[Blog (non channeled), Feb 2010]

Sometimes your past comes back to you like an old friend.

Several months ago, I noticed I had a resumed interest in examining the Michael teachings. This has been reflected in part by newer channeling, some of which you can see here in pages about energy dynamics like Martyrdom, Arrogance, Greed, and Self-Destruction. It's also been an internal journey. The Michael teachings have been a basis for and integral part of my personal spiritual cosmology since I was 18. And while that cosmology has expanded exponentially with my work with Polaris, the Michael teachings are a sort of spiritual home for me.

You may have noticed some changes on the site. Some are little but (to my esthetic Artisan heart) vast in feel. Some are a little bigger, and there are more to come as I evolve as a human and as a spiritual teacher. Life is more fun when you allow things to change, you know?

It's my pleasure, then, to call your attention to a couple of smallish but truly huge changes. If you have absolutely no familiarity with the Michael teachings but are curious, or you're just dabbiling your toes in it (or even if you're an old Michael hand), there's a series of pages beginning with this one that explains everything. And on that page is an interactive glossary feature that explains the wonderful and rich lexicon that is particular to the Michael teachings body of work. You can also explore the glossary just on its own. Go ahead, click! You know you want to. Polaris uses some of these terms as well at times, so please explore. Like with every body of spiritual teaching, take from it what is yours, whatever parts resonate for you.

It's our gift to you.

The theme for this month is Flow. When we speak of Flow in this context, we speak of the ability you all have — perhaps something unique to your species, at least in your way of doing so — of assimilating yourselves into that which surrounds you. In other words, you take in the energy of what is around you and breathe it into yourself, sometimes quite literally, creating an ever-changing new organism with each breath.

When we speak of “what is around you” we mean this:

• The literal air and all it contains: particulate matter, the pheromones of nearby lovers, the scent of the pot roast bubbling on the stove in your kitchen.
• Visual stimuli: the flowers in a vase on your table, the piles of clutter on your desk, the view outside your window.
• Clothing and furniture: the touch, smell, and feel of what touches your physical body.
• Energetic information: every tangible item or person (or non-human being, such as pets, plants, and stones) has with it an energetic signal, and this you also take in.

Each of these things that you take in, the actual tangible things as well as the energetic information, also contains within it all the memories you have ever experienced of similar such things. When you observe the vase of flowers on your table and take that into your being, you take with it the memory of all flowers in vases you have ever observed, and all similar-colored flowers you have observed growing, perhaps, in gardens, as well as the memories that come flooding into you with the scent of flowers, the color of flowers, and the feeling of warm sun on your back as you, perhaps, once walked through a garden filled with flowers.

[non-channeled]

Like many people whose eyes, ears, and fingertips are connected by the vast Interwebs, I heard the news of yesterday’s devastating Haiti earthquake via Twitter.

7.0. I’ve been in a 5.5. I know that 6-point-something is pretty damaging. Every point-something is a factor of 10 in magnitude. So this 7.0, in a country where most people are painfully poor and (I imagine) live in the kind of rickety shack housing I’ve seen elsewhere in the Caribbean, is huge.

And it is. According to what little I have read (and I avoid TV news like the plague), 100,000 people could already have died. And the inevitable deaths from disease due to damaged water systems, lack of food and shelter, could raise the figure precipitously.

I am trying to figure out how I feel about this. What I feel.

In 2001, when we all saw surreal footage of airplanes flying into tall buildings that had become part of an iconic skyline, I felt something. That night I lay in bed and imagined helping herald 2000 confused souls into a warm light-filled embrace, and helping tens of thousands more through those first days of shock and outrage. In the days that followed, it became easy. All that shock and outrage got funneled into hating someone and something that someone else decided we should be hating anyway.

That’s how wars start.

But how do you hate an earthquake?

We can’t hate the earth, because it’s our home. It sustains us.

Less than two weeks ago I channeled information about people — many people — choosing to exit their earthly lives this year. In working with this kind of information, I try to remain a little distant and not feel the pain and grief associated with such an eventuality. When just one person dies, many grieve. I’ve protected myself from feeling that on a grand scale. My fear is that I’d be overwhelmed by the immensity of such pain on that large a scale. Many people transitioning? There are 7 billion or so on the planet now. A few thousand here or there doesn’t make much difference overall. Many people would have to be … many.

People.

100,000 beautiful, alive, loving people in Haiti died yesterday, ending lives that had love and pain and laughter and tears. And it wasn’t an ethereal Rapture, where they simply got lifted up into some alternate reality. No, a good many of these people likely died in pain. That’s twice as many people as live in the small city that is my home, and it’s pain that I am afraid to feel.

What is compassion?

I think about Haiti, just as I thought about the Christmas tsunami a few years ago. I hear a big ’should’ in my head. I should be feeling this, because I can. It’s my job, my livelihood, to tap into a global consciousness, or into the energy body of a single person. To me, it’s all the same.

And yet, I don’t.

Last night I approached a woman, older than me, who I knew had been having some physical issues. I asked how she was. I could see how she was, could see where there were energy blockages. I asked her permission to touch her, and I briefly touched points on her shoulders and down her back. I asked about her feet because I could feel immense pain there. I wept, not from the pain but from the sense of it.

I can feel pain without feeling it. Strange, that.

And yet I don’t go to Haiti. This makes me smaller somehow, less human, I fear.

Last night I also wrote a column in which I cried about some of my fears. Fears of my own fragility. In the light of the new day I can see that this was, in some way, an expression of my response to Haiti. I know we all process everything that comes into our being — from near or far, it’s all the same — through our personal perception lenses. That’s not being selfish, it’s being human. We can’t help it. So I transferred the cries of tens of thousands of throats into one cry from a single throat, crying, “Who will help me when I have need?”

I could rationalize that just as children are better off when you let them make their own lives and their own mistakes, that I should keep my virtual hands of Haiti and let things transpire there as they will. I am not Atlas and I cannot hold the world on my shoulders. I have trouble some days with my own piece of the world.

At the risk of sounding trite, or incomplete, I can love. In the end, that’s all any of us can do. For some, love will be a $10 donation to the Red Cross. For others, it’s being airlifted along with dogs and rescue teams to pull people out from under buildings. For still others, it’s prayer. And for others, it’s a blink in the daily crush of living. Who am I to determine which facet of love has more merit?

[non-channeled]

I used to write poetry when I was young. It fell out of my heart and remained caught in a blank space for a long time, but I have made room in my heart for poetry again. It feels good. This piece is like time-travel and speaks from a place in my past.

Longing

I long to travel where my body cannot go;

through doors and walls and windows

to unseen worlds of dizzying possibility.

I lie awake, willing a single silver cord

to emerge from my body like an astral umbilicus.

At the mirror I chant I AM

and wait for the reflected worlds behind me to unfold

like petals after a spring rain,

worlds that will swallow me into nothingness.

One day I will scream for an hour so shards of my

shattered heart will break my brain into halves

and I will disappear between them.

Float away, Self, I whisper in my dreams

that follow me like twisted shadows.

Float away and unwind the becoming,

banners at rest and respectfully waiting,

all time suspended.

A friend recently posted her reflections from 2009 and hopes for 2010, and I was especially intrigued and touched by her chosen theme for the coming year -- gentleness. It's my friend's intention to be gentle with herself this year, releasing herself from the bindings of the need for perfection and from the desire to do all and be all. Isn't that lovely?

I thought it was a wonderful theme for the year, and it got me to thinking. I post a lengthy channeled message every month -- as well as one for the entire year -- which typically includes a theme for that period of time. Why not choose one (or listen to the one your heart sings to you) on a personal level each year?

After upheaval comes quiet, at least for a while. It’s a time of taking stock, of seeing what’s in the larder, and then moving ahead again into new territory. By month’s end, many of you will have unearthed a direction or secret resolve that you intend to move forward upon into the future.

The stabilizing energy is a direction to head toward. There will likely be a number of ups and downs along the way — realizations and discoveries — but on the whole, the energy of January speaks to an overall stabilizing effect so that further deepening and movement can be possible in the future.

Effects on a personal level

What does this mean to you personally? For starters, it’s about bringing things to the surface. Not so much in the dramatic ways of the past few months, but more lovingly, tenderly, almost as if you are greeting inner parts of you for the first time, giving birth to the most precious deep elements to the creation that is you. So you can expect feelings of surprise, wonder, childlike yearnings, and innocence to be crossing your path this month.

Another effect of January’s energy on a personal level is a sense of greater connection. This may occur for you on a family level, between neighbors, in a community, or on a virtual basis, but awareness of the greater whole that is all of humanity will be becoming more evident this month. Deepen this for yourself by reaching out in tangible ways to those around you — volunteer, give charitably, or simply host a gathering.

Right now you – all of you – stand poised at the edge of a precipice, ready to jump. Or to fly.

2010 is a pivotal year. We have been telling you about changes taking place within you and around you these past several months. Many of you have begun deep, lasting, and profound inner transformation as a result of choosing to step into the flow of change that is taking place all around the world. We repeat here what many of you have heard from other sources, or perhaps sensed yourself: you are here – now – for a reason. Most of you reading these words will feel a familiar tingling or chill right about now. You are here, right now, in this place and in this time, to take part in what is likely to be one of your species’ greatest times of expansion.

First, a caveat. The change that we speak of will take years to complete or even to come to a place that is readily discernible by most people as great change. This – now – is just the beginning stage of great overall growth. Expansion. You have agreed to be a part of what will end up being among the beginning stage of this expansion. Many of you will intend to incarnate again later on for a role in later stages of this change that will likely require several hundred years overall.

But understand, too, that change is occurring. Many of you are sensitive enough to feel what’s coming and to incorporate new ways of relating into your own lives. Many of you are now riding the crest of the wave yet to come.

Now, what do we mean by “expansion”? The human species has collectively agreed and chosen to begin evolving in certain ways that will eventually support new ways of interacting. Evolution has been occurring throughout your entire history, of course, but soon there will be more evidential changes taking place. Nothing so drastic, perhaps, as growing gills to breathe underwater, but just as significant in the overall effect.

December is the month of richness. Not “rich” in the material sense, although that is certainly a possibility for those on that path, but rich in the sense of depth. Added complexity. Layers unfolding layers. Last month you allowed what was under the surface to bubble up to conscious awareness; this month you explore things more deeply, in a rich, soul-satisfying way. You'll see the strata of each layer of past experience and insight, and this month the patterns become more clear and beautiful. You sense purpose in your experience. Everything you have been before this moment has built the You that you are now, and you rest this month in that knowledge.

It’s no accident that this energy is occurring along with a few other things going on in the world at this time:

1. End-of-calendar-year review. Now you’ll be looking back over the past year, a convenient marker or milepost, to see where you’ve been and the journey it took to get to where you stand now.

2. December religious holidays, for whatever amount of significance they hold for you personally, are extremely affecting to the vast majority of people in the world. Even if you don’t personally hold religious significance to this time of year, there’s a pervasive sense of global collective awareness this time of year. Now, more so than other times of the year, you are aware of the connections you have to all of humanity.

3. Solstice. For the Northern Hemisphere it’s the winter solstice, the time of inward contraction, which invites inner exploration. In the South there’s expansion with the summer solstice. Two magnetic poles in perfect balance. Overall, this affects your richness explorations by inviting you to feel more in tune with the energy of your region.

4. Copenhagen energy talks. Much of the direction you’ll be headed on a collective basis in terms of how humans and the earth interrelate will manifest through the results of this summit. If you like making predictions, pay attention to what goes on here.

It is helpful, with all this collective energy abounding, to bring yourself to a place of conscious connection to the global collective entity known as “humanity” as well as to the larger global collective entity known as “Earth.” To create a stronger conscious connection, we suggest the following. This exercise is most effective if done as a group experience, but can also be practiced alone:

Lie directly on the ground if possible, or on the floor of what feels to you like a comfortable space.  Lying on your back, take a few deep breaths to relax your body somewhat and to allow you to focus your energy and attention.

When you feel that you have expanded into the space surrounding your body (about 6-8 inches all around your body), focus your awareness on the space within your heart. As you do so, notice that this space is of infinite size – although it is contained within your awareness, it extends in every direction toward infinity.

Maintaining your awareness of that space, allow yourself to imagine a golden light emanating from that space, dropping down into the center of the Earth below you. The center of the Earth, you now notice, is also a space of infinite proportion just as your heart-space is. The two infinite spaces are now connected by the golden light.

You are now connected to this source of energy that exists within your planet that fuels and connects the global collective entity known as “humanity”. You are also now connected to the global collective entity known as “Earth.” You are no bigger and no smaller than either of these entities.

Your own space is as infinite as any other.

Practice this daily if you can this month, especially on the solstice.

Other ways this energy of richness will appear this month, beyond that of a personal nature:

Gratitude is the state of being open to what is present around you. It's receiving, being fully open — without judgment — to the state of what is around you.

Energetically, gratitude is an invitation into the third chakra to take in the totality of the energy of that which surrounds you. You can focus on something particular to hold that openness to. For instance, you could be grateful for a person and be open to their energy, inviting it in through your third chakra to then infuse you. You can be grateful to a situation and allow the energy of the state of something, as you perceive it, to be more a part of you.

Most people, in their normal state, are in a state of resistance. The amount of resistance varies from person to person and will vary for a particular person from situation to situation or from interaction to interaction. In other words, there is a spectrum of resistance.

Since most people are in a constant state of some resistance there is little awareness of the resistance that they are holding. The majority of people are in a rather low level state of resistance. Moving from that low level end of the spectrum to the more intensely resistant end of the spectrum is noticeable — and that's when it kicks in to conscious awareness for most people.

This month, the rage surfaces. Just like bubbling lava that’s been deep underground and now longs to surface, so too in this month will anything you’ve been keeping stored inside you.

Do you fear this? Do you fear that the inner parts of you that now seek sunlight are dark and should remain hidden? They are still a part of you, as much as the parts of you that you show yourself and others.

Now, while we used the word “rage,” it would be inaccurate and incomplete to describe the majority of what is happening this month as angry, or vengeful, or dark. Instead, we invite you to think of what bubbles forth into the sunlight this month as “movement.” Joyful. Opening. Inviting you into your wholeness.

This doesn’t mean that you will feel nothing but good feelings, although the more you invite the hidden parts of you into the light with joy and acceptance, joy and acceptance are what you will feel. But this is a process that brings up emotions and judgments that are connected to the inner parts of yourself you've been hiding. There are reasons you've been keeping them submerged — patterns you've become accustomed to using. Any time you are faced with elements of yourself you’ve been keeping hidden, you could experience resistance. Or feel shame. Or uncertainty. So, too, could those around you, who will be surprised at your new depth and may react with their own reactions to this new energy. But understand that these are their reactions to what they feel inside themselves, and have nothing to do with your relative goodness or lack of goodness.

Let’s explore the various ways that the rage bubbles to the surface this month.

From time to time, Polaris speaks in parables and stories.  This is a wonderful short story about a brickmaker, art, beauty, and blame, which was told when a question was asked about the nature of blame.  For your enjoyment, we've included the audio, so you can hear the story as it was told.  It runs about 9 minutes.

Click Here to Download

(Note: you can automatically download this into iTunes by clicking on this iTunes subscribe link)

The story was transcribed below:

Last week I practiced being dead. It was the flu. When I told someone that, they asked me, "Was it the throwuppy flu?" At the risk of entering The Land of TMI, no, it wasn't the throwuppy flu. It was the you're-dying-so-you-might-as-well-get-used-to-being-dead flu.

So for several days I did nothing. Reading was out of the question — not only were books simply too heavy to hold, but they made no sense. Black shapes swam on white pages. It was much easier just lying still under 20 blankets, staring at the ceiling with my eyes closed.

Matthew spoke to me from time to time. He was probably speaking coherently, but to my fevered mind he appeared to be saying things like, "The walrus is painting the refrigerator purple and the headphones are dangling under uncanny optimism. Can I answer your octopus?" after which my brain would announce how very very tired it was and Matthew would smile indulgently and walk away. We had many conversations like that. It was restful. I didn't need to understand. And then I would go back to staring at the ceiling with my eyes closed.

October is a month of restoring balance. September was all about uncovering things, buried facets of old patterns, but this month you’ll be striving to maintain order and find balance again in what feels yet again to be a very unbalanced world. For many of you, this process will be easy, facile, and unthinking, but more of you will likely react to the flailing efforts of those around you and strive ever harder to maintain your own balance while people around you are plummeting from their tightropes.

Let’s examine this tightrope analogy a moment. Most of you regard the concept of balance as being poised atop a precarious perch, much like a tightrope, and that within this confinement you must walk your path, remaining ever vigilant lest you plummet to your undoing below. But what if … instead of falling, you would fly? And what if in this flying you find new heights, new lovely vistas, as well as new challenges to surmount? We pose this question because we see that the majority of you regard balance as a precious commodity, one that allows you to remain safe within, again, the confines of your path as you determine it to be. But we challenge this notion, and instead invite you to see balance as a limitation. As a means to control yourself and your environment. As a narrowing of our own choices. As … unnecessary.

So while on the one hand you’ll likely be striving FOR balance this month, attempting to find a foothold or at least a toehold on reality as you perceive it, we invite you instead to let go.

Fly.

I've got nothing against the Law of Attraction. I think its tenets, at their core, are exactly right and true. I know the Law of Attraction works. I know we create our reality.

So what's the problem? It's in the interpretation.

We assume, because we are human people living in human bodies on the physical plane, that life is expressed through tangibles. Through "stuff," in other words. In addition, we've just come from a good 2000 years of exploring human interaction through the lens of wealth and material goods accumulation that's led us to where we are now, in a world filled with flat-screen TVs and cell phones and cars. And all this stuff we have makes us want more. We want what others have.

And if it's not actual tangible stuff we want, we want something so ephemeral we can't even quite describe it. It seems out of our grasp. Happiness. That's what we want. We want to be happy.

What is happiness? Your answer to that is going to be different than mine. All our answers differ based on our unique lenses of perception, experiences we've had, and soul-level plans for what we wish to do in this life.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with wanting happiness. Except ... I'd much rather HAVE happiness than WANT it. Wouldn't you?

[Channeled, Aug 2009]

The following was part of a series of wonderful questions asked in the Polaris Forum (in this post) which relate to conscious creation, the mind and brain, and most importantly, cats.

Question: I was thinking about whether animals, such as cats experience a dream state or an alternative, lighter existence (such as we do) when they are sleeping? Do they experience a mental life similarly to the way we do and do they have individual or mass thought (being as they are part of a hive or shared soul)

Yes, animals such as cats experience dreams. However, they have more awareness of their ability to manipulate astral matter than do most humans. They also experience a lighter meditative state. You often see this with cats that appear be sitting and, for all intents and purposes, staring off into space. It would be incomplete say that they are meditating, but they are in a light hypnotic state, in almost a trance, and are in a meditative state. In that state they have a different awareness of their bodies than they do when they are fully awake and alert. In that state is when they have more conscious connection with the other consciousness that is them on a collective basis.

[Channeled, Aug 2009]

The following was part of a series of wonderful questions asked in the Polaris Forum (in this post) which relate to conscious creation, the mind and brain, and most importantly, cats.

Question: I would like to ask Karen and/or Polaris about the mind. There seems to be two schools of thought in this field. One being that the mind is merely and purely a product of the brain with no external influence or input. The other is a dualist idea and that the mind is a by product or extension of our soul?