In the face of my relentless pressure toward positivity, I find my negative thoughts and beliefs are acting out more and more. It’s as though they are kids being shushed for being ‘bad’ while other kids are being praised for being ‘good’. The good kids beam quietly in the face of my approval, while the bad kids shriek ever-more-loudly, seeking my attention.

I thought I’d give my bad kids some attention for a change. Here’s what they have to say.

First kid:

It’s not enough! I never get enough and what I get is never right or good enough! Nobody likes me enough! I never get enough gifts or attention on my birthday! For every person who admires, likes or gives their love to me, there are five others I care about, that I give attention and admiration to, who ignore me and act like I don’t exist. I give way more than I receive when it comes to listening, attention and positive feedback. I don’t deserve this crap. I deserve better. When will it be my turn? When is somebody going to give me what I deserve? When does it start coming back to me? When is my investment in other people going to start paying returns?

Second kid:

Life is horrible and it must be all my fault. I’m horrible. I’m too old, too fat, too saggy and baggy, too weak and undisciplined. I don’t do enough to earn the praises and attention and money I want. God must hate me. Maybe there is no God. Maybe nothing means anything at all. Maybe there’s no point even bothering. Why do I try? My efforts are never good enough and I don’t have the energy and motivation to try harder. I try so hard I’m constantly exhausted but really, it seems I hardly do anything at all. I probably don’t deserve to live, even if life was worth living.

Third kid:

This is crap. The world sucks. The system is rotten, nothing makes sense, everything is backwards and inside out. My species is insane and anti-life and I can’t stand being human. I deserve to be dead, and so do the rest of us whackos. Just look at who we allow to make our rules and laws, and how crazy those rules and laws are. Look at the oppressive craziness of bureaucracy, the soulless mechanical corporations that run our lives, while sit on our fat lazy butts and let them. A blind moron could see that the life of any modern human is evil no matter how hard we try to recycle and be conscious. With practically every breath I am committing some horrible wrong. That cell phone case I bought at the dollar store today for $1.50 was made by some little kid in a slave factory in China. Every good deal has a dark side. Ugliness is everywhere. I refuse to participate in this madness. Let me out of this crazy world.

Fourth kid:

I’m too much, too intense, too full and nobody wants me, nobody wants what I have to offer. Nobody will pay me for what I do, yet it’s all I can do, so I can’t support myself in this crazy world. Nobody wants to listen to me or pay attention to me. This is because — (fill in the blank with variations on the first, second or third kid’s theme: ‘nobody likes me,’ ‘I don’t deserve,’ ‘the world makes no sense.’).

There are more, all crying, their tinny voices intertwined, mixing and matching and struggling for dominance.

What to do about these kids with their relentless resentment, self-pity and cynicism? They won’t shut up, they won’t go away. They mutter, shriek and whine in the back of my mind until I can’t think straight, while the sweet light children I prefer go unheard, their gentle song lost in the clamour. I must forcefully tune them out when I wish to turn to their siblings, to whom I listen intently, hoping they can help me feel better. And they do, while I can hear them.

Good kids (in chorus, harmonizing):

I am so grateful for today. Every breath is a blessing. I hear the birds and my heart swells. I feel the blood pulsing in my body in the rhythm of my heartbeat. This moment, here and now, is magic. I feel God here. Every day, every year life feels better and better. Miracles happen before my eyes. I look, and what I focus on brightens, sparkles and expands in my sight. I am a living, breathing, natural creature of power and magic and beauty. I see my beauty in the eyes of people I talk to sometimes, who look at me that way in response to something I say without even trying. I am wise, I am strong, I am creative, I belong. The earth is blessed, everything has a reason, and love is all that exists. I may not understand it, and I don’t need to.

I trust God, I trust Mother Gaia, I trust natural processes of evolution to unfold perfectly, and I trust the future to make sense of what may not be clear now. I release my need to know it all and I realize my potential for happiness now. I am growing stronger, I am better, smarter, more capable, more gifted and skilled every day of my life. I am attracting more loving, genuine, emotionally congruent people into my life who are more willing to love me back than I could ever have dreamed possible even a few years ago. I have more peak experiences, my highs are higher and my lows are higher too. Life is wonderful and becoming more so.

Is it any wonder that I prefer these ones? Their song is easy on my ears, they make me feel good to hear. What they say feels true to me, so I intuitively respond to their goodness. The ranters chanting nastily and hurtfully in the background, conflicting with and contradicting each other, can’t compete with their sisters and brothers. I resist them, I push them away, so that their voices are raised in hurt and blame. I feel bad for rejecting them but I can’t stand to listen either.

What is the solution here? Where is the balance? I turn to the middle ground, the empty place between the poles where I am blind, and this is what I find:

There are no bad kids and no good ones, merely differences in point of view. Some parts of me see a truth that is beautiful and pleasurable, and these parts agree with each other, so alignment and harmony comes easily. It is natural to prefer harmony to discord, but that doesn’t make the discordant parts wrong or bad. The so-called bad parts see other kinds of truth, darker and more emotional viewpoints coloured by past experience that was not accepted and embraced at the time, and therefore remains stuck there, and these are not beautiful and not pleasurable. Yet, because these points of view do not tell a story that aligns with the truth of the present moment doesn’t mean they are not valid points of view. Theirs is a truth that can evolve when it is accepted, embraced, allowed to vibrate and change to be replaced with true understanding.

True and lasting change can come only when I give these parts the floor, listen and feel their point of view compassionately without judging or rejecting in favour of a different, better-feeling truth. The truth is that my sensation of discordance is a judgment, and even more negative feelings are caused by my conscious rejection of what I judge to be discord. I want everything to harmonize in a way that feels good so I try to edit out and erase anything that disagrees with the pleasurable truth that feels good to me. But that does not allow the whole truth, it does not allow me to learn the deeper truth that includes shadow as well as light, it does not honour the beings who hold pieces of truth that I reject and deny. It is my own rejection and denial, my own resistance and rigidity that makes it feel so bad to me. If I continue to reject and refuse, I can never know how it might feel to embrace those points of view within the context of acceptance and inclusion rather than struggle, discord and rejection.

The truth is that I have always suppressed certain voices within me because I didn’t like what they say or how they make me feel. That can change, and in fact, it already has. Most of the light voices began their journey as part of the dark and painful clamour, and my self-acceptance and embracing of their point of view has allowed them to evolve. Without that, I would not be who I am today, nor could I be having the beautiful experiences that I do have. I would still be trapped in my dark past, repeating the patterns of my history.

Here is how I have done it: with help. I remember how, now. It’s always a struggle to remember when I forget, which is constantly. And that’s okay.

First kid:

I never get enough.

What do you need? What would help you feel like it was enough?

I don’t know. All I know is I’m always hungry. I am empty and gnawing and aching and hurting and I want help.

That must feel awful. I’m sorry you have to feel that way. How can I help you?

Stop pushing me away. Stop hating me and making me feel bad about feeling bad. I can’t help how I feel. My feelings matter. I’m real. I hate you for making me hurt so bad.

I’m sorry. I was wrong. I shouldn’t have. What do you need from me now?

PAY ATTENTION TO ME!! Love me! Notice me! Listen to me!

Yikes. This kid is an endless black hole of need. I feel it sucking the life out of me. When I focus on her, I can’t love her. She is hateful, angry and too hurt and hungry to believe. What can I do now? As I ask the question, I know the answer.

Ah. Okay. Hey, Big Wholly Mama. There’s a kid in me who needs more than I can give. Will you help?

Yes.

Hey kid. Here’s your mom. See you later. Good luck.

————————–

Okay, maybe not that last bit. I need to stay present with the whole process, no matter how uncomfortable it gets. But I trust - I DO trust - that with Big Wholly Mama’s presence making me bigger inside, I can be enough for myself. I am enough for myself. Whoo hoo.

That’s the trick. I think. These aren’t simply bad feelings that I can push away and suppress. They’re parts of me. Kids, hungry hurt ones. And I’m not big enough to parent them all by myself. I need help. I am asking for the help I need, not to get rid of them, but to help them get their needs met. I know that when they are fed and listened to, cared for and allowed to cry their tears and express themselves to their heart’s content, that they will be able to show me who they really are.

And oh yeah, how good it feels when they add their voices in harmony to my chorus. They make it gutsier, edgier, tighter, more vivid, more real.

Rock and roll.

I seem to need to binge-purge with writing, to spew the vomitrocious contents of my brain in the possibly vain hope that some kind of clarity may result. The piece you are reading falls under that heading, alas. So, mea culpa for cluttering your screen with my mentritus, but a gaia’s gotta do what a gaia’s gotta do.

Here I go, running as the brain-ball bounces above the words to the jingle that’s relentlessly singing under the picture. Once, I leaped to greet the new day only to be dumped into the drink I thought I’d be toasted with. Back on my day of birth, fateful entry into earthly existence, I finally squirted down my watery slide after a long crazy ride (thirty-six hours, mother said), expecting a celebration. Hey everybody! I’m here! Break out the good cheer!

But that was before I learned how the story is supposed to go.

The newly-arrived (me, and more than likely you, too) were casually caught, treated like things, slung to the side to be sucked out, palpated, stuffed, packaged and wrapped. Not that poor, tired, trapped mums were treated any better. It was just the same-old, same-old nature of life here on this plane, but to say it seemed insane to me then is about as under as I can state the matter.

And now, the constant clatter of high heels on marble and concrete, the nattering background drone of television undertoning every conversation, the roar of motorbikes and muscle cars, unmuffled because more decibels are cooler, drowning out the industrial white noise every urban dweller must take for granted or go mad… these all must have rattled everybody else’s brains and addled their sense of something wrong, something missing, something fatally awry, but I…

… I must’ve been hiding under my bed or (more likely) lost in a book when the deaf and blind was handed out. I thought I was so smart, but might have been happier had I joined the queue of winners and losers taught young to manipulate the controls of their souls, turn this need down, amplify that desire, damp the fire of life-force. That’s how you make it here in this so-called real world, which ironically consists of putting in wasted time until you die in order to qualify to live, finally,in the heaven of your dreams.

That is, unless you fail to avoid committing any of a myriad compelling sins, then you’ll be condemned to be sent to the bad eternity instead of the good one you were promised. What are the odds of winning that lottery? Can anyone really walk the razor-fine line that supposedly leads to forever’s heavenly reward?

Hell, I can’t even walk a straight line from here to tomorrow without getting distracted by the urge to drown any of a thousand sorrows I’ve been forced to suppress over the course of trying to survive this crazy world.

I regretfully report that I consistently come up fatally short on the Sin-o-Meter. It seems the dream of heaven is not to be my fate. Still, when I peer more closely at that photo, the heaven it shows is far too stiff and stilted for my taste.

As for the long winding road, my load is way too heavy to carry so far. Much, much better my loosey goosey, unwinding, undefining dance into the bliss of eternal Now, and damn both Hell and Heaven altogether. All worry and stress about wrong versus right can just take flight with the birds on the breeze, take root to be flowers for bees, become sweet scent wafting through the trees, oh yes.

Ah, oh, yes. Such pleasure, such a treasure trove of blessing be mine whenever I re-member my eternally divine miracle, my mantra, so simple, so gravid:

“Here I am, now.”

Time for some mental hygiene, brush the teeth of my soul to sparkling brightness. I have limited hopes, though; the look of the outdoors today is as dreary and dark as I feel, so realistically, chances for change are limited, being the weather-dependent faerie that I am.

Somewhere in the heart of my darkness is a stake which was meant to slay the vampire; the trouble is, the vamp’s victims become themselves undead, so the well-meant weapon was stuck into my own once-beating center. Now, pinned to the ground I find myself bound by limits to my fullness. Dark? O yes, this dreary pain needs be expressed, though no one is likely to be impressed by its soul-sucking angst.

Did you not hear me say, the vampire is me? That darn stake didn’t kill, for how can the undead be killed? merely trapped me, sapped my energy and locked me into this coffin of choiceless, noiseless, changeless, cheerless, hopeless, deathless, oh you get the drift I’m sure.

What am I trying to say? Spit it out, get over this hump, lift up that slumped lump of self from the floor, off the ground, unbind the bound or be forever found lacking, slacking off from assigned tasks.

Get the fuck UP already.

I’m supposed to be inspiring, living the truth I dare to spout like some kind of teacher, a preacher who practices, so better stop showing these blemishes and warts on my naked doughy belly already!

Oops, did I say that out loud?

You have protected yourself by divorcing the emotions from the images of torture. You heart has felt it could not tolerate the pain of the compassion, empathy and heartbreak of these feelings, but emotions are not divorceable. It is like divorcing your bowels from your brain. You are all part of one body, one being—bowels, brain, mind and emotions. It is time to re-marry the separated parts of yourself which have never actually been separate but have simply stopped communicating with one another. This lack of communication has led to misplaced assumptions and resultant misunderstandings.

Now, your spirits inhabit your bodies as though they were separable from them, like a car and driver. But they are not truly separable, and it has never been right to treat bodies as disposable. You have worn yourselves down and lost much power over lifetimes through the cycle of birth, death, and in many cases, birth and death again, again and again. This cycle has appeared to be the natural way because it has happened for so long, but it is not the way it is meant to be.

Some of you have lived hundreds, even thousands of lifetimes on Earth. For others, it is the first time around here–and the last. It is not a question of which paradigm is correct, the wheel of reincarnation and karma or one shot at embodied / earthly life. Both are true for different types of beings.

The beings who have reincarnated on Earth many times are the old souls. They have much more responsibility for the state of the world as it is today than those who are only now born into it for the first time. The new ones, the once-borns (as they were called) have responsibility to save themselves if they wish to live. If they do not, then death will be their lot, for each in the time which is right, and that will be the end of their time on earth. This is not necessarily wrong for them.

On a personality level, we are all ‘once-born’. Personalities are formed at the moment of birth, which can be read in the astrological chart of the tropical zodiac.

I am an old soul on Earth—an ancient one. I remember my other lives in aggregate, though only a few in great detail. I tend to live with a kaleidoscopic profusion of mental images and memories. Most of my past lives ended badly, which is not an uncommon pattern for we old ones. I have become stuck in the pain of my past deaths. I have died many times, in terrible ways.

None of my memories so far include slipping gently away at the end of my days, surrounded by my loving family, as I rise from my body and into the welcoming light. That has not been my story. Being burned at the stake, tortured, starved, or wasting away in painful torment has been more my style.

The reasons for that are complicated and I won’t go into them here. But I cannot blame others for my own patterns. I see lines of causality connecting me to my experiences, and I accept the responsibility inherent in that causality.

Science has proved that time is not linear. Thus, there are no ‘past’ lives that are really over with, finished, or ended. I still experience every one of my lifetimes, at some level, concurrent with this one. In a sense, my deaths are yet to come, since I am still alive in this here and now. As long as I live, there is hope that my other selves may yet live. The past is subject to change due to my evolutionary growth. Still, memories of death are also true, because my body (which is bound by time) holds the emotions triggered by these past deaths, and can only continue to hold them until those emotions are released.

These emotions were born with me and have been the cause of most of the compulsive behaviors, futilities and failures of my life. This is the fate side of the double-sided coin. On the free will side, I can choose to allow those ancient emotional imprints to express cleanly, thereby releasing the patterns that hold them in place, and thus changing my own fate, past and future. The memories themselves may not shift until all the held charge is released, so changes, when they come, tend to be sudden from an experiential point of view.

I’ve already lived through several of these global internal transformations. But I’m not finished, for my history is long and the layers are many.

For as long as I live, there exists a possibility that I may yet live forever. If this possibility manifests, then the experience of eternal life will be translated to my other selves, some of which exist in my chronological past, and some in the so-called future.

What of those who do not boast past lives, the once-born? Who are they? Their fullest focus as beings is not here on this planet. Most of them are extrusions or extensions of vast selves which exist primarily on other planets. Their prime attention is focused elsewhere. Earth is not their primary home, merely a side trip.

Whether we feel love for Earth or not, if we have lived many lifetimes here, Earth is our primary home. We are bonded to her by virtue of the many bodies we have borrowed from her, made of her sub stance, whose elements have since returned to her. We are owned by the Earth, and in turn, own her.

The once-born, though not the enemy, are the greatest danger we face, for they can not relate to Earth as we do, and they can not understand. They are not focused with their full loving attention as spirits here—Earth is not their primary matrix. They cannot act, here, from their hearts, for their hearts are not with them. In point of fact, they are not right to be here in the first place. They are an invasive species, so to speak.

At present there is nothing you can do about them. The best thing you can do is to call those spirits who do belong here to return home now, and this includes the rest of your own consciousness which currently drifts in worlds of dream and fantasy, seeking escape from the pain that pressures your bodies and minds to be released. You can call yourselves home through your intent to awaken and accept the responsibility that is yours. However, much of the consciousness that belongs on Earth has been displaced by consciousness that actually belongs elsewhere.

This displaced consciousness can return in several ways: it can be born anew into infant bodies (and this has been happening for some time already). It can enter an already-existing body whose own birth spirit has abandoned it. This is quite a common occurrence, as those who do not belong here seek escape. It can suffuse the elements of nature—a spirit could take up residence in a river, for example, or a forest glade, or a hive of bees. Depending upon the inclination and affinity of the incoming spirit, it could bond with a frog or a giant tree, with an entire ecosystem or with the biosphere as a whole.

Earth has need of these lost children now, and is calling them home. Many earth spirits (such as the consciousness of the faerie folk, little people, gods and goddesses, devas, monstrous and magical creatures) have been pressured almost completely off the surface of the planet. The once-borns are here instead and spirit essence which is of the earth has been pushed out of its place. Before life eternal can manifest for anyone, all spirits need to find their true homes and occupy them, and spirits who are occupying space that belongs to others need to leave it and find their own places.

Well I’ve webbled until I’m boggled and my eyeballs have that cartoon character spiral thing happening. So I’m going to take a break and just write for a bit, give my brain a rest. See, just because I’m getting oh so organized, writing actual articles and tonifying the look of my webly home here doesn’t mean I’ll stop spewing forth my crazy poetnesses. It’s my catharsis, my mental hygiene, my truth, my Way!

Okay, so I got a bit carried away. That’s what happens when I don’t write for a long time. I get backed up and what comes out is, shall we say, a little brown. False start. Here I go again.

It’s March. Last month, February was my excuse, but every year March smacks me fresh with drab, grey blotchiness, forcibly reminding me that the golden spring promise of February with its crocii and spring tree-buds bursting loose was, alas, merely a preview of spring and not the real thing. Not yet. March reels us back to the season still in progress, namely winter. It’s a thudding descent into dreary grey one-day-after-the-otherness, cold and wet and threatening snow, with the sunshine a Februarian memory. This happens every year, and what is that about, I want to know? February seems to be a month out of sequence. March is supposed to come after January, with February the lighter and brighter time segueing more naturally into the sweetly scented April world of blossoms and blue skies.

It happens in May too. May will be sunny, count on it. Then June will rain, but July and thereafter will, unless global warming has completely screwed with the program, brighten up again. I counted on it last year too, but it didn’t happen. Damn this climate change!

Still, I remember extreme weather from my childhood, and tales by the oldsters of seasons long past that surpassed the current climes for extreme weirdness. They loved to one-up each other with sample stories of houses buried in snow so you couldn’t see out the windows anymore, cold so cold that your breath would freeze and fall to the ground. And then it would veer into tall tale territory of the Paul Bunyan variety, but still, there were germs and grains of fact in the fancy, which is to say, weather is weird. Always has been, always will be. And people always try to make it mean things.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say that the climate isn’t changing. Polar bears forced to swim where they once reclined on ice floes and dined through the holes, and pine beetles surviving no-longer-cold winters to devastate the northern forests are evidence enough for the doubter in me. But. Weirdness happens. Right now (did I mention my brain is turned off?) I’m just dazzled by the mystree of it all. Yeah, it’s weird. But science doesn’t know everything. Oh, the rationalists loooove to declaim about us weirdness-mongers and how flaky we are compared to their oh-so-logical and reasoned approach to life.

Still, just how logical and reasoned are they? They have their own prejudices and assumptions, and the freakishness/weirdness of astrology (which this post from WiredScience shows–especially interesting are the comments) falls squarely into their own blind spot. It’s chock full of unquestioned assumptions and ‘everybody knows’. It’s depressing, mainly because I’m about half inclined toward a science geek perspective, reading science books (by scientists with poetry in their souls; yes, they exist) for pleasure, and I’d like to imagine I could carry on a conversation with one of these folks without having to hide from them what I do for a living for fear that it would discredit me utterly. Am I not a human? Have I not skills of observation and a functioning brain? Not according to these know-it-alls.

But, ah well. If that astrologer hadn’t done that reading for me lo those many years ago, thereby grabbing me by the cortex repeatedly with the question ‘How did she KNOW that??’ and if I hadn’t begun to actually research the topic, which led me down the primrose path into the gloomy cobwebbed depths of the superstitious brain-dungeon, I might still be qualified to carry on an intelligent conversation.

But no. According to them, I must surrender any pretensions to brainiosity, despite my considerable geekery.

The funny thing is, all the skeptics like James Randi who go to such lengths to disprove astrology to the masses are never well researched. They learn just enough to figure out ways to make it look ad fake as they already believe it to be. Like the famous experiment where a so-called ‘thorough horoscope’ is given to a group of people, and they are asked to rate its accuracy. Of course, everybody finds it ‘extremely accurate’, only to have the debunker triumphantly reveal that everybody actually received the same horoscope (collective gasp). This absolutely beyond the shadow of a doubt proves the nonsensical brain-tricksiness of astrology (which is always lumped in with all other forms of prognostication, such as palmistry and psychic divination).

And this experiment is endlessly repeated. The same damn thing, over and over.

The mind tricks we astro-fakers are supposed to be pulling apparently involves always using language that could apply to anybody. According to the debunkers, we merely appeal to the natural human desire to be seen and known, so we use vague, globally-applicable statements like, “You have a great deal of unused potential” and “You are recovering from a recent disappointment”. This is our dirty little secret.

But can something like the following really apply to everyone?

With Earth in Aries, you have a strong need for physical action. Your body has a lot of energy, a lot of life force, a lot of drive, but in Aries, there’s no real need to have a focus for it. You could get just as much reward from running on a treadmill as from building something beautiful. The point, with Earth in Aries, is that you sweat, that you get your heart rate up, that you act, that you do. And this is a really solid way for you to nurture your body, to meet your physical needs.

Your body needs to be starting things, to be doing things, in order to be grounded. That’s Aries. But you need to be aware of your primal physical experience (not ‘what you are doing’ but ‘that you are the body doing it’) as much as possible. Feel your breath, breathing and focusing, not with the intent of doing it better, but just to be present in the actions of your body… to feel your muscles moving, the breath expanding your chest and your diaphragm, to feel your skin from the inside, feel the air and any pressure on your skin from your clothing and feel your weight shifting. Really be focusing on feeling your body as you’re moving, as you’re working up a sweat. You’ll find that you glory in that feeling, so let it nourish you. The primal joy of extreme exertion, the endorphins and the whole rush, can be very thrilling to you, with the Earth in Aries.

Well, it would appeal to a lot of people. Exercise is good. But not everybody–some people are couch potatoes, or need to ground through other means, or just don’t find that extreme pleasure in working out.

And how about this bit?

Your Sun-Uranus conjunction and your Earth-Chiron conjunction both square your Ascendant. This is strongly indicative of a crisis around your birth–possibly you or your mother came close to death during the course of your being born. In any case, you were faced with a choice of whether you wanted to live or not. On a personality level this results in a sense of instability in your self-identity. Are you a daring adventurer in love with the universe, trustingly risking it all, or are you more the careful, reserved, practical, business-oriented sort?

Ultimately both are true, and your path to balance will involve finding a way to integrate these disparate styles and needs within the wholeness of your greater Self. Because the transformative and transmutative forces Uranus and Chiron are present in this configuration, you will not necessarily be free to unfold your own sense of timing around your personal growth. Crises and shocks may jolt you out of your comfort zone and into a period of forced healing, whether you like it or not.

Your Capricorn Ascendant has predisposed you to a certain amount of pessimism and misanthropy. You hold certain ingrained attitudes and opinions about yourself and others that are quite untrusting and even unloving. This part of yourself will likely grate on the part of you symbolized by your 9th house Libra Sun, which wants nothing more than to dance joyfully through life following the will-o-the-wisp of love, accepting the gifts of abundance offered by the universe as you go. To your Capricorn Ascendant, this attitude is ridiculously impractical and not even to be considered! This Capricornian part of you keeps the reins firmly drawn.

These examples are just random excerpts that I drew just now from one of my own transcribed readings. I’m too tired and annoyed by life and March right now to bother sifting through everything to find a really great example of how specific and personal these analyses can be, and of course there will be many people who’ll read those two bits and recognize themselves in it, but by the time the pieces are all put together into a full reading and synthesized (which is the true art of the astrologer) into a unified picture, most likely only the person the reading is intended for is going to be able relate to it.

I’ve done readings in the past for people mistakenly using the wrong birth time, and they had no problem letting me know they didn’t think it was right. And the problem always turned out to be a wrong birth time. Quite recently I did a reading for someone who said they couldn’t relate to what I was saying, so I asked them to double check their birth time. Sure enough, it was twelve hours out.

I’m just tired of being lumped into the charlatan faker box. I work hard at what I do, I’m damn good at it, and I give excellent value to those who want help understanding their own workings and the meanings behind their crises and passages. I can help. So frickin there.

End of rant. I’ve just sat through several videos of these wannabe debunkers all focused on proving me to be a fake, a fraud who deliberately fools poor gullible souls into giving me their money for nothing, and it pissed me off.

Time to toddle off to my lonely March bed. This too shall pass. Thanks for listening.

I’ve created a page about my perspective on Gaia called ‘The Beinghood of Gaia‘. It’s not really accessible from anywhere except a link on the home page in the text (the link on ’separatist worlview’ goes there); in the spirit of putting everything new on the blog proper, I’ll share it here:

This planet Earth is a living, breathing, evolving being. Scientists like James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis and Stephan Harding (and many more) have made it abundantly clear that Earth is self-regulating and does not function according to mechanical models. This is no dead ball of dirt and stone that happens to support a precarious skin of life on its dead surface, but rather, a great, mysterious and miraculous living body that we are fully participating in.Humans have evolved a schizoid separatist culture in which we view ourselves as ‘outside of’ nature, so that we ‘are doing things to’ the planet, in much the same way as we view ourselves as separate from our own physiological beings. Spiritual and religious systems of belief tend toward the view that our physical bodies are merely vehicles which we use until we die, at which point we will be in the ‘real’ reality, or Afterlife.

After twenty years of astrological and metaphysical practice, and having grown up in the wilderness of northern British Columbia, I have come to fully accept the entity-hood of Earth. What does this mean to us individually and as a species? We need to change our attitude first, then we will find that our actions will follow. If we truly understand that our own physical bodies are living expressions of our own selves, not simply biological mechanisms or toys for us to use up and throw away, we naturally find ourselves behaving differently. The same applies to changing our view of the planet as a whole. Our current behaviors cannot continue if our cultural worldview changes to one that honours the beinghood of Gaia.

And I’ve created an ‘About Me‘ page, accessible from the top menu bar, that goes like this:

For the past twenty years, I have been developing and refining my vocation while living in relative isolation on Hornby Island in British Columbia. Having recently moved to the greater accessibility of Vancouver Island, I feel called to bring my work to the general public through various venues, including this website.

The unifying thread behind the many types of work I do has been a healing integration and expression of the points of view of the feminine principles: the physical and emotional bodies and the great Mother planet Earth, which have been equally neglected to the point of global and personal disaster.

Seeking to understand the tsunami of change triggered by my Saturn Return in the mid-eighties, although initially skeptical of astrology I received a reading which proved stunningly accurate and detailed and quite blew away my preconceived notions. (Now, I love reading for skeptics! It’s so cute the way their jaws drop!)

I fell in love with the archetypal beauty of the astrological language and embarked on an in-depth study, but soon felt something important was missing from the system. Shortly afterward, I discovered a single paragraph describing the planet Earth’s significance and meaning in March & McEvers’ ‘The Only Way To Learn Astrology’.

Intrigued, I began to use Earth in the chart in the book with excellent results, and when I included also the newly-discovered Chiron (according to Barbara Hand Clow in “Chiron: Rainbow Bridge to the Outer Planets)” I felt the needed grounding and balance had been achieved.

These two forces, ruling formerly co-ruled signs Taurus and Virgo, completed the symbolic system in a satisfyingly symmetrical way. Their addition ensured twelve planets ruling twelve signs and made it possible to perform readings of much greater depth than had before been possible.

I began writing songs around the same time. Never having conceived of the idea of writing a song in my life, a chance suggestion by a friend (‘Why don’t you write a song?’) opened floodgates which have never closed. My songs come from my deep sense of connectedness with Earth and Mother, as well as being tools for working through emotional issues. If for example I write a song which was initially inspired by feeling despression or despair, I emerge on the other side with renewed faith and zest for life.

I view songs and songwriting as tools for transformation and seek to inspire others as I was myself inspired. I am beginning a new series of classes at SoulSpeak in Duncan called “Songwriting for Shower Singers,” having discovered that most people need only the catalyst of suggestion to release their own songs.

For more information about astrological sessions, private house concerts and astrology and songwriting classes, contact me.

Because I haven’t found a way to enable comments on my pages, here’s your chance to give feedback if you wanna

The book I’m reading (see previous blog post) is bringing me back to my awareness of the greatness and aliveness of this planet, and how we need to accept our place within her. We are not outside of Earth, we’re in her, like microbes in a body, and we have a role to play and it’s time we started playing it. Or perhaps, we need to accept that we ARE playing it, whatever we might think is happening, but in any case, to stop trying to detach, separate, elevate ourselves above and outside our matrix. We are of Earth, made of Earth, and we depend on her for everything. Everything.

All that we believe, think, understand, perceive comes to us through the medium of our senses, emotions, neuronal synapses firing. It’s all her. That doesn’t mean it’s not transcendent and spiritual. But it’s through her that we are that, too. Our transcendence is only possible because we are a part of her. As great, spiritual and amazing as we might be, she is more so, and she is what makes it possible.

In other words, we need to freakin’ get OVER ourselves and get inside the planet. And stop thinking of it, as her, as a buncha rock, wood and stuff. There. That’s my preach.

Dark follows light, and light follows dark
The dark side is about to become the bright side
for revolution is the way of life
It’s time for the light to surrender supremacy,
to make way for that which hides in shadow
if that frightens you, ask why you fear
half of your own whole self. The bits on the shelf have
waited their turn so long they’ve forgotten
how to even yearn for their heart’s desire to manifest

If this is a test, I would know the penalty for failing
and even more, the reward for success
If I am to invest my desire on the side of survival,
I wish to know that survival means something
Beyond mere continuance of existence.
If I am to persist in this struggle to evolve,
To revolve my whole self, to show
my least comfortable faces for the gaze of
those hidden eyes in the haze, then
I insist upon some surety that my efforts
be not vain and fruitless. You see, I want to root here. 

So I ask, but would be frankly flabbergasted
to receive a useful answer. The point of asking is not
to be answered but to explore the question, to feel through
the maze to the best approach to discovering
and possibly uncovering solutions to the issue
that resulted in need to ask. 

So I ask, and to you (whoever you are)
I assign the task of not responding,
of allowing me the space and grace it takes
to flounder foolishly in my own confusions until some
magical fusion of fragmented perception
might culminate in the epiphany I seek. 

I do admit, I would not enjoy the view from
the seat I expect you to occupy.
I use you, poor reader, shamelessly
toward my own devices
In my defense, I can only present
the vision of wholeness which I struggle
with all my brain and heart to serve. 

Should this cup of blog be not to your liking,
allow me to mention the obvious, that any time
spent on studying these patterns of photons
randomly-etched in electronic sand must be
by your own command, for you are free
to wander and wonder at your will,
to quest for your own carrots, and to
invest your attention where you please. 

Should I seem defensive, please believe
it is not you, dear unknown, against
which I defend, but merely my same-old familiar,
ratchet, snick and click of guilt clacking
against the grain of my burdened, saggy brain,
close to collapse under the weight of old freight
passed from parent to child for the purpose of
trapping and taming the wild within. 

Those patterns and pathways were practiced
until I got it right, but always failed to delight
and in fact became root, branch and leaf of my plight

And now, the wild world, night side, feeds my need,
in wild mind I find my salvation

It’s time to delve into the deep layers now, below the surface tension that occupies so much of my attention these days. Time to dare to dig below the obvious patterns of love and betrayal. This tale told so often has become a coffin, and it always ends the same way, dangling on fraying rope-ends of hope and despair, a fantasy, doomed from its outset.

What is that sound; is it singing? Rejoice, for this dark tag-end of doomed dreams has a silver lining. It serves as an inspirer of beautiful music to awaken and uplift the larger heart that lives beyond the hope for a single human relationship.

Indeed, the feed we most need must come from a vaster source. No single love could stay this course, for we are each fractured into shards and fragments of what we once might have been, and we see our reflections in crazy bits of shattered mirror, some here, some there, some foul and some fair. I spy you and see myself, whoever you might be, and I name the reflections I approve of ‘something to do with me’ and the ones I dislike ‘nothing to do with me’, but all that means is, I don’t know the half of what I am.

It is time, I insist, for a cease and desist to this game of winners and losers in love. Why should some be shoved aside to make way for new images of self, when all visible images added up still total less than the sum of who and what we are? We are stars, vast with ancient, albeit ignored, glory. The true tragedy of human existence is its insistence on its own insignificance.

Alas, this approach is doomed to irony, for in our attempt to forestall our fall, we grovel in our group muck, sinking as low as we can go. “Don’t look at me,” we each whimper, imagining ourselves unique in our debased state. “I am nothing, no one, I have no purpose, life has no meaning. Look elsewhere, for I am particularly powerless!”

Pathetic creatures, we, worms wriggling helplessly in the mud of this tiny ball of rock and scum located inauspiciously in the backwater of a small spiral galaxy in the corner of a single universe among infinite possibilities. How could we imagine otherwise? How could we dare to vaunt ourselves as anything more?

Still, the question is begged, what have we to lose? Why must we so fear falling that we voluntarily cast ourselves into the depths? Why force ourselves to pretend to be content with pseudo-life as fragments and fictions, figments of our own self-negating imaginations?

Suppose for a moment we have already lost everything. Further, imagine that we have cast away our potential for no purpose, paid the maximum cost for no product but the twisted blessing of knowing we have nothing further to lose, nowhere further to fall. Imagining that is true, ought we continue to buy such tawdry, cowardly self-deceptions?

Suppose, for an instant, we are the spawn of gods with infinite power in potential, and imagine that we might actualize a fraction of the power we sense pulsing in our veins in moments of shocked sanity which we habitually dismiss as insane hubris and delusional vanity.

What if, perchance, actualization were a matter of allowing all that we are to emerge into consciousness, to know ourselves in all our glory, terror, rage, ecstasy, bliss, to burst in orgasmic explosions of expansion on ever deeper and wider levels. Would you risk it? Would you dare? Would I?

Oh, my. Back to our regularly scheduled program, already in progress.

On this New Year’s Day I choose life eternal, love infinitely expanding, sweet peace, joyful and profound. On this path I place my shoes. The collective belief that claims only certain things to be possible and death to be inevitable can go hang.

I reclaim my power rooted in this now, this eternal moment of creativity. I open to all possibilities for love and plenty. I leave all doors open, even those that may lead to darkness and pain, for only through infinite possibility can maximum mutative morphogenesis take place. I trust the living love of our Most Wholly Self.

I return to this bottom line, though betimes it seems the promise of a brave new age fades as the old falls drunkenly on its face, disgraced by death and denial of dreams gone by. I am betimes sliced by the razor-edged knife of mine own ambiguity, so quivery uncertain of the trustworthiness of circumstances to come. Do I create my own reality, or is that a fallacy? Am I evolving into greater love and fullness of promise, or merely blundering through a random game of chance, the victim of events that I cannot foresee or defend against?

These questions approach crisis frequency as I age. The stakes grow higher as the hooded spectre of perceived mortality raises its mottled, wrinkly neck and thwips its slotted tongue in my face.

Still, I can’t shake my conviction that profound unprecedented change is possible, nor slake my hunger for same. I, as much as anyone, might discover a way never before known to change the shape of collective consciousness and, consequently, open new channels for experience.

So, again, I choose to embrace my place within Most Wholly Self, that collective entity which is unimaginably greater than the sum of its parts (which are themselves unimaginably great). I allow the voices in my head which claim the name to guide me into correct relationship and to open doors in blessed synchrony.

I choose to believe in possibility, for the fatalistic alternative has been endlessly tried and found faulty, fruitless and futile.