Autumn and The Kali Yuga?

The Yugas, Great Ages

The Kali Yuga is the last of the four yugas in the cycle of Kosmic seasons as represented in the Mahabharata of ancient India.

In the background, as I write, the TV news people are chewing and re-chewing the issues surrounding Bret Cavanaugh’s appointment to Supreme Court Judge. I am no longer emotionally engaged in stopping the trend of current politics. This is because I believe that certain processes must ripen before their destructive nature is revealed. Frantically resisting the power of a rushing stream leads to injury and defeat.  Actions must be timed in accord with the in and out motion of the cosmic breath.

We must hold to our truth but not in an arrogant manner.  Trump may seem incompetent as the president of our country, but he isn’t isolated. He is not an accident he is a symptom. America is still in many ways an immature narcissistic country.  As much as we may not like to admit it, he does represent a large part of our national state of mind. Narcissists are unaware of their dissonances. When they look in the mirror, they see what they wish to see. On the other hand, they see their own welts, wrinkles and intolerant expression when they look at others.  Love, respect and dignity are not the same as xenophobia.  Narcissists can’t admit wrongdoing, assume winning is more important than truth, see self-examination as a weakness, see life in extreme terms of black verses white and assume that their own position is white.  Of course, because this stance is untenable they must be re-energized frequently. This extreme division does not mean that we must just choose whom we believe to be correct, it means we all must look carefully in the mirror, notice all the blemishes and send unconditional love to those parts we don’t like without judgement.  

 The swings of history are the human creation story in process.  It is inevitable that following one’s concept of truth becomes the best way to discover it’s limits and flaws—and yet, awaiting the ripening and eventual decay of a failed belief is a painful process for those who already see beyond it.  Humans, with our short lives and shorter memories seldom notice the repetitive nature of mass consciousness. I am asked, and have myself asked why if I regard reincarnation as a reality, since we do not remember the events of past lives (with some exceptions). Truthfully, I believe we seldom   remember past events of this life if they don’t fit within our preferred narrative.

 Fear and intolerance rule the present age resulting in the opposing forces in our world moving dangerously further apart. Crisis looms around each corner. However, I’m also aware that crisis is as old as life.  At a time not long ago by the vast cosmic clock, our country divided into opposing forces and went to war. The wounds are still oozing.  In fact, it seems that wars are never won, and the combatants suffer their scars as festering wounds until they recognize that there could never have been a definitive victory just as there is never a victory in domestic fights. There are wounds, fear, distrust and alienation but not victory.

Perhaps nature itself is mirroring the state of our world. Tsunamis, earthquakes, floods and volcanoes express the upheaval and disharmony in the world we live in. Yet, it is all part of the creation process. We tend to think of creation as something that happened in an incalculable past, and yet, the process of creation is beyond measure, and always mysterious to a finite mind. Our earth and Cosmos breathe in and out over infinite expanses of time.  Creation, destruction and re-creation are the only constants in  this universe and in universes beyond imagining. We can live the best that we know at any given time and yet it is certain that it will seem barbaric and narrow-minded a few generations in the future.

 Completely, independent nations, tribes and individuals no longer make up this world if they ever did.  Energetically, everything relates to everything else and the unchecked expansive drive to prosper at the expense of the environment and all other beings that depend on that environment is ultimately suicidal. Ironically, only a very constricted identity could countenance such myopia.  

 Each body has a short season before falling from this dimension the way a leaf drops from its tree when the growing season comes to an end and the lowering temperature of autumn portends the coming of winter.  It happens gradually. Autumn is a beautiful interlude. In this third act, the year presents intense colors and a snapshot of perfection just before life goes underground.  We don’t count the underground time as life and yet it is very important for a successful spring.

At my age, I think of winter and especially the following spring. That dormant time is very necessary for a successful renewal. Last winter was dangerously dry.  There were perhaps two good snowstorms throughout the entire season and even the grass needed extra help to reestablish itself.  A while back, I was concerned about the human energy dip in Taos. It has become more’ mainstream’, less of an organic community, financially stagnant and worst of all most of its people keep to themselves the way city people do. Now I realize that it is all about rhythm.  Taos is breathing in. The great snake beneath the earth wiggles this way and that on its hidden journey around the planet. Each in breath is a time to go inward and process what we have taken in. The seeds of the next spring are now germinating for the coming year.
  
"Gentleness generally implies that you no longer have a strong ego-inspired desire to dominate or control others, which allows you to move into a rhythm with the universe. You cooperate with it, much like a surfer who rides with the waves instead of trying to overpower them. Gentleness means accepting life and people as they are, rather than insisting that they be as you are. As you practice living this way, blame disappears and you enjoy a peaceful world.” – Wayne Dyer

Beauty All Around Us

As I feel the gentle crispness and stunning brilliance of sky and foliage in another late September Northern New Mexico afternoon, layers of memory compete for my attention.

In September Twenty-eight years ago, I attended an astrology workshop in Ojo Caliente. I often think of our teacher and wonder if she still lives there. It was one of my earliest visits to New Mexico.  Although there were only three of us in attendance, I will always remember it as a rich and true New Mexico experience of the best kind.  Our teacher was a Brit who had studied with the best and her husband was a massage therapist at Ojo Caliente mineral springs. How many places can one find ancient rural, verging on primitive blended with European esoteric tradition and sophistication?  That turned out to be one of my strongest draws to New Mexico.

 In those days, any excuse to visit New Mexico was a special treat. On my way back to Denver, I remember seeing a turnoff to the right onto a narrow gravel road. It had the word Taos on the sign and I impulsively turned off. I couldn’t help but give myself an extra treat and visit Taos before heading home.  I drove through the clear early autumn air and opened the windows so that the smell of sagebrush could waft in. I felt ecstatic.  I hadn’t visited this area on previous visits, but love new experiences with old friends. As I drove, the newly whitened tops of the Sangre de Christos grew larger and my heart beat faster in anticipation. Here and there, I passed old Hippy dugouts, and a few abandoned busses sitting far back from the road, now almost buried in the foliage.  Suddenly my heart stopped as large boulders lining a breathtaking drop appeared.  Was this the end of the road? Was there even room on this narrow road to turn around?  I stopped the car and then moved forward cautiously to confirm that my senses were not being tricked by the leftover work of a local Bruja.

I was shaken, and then thrilled to see a narrow dirt road winding far down to the base of the steep canyon wall. It had never occurred to me that I was driving toward the Rio Grande Gorge even though I had crossed over the spectacular bridge several miles to the north on previous visits. For one thing, it was completely invisible until one was directly on the rim. My vision adjusted and I saw a few tiny fishermen at the river far below. Best of all there was a wooden bridge to another narrow dirt road climbing like a snake up the opposite rim of the gorge.

Arriving in Taos, I felt proud to have been appropriately welcomed with a surprise test. I found a restaurant on the plaza and imagined what it would be like to live here.  Shortly after moving to Taos, there was a landslide that destroyed that same road that climbed the eastern side of the gorge. I was somewhat pleased by the veracity that it turned out to be as dangerous as it looked.  The county closed it off permanently and you can now hike over the great mound of collapsed earth that was once that road.  They decided repairing it would be too expensive and it would still be dangerous.

Rancho de Chimayo Double Selfy

Beauty and danger would seem unlikely partners, but this is the superficial view.  It seems that opposites do more than attract each other. They define each other.  When life and its environments run too smooth on the surface , it can be very challenging to perceive the opposites. Good seems boring and bad seems too much like good.  This is not a recommendation for bad. However, it’s unavoidable and better if we can tell the difference.  Nature, even if it’s human nature will make sure that these opposites are well defined.

There is a sweet bitterness about autumn, like dark chocolate. At its best it is full to the brim with nostalgia and the desire to take as much of its beauty as possible into ones sensual memory before the still intense colors fade away, as we know they will.  PQ and I celebrated our seven-year anniversary yesterday.  It was a perfect autumn day, as was the day we were married.  It doesn’t seem like seven years have gone by and yet so much has changed in our life and the lives of those who shared it with us. I can still feel the soft air and cool shade, hear our footsteps on the gravel path of our friend’s property and enjoy the company of so many precious friends.  

This anniversary had the same beautiful light and air. We had lunch in the outside patio at Ranchos de Chimayo. The local bees came to take back some of their honey just as they did at this restaurant on my first visit to New Mexico in 1989. Many other things have changed utterly. Even the restaurant itself was gutted with fire a few years ago but was restored in the same image with a few refinements. The third tier patio was one of those refinements. I like to think that reincarnation works the same way, if we hold that intention.

PQ and I are in the autumn phase of life now. The beauty is all around us though sometimes trivia and unawareness distract us. We left the restaurant and took the beautiful backroads to Santa Fe. It was again, an experience of past overlaid with present. It looked as it did on my first visit those many years ago. We visited the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe after lunch and wondered why it had taken us so many years to visit. The guard took a picture of us standing by an Alan Houser sculpture and then we went to the Santa Fe plaza, sat on a park bench in the rich afternoon gold and enjoyed an ice cream smoothy.  The beauty was the same even if a few things have changed including the name of the ice cream store, but that adds the present to an already layered experience.

I have white hair now and more wrinkles but I would not go backwards. Those old layers are still there. Some I remember with longing and some are tests that I hope I passed because I wouldn’t want to take them again. We saw many apple trees with ripe apples as we drove through country villages. I hope we too are ripening without rotten holes or worms. After all, as much as we are hard sold the idea that we should be a green apple forever, the point of being is the attainment of fully flavored highly nourishing ripeness.  Having let go of unnecessary goals, and having learned that this present stage of life is adorned with jewels I would never have anticipated when I was younger, I’m able to enjoy the landscape just beyond my front door as if visiting an exotic land--maybe I am and just noticed.

SEEING WITH THE HEART

The smell of damp earth is healing to the soul. I spent the morning turning over soil and pulling weeds. The previous two nights of soft rain broke a drought that almost killed the plants I’ve loved and nurtured for many years. A week ago, I decided to water the brown grass and give a soft soaking to bushes, and trees. At first, I felt guilty because water is sacred in this semi-arid land and everyone else in the neighborhood is living a water conserving life with dry earth and yellow grass. Then I remembered something I’d experienced in the past. When I water the plants, clouds appear. Perhaps it is because like attracts like, or perhaps the coming clouds speak to my instincts before consciousness receives the message. The important point, is that I couldn’t stand the drought anymore, acted on it and the rains came. Nature is a great teacher.

A week ago the green was brown.

“Energy flows where attention goes.” This is a popular saying but despite its simplicity, we seldom know how to apply it. Our attempts to be rational law abiding and factual according to common wisdom sometimes goes against natural laws. I’m still working on the application of this cosmic principle.

It isn’t unusual to feel depressed or sad in the month preceding one’s Birthday.  However, this year I had quite a dip. It seemed like my whole life had been a useless struggle to climb a hill covered in wet slippery clay and now I was still at the base tired and much older but without visible progress.  Then it occurred to me that I held hopes and expectations for many years that I would eventually achieve certain goals.  Then it occurred to me that the important question was; were these goals based on inner truth, or on assumptions about what success should resemble. 

 Still, that earlier feeling of powerlessness and insignificance required more than improving the garden.  I haven’t improved the world by holding consciousness raising workshops, running campaigns for saving nature, interviewing important people,  starting a charity, or being a top artist but the warm mud, little insects I turned up with my shovel and the intimacy of physical contact with Mother Earth literally brought me back to real life. 

I regret that it’s unlikely that I will ever travel to Europe or Asia, and even a trip out of state isn’t practical right now. However, I acknowledge that nothing in my current life seemed possible a decade ago.  Life isn’t predictable so no use responding emotionally to a possible outcome before its real. 

However, reality itself is a pretty tricky shapeshifter. The best and the worst of humanity seem to be in constant moral combat over reality. Yet opposition never wins the wars since each side sees itself as the right side. Lacking final resolution defeat and victory are temporary. It reminds me of a saying my grandmother often used: “He who is convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”  

While walking in and out of the house during the day, I caught bits of TV news, political interviews and opinions that PQ was watching. It reminded me that hate is another kind of attraction and its magnetic grip is currently holding the media hostage. They expect to put their world back the way it was by analyzing and criticizing. I don’t like the way things are unfolding in the government either, but I feel uneasy with this obsessive attraction. It reminds me of the way moths can’t resist flying into electric lights even if it kills them. Too often while fighting an enemy; we succumb to taking on their ways. If it goes unchecked, we become just a mirror of what we find horrific. 

Again, this is all very tricky. We can’t ignore moral issues in good faith. Today’s news focused on the inhumane practice of separating the children of refugees seeking asylum in the U.S. from their parents. This practice is horrible and it will likely create emotional scars for life.  It reveals that our nation has serious heart trouble, and this involves lack of empathy and a lack of courage. No amount of rational efficiency can compensate for a frozen heart.

The heart is the locus of intention. It mediates between the lower chakras based on instinct and the upper chakras connecting us to higher mind and offering a perspective beyond the individual. A sick or undeveloped heart doesn’t properly deliver life force throughout the body on the physical level and throughout the emotional body connecting us to the rest of the world. 

Although chakra is an ancient Sanskrit word, it is often mistaken for a New Age term. It describes the circular nature of the life force. When the circle is broken or has a weak link, dysfunction is a likely result. Obviously, this is true on many levels from the atomic to the cosmic.  If one chakra is weak or out of balance, the entire system is affected. 

“Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings
but contemplate their return.

If you don't realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.

When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.

Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you,
And when death comes, you are ready.” 

― Zhuangzi

THINK ABOUT IT!

Think about it! Time is measured by the daily spin of our planet, and its circular movement around the big boss, our Sun. It could speed up or slow down and we would never know it: Or, would we have the peculiar suspicion that the days were getting smaller.  I can't tell if this is really happening or if adding years to one's memory causes time seemingly to speed up. After all, when I was three years old it seemed like there was never been a time before there was me. We are experientially eternal. Of course, science knows that our entire Solar system is also circling around an even greater center, and so on, and so on. When I was a child, I used to fall over from dizziness thinking of such things. I guess my brain hadn't caught up with my mind, and my body certainly wasn't up to such big thoughts. It probably never will be. 

That brings up another question. Just what is the mind? Is it even in the same body all the time, and is this body I call mine, the same one I started with? I suppose the DNA is the same, but science is learning that DNA is more flexible than originally believed.  Science is just beginning to catch up with metaphysics in this regard. Has my mind entirely moved out of its previous home? I guess that would be the probable hold of karma (karma isn't always bad, just out of date).

 Okay, that leads to another speculation. Is the mind a mediator between the body and spirit or soul, perhaps a stepped down version of soul and stepped up version of body—kind of meeting in the middle, perhaps. Then there is the heart, which science is just beginning to recognize as another kind of thinking organism. Heart intelligence is surer of itself and less analytic. It detects vibes that the brain is too dumb to pick up, or has learned to filter out by cultural conditioning. It seems that the old adages such as, “the heart knows” are genuine.

Beingness seems to consist of the same repetitive patterns all the way from the atomic level to beyond imaginable universes. A universe is just another atom on an immeasurable level. The unfathomability principle, I’ll call it. Actually, it goes in both directions. Who can imagine the subatomic world?  We humans, have a minuscule range of perception. That is what makes, “seeing is believing” a dangerous assumption. Anything really big or really small is out of range. I’ll speculate that it is that intermediary mind trying to fit experience into the little brain that is regulating our interpretation of each situation. 

The brain is probably too big for safety, as it is. The brain we have may end up destroying our world. I believe the Atlantis story, and it doesn’t matter if Atlantis existed in the literal past or is a cautionary tale about the future. It is probably a reality that follows us through each stage, an archetype of misused technology. the intermediary Mind has a really big job.  The most important thing is balancing between worlds. We humans are sadly misinformed about the importance of brainpower.  By now, it should be obvious that some very evil and foolish people have high IQ’s. Bigger brains would only take us to disaster faster. Higher Mind power is the real voucher to the continuance of our existence. I should clarify that it is actually this Higher Mind that has a connection with Sophia, MadamWisdom. She isn’t that well known during our time, but will continue to hold the light for those who want to know.

There is a word out in the cyber world that the Trans-humanism movement is attempting to make an intelligent, immortal being in the human model that will never die. Here is Regina Meredith interviewing William Henry this topic: 

  

It is also the subject of the 2015 film, Ex Machina. I for one look forward to knocking conscious life up a notch rather than slogging along on the same level of life forever. I also question how Trans-humanism can fit within the cosmic design. At this time, the model is rather empty of higher potential. The brilliant young people who occupy the cyber world are so modern that they have no memory of humanitie's past disasters. Preserving the body and mind without soul and spirit seems as empty as modern art, but modern art is attempting to show us a mirror of where we are heading.

If the cosmos is one super-gigantic hologram, and I believe it is, then those chakras in our bodies that correspond to different intelligences must be a reflection of cosmic energy and design. This life in this world is a step along the way, perhaps a little thread in an intricate weaving that began with one tiny corner of the cosmic loom. We are all related.

This is the kind of stuff that goes through my mind on those nights that I can’t sleep. PQ suggests that I turn on the TV. I usually go to sleep watching TV but I like the soft darkness without distracting sounds, just the stars I see through the window. Cosmic!