Pod­cast

Today is the sec­ond of 4 Mer­cury ret­ro­grades in 2016. This ret­ro­grade runs from April 28^th until May 22^nd, with the entire ret­ro­grade tak­ing place in the sign of Tau­rus. My com­men­tary in the pod­cast con­cerns the oppor­tu­ni­ties (and, of course, the chal­lenges) pre­sent­ed by this ret­ro­grade, whose prin­ci­ple empha­sis will revolve around the Tau­rus expe­ri­ence, the ques­tion of Value.

Mer­cury Ret­ro­grade Podcast

You are a Pil­grim of Spir­it; You are a Hier­ar­chy of Energy-Forms,
Mov­ing through Worlds, Bod­ies and Lives, for you abide in each of the 7 sacred realms.
You are a Micro­cosm of the Macro­cosm, learn­ing to know yourself.
You are a Phys­i­cal being, and Ether­ic, and Astral too.
These inte­gral vehi­cles of Ener­gy-Forms con­tin­ue into your Low­er Mind,
Then through the High­er Men­tal guid­ed by your Intuitional.
Final­ly, all of these are, as is all of Cre­ation, made into one.
For you are guid­ed by, inspired by and loved by
Your spark of the Divine, Your Mon­ad, your High­er Self, your one of the One.

Yes, you are a Mon­ad of Life-Con­scious­ness-Spir­it trav­el­ling through Space-Time.
Your ori­gins are as far beyond your remembering,
As your future is more glo­ri­ous than you may imagine.
You began as an unself-con­scious spark of the Divine, and
You will become in time a ful­ly con­scious Co-Cre­ator of Creation.

You will lift your­self and one anoth­er up, by learning,
For it is by choice, through tri­al and error, that you grow.
Being guid­ed by the one Immutable Law, of cause and effect, by Karma,
You will to learn to choose what is good and true, and to let go of the rest.
You will learn to know your­self, and so equal­ly know this Uni­verse too.
You will jour­ney with count­less oth­er life-forms,
Who just like you are on this sacred path of Self-Becoming,
Formed, Guid­ed and Inspired by the Self-Lumi­nous Hier­ar­chy of Love.

Your jour­ney is pre­cious, and so you will nev­er walk alone.
For many have come this way before you…and they wait.
They range from beings beyond imag­in­ing, whose nature is far removed
From these human tri­als and tribulations.
To those who work, in forms and beyond forms,
Tire­less­ly striving/serving to heal by love.
They wait for you, watch over you, care for you.
Though you must do “the work”, of lift­ing your veil of doubt and fear
And so come by your own self-becom­ing to the ever­last­ing Truth,
They do what they can to help, lift­ing spir­its, send­ing com­fort and hope.
And when need­ed, an emis­sary will come to remind one and all,
To show “the way”, to lead you back to the sacred path of a
Freer Mind, Uncon­di­tion­al Love and a Cen­tered Will.

Among all the count­less beings who have come this way before, today we cel­e­brate and hon­or one of our “own”. For today is the Day of the Bud­dha, today we bow our heads and hon­or the first of our Kind. For just as you must some­day too, the Bud­dha was the first, he is the “Self-Awak­ened One”. He threw off the shack­les of uncon­scious­ness to become a com­plete human…what is known in the Ancient Wis­dom as a Jivanmukta…a freed Monad.

He is no longer bound by the Law of Kar­ma, he has made his final choice…
And he chose to wait…he chose to wait for all of you. For this is the Way, this is the Truth…this is Love.
He stands now, at the por­tal of self-transcendence,
He will wait for each of you to make your way.
For this is the Great Sac­ri­fice, this is Sacred Love.
He waits for you to be ful­ly human,
He waits for you to be the Self-Awak­ened too.

We cel­e­brate the Bud­dha today because it is said the he was born at the Full Moon of Tau­rus, achieved enlight­en­ment at anoth­er Full Moon of Tau­rus, and final­ly left his phys­i­cal form at anoth­er. His expe­ri­ence and sto­ry illus­trates one of the fun­da­men­tal truths you must mas­ter, you are an Immor­tal mov­ing through Worlds, Forms and Lives that are mor­tal and impermanent.

Your prin­ci­ple pain aris­es from “attach­ment”, from the desire to con­tin­ue and hold to this or that “thing”, whether it be an object, an expe­ri­ence, a loved one, or even your very own life…you suf­fer because you have forgotten…You are an Immor­tal Spir­it mov­ing through these forms of man­i­fes­ta­tion, but none of these can hold you for­ev­er, noth­ing can or will last for­ev­er in these mor­tal realms. You are Spir­it, you are here to grow, and there is no “con­tain­er” that can ever be enough, there is noth­ing that can hold for­ev­er the Light-Truth-Love that abides with­in you.

What you must do, what you have always done, is to sim­ply walk on. You are here to be what you are, Life-Con­scious­ness-Spir­it thrilling through count­less forms of self-becom­ing, seek­ing, stretch­ing, and grow­ing for­ev­er and ever.

You should cel­e­brate each encounter with your world and with one anoth­er. Mar­vel at the Sun setting…but it will end. And so, you will turn and watch as your Star ris­es again at the dawn. When in the phys­i­cal, live in Beau­ty by mov­ing through Life by Love. Know that whether you are with some­one for a won­der­ful after­noon, or for many, many years of rich­ly lived lives…it too will end. And it will hurt, as it must, but you will come to know that this pain is the mir­rored reflec­tion of the joy you shared, and will con­tin­ue to share again and again too.

Cel­e­brate your Spir­it in Motion, mov­ing from form to form, grow­ing and becom­ing as you move ever clos­er to the moment of true free­dom and spir­i­tu­al grace. Freed from doubt, free of fear, you under­stand your destiny.

Today/tonight cel­e­bra­tions will held around the world, to hon­or one who came before us, but one who is just like you and me…The teach­ers do not come to start a reli­gion, that is for those who come after. The teach­ers do not come and say “pray to me”. Every true Teacher comes in order to quite pro­found­ly yet sim­ply say: “Do as I have done, fol­low the path that is with­in you, lis­ten to the whis­pers of your own High­er Self who is singing the same songs I have sung to you. Fol­low this path and you will be wel­comed home too.”

To all who seek, an answer will come.

To all who serve, a door will open.

Join with those who seek by serv­ing, in cel­e­bra­tion of the truth of your des­tiny and the exam­ple of the one who came before, and who waits until all have made their way home too. Hold the Great Invo­ca­tion in your Mind, Heart and Will as you repeat the promise made of a bet­ter world to be:

THE GREAT INVOCATION

From the point of light with­in the Mind of God

Let Light stream forth into our minds

Let LIGHT descend on Earth.

From the point of love with­in the Heart of God

Let Love stream forth into our hearts

May LOVE increase on Earth.

From the cen­ter where the Will of God is known

Let pur­pose guide our wills

The PURPOSE which the mas­ters know and serve.

From the cen­ter which we call Humanity

Let the Plan of Love and Light work out

And may it seal the door

where evil dwells.

Let Light and Love and Pow­er restore the Plan on Earth.

Your year­ly jour­ney with and through the Cir­cle of the Liv­ing Ones, what is com­mon­ly known as the Zodi­ac, departs from Aries, the First Realm of Fire. It is time for you and your world to move into this sec­ond act of the Sacred Twelve, it is time to abide in the First Realm of Earth, it is time to come home to Taurus.

This is the heart­beat of Spir­it, “Fire-Earth-Air-Water”, and after each sojourn in the space-time of Fire, (which is the realm of Visions, Ideals, Enthu­si­asms and Dreams), it is nec­es­sary to bring these plans of poten­tial “down to Earth”, it is time to see if these “Gifts of the Spir­it” can become Real and Substantial.

What you will face now is this chal­lenge: Will you be able to take the Inspi­ra­tion you found as you moved through the realm of Aries and make it come “to be”. For in Fire your soul/spirit is filled by this Intu­ition­al Truth: that you are a Divine Spark, and in essence, as a Spir­i­tu­al Mon­ad, you are “one of the ones of the One”, and so your sacred heart cen­ter is tru­ly the Foun­tain-Source of the “Infini­ties of Poten­tial­i­ty”. You are des­tined to become a ful­ly self-con­scious, Dream­ing-Mak­er Co-Cre­ator of Creation.

But the ques­tion is, can you take your Idea/Ideal and fash­ion “some-thing”, can you form your­self and your world into mean­ing­ful real­iza­tions and pur­pose­ful­ness today? The ques­tion is, can you bring your Ide­al into Being, can you breath upon the “Waters of What-Might-Be” and be a “Mak­er of Value”?

The First ques­tion of Aries is: Who are you?

The Sec­ond ques­tion of Tau­rus is: What are you?

You are brought by Aries to real­ize that you are a unique instance of the one Divine Spir­it. You are a spark of the Divine, a mon­ad trav­el­ling through Worlds, Forms and Lives as you unfold your­self by Imma­nence, by the sacred path of “Self-Becom­ing”. You grad­u­al­ly ascend from unself-con­scious spark of the Divine, and through many, many, many lives you will even­tu­al­ly become a self-ful­filled human: endowed with Cos­mic Con­scious­ness, Uncon­di­tion­al Love and a Cen­tered Spir­i­tu­al Will.

In Earth, and here by Tau­rus, you will make many “things”. You will pour your­self into count­less forms, objects and activ­i­ties, into phys­i­cal-emo­tion­al-social-cul­tur­al-spir­i­tu­al vehi­cles of Self-Realization…but the most impor­tant “thing” you will ever fashion…well that is you.

The real ques­tion will for­ev­er be, (as you will at many times doubt or feel your­self to be “unwor­thy”): What is the val­ue of you?

And the real or ulti­mate answer or truth will for­ev­er and ever be: Your val­ue is beyond measure…for you are priceless.

Why? Because beyond any forms of self-real­iza­tion, beyond all the phys­i­cal cre­ations you have fash­ioned, and into which you poured some mea­sure of the val­ue that is you, (and by this you cre­at­ed and bestowed your val­ue into “some-thing”)….beyond and behind all these things you make as a cre­ator, there abides in you this truth. You are one with the One Spir­it, a Spark of the Divine, which is the true source and mak­er of all val­ue, the foun­tain-source for all these worlds. Above all and any oth­er val­ue of you there will always be the Ulti­mate source of Beau­ty, Val­ue and Cre­ation… behind it all there is quite won­der­ful­ly and sim­ply Love.

You are one of the ones of the One…and your truth worth and val­ue is beyond all reck­on­ing. You have not even as yet begun to com­pre­hend how far you have come nor how far you will yet trav­el as you ful­fill your des­tiny to be the Dream­ing-Mak­ing-Cre­ator. You will pass through many Worlds, Forms and Lives…but these are not who or what you are.

You came from the stars…

You are des­tined to become a star…and then to go beyond.

And behind it all there is but one Force, one Truth, one Value…

Love.

Podcast—2016, Part Four

Jupiter Square Saturn

Today we con­sid­er anoth­er of the sig­na­ture align­ments for 2016, Jupiter Square Saturn.

The syn­od­i­cal cycle (from one con­junc­tion to the next con­junc­tion) of Jupiter and Sat­urn is 20 years long. Their rela­tion­ship artic­u­lates the vary­ing inte­gra­tions of our under­stand­ings, (Philoso­phies, Sci­ences, Reli­gions) with our sub­stan­tial real­iza­tions of our Ideas into the “real” or phys­i­cal world, (Insti­tu­tions, Busi­ness­es, Gov­ern­ments, and quite lit­er­al­ly our “way of life”).

When Jupiter and Sat­urn are form­ing align­ments that are more har­mo­nious, what is Real and how we Under­stand it are in greater agree­ment. And when they are in a peri­od char­ac­ter­ized with more ten­sion between them either our mean­ings or our real­i­ty (or both) do not add up or make sense/or func­tion as they should. It is at such times that we either have to refine our under­stand­ing and/or make adap­tive changes to our struc­tures so that we can bet­ter meet our needs and live a life of beau­ty, har­mo­ny and peace.

Today’s pod­cast con­cerns the Jupiter/Saturn align­ment from August 2015 through May 2016, which is formed by their wan­ing square, and this is their last major aspect before they meet in a his­toric con­junc­tion dur­ing 2020. This align­ment we are fac­ing now is a pre­cur­sor and prepa­ra­tion for that major shift in 2020. What might that shift entail?

We can also under­stand the Jupiter/Saturn cycle as being orga­nized into a larg­er series of repeat­ed con­junc­tions that occur in the same ele­ment (Fire, Earth, Air and Water) over a peri­od of about 180 to 200 years. Most recent­ly we have been expe­ri­enc­ing their con­junc­tions in Earth since 1842, but in 2020 they will begin a new series in the ele­ment of Air (until 2219). These series of con­junc­tions in a par­tic­u­lar ele­ment con­tribute to defin­ing a peri­od Spir­i­tu­al­ly (and Cul­tur­al­ly, Eco­nom­i­cal­ly and Polit­i­cal­ly). For exam­ple, the pre­vi­ous Water peri­od (1425–1663) could be called an “Age of Faith”, and the fol­low­ing Fire peri­od (1663–1842) an “Age of Explo­rations”, and our Earth peri­od (1842–2020) an “Age of Mate­ri­al­iza­tion”. What will arrive in 2020 is an Age of Air, or what we might call an “Age of Ide­al­iza­tion” or an “Age of Etherealization”.

Here is a list of the pre­vi­ous Great Muta­tions of Jupiter and Sat­urn, which can help us to under­stand what we are being formed by with regards to the pre­vail­ing  greater con­text of mean­ing in each his­tor­i­cal period:
Water 1425–1663 (Age of Faith), pri­or 690–868, 165BC-74AD, 960BC-781BC

Fire    1663–1842 (Age of Explo­ration), pri­or 868‑1047, 74AD-253, 781BC-582BC

Earth 1842–2020 (Age of Man­i­fes­ta­tion), pri­or 1047–1226, 253–452, 582BC-384BC

Air     2020–2219 (Age of Ide­al­iza­tion), pri­or 1226–1425, 452–690, 384BC-165BC

 

So, this year’s wan­ing square is the final shift/release before a new 200 year cycle com­mences. We are not only fac­ing a turn­ing point regard­ing what we have made of our Beliefs/Realities since 2000, but in some fash­ion we are also fac­ing the final karmic adjust­ment of what has been our the­mat­ic par­a­digm since 1842!

This final and Wan­ing Square of Jupiter to Sat­urn is informed by their respec­tive sign posi­tions, Vir­go for Jupiter and Sagit­tar­ius for Sat­urn, or between the realms of Earth and Fire. The wan­ing square requires that each one of us indi­vid­u­al­ly, and also col­lec­tive­ly, take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to “let go” or “rise above” both the thought-forms (or ideas) and formed-thoughts (or real­i­ties) in order to grow. Giv­en what was revealed at their last oppo­si­tion in 2010-11 ( with ref­er­ence back to the ori­gin point of 2000 and the wax­ing square of choic­es 2005-06), we now are asked to rise above our more lim­it­ed under­stand­ing of not only our time, but what has been cen­tral or core mean­ings and lessons we have come through since 1842.

For myself, I believe that one of our major lessons (or awak­en­ings) that has been re-dis­cov­ered dur­ing this peri­od, (and has espe­cial­ly been brought to a fin­er point by our Envi­ron­men­tal, Eco­nom­ic, Polit­i­cal and Cul­tur­al crises) is that we have re-dis­cov­ered the truth with regards to our mate­r­i­al exis­tence: “More does not equal More”.

We most cer­tain­ly have cre­at­ed vast wealth (for a few), and more for many oth­ers since the 1840’s. But we have done so through “Cre­ative Destruc­tion”, as our rela­tion­ship to our home plan­et became one of “tak­ing” rather than “tak­ing care”. Our time-frames became imme­di­ate and urgent, and we for­got that the con­se­quences of our actions would be expe­ri­enced by those who came long after us…and they will cer­tain­ly cast a shad­owed view back upon us as they won­der, “what were they think­ing, why did they not care?”

Quan­ti­ty does not equal Qual­i­ty, and we are expe­ri­enc­ing the need to reestab­lish our lives in the Way of Beau­ty, to find our joy by liv­ing in a greater har­mo­ny and bal­ance with one anoth­er and with our plan­et. Though there was a great expan­sion of mate­r­i­al well-being for the past 200 years, the true costs were not fac­tored into the “Ledger Book of Life”. As much as there was great cre­ation of phys­i­cal arti­facts, there was arguably equal or greater destruc­tion too of the phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, men­tal and spir­i­tu­al realms on Earth as well.

For the future, for the Age of Air that begins in 2020, what might we find? There will be the enjoy­ment of expe­ri­enc­ing life more sim­ply, of hav­ing less “things” to come between one anoth­er. We will need to adopt a sim­pler, yet more spir­i­tu­al lifestyle and re-inte­grate our lives with the life of Moth­er Earth. We will get back to “Liv­ing in the Light”, for our des­tiny is to be con­scious co-cre­ators on this plan­et. Now that we under­stand more tru­ly the com­plex web of Life-Con­scious­ness-Spir­it that is life on Earth, we must pro­tect and sup­port these very lives we depend upon for our very own survival.

We are here to be the Dreamer-Makers…

Let us fol­low the Ancient Wisdom…

Walk in Beau­ty, Live in Beauty…

Love one another.

Here is Part Four of the 2016 Pod­cast — Jupiter Square Saturn