Children of Syria

Today, thousands of children fled Syria's war in the cold, in the dark, with fear at their backs, amid rebel and government forces' gunfire and bombing.  They saw friends and relatives shot, killed in their presence, and that's if they were lucky and didn't witness worse.  Jordan is overflowing with as many as 350,000 refugees with many more expected daily. Turkey is also offering safety to more than 150,000 Syrian refugees along its borders and in camps. Estimates are that another 100,000 or more Syrians have fled to Lebanon and Iraq.

The United States has already provided more than $200 million in humanitarian aid and yesterday President Obama approved another $155 million in aid to the people of Syria to provide, "warm clothes and food," he said. But, if your heart aches for these people - especially the children - as mine, you may want to offer to help. 

Below is some information on how you can help the children of Syria through "Save the Children," the well known international relief agency that is helping the children of Syria and the British Red Cross.

And, if you are willing, pray for these dear ones, these precious children, the lost innocents whose lives will never be the same. 

https://secure.savethechildren.org /site/c.8rKLIXMGIpI4E/b.7998763/k.FEA/Donate_to_the_Syria_Children_in_Crisis_Fund/apps/ka/sd/donor.asp?msource=wexgpsyr0312&gclid=COek8KLKnLICFYhM4AodSmQA4g

http://www.redcross.org.uk/Donate-Now/Make-a-single-donation/Syria-Crisis-Appeal

Another Way

If this speaks to you, then you know who you are and celebrate! This is a brilliant video However Tiger Lilies is neither endorsing nor not endorsing the movement. Tiger Lilies is saying that this is awesome and truly mind opening, something Tiger Lilies is also calling for. You decide.

peace, passion and purpose

Clothed with Power

In this new age, this ascension age, as these times are being called, we are reaching for a renewed understanding of what is real - really real.  Often I think through a very modern lens, one that combines science, physics, ancient writings - known and newly discovered - and yet so often come right back to where it all began for me - in the Gospels.  I've asked myself a million times, "Do I honestly and authentically believe that Jesus is the Christ and what does that mean?"  

And, I have sincerely come to answer with a resounding, "Yes."  As I move in and out and around so many different schools of thought on all the metaphysical information and other religions, including  scientific and religious thought - all of which I cherish for its brilliance - I return over and over again to an increasingly beautiful awareness that this precious man who lived among us, who himself was clothed and filled with power, was indeed the full human manifestation of God, born to bring us into the selfhood of God, spiritually and consciously.  

We never left God.  We have only slept in this dimension, this illusion which it is often called, unaware of who we are.  It is the power of our mind, the ability to consider something larger than all this, that allows us to open up our minds, awaken our sleeping imaginations and receive a new thought, a new idea of who we are.

When we begin to awaken, a new electrical charge surges through us, enlivening us.  It is the awakening itself that allows us to open and in opening, we receive.  I think there are a couple of ways to approach or engage with this new awareness.  One is to accept that this man, Jesus, is indeed the full expression, manifestation, of God and yet He is not the whole ocean of God.  He is a gathering of the substance of God.  If we could wrap our minds around that idea, I think we would be able to enter into his "army of light," for lack of a better metaphor at this moment. It is an army that heals, that brings life, that resurrects our sleeping souls from this soup of madness that currently presents itself as "real."

Is there another image that may work better for our modern minds that has been overburdened with church language for so long that we are immune to its meaning?  

Greg Braden, a kind of modern guru of the quantum physics / spirituality movement, drawing from some of Albert Einstein's thought, says the universe if filled with an energy field.  That energy field is like a fabric, a web, which is responsive to human thought and emotion, especially emotion.  It is creative, intelligent and powerful, which are the qualities of consciousness. That "web" is conscious.  Our modern minds can receive that. 

Now, look at the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Several years ago in an Education for Ministry class in my parish in East Aurora, NY, I asked one of the leaders, "What exactly is the Word?" His response was a bit flippant.  He said, "You know (you idiot!)  The Word is words, language."  Clearly, I knew that's not what The Word was.  It was more than that.  Our world is a babbling swamp land.  All that babbling isn't The Word. Since then, I have reflected on what exactly, the Logos, The Word is.  I have come to realize The Word is that very substance of God that fills the universe.  It is the Body of God and the Wisdom of God, which is the Spirit of God.  It is The Christ. How can I express this?

Putting on my 3-D spiritual vision glasses, I look out into the universe and it is no longer dark and vast with a sprinkling of stars.  Now, it is a glowing, sparkling, golden ocean filling the entire universe. I can see it undulating, surging rhythmically with a musical tone and radiance.  Its power is awesome.  It is heavy and light at the same time.  It breathes and exhales.  It is alive in some really awesome, yet incomprehensible way.  Maybe that is The Word.  

Now, as I step back a bit from the intensity of this awesome vision, I can see it surging and moving and forming, by its own will, into a kind of ball of fire - but it's not fire, although it's bright and brilliant like fire, it's not destructive, rather its creative.  Then I see it emerge into the form of a human body of light.  As I look more carefully, I can see that it is a very familiar light form - perhaps it is The Christ who is being formed and is stepping out of that oceanic body of light.  

Ok, so now, maybe the opening line of the Gospel of John makes a bit more sense ... let's hear it again ... "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God."

As I see Him, brilliant, sparkling, His presence is powerful, in a way that is impossible for me to convey.  This light being, in all His God-ness and all his power and light, then enters our humanity through his miraculous birth through the Blessed Mary.  (So far the Church story and language works with this new idea.) 

So often He said to us during His time among us, that his teachings "are for those who have eyes to see."  What did he mean? Possibly he meant we could see who He is and from which (Who) he came only through those special 3-D glasses, which are our spiritually awakened eyes and imagination.  What he said and taught and did only makes sense through that awareness.  Soon you come to realize that it was never about worshiping him in a Golden Calf kind of way.  It was learning how to see the way he was teaching us to see and then and only then could we understand who he is.  Although He now has returned to his Source, yet He continues to be as he was. 

One of the things He said to the woman at the well, "If you drink the water (wisdom from the source) that I give, you will live (eternally and authentically)."

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:13-14

It is His knowledge of this great truth of who He is and who we are that will open our minds and in that opening, we will become eternally conscious. It is His knowledge that is The Word.

And, even more awesome.  He said we were like him.  We are these amazing brilliant, powerful, light bodies.  That is who we really are and yet we can't see who we are.  We couldn't handle this because it challenged our worldview so heavily.  It meant everything would have to change.  We would have to grow up spiritually, open our minds and live with the power that is there - His power, given to us, by virtue of our innate creative being.  

It has been (and still is) our natural response to want to worship Him and yet in worshiping Him, as we have done for the past 2000 years, we continue the separation. We have to be careful not to commit idolatry. We must, rather, allow Him to clothe us with His power. We must open our minds and engage around the idea of who He really is, and then open our hearts - which is what he is asking us to do - and allow Him to fill our hearts with His light, power, brilliance.  Maybe it is there already and we have to open our minds to see it and that unleashes it. This is grace, an act of God to open us to receive who we really are, to remove our veils that blind us to the truth of who He is, from who He comes, and who we are, children of the Living One that fills the entire Cosmos with His Being. 

I think it is through an awakened understanding, found in the imagination, that we can embrace this idea, open our minds, step away from the world's gluttonous table, and walk with Him, listen to Him, learn from Him and then join Him in His campaign to bring the entire human race, and all of creation, into alignment with the power and light of what only is real, which is this vast ocean of intelligence. We can open our minds, unleash our power and ignite our heart light.  We will find that the intelligence of the universe, that living power is God's being of which he and we are part.  

Then, as I looked back at that vision, I saw human beings doing that.  I saw them opening their minds and as they did that, each one began to glow from inside themselves until their entire beings were transformed into that sparkling, glowing light power.  They expanded and radiated, they lifted up and were so joyous that I could feel their joy as clearly as I could see their light.  I saw that they had been clothed in power, just as he promised he would do at the end of the Gospel of Luke.

What could be more wonderful?  What could possibly be more wonderful than this?  that thought is the one that opens the door to Him and the rest you already know.  We all know this because we've all been there since the beginning and somehow we all - one by one - will remember.  It's not a religion thing.  It's a truth thing.

Universal sounds create life

These are awesome!

A forever place

A radiant explosion of sunshine brightened the typically dull January landscape in the small town in Michigan where my sister lives now.  But, it wasn't to last long. The soft welcome of that late winter afternoon sunshine was met by a piercingly cold winter wind, presumably fresh in from a dance across the great lakes.  

Alexandra pulled her blue winter hat down over her freezing ears and slipped the hood of her jacket over it, covering up her short hair in an attempt to get warm. A vague kind of longing crept over her - just a feeling really - but terribly real nonetheless. Softly, it seemed to envelope her until she found herself immersed in another time and place, another world when life was idyllic and magical.

Winters in Michigan are long and hard, as life in general has been there these last few years.  It's common knowledge that the Asian automobile industry had usurped the former throne of American opulence, home-based in Detroit. But, it seems lately every town in Michigan has been impacted by the declining economy, sadly too often leading the young men into military service just for a paycheck.  And, where there's job loss, there's poverty and where there's poverty there's crime, drugs, and every other imaginable human vice.

But on this cold afternoon, the hardness of life seemed to recede as she slipped into remembering a kinder and warmer time, that time in childhood when dreams are made, when hope was real and life was fun. Our childhood summers at our grandfather's Canadian home at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., were breathtaking, a gift that would remain with us for the rest of our lives. The place had always been a place of hope and healing from life's harshness, a place where new lives were begun. 

It was a magical place that held meanings for each of us in our own ways. For me, it was the beauty of the place, the endless, exquisite fresh florid atmosphere, the sense of safety and space that inspired me then as it still does today. Alexandra also loved to play by the fountain with me and hide-and-seek from the others behind the garden greenhouse, but she was especially captivated by the bell tower and dark tunnel under the old house which our mother said ran all the way to the river and had been part of the Underground Railroad. Those two images stood out in her mind on this bitterly cold January afternoon.

Climbing up into the bell tower was an awesome experience. The old bell tower, reminiscent of a church steeple, was hung on worn, white wooden scaffolding with a huge bell suspended over equally old flooring.  The whole area, about 10 ft. by 10 ft., was protected only by a weak 3 ft. high guardrail.  Remembering the tower as an adult helps us both realize our parents' concern when we begged to go up there - a request that was rarely met. Maybe it was the out of reach nature of it made it all the more appealing to us as children.

We were never allowed to ring the bell, but we wanted to know all about when it was rung and why it was rung and if we could ring it someday.  Someday never came.  I remember the endless staircase that spiraled up to the tower.  Hot and dry, dead flies in the tightly closed windows, which had probably never been opened, sealed shut with paint a hundred years previously.

What did that bell tower mean to Alexandra?  Was it a place away?  From what did she want to escape? Was it the loftiness that offered a kind of magical experience of being up and away from the activity below, a kind of heavenly height that enchanted her? I guess it was all of that and that everything in those days was a kind of magical mystery tour. Our natural curiosity and joyous pursuit to explore endlessly, lured us into the high and low places. The radiant sunshine on this cold January day reminded her of those times. The memory kept her warm as she struggled against the wind to get home to her waiting musician husband.

But there was so much more.  It was a place where a hardworking family would come home to recover from life's heavy demands during equally hard former era. It was a time when the country was still steeped in its worst depression with long breadlines, when the unemployment rate nationwide was close to 27 %, strangely the same unemployment rate in inner-city Detroit now.  It was a time when Europe, struggling in its fight to free Jewish captives, imprisoned, tortured and gassed by the nightmare Nazi machine, beckoned American support. 

Our grandfather, who had been stricken with polio as a child yet managed to reign over the large family from his wheelchair, died just before our father was drafted into World War II, leaving our gentle grandmother doubly heartbroken.  This magical place, now silent, stilled in time, was a vibrant playground for us. As our parents, aunts and uncles gathered inside, discussing more serious events unfolding globally in the late 1960s, we danced in water fountains, climbed garden walls and dreamed endlessly.  

Alexandra's cheeks were burning from the wind when she opened the back glass sliding doors into their large old house, a house that in many ways seemed to resemble that old house back in Niagara.  It too was near water, it too had been home to so much living as her three children grew up. 

Her husband met her at the door, smiling.  A musician, sensitive to the movements of the soul, saw the distance in her eyes. He knew deeply both her strong creative, passionate nature, and his own personal artistic angst. As a musician with a strong reputation as both a teacher and a drummer, recently he has felt the oppression as a technological and litigious age bore down on him.  He found his music a welcome retreat, a place of healing and joy which transcended their life in Michigan. 

Alexandra knew there was so much more to life than the daily grind she was so immersed in lately.  She also wanted to find her own inner artist, she needed to go back and reclaim something that was left behind at that old house. In her emerging memories, even growing desire to return, the memories themselves would unchain buried dreams. Maybe the memories of the old bell tower and underground railroad even help her have the courage to explore her own creativity.

(Photo of the front of the house and the bell tower.)

Once used as a safe house for slaves fleeing the real oppression of slavery, today the old underground tunnel at our grandfather's house has been closed up - maybe to keep little girls from getting lost in there.  The memories of that dark, damp tunnel and the bell tower where she once felt as free as a bird in the large oak trees over that beautiful place, helps her reconnect to a more innocent time, a time of real dreaming, of vision, of life itself. It is a forever place.

Maybe childhood memories don't solve anything, really, but they help us reconnect to something that may have been lost, left behind and forgotten in the dusty trails of our lives.  They may signal an unacknowledged longing in the soul to grow, evolve and nudge us to greater awareness of our own creative dream-making. Maybe there are times when the memories of the past help liberate our long forgotten childhood dreams, buried by our unwitting slavery to the cacophonous demands of our daily lives, even our blind collaboration with the collective illusion that leads us further away from our truth.

 

The rider and the rose

I stood in the middle of the world, 

and in flesh I appeared to them.

I found all of them drunk. 

None of them did I find thirsty.

And my soul ached for the children of humanity,

because they are blind in their heart, 

and they cannot see;

for they came into the world empty,

(and) they also seek to depart from the world empty.

But now they are drunk.

(But) when they shake off their wine, 

then they will change their mind. 

Gospel of Thomas 28:1-4*

The power, the sheer power in the brilliance, the genius in His words just blows my mind, over and over and over again.  And didn't He say He had a new wine, a wine of the spirit, to give us and that wine would make us sober? Since I was a child, I have felt drawn, compelled really, to explore deeper meanings in things and nothing drew my attention more than the mysterious meanings to Jesus' words. 

Life is a journey of discovery, of looking for meanings and messages in all things.  Truly nothing is random or accidental.  We draw all experiences to ourselves for a million reasons, some of which just to know what we don't want.  That too is a marker on the way to guide us as we sort through these things to make sense of it all.  

Then, wonderfully, at some point down that road, you catch the fever, the passion of this great life, and the nature of that inner fire is so powerfully compelling that it wants to scream from the housetops, or write in a little Tiger lilies blog what it is.  Love's nature is to spread itself.  It is always relational, connecting - all of life is being born, moment by moment by the power of the creative life force, which is a catalyzing love dance, rhythmically ever creating, ever repeating, yet always different in a kind of webbed lace design, from the tiniest mitochondria of biological life to whole galactic star systems throughout the entire universe.

Jesus' teachings take us from the deepest recesses of our own inner being outward to the farthest reaches of our multi-dimensional universe, which, on another dimension from that which we are commonly aware, He calls the "kingdom."

The kingdom is inside of you, 

and outside of you. 

When you come to know yourselves, 

then you will be known, 

and you will realize that you are 

the children of the living Father. 

But if you do not come to know yourselves, 

then you exist in poverty, and you are poverty."

Gospel of Thomas 3:3-5 

One might wonder what Jesus really is talking about. It becomes clearer as you seek for understanding. Once that light dawns, you will see that it always has been there.  His teachings go back to the dawn of recorded history, and according to writings on the ancient pyramids - all around the world - it goes back before our recorded teachings which further suggests that there were human civilizations on the earth long before us.  But, that's another story.

The way into the cosmic experience, our authentic state of real being, where we really are and of which we are aware, if we are enlightened, is through the heart, transcending this everyday life we call "reality," which is what Jesus calls a drunken experience. 

This "heart" is part of your physical heart, the one pumping in the center of your chest in the fifth chakra and the most powerful chakra in your entire energy system.  It not just a metaphorical heart as in good-heartedness, although living through the heart would shine out into the world as good-heartedness, as loving your brother and, yes, loving your enemy ("rather than bombing him into the stone age,"  per Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, Detroit, MI) 

I think our dependence on technology is an indication of our failure to evolve to the next step of our collective consciousness.  It is an indication that we have not evolved, developed (not to mention mastered) our heart's wisdom, that sheer creative power manifested by intention fueled by vision, emotional desire, spiritual wisdom and divine light.

If you do not abstain from the world, 

you will not find the kingdom.  

Gospel of Thomas 27:1

For centuries, mainstay Christianity suggested the way into the kingdom (which it thought was some remote place other than here in the heart) was by acting lovingly to our neighbors (although too much of Christian history shows up as a great and terrible hypocrisy on that one, but at least it said we should do that.)

Light exists inside a person of light, 

and he shines on the whole world.  

Gospel of Thomas 24:3

Thankfully, that time is over and past now.  Jesus' Christhood and His teachings belong to the entire world - to all people, all faiths, cultures.  He wanted so much to teach us how we all could enter into that perfect state of oneness (perfect unity and communion) with God, with the All that Is, which is Christhood.  

His teachings were (are) a cosmic invitation to enter into the same state of Christhood that He was (is) in, which is why He called us his brothers and sisters. So, a Christian is one who evolves spiritually through practice (and prayer) into that perfect state of union with God and experiences himself as one with the universality of the all in one.  Such a person would never call him or herself a Christian, but would rather call him or herself a Human Being, fully aware that the state of Christhood is perfected humanity. It is what we are all meant to be, when we grow up a bit more.

Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect. 

Matthew 5:48

Perfection means no scratches, no cuts, no divisions. There is no division in God's oneness, so there is no Christian and other, as St. Paul writes**, no Jew, Greek, Muslim, Hindi, etc.  We are all people seeking to grow and evolve, as all of life is in the process of doing.  Sadly, and I don't know how it happened, but somehow we got stuck in our evolution.  We failed second grade on the spiritual evolutionary scale and detoured into the left brain, the intellect, from which modern technology stems, cutting ourselves off from our true natures, which are heart-centered. 

Jesus' teachings very much harken back to those of the ancient Egyptians.  There seems to be no question about that.  There is indisputable evidence that his early life (those missing first 13 years about which theologians and church historians have pondered for centuries) in Egypt, most likely either studying or teaching in the mystery school there, where he would have learned or taught sacred geometry, and learned the ways of the heavens and the energy patterns of the universe, and how to connect to God through an incandescent, transcendent method of meditation, which we now call the "Mer ka ba."  

The way is simple, once you know it, but learning it means unlearning so much of what we've been taught for centuries.  There is also that deep boundary of loyalty to whatever faith you were raised in.  If you are a Jew or a Muslim, couldn't you also step across that boundary and enter into the heart, now lit by God's divine power of love, wisdom.  Christianity calls that power the Holy Spirit; Judaism calls it Holy Shekina and Islam calls it Holy Wisdom.  It is the same thing.  A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.***

Today, the biggest barrier to our heart entrance is our fear. I think something terrible must have happened to us along time ago which lies buried in our collective unconscious.  Just as a child's development is stunted by an abusive or traumatic childhood experience, leaving a fear marker which forever effects his limiting life choices, I think that must have happened to us.  I don't know what it was and I don't know if it matters.  

What's important now is for us to grow up beyond it.  Look to the future, rather than the past, but be aware that it left a fear marker, spintering us into seven billion different pieces.  If we came together as one consciousness, drawing from our heart centers, drawing from the one power of life and focused as a single mind on healing and loving and evolving, what do you think might happen? WOW!

So, fear is our enemy.  It is the barrier to our own selves, our own hearts, the portal to the multi-dimensional life, eternity, God. Maybe we know this in the abstract, on an intellectual level, but we all - each and every one of us - need to face it in a very personal way.  We have to look at what happened in our lives - look at it long and hard and be as honest with yourself as possible - and then, reach for the scissors and cut the cord that links you to that past.  Be very brave.  Step out of that moment of awareness with courage.  

Dare to dream your biggest dream, dare to accept the fact that you are loved and it's all OK.  Dare to be you and to let you being you your number one priority today.  Forget about all the old boundaries - at least for a moment - as you meet yourself in your true light and wonder.  If you see imperfections, note them as you would note an unruly child in class, and then forgive them.  

Look for your most joyous thought about yourself and hold onto that one.  That's the horse you're going to ride on.  It's a stallion, a beautiful, big shiny, glossy, steed.  That is going to take you far. That stallion is your way into your heart and on into that realm of light, power and utter, unbelievable joy.  It will take you to your destiny.  And, it will be the ride of your life, forever leading you on and on, even beyond your physical death.

*Translated by Stephen J. Patterson and James M. Robinson

** Galatians 3:28

*** William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, 1600:

JULIET:
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

Sacred Heart Consciousness

Sacred Heart Chakra Meditation

 By Solara An-Ra*

Place your awareness in Anahata, your personal Heart chakra, inside your chest between your breasts. Experience your Heart Chakra as a radiant, glowing Emerald green energy. Now feel the presence of the Sacred Heart Chakra above, in your chest between Anahata and the throat Chakra, Vissudha. The Sacred Heart Chakra glows pink, and its radiance holds an overwhelming quality of unconditional love which connects us with all life on our blessed planet.

Imagine a massive circle of people holding hands –every single human being which makes up the tribe of planet Earth, circling the entire globe. Our feet are on the Divine Mother Gaia, and her Goddess energy pours through her flesh and bones, and into our feet, filling us with the unconditional love of the Divine Mother. We feel ourselves as her children.

A resonance flows sunwise through the circle through our sacred Heart Chakras, and through our arms and hands - the resonance of unconditional love. We let go of all judgements and concepts of other human beings as good or bad, superior or inferior – understanding that we are truly a tribe - a tribe of beings whose hearts beat as one! We are the tribe who holds a connection at this time with this sacred blue-green planet – a planet of infinite beauty and power – a planet who IS a Goddess being - sharing her life with us and holding us in her arms.

Allow the love that circles through the tribe to connect with all life on the planet now – our love radiating through the plants, the bushes and flowers – through the woods, the forests and the rain forests – through the trickling brooks, the streams, the rivers, the ponds and lakes, and the great mother oceans.

Allow this love that radiates and circles through the tribe to reach across the landscapes, across the farmers’ fields, across the meadows, the valleys, the hills, the majestic mountains, the deserts, the swamps.

Allow this love to be felt as a connection between us and all other life forms – the insects, butterflies, ants, the birds, the monkeys, the rabbits, the deer, the wild animals of the African plains, the jungle animals, our cats and dogs. Feel a matrix of love developing that we have initiated, which is now connecting all life on our planet.

We have this ability to connect with all life on this planet through the Sacred Heart.

Send this love radiating down through our chakras now – through the root chakra, through the Earth Star Portal below our feet – and into the heart of Gaia. We feel our heart beat as one with hers – and we feel that love spontaneously returned to us now – flooding our bodies with her unconditional love for us.

Focus now on the Christ consciousness Grid – the dodecahedron 60 miles above Earth, surrounding our blessed planet. This grid holds the vibration towards which we move at this very time – the vibration of Christ consciousness, of unconditional love and unity consciousness. Feel our love magnified in our hearts, and send that love now from the whole tribe on Earth to illuminate this grid.

The dodecahedron grid is glowing now with this intense pink light – and as it reaches critical mass in it’s radiance, it pours that love back down through our cosmic star portals and into our sacred hearts.

We are the children of Mother Earth. We are the children Father Sun, the creative force itself.

Let us keep this connection of love, the connection which binds us with all living things on the planet, with the Goddess Gaia herself, and with the Christ Consciousness grid created by the Divine Father, to stay with us as an awareness throughout the day. Namaste.

ESSENTIAL DAILY PRACTICES

Close your eyes, settle into your body and slow your breath down. As you say the following invocations, understand that your wish is your command. And so it is.

1. Say out loud ‘I call light to myself now!’

As you call, a column of light, infinite in nature, pours down through your aura and your body, encompassing you in a higher vibration. This light that you call to yourself literally enlightens your being. It places you in a vertical alignment where you are connected with Heaven and Earth. It assists your body in raising its vibration in preparation for your movement into the 5th dimension.

2. Now say, ‘I ground myself into the heart of Gaia now!’

Stretch your awareness deep down into the heart of the Earth Being upon which you sit – there you will see a beautiful magnetic iron core crystal. Create a grounding cord like a rope made out of light, and attach that cord into your 2nd chakra in your belly if you are a woman, or into your 1st chakra at the base of your spine if you are a man. Send that grounding cord straight down to attach magnetically into the crystal at the heart of Gaia.

You feel yourself very present in your body now – grounded, relaxed and heavy.

3. Now command ‘Let all energy I have given away or left behind return to me now!’

With this invocation you feel all of your energy returning to you from all directions. Become aware of your aura in all 6 directions – to the front, the back, the left and right, above and below.

Repeat 'Let all energy I have given away or left behind return to me now!’ Feel the concentration and expansion of your aura as your energy returns to you.

4. Now say ‘I call a golden rain-shower to cleanse and heal my aura now!’

The angels send this golden shower now, pouring through your aura – golden particles of light, like a shower of rain, pouring through the energy which is you. As this rain-shower completes its cleansing and healing work, consciously spin a thread of golden light around your aura from the uppermost point above your head, spin this golden thread of light in a sun-wise direction, around and around, around the widest part of your aura, completing at the lower-most edge below your feet – leaving a crust or edge of golden light around your aura which continues to heal and protect your energy until you do this practice again.

5. Now command, ‘I ask for my 12 strands of DNA to be reconnected now!’

Visualise the double helix of your DNA and the disconnected strands reconnecting, allowing you to be the multi-dimensional master who you truly are. Feel a sense of reconnection within your body.

Command, ‘I ask for my 12 chakra system to be reconnected now!’

You may experience a spinning sensation within your body or your body may begin to move or spin as this connection takes place.

6. Stretch your awareness to your uppermost part of your aura now – to the ‘Cosmic Star Portal’ chakra.

Affirm ‘I open my Cosmic Star Portal to connect with the heart of the Great Central Sun!’

This connection allows the highest possible connection with your guides, and allows the information and energy which is needed for your vertical alignment and ascension to enter into your aura and body.

Now stretch your awareness to the very bottom of your aura, below your feet, to your ‘Earth Star Portal.’

Affirm ‘I open my Earth Star Portal to connect with the heart of Gaia.’

Your deeper connection with Earth through this portal allows you to be a channel for the energy of Heaven onto Earth now.

7. To assist this connection we end with a mantra which awakens your knowledge of your ancient heritage and shamanic powers so that you may see through the veil to the reality that WE ARE ALL ONE!

Sing with me ‘Om Nyaliman Shanti, Om Nyaliman Shanti, Om Nyaliman Shanti. Peace, peace, peace.’

Love and thank you, thank you to all higher beings who assist with the Divine plan for Earth.

Love and thank you, thank you Mother Gaia, who holds us in Her arms as we ascend.

    
* www.solara.org.uk
          and to listen to this meditation:
           http://solara.org.uk/archive/ListentoMeditations.htm

 

Candles in the wind

In the night was the dark,

In the dark was the dream,

In the dream was the Child,

and myself there unseen 

You are all beautiful brilliant angels, gentle, innocent, radiant, and ingenius.  You are also all sensitive, kind, loving, helpful and spiritual.  You may not really be who you think you are today - if you are an adult reading this. You were born with an amazing life waiting to bloom forth from your fresh little souls.  You were born with talents and interests, skills and latent, yet unformed, great ideas, art for your life canvas.  Did you reach those inborn, latent, dreams for your life? 

As children we were told that every snowflake was different, each one of the trillions of white laced snowflakes is different than the one next to it, and that we children are all uniquely different as well.  It was an interesting theory anyway, one which I thought about as my sisters and I played inside an iridescent igloo we'd made in the six-foot-high snowbank at the end of the driveway. While the bright winter sunlight sparkled on the icy glaze making windows on our igloo, we laid on our backs, charmed by the magic all around us, and watched those delicate, fragile, short-lived snowflakes gather above us.

In the book was the word

In the word there was truth

In the truth there was age

In the age there was youth

Yes, perhaps the theory is true, we are all different yet we are all alike. Maybe we are alike in that uniqueness. Today, while my lovely sisters and I are as different as those snowflakes, we are alike in so many other ways.  We are  extra sensitive to just about everything - food, violence, mean people and irritating smells and overhead lighting. 

And I said to the Child 

Do your hands they still bleed

After all of this time

Do you think there's still need

But the Child only smiled

And said not a word

And the snow it came down 

As if it hadn't heard 

The challenge for us, as it seems it is for all people, is having the courage to allow our unique lacey patterns, our intricate human design, inborn in each and every one of us, shine in the light, dance in the magic of life all around us, and softly just be, like the flowers I described the other day, to just be the beautiful beings God made us to be originally before the world got in the way.  

And all that night the snow came down

To heal the scars our lives had found

And the dreams that lay broken 

The temptation for all of us, and especially for those like my sisters and me, who are sensitive, is not to lose our uniqueness, not to lose our original design in the compression of that admixture of sun, light, heat and human endeavor.  In short, how do we maintain our unique selves, and along with that unique selfhood our unique path and dream for ourselves,as we live among all the others who are also striving to express their beinghood here?

And there upon a bridge of dreams

Across the night we walked unseen

With no words ever spoken 

Life is scary for sensitive souls.  It's a dangerous endeavor - just managing to survive is an all consuming effort, and yet aren't we here for so much more than just survival?

And then on through that night

We did walk for a while

And our steps turned to blocks

And the blocks turned to miles

We also run the risk of losing sight of our own dreams as we are fed the popular fad dreams by the corporate dream-makers out there.  I truly think that so many of us are hiding inside our personal igloos unaware that we are missing out the greatest experience of our lives.   We may remember that we wanted our lives to be a little different than they turned out to be.  We may have made decisions, perhaps ill informed at the time, that we wanted to be or do or accomplish something in our lives.  

Then we followed a path

For as far as we could

Till we found ourselves there

In an evergreen woods 

Today, the economy may have taken a hit on those dreams, maybe some of the ways we chose to get there didn't work out.  Whatever unknown factors may have diminished the probability of those dreams ever coming true, whatever extinguished the light of our little candles back then, whatever it was, it can be undone. Your dreams are like unborn children, they will be born - maybe some dreams just take a little longer than others. 

There were thousands of candles 

Upon every tree 

It was beautiful 

But there was one mystery

For with all of those candles

You must understand

That the only one lit 

Was now in that Child's hand 

Maybe our little lives were once like candles in the wind and we so badly wanted them to come true, but each time a dream was blown out, we lost a little heart and slowly over time, so many of them may have been extinguished by the winds of life as we know it.

And there upon that Christmas scene

The candle wax of melted dreams

And the years they had taken 

And as the snow did gently fall

He one by one relit them all

Till each dream was awakened

Before we can ever accomplish great things, *we have to recover the dream.  We have to remember who we are, walk with the Child awhile, it may be a heavy woods, a frozen dark night of the soul, but the Child, silent, is always present.  That Child is obviously the Christ, but that Christ is also the Child within you, the one in you who walks with you always.  The Child holds the power to relight your dreams and with a relit dream, there is nothing you can't accomplish because in the act of relighting, you realign your priorities, you tear down the false gods of this world and choose to honor the true one, who comes to us as a Child.  Isn't God amazing?  

And there to that light

That young Child showed to me

All the things that he dreamt

All the things that might be

How for everything given

That something was gained

Strike one match in the dark

And all the world's not the same 

In our world, bigger is better, smarter is better, money is more valued than love, tough is more prized than gentle.  In our world a king is more important than a servant.  And, in our world, nobody wants to feel uncomfortable.  We all want to be comfortable and yet we had these dreams -these high hopes for our lives and where are we now, today?  Are we comfortable?  Probably not.  Not really, anyway.  Who can say they're comfortable if they're not living in tune with their own inner dream?  But, we think we are.  The truth is we're addicted to our pain.  We're terrified to try to step outside the comfort zone of our own status quo.  We want to get in shape, but do we really want to commit to the gym everyday?  We want to change our careers, but at - you name the age - do we want to go back to college? 

And then I asked that Child

Why this night has a star

And he said, "So we'd know 

That we could see that far"

And these candles are wed 

To that distant star's light

If we're aware that everything we've been doing - all our lives - isn't working, are we willing to really change?  And, if we commit to that necessary change, are we willing to stick with it? Changing your life will demand a kind of courage that is more exacting than anything you've ever experienced.  But, how badly do you want to live a real life, rich and full of all the awesome experiences and accomplishments you once dreamed for yourself? 

What price would you pay for the life of your dreams?  The only cost is to face your truth - your own fear - your own internalized ghosts of Christmas passed - when your own tender little child self was traumatized by the power brokers of your (and our) life - who somehow took your family, your community and our whole world hostage, killing the innocence in everyone to establish itself as king.  But, now you know the truth. the true king is that Child who visits you on a long winter night, invites you silently to walk into the dark, empty woods of your life, and in that stark moonlit truth, He gives you back your dreams and welcomes you back to life.

And when I awoke, 
well the Child he was gone

But somewhere in my mind

I believe he lives on

And somewhere in my life 

Between here and the end

On a long winter's night

I will dream him again

This Tiger Lilies post is dedicated to my beautiful sisters: Alexandra, Frederica, Jayne Kathryn and Francesca and my kind and loving brother, George Franklin.  Never forget !

Sacred chamber

Thy heart is my home; sanctify it for My descent. 

Thy spirit is My place of revelation; 

cleanse it for My manifestation.

- Bahá'u'lláh

Life is a mystery in so many awesome ways.  I've often wondered if we know anything really.  So much of what I learned in school as a child has been revised, updated and so much of what I learned in seminary has also been supplanted by so much new theology, biblical archaeology and mystical spirituality that I wonder if we can know anything at all.  I also think the key to knowledge is not in our limited human brains, but rather through our hearts in which is the portal to heaven and is also the sacred chamber where we encounter God's Holy Spirit. 

I often think of our brains, our intellects where so much of our scientific and rational deductive reasoning is done, as a cold place, lacking the passion and compassion of the spirit in which we know something of God. There is something sad about the brain's lonely existence, always feeling threatened by its own self comparison to others, all the vanity and fear it feels because in the back of its own mind is this little truth that would undo it. That little truth is the brain is limited.  It is not the king of us as we always thought.  Rather, it is the servant thinking it's the king.  

The heart is the true royal throne which the brain has dismissed as sentimental and weak due to the heart's spiritual power of which the brain knows nothing because it doesn't have the lens with which to see or know who resides in that holy place.  The world has believed the brain's haughty bravado for too long. It's like the little man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.  It has limited power but we have believed its fallacies almost to our own undoing.  Now, we must awaken to where the truth is and somehow relearn how to listen and see through our hearts. 

Some might call that aspect of knowing as the feminine spiritual aspect and the rational, intellectual, brainy way of knowing as masculine.  Perhaps that's true and with all the science and technology, theology and philosophy, and all we think we know of everything, we don't know God and we don't even have enough spiritual vision to realize that we don't know anything.  

The intellect will keep us blind, constantly dismissing the spiritual as weak, as unnecessary, as irrelevant as Karl Marx believed, who said "religion was the opiate of the people."  I think without spiritual consciousness, we'd need opium to dim the pain of our stark ignorance. We are still blind to the multidimensional realms that are right here among us.  We don't see because we don't believe and we don't believe because we have been looking for heaven through the wrong lens.  

The heart has been discounted as a soft, girly kind of thing - a Hallmark card kind of thing - and we failed to see that the heart is utterly brilliant, powerful and vastly unlimited.  It is a portal as well as a temple and we have been terrified to open that inner door and allow ourselves to experience the greatest encounter, meet and see the angels - for real - and enter into an authentic relationship with God who is waiting for us, loving us and hoping we will open our heart to Him, His Holy Spirit, which is love and the greatest power the universe contains.

This is not so complicated.  The brain, which can't do this at all, tells us it's impossible - because it is for the brain. Not true.  It's so simple that the children can do it.  One of the most brilliant spiritual children I ever knew was a little boy who had cerebral palsy back in Tonawanda, New York.  He was the delight of his parish and sparkled with the love and obvious presence of God within him.  He seated people with a church program as they came in to the church door.  He was an angel in a little boy's body.

So, is it really any wonder that Jesus said that the children and those who have open hearts like children are entering the kingdom before the wise and learned?  

The way is simple.  Love God, love your neighbors, yourself and all people - all of life - all those who challenge your ability to love because they are your teachers of the heart.  If someone is cruel to you, offends your vanity, thank God for the lesson they provide you to love without any conditions.  Love, love and love some more.  Make it your number one priority.  Love even if it seems unjustified. Love even if the other person cannot love.  Remember that when you are choosing to love, you have in your words and your hands the most powerful weapon to fight against the blind apathy that has steeped our world in darkness too long.  

Take up your sword of love, and bring down the walls of hate that have kept us all imprisoned in this fog of unconsciousness and ignorance too long.  Be brave and love despite the cost.  If you would give your heart to God by loving others, God will give you His power and wisdom and your life will expand beyond your wildest imagination. I also believe God will help you to have the faith you need to do this.  Remember God is always on your side, and God will give you His love which is always enough.

A mystery and a message

Millenia ago the Earth was goddess-based, archaeologists maintain. Ancient ruins all over the world offered up small venus statues until suddenly they seemed to disappear as the world devolved to an escalating violence-based power/control masculinity that has since stomped out the creative power of a feminine or mystical divinity. 

The masculine was linear, closed, limited, left-brained, technologically focused, legalistic and judgmental.  In short: often competitive, divisive and often destructive.  The feminine is inclusive, open, allowing and relational.  In short: connecting, creative and building.*

The feminine was powerful in its spiritually instinctive nature.  That feminine power has been lost to us. It is a natural allowingness that wisely knows the power of nature - that deep mystically spiritual as well as earthy naturalness.  It doesn't control or conjure.  It envisions and allows. It knows a secret that is all over the Pyramid walls and buried deep underneath the ancient Sphinx.  Left to its own, the world would clearly have turned out differently.

So, what if humanity's most ancient ancestors, from predeluvian antiquity, wanted to leave us a message for our time - a message to our future and they knew that we would go to sleep spiritually and eventually forget everything and not even be able to read their language?  What universal images might they use and what would those images convey? Wouldn't it make sense they would leave that message in stone in a classically archetypal monolythic structure?

The world's most famous sculpture, Egypt's Sphinx, holds that secret of the ages.  This awesome face, buried from the neck down for thousands of years, has peered out over the vast undulating sands of time for at least a hundred thousand years.  When it was first reconstructed in the late 1800s that work was done poorly and only in the last century was the rest of this mysterious structure uncovered to reveal a kind of lionesque body, sitting ontop of an even greater secret.  Beneath the Sphinx is a complex of tunnels leading to chambers descending almost a mile underground.  Some of those once only mythic chambers have recently been found to contain objects and a sarcophagus, also from the deepest reaches of human history.

Oasis or reality?  If real, when?  Wings on the Sphinx?  on an island in what is now a desert, and where are the Pyramids in this picture?  The imagination longs to know more. What a surreal image in a watery, romantic place, exuding a kind of twilight consciousness, a mystery and a message. While all art is an interpretation, some art is more authentic than what remains lurking in the ancient sands of Egypt.  Yet, somehow this picture of the enigmatic Sphinx is reminiscent of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, or was Ms. Liberty inspired out of our collective memory of the oldest human-made (assuming she was human-made) structure on the Earth?

Archaeologists assert the wear marks on the Sphinx are not due to sand erosion but rather are due to persistent rain over several hundreds of years.  Since that is unanimously agreed on, the next question is when was Egypt a rain forest?  About 15,000 years ago - or more?  And, those wings?  According to an ancient riddle of the Sphinx, she is described as being female, lionesque with falcon wings and a serpentine tail. 

Several feelings emerge at this artist's idea of what or who that most ancient of ancient sculptures is.  The archetypal feminine -  powerful, sageous, strong, mystical, creative and beautiful.  Could she be mystical as an angel, regenerative like the mythic phoenix, suggesting resurrection and the ability to enter other dimensions, to create using means other than those we emloy today - those that manipulate nature rather than work with her.

There is an infinite amount of information being revealed today in sacred geometry, which was the evolutionary detour we didn't make when we succumbed to the manipulative masculine power-over-nature modality the human race has been running on for close to 15,000 years or more.  It has become clear to me that the ancient feminine spirituality - of which we are only now learning about - is the way of the future. 

The ancient Mayan prophecy suggested these times - our current times as we know them - would end in 2012, but what would come next?  The end of our times could mean the end of that masculine, power/control technological mentality that uses and abuses nature - and everyone and everything in it - to its own self gratification at the cost of nature and human life.  It is also anti-God and anti-Christ as it is anti-spirit. So, then, what would be next? 

If the ancient number for the divine feminine is "13," and we have entered a new age in the year 2013, could it mean that the new age would be the age of the great mystical Sphinx, the age of limitless creative spiritual power by allowing, in envisioning and creating out of that envisioning through the power of the mind, rather than the intellect. 

It sounds simple, but I doubt it is.  It would require an entire reworking of our entire mindset, refashioning of our worldviews, of practiced, intentional mindfulness and connecting with the power of God, the one and only God - the powerful, generative, creative God of Christ who is both mother/father.  But, that's just the beginning and there's so much more to Sacred Geometry, which includes that star tetrahedron (star of David) which further suggests this ancient knowledge was once known by the ancient Jews, who also fled from Egypt during the time of its oppressive reign of Pharoah's.  In their haste, led by Moses who courageously stood up to the exploitive Egyptian Pharoah, could they have carried this ancient knowledge with them?  Kabbalah would suggest the affirmative.

While this ancient knowledge is being revealed, and uncoverd again today, to those who explore and translate - even using art to recapture what has been lost - we know that Jesus was taken to the temple in Egypt after his birth.  We know also that His teachings are a call to return to the essential mysticism of the sacred mysteries of the inner sanctum, through which we connect to God and to whom we remain connected through resurrection and ascension remaining immortal.  

So, on this Epiphany, when we remember that the newborn Christ child was taken to Egypt, we could reimagine that return and enter into the imaginal iconic realm of that once watery spirit of divinity that lingers on the edge of Earth time.

Above photo:  http://www.magic-point.org/Html/Sphinx.html

*masculine or the feminine without the reciprocal balancing effect of the other is dysfunctional leading to disastrous effects for the planet.