"When we open our eyes to what is happening, even when it breaks our hearts, we discover our true size; for our heart, when it breaks open, can hold the whole universe.
We discover how speaking the truth of our anguish for the world brings down the walls between us, drawing us into deep solidarity. That solidarity, with our neighbors and all that lives, is all the more real for the uncertainty we face.
When we stop distracting ourselves by trying to figure the chances of success or failure, our minds and hearts are liberated into the present moment. This moment then becomes alive, charged with possibilities, as we realize how lucky we are to be alive now, to take part in this planetary adventure."
Joanna Macy wrote this article as part of Stop Global Warming Cold, the Spring 2008 issue of YES! Magazine. Joanna is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory and deep ecology, whose latest book is World as Lover, World as Self. She lives in Berkeley, CA. www.joannamacy.net
Monday, June 14, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
SYSTEMS FAILURE in the GULF
This has been edited from an article written by Margaret Wheatley for YES! Magazine:
We must deepen our understanding of what's happening in the Gulf and what it means for our future. And what it means for us right now. "My sadness over our American Sea is becoming unspeakable. Few, and not I, can imagine the damage that will be done for generations to come.”
An oil company executive has said, 'I've been in the deep water drilling business for years and none of us can figure out how this happened. Nothing that should have stopped it worked. And the damage is limitless. 25,000 barrels a day is the more realistic number. It will take months to stop it much less clean it up. Nobody knows how to do this.'
This is a major SYSTEMS FAIL. The Gulf Coast has always been sacrificed for oil and industry. By everyone. SYSTEMS FAIL. Game over.
What do we do with our anger, our outrage, our frustration, our impotence as we tune into what's happening there? How do we avoid being consumed by these dark, swirling emotions that, like oil in the Gulf, destroy life's capacities? How do we persevere, and find the strength and faith to keep working for what we believe in?
If you're watching or reading the news, do you feel as I do how broken we are as a people?
We have choice here, as a nation, and as individuals. We can recognize that we're in new territory, that we're truly lost.
Well, nothing is working as it should. We find ourselves prisoners of arrogant technology magnified by insistent greed.
People who are lost in the mountains or wilderness, who either survive or die by the choices they make, at first fight to make their old maps work. They do everything possible to make the old maps fit the present circumstance-but they never can.
In wilderness situations, this grasping goes on until the person is confronted with the fact that they're about to die. They will survive only if they acknowledge that there's no way out of their present peril; they must give up their old maps and acknowledge that they're truly lost. Once they recognize this, they begin to notice where they really are, what's going on, what's useful information available here and now.
They make new maps and find their way home.
Laurence Gonzales, in his book Extreme Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, writes: "Not being lost is not a matter of getting back to where you started from; it is a decision not to be lost wherever you happen to find yourself. It's simply saying, `I'm not lost, I'm right here.'"
I hold in my heart the vision of what's possible if we realize that, with the Gulf tragedy, nobody knows what to do, we're in new territory, we're lost.
I don't think we have a choice here. We have to come together to find what's needed for the Gulf, its people, and all its living beings. But will we make this choice? I have no idea.
Margaret Wheatley wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions.
Margaret is an internationally acclaimed writer, speaker, and teacher. Her books include Leadership and the New Science and, most recently Perseverance.
She is co-founder and President emerita of The Berkana Institute, a charitable foundation that works with people around the world who strengthen their communities using the wisdom and wealth already present in their people, traditions, and environment.
We must deepen our understanding of what's happening in the Gulf and what it means for our future. And what it means for us right now. "My sadness over our American Sea is becoming unspeakable. Few, and not I, can imagine the damage that will be done for generations to come.”
An oil company executive has said, 'I've been in the deep water drilling business for years and none of us can figure out how this happened. Nothing that should have stopped it worked. And the damage is limitless. 25,000 barrels a day is the more realistic number. It will take months to stop it much less clean it up. Nobody knows how to do this.'
This is a major SYSTEMS FAIL. The Gulf Coast has always been sacrificed for oil and industry. By everyone. SYSTEMS FAIL. Game over.
What do we do with our anger, our outrage, our frustration, our impotence as we tune into what's happening there? How do we avoid being consumed by these dark, swirling emotions that, like oil in the Gulf, destroy life's capacities? How do we persevere, and find the strength and faith to keep working for what we believe in?
If you're watching or reading the news, do you feel as I do how broken we are as a people?
We have choice here, as a nation, and as individuals. We can recognize that we're in new territory, that we're truly lost.
Well, nothing is working as it should. We find ourselves prisoners of arrogant technology magnified by insistent greed.
People who are lost in the mountains or wilderness, who either survive or die by the choices they make, at first fight to make their old maps work. They do everything possible to make the old maps fit the present circumstance-but they never can.
In wilderness situations, this grasping goes on until the person is confronted with the fact that they're about to die. They will survive only if they acknowledge that there's no way out of their present peril; they must give up their old maps and acknowledge that they're truly lost. Once they recognize this, they begin to notice where they really are, what's going on, what's useful information available here and now.
They make new maps and find their way home.
Laurence Gonzales, in his book Extreme Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, writes: "Not being lost is not a matter of getting back to where you started from; it is a decision not to be lost wherever you happen to find yourself. It's simply saying, `I'm not lost, I'm right here.'"
I hold in my heart the vision of what's possible if we realize that, with the Gulf tragedy, nobody knows what to do, we're in new territory, we're lost.
I don't think we have a choice here. We have to come together to find what's needed for the Gulf, its people, and all its living beings. But will we make this choice? I have no idea.
Margaret Wheatley wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions.
Margaret is an internationally acclaimed writer, speaker, and teacher. Her books include Leadership and the New Science and, most recently Perseverance.
She is co-founder and President emerita of The Berkana Institute, a charitable foundation that works with people around the world who strengthen their communities using the wisdom and wealth already present in their people, traditions, and environment.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
The solstice gateways and the polar-to-solar shift.
"The ancient Mayan tradition, which is really congruent with Traditional sciences, reconstructs the traditional Mesoamerican wisdom and, in seeking an explanation for the Mayan calendar 2012 end-date, led to the precession and the alignments to the Galactic Center.
The Galactic Center is apparently one of the gateways in Vedic cosmology. The Galactic Center may well be considered to be the Hypercosmic Sun, the Well of Remembrance, the Sundoor at World’s End, the eye of the heart, the cosmic center, the Holy Grail, etc.
It is an academic and scholarly challenge to demonstrate how ancient metaphysicians and cosmologists — not to mention astronomers — had attached their eschatological doctrines to the rare alignment of solstice sun and galactic heart.
The alignment of the solstice sun on December 21, 2012 at 11:11 AM GMT with the galactic equator of the Milky Way, with the Galactic Center nearby.
The precessional movement of “the sun” closer to “the grand center” causes the full expression of a Golden Age of Light, a time indicated in Vedic and Hindu traditions as occurring a dozen or so millennia ago. As such, it must be the precessional motion of the June solstice sun around the grand center that is indicated, because the June solstice sun was “closest to” the Galactic Center roughly 12,000 to 13,000 years ago. This “closeness” is in terms of alignment (as viewed from earth), not distance.
In the year 2012 the Galactic Center is at 27 Sagittarius (within 3 degrees of the winter solstice). On the winter solstice of 2012, the Galactic Center will be rising heliacally just before dawn, in a way reminiscent of how the Maya observed Venus's last morningstar appearance.
This basically follows the "1 degree every 72 years" rule of precession. In this way, back in 3114 B.C. the sun conjuncted the Sacred Tree on Oct 10th, which is 72 degrees, or 1/5th of the ecliptic from the winter solstice.
The Fall Equinox sun conjuncted the Sacred Tree about 6400 years ago (1/4th of a precessional cycle). Ancient cultures in Mesopotamia may have recognized this alignment, and called it a Golden Age. The fall from this state of alignment may be responsible for the original Fall from Paradise myth, which filtered out to the Judaic tradition.
Where the Galactic Equator (not to be confused with Galactic Center) crosses the ecliptic in Sagittarius just happens to be where the dark rift in the Milky Way begins. This is a dark bifurcation in the Milky Way caused by interstellar dust clouds. To observers on earth, it appears as a dark road which begins near the ecliptic and stretches along the Milky Way up towards Polaris.
December 21, 2012. On that day, our sun will cross the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy, an event that only happens once every 25,800 years. December 21st, 2012 (13.0.0.0.0 in the Mayan Long Count) represents an extremely close conjunction of the winter solstice sun with the crossing point of Galactic Equator and the ecliptic, what the ancient Maya recognized as the Sacred Tree.
At 11:11 AM GMT on December 21, 2012 A.D., the band of the Milky Way, whose center is called the Galactic Equator, and the ecliptic which can be seen by tracing a roughly horizontal path through the center of the chart of the planets, line up so that the sun is exactly in the center, which is often referred to as the Sacred Tree.
It is critical to understand that the winter solstice sun rarely conjuncts the Sacred Tree. In fact, this is an event that has been coming to resonance very slowly over thousands and thousands of years.
For early Mayan / Mesoamerican skywatchers, the slow approach of the winter solstice sun to the Sacred Tree was seen as a critical process, the culmination of which was surely worthy of being called 13.0.0.0.0, the end of a World Age. The channel would then be open through the winter solstice doorway, up the Sacred Tree to the center of the churning heavens, the Heart of Sky.
An age may come to an end and be replaced by a new age where different realities are present. This transition from one age to another is often the subject of eschatological discussion. So, instead of "the end of the world" we may speak of "the end of the age" and be referring to the end of "life as we know it" and the beginning of a new reality. Indeed, most apocalyptic literature (and movies) do not deal with the "end of time" but rather with the end of a certain period of time, the end of life as it is now, and the beginning of a new period of time. It is usually a crisis that brings an end to current reality and ushers in a new way of living / thinking / being."
CLICK HERE for more information:
The solstice gateways and the polar-to-solar shift
The Galactic Center is apparently one of the gateways in Vedic cosmology. The Galactic Center may well be considered to be the Hypercosmic Sun, the Well of Remembrance, the Sundoor at World’s End, the eye of the heart, the cosmic center, the Holy Grail, etc.
It is an academic and scholarly challenge to demonstrate how ancient metaphysicians and cosmologists — not to mention astronomers — had attached their eschatological doctrines to the rare alignment of solstice sun and galactic heart.
The alignment of the solstice sun on December 21, 2012 at 11:11 AM GMT with the galactic equator of the Milky Way, with the Galactic Center nearby.
The precessional movement of “the sun” closer to “the grand center” causes the full expression of a Golden Age of Light, a time indicated in Vedic and Hindu traditions as occurring a dozen or so millennia ago. As such, it must be the precessional motion of the June solstice sun around the grand center that is indicated, because the June solstice sun was “closest to” the Galactic Center roughly 12,000 to 13,000 years ago. This “closeness” is in terms of alignment (as viewed from earth), not distance.
In the year 2012 the Galactic Center is at 27 Sagittarius (within 3 degrees of the winter solstice). On the winter solstice of 2012, the Galactic Center will be rising heliacally just before dawn, in a way reminiscent of how the Maya observed Venus's last morningstar appearance.
This basically follows the "1 degree every 72 years" rule of precession. In this way, back in 3114 B.C. the sun conjuncted the Sacred Tree on Oct 10th, which is 72 degrees, or 1/5th of the ecliptic from the winter solstice.
The Fall Equinox sun conjuncted the Sacred Tree about 6400 years ago (1/4th of a precessional cycle). Ancient cultures in Mesopotamia may have recognized this alignment, and called it a Golden Age. The fall from this state of alignment may be responsible for the original Fall from Paradise myth, which filtered out to the Judaic tradition.
Where the Galactic Equator (not to be confused with Galactic Center) crosses the ecliptic in Sagittarius just happens to be where the dark rift in the Milky Way begins. This is a dark bifurcation in the Milky Way caused by interstellar dust clouds. To observers on earth, it appears as a dark road which begins near the ecliptic and stretches along the Milky Way up towards Polaris.
December 21, 2012. On that day, our sun will cross the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy, an event that only happens once every 25,800 years. December 21st, 2012 (13.0.0.0.0 in the Mayan Long Count) represents an extremely close conjunction of the winter solstice sun with the crossing point of Galactic Equator and the ecliptic, what the ancient Maya recognized as the Sacred Tree.
At 11:11 AM GMT on December 21, 2012 A.D., the band of the Milky Way, whose center is called the Galactic Equator, and the ecliptic which can be seen by tracing a roughly horizontal path through the center of the chart of the planets, line up so that the sun is exactly in the center, which is often referred to as the Sacred Tree.
It is critical to understand that the winter solstice sun rarely conjuncts the Sacred Tree. In fact, this is an event that has been coming to resonance very slowly over thousands and thousands of years.
For early Mayan / Mesoamerican skywatchers, the slow approach of the winter solstice sun to the Sacred Tree was seen as a critical process, the culmination of which was surely worthy of being called 13.0.0.0.0, the end of a World Age. The channel would then be open through the winter solstice doorway, up the Sacred Tree to the center of the churning heavens, the Heart of Sky.
An age may come to an end and be replaced by a new age where different realities are present. This transition from one age to another is often the subject of eschatological discussion. So, instead of "the end of the world" we may speak of "the end of the age" and be referring to the end of "life as we know it" and the beginning of a new reality. Indeed, most apocalyptic literature (and movies) do not deal with the "end of time" but rather with the end of a certain period of time, the end of life as it is now, and the beginning of a new period of time. It is usually a crisis that brings an end to current reality and ushers in a new way of living / thinking / being."
CLICK HERE for more information:
The solstice gateways and the polar-to-solar shift
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Arise then, women of this day!
After the heartbreak and deep wounding of the U.S. Civil War, Julia Ward Howe was moved to write the Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870. It reads:
"Arise then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!
"Say firmly: 'We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.'
"From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, 'Disarm, disarm!'
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor does violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar but of God.
"In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace."
"Arise then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!
"Say firmly: 'We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.'
"From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, 'Disarm, disarm!'
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor does violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar but of God.
"In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace."
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