There’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is that we are more than our physical body, and magic is real. The bad news is that we have forgotten this. We have forgotten who and what we are. We have forgotten how to listen to our inner voice.
Several years ago I had my astrological chart read by Bill Herbst. Toward the end of the session I asked how he saw my future according to my chart. He said, “You will be comforting the traumatized.” Now, several years later, as a practicing therapist, this prediction has come to pass. Most of my clients are here because of anxiety.
We have good reason to be anxious. Our self-preservation model, our ego keeps telling us tomorrow will be just like today (or just like yesterday) but our intuition, our gut feelings, and our eyes and ears tell us something very different if we listen.
Two days ago I totaled my car. Looking back on it, I am totally amazed no one was hurt…or worse. There is an intersection close to where we live that I have always worried about because it scares me. Poland Springs runs 400 to 500 trucks per day (one way) carrying water out of Maine. These trucks run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We get trucks as often as one every 1.23 minutes. The trucks do not slow down as they cross the Saco River on a very narrow bridge.
Fortunately, I did not hit a Poland Springs Mac truck, or vice versa. I stopped at the stop sign, looked both ways, then looked at the car across the highway, turning in front of me, who beckoned me to go first. Unfortunately, I did not look left again and a Ford F 150 came down the hill. I took out his rear axel. My car stripped the engine off the motor mounts and ripped the frame. I remember the impact as I watched the truck spin out across the bridge. In hindsight, in that moment we all thought he was going in the river.
It could have been so much worse. No one was hurt. I was definitely in shock and shaken (and I still am.) My dog, Sneakers, wasn’t hurt. The man and his son weren’t hurt. At night, when I put my head on my pillow the accident, or what could have happened, replays in my head. I could have been broadsided and the one in the river.
That incident reminded me of how quickly life can turn on a dime. Yesterday, today (and tomorrow) are not the same as before the accident. Do I believe in Divine protection? Yes, but I have to do my role and pay attention.
Were there subtle warning signals that I missed? Probably. Did I wonder about the planets and consult my astrologer? Absolutely. But remember the planets impel, they do not compel. This time it was my dear friend Savitri Bess that I consulted after the accident.
There have been several major, deadly, accidents in Maine recently. My belief is that there will be many more because we are all distracted, shaky, anxious and disoriented. Everyone feels this, not just you. It is, according to Umair Haque, “ an epidemic of bad vibes sweeping across the globe.”
Our world is profoundly distressing, imbalanced, unhappy, desperate and worried. Do you feel it? News isn’t news, it’s entertainment. The real news⏤that we have burned so much carbon into the atmosphere the CO2 levels are higher than they have been for the past three million years; or that deadly methane gasses, trapped for eons under arctic ice, is now being released. (To clarify, methane is 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Whereas the full effect of heat from a carbon molecule takes ten years⏤ peak warming from a methane molecule occurs in a matter of months.)
Since 2011, when a tsunami struck the northeast coast of Japan and caused a near meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, it has taken more than 42,000 gallons of fresh water per day to keep the reactors cooled. Keeping the radioactive elements contained requires dangerous jobs for the workers, and building a new steel water tank every four days to store the spent radioactive water. Perhaps 20 years ago, I heard Joe McMoneagle (the remote viewer) say that wars of the future would be resource wars. We are there. (Only 2.5% of all the water on earth is fresh water. The rest is saline.)
There are hundreds more facts like these. In her article, “Facing Extinction,” Catherine Ingram wrote, There has never been a greater news story than that of humans facing full extinction, and yet extinction is rarely mentioned on the evening news, cable channels, or on the front pages of blogs and newspapers. It is as though the world’s astronomers were telling us that an asteroid is heading our way and will make a direct hit destined to wipe out all of life to which the public responds by remaining fascinated with sporting events, social media, the latest political scandals, and celebrity gossip.
In the fall of 2016 we were destined for change. Many of us wanted change. “Be careful what you ask for” the old saying goes. We just weren’t expecting Kali, the Dark Mother, the destroyer of worlds, oracle of holy change, the tenderhearted be-header, to be the winner of this country in 2016. Kali has brought down our house in a shocking blow; all the illusions of America, stripped in a single night. We are not who we thought we were. As a result of the election of 2016 we are standing in her much needed fires of transmutation and we are shaking to the core.
Back to the topic at hand. How do we cope with our fears, depression and anxiety? It seems to me that we have choices. We give in to fear and continue to try and keep our head in the sand, denying the reality we have created; or we awaken to our true nature. We awaken from the dream world our thinking mind has created. As much as I write, talk about and teach awareness, I realize that in my mind I am frequently in the future creating my dream world: what time will I go work out? What will we have for dinner? Has that future program been booked? What is on my schedule for tomorrow?
When my mind is creating my future, and it always is, I am asleep in the middle of my daily life. When I wake up I come back to the present moment and I am aware that I am more than the character in my dream, more than Winter with all of her idiosyncratic tendencies, her beliefs, her attitudes. When I am in this space I can rest in the beauty and wonderment of the world. At a deeper level I know there is more.
Within this “more” is an order to the Universe. I may not understand it, but through experience I know there is a Divine Presence. Sometimes I call this presence the flow of the Tao. To experience this flow I have to let go of what my ego wants; I have to release my desires and expectations, and I have to be open. I have to be in the present moment.