornucopia of food selection in the supermarkets and various small shops, worldwide in scope and of privileged quality.


• The wide clean quiet streets, nary a motorbike in sight.


• The convenience of a home address, phone number, access to utilities, true high-speed Internet.


• Backups to restore of music and photo collection, files, computer programs, to resume fully the digital side of life.


• Continuity of dentist and doctor care, and besides, being healthier and more energetic.


• Familiarity of streets and shops, to find whatever items are needed or desired, right now.


• Cool fresh air, the cloudless sky (without chemtrails), turning to genuine summer perfection in early May.


• Familiarity of trees, gardens, forests, landscape, beaches - and water swimmable this year in spring.


• Long daylight hours of late spring and summer, contrasting with the dark tropic evenings.


• Relaxation of the body and spirit from the irritating buzz and itch of mosquitoes.


• List of friends/family/band/pod to catch up with, events to attend.


• Compatible language, cultural personality, civil society.


• A single all-embracing culture, instead of divided status as "expat" (leaving aside deeper analysis of colonization here in North America, and how far back that goes, for instance the ice-age megafauna extinctions, or further?).


• Familiar car, house, furnishings, kitchenware, bedding, instruments, printers, desk and chair, clothes, shower and bath.

Five days into blowing this bubble of elation, I pause, already settled in, full in appreciation and now ready to consider what's next. The other side of elation, sniffing the slide down to routine, normalcy, even stagnation; and beyond, the unsettledness of the next cycle, and the complexities of merging another being into this bubble built for one - or floating it off again to another land.

In the meantime, the story settles into a space between the swings of the pendulum. Neither elation nor deflation offers to sustain. Rather a more grounded presence, neither catching up nor leaning ahead, but arriving to the next moment simple and free. May this story, with less attachment to details of home and circumstance, and more opening of heart, continue. Its mantra, whether on page 1, 5, or the last: Stay Tuned.

Coming Soon

The biggest spider I ever saw, a sentient companion over my morning sun meditation bench... after two weeks, I look up one morning to find it gone, web destroyed. That must have been one large hungry bird.

As we go further into 2012, already the days and weeks and months are spinning by, accelerating, and I have just one month left in this fertile bubble called Bali. While the outer world careens through a parade of events - seemingly chaotic, more likely orchestrated from hidden forces terrestrial or otherwise - I have kept life here simple. Revising to bring new life to an old novel; snapping photographs on sunny walks through the rice fields and walkways adorned with offerings; anticipating momentous changes to come, transformation already underway.

Who is the spider, who the flower, who the hungry bird?


What is really happening in the world, and what is about to happen? On the mainstream side we find the usual diet of war and rumors of war, endless episodes of so-called terror, frightening swaths of destruction from supposedly natural forces. The alternative media paints an opposite picture of plots and plans, documenting histories of coercion and coverup, aiming for truth disclosure above national and sectarian ideologies. Financial tyranny, we are promised, is now on the brink of collapse, as earth's vast majority of good citizens will be treated to a spectacle of mass arrests of the dark cabal.

Aligned with the political, scientific and financial whistleblowers are the angelic channelers, New Age seers, and disclosers of contact with advanced beings from beyond - who keep promising to materialize "in the very near future." The legions of spiritual teachers and guides continue chanting the mantra of inner peace and self-realization, with a contemporary twist of letting go and merging with the bigger picture, surfing the planetary shift, breathing into the One body of energy that we are, the collective cosmic organism, expression of Source.

All this news coming from all sides is unmistakably taking on a different edge now, everything coming to a head, everything to be revealed, and healed.


Channeling, whether conscious or unconscious, what is needed for human evolution, our personal lives tick by nevertheless. We go out to cosmic possibility and come back again to a feeling of, okay, whether after enlightenment or still before - in other words, during enlightenment - we still chop the wood and carry the water.  Only somehow the little things are more profound, more meaningful and important. At the same time we have the awareness of something other in the offing, something far greater, making those chosen particulars less meaningful, less important. Either way, both ways simultaneously, we do them, we continue, because that’s what we do.


And while waiting, anticipating, pausing in another long breath between the daily doing, we catch an inspiration to do more. On the creative alternatives side, we have the new activist paradigm to Occupy Earth (with room for the poetical hand in hand with the political); or to celebrate nature, culture and spirit in a further explosion of transformational festivals.

Always coming back to the present and personal, the one breath I am responsible for, each moment there is a new opportunity to go deeper, to the opening within, the tapping of source divinity, the space between cells, walking with lightness and light itself, in a frequency of dimensional shift, healing energy, higher vibration, sense of oneness with all.

Andromeda emissary Tolec says it will all happen in a flash, overnight as we sleep, and anyway not until January 2014. Craig Hamilton says the thing is to get up off our self-absorption, and see our consciousness raising as a collective identification and experience. Osnat says it’s more than sitting by oneself in silence and more than sitting together to Occupy Whatever; it’s whatever we do and wherever we walk, in that lightening of density, the opening of space between.

In reality, this reality here and now, the possibility and potential of a dimensional shift, of a higher vibration, of an expanded frequency, is discovered in the opening of inspiration - not so much a concept, idea, an analysis even of the biggest picture - but of moving energy in the manifest moment, in the cells themselves, the quickening of the breath, the tenor of the voice, the momentum of the words, the sudden swell of intensity of the music of the Balinese jazz funk band in the middle of their set, on the ground floor of the restaurant where everyone, in what a moment ago seemed a conventional, humdrum setting, sits up and takes notice, their heads starting to bob, their knees keeping time, their feet twitching, their eyes coming alight.

Computer Crash

It's a tale as old as the computer age: hard disk failure, no backup. In this case, the "crash" was literal, and traumatic. Osnat, navigating the narrow space between window, desk, chair and bed after closing the curtains, tripped on the tangled computer cords at her feet, and sent my sleek black plastic Vaio careening onto the floor, cracking the corner of the screen and more seriously, impacting the lower corner, the area encasing the hard drive.

At first it seemed okay, screen still displaying as usual. I didn't try any further testing as we were just headed out the door to dinner. Conversation with our neighbor there touched on the near-catastrophe and moved on to world tensions - "What if the whole Internet went down in an instant with a cyberattack on the magnetic shield?" - as well as our addictive tendencies these days with computer and Internet and related technologies. I felt chastised by the tenor of our collective judgement yet smug to have dodged that bullet for now.

Back at the room I discovered that programs wouldn't load; I tried a reboot. A telltale clicking sound advertised trouble in the vicinity of the hard drive, and the opening screen stalled with the wishful statement, "Starting Windows..." For good measure I gave the plastic housing a few more whacks with my hand, hoping to rattle back into place whatever had come loose, but now the result was far worse: simple white letters on a dark screen, like what you would get on the first time-sharing terminals I cut my computer teeth on back in 1968. The simple script announced, "Cannot find operating system."

I grieved. Hung my head, retreated into a cocoon, stared off into space. Tried to keep from blaming Osnat; blamed myself, the karma of vulnerability. Computer just four months old, I had spent a month in September installing programs and organizing data; spent irreplaceable weeks revising a novel; maintained all the accounts for my editing business. I had already felt antsy over the required idleness of this January Ayurvedic treatment regime we’d embarked on, in the quiet green hills of Kerala. Had looked forward, at least, in some consolation, to working our way through the dozens of videos transferred from Fabian in Tiru, and downloading more to watch - even some select TV shows! Maybe that was the fatal attraction... Or was it a karmic virus inherited from Fabian, who himself had lost the bulk of his inventory on a zapped hard drive, just the day before offering us our remaining selection from his secondary drives?

Whatever. Now I was up the creek in Kerala. Would I simply sit idle and useless in the rice fields - here and in Bali - until returning to my backup computer in summer?

Osnat tried the consolation-of-philosophy angle, to relieve my “suffering” and probably too her own guilt in the matter. She made the obvious diagnosis: I was too attached and self-identified, anyway, and this should serve as a fruitful karmic lesson.

True enough, I had to acknowledge, since only minutes before the mishap, Dr. Ravi had sat on this very floor observing that I looked out of balance, which I was, since all day I had fumed about my lack of productivity, creativity and efficiency here at the ashram, scratching patches of minutes together over the space of an afternoon, to manage a little over an hour of billed editing time - between lunch, fruit snack, conversations, research for places to stay on our way to Trivandrum, gathering information for our visa application in Singapore, checking email and Facebook postings, and on and on. In truth, I was both too attached and too undisciplined at the same time – the last, a condition not only of poor time management, but also reflected in the loss of hardware and data itself: too careless with the tangled cords in the corner, too neglectful of the need to back up essential data.

In the sleepless night following this “lower-self” trauma I realized how many attachments of self I have already released in the past nine months before this strange still-birthing of a dead computer into karmic manifestation. Coffee, marijuana, all my favorite foods, friends and family, music bands and students, my homes in Victoria and Maui, half my summer in BC, my swims in the ocean, my long walks in nature, baseball, my perfect car, my good music speakers, my drums, daily news research and postings, editing of music jams and videos ... all abandoned for life on the move, for a healthier body and diet, for a loving relationship, for openness and discovery itself, in that spiritual hothouse of southeast India, Tiruvannamalai. If the trickster mountain Arunachala had taught me anything, it was to keep letting go of any expectations and identities ... and to keep letting go.

Still I latched on to the promise of stretches of time coming up in the spring, time to focus on writing and editing again, in Bali while Osnat goes to classes. Having given up all these lesser identities, preoccupations, pastimes, addictions, childish and egoic pursuits, I still harbored this ever-unfulfilled ambition to write, to focus, to retreat, to hole up in my hideway in the ricefields, just me and my manuscripts, nothing left but what I have my whole life considered "the real work." Nothing left, in other words, but the seat of the ego, the sacred head.

Now with one swift stroke the goddess Kali has come with her terrible sword to cut it off.

*

A nightmarish night past, the day unfolded with positive movement in many directions to restore order, hope and functionality. I first determined that the computer warranty does not cover accidental damage. Fair enough – I moved on, following Dr. Ravi’s advice to look in Cochin for expert repair help. With the help of Osnat’s still-functional MacBook Air, I searched online and found a Sony repair shop that could at least take a look and try to repair the hard drive or recover data during the three days of our transition from here to Trivandrum for the departure from India. Now it became clear why we had delayed booking our intended stay at Allepey in the backwaters; instead we booked a hotel in Cochin, from where we could still venture out on a short backwater trip while the hard drive was repaired or replaced.

I had been careful only to back up a few necessary documents on my Android phone, and at first these failed to transfer to the Mac via Bluetooth, but the USB option proved successful. The most important document, containing passwords to online accounts, still needed MS Word, however, to solve its password protection. Would I have to buy and download a replacement to install on the Mac? Open Office, a free Word clone, came to the rescue.

All of this progress on the practical plane, to restore the functionality of my computerized life, if not the hardware itself. There are usually, it seems, workarounds. Google came through big-time with its synchronization of my Chrome bookmarks, so that my virtual life online remains intact via Chrome, on the Mac. The question remains, in the hoary words of Dylan/Hendrix, how much is any of it worth? Yes, I will have to work more hours to cover the needless expenses of repair; to restore programs and settings; to recreate spreadsheets and novel revisions from scratch. But I won’t be spending all those hours watching those lost videos and TV shows. And either way, what is the value of time, itself, except in the living? On the inside.

*

Reduced to my core identity as a writer/editor, and even that threatened by the loss of familiar material capability (hardware, software, data, access), I had to experience that dark one-night of the soul, with Osnat rubbing in the spiritual salt. While aware of the higher justice of her perspective, I remained stuck in my emotional loops of feeling lost and disoriented, an addict without fix. Does “back in the saddle” now resolve this deeper metaphysical condition, of self-reliance on particular identity, role, activity, success? On my sacred trinity of Productive, Creative, Efficient? On my fundamental marriage to countable, fillable, executable Time?

Here I am, on the morning of my virtual renaissance, Mac-reborn, spending my precious free hour before breakfast while Osnat is in treatment, scoping out the options on OpenOffice, and clacking away at the old keys.

So I continue, now as ever, with this identity, this version of “real work” intact: the roving word, the rogue journalist, wearing the self-proclaimed hat of the writer, ever resilient... like my mother a smart-aleck to the end, with the TV on; or my father with figurative drink in hand. This is my chosen or given self, the way I accept for my true meditation, what I can offer to myself and the world, for what greater purpose I cannot know or care too much, but to give, to sacrifice, to offer again; to breathe while doing so, to let the thoughts pass by and let them go; to watch and witness and hold and shape and let pass by; to savor in gratitude and to share for whatever use they may have for others, or whatever beauty and grace they may convey; for that is our gift in this paradoxical paradise we have co-created, to dance in beauty and grace, before and after the challenges and obstacles thrown up as exercises in digestion and transformation; to dance in beauty and grace.

Where is this motion, but in the running fingers of time passing, letter by letter? Where is the notion that all is well or doomed, when the sweet middle steers a sure course effortless, flaming inward in open splendor?

Only to offer, to be available, to invite the sudden flurry of birdwings by the face with eyes closed, then open to the swaying flowers, the silent sun.

Followup post: Doing and Not-Doing