Optimizing Sustainability

Blessings of the Equinox! If you’ve had a long dark winter, you can take a breath now and smell the first fragrance of Spring. For a short time, the nights and days are equal, and at last, the light will begin to overtake the dark. Balance is the key to this Equinox holiday and indeed to the renewal of Spring. Imbalance is simply unsustainable, whether it’s the imbalances between rich and poor, humans and the environment, or between men and women. Imbalances always seek to right themselves and come back into balance once again.

We often speak of checks in the same breath as balance, as in “checks and balances.” To become sustainable, the inimitable human urge toward maximizing everything has to have some checks, and I don’t mean the kind we deposit in our bank account. In truth, I have never been crazy about the word “sustainable.” While I wholeheartedly agree with it in principle, the word speaks more about maintaining than thriving, holding back rather than moving forward with a good balance of joy and common sense.

I prefer the word optimization, asking the question: What is optimal for our future? Optimizing is not maximizing – it’s not going as far as we can whenever we can, but invokes the ideal conditions for evolving and thriving. Below you will see a new series of free telecalls from Shift Network, called THE SPRING OF SUSTAINABILITY. Registration is FREE so check it out. It features some of the best minds on the subject of renewable energy, green technologies, and sustainable practices.

Meanwhile, in honor of the balance of the season, what is optimal between men and women? And may I begin where I left off on my last post. . . .

For those who read my tirade on Rush Limbaugh in my last blog (see below or click here), please know that we were not alone. There was enough protest that even the U.S. Army pulled its advertising from Limbaugh’s show, along with at least 140 others. When such an uber male institution as the Army joins forces with the causes of women, we know we’re getting somewhere. Thanks, Guys, we really appreciate having your support!

However, not all the news is so good. Mitt Romney declares he wants to do away with Planned Parenthood, denying women low cost health care, breast exams, pap smears, and birth control.

Meanwhile Senate Republicans are looking to repeal the 18-year-old, formerly bipartisan Violence Against Women Act, which has been highly successful in reducing domestic violence. Apparently the bill has been amended to now include Gays and Native Americans, and I guess that’s just going too far, so let’s can the whole thing, and turn our backs on roughly 12 million women per year who were victims of domestic violence (according to CDC’s calculations) and ignore the fact that 45% of women murdered are killed by their male partner. But hey, that’s one way to keep population down while making it harder to get birth control.

But really, I don’t get it. We’re told that single mothers – women who stick by their children when the fathers run off – are the downfall of the American family. But we’re not supposed to use birth control, and we’re not supposed to have an abortion either. And now some factions want to deny us any protection when we try to fight off those who would force the aspirin out from between our knees. Maybe we
should all just put on Burkas and hide out until this insanity is over.

Lysistrata anyone?

For those who might have skipped out on studying Greek literature, Lysistrata is a comedy by Aristophanes, performed during the time of the Peloponnesian War (4th century B.C.). In this play the women of Greece start a powerful peace movement by withholding all sexual activity from their heterosexual relationships until a peace treaty is negotiated and signed between Athens and Sparta. It works! And the celebration afterward was spectacular, to say the least.

Let’s instead imagine what is optimal – safety and protection for all. Women safe in their home and on the streets; men safe from gangs and going to war. Women able to earn an equal salary for the same work; men not having to carry the financial load by themselves. Children who are planned, wanted, and cared for through adulthood. A way that men and women can thrive together, working in partnership, mutual respect, protecting what is sacred to each.

Let’s become sustainable in our relationships to each other, to the earth, to a glorious future that awaits us all.

Let’s celebrate this Equinox as a love affair between heaven and earth, light and dark, masculine and feminine. And let’s fall back in love with our world once again.

Brightest Blessings,

Anodea Judith

(See full newsletter)

Rushing Out on a Limbaugh

I thought it would be old news by the time I got around to writing this, but it looks like the gender storm is just beginning. This time shock jock radio host Rush Limbaugh has gone too far and ignited the kind of feminist outcry I’ve been wanting to hear for a long time. Maybe it took a blowhard like him to wake us up to the fact that things haven’t really changed all that much in the new millennium as far as women are concerned. That’s an awakening that will ultimately benefit all of us.

If you’re not up on the latest set of insults aimed at half the human population, suffice it to say that the abortion debate has now taken a back seat to arguing about women’s right to have any birth control at all covered by insurance. Rush Limbaugh made such derogatory comments to a female law student that Obama himself was compelled to call her and apologize. I won’t belittle this blog by repeating Limbaugh’s adolescent taunts here but if you really want to know, you can discover for yourself why his advertisers are fleeing in droves.

If you want to join the wave of pressure to have him removed from some of the 600 radio stations that host his show, sign the petition here!

It’s not like this little comment exists in isolation. The panel of five conservative Congressmen who held the forum on whether insurance coverage of contraception violates religious freedom, refused to allow testimony from any females, saying that the women chosen were not “appropriate witnesses.”

LEFT PHOTO: Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Chair of the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee.

“What I want to know is, where are the women?” Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) asked Rep Darell Issa before walking out of the hearing after the first panel. “I look at this panel, and I don’t see one single individual representing the tens of millions of women across the country who want and need insurance coverage for basic preventative health care services, including family planning. Where are the women?”

Now, I may sound a bit cynical but I don’t know whether having women testify would have done all that much good. We just get labeled as angry bitches and you might be thinking that about me even now. What I think would be more effective is for each of those men to be locked alone in a room with a couple of two-year-olds for 48 hours while strapping a large watermelon to their bellies. If they survive that, then they might be eligible to vote on this issue.

Now of course, the debate has not been balanced where Viagra is concerned. CNN talk show host, Jack Cafferty says it’s not the same issue: “Viagra is used to treat a medical condition, erectile dysfunction. Birth control is a lifestyle choice.”

Excuse me? Medical issues are exactly what law student Sandra Fluke was trying to address.

LEFT PHOTO: Sandra Fluke: Law Student who was the target of Limbaugh

But really, folks, this is much more than a feminist issue. In a world dying under the weight of overpopulation, where 20% live in bone-chilling poverty, where food production is declining as climate temperatures rise, where clean drinking water is becoming an upper class privilege in many parts of the world, where one out of every three women is raped or beaten —refusing contraception digs a grave for the future of all humanity.

We’re better than this. We can work together. We can co-create a glorious future. It’s in our hands. But sometimes it requires going on a rant like this one to get us to wake up. Thank you for listening and making your voice heard in this swelling outcry against injustice and stupidity. Please help take Limbaugh off the air. At least make the statement that we’re out here and paying attention. At least half the people of the world will thank you.

Blessings,

Anodea Judith

(See full newsletter)

Love is in the Air

February 14, 2012

It’s that time of year again. The time when we make a special place for what we most need to remember: the cosmic glue of love.  
 
That may seem like an unromantic term for life’s most precious experience, but love is, after all, what holds everything together. Love brings us into, and then holds us in relationship. And while love may be the glue of relationship, relationship itself is the state of all existence, down to the tiniest quark, and out to the edge of the universe. Everything is in relationship to everything else, in an amazing symphony of harmonic alignment that is so complex and sophisticated, its organization is far beyond our control.  
 
And a good thing, too, because love IS beyond our control, the next chakra above the efforts and will of the third chakra, where we make things happen. Instead love is an experience of surrender to something higher than our individual ego, surrendering our illusion of separateness, our need to be right, our need to have it look or feel a certain way.
 
The essence of lasting relationship is not only love but also balance. This is an essential aspect of the heart chakra, which sits majestically in the very center of the chakra system, with three chakras above and three chakras below. The heart is the balance point between above and below, mind and body, heaven and earth, masculine/feminine, inside and outside, self and other. Not that this is a static, one dimensional balance, but a dynamic ebb and flow of perpetual reciprocity. As long as we keep feeding it, love keeps growing. As long as we stay in balance, love can last through time. 
 
Valentine’s Day reminds us that one of the keys to lasting love is expression and appreciation. What you appreciate appreciates. It starts with appreciating yourself – your first laboratory for unconditional love.  
 
Name three things you appreciate about yourself and take three deep breaths into the heart while feeling each one. Breathe those qualities back out into the world on each exhale and imagine your heart radiating golden light. Then focus on what you appreciate about someone else that you love. Breathe again into that feeling of appreciation, breathing those qualities deeply into your own heart .
 
You can do this anytime you feel stressed, unloved, or unappreciated. This simple exercise will increase your heart resonance – the way the various cells within your heart beat a coherent pattern. HeartMath Institute has a goal of getting 350,000 people to use these techniques as a way of creating coherence in the overall heart field of the planet – what I call the Global Heart, which is awakening at this crucial time. You can go to their website and find out more about it and join in the practice.
 
The Global Heart awakens through our willingness to be in touch and to care. And to appreciate all that we have in this wondrous world of creative splendor. We can all be co-hearts in this amazing awakening of consciousness.
 
Happy Valentine’s Day!
 
Anodea Judith
Sacred Centers founder and CEO 
(Chief Evolutionary Officer)

Can You Create a Miracle?

February 9, 2012

Whether you think 2012 is going to bring disaster or delivery, it’s pretty obvious that it’s going to take a miracle to make the kind of changes necessary in the world today.
 
And that’s a good thing, because how else would we learn about miracle making? How else would we learn to harvest divine power and bring it down through our core and out through our chakras? How else would we really grow up and shift from being Children of God to becoming Adults of God? (Thank you Swami Beyondananda for that phrase).  
 
The world needs people who can step into their power, take a stand, and create change. And there’re people everywhere who need support in doing just that.
    
That’s one of my missions – to empower people to take charge of their life, so they can create the life of their dreams. My deeper mission is to create heaven on earth, but that’s a big job, and I’m not delusional enough to think I can do it alone. For that I need others to play with, people with big dreams, people with visions, people who want to learn how to manifest their deepest purpose.
 
I can’t tell you what to create, but I can share a process that makes creation fun – even ecstatic. If you have a dream (and who doesn’t?), I can offer you a step-by-step process for bringing your dream into reality.  
 
It starts with the highest you can reach for in the crown chakra, then takes you down to the realm of Vision in the sixth. Then you Communicate your visions effectively in the throat chakra, which brings you into Relationship at the heart. Loving relationships can give you support and inspiration and make the job so much easier. With the divine coming down and through you, it’s easy to keep your Power focused and blast through obstacles and distractions. Take it down through the second chakra and it picks up the waters of your Passion to fertilize the ground and become real on the final plain of manifestation.  
 
Everyone experiences blocks in the process of creation. They are more than figments of our imagination. They’re real and they can be tough. But having a way to handle those obstacles when they arise keeps you on track from conception to completion. Blast through blocks at each chakra level and you have a clear path to manifestation your highest purpose. Creation then becomes ecstasy.
 
This is the downward path through the chakras. It’s a spiritual technology for manifestation: for bringing heaven down to earth. There’s a lot more to it, but it’s easily learned and can be used for anything you want to create. Why not get started now on your dream?  
 
Our Creating on Purpose book will be out in late October (written with Lion Goodman). But if you don’t want to wait that long to get started on your dream (and we don’t have time to waste) check out the live experience of this breakthrough workshop, coming up February 20-24 at Kripalu in Lenox, MA. It’s the only manifestation workshop scheduled in the US this year, so if you miss this one, you’ll have to catch us in Holland in July.
 
Check it out below, while there’s still a few places left. Who knows what you will create?
 
Brightest blessings,
-Anodea Judith, Ph.D.

WE ARE ALL THE 1%

(from somebody’s perspective)

January 20, 2012

It’s so easy to identify with the 99% Occupy movement that has now reached 600 communities in the U.S. and 82 countries worldwide. Certainly, the financial difference between the elite rich and the rest of us is off-the-charts bigger than it’s ever been in recent history and shows little sign of slowing down. Economist Paul Krugman writes that the number is really more like .1%, making this gross inequality even more mind-boggling. If even a portion of this difference were redistributed to those in need, it would be an enormous benefit across a wide spectrum of the population.

Image borrowed from csmonitor.com

But are the elite 1% the only ones unwilling to give up their advantage to better others less fortunate (or less ruthless)? Just as Obama’s lack of audacity may represent the way many of us exhibit our own wishy washy complacency, I find it useful to see how the major archetypes in the news reflect something in the general public. Let’s be conscious as we hurl that first stone.

If you are reading this Blog on a computer, you are in the 1% from somebody’s perspective, just on a different scale. You have a roof over your head, electricity, probably food in your belly, and a place to sleep. You may even have some disposable income, even if it’s a meager pittance compared to Wall Street insiders.

Yet how willing are you to relinquish some of your cash to the beggar on the street, to organizations like Oxfam or Women’s Earth Alliance or Amnesty International, or any of the other thousands of organizations set up to address social inequalities? Is it worth passing up that cute little necklace or foregoing a few soy lattes?

I recently considered buying myself the new iPhone 4 for a mere $200, even though I already have an old 3G model. Then I heard a chilling description from Mike Daisey’s monologue aired on NPR. It’s about Apple technology and Foxconn, the plant where they make all those nifty life-changing products we love so much. Foxconn is a plant in China the size of a city – 430,000 people. Many of the workers he interviewed are age 12-16, crammed together like sardines, doing meaningless repetitive work for 12- to 16-hour shifts. Their hands get crippled by their work before they reach adulthood and they have to put nets on the buildings because there are so many suicides. Terry Gou, chairman of Foxxconn, refers to them as “animals.”

I’m not sure what to do about this problem, but it’s keeping me awake at night. I love my Apple products the way Wall Streeters love their bonus checks. Daisey’s monologue has produced a flurry of letters to Apple, and apparently they have their own rebuttal about attempts to change the situation.But we know this is happening, not just in China, but all over the world, where slave labor brings us cheap products that we in the first world get to enjoy.

Whenever I am tempted to complain about my life, or vilify the 1% that are soaking up the general circulation of funds like a blood clot soaks up blood, I have to remember that whenever I point a finger outward, three fingers point back at me.

It’s all just a matter of scale.

Brightest blessings,

-Anodea Judith, Ph.D.

Finding Grace in Transition

Evolution. It’s not just a good idea, it’s inevitable.

January 12, 2012

One thing about evolution: it’s always moving to the future. Even when it seems like we’re moving backward in some kind of bizarre regression like the Tea Party – the actual movement is still forward – sort of like the planets going retrograde every so often. They haven’t actually changed direction, it just appears that way from our stationery perspective. Astrologers will tell you that retrogrades can represent the disruption that leads to a new order. Retrogrades are also times to clean up the past.

So here we are, at the front end of 2012, perching on what we believe will be evolution’s Big Shift Year. Decades ago, when I first thought about it, I imagined we’d be much farther along by now — that we would have figured out how to live in peace, share wealth, take care of the environment, and live elegant lives supported by advanced technology. I certainly didn’t think a world teeming with overpopulation would be arguing about women’s legal right to use birth control (thank you Rick Santorum), or that 115 days into the Occupy movement we’d be listening to Wall Street brokers threatening to quit if their bonuses were reduced.

But wait, isn’t it always darkest before the dawn? Aren’t we just barely crawling out of the darkest time of year, still at the pink-orange sunrise of the new year, let alone the dawning light of the next era? Here’s something to think about as the light grows around you: Like a holograph, whose parts always contain the whole, each photon of light carries information in a 360-degree perspective. That’s what light does; it helps us see where we’re going, helps us see the big picture. If we listen to each other’s perspective, we can see the whole take shape.

The dance of evolution moves toward greater bodies of wholeness — more parts working together in larger numbers. From single-celled organisms that took 3 billion years to cooperate as simple creatures, to ego-based individuals who must now figure out how to run a planet together, evolution is a cauldron of creativity always finding new ways to melt its disparate parts into a greater whole.

To transform into that whole, we first have to melt. We have to be willing to let go of old forms, attachment to outcome, to believing that we know everything. We have to let go of the illusion of separation, even as we hang on to our own important agency. Our unique note in the symphony is necessary, but the symphony is something we create together. We can consciously co-create with evolution — as long as we understand that it’s the senior partner in the dance — much, much older and wiser than we are.

Where there’s pain, that’s evolution urging you somewhere else. Feel it, pay attention, then melt your stance. Listen to the heart, which moves toward greater expansion. Anytime you create more organization, harmony, beauty, truth, or goodness, you are moving in the direction of evolution. Where can you create more beauty in your life? Where can you find more harmony with your friends, neighbors, co-workers, home environment, or within yourself? How can you use this time to get more organized for the year ahead? Step outside, into the light, and see the bigger picture taking shape, one photon at a time, all around you.

Grace is the music that coordinates separate parts into a greater whole. When those parts move in harmony, singing to Divine’s not-so-subtle urges toward greater perfection, try to surrender and ride the waves — even through their ups and downs. Have faith that you really are going somewhere — just like all the rest of us on this bumpy ride to the future.

Brightest blessings,

-Anodea Judith, Ph.D.

These are the Times

December 31, 2011

The time we have all been building up to for lifetimes is now upon us: the time of the Big Shift, all hands on deck, for what many are calling the Great Turning. I call it the Great Awakening because we are on the verge of the greatest awakening that any species has ever had on this planet. Everything is accelerating toward this point and has been for some time. What is important must be anchored, tied down, for the storm ahead. What is not important must be released and recycled-it only becomes dead weight a we rise from the depths of winter, returning toward the light.

I could write lots more but for my New Year’s gift I will leave you with this poem.

THESE ARE THE TIMES

These are the times we have been waiting for.

These are the times that our countless lifetimes

of living and dying have been leading up to.

Through endless cycles of hope and despair,

as master and slave, soldier and slain.

As a mother who lived through yet another childbirth,

and a child who died much too young,

All to continue the species to be here, now,

Alive at this time of Great Awakening.

These are the times that we have chosen to be here

Chosen to be part of the Big Change

The wonderful realization of who we are,

The recognition of who we’ve been in the past,

And the tantalizing vision of who we are becoming

Beacons of light co-creating a new world.

These are the times to say

“We were the ones!”

with a thousand, million others

We were the ones,

Who cared enough to change the world.

who considered the fate of the unborn children of the future

Who saw the immense possibilities of miraculous rebirth.

These are the times for us all to say

We were the ones who did turn away

Turned away from what was, turned away from what is

And joined our hands together to turn toward what will be

Birthing the phoenix of glorious possibility from the ashes of a dying world.

We are the ones who dared to see and dared to say

Who stopped at nothing to change the way

Who faced the darkness of our initiation

Faced the death and transformation,

To awaken our divine powers to create a new world.

We are the ones

Blazing with vision, bursting with truth

Weeping with compassion

Staggering with the implications of our understanding

For we are the ones who dared to love

When the world itself had forgotten.

Brightest Blessings,

-Anodea Judith

DARKNESS REVEALS SO THE LIGHT CAN HEAL

December 23, 2011

Once again we are ending a cycle, completing our trip around the sun with Winter Solstice, the darkest time of the year. The most ancient of archetypal partners, darkness and light play deep in our psyches and indeed all of nature. Yet we scarcely know what darkness even is anymore – so vast is the array of electric lights drowning out the stars in the night sky. The fear and inconvenience of darkness, like that of death, has spurned endless achievements and triumphs of light, from our oldest mythologies to modern technology.

Darkness is a deeply fertile time, a time of imagination and visioning, a time of rest and renewal, a time of going deep within yourself to commune with the depths of your own soul and that of Nature. We avoid this darkness at our own peril, exhausting our resources within and without. In the archetypal dance, darkness is the senior partner, the realm of emptiness and fertility, from which all things emerge.

Darkness represents the most feared and repressed aspect of the Goddess-the wisdom of the ancient Crone. Her repression has resulted in a linear trajectory of constant expansion, endless activity, and achievement. Without the cyclic nature of balancing light with darkness, we are unwittingly creating it – through an unsustainable society that threatens the end of over a million species and hundreds of millions of people.

As we head into the beginning of 2012, we are facing an unknown future. Business as usual cannot be assumed. We cannot bank on anything staying the same – not the economy, the environment, certainly not technology. Yet we must vision and plan anyway. What do we count on?

We can only choose to build our lives on the values that are most important to us. They become the foundation, the first chakra earth base upon which we build our future. Whether it’s a business, a relationship, or a project, set a firm foundation of integrity – and take your time creating it. Preparing the ground makes for fertile growth when the light waxes in the new year.

As we near the bottom of the wheel of the year, we are hitting the pivot point from which we bounce back up the other side. In order to make it back up from the depths, we need to let go of excess weight, in terms of old patterns and aspects of life that no longer serve us. It is interesting that the word “light” represents not only the source of illumination and growth but also the opposite of heaviness.

Letting go into emptiness and darkness is actually a way of lightening up. What we release lightens our load, makes it easier to ride up the wheel toward the returning light and new growth of the next cycle. These first few days of the new cycle can be a good time to fast – though it’s a difficult time to avoid the endless parties and delectable goodies of the season.

Just as bulbs need a good chill in the winter to make beautiful blossoms, we need to dream in the darkness to invite in the light. Linger here. Taste its sweet bitterness. Empty out and listen to spirit. Disengage the clutch of your life and allow yourself to change gears. You may find that spirit has a download just waiting for your mind to be empty enough to listen.

May you all have a blessed Holiday Season of Joy, Love, and Light,

Anodea Judith

Manifesting Real Abundance in the New Year

December 16, 2011

WE DID IT!

In the true spirit of manifestation, completing our manuscript by 3pm on the date that it was due, Lion Goodman and Anodea Judith just finished their co-authored book: CREATING ON PURPOSE: THE SPIRITUAL TECHNOLOGY OF MANIFESTING THROUGH THE CHAKRAS. It has now been sent to the publisher, Sounds True, who will take it through the next phases of editing, designing, typesetting, and printing, to release it to the world in October, 2012. Like a parent with a new baby, I want to do all I can to make sure the world is still functioning by then, so this baby can grow up and find its way to many readers.

The main idea of the book is that, together, we can “Co-create Heaven on Earth” (our original working title). Co-creation is collaborative creation-something we can’t do alone. We do it with each other, with the Divine, and with what the world gives us. Bringing Heaven down to Earth means that we can make this world a paradise – because that’s what we were given to start with, and we’re all more sophisticated now than our ancestors could have ever imagined.

Bringing Heaven down to Earth also implies taking the downward current through the chakras, beginning with the highest we can reach for, and stepping it down, chakra by chakra, until we get to the earth plane where manifestation completes. In this path, aligned with your life purpose, ideas become dreams of how you want the world to be and visions of how to make that happen. We then take your vision into the realm of communication and relationship, then down to the lower chakras where you balance will and pleasure, effort and surrender, completing the process at the solid ground of the first chakra.

The book arose out of the workshop we’d been teaching for the last few years, called CREATION IS ECSTASY: MANIFESTATION BREAKTHROUGH WORKSHOP (it’s the blocks that are a pain). The goal of that workshop is to teach techniques for handling obstacles that arise at each chakra level. Our not-so-secret agenda is to create master manifestors who know how to create what they want and help make a better world for all. We believe that if you get enough people with spiritual intelligence down to earth, we just might change this planet back to the paradise it was meant to be (but at a higher level, of course.)

The spiritual trajectory for thousands of years has been toward transcendence-moving up and out. We believe the arc of evolution is now turning around – bringing advanced consciousness, achieved through the many practices handed down to us by spiritual masters, down to earth for the purpose of manifesting a more enlightened way to live. Each of us is called to this task at these crucial times – to grow up and stand up, to take responsibility and reclaim our power to make change. It’s time to walk our talk.

CREATION IS ECSTASY will still happen as a workshop at Kripalu in February, though Anodea will teach it alone this year. Manifesting through the Chakras has also been an online course through Shift Network, that is now being offered again, along with the course of another manifestation teacher, Sue Morter, for a reduced fee.

Halleluja!

Occupy Anthem

December 12, 2011

One highlight was that my friend, Gary Horvitz, shared a moving song he wrote about the Occupy movement – to be sung to the tune of Leonard Cohen’s recorded song, Halleluja. See the lyrics here, sing it together, pass it around and circulate widely. It could become a national anthem.

Into the Darkness before the light

So now we head into the dark times again – nearing winter solstice, the pivot point of the year. Prior to electric lights, this marked the time of ultimate descent, and the point of renewal for bouncing back up the other side into light again. If you are discouraged by the news and the state of affairs, have faith. Use this time to explore the darkness in the following ways.

Sink into the Darkness

With all the holiday merriment aka busyness, it can be hard to find time for deep contemplation, but that’s what this time of year calls for. Take time to be quiet, to sit in the dark with a candle or two, and to drop down into your lower chakras. Let yourself feel, sleep, and dream. Slow down and be quiet. Let the darkness hold you like a womb, treasuring what is gestating within you, waiting to be born. Practice letting go, surrendering into a yin state. Take time to write in your journal what you want to let go if and what you want for the coming year. Visualize, imagine, set intentions. Don’t wait until New Year’s Eve to do this-give it some attention ahead of time. If you want to learn powerful techniques for manifesting your dream, join me at Kripalu in Feb. for the Creation is Ecstasy workshop.

Look at your shadow

The shadow, often thought of as our negative traits, is by definition, whatever is hidden to consciousness. So how do we find it?

Those who have taken our Psychology of the Chakras course know this exercise, but it bears repeating periodically. Ask yourself the following questions:

1. What do you typically judge in others that keeps showing up in friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, or people you can’t easily avoid? (examples: people who are lazy, sloppy, controlling, pushy, loud, irresponsible, needy, self-centered, oblivious, selfish, etc) See if you can get it down to an archetypal name, such as the Tyrant, the Good-for-Nothing, the Slob, the Cheat, the Brat, the Prima Dona, the Bitch.

2. Where are you not allowed to have any of that trait? For example, how were you not allowed to be sloppy, confused, naïve, free from responsibility, etc? Is there any secret longing to be able to move a little more in that direction for healthy balance?

3. What might be a healthy root of that trait? (For example: lazy people know how to relax, controlling people know how to take charge, needy people know how to be vulnerable, etc.)

4. How can you reclaim the healthy aspect of that trait for yourself? Ground this energy by putting on music and dancing that archetype into your body, releasing the repressed energies. You will feel more alive, and the shadow aspects of that trait are actually less likely to take over. Not only do you become more integrated, but the people that exhibit these traits either disappear from your life, stop doing those traits, or you cease to be bothered by it. The result is you will feel more peaceful yet energized, as well as more tolerant of others.

May you be blessed by abundance, gratitude, and good grounding this holiday season.

Bright Co-Heart Blessings,

Anodea Judith

Occupy Anthem

Come join us in this square today
We’re here to find a better way
To live our common dreams and share them with ya

Remember that you have a choice
No matter where you raise your voice
Just take a stand and sing out halleluja

Halleluja! Halleluja!
Halleluja! Halleluja.

As the story of this time unfolds
It’s all about the human soul that’s rising and it’s comin’ up
right through ya

It’s time to turn our history’s page
To share the love beyond the rage
Our hearts will not be broken, Halleluja

Halleluja! Halleluja!
Halleluja! Halleluja.

They operate by corporate stealth
Stripping all of Main Street’s wealth
They’ve bought the politicians who’ve betrayed ya

But this ride they’re on is suicide
So it’s time to speak what we know inside
Community’s where our riches lie, halleluja

Halleluja! Halleluja!
Halleluja! Halleluja!

Keep marching round and round these walls
‘Til the banker’s lies begin to fall
Or they’ll own your life and sell it right back to ya

But their greed will come to no avail
’Cause the web of life is not for sale
The earth will rise in sacred halleluja

Halleluja! Halleluja!
Halleluja! Halleluja.

So stand with us in unity
Help build the new economy
The currency of love is what will free ya

Be the vessel that was meant to lift
Together we will make the shift
To a world that values all our gifts, halleluja

Halleluja! Halleluja!
Halleluja! Halleluja.

Music: Leonard Cohen
Lyrics: Gary Horvitz, Jennifer Watters
gary@2degreeworld.com
http://Occupycafe.org

EPOCH COLLAPSE OR APOCALYPSE?

Photo/Artwork by Will Zero

April 2, 2011

It all depends on how you look at it.

I’ve been reading a deeply disturbing and truth-telling book by Carolyn Baker called SACRED DEMISE, a book who’s subtitle says it all: WALKING THE SPIRITUAL PATH OF INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION’S COLLAPSE.

Needless to say, she doesn’t mince words about what’s going on in the world: the perfect storm of economic crisis, climate change, peak oil, peak food, peak water, political corruption, and environmental decline. What the Japanese are experiencing now could become all too common, and is already present in many parts of the world. We are not immune here in the West as these pictures of the collapse of Detroit imply. It is already happening. Even here in the good ’ol US of A.

We are witnessing nothing less than the collapse of an entire epoch, outgrowing the organizing principle that has held us together for the last 5000 years, since the beginning of Empire. The fall of Egypt as an empire ruled by a single dictator was a telling omen, and we are watching that movement spread across the Middle East, through struggle and death, hope and eventually healing.

Creation and destruction always happen simultaneously, so what is the other side of this impending picture of doom? How do we navigate these changes and hold our heads high with vision and our hearts filled with hope.

The collapse of an epoch can bring apocalypse. Apocalypse is a word from the Greek meaning “lifting the veil” or “revelation.” Wikipedia defines it as “a disclosure of something hidden from the majority of mankind (sic) in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception.” Our times couldn’t be more ripe for it.

Revelation is a spiritual initiation, an aspect of the dance of Shakti in Her eternal hide and seek, to lure us deeper into the mystery. (Revelation is also one of the characteristics of the planet Uranus, which in previous blog, mentioned it just started a new cycle in Aries).

The silver lining of industrial civilization’s demise is that it’s collapse reveals a far more magnificent reality. The walls we have erected between ourselves and Divine Nature must collapse for us to have the revelation. When we can no longer drive to work (some as much as 2-3 hours per day), we will discover time with our family. When groceries get expensive, we discover back yard gardening. When we can’t go shopping we discover we feel lighter with less. When our ego gets ground down to a layer thin enough for the light get in, we flood with Grace.

Baker says: “Sooner or later collapse will force humans to interact directly with nature.” Our original distortion of Nature is part of our current insanity.

Two weeks ago, I included a letter from a woman in Japan saying they were discovering starlight in the darkness, quiet in the broken roads, community in the sharing of resources. Despite the untold suffering of the Japanese tragedy, something deeper is being revealed.

The Divine cannot collapse. We can only collapse that which stands in our way of receiving it.

If a woman had never heard of birth and went into labor, she would think she was dying, and even if someone told her what was going to happen, she’d say it was impossible. The pain of labor is designed to create an opening that allows something BIG to come through. Bigger than we can believe.

We are all midwives in the process of this miraculous birth of humanity. We are all doing the labor, feeling the pain, breathing through the contractions and reaching for each other’s hands. And we are all being guided by Grace toward something so wonderful and enlightening, we can’t even see it from here. It emerges like Springtime, from the age old partnership between Heaven and Earth in its infinite mystery. It is fertilized by the fallen stalks of the old. But there beneath the rubble, the light is calling of forth. New stalks are arising out of the old.

Facing epoch collapse and apocalypse is the challenge of our global initiation — a rite of passage that is nothing less than the rebirth of humanity into its next organizing principle, a birth from the limiting love of power to the unlimited power of love.

Anodea Judith

April 1, 2011

How Do We Make Change?

April 8, 2011

Photo from Chapter 8 of Anodea Judith’s Waking the Global Heart

One way that change happens – and certainly not the fun way — is the path of adversity. That’s when we get beaten so far down that we surrender. An alcoholic hits bottom; we run out of money; the sea level rises, oil sources dry up, the economy tanks, or civilization collapses. There’s lots of “doomers” out there who say that’s how it’s going to happen, that humans don’t change anything until they absolutely have to. From this perspective, humanity is headed straight toward its collective dark night of the soul.

Such dark nights are a time of deep listening. So many people I meet these days are in a state of confusion, not knowing quite what to do right now. The “I don’t know” means we are open to ideas, instruction, guidance. A collective “We don’t know” would mean we have to listen to each other, to the earth, and to the divine intelligence that is actually running the place. Dark nights lead to deep systemic change.

There’s another way change happens that’s a lot brighter and easier. It’s simply having a better idea. We didn’t need a failure of the typewriter industry to switch to desktop computers. Nor did main frame computers have to self-destruct for us to buy laptops or smartphones. We just self-selected for superior performance. When small groups of people get together and start doing things differently – and are successful at it – people around them start taking notice. They look over and say: “I want what she’s having!”

The yoga movement that’s sweeping the world is a case in point. You go to a party and run into a friend you haven’t seen in five years. She looks great, fit and shining with light. You ask: “Wow, you look good. What have you been doing?” It might be yoga, or it might be a good diet, meditation, or a new kind of snake oil, but it’s the success that makes you want to try it. As new ideas form on the edge and people find benefit, these ideas grow into movements. What works expands and evolves. People want to join.

In Tapscott and William’s book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything they show how companies that collaborate are making more money than those that have full time R & D personnel. Wikipedia out-performs the old encyclopedia sets. Countries like Germany are shifting their taxes from income to ecotax and have created a green industry with 250,000 new jobs.

What if there were a subset of the UN called the Union of Peace Nations? If a nation was willing to get rid of nuclear weapons, keep their military down to a small fraction of their national budget, agree to human rights principles, and other such things, they could have protection from other countries. Meanwhile these countries could balance their budget, rebuild their schools, give their citizens healthcare, develop green technologies. They could prosper and be a model for others who would then want to “get in on the club.”

What it takes is showing that something works better, then getting more people involved. As it grows, we get better at what we’re doing. We get more visible. We’re not knocking anything down, we’re simply galloping beyond it.

As Mark Gafni said at the World Spirituality Center opening, we’re transcending, which is ending the trance.

Anodea Judith

Death and Rebirth:

The Dark and the Light of Japan

Photo from Ashbury Park Press

The crisis in Japan is of epic proportions. Like so many others, I sat transfixed by images of burning buildings, floating cars, and exploding reactors playing across the TV screen, my heart ripped open at the level of destruction and tragedy. How do people even begin to clean up something of such magnitude, let alone rebuild and heal from the trauma?

This is exactly the kind of disaster I write about in Waking the Global Heart – disasters that seem to be coming more frequently, like painful contractions in the birth process of humanity. (e.g. Katrina, Haiti earthquake, Gulf Oil Spill, floods in Pakistan, etc.) As terrible and awful as they are, we must also remember they contain an awakening to a new order. As ordeals of initiation, their extreme loss reveals gifts that were previously obscured: the gifts of community helping each other, the appreciation for simple things like food, warmth, and water, the experience of hearing quiet and seeing the stars, as this beautiful letter from a woman in Sendai expresses.

From Anne Thomas in Sendai, Japan where she has lived for the past decade teaching English.

Hello My Lovely Family and Friends,

First I want to thank you so very much for your concern for me. I am very touched. I also wish to apologize for a generic message to you all. But it seems the best way at the moment to get my message to you.

Things here in Sendai have been rather surreal. But I am very blessed to have wonderful friends who are helping me a lot. Since my shack is even more worthy of that name, I am now staying at a friend’s home. We share supplies like water, food and a kerosene heater. We sleep lined up in one room, eat by candlelight, share stories. It is warm, friendly, and beautiful.

During the day we help each other clean up the mess in our homes. People sit in their cars, looking at news on their navigation screens, or line up to get drinking water when a source is open. If someone has water running in their home, they put out sign so people can come to fill up their jugs and buckets.

Utterly amazingly, where I am there has been no looting, no pushing in lines. People leave their front door open, as it is safer when an earthquake strikes. People keep saying, “Oh, this is how it used to be in the old days when everyone helped one another.”

Quakes keep coming. Last night they struck about every 15 minutes. Sirens are constant and helicopters pass overhead often.

We got water for a few hours in our homes last night, and now it is for half a day. Electricity came on this afternoon. Gas has not yet come on. But all of this is by area. Some people have these things, others do not. No one has washed for several days. We feel grubby, but there are so much more important concerns than that for us now. I love this peeling away of non-essentials. Living fully on the level of instinct, of intuition, of caring, of what is needed for survival, not just of me, but of the entire group.

There are strange parallel universes happening. Houses a mess in some places, yet then a house with futons or laundry out drying in the sun. People lining up for water and food, and yet a few people out walking their dogs. All happening at the same time.

Other unexpected touches of beauty are first, the silence at night. No cars. No one out on the streets. And the heavens at night are scattered with stars. I usually can see about two, but now the whole sky is filled. The mountains of Sendai are solid and with the crisp air we can see them silhouetted against the sky magnificently.

And the Japanese themselves are so wonderful. I come back to my shack to check on it each day, now to send this e-mail since the electricity is on, and I find food and water left in my entranceway. I have no idea from whom, but it is there. Old men in green hats go from door to door checking to see if everyone is OK. People talk to complete strangers asking if they need help. I see no signs of fear. Resignation, yes, but fear or panic, no.

They tell us we can expect aftershocks, and even other major quakes, for another month or more. And we are getting constant tremors, rolls, shaking, rumbling. I am blessed in that I live in a part of Sendai that is a bit elevated, a bit more solid than other parts. So, so far this area is better off than others. Last night my friend’s husband came in from the country, bringing food and water. Blessed again.

Somehow at this time I realize from direct experience that there is indeed an Enormous Cosmic evolutionary step that is occurring all over the world right at this moment. And somehow as I experience the events happening now in Japan, I can feel my heart opening very wide. My brother asked me if I felt so small because of all that is happening. I don’t. Rather, I feel as part of something happening that is much larger than myself. This wave of birthing (worldwide) is hard, and yet magnificent.

Thank you again for your care and Love of me,

With Love in return, to you all,

Anne

After the shock and pain, grief and loss, and the long hard clean up, there is something remarkable that I expect will come out of this. More than any other subculture on the planet, the Japanese are known for their quality, efficiency, elegance, and beauty in design. With whole towns and cities devastated, there is now opportunity to design and build from scratch, cities that are ecologically modern, more beautiful than before, that really serve their communities. Who better than the Japanese to take on that task? I predict that their new cities will be models for the world.

Commentator Fareed Zakaria said that the Japanese had prepared better than most for this kind of disaster and that indeed the deaths were fewer because of it. But they were economically unprepared as their country had fallen deeply into debt. Where will they get the money to rebuild? Yet rebuild they will, simply because they must. By necessity they will need to innovate socially and economically as well. And this too, will set a tone for the future. A means of working together out of necessity, more from the heart than from financial interest.

Also inspiring, in a devastated country of 128,000 people, there has not been one reported case of looting. The Japanese are being patient while standing in line for food, helping each other out as this report shows.

Destruction and creation are an inevitable pair. In the midst of the devastation, something new is being born. Evolutionary thinker, Barbara Marx Hubbard, noted on a call recently click here to access the recording. that if a woman went into childbirth without any idea of what was happening to her, she would surely think she was dying. Another woman, Ariel Spillsbury, said she felt that the tsunami was the waters breaking of humanity’s birth. There is much labor still to go, but we are birthing a new world.

Birth is painful. Birth is messy. Every loss is a contraction in the birth process. We must breathe through it. We must hold each other’s hands. We must not fear. We must bear down and push hard for the future we want to create. We cannot do it alone. We don’t yet know what it will look like, but the process is happening, whether we like it or not. It is the ordeal that will test us and turn us into planetary adults.

We must remember that birth brings forth a miracle, something that has never before existed. We are not dying, we are going through the challenging initiation of being born.

Anodea Judith

March 16, 2011

BULLIES AT THE MAD HATTER’S TEA PARTY

Watching politics is like going to a high school football game, minus the hot dogs. Two teams vying for the playing field, locked in opposition, with Sarah Palin as the head cheerleader. Rah, Rah, Siss Boom Bah. Rousing cheers that rally the crowds, yet say nothing intelligible. Such is the conversation at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.

News reporting focuses more on the scorecard between Reds and Blues than the real qualifications of the candidates. Reds just won one for the House, now the Blues are behind. Team spirit is nice, but don’t we see that the whole game has to change? Team spirit should reflect the best of human cooperation but it’s devolved into mob mentality. Wasting taxpayer money on the stalemate, while the media sells advertising for it, not only halts progress but makes us all look like fools. Meanwhile the average guy who’s in danger of losing his job is petitioned by emails to help pay for the ads. If politicians spent as much time and money solving the issues as they do trying to outwit their opponent, we might actually get somewhere.

The far right plays the archetypal Bully. They’re like that dumb, fat kid who feels intellectually insecure and makes up for it by being tough and mean. He increases his power with numbers, drawing his friends into the drama, and picking on anyone that lets them get away with it – including the President. The Progressive movement, ever on the defensive, ends up placating through compromise, arguing on the other’s terms, and consistently losing the high moral ground. No wonder their political ground is shrinking as well.

What’s the role of a bully in someone’s life? Most of us remember being on one side of the fence or the other in this ancient dynamic. The bully knows they can get you and taunts you again and again, knocking you down, until you finally stand up and fight back. Then the bully’s job is done. We play this out in our movies and novels, and now we see it in our politics, to say nothing of personal relationships.

The fact that the rallying cry mobilizing the Conservative movement can be based on this degree of nonsense is a testament to the poor articulation of the Progressive message. This will continue until the Audacity of Hope becomes, well, audacious enough to wake us up.

Let’s name the real moral ground here. Is it about who’s sleeping with whom and what gender they might be, or the fact that we’re threatening the future of four billion years of evolution with mindless consumerism? Is it about collecting a few stem cells from an unwanted fetus, or polluting the seed stock of the future? Is it about too much government spending on social programs, or ripping off millions of homeowners with foreclosure fraud? Is it about the extension of unemployment benefits or the fact that 59% of our budget goes to the military?

Gandhi based his movement on Satyagraha, which translates as the force of truth. The bullying will continue until there is clear and coherent articulation of the real dangers that threaten us: global warming, toxic waste, economic collapse, to say nothing of the media’s weapons of mass distraction – and our willingness to fall for it.

Anodea Judith
San Rafael, CA
November 2010

Do We Really Care About our Health?

In all the talk about health care, few are asking the question: “Why are we getting sick?”

The first chakra is related to the element earth and to the aspect of consciousness oriented to survival. Denying the first chakra is a denial of our bodies, our environment, and the path to abundance. No wonder we are suffering from a health care crisis, an environmental crisis of global proportions, and an economic crisis. All of these effect our survival, yet all are an issue of health. We want healthy bodies, a healthy planet, and a healthy economy. These are all intricately related.

While it is easy to feel overwhelmed with the immensity of the problems, the area we have the most control over is our personal health. I write this as one who has struggled with my health for most of my adult life. Due to an undiagnosed case of Lyme disease that nearly crippled me two decades ago, my health has never been taken for granted, and requires dedicated work and attention. It has been a great teacher and guide along my path as a healer and teacher. But what brought me to my health did not come from the Health Care System, but from my own efforts toward cultivating wholeness.

Our current Health Care System is neither about health nor care, nor is it a functioning system. It is a system designed to rescue us from the inevitable result of denying our bodies, our feelings, our planet, and our needs. We look to modern medicine as the remedy for a lifetime of unhealthy food, exposure to toxins, and lack of exercise, touch, fresh air, free time, and the simple pleasures of life.

Just as a co-dependent enabler of an alcoholic becomes exhausted by their efforts to remedy an addictive situation, our “health care system” has become the fixer or enabler to unhealthy lifestyles, and is bound to fail sooner or later. To remedy this important system, we must look deeper at what really needs healing. In all the talk about health care, few are asking the question: “why are so many getting sick?” Cancer, heart disease, chronic illnesses, and expensive surgeries are draining demands on our health care system. If we do not address the causes of our illnesses, these costs will only continue to rise.

True health care means caring for your health. Caring what you put in your body, caring for yourself when you are tired, hungry, thirsty, caring enough to make sure you get fresh air, sunlight, and exercise. Health means listening to your body, engaging in practices, like yoga, aerobics, dance, chi gong, or anything that develops your body’s strength, flexibility, intelligence, and capacity.

A healthy “health care system” keeps us from getting sick in the first place. It teaches practices that promote health, gets them into schools and businesses so they become part of society. It addresses environmental toxins, promotes organic food, looks at a way to reduce stress and find more enjoyment in life. Such a system spends more of its money on prevention than adaptation. Such a system saves money and improves what is around us at the same time. It is a win-win approach.

We can begin by caring for our own health, engaging in practices and watching what we eat, breathe, see, and hear. To heal means to make whole. Wholeness is a powerful force in the world.

(For a great morning exercise routine, check out the audio CD of the seven chakra based Sun Salutations included the Chakra Balancing kit.)

FROM YANGXIETY TO YINSIGHT:

THE BALANCE OF THE EQUINOX

Well, friends, here it is. The long-awaited beginning of spring and the point of sacred balance between the dark and the light. As Uranus leaves Pisces, where it’s been lurking for the last seven years in Neptunian formlessness, it now moves into Aries, the start of the zodiac, signifying the start of a whole new cycle, with new fire and focus. No wonder we’re getting earthquakes and threats of meltdowns. The fires of transformation are upon us. But how do we ride all this energy with balance and equanimity?

Too much fire can be too much yang, and with all the radiation panic, it seems the whole culture is suffering from yangxiety. Most people are yanged out – too much to do, too much stimulation, moving too fast, and face it, too much masculine paradigm superimposing itself on the natural world.

Isn’t the threat of nuclear radiation pouring into the air, water, and earth near one of the largest and most productive cities in the world enough cause to make us all stop and think about what we are doing and where we are going? (as if we didn’t already have enough reasons). If this doesn’t do it, what will it take?

What we need for balance is a little yin-sight. Slow down, take some quiet time to reflect, have a nice long bath and think things through. Emptiness softens, informs, allows new things to come into being, and creates ease. And who couldn’t use just a little more ease in their life as we head round the bend into the future? If Springtime signifies rebirth as well as balance, it may be that balance is necessary for rebirth.

There are many things out of balance in our world, but none quite so long-standing and globally pervasive as the imbalance between masculine and feminine. Here at the Spring Equinox, the Greek Goddess of the Underworld, Persephone, returns to the light and brings back the flowers and greenery—and with them, food for the people and hope for the future. She’s had a long hard winter, birthing the souls of the dead back to life again and living under Hades rules.

So let’s give Her some room to distribute her magnificence. Let’s take time to smell the flowers and remember the miracle of spring. Let’s combat global warming with some chill space – less driving, less doing, less stuff. Let the feminine lead a little more in your life – your own feminine side, or the women in your life. You may be surprised that your life gets a little easier as corners turn to curves, hard edges to softness, and that dry job gets a little juicier.

If this yang civilization collapses, we won’t be able to go anywhere or do much of anything. The yin will then predominate, and we’ll be out of balance again in a different direction. So we may as well do it now, while the Divine Partnership that gives birth to all possibilities is still possible.

At birth all people are soft and yielding.
At death they are hard and stiff.
All green plants are tender and yielding.
At death they are brittle and dry.
When hard and rigid
We consort with death.
When soft and flexible,We affirm greater life.
-Lao Tzu

Anodea Judith

March 24, 2011

Photo/Artwork by Will Zero