Happy holidays

Hello dear readers

It has been quite a year, hasn't it. So many intense energies flying around, upheavals and changes in people's lives seem to have abounded this year, scandals being exposed in the wider world.

And mostly, human being questioning the status quo, and wondering exactly where our leaders are leading us, what with the Arab Spring, chem trails, and many more issues.

When I feel like things are just getting too much, I say a prayer to release the burden form myself. I am only one person, and constant worries are not good for one's health and the well being of your soul. So I say a little prayer to the heavenly being of my choice (in my case, this is Jesus, called Christ) and I find that it does help.

So hopefully you out there are not letting these bigger things - or even, the 'smaller' things - get too much on top of you at this time of year. After all, this sacred time has been set aside since ancient times for joy and celebration, for letting one's hair down and allowing the efforts of the past year to speak for themselves, and to bear fruit in their own time.

My intention for this time is to take it easy on myself; to relax my expectations of myself after a year of hard work (at my job, as a parent of a 2 year old, and as a tarot reader and blog writer). Let's all give ourselves the gift of valuing ourselves and our efforts these past twelve months, because let's face it - we all came to this earth to work hard, to share our gifts and ourselves to try to better the world and make it more like the divine template that exists for it in the spiritual world. It is a labour of love that each one of us is engaged in, whether we are fully conscious of it or not.

So well done, you. Thank you for all your efforts, your sweat, your tears, your love for each other and the planet. Rest assured - these efforts will bear fruit in good time.

Take it easy! And remember - spirit is always near, working right alongside.

Have a truly blessed holiday period (and hopefully you get to experience a holiday!)

Anthony

Signs of the Times

Have you ever taken time to reflect on how society and attitudes have changed in the last 30 years? Now that I am approaching 40, I can begin to look back with a certain perspective on many changes evident particularly in my own country, but I feel sure that similar changes have taken place in the US and the UK.

Attitudes have undergone a complete revolution since the early 1980s. One area in particular is in the realm of the nuclear threat. This has not of course completely gone away, but I remember growing up feeling like it could happen at any time. Russia, which was then much larger and known as the U.S.S.R., was seen as the great enemy of the West. And they, of course, saw us as the great enemy! For a period of over 50 years, from 1947 to 1989, the tension between these two great power blocs was at a dangerously heightened level. Students in American schools in the 50s and 60s were actually trained what to do in the event of a nuclear strike – basically to crouch under their desks and brace for impact (and a fat lot of good that would have done). Hence the 1985 song “Russians”, by Sting, in which he directly confronts the issue, questioning the insanity of the powers, with their fingers poised over their respective buttons, and asking – don’t the Russians love their children too?

Strange as it may seem to today’s Gen Y, this truly was the situation in the early 80s. I can remember asking myself the same question – if the Russians are people like us (and the media strove to convince us that indeed they were not!), wouldn’t they want a peaceful solution for the sake of their children?

This all culminated in the “false-alarm” incident of 1983, which was itself part of a larger pattern of events that convinced Russia that America was preparing for an actual strike. If it were not for one man working within the Russian nuclear installation who correctly surmised that their missile detection instruments were malfunctioning, the unthinkable may have actually occurred at that time. Of course now, we are much closer to Russia, with tourism a growing industry whereas once it would have been unthinkable to travel to the Soviet bloc country. Certain tensions, unfortunately, still exist, especially over the Middle East.

This is one example of how things have changed over the years. Another example, in Australia at least, is so-called multiculturalism. The divisions between Anglo-Australian culture and the various other immigrant cultures are much less evident these days, particularly in metropolitan areas. It used to be that the main sources of non-Anglo immigration to Australia were from Greece and Italy. Despite the historical kinship that exists between those nations, most “Aussies” were pretty hard on these immigrants. This despite the fact that most of the people were beautiful, peaceful and law-abiding citizens! But Aussies had come up doing the hard yards of establishing a nation out of the raw rock and desert soil of this nation, and as a result of this experience they had perhaps become hardened. Also, as a new nation forging a new path away from the mother continent of Europe, most “Aussies” were probably sceptical of anything European. Still, the treatment of those waves of immigrants was thoroughly undeserved. Today, we see immigrants from all over the world – from places as far afield as Croatia, the Sudan, Lebanon, Iran, etc. This has become normal. And miraculously, all these cultures are somehow (for the most part) living side by side in relative peace (knock on wood!).

Naturally there is of course a regrettable element of conservative, intolerant “Aussies” – but I for one never really hear much about them, and they certainly don’t get much (if any) press.

Yet another area of change is in the status of women. Now this is a curious area of social study – after the feminist wave of the 70s and 80s, many women would say things have not improved but in fact have perhaps backslid. (Is that a word?) Certainly there are a much higher proportion of women in positions of management, especially in the public service where I work. Women no longer have to prove they belong in the workforce as they once did. Yet there are still men who feel the need to over-control their women – and regrettably, I have discovered that this tendency still obtains within me.

This has been a rather rambling blog so I hope you will bear with me, but lately I have heard stories of women who have left their partners because they insist on trying to control. I myself had a meltdown recently when I felt my partner was becoming too independent (gasp!) and some inner, wounded part of me – inaccessible to my powers of reason! – was convinced I was being left. It wasn’t as if she was even doing anything that threatening – it was more that I could just sense a pattern emerging and this was reinforced by things she had been saying lately.

Now in my right mind this would not have been a problem. But I had let myself and my self-care slide in recent times, and as a result the inner wounded-self was festering. The abandonment complex I had carried since before conscious memory was really acting up – and acting out. Fortunately we have been able to smooth things over together but I am still disturbed by what happened.

Without trying to sound too righteous about it, I really feel that the whole world’s problems stem from men trying to control. I am sure many women reading this would agree. All the things I have mentioned – the nuclear threat, intolerance of other peoples – are not perpetrated by women, but by angry men. As the Goddess returns, balance is restored among the sexes and women rise to new levels of empowerment and independence, men are possibly feeling a little hurt and confused. We aren’t sure what our place is anymore – having been in control for so long, having been the ruling paradigm for several thousand years, and having soothed our savage beasts by keeping women at our beck and call, we are possibly entering this new age feeling a little shaken and shaky.

For myself, the answer is to take time out for me. Many men have possibly already cottoned on to this solution! But for me certainly, taking time out for myself at the end of each day, to pause, to reflect, and just to let my inner voice be heard, is one small step to allowing myself to self-nurture. Burning out my brain with distraction after distraction is not the way to go. And after all, I do have a contemplative and spiritual side, I am interested in positive change for the world. I guess it’s a matter of acting in accord with what I want to see in the world!

Or as the Mahatma once said, Be the change you want to see in the world. But to the blokes out there – take heart, gentlemen. We all want a safer, more peaceful world to live in, and that is what is trying to come to birth. The old ways are no longer working for us, guys. Time to relax and let the changes in!

Be well

Anthony

A little zen moment...

Have you read those stories about Zen students who suddenly have insight into the true nature of things? Well, I can't say I've had one of those earthshaking moments just yet, but I do want to share a nice little moment I had last night after a spell of rain.

I was on the balcony, just looking out and not thinking much of anything, and I caught sight of the droplets of rain hanging from the railing. The sky was gray and featureless, but at that moment, the droplets seemed to reflect a luminosity of the sky around them! I suddenly realised that a single raindrop has the ability to reflect ALL the light from all the surroundings into itself.

In other words, a single raindrop can reflect the whole world.

I felt a voice say to me, in the same way, a single person can reflect the entire world within themselves - and every person deserves love and respect accordingly.

And when you think about it - each of us are 80% water...!

And there's that word again...love. As I mentioned in a previous post, it continues to be emphasised to me that this year, 2012, is a year to keep learning about love.

I don't often have these moments but this was really moving for me, very profound. I feel it was just the seed of deeper insights, which I hope to gain down the track.

Love and light
A

Galactic consciousness

There are a lot of people out there who claim to be channels of various types of galactic beings, such as Dolores Cannon and many others. Now I am not claiming that ability, at least not that this time! But a number of blog posts and websites lately have stimulated me into thinking about what it is that I feel to be true about galactic consciousness.

A common error that I notice people make when thinking about what life might be “out there” is they think that life will take a similar, material form to ours – that they will be creatures of flesh and blood like us. Thank you, Hollywood! Well, for me, nothing could be further from the truth.

This vibration that we currently reside in, what we call our ordinary earth-life existence, is the “lowest” realm of our entire galaxy! It is the densest form of incarnation you can find, anywhere in the multi-layered dimensions of the Milky Way. If the Earth (at least in the vibration that most of us are currently living within) was a piece of real estate in the Galactic Neighbourhood, it would be known as the crummiest and most dangerous part of the city! You wouldn’t want to go there at night, because it’s often a little scary and not terribly welcoming!! However I want to stress that this used to be more true at certain times of history than it is now – during the medieval times was probably when the Earth level was at its most brutal. I do feel things are improving considerably now as the hearts and minds of people improve, and as we get closer to the ecstatic galactic alignment of December 2012. But still, there’s no denying that Earth is something of a “backwater” – we sit right out on the far point of one of the spiral arms of the Galaxy, very far from the bright centre, the “hub” where all the brightest souls reside and where all the real “action” is!

And this gets to the point of my post: to me, “soul”, “spirit” and “consciousness” are much better terms for the life “out there” than “alien”. Sure, there may be some spirit entities who may take on an “alien” form, or resemble what we know as gray aliens. This may be because they are from a certain star system, where the inhabitants have assumed that form as part of their long process of development.

I think that it’s an attitude of fearfulness that leads people to believe in the possibility of aliens landing, or some such. To me, angels, aliens, gods and goddesses, are all part of the marvellous diversity of Life that exists on what we often refer to as the “other side”.

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting” – those are the words of my favourite idealist poet, William Wordsworth. This life, that is the process of getting incarnated into this realm, is a very difficult one indeed, and the birth process most often leaves a kind of trauma on the incoming soul that often leads to amnesia or forgetting of the previous, blissful realm of existence – what the Hindu tradition refers to as devachan. We forget that we have an infinite, blissful inheritance just waiting for us on our return to our true “home”, and that this stay on earth is but a temporary one where we practice at being loving, and at being creative. We also forget that we have a “support team” of beautiful souls right along side (sometimes more in the background) at all times, who look on us with eyes of love and who are supporting us at every turn. Then when we do make the return journey home, our support team are right there ready to welcome us and ease the transition back, which is also often confusing and scary. But we do have help!

So in summary I think we have nothing to fear from any consciousness “out there”. The dominant part of the universe is love – the love which brought the universe of manifestation into being in the first place. We are here to practice being love; not to be constantly looking for it outside ourselves, but to feel it within, to love ourselves and the divine spark that God has given us as an inheritance. It is only on earth where love gets (temporarily) forgotten as part of the earth-amnesia. But love IS the only reality!

Blessed be!

A

The ebb and flow of this year so far...

Here we are, almost half way through 2012. The year that's supposed to be "the big one", in terms of making that final decision that will take each of us into the New Age - the decision as to what road we want to take in life and in afterlife.

I must admit I had actually forgotten about this in the midst of the nitty-gritty of living daily life - some old unhealthy habits even rearing their ugly heads, but some progress being made still. It's as if I'm riding one wave that's pulling me one way...then there's this undertow that's gently but consistently pulling me another way.

The planet Neptune has finally entered into the tropical zodiac sign of Pisces, and water is the keyword. Ebb and flow, moving in rhythm, being led by impressions, filling one's spiritual and emotional needs...all these are important this year and for the next 13 years or so.

Reflecting on how things "feel" now, as opposed to  last year and before, things do feel a lot more upbeat and positive now. The new energies of 2012 have had time to kind of settle in to a more stable configuration, there's not as much of that feeling of jagged harshness of last year when the energies were working at cross-purposes. Replacing that is this feeling I was just describing, of ebb and flow, some confusion, some illusion, but overall there's a good feeling under the surface...

In fact I've been having what I call little ecstasy moments. In tune with Neptune in Pisces, the feeling will start in my feet, completely out of the blue and unexpected, and I suddenly feel amazing, right in the midst of my ordinary experience. Not perhaps in 100% of my being, but in a big enough proportion of myself to feel like whoa, what was that amazing feeling! It will usually be just a brief burst but it certainly leaves a strong impression on my afterwards.

A little moment of bliss, as a result of the new incoming energies of the 2012 galactic alignment, perhaps? (And which has the "powers that be" so worried!)

And so our journey through this important year continues. I wonder what December will have in store for us...

Love and 2012

I was inspired to post after quite a while after reading Celtic Spirit's latest post; she hasn't posted for a while also.

This is 2012. My lady partner and I have been discussing how much we have been through since we first met in 1998. There have been a lot of tears, a lot of sorrow and suffering, but so many laughs, so many fun times, nice moods of different phases, difficulties, and trials.

Now finally - finally - we are feeling the slow, steady approach of hope. In this year of reaping of efforts, we finally feel that after much painful self-examination, we can start to truly hope again after so much struggle.

To me that's what sums up 2012 - it is the time of harvest. I hear of so many people  - and myself included - who have been living lifestyles that do not support health, growth and well-being. LIfe and our very bodies have been issuing us a final ultimatum: dispense with the habits of destruction, or be destroyed. What you sow, you reap. Alcohol, drugs, self-indulgence, bad foods, too much tech, electromagentic poisoning...all these things have had "time" called on them.

Time itself, as we have known it, is ending. The old time is ending. We sense that, my lady and I...we sense that the old "flavour" of the old world, the one that involved all that struggle, pain, feeling unworthy, unloved, that the world was not an understanding place...all of that is due to cease. We sense that we will finally find our place in the world.

Love....another blog I follow called The Cosmic Path stated earlier this year that the keynote of 2012 is nothing other than LOVE. And that's what I feel coming in to my consciousness - love, love, love, love...I am a new father and love certainly is making itself felt through my beautiful son. And, I might add, another little female soul that wants to come through who is also making her presence most definitively felt in our psychic lives!!

It's all about love, people. If I could have any wish granted right now, it's that all those who are reading this, those who are still burdened by a hardness in their hearts that is lingering due to past hurts, who still feel unworthy of love (such a lie!!!), can now release the tears, the angst, the sorrow, and allow the love to flow back into their innermost being. I pray this takes place for you, right now.

Let it all go! Let the grudges, the fears, the anxieties...let them go. Remember the truth, the one truth that pervades all the universe...that love is real, and it is all there is.

Why are you here on this earth? Love. Why do you keep going, long after it has ceased to make any rational sense? Love. Why does the sun shine? Love. Why am I writing this blog and why are you reading it?

Love! We are spirits that come here for love's sake, for God's sake, that we all might grow close to Him in wisdom and in love. Some esoteric traditions state the the nature of our Solar Deity is  Love-Wisdom, and that we as his children partake in this need for both Love and of Wisdom.

So let your Wisdom fuel your inner knowing, that Love is all you need! Let your Wisdom be informed by Love, and your Love informed by Wisdom. Let's walk into heaven this year, and find a new world where we are truly purged of the old, and where we all can bask in the new.

Galactic Consciousness

As someone who was raised Roman Catholic, I have in the last decade seen the proliferation of material relating to the Templars, the Gnostics, the theory that Jesus was married and had children, bloodline conspiracies, Illuminati conspiracy theories and so forth.

I have to say that to me all of these things smack of the great illusion – the program to which the whole world has been blindly running these past two millennia. Greed, violence, deception, political intrigue, war, religious arguments. A person could spend (and waste) their whole life in pursuit of answers to these illusions.

I believe the program that governs all these things is due to end and end soon. I’m tired of them – the world is tired of them. The only thing I know in my heart of hearts and soul of souls that truly matters, is what I (and others) call galactic consciousness.

In my memories of what life is like on the other side, God is a presence that underlies and permeates all of reality. It’s not like on Earth where there is this terrible feeling of separation. We chose that experience in order to learn to exercise our free will, and to grow in strength of personality, “away” from our cosmic parent. No, in the heaven worlds there is a constant awareness of the beneficent presence of God. As a result everyone is happy – everyone sees the importance of love for one another, it’s automatic, and the only real concern is for those incarnated souls undergoing learning on the different planets of the galactic system.

Most especially, however, the concern is for souls living on Planet Earth. Earth is known as the most dense, the most physical, of all the planets upon which a soul may live an incarnated life. As a result the earth is the most difficult of all the planets to be on. As I said the feeling of separation from God is the keenest here. And what is religion, if not the cry of so many lonely infants separated from the cosmic Love of God the parent? The word galaxy means Way of Milk in Greek – hence The Milky Way, the ever-flowing sustenance of God’s love that sustains all souls in heaven.

We come here, every one of us, on assignment. God has a plan for Earth and each one of us chooses to participate in this great design. Every so often, a soul will receive the “call”; as if deep within, the cosmic mother calls out to one of her own, summoning that soul to go forth and minister to her children on earth. The soul can choose a different assignment; but speaking for myself, when I received the call the thing that impelled me the most was knowing that in order to feel truly worthy of God’s love, I owed it to the suffering souls on earth, who are working so hard in their lives, to at least come to earth and contribute in whatever way God needed.

I remember that I felt greatly intimidated at coming to Earth again, and frankly if left to my own devices I probably would never have come - mostly for the reasons I have outlined above! Earth is difficult, but of course the rewards of personal satisfaction in staying the course and maybe even making a small difference are immeasurable to a developing soul.

This leads me to another point, which is the reason souls come here. I believe that Earth represents the most dense, the most stubborn, and the most hard-to-transform energy in the consciousness of the All, of God. We can see this by how many messengers of God are persecuted through history, and even those people who try to battle corruption in more limited spheres of life seem automatically to attract negative attention. This earth does not appreciate being made to change. And as humans we all share in that lot – we are all stubborn and slow to embrace change. In a sense the earth represents that part of each of us that is most in need of working on, to transform it into light (and enlightenment).

Our main job is firstly to awaken – to wake up to our true, cosmic origins. Not in some strange alien sense – this is a materialistic interpretation of a spiritual truth, the truth that we are all soul and we come originally from God and from heaven. The more we can awaken in this life, the more chance we have of remembering our true purpose on this Earth and maybe start to live it more consciously.

Esoteric traditions maintain that we all need to work on the Four Elements in ourselves – the Fire of Will, vision and enterprise, the Air of Right Thinking and Logic, the Water of Right Feeling and Compassion, and the Earth of common sense, practicality and Right Judgement. By working on these elements within our beings, it is predicted that we can transform every material atom of our bodies and of the universe gradually into Light. (This is the meaning of the Tarot card The Universe (or the World), where the four living creatures – the four primal elements – gain wings after the many trials experienced by the Fool.)

This year of 2011 is the time to activate our memories – to awaken to galactic consciousness, the moral of which is simply, Love one another as I have loved you. This is the only antidote to greed, to conflict, to war, to disharmony. The harmony of galactic brotherhood must – and will – prevail.

Consciousness

I should clarify what I mean by "spirit", as mentioned in my last post.

When I say spirit I mean Consciousness - the faculty of awareness, the inner Being who Knows. As an idealist I believe that Consciousness comes first, and it is one's state of Consciousness - feelings, thoughts, beliefs, attitudes - that determines what kind of life one lives.

Modern scientists are trying to tell us that our consciousness is merely secondary - that it is an epiphenomenon of matter, just an illusion of biochemistry. I feel very sorry for people who put forward this as a philosophy of life; they must be very sad and lonely people. One who believes that matter is primary over consciousness lives a very lonely life indeed - and in fact this is what we see in today's western society, where materialism as a mindset appears to rule and as a result we have social isolation, depression, alienation.

But one who believes that Consciousness comes first is never lonely! Why? Because that person knows they are never alone. Everything is made of consciousness ~ the whole universe is consciousness. This is why people of past generations believed in the beings who tend to the trees and flowers, who live in the streams and rivers. That is why the ancients believed in mighty Jupiter and tricky Mercury. That is why Christians today believe in Christ as Redeemer, because everything is consciousness. Because consciousness rules matter, and matter can be saved through consciousness.

We find ourselves confronted with a marvellous challenge-opportunity at this time. Our consciousness has the chance to grow and expand to a new level as the galactic Consciousness makes contact with the Earth. I believe that 2012 will see an influx of uplifting spiritual energy which will boost those who are ready for it into a new existence. 2011 is the year of final choice, where those on the side of dark firm into their positions, and those on the side of Light do likewise. Those who choose Light are going to experience the certainty and comfort that comes from being re-attuned to Galatic Consciousness, which is God and which is Us.

We are the answer - what was the question?