I have this theory that on our birthdays, the Universe shouts messages to us. All kinds of messages. It is always a bit of a scavenger hunt to go through a birthday, moment by moment, and watch and listen for the messages. This year did not disappoint.

One example goes as follows. I decide to head out on this beautifully sunny if coolish day to the beach. There is also a good stiff wind blowing. As I step down my front steps, there, laying in wait, is a kite on the ground with its string extending out all over the place, caught in trees and bushes and in need of being freed. It took a while, but I got the string loose and set out for the beach, new kite friend in tow. As soon as I set foot on sand, the kite ripped up into the sky. Something thrilling about how eager it was to go up high. As I look up, I see dazzling cloud formations. I am cold from the wind but do not care as the sky is intoxicating me and the kite is like a wild, free thing that is having such a romping good time.

I see walking towards me a man with white hair flying in all directions and a definitive twinkle in his eye. He smiles at me and says something about my going to get whisked up with the kite. As often happens when I am in the elements, I feel like I am in an alter Universe. I felt so much joy that was just bubbling up and splashing all around. This is the day that follows and seems very much like a continuation of the prior blog story about the incredible Light at sunset that reached out and touched my consciousness.

These events I like to share with you are so magical, and so generous in what they offer. As I listened to what the messages seemed to be with my sunset/ beach/kite experience, here is what I got. 

Absolutely, the sunset let me know Love is very present on this planet, and also that I am loved on this my day of birth. The sky and kite and even the elder gentleman with the twinkle in his eye conveyed the following messages:

First, untangle the parts of your life that have kept you from flying free. Take the time and go to the trouble of undoing, tangle by tangle. Second, move forward without expectation. Next, when you are in the right place at the right time, do not be surprised at being lifted very high very fast.

Look around at what is enfolding you on all sides, the glory and the beauty and accept that this level of freedom from being held back offers endless vistas to explore and create and yet, note that one thin kite string keeps you grounded enough while you are still in a body, and that grounding is very necessary.

Have the humilty to know that you are being privileged to experience such wonderment purely as a gift from Life, not because you have done anything to earn it per se.
 
The best way to say thank you is to let your cup spill over with the goodness being offered. And lastly, recognize the wisdom and amazing love that comes from elders. Listen to them and remember what they say.

Interestingly, the gentleman I encountered seemed somehow aware of what was going on with me, almost more than I understood myself. He seemed to be the proverbial wise man or wise woman figure in the Hero's Journey. The story writer put him in the scene in perfect place and perfect timing.

And this is how it goes on one's birthday, with eyes to see and ears to hear. The next time someone tells you to just go fly a kite, I encourage you to do so.

We, the ones having a human experience, are the kindling. If you doubt that, think of the hardest times you have experienced in life. Now think of who you are today, after dealing with the really hard stuff. You are different, right? Dare I say transformed?

Some people feel the hard part of life has had a negative impact and made them less than they could have been. To that I would say, you are looking at too small a picture.

Sometimes I like to ponder what my soul had in mind in choosing my particular set of challenges in this lifetime. I go back to before I was born and imagine myself having a conversation with a muchly trusted guide. The first thing we assess is why incarnate on earth as a human at all. Then we assess what soul powers I have developed thus far that I can use in this coming lifetime Once that is established, then it is a matter of, given my motivation of what I want to use this human experience for, what kinds of challenges would help move me in the direction I want to go.

I can almost feel what I am feeling during this consultation. I might feel excitement, knowing this new lifetime will be an adventure, whatever else it ends up being. I might feel fear, that I might fail in my objectives or that I will have taken on more than I can handle and will suffer greatly. I include in my imaginings that the one who is my guide knows me well and though I am the chooser, I am seen, known and loved as I make the choice. Who knows, maybe the guide has veto power if my choice is too off the charts.

That is fantasy (though I sense it bears some similarities to the before life incarnate way of things). Being here on the planet is very real. Looking at the evidence, I am satisfied that every single hard thing I have ever been through was chosen by me, and with a purpose, of making me better, stronger, wiser and more compassionate i.e. transformed. Here on earth, our swords get tempered in the flame. It appears from where I stand, the hotter the fire, the stronger the tempered steel.

I think of Abraham Lincoln and the intense dealing with his own dark moods he had to shoulder. Add to that, the horror of being the one to make the decision that ended in 600,000 deaths for the sake of a step up in our ethical consciousness. Add to that a difficult marriage and death of two of his children early in their lives. I cannot even begin to imagine how he navigated those waters. I am however convinced that his strength came from what he taught himself how to endure. He was the kindling. The strides he took, as a result, were enormous.

We don't all sign up to grow through such extremes, but as an incoming soul, the likelihood is that what you chose, you did so for what felt to your soul like very good reasons. We need to trust that, and love our valor.The ones with the easier lives are not necessarily the luckier ones.

Who is capable of being clairvoyant? Everyone. Who is clairvoyant? Not everyone. Why not?

Clear seeing with the Inner Eye (or Third Eye as most often referred to) is a capacity all have but for most people, it is a latent capacity. There are reams of accounts of what happens when the Third Eye opens to clear seeing, and how to get that to happen. There are some that purport to teaching this process. Some people are born with this capacity and never lose it. To some, the opening can seem to happen on its own, much like some kundalini experiences that can show up unbidden. Children are born with the openness but can shut down quickly when they assess where they are and the unacceptibility of their gift to many who are threatened by it.

When the Third Eye is open as a stable part of one's life, life is far from what it would be were the capacity unactivated. I feel the opening is an earned reward for commitment to the desire to see clearly and to see all things from the heart. Who knows how many lifetimes of devotion and commitment lead to this treasured state of clarity.

But then, we are living in these times, and these are not times as they have been in many eons, if ever. These times need, nay, require that masses of people come into clear seeing. Having the Third Eye open is now no longer the province of the esoteric elite. If you, from your heart, want to live a life seeing from your heart, then you are eligible to open either through assistance (Drunvalo Melchisidek is a good resource), from a miracle (it happens on its own) or through some private form of study you have found and undertaken.


Warning. Be careful what you ask for. When you see with the Third Eye, there is no way you can hide from yourself anymore, in any manner, and no one can hide from you. Some people will appreciate you for this capacity, but not everyone. Personally, I think by the time you pass muster and see clearly in a way that far exceeds anything external physical vision offers you, you will know how worth it this gift is, whatever it took to get here. And this is definitely a case of, the more the merrier. The joy of looking into the eyes of one who is clear seeing with your own clear seeing eyes, well, it is unsurpassed.

Forgive the graphic image, but there is a point in sharing it. Dolphins can sustain what appear to be drastic injuries and yet can ofttimes if not most times completely recover just on their own. What special healing powers do they have that allows this regenerative ability?

Like us, they have a consciousness that holds awareness on par with (and beyond us in certain ways) what humans have. We can think about what happened in order to learn from it.. We can go into the future and plan out what to do about a situation. These cognitive abilities serve us (and also can create emotions like fear and regret, so can also work against us).

The consciousness of dolphins seems to be a step up from our inclinations in the following way. I think one reason they heal and regenerate in the ways they do has to do with their emotional body, and rest assured, they have one! They are very present time oriented though I am convinced that they, like elephants, have an amazing memory, and that they, like humans, know how to anticipate the future. They are absolutley geniuses at knowing how to work with etheric energy, the positive and negative energy valences in nature. The only place to do that successfully is to be 100% in the here and the now, where there is no regret for the past nor fear of the future. If we lived more potently in time present, we too would discover remarkable abilities to heal ourselves, especially emotionally, but physically as well.

Dolphins are known for the joy they express and the contagion of joy people feel when around them. I defy you to experience that dolphin energy and let it in and at the same time worry about what is going to happen when you go to the office on Monday. I am fond of saying, joy has no opposite because joy isn't due to external circumstances. Joy is a state of consciousness that derives from being absorbed in the eternal NOW. Dolphins know this and demonstrate this to humans over and over.

Are all dolphins joyful all the time? No. Dolphins  traumatically captured and deprived of their normal life and abused can be utterly miserable. They are miserable because their conditions do not allow them to express their true nature. Interestingly, that is the source of all human suffering as well. Dolphins living with their pod in the wild are joyful most of the time, and not even something like a little run in with a shark will interfere with that state of consciousness. That mega-pod spotted off San Diego showing dolphins stampeding together in a certain direction . . .whatever the reason for the stampede (I personally think it was about huge schools of fish), I guarantee you this - they were having a fine time swimming together

Watch and learn, humans. Watch and learn.

Is there a more important question you could ask? And, in trying to answer it, how close would you get to finding the truth about your being here, now, on this planet, incarnated in a human body.

OK OK. Guilty as accused. What can I say. I was a philosophy major in college, going through existential angst of the first order and only the far reaching questions about life interested me. Then, I calmed down and became interested in just living my life. Then I opened up and started expanding again into the bigger questions and here I am, 7 decades after my birth fiercely interested in these questions that were with me, even as a child.

Our being here was part of a plan, a bigger plan, on the part of your soul, and the more you know about what your soul had in mind, the better. For all the rough stuff about being on this planet, it is an enormous opportunity for soul growth. Those who have near death experiences and  return usually resume their life with a much more pronounced understatnding of who they are, what they are here for and what is the best way they can use their remaining time here, for their own soul growth. Sometimes, there is a period of depression due to the contrast between the peace of the afterlife and the chaos on this planet, but once you really understand the difference you can make, both for yourself and for others, then, it becomes more of an adventure and a privilege.

For more years than I care to recount, I have understood that an astrology chart is one of the ways we can derive information about what our soul had in mind on this particular earthside journey. I use my readings to shed light on that very information. I like to think of the chart as the soul's layout for the kinds of experiences you can best use for growth. Some people have extremely difficult lives, and you can wonder why the soul would put someone through such things. These are deep topics. As Viktor Frankl shared in his classic The Search for Meaning about what allowed some people in concentration camps to fare better than others,  he discerned that when we have a sense of purpose behind circumstances, it makes a world of difference. An astrology chart speaks to that sense of purpose in any given life.

If you are drawn to look more deeply into your 'star map' and ask anew the question "Why was I born", it would be my pleasure to interpret for you. Just go to the astrology section of my website to make an appointment.

Before love was a word, it was a vibration, an essence, a truth. It was and is the biggest and most indestructible truth there has ever been, and ultimately, the only one.

The word 'love' gets used often and frequently with the best of intentions, but the map is not the territory. The word. through so much usage, has ceased to be the vibration.

There is a time though, when the word is still the vibration. When one uses their throat chakra to speak the authority of the truth of their inner being, when that is what is going on, the word 'love' still carries the vibration.

There are many who speak with the authority of their being who will not use the word 'love' often. They are doing something more significant though. They are being love, the essence of love, which is a vibration. The closest language I could put to what that vibration is about is inclusion. What is being included, is being loved. It is that simple.

Love existed before people did. Now there is something to ponder. Love was what birthed all that is, and we have not always been here in human form.

There is a magic and a mystery to what love is and how it manifests. It will never ever be capturable in language. Never. It cannot be reduced to language. But it is always known and recognized.

I am not saying don't tell someone you love them. No problem there. Just make sure you are feeling it when you do.

There is something exhilarating when a storm moves in. Frightening sometimes but also very stimulating. When the dark and the light are right next to each other in great contrast, something in us wakes fully.

We are forever trying to ban the dark. Annihilate it. Make it gone forever. In a unitive world, this would make sense, but in the dying days of duality, we have another job to do. We keep thinking it is to 'get rid of' all that we judge as being off the mark.

I put to you, that is not our job at all. Our job is to dance, and allow and weave all threads.
 
What usually comes up at this point is that allowing the truly darkest of darks is just . . well . . .unallowable. How could anyone in good consciouse allow that which we feel represents the very worst of humanity? I am not saying you have to approve of dark acts or like them. I am saying you have to allow them.

What does that even mean? It means you accept that Love, which is all inclusive wins. When you kick no one out of creation, the sheer potency of that degree of acceptance always brings the sheep who wandered off back into the flock, eventually, and 'eventually' is the operative word here.

This kind of potent love must be done outside of time because if you stay in time, you will run out of spiritual will or faith and have a horrible backlash of despair and rage that all your attempts to "love someone home" don't seem to be working. But if you are not watching the clock, miracles happen.

This is the graduate course I am talking about, this level of love. How to get there? Dance. Love your own flaws. Find your neighbors' idiosyncracies amusing. Start small and build up. Just keep dancing. It is very hard to laugh at yourself, forgive yourself and hate yourself at the same time. (And as you know, being unhappy with anyone else is impossible when you fully accept yourself, dark side and all). It is hard to dance and identify with any one position or judgement at the same time. We just need to keep dancing . . .and dancing . . .and dancing. We are headed home.

You cannot visit ancient sites and not hear the past speaking to the present. Granted, it is a different kind of hearing for it resides mostly in the bones which, of all body parts, resonate the most profoundly with truth, especially with timeless truth.

I return to Peru and high in the Andes Mountains over and over because it makes my bones speak to me and tell me things that apply to time present. Looking at this image of these steps, my bones' tongue loosens. Here. I will let you listen in.

My bones -  Do you wonder that everyone soars when they come to this place? And why is that? It is profoundly beautiful, yes, but there is more to it. The world now is hungry for a kind of music that sings in these stones. It is the music of knowing what it means to feel our Divinity in the midst of our human existence.

To know that all earthly struggles are as nothing compared to the privilege of being able to touch in to our Divine inheritance while we are in a physical body on this planet, these stones high in the Andes Mountains will remind you. Hunger, war, oppression of whole peoples as played out throughout human history (and still being played out) cannot hold a candle to what these wise mountains ('apus') in Peru know about how lucky we are to be alive in a body.

Machu Picchu is but one of many places in these mountains where those who came before lived in a state of consciousness that we are trying to re-claim, and indeed are re-claiming in this powerful year of 2013. These forces moving on the face of the earth now are so strong that, to bring the past home again, we do not even have to go to the land where the stones talk to our bones. Seeing images is sufficient to give us the jolt of remembrance.

There is a difference though. Something about putting our feet where so many before us stepped, who carried the Light we are now lookinig to carry, causes a deep unassailable gratitude to flood in. We owe them much, both the people who lived back then and carried the Light, and the stones of Gaia herself. It would be so much harder to make the leaps we are now making, were it not for what got laid down for us by the very ones who walked the stones in this picture. Something to ponder when 'the world is too much with us' during our current challenges.

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