Change or not?

A person once asked Confucius,

“What surprises you most about Mankind?”

Confucius answered,

“They lose their health to make money and then lose their money to restore their health.

By thinking anxiously about the future,

they forget the present,

Such that they live neither for the present

nor the future

and they live as if they will never die,

and they die as if they had never lived.”

Democracy by Leonard Cohen

Its coming through a hole in the air
-from those nights in Tienanmen square
Its coming from the feel
That it aint exactly real
Or its real, but it aint exactly there
-from the wars against disorder
-from the sirens night and day
-from the fires of the homeless
-from the ashes of the gay
Democracy is coming to the u.s.a.

Its coming through a crack in the wall
On a visionary flood of alcohol
-from the staggering account
Of the sermon on the mount
Which I don’t pretend to understand at all
Its coming from the silence
On the dock of the bay
-from the brave, the bold, the battered
Heart of chevrolet
Democracy is coming to the u.s.a.

Its coming from the sorrow on the street
The holy places where the races meet
-from the homicidal bitchin’
That goes down in every kitchen
To determine who will serve and who will eat
-from the wells of disappointment
Where the women kneel to pray
For the grace of God in the desert here
And the desert far away
Democracy is coming to the u.s.a.

Chorus
Sail on, sail on
O mighty ship of state!
To the shores of need
Past the reefs of greed
Through the squalls of hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on…

Its coming to America first
The cradle of the best and of the worst
Its here they got the range
And the machinery for change
And its here they got the spiritual thirst
Its here the family’s broken
And its here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way
Democracy is coming to the u.s.a.

Its coming from the women and the men
O baby, well be making love again
Well be going down so deep
That the rivers going to weep
And the mountains going to shout amen!
Its coming like the tidal flood
Beneath the lunar sway
Imperial, mysterious
In amorous array
Democracy is coming to the u.s.a.

Chorus

I’m sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I cant stand the scene
And I’m neither left or right
I’m just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I ‘m stubborn as those garbage bags
That time cannot decay
I’m junk but Im still holding up
This little wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the u.s.a.

Words & Lyrics by Leonard Cohen.

Check out this video.

I’ll move it over to the sidebar asap.

Mercury Retrograde – Oh Yippee!

I’ve returned to my homebase recently after spending a lunar cycle on the West Coast. My Pluto line ran right through the locality I spent most of the time in.

For the last 3 days of my trip I was able to travel to a Sun/Jupiter paran to experience some relief from those intensive Pluto vibrations.

Understanding your personal Astro-Cartography can be very helpful when traveling. My preparations were successful and effective.

My plane landed at the same time as another one in the area was crashing into a nearby river….give or take a few hours…. both of us were flying under Mercury Retrograde with saturn/moon conjunction forming. Good Fortune was present for All. Ommmmm.

How blessed I am to have this retrograde period. It will give me time to process my journey and convert all that I learned into my teaching for this new DAY

Mercury Retrograde periods can be very productive times for cleaning up the lose ends of projects that are not yet complete. This particular Mercury Retrograde period began at 8 Aquarius. If you have planets in Aquarius you need to do a little more research than this blog. But, for now here’s some input from An Astrological Mandala, a book on the Sabian Symbols by Dane Rudyhar, a master for sure.

A great resource for Sabian Symbols.

BEAUTIFULLY GOWNED WAX FIGURES ON DISPLAY

…..a time to consider the “fixed symbols upon which a culture is based, with mental archetypes.

…a stage of vision

….new forms are revealed to the consciousness “

Wow. That seems pretty interesting me considering the state of world affairs these days.

Oh well. More coming as soon as I re-acclimate to the local time/space conditions of the East Coast.

May all beings be peaceful.

Worn-Out Garments

Worn-out garments

Are shed by the body:

Worn-out bodies

Are shed by the dweller

Within the body.

New bodies are donned

By the dweller, like garments.

Not wounded by weapons,

Not burned by fire,

Not dried by the wind,

Not wetted by water:

such is the Atman.

Not dried, not wetted,

Not burned, not wounded,

Innermost element, Everywhere, always,

Being of beings,

Changeless, eternal,

For ever and ever.

–bhagavad gita 2:22-24

 

from The BHAGAVAD GITA:

The Song Of God,

translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood.

Vedanta Press.

 

Pain, Pleasure, Neutral?

 

Sylvia Boorstein, an esteemed teacher of Theravada Buddhism, once led me into a meditation exercise where I was asked to notice every thought and to label it as painful, pleasurable, or neutral.

Easier said than done.

First, ‘notice your thoughts’. Anyone who has practiced meditation in any of its forms immediately comes face to face with the difficulty in this seemingly simple task. I have been practicing yoga & meditation since the mid 70’s so some of those initial obstacles to the task have become somewhat easier.

Putting these thoughts into three simple categories was also not quite as simple as it seems. The first thing I discovered was that I had to ‘think’ about it. Many of my thoughts seemed to span across all three categories and could fit into any one of them depending on the time of day, time of year, or present day circumstances of my life. Consider the thought, “I am hungry”. If that thought is accompanied by strong, uncomfortable sensations in my belly the thought might be quite painful. If the thought is occuring just as I drive by a wonderful restaurant, the thought would fit in the pleasure column. And, if the thought occurs in the middle of a yoga asana, neutral would be the proper categorization.

The purpose of this exercise is to bring further into the light of consciousness how our desire nature governs our minds and actions. The same thing applies to that part of ourselves that resists pain. Neutrality, the middle path, brings us closer to separating reality from illusion. Nearly all thoughts that fall into the pain/pleasure column take us away from the present moment into either the past or the future. When we are thinking about past/future our mind becomes disengaged from our body. The body is always here, now. The mind is the time traveler and when it’s not here, now, is when suffering occurs. (according to G. Buddah)

The yogi’s have their own way of teaching these same truths. The Klesha’s represent the obstacles to enlightenment and mirror the same obstacles set forth by the Buddhists. Essentially it all comes down to greed, aversion & delusion.

Whew…………..heady thoughts for a quiet Sunday morning. I just finished reading Breakfast with Buddah. A good read.

Mind, Mood, Mercury & The Moon

 

The differences between Eastern & Western astrology systems definitely illustrate some of the differences between the two cultures.

First, consider how each system looks at the moon. In the Vedic system, the moon is extremely important and is more relevant than the Sun. (a heresy to consider here in the west!) Whereas here in the west the moon represents our moods, our emotions, and our unconscious behaviour patterns. In the east, the moon describes the mind….particularly the monkey mind, or the puppy mind as yoga teacher Steven Cope has described it. Either, or, it’s out of our control.

On the other hand, Mercury in the western system governs things like communication, networking, short distance travel, and our habitual thinking patterns. In the Vedic system, Mercury has more to do with our intellect, a higher function than we usually attribute to Mercury.

The yogi’s and other spiritual seekers of the east spend a lot of time studying the mind. Over the centuries they have written volumes on the nature of the mind and how to best use and control it. For anyone who has practiced yoga or meditation for a while it’s easy to see that they are definitely onto something. The Buddah tells us that our suffering is really a result of negative and disruptive mind states. Patanjali wrote in his famous sutras, that the ultimate purpose of yoga is about calming down the fluctuations of the mind.

Whether you follow eastern or western astrology there’s a lot of information to be gained by examining the condition of the moon and mercury in your chart. First consider the sign and house placement of each planet, and then spend some time looking at the aspect (or relationship) of them to each other. Perhaps you’ll get a sense of how your mind functions, or not! After all, your entire perspective is simply a result of your own mind.

Hmmmm.

Time to ponder.

Om shanti.

Enter The Shamans ….. earth meets sky …….

The Peruvian shamans living high up in the Andes Mountains have come down to tell us that a new species of human being is about to appear. They call this being ‘Homo Luminous’. They tell us that forerunners of Homo Luminous are already among us right now. Like Cro-Magnon Man of 26,000 years ago, the last time that we passed through the cusp of Aquarius, so too now a new human is emerging. This new human will possess entirely new qualities that we do not have. The great Avatars, Jesus Christ, Krishna and many others may have early arrivals for this newly emerging species. Aquarius is the only one of the four quadrent signs that is symbolically represented by a human, and this human carries a container of water. This symbology is interesting as DNA can only be activated in water. So even the symbolic nature of the sign of Aquarius seems to suggest a change in the genetic structure of the human race.

Our spiritual existence is really a unique combination of free will and predestination. While we possess the ability to act freely within the moment, there is little we can do about the larger cycles of time and the qualities that emerge at the cusp of each of the four great signs. So as the hand on the great cosmic time clock passes into Aquarius one can expect massive changes to occur. While the ancient art of alchemy is concerned with many aspects of our existence including the extraction of light from plants and minerals, the transformation of the dark lead of our physical being into the pure gold of enlightenment and much more, alchemy also is a symbolic ontology concerned with the observation in the changes of the “quality” of time through the 25, 920 years-long duration of the Great Year.

The world is changing. The past will disappear and history will become legend and finally myth. Our destination is unknown. The only thing we know for sure is that it will change.

http://www.jayweidner.com/time.html

“Shamans understand that the human brain “is modeled after the celestial vault and the human mind functions according to the stars, which are the ventricles and sensoria of the cosmic brain … there exists a close relationship between astronomical observations, cosmological speculations, and drug-induced trance states.”

—Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff (1982:176)

I lifted that whole quote off this webpage, an excellent resource for time comprehension.

Why are there only 360 degrees in a circle?

That question was asked in one of my classes recently. I’ve been pondering this now for a couple of days. Why isn’t a circle 361 degrees, or 365, or 720, or 1? Where/when/how/why did 360 become the *magic* number of degrees?

Calling all mathematicians, astronomers, historians, musicians, physicists, cheaters & priests!

Come to my aid and answer this question!

Anthem, Lyrics by Leonard Cohen

Click on the picture to hear the song on YouTube.

The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Dont dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be

The wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
Be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free

Chorus
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
Thats how the light gets in

We asked for signs

The signs were sent
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
The widowhood
Of every government
Signs for all to see

Cant run no more
With the lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud
But theyve summoned up
A thundercloud
And theyre going to hear from me

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
Thats how the light gets in

You can add up the parts
But you wont have the sum
You can strike up the march
There is no drum
Every heart
To love will come
But like a refugee

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
Thats how the light gets in

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/l/leonard+cohen/anthem_20082876.html

East & West Astrology……..9/11/07

There has always been a lot of *fear* around eclipses. One can only imagine what it must have felt like to observe the moon or sun go dark in the sky. The memories and feelings of that primal fear live on in our ‘old’ brain and continue to run like a silent computer program in the background. What do you think would happen if we used all of the power of our attention to dis-engage the fear button? Think about it. Practice.  Take a conscious, deep breath every time you feel fear. Go to a yoga class to learn the subtleties of breathing.

The September 11, 2007 Solar Eclipse occurs at 18 Vir 24 using the Western (tropical) zodiac. In the Eastern (sidereal) zodiac, the eclipse is occuring at 24 Leo 32′. degree.) There’s approximately 24-25 degrees difference between these two systems of astronomical measurement. (Google: Ayanamsa.)

Marc Edmund Jones, 10/1/1888 – 3/8/1980, the astrologer who ‘created’ the Sabian Symbols, taught that astrology “properly used” can help people see more clearly their own tendencies. Once seen, we can then apply our free will to adjust, modify, change, or ignore what has been seen. Our evolutionary engine depends on our ability to learn & grow in this fashion.

The sabian symbol for 19Virgo is: A SWIMMING RACE. (When you work with the sabian symbols you always round up to the next degree. You can also go here to read more of what I’ve been exploring with Sabian Symbols)

In his book, An Astrological Mandala, D. Rudyhar interprets this image as “The stimulation that comes from a group effort toward a spiritual goal.” Hmmm.

What would happen if our spiritual goal was: *peace in the moment, no matter what* ?

Rudyhar goes on to remind us not assume that the image symbolizes competition.
In fact, he then says that ” the personal ego-centered ambition to succeed and to be “first” is indeed a sign of expectable, spiritual failure.” Yikes!

I didn’t know there was such a thing as spiritual ‘failure’. Oh dear.

It does pose a dilemma, this image, (A Swimming Race) pointing to our issues around competition, success, failure, and how a competitive path interferes with spiritual rewards. He concludes by pointing us towards “emulation“. ….hmmmm.

Now, I’m wondering if Dane Rudyhar’s sabian symbols can be used with Jyotish, the Vedic system of astrology? I don’t recall ever reading or hearing any of my Jyotish teachers refer to these symbols. In fact the teachers were always quick to remind us NOT to apply western astrological techniques to eastern charts, and vice versa. (That’s surely something to meditate on…………..)
Jyotish does, in fact, have it’s own methodology for referencing each of the 360 degrees in the zodiac. They, too, use their discriminative faculties to identify incredibly subtle differences and broad sameness. (note to astrologers: please feel free to comment on this)

So, let’s break the rules for a moment and integrate these two astrological systems and see what happens.

The sabian symbol (a western technique) for 25deg of Leo (the degree of the eclipse according to Vedic Astrologers. ) states: A LARGE CAMEL IS SEEN CROSSING A VAST AND FORBIDDING DESERT.
Self-sufficiency in the face of a long and exhausting adventure.
Rudyhar recommends, ” total independence from our surroundings and uncompromising persistence.”Hmm. How’s that sound? Reminds me a little of all of the forecasts from ERIS!!

So, let’s see what kind of theme’s play out over the next few months and look for how these images manifest in your personal world, and the external world. See for yourself how the essence of these themes get expressed. Of course each of us responds to eclipse energy differently. There will be those who are strongly affected, and those who are not. Consult your local astrologer and get a reading.

May all beings live in peace, no matter what.

Om Shanti.