Halleluja!

Occupy Anthem

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

How Do We Make Change?

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
April 8, 2011

EPOCH COLLAPSE OR APOCALYPSE?

Photo/Artwork by Will Zero

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

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

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

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

Here you will find past news and announcements.
Click on title to read article.

• What to you think of our new website?
• Sacred Centers Mission Statement
• What do you mean by Sacred?
• What is a Kin-ship?
• Dancing Archetypes, a description of a 6th chakra process, taught in Psychology of the Chakras 7-day Intensive
• Global Heart Newsletter – March
• The Relative Importance of the Financial Crisis