The Phases of the Moon and Their Effect on Us…

Human beings are intensely layered, complex beings. I was thinking the other night about how someone born at different phases of the moon have similar personality qualities because both myself and my brother’s fiance are born during the same phase of the moon but in completely different signs (actually that square one another) yet I could see similarities between us. Yet in astrology this isn’t something often gone into due to all the other complexities of a chart so I’m going to go into them here briefly.

Here’s the basic breakdown:

New Moon = Sun and Moon in the same astrological sign.

Waxing Moon = Sun and Moon square in an applying opposition; meaning the moon sign is in a sign before the opposition. For example if a person were an Aquarius, the opposite sign would be Leo, so if a person was born with Sun in Aquarius and Moon in Taurus, the moon would be in the Waxing phase.

Full Moon = Sun and Moon in opposite signs.

Waning Moon =  Sun and Moon square in an separating opposition; meaning the moon sign is in a sign after the opposition. For example if a person were an Aquarius, the opposite sign would be Leo, so if a person was born with Sun in Aquarius and Moon Scorpio , the moon would be in the Waxing phase.

So if your sun and moon relationship isn’t a conjunction/opposition or square, your phase of the moon is somewhere in the middle and depending on the rules given above you can see where it fits into the basic phase. For example you are an Aquarius with Moon in Capricorn, that means you are basically a New Moon person on the Waning side. If you are an Aquarius with a Pisces Moon you are basically a New Moon type on the waxing side.

Now to the point of all this.

I’ve noticed New Moon people have a tendency to be hermetic, homebodies, yet are usually warm and open. This would be because the Sun conjunct the Moon gives the Sun a Cancer flavor and the on the other end gives the Moon a Leo flavor. So they are straightforward and open, but don’t volunteer much about themselves. They’ll tell you anything you want to know about themselves but you have to ask first. The person saw their parents as the same person. Often this configuration is found in people who were raised by a single parent or whose parents were so tight they operated as a single unit. (This is true for those with the Sun and Moon in the same sign only, shades of these things may apply to those who are close to the New Moon.)

With the full Moon people I have noticed a great discomfort with themselves, perhaps this is because their moon sits on their earth (or their shadow self.) They seem to have a hard time being comfortable in their own skin and usually flip from one end of the spectrum to the other, often causing others to be confused. I believe it takes a while for them to unravel who they are to themselves. This position seems to take time to find their path. They do a lot of exploring, trying on new identities and hats before settling on what feels right. Also it indicates the person saw their parents as opposites which means the parents were very different from one another. Often it can indicate a divorce or separation between the parents especially if there are squares to the Sun or Moon.

The Waxing Moon people have a tendency to flip from acting out of one side of their personality or the other. For example a Capricorn with an Aries Moon would sometimes be extremely hard working, structured, disciplined and ambitious and then the next week might seem uncharacteristically self-involved and unconcerned with their future and work instead they might want to party and live  in the moment not thinking of anything but what kind of margarita to drink. It also indicates (from the person’s perspective) real tension between the parents and often parents who either don’t stay married or live together and fight constantly. The person sees their parents as at war with one another. And in many cases the parents are physically separated during that person’s childhood.

The Waning Moon square people have similarities with the Waxing Moon people as they too seem to flip from one side to the other in their personalities and often see their parents as having tension between them. The waning moon people however seem to be less conscious of their parents dynamic from what I’ve seen, and often have a certain level of denial about family problems preferring to brush things under the rug.

OK… My back is hurting from sitting funny. I’ll keep this short today.

Thanks to everyone who contributes their thoughts through the dream journal and the comment sections.

Best wishes and many blessings,

Denise

Michael Jackson, Farah Fawcett & the Coverage & Fame

As Grace mentioned the connection between Michael Jackson and Karen Carpenter immediately came to my mind at the time of his death as well. I have a feeling that the real killer here was his anorexia, the drugs just made it worse.

Interestingly, the coverage of both Fawcett and Jackson’s deaths have been very odd, in my opinion. Very few of those who gave statements in the death of Jackson seemed very real, instead they focused on his career and their connection to it. Quincy Jones made sure to give the number of records sold and which records he worked on before saying he felt like he lost his “brother.” I don’t know about you, but that’s not the first thing I think about when I have tender thoughts of family members. Most of the celebrity “grief stricken statements” seemed more of an opportunity to show off their accomplishments and boil down the whole of Jackson’s life as if he were a cartoon. It’s no wonder one of the lawyers who represented him during the case against him for child molestation described Jackson as “one of the loneliest people,” he’d ever met. The only celebrity statements that seemed remotely like normal human reactions were Lisa Marie Presley, Brook Shields and Elizabeth Taylor’s.

I have to admit that I am cringing through most of the coverage of his death which seems to vacillate between extreme hyperbole (Ann Courie saying there might not be any MTV without Jackson) and turning him into a convenient way for certain celebrities to plug their own talents and importance. To say it is crass is a far too great of an understatement and the fact that the media (which itself seems to have gone the direction of placing its own head so far up its own butt that it hasn’t seen daylight in 20 years) is fanning the flames of this hyperbolic narcissistic feeding frenzy, at least hear in NPD central, Los Angeles.

And the sad documentary (which is made only that much more sad by Farrah Fawcett’s death) also seems a strange macabre ego massage. While I feel very sad for anyone who has health troubles, it seems an odd way to gain celebrity status, which has been happening as of late, some woman in GB did her death as a reality show, another dude the same, and then it seemed, in an effort to rekindle her celebrity, Fawcett allowed the documentary to be made. I’m not sure what is sicker people watching these other people suffer during the last moments of their life or the desire to be watched while walking through death’s door.

For some reason (being under the weather with nothing else on TV) I found myself watching part of the Fawcett documentary which was an odd mix or sadness, beauty (Fawcett’s journal writing about her experience was engaging and poetic) and twistedly narcissistic. She insisted on going home after having major surgery back from Europe to the US despite doctors’ warnings which I found oddly arrogant. After facing a deadly disease, going to another country for expert help, and one can only imagine facing your mortality squarely, she did the unexpected, she ignored their advice in characteristic stubborn star fashion. the normal comforting blanket of celebrity became a strange disconnect from reality, a retreat into her specialness which she paid the price for on the flight back as the doctors had warned.

It’s odd that we’ve now had a 96 hour news black out because two celebrities have died. One more infamous in recent years than famous, the others most memorable moment in the past fifteen years a bizarre seemingly drug addled interview on Letterman with “art” made by her naked body, published in Playboy when she was 50 years old, well past the expiration date on the public’s appetite for her nudity. She then came home after the expert doctors she’d gone all the way to Germany for who told her not to fly home early, which she did anyway (a typical sort of celebrity knows best sort of attitude which I’ve seen a lot here in LA) to her apartment with a giant Andy Warhol portrait of herself in the living room. She claimed to desire her privacy and was angry about people finding out about her health problems – so why the documentary detailing the nitty gritty of it? The answer to this seems to be a pathological need for attention, which appears to be the bane of the famous/infamous’ existance. Farrah’s diary entries, written and read by her in the documentary were very well written and moving, revealed a lot about the sheltered and privileged life she led when she wrote an entry about never having gone through any real sort of health problem and how she wanted her life back. While she did count her many bliessings she also infered her specialness was given by God instead of understanding that her life, as all lives have lessons and one can not rise above being human to be anything other than as special as anyone else. She seemed to lack the insight of her connection to the whole of humanity and there was a constant feeling the reason for the documentary was an indignance with her own mortality, that somehow fame which had made a goddess out of her, could not give her the one thing that a real Goddess would have, immortality. She seemed to be beffudled by the idea that she was human and had an odd percpective that her facing death was somehow anything more than what we all share. We all die. We all have pain. We all suffer. There is no escaping this, yet there seemed to be a part of her that came through that actually thought she would somehow escape the inevitbale almost as if she had never considered it until she was staring it down. And although she seemed mildly humbled when she was feeling her worst as soon as she got good news she abandoned her inner quest back to her throne. It was very odd.

I live in Los Angeles and at this point I’m not sure if this sick fascination with the “famous” is a function of the bizarre and twisted culture of Hollywood that is warping my greater view of American culture or whether American culture truly has become a tabloid, insanely obsessed, strangely narcissistic fish bowl.

As a way to escape the onslaught of Jacskson and Fawcett endless non-news stream, we turned on Bill Maher. Ironically, he actually did talk about Michael Jackson with Billy Bob Thornton, however when that interview was done MJ would still have been alive. But what struck me like another hammer over the head was the first interview with Cameron Diaz promoting her new movie, where she plays a mother who has a second child to save her first one from cancer (she needed a donor match). Interestingly, Diaz revealed a lot about the strange curse disguised as a gift, known to us commoners as “celebrity.” In her comment she mentioned that people (the public) expect her (or any celebrity) to stay the same as when the public “fell in love” with them. That said celebrity, in her case was when she was 22, which she used as an example.  She then went on to talk rather candidly with Maher about her feelings about marriage and children which she said she understood (only and purely) as a biological need to procreate. Seriously, that’s what she thought marriage and family was about. And she said she didn’t believe anyone who got married thought they would actually stay married and anyone who married held onto the security blanket of a possible divorce down the road.

Wow, I thought, she sounds like a 22 year old girl who was very immature for her age.

In a strange way she harkens back to the ancient archetype of the virgin (not what the virgin became but what it was initially which was a woman who had no need of family or men and was considered complete onto herself – she represented the girlhood phase of femininty just as say the bacholor or Peter Pan represents eternal boyhood. However virgins were dedicated to the Goddess and spent their lives in service to the spiritual path of the maiden).

But back to the point I was making about Diaz’s understanding of, let’s be honest, love. Bill Maher also suffers from the same affliction as she, an inability to really connect with others and have true empathy. You may wonder how I jumped to such a conclusion based on the interview and her rather shallow portrayals on film. Well, I’ll break it down. Firstly, there is partial truth to the need for procreation and for most people this is how they leave their mark on the world through their family. However more important than that basic primal desire is what is masked underneath that desire, and that desire is the desire to be one with another living being – to find connection. Sexuality in most ancient cultures was actually seen as a way to connect with the divine through feeling the oneness and the living spirit of God/Goddess in your partner. Sure, now sex has been turned in on itself to control people with, turning their most primal and spiritual desires into something to be disgusted and embarassed about so the 3rd party religious institution can rid a person of their sin and make them holy again through disconnecting them to the very source of the spirit of the Creator. It is through sexuality that we become divine/co-creators or potential co-creators (at least in a physical/symbolic way)  in the ever expanding universe.

It was interesting to see Maher and Diaz, two sides of the same coin, sitting across the table from one another, each wearing a different mask but unknowingly of the same distorted viewpoint. Diaz representing what she said were the many “opportunities” she had been presented with unlike her parents and Maher, who I suspect never got past some twisted Freudian relationship with his mother, both so empty and insecure and afraid to be vulnerable to anyone, preferring to stay frozen in time and in control at all costs. I say this because one of the greatest gifts of romantic love is being out of control, losing your mind and then seeing yourself through the mirror of your partner who challenges you to be a better human being, not neccessarily richer, or a bigger star, but a more evolved soul, something most of Hollywood is completey unconcerned about. It’s interesting here as an aside to note, that the card representing the film/TV industry is the Devil card in the tarot. I had been told this by several readers and then put it to the test only to find it was true. When reflecting on why this would be I realized that the grueling work schedules and focus on material things and status are the greatest fixation for the vast majority of people who participate in the industry. There is a one-upmanship unprecidented in any other field and a vaccous need to be the most famous of the famous, which of course is born of great insecurity, shame and narcissism (which by defination is a shame disorder but that’s another aside).

I’ve seen (because again I lived in LA for a very long time and you can infere what you want…) a pattern among celebrities or people who attain a level of fame. The best metaphor I could come up with was imagine that these individuals are flowers in a field and plucked and pressed in a book, dried to perfection and kept forever in this state. Their life stays frozen. Their spiritual growth frozen, because no one will confront them anymore for fear of their status (by being friends/lovers or whatever of the famous person) will be lost by a blow off. Even the most evolved souls who truly seek out ways to improve their spirits suffer under the weight of being plucked and pressed, losing their roots and being isolated, stared at, admired from a far for appearance only, and being under a constant microscope.

Fame is a killer, like heroine it is addictive and intensly destructive yet most Americans suffer under the delusion that it’s something to be desired and like a magic potion will solve all of their trouble if only they could be rich and famous like the celebrities they adore.  So many people that go into the performing arts do it for the sake of fame and believe the lie that life will be fixed on the other side. A belief I’m sure Kurt Cobain had as so may other rock stars before him, only to find that wherever you run there you are, and being famous doesn’t change you, you  just have a thousand eyes watching every move you make, judging, reporting and admiring, heightening the insecurity and shame felt pre-fame. I’m quite sure this is why so many celebrities (especially musicians who carve their own path and whose success is more dependant on their ambition than actors whose fates are more at the whim of circumstance) die horrible premature deaths, hooked on drugs, unable to enjoy a decent salad due to body dismorphia, completely alone because no one is willing to be honest (although most celebrities would just rid themselves of anyone honest so that’s a self-created problem) and confused, taken advantage of, but hey, they get to live in houses so big they probably only use one percent of the space they own, and wear clothing that costs more than some people’s homes. Seems like a fair trade.

I want to say here that I don’t believe in romanticizing people after death. Perhaps because I know the souls of all individuals proceed and are eternal, I don’t feel there is any use in lying. When Nixon died he became Saint Nixon, Reagan an Angel. We learn nothing from the lives of those we have had the privelage to watch if we do so dishonestly. I am not criticizing these individuals. I am criticizing the disturbing way our culture fixates on certain individuals to the point of their destruction. I truly feel pity for those who spend their lives chasing fame, fortune, and status. It all too often leads to a lonely life spent chasing a phantom carrot. For the souls who have crossed over, all of them, not just those whom we have seen on TV, may their spirits be guided to the light as peace and love consume them.

Many blessings,

Denise

Neptune, Jupiter Retrograde Opposite the Moon & It’s Effect on Celebrity Deaths

With the news of both Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson’s deaths on the heels of Ed McMahon, I thought of the old wives tale that celebrities seemed to die in threes. Which appears to have some bizarre truth to it. I also knew from memory Farah was an Aquarian and that Michael Jackson (although his sun was in Virgo) had his moon  in Aquarius.

Right now Jupiter the planet of expansion, excess and general bigness (usually a beneficent planet) is retrograde (going backwards and many would say in this position its beneficial elements are greatly lessened) is exactly conjunct Neptune the planet of loss, death, psychic phenomena and spirituality, also music, the arts, photography, the sea, etc. Together they were opposed by one of the lights (as we call them in astrology ie., the sun and the moon) the moon in Leo with a lot of loose squares coming from all directions to this configuration. It’s not a surprise that three iconographic celebrities would cross over during this period. McMahon’s death happened when the moon was in Cancer most likely conjunct his natal Pluto and interestingly both Fawcett and  Jackson were in the Pluto in Leo generation. Pluto ruling death and transformation, sexuality and the underworld. This trigger of the moon potentially conjuncting their natal Plutos along with the Neptune/Jupiter retrograde conjunction sitting near Fawcett’s Sun (vitality, life force, soul) and Jackson’s Moon (persona, emotions, past life, childhood, personality) would be enough to push them in their already frail states to the other side. Ed McMahon with the recent stress of a foreclosure looming over him at his age combined with the planets were too much to fight at his age. (I have yet to look up his chart but I will.)

17 and 1/2 months ago when my daughter was born Neptune in Aquarius was sitting directly on my sun. I knew early on in my pregnancy I would have serious trouble, had a dream of having preeclampsia which happened, and knew that my yet to be proporly diagnosed neurological condition would reek havoc on me. I was vigiliant about talking to a neurologist and squaring away what to do in case I had to have an emergency c-section (my back is fused from a childhood injury). I was the one who caught the preeclampsia by buying a home blood pressure ki,t but to make a long story short, I would not have survived giving birth to my daughter if I had not been psychic and been warned in dreams and through premonitions about what was going to happen.  Luckily, I was able to use the Neptune on my sun for greater psychic clarity telling the nurses before I began to seizure that it was going to happen. But truth be told I’m very sure my dauughter and I would have died had I not been psychically attuned to the situation. And according to my OBGYN she had never come so close or been so scared of losing a patient. She insisted I never have another child as my risk of death was just far too high. I say this only to illustrate the intensity of Neptune conjunct a light in a person’s chart (the sun or moon).

An astrologer friend who looked at my chart that day was in tears when I didn’t answer my room phone. Her husband told me later she was sure I had died based on my chart. So although I haven’t done the charts for Farah and Michael Jackson knowing this intense conjunction was close to them was probably the reason they were no longer able to stay a part of our world.

No matter what the autopsy on Michael Jackson finds (and I’m sure it will show that he was malnurited due to anorexia and died of a heart attack from over-exerting himself with his upcoming new tour) it was his time to pass over as it was Farah’s. Even if Michael had been taking too many prescription drugs I’ve had the feeling for the past five years or so he was near the end of his life. He would have died irregardless of the medications. And of course Farah fought hard but cancer is an unseen enemy that truthfully can only be endured with grace which she did.

May their souls go peacefully into the light.

Blessings to all,

Denise

Obama & Flu Be Gone

I didn’t want to be too hard on Obama. But I really don’t think keeping the statis quo as it has been for the past 30 years is the right way to go. We are in this horrible mess because we need to truly change, destroy and rebuild our system. There are too many old bones rattling around slowing down the wheels of progress, too much power that corporations have and too much reliance on corporate self-policing.

Obama just needs to get in there and do some serious butt kicking the way old FDR did it back in the day. Granted Obama has more hurdles and a country ill informed, and the vast majority of Americans who don’t even understand the basics of the economy well enough to know they are being swindled and lied to by FOX news inc. and as someone mentioned the big start of all this happened during the Reagan administration, when double speak and calling the conservative corporate media “the liberal media” started and all kinds of saying the opposite of the truth to cover the truth began.

Obama has a huge (and rather terrifying) job of reforming a dying beast in front of him. He is an amazing and erudite man, gentile and compassionate. These are all great qualities which I respect in him. I just want him to feel free to be a warrior on behalf of our country and do what needs to be done by disassembling the corporatocracy and re-instating the democracy we are supposed to be.

Hey, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’m finally over the flu despite being barfed on twice this weekend by my lovely little daughter.

Many blessings to all you kind and good hearted people,

Denise

An Open Letter to President Barack Obama

Dear Mr. President:

Most of us wept with joy when you took the oath of office. It was an amazingly moving day, one we won’t forget. Not because you are the first African American president, although that’s a beautiful thing to see, but because you represented the hope of getting our country back.

You see, we don’t want to be an imperialist nation acting as dictators to other cultures. We want all people to get the chance to choose whatever form of government they want, even if its something we don’t understand or agree with. But most of all, we want the tyranny of multinational corporations to end. We want them to stop the exploitation of the earth, her resources and people for the sake of a few CEOs and shareholders can get ridiculously wealthy.

In you we saw our idealism reflected. A hope that we could get out of the mess the Bush administration had tied us in and we could do it with dignity, reclaiming our democracy in the process, and righting the wrongs which had been foisted upon us over the last thirty or so years.

Many of us did things we never believed possible of ourselves to get you elected. I have friends who went to different states and campaigned for you. I myself started a blog partially to inspire people to the call of change you sang out.

I know it’s only been a few months since you’ve taken office and you have done many remarkable things except the one we are all desperate for you to do; change the flow of the river of our democracy. The change you talked about, the change we envisioned along side you. Instead of the trickle up (disguised as the trickle down theory) of economics which has engrossed our land with unabashed greed, relentless ruthlessness and complicacy in the depravity of other countries who take full advantage of their people to the point that even Dickens would shudder at how dark the human soul could blacken in the search for the dollar. And which has drug us into a pit of debt and dependency on governments we should be more than weary of yet like a beaten down prostitute we get back on the street corner and do business with the same John who almost killed us last time in the name of a few bucks.

Perhaps it is a myth that we were once a nation better than this; a nation where the bottom line, bottom dollar and corporate robber barons were not looked upon with tender compassion but reviled for the filthy, money grubbing thieves they were. Where the people had pride in their work, were paid a fair wage, and we expected our corporations to abide by common laws of decent behavior.

That era has certainly died a slow painful death since the Reagan administration. We are now a nation of debtors who make nothing but intellectual property and export only culture to the world. A lot of good that would do us in a war! We are like the slacker kid who has been spoiled by his parents showering him with expensive gifts and when he comes of age to go to college there is nothing left for him to better himself because his parents had no foresight, only to please him in the moment so he would not complain.

Let us complain!

Don’t be afraid of critics or the idiot talking heads on the right. The only thing you have to be afraid of is leaving this planet in peril for your children, letting America fall the way of a Banana Republic, allowing each succeeding generation to do worse than their parents (which has already begun) and allowing corporations to continue their exploitation.

I am an American and in earnest I ask of you this question; if I can’t move to Europe, work and live as I please then how come an American corporation can set up here and export all its jobs? How can, in essence, a corporation not be restrained by the same laws of the land that govern me? If our country will allow people to manufacture wherever they want then I want to move to France and work there. It seems only fair. Why should I pay taxes when corporations find loopholes and get welfare? Why should I, or any of my fellow Americans, labor in their cubicles, solving problems so our jobs can be sent to a country that’s pay scale verges on slavery?

We can all lie to ourselves and say that these companies are helping to develop these countries, but the truth is these people work for nothing. They live in abject poverty and only a few people develop a fat wallet, those who skim the most off the top by exploiting them. This is more than absurd it is disgusting, an abomination – a moral outrage.

I beg of you to pull the plug and make some real laws that constrict these corporations to realistic growth and to realistic profits that include bringing back jobs or risk being taxed to the point where they can’t make a profit by exploiting foreign people. And for those countries that we do want to help develop, lets do so by opening divisions that service only their part of the world, allowing them to have jobs and grow their economies, pay them a fair wage for their work there and let their middle class bloom as ours did when we used this model. The model of making things here in America, by Americans and paying them a living wage.

If we don’t do this we will be a fallen empire and you the last elected president before a series of revolutions. I know some are worried about deflation with the Chinese and other developing countries who have lent us lots of dough, wanting to change the standard of currency. Some are saying our country will be like the Weimar Republic. I think it will be more akin to what happened in the Soviet Union after their fall. A world run by black market hoodlums, were crime is so out of control there won’t be enough police to find all the cracks, thieves, slave traders and pimps.

Please realize that you have a mandate. We voted for change. Change away. Change so big we can’t even imagine it! Be the Shiva of a new world order and destroy all the idiocy that has been built up in Washington so we may remake ourselves in our ideal image. If you don’t we have a million times more to loose than if you find the strength to take these horrors head on and fight them.

I don’t envy you. Your job is extreme, difficult, perhaps verging on impossible. But we all believe in you. We know better than you know yourself, that you can do it if you choose to fight for us and your children.

And I am begging you to please fight for us, our planet, our children and life itself. We are at a cross roads on this planet. I’m sure you know this better than most. Your job is vitally important to solving this and reviving the world from her current heart attack.

Peace and kind wishes,

Denise Siegel

Photobooth Function/Kirlian Photography Experiment

I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with kirlian photography but it is supposed to take a picture or an aura. I have been fascinated by this for many years. Anyway, to make a machine is very difficult and to buy one outrageously expensive. However for those of you who own macs and have the photobook function on it, try putting the effect “Glow” on and then get into a dark room and take a picture of yourself. Do that first and then try projecting different colors onto the image. I found that I was able to get the color I was thinking of to color the image of me. It was very interesting.

Try it and let me know what you find and e-mail me pictures. If you want them posted let me know and I will do so. If not then let me know that too. Please give it a shot. I think mac may have inadvertently given us a way to work with energy through the computer/camera. Let me know what your findings are.

Also I have been reading to excellent books that seem to compliment each other well. One is called How to Read the Akashic Records, the other is If You Want To Write. The writing book is actually a spiritual book disguised as a book about finding ones authentic creative voice. For anyone interested in being more creative in any aspect of their life and being in touch with the divine I highly recommend the book If You Want To Write. It is inspirational, plain spoken and encourages the connection between the self and the divine. Also How to Read the Akashic Records also fosters a personal connection to God/Goddess/Creator/Universe and gives some good ideas for people to follow on how to get in touch with ones own higher self and spiritual teachers (on the non material side) encouraging people to forage their own link between themselves and the truth that they are part of God. Both books do this in different ways. I highly recommend them especially in this turbulent time when the best thing that can come out of this for all of us is a greater understanding of ourselves.

Best to all and many blessings,
Denise

Help!

It will take me a while to go through all my e-mail and catch up on reading everyone’s comments over the next couple of weeks. So please help me to prioritize what everyone finds most interesting. I’m going to add a poll asking you all what subjects and/or things you most enjoy or want me to cover so I have a place to restart. So please cast your vote or add in your own comments at the bottom section of the poll.

Thanks to everyone for their patience through this horrible flu!

Best to all and many blessings,

Denise

Howdy

I’m still on the mend. Unfortunately, my daughter has been ill as well. My husband now has a bit of it as well. It’s been odd here lately. I walked out tonight for a moment and realized the birds were chirping at midnight. I don’t take this as a good sign. It has been bizarrely cold, wet and rainy here. This is the equivalent of it snowing in July in Chicago. It probably has happened but not very often. As a matter of fact it is plain old strange.

Someone mentioned on the blog named Lisa they no longer have a good feeling about Obama. I too feel dissapointed that he isn’t as strong a leader as I’d hoped him to be. He’s not awful but rather he needs to really shake things up and so far he hasn’t taken steps to do this. I don’t think he gets that propping up the old system is a mistake. We need REAL change. This was why I was unsure of him when he ran as a candidate. I felt he was too diplomatic which is appealing after 8 years of the opposite but we really need someone who is fearless in the face of corporate America. I had thought Hillary would be an excellent bull dog for the left but she just turned out to be a bull dog for herself. I do feel Obama is a great man and we need to push him and give him a little more time before we get too upset. He’s a smart man and hopefully he’ll realize that you can’t play baseball with a bunch of hungry tigers.

Anyway, I hope to be back to normal by tomorrow and posting again regularly. Thanks everyone for your patience with my flu and for all the good energy you have sent my way.

Many blessings,

Denise

Random Thoughts..

I hope I didn’t offend Pat. It wasn’t her I was frustrated with just the whole guru thing. As Hope and a Plan mentioned we live in a very shallow culture. I know the generation before mine, the Pluto in Leo or “Me Generation,” often meant well with their spiritual seeking and did push the envelope and change many things for the better however there is a tendency toward the lemming mentality there. In the generation that followed, Pluto in Virgo or anyone born from 1957 – about 1970/71, there is a an almost hypercritical evaluation and deconstruction of everything often to the point where things break down into conflict. For those born during the Uranus/Pluto conjunction which hit from about 1962-1968 we have a tendency to be of the belief that we are so very different no one in the universe is like us, so much so we don’t identify ourselves as being part of a generation. My husband illustrated this the other day when he, in amazement, showed me how Amazon had (based on his past buying trends) managed to figure out he liked some obscure things like Naked Lunch, Grizzly Bear, a certain kind of motorcycle boot and a bunch of seemingly unrelated things. I just laughed. He’d finally had the epiphany that he was a type, no matter how quirky and strange there were others like him.

Now onto California and our mentally challenged governator. I have to say Arnold Schwarzenegger and George W. Bush had me convinced for awhile that democracy wasn’t the best form of government for the simple reason that if you have an uniformed, uneducated, apathetic and unthoughtful sheeplike electorate then people are manipulated into voting for things that go against their best interest and to put it kindly make some very poor choices in the voting booth. The movement to oust former Governor Gray Davis in liu of the governator was in my mind tantamount to another Republican coo. Unfortunately, the voters of California who either worship celebrity or think the idea of an ex-playgirl playmate, pot smoking, Austrian born mega star known for playing a robot was ironic and funny were in the majority and the Republican smear campaign blaming Gray Davis for the energy crisis (which of course turned out later to be a Bush administration gotcha fist job) all worked to get the Republicans in power here so they could once again mess up the economy BIG TIME!

California was ranked the 5th largest economy in the world back then after France. Now I think it’s 8th and falling. Mr. Governator wants to cut education (which is already screwed here because of Dear old leader Reagan’s propl 13 legacy) get rid of police and let a bunch of violent criminals out onto the streets, get rid of the poison control center for children. Sound good? Oh, yeah and besides increasing class size not pay teachers and school administrators or anyone in CA government as much. What a plan. How about raising taxes on douche bags that make over 10 million dollars a picture? Hmmm, let’s see I think we should try that. I’m sorry but why is that the most inane jobs such as acting are the highest paid? And those that actually add to the welfare of others are underpaid? Oh, we’re Americans, I almost forgot. How idiotic are we?

Best wishes and many blessings,

Denise

I know I’m cranky. I’m sick! So please excuse the crumedgeoneous.

Answering Readers…

From Melissa:

Melissa

I haven’t read the book you’re reading. But I spent 27 yrs going to a “new thought” church, & reading books that claimed to have all the answers, such as “all you have to do is believe” or “think positive” or “visualize”,or “send love”. I felt so bad that I was not becoming a “master” who had achieved whatever I wanted, etc. My final conclusion: free will of people is the bottom line. We cannot control what others choose to be, or do. And how others choose to be or do, is a big part of what affects everyone, in families, at work, everywhere.We can get some spiritual helps, & little or big miracles here & there, but it is not the way the self-help authors of recent yrs tend to paint things.Earth is not paradise. I think it is meant to be a school.And I think we all have our own “karma” or soul lessons to learn.We don’t all have the same problems, losses, hurts,or opportunities. Many opportunities are blocked by those who have positions of power. Most gov’t leaders are “power” people,rather than “love” people. It’s a mixed bagof souls on earth. It’s about individual soul growth, which could lead to collective soul growth, but it has seemed to me that most people are content with material well-being, and disinterested in the anguishes of others,as long as they are not affected. Selfishness is pretty typical of most. Not on your website, maybe, but it is prevalent. Do most Americans ache for what has happened to the innocent in Iraq,or our own military, or Afghanistan or now,Pakistan? I think not. I’ve not had the desire to be “negative”. When you get to be 58, and have tried what most of the books preach as the “way” for many years, you have to, if you have any sense, look at what the results are, and examine your experiences. We are all affected,for good or for bad, by the free will of others. I wish I believed differently, but I have had to look at realities,based on experiences. Love,love,love ,does not work with many people. Many people are not “run” by desire for love and peace and good for all. I think we’re meant to learn and grow in wisdom,as well as compassion. Our country is in a sorry state. People prefer denial to learning. People want to believe it is all about pol. party platforms. It’s bigger than that.All individuals have the choice to choose good,or evil. And they choose daily. Where we are now, is a result of individual choices. It’s very sad. I wish people would want to have non-denominational prayer groups going, all over the US and world. I hope you feel better and get well soon. You must be a strong person, to have had such high fever, yet still write. Blessings……..

Hi Melissa,

Man I couldn’t have said it better. Or woman I couldn’t have said it better. You are so right. This is exactly what makes me so very angry about the New Age medicine show. There are some insidious things you touch on which I’d like to go into detail here about, firstly, many of these books have a (truly goofy American) “blame the victim” mentality. Let’s take the Louis L. Hay books in which she basically says that if you are sick, it’s your fault! So if having cancer isn’t bad enough, well that’s because you didn’t speak your truth you fat bag of lard! That’s the general undertone of it. I’m not saying that there aren’t symbolic things in illnesses that speak of troubles in our lives but that still doesn’t make it the person’s fault. Is it a child’s fault if they are severely abused? Well, I guess Louis L. Hay would have to say hey, yeah, for sure! Because as it turns out people with abusive childhoods are statistically proven to be much less healthy and die at an earlier age than those who had happy childhoods. Those damn little brats, I guess they did something horrible in their past life to deserve it. This is just so idiotic. And horrible. This is exactly why the ancients did not reveal their teachings to morons who would do exactly what many in the New Age community are doing to these ancient philosophies, taking them out of context and making everything black and white when the universe is so complex it can’t even be boiled down to the color spectrum we can see with our eyes, there are wave lengths of light we can’t detect, sounds we can’t hear, and ideas we obviously can’t comprehend.

Clearly if all we were doing was paying off old karmic debts we would be off the old wheel in no time but that’s not really how it works. I’m not even sure if the idea we have about karma is correct. I believe we can transcend karma through forgiveness which is much easier said than done and lets not forget that old debts were once created, meaning we are unfortunately constantly creating new karma that has to be corrected. So when is it old? When is it new? Does it even matter?

No. It doesn’t matter. Because karma is just the new way of saying, “it was their own damn fault!.” And failing to become Oprah or Jim Carey (who carried a 10 million dollar check in his wallet until he got one as some kind of weird New Age attraction ritual) because you haven’t been able to manifest incredible fortune, wealth, fame and perfect health through visualization is just the New Age replacement for the old American Puritanical idea that rich people were intrinsically good because God had blessed them with wealth. As it turns out God did not bless Jesus with wealth. I guess He really must have hated him.

All of this nonsense is justification for why the rich should be allowed to get rich without guilt and why the poor should just lay down and die because they didn’t really deserve anything anyway. I have a close friend from India who was a member of the Shadow cast. His father was a famous author and his mother a scientist but when people found out they were of the cast they wouldn’t allow him in their homes anymore. It’s the same idea in that case.

The thing I most want to say in regards to all of this crap is, it’s CRAP! And the universe, God/Goddess/Creator is far too complex and our personal evolution and how it interacts with the collective evolution are far too complex for any of this simple minded BS. In this world their are victims, their are criminals, there is evil, there is good, mostly there is a mix of all that goes between these things that is so tangled up it would take a billion forevers to entangle it. It is not our place to judge ourselves or others. It is our place to find compassion for ourselves and others and to fight against injustice and point out wrong headedness so we can all evolve and grow.

And Jennifer:

Jennifer

Well, Denise, I agree with you again. I also have this book and could only read a portion of it for exactly the same reason.

We are all so individually hardwired by our own childhoods that many of these “archetypes” just aren’t in our brains. I suppose this is where I disagree with Jung. I don’t think that there is a collective consciousness as strong as Myss and Jung have proposed.

Or, how about this? Maybe there are two separate collective consciousnesses. And maybe that is the reason that people like us simply don’t understand the seemingly missing spirituality of what appears to be the majority of Americans today.

Possibly, the people that are on what seems to us a less spiritual path, have more archetypes or less than us.

Maybe these people have an archetype that favors the propagation of their own race, especially their own offspring at all costs – similar to other, less evolved beings that we share the earth with. Maybe they cannot understand the idea of our “tending” the planet, as they cannot get past the concept of their main purpose being to propagate. And anyone: homosexuals, pro-choice advocates, anti-gun legislators, birth control enthusiasts. etc. that could possibly get in the way of their or their children producing offspring are considered “evil” in their eyes. This is the survival of the fittest.

And maybe some of us have another archetype (maybe a God or Mother Earth archetype) that favors the love of all species and the planet above all else. I must admit that there are times that I could see that the earth could be better off with the human race. But then, I love feeling nature and talking with my spirit guides (angels, arch angels, power animals, spirit guides, healing angels, healers of the universe, the Universe, Nature or Mother Earth, God, Jesus) so much that I know that we have a wonderful place on this earth. We are here for an important reason that is probably so vast that we couldn’t begin to comprehend it.

Well, maybe this is the dilemma. Maybe this is the question of our times. Maybe some of us are missing or have extra archetypes.

Thanks for your post, Denise!

Jennifer

Hi Jennifer,

You maybe right. I have often felt that there are two halves to the human collective consciousness. There are two halves to our brains, the right and the left, so maybe we have a split here as well in the over-soul. It does seem like one side pushes us forward and the other back, one is patriarchal and one matriarchal and compassionate. So you may very well be onto something. Like I said earlier, I’ve felt us at a crossroads for a long time and have felt us flipping back and forth. This would explain it.

And Hello:

Hello

As a parent I find myself thinking about my son’s future and what it might look like. Denise, you mentioned in a prior post about the feeling you were getting that we might be past the “tipping point of no return” in terms of the environment, and that the Bush administration was holding back information in that regard. I am not psychic like you but I had a feeling like that about a month ago. The feeling washed over me out of no where.

Do you get a sense that a shift in energy policy will be a successful part of the Obama administration?

Thank you for your compassion and caring wisdom you bring the days I read your Post.

Hi Hello,

I’ve had visions of our demise since childhood but I’ve always had the feeling they were warnings and not absolute. I really feel we don’t have much time, maybe 5 years to be realistic in order to radically change our ways or we will leave our children to inherit a horrible, terrifying place. Honestly, this was a very difficult thing for me and a reason I worked hard not to have a child for many years despite my personal desire to have one. I’m so thankful that my daughter chose me to be her mother however I am terrified for her and sometimes just break down weeping at the potential future she may have to deal with. That being said I have always done everything within my personal power to change things, and everyone doing everything within their personal power is not and will never be enough. Our governments have to change, our industry has to change, the wealthy and powerful have to change in order to save the world for our children. And I think they are betting on having an escape hatch. I do feel Obama will make changes but I feel he’s distracted by the economic situation which is understandable. Bush left our country stabbed a thousand times, bleeding from everywhere while being dragged by a Brinks truck. First we have to get stabilized, stop the bleeding, detach from the brinks truck and then after we live through that go and save our kids. I think this is how Obama sees it. We just have to keep putting pressure on our government and stay involved in environmental issues.

From Juno:

Juno

To comment on what Denise and grace43 have said about what it takes to chnage — it seems humans need to face extreme pain and/or sustained discomfort before they will change. What’s spooky is that we are on the same wavelength again, Denise, because I was in the library 2 days ago and Stephen King’s The Stand fell out of the stacks when I was walking by and I checked it out. I am halfway thru it and if you have not read it it is about a killer flu virus (99% mortality) that the Army has created that is accidentallt unleashed. It depopulates the U.S., laying waste civilization as we know it. Not so far fetched as when the book was written 20 years ago. Gaia may beat the U.S army to the ELE, tho…

Hi Juno,

That is spooky especially since I have the flu!

From Grace:

grace43

Any ideas on how to get people to listen?  I have been on this mantra for over 25 years – writing letters to Congressional Representatives, signing petitions, starting recycling programs at work, talking to people, etc and I don’t think I’ve gotten very far.  I can’t imagine how the folks who have been saying this exact same thing since the 60s must feel.  Sometimes I think the only thing that will make people listen is if a major catastrophy happens in someplace wealthy.  Not a tsumani in Southeast Asia or a tornado in China, but in someplace western and wealthy.  I believe a majority of the rapidly declining middle class and the rampantly increasing poor are mostly convinced but without convincing the profiteers global change is worth it, I fear we won’t get very far.

I am sad to say that rampent, out of control gas prices may have done more for the environment than most environmental efforts in the last 20 years.  I can’t afford another car, but we could do more getting away from using gasoline to run cars than anything.

I do have some hope because after many, many years of protesting against one of the nation’s worse polluting power plants, our efforts finally paid off.  New air scrubbers have been installed and that plant is now over 98% emission free!  In addition, the new system requires more upkeep so an addition 340+ workers were hired in this economy in a poor area that despritely needed the jobs.

We are looking for ways to find employment for people when it is as obvious as the nose on our face that there is a major industry waiting to be born in cleaning up the environment and restoring lands destroyed by strip mining and other disasterous practices.

After over 25 years of trying, I haven’t found the answer.  But now even my father, who never really cared much before, is starting to care.  It’s not much, but it’s a start.

Hi Grace,

Everything you have done has made a difference. It may not feel like it sometimes but it all does make a difference. The fact that your father has started to shift proves my point. He represents thousands if not millions of people like him.

From Wei:

Denise, I think you are absolutely right. We are at a cross roads. I am in the process of learning past life regression therapy and I believe in past lives. If all of us understand that we will have to come back to this world and home, we would take care of it better. The analogy that I think of is that the roads we can take are already marked, but which road we choose is up to us. The destination may change midway, but more often than not, we are set on a particular course. The older I get, the more I believe that free will comes into play if we break our karmic issues, otherwise we are destined to stay on the road we have agreed to be on. The truth of the matter is, if we plunder our resources, there will be nothing left. It is very obvious that we are on the way of destroying ourselves. I am ashamed of the garbage and CO2 I produce daily. Thank you for imploring all of us to do better. It is time for a change in mass consciousness.

Hi Wei,

You are absolutely right. We can break our karmic cycle, it’s actually not as hard as we think. And free will is true, there are thousands of time streams that are possible if even a few of us change we can actually change the whole of things maybe not entirely but enough to shift the future. That is the feeling I have now. I feel people are waking up and there isn’t a defined time stream. We still have a chance to change our world but once we get past a certain point it will be too late.

From Jennifer:

Jennifer

I believe in free-will, but there three books written by Hank Wesselman about his experiences when he went into involuntary trances for a period of his life that are worth reading. I picked up the second book (“Medicinemaker”) at a Border’s in Deerfield, Il in 2000. The author tells the story of a person from the future that he has a type of vision with. He is actually able to see through this man’s eyes. They share the same power animal, and the author believes that he is the man’s ancestor…anyway I highly recommend the books because they give a glimpse into the distant future of 5000 years from now in which the humans are sparsely populated and technology and even metals are non-existent. The first book is called “Spiritwalker: Messages from the Future.” The author is an anthropologist and approaches his experience from a scientific viewpoint, if that is even possible.

Hi Jennifer,

There are actually a lot of books that make those claims (and a lot of scientist/shaman combos who have come before him) also a lot of psychics who have for years been saying that we are going to go through a period on earth were there aren’t many humans. I don’t think this is absolute at this point. I think it’s a bit lazy. We are here for a reason, not to just give up to the powers that be but to change the stream for the betterment of our children and children’s children and for the betterment of all the Creator’s creatures.

From Pat:

Pat

Denise,
The get the truth must listen to those who know. Nisargatta, a spiritual teacher stated the following: To help others one must be beyond the need of help.  Everybody sees the world through the idea he has of himself.  Great teachers know the world is not coming to and end, mother earth will continue, there is no karma and no need of fear.
The mind has no capacity for truth….none.
Ramana Maharshi is also a great wisdom teacher who confirms the above. Fear is nonsense.  Let it go.
P.

Hi Pat,

Firstly I would guess you were born before 1957, My guess is Pluto in Leo because I’ve had this argument with countless seekers in your age group. First of all I am not of the belief that gurus are possible or spiritual leaders. I have been put in that position before and rejected it out of hand. The reason being I believe everyone must find their own path to God/Goddess/Great Spirit and anyone claiming they are more holy than anyone else is full of crap. I do believe that we can teach each other a great deal and that is what we are here for. Anyone elevating themselves to the level of “Great spiritual leader” or “Great teacher” is delusional at best, at worst all I can say is Jonestown. I think by your comments you are missing the point of what I was trying to impart. Fear has nothing to do with the issue. In the universe stars, planets, galaxies, you name it, they all die, they all have a shelf life. To believe that the earth is somehow immune to the laws of nature is inane. In the physical world everything has a beginning and and an end. The idea that humanity can’t kill the earth is just a lame justification for our stupidity, it’s equivalent to saying that cancer can’t kill human beings because it’s not big enough, the body, humanity is too great, too powerful, too intelligent to be killed by a lowly disease. I don’t mean to diss your spiritual teachers but this is the problem: when we let other people think for us we lose perspective, our own connection to the universe and our own personal spiritual development. You have perfectly illustrated why I think following any guru is a horrible idea and why we as human beings should always take what we can from wherever we can, analyze it (that’s why we were given this sophisticated hardware) and find the meaning in it for ourselves. Quoting other people is as empty and meaningless as giving me a math problem to the question, “where does the soul go after death?”

There’s a reason we spend so many lifetimes here on earth. Our brains are wired to follow. We are social creatures but our soul’s goal is to individuate and at the same time find it’s way back to the One, bringing with us new insight and elevation to add to the One/Creator’s being. That’s my belief.

I have been extremely psychic since I was born. After my back was fractured and my disc herniated when I was 12, I spent most of a year laying flat on my back, no school, just meditating on things and reading. I began learning meditation at that time. Of course I taught myself. I tried to become a Roscicrucian through the mail but I was too young to join. I had amassed a huge library of occult books by this time as I had noticed that I seemed to scare people and was often asked how I knew things about people. After a lot of telekinetic events like the radio dial turning on its own while I sat in front of it, the TV flipping on and off and the garage door going up and down all day I started to think that there was something odd going on, this was when I was about 10, before my father died. I’m not going to go into all the other bizarre things that happened but anyway lets just say I had some very intense and scary experiences mostly because I wasn’t trained how to control my ability and other people’s fear made the situation much worse.

After my father died. I made if my mission to become Catholic (my father was Jewish, my mom Catholic and the Rabbi felt it was best for my brother and I to be raised in her religious tradition). And so I read the bible, attended CCD was confirmed, baptised and full on for a couple of years. When I realized this religion had a lot of confliction and that it didn’t suit my needs as a psychic/sensitiveve I looked elsewhere. I went to every friends church or temple in search of the perfect thing. I had Mormons do presentations, went to Buddhist temples, searched nearly every organized religion available in the Chicago land area and nothing stuck. Oddly during this period a woman of the western shamanistic tradition wanted to teach me but being afraid of this because I was still Catholic I refused. I gravitated eventually toward the western esoteric tradition of high magic because it had roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition, called upon angels, used the cabala or tree of life as its basis and used the names of God I was used to.

When I went off to college and learned more about the Judeo-Christian mythos and history I became increasingly turned off to it. Besides my own personal experiences that led me to believe it wasn’t for me personally. I had already started coming to the conclusion that too many of my lifetimes had been spent in other traditions that I couldn’t start all over again with that one. My soul just didn’t connect in a deep way with it. I was drawn toward ancient western shamanism very akin to Native American, Aboriginal and all ancient shamanistic practices actually. I studied with a woman who supposedly (I say this because it’s not like she had a certificate on her wall) studied with a group of people who had kept the ancient traditional Celtic religion and shamanistic practices alive. I studied to be a priestess. The study involved about 8-12 hours of trance work several times a day, outside and in rugged conditions from sundown until sun-up. Doing crazy stuff that seems reckless to me now but I was 18 at the time and fits very much the ancient shamanistic traditions. I came by my religious/spiritual experience through very hard work that had started long before I came to this teacher.

After a year of studying in that situation I started to feel  the idea of a hierarchy was wrong because it played upon the human weakness of ego and  led to abuse of power. I tried to convince the two young women I had brought into the situation with me to leave but they were too involved and as one was my best friend, the other her sister, I felt I couldn’t leave until I convinced them to get out. After a trip to Big Sur in Northern California where were sleep deprived for about a week, not allowed to wear shoes or socks, made to walk alone in the forest at night on visonquests and on one occasion were made to walk on a ledge that was about 8 inches wide with about a 500 foot drop, I finally convinced my best friend that there was some power tripping going on and it boarded on a cult. She agreed to leave with me. Unfortunately her sister did not. The two never spoke again. They have been estranged now for more than 20 years. They were very close and I felt and still feel very badly that I got my friend and by proxy her sister involved with this “teacher.”

I studied with other people who were not power trippers and they truly just wanted to impart their knowledge and I thank them for that but they also would never have called themselves “spiritual leaders” nor would they have considered themselves anything but a simple teacher passing along what they learned for the next person to make what they would of it. They didn’t make money on it, actually none of my teachers did including the intense/head trippy one.

So fast forward to my early 20s out of art school when I began to work professionally as a psychic. I somehow figured out how to channel and was very accurate in terms of my information. About a dozen or so psychics who I worked with ended up wanting me to teach them how to channel as well. Actually what they wanted was for me to channel and they wanted me to be their “spiritual leader.” I can’t tell you how many of these well meaning and good hearted psychics looked at my palm and told me I was going to be “a great spiritual leader,” and I looked each one in the eye and said, “no, I’m not.”

The reason I was so sure about this was because I don’t believe in spiritual leaders. I don’t believe anyone should lead anyone in that area of their life. Teaching people to get closer to their own truth is fine, helping others to get in touch with their higher self, OK. But anyone who claims to have a direct line to God that you have to go through, watch out! That is just the biggest scam in the universe. We are all part of God and NO ONE! NO ONE is more connected to God than anyone else. Absolutely. There are some people who have worked harder on listening and being in touch with God. Some who have a better understanding of the signs given them, some who understand signs and are more psychic. But no one is more spiritual than anyone else. That’s akin to saying I’m more real than you are because I’ve got more muscle so that makes me physically denser so, I’m more physical hence I’m more present and real in the world. How ludicrous! I can’t tell you how the whole thing makes me sick and angry, more than almost anything else because it just leads people to feel, once again, powerless, less than someone else and enables people to unscrew their brains from their heads and let other people fill the space between the ears with their thoughts. It’s awful! Even in what has become 2 of the world’s biggest religions based on the teachings of masters or in Jesus’ case, saviour, if you actually read what they themselves said, they never claim to be anything but human beings who are nothing special and tell their followers to look inside and live their life with compassion and find that connection to God themselves.

I could go on all night about this and I’m sure I will at some point but I have to go to bed, I still have the stinkin’ flu!

Many blessings,

Denise