Near and Now

Death Came Knocking

2011-06-28T22:44:00.000-07:00

The four of us girls were chatting away in the dark cocoon of my Aunt Lydia’s car on our way back to Carlsbad, New Mexico after taking my cousin Grey to college in Las Cruces. It was labor Day weekend and we were on the last leg of an all day trip.

Twenty miles east of El Paso, the fading remains of day lay behind us, a blackness was settling over the moonless, windswept desert. Lights of sporadic lines of oncoming cars danced far ahead of us, twinkling in the distance. The highway was a two lane ribbon of asphalt stretched between barbed wire fences. It rose with the hills and dipped and curved with the valleys. About half the time, we were driving in no–passing zones: suddenly there would be a yellow line and we’d know we were topping a hill.

Grey's sister, Darla, Jane and I were starting our senior year in high school and this was a fun jaunt, taking Grey off to college as a freshman. Darla and I were in the back seat, sitting center and forward, our arms on back of the seat to participate in the conversation. Jane, Bob’s girlfriend, sat up front with my older sister, Carol who was twenty-one, and had been entrusted with driving us for the day in the family car. Carol's husband was at work, her toddler daughter was with Mother. We were all eager to get home.

“I don’t know whether to pass this truck or not,” Carol said as we edged up behind an eighteen wheeler. “There’s no yellow line, but I’m not sure how far we are seeing, since there are so many hills along here.”

“Well, it looks like there’s nothing coming right now,” we encouraged her. "Go ahead."

So she stepped on the gas and eased the Ford sedan into the left lane, rushing to pass quickly. Halfway around the truck we entered a no-passing zone and almost immediately, the lights of an oncoming line of cars peaked the hill right in front of us.

Carol hesitated only a split second before floorboarding the gas pedal, but there was neither time to get around nor to slip back behind the truck. I stared in terror at the headlights hurtling at us, close range, involuntarily screaming “No! No!” Carol edged almost against the truck, riding the brake, and just as it appeared the car would smash into us, she jammed the brake and lost control. We lurched sideways in a tight spin. I was plastered against the door with Darla pinned against me as we spun around and around in a void where sound and time ceased to exist.

After a short eternity, I noticed lights flashing past the car window. I slowly became aware of a disembodied voice insisting, “Stop screaming. Stop screaming. We're okay.” It was registering against a high-pitched scream I hadn’t heard before. Slowly, ever so slowly, I came swimming up from an abyss. Jane was speaking calmly from the front seat. The sound stopped and there was absolute silence, not even a heartbeat. I don't know who had been screaming. It may have been me.

“We really are okay.” Her voice sliced through me like a high voltage electrical charge. I couldn’t seem to breathe or feel my body, just the jolt to my nervous system of her voice breaking that disembodied silence.

“I’m going to check the car, but I think it’s fine,” Jane stepped out and walked around it. I could see her getting out, but it was like watching a movie on TV from across the room. It was far away. Removed. Small. Had nothing to do with me.

We sat motionless for a moment then one by one, we almost fell out of the car, wobbly, like our legs couldn’t quite support us. Edging to the barbed wire fence, as far as we could get from the highway, we shook and laughed at nothing. My teeth were chattering from the overdose of adrenaline, my mind replaying the lights in my face. The moment of impact that hadn't happened seemed suspended somewhere in space, waiting to end our lives when we weren't paying attention. I could feel it out there.

Jane kept talking, chatting about nothing, as if the world was normal and this was just a little respite from the drive. Her voice was an irritant, like a mosquito buzzing in the room when it’s too dark to find it. I wasn’t sure we were still alive and she was running off at the mouth about inconsequential stuff. I couldn’t even follow her conversation.

Instead, I was still caught in that moment of terror. There seemed to be no logical way for us to have survived the head-on collision. My mind kept examining it. Did we actually manage to slide between two speeding cars, off the far side of the highway, continuing to spin while a dozen cars passed within a few feet of us? Or did we crash and our minds continued forward with the story line we had going originally. Were we suspended between the knowledge of imminent death and the impact? Like a limbo? I wasn’t sure. Reality itself had become suspect.

After a short discussion, we agreed that it was best to let Jane drive home since she seemed to be the only unrattled one among us. We also decided that this incident should remain a secret. No reason to worry our families and we wanted to protect Carol from blame. I noticed that although I participated in conversation, I wasn’t sure my body was breathing or what I said. Words vibrated in the air, but did they come from inside me? Everything seemed to be relayed from far away.

Once on the road again Darla and Jane conversed quietly from the front seat, their voices rising and falling but the words were meaningless sounds. Carol and I sat in the back seat while she tried to process her choices and her fears around having done the wrong thing. It weighed heavily I knew and tried to reassure her, we had participated in the decision after all, but all the while I felt strangely hollow. Not really present.

We turned and kneeled on the seat, looking out the back window at the stars and shared how we were marked by this happening, wondered if we were spared for a reason. On the other hand, we questioned if this was what death felt like. How could you tell if you were dead? We decided we wouldn’t know until we walked into Aunt Lydia’s house: if she saw us, we were still alive.

It was late when we stepped onto the porch. Aunt Lydia met us at the door. “Well, the wandering gals came home again. I’ve got you some cookies and milk.” Carol and I looked at each other, a silent high five of affirmation.

But a part of me knew that in some other probable reality, we all died that night. And there were repercussions that reverberated through our known world. . . I have felt the undertow of it ever since. Waiting for the impact . . .

The End of the World?

2011-06-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

There is a wonderful astrology book called The Gods of Change, by Howard Sassportas. I love the subtitle: "Pain, Crisis and the Transits of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto." This seems like a good subject to talk about since we narrowly missed the end of the world on the 21st of May and as every astrologer knows, the gods are restive of late. Okay. I'll admit, I'm iffy about the Rapture saving me . . . so I'll just have to deal with bumptious gods and worlds ending.

I've been roughed up by these gods more than once and I have the utmost respect for their powers. I've learned that I'm such a speck that I can curse them at will and affect nothing except my state of mind. It feels good to vent sometimes. But then I still have to get on with the dirty work of cleaning up the mess and righting my upside down world. From it, I've gotten a bit wiser. For starters, I do less venting and more getting on with it.

And here's what else I've learned about those harbringers of Pain, Crisis and Change.

First, they are going to do what they are going to do. The gods will take you to task at some point in your life. Maybe several points. Scan your chart horizon and prepare for it as best you can, knowing that you still may not see it coming . . . and that it too, shall pass.

Second, understand how they operate and don't expect anything else. When they are through with you, they will move on, winds howling down the canyons of life. They've done their job which is messing with your known world. Demanding your own terms is like trying to negotiate with the Japanese tsunami or the Joplin tornado. They don't listen.

Third, it's truly impersonal. Don't take it personally. Just get out there and get on with life as it is. Even wasps and toads do as much.

Fourth, never argue with the gods (or What Is.) It only makes you crazy and annoys the gods. Your job is to clean up the debris and build a new life. It won't be the same and you will never again take things for granted, believing you are impervious to the vicissitudes of life. Be grateful for the tempering of your character. You probably needed it.

And last, it is for your own good. I need to believe that one or I'd have to shoot myself as a logical response to the alternative. Through these god adventures (a euphemism if I ever used one), I've noticed that certain outcomes can and may happen:

A. You may never recognize the gift you were supposed to dig out of the rubble. So, you cower before life believing yourself a helpless victim rather than the responsible party. (Just remember that the gods don't mess with things that are working for your growth. But crystallize and get inertial, live with situations instead of dealing with them and you step into the target zone.)

B. You may realize you've been set free and see yourself a feisty survivor who dives into life because you know tomorrow you may die, and you don't want it happen with you hiding in a hole, your hind parts foremost.

C. You may recognize we're all in it together and gain a new appreciation of your fellow beings. Ultimately, the choice of perspective is yours. That, the gods can neither grant nor take away. It's all on you.

So, join me and lift your cup to the gods of change, to ending worlds, and the growth they induce. To Life.

Disaster in Japan and Life with Death

2011-04-04T19:57:00.000-07:00

The earthquake and tsunami in Japan reminds me how fragile life is and how quickly it can be snuffed out. Daily, there are stories in the news about murders, fatal accidents of all kinds including floods and tornados, but they seem more manageable when it's one here and there, or maybe a few at a time, with or without pictures. But to sit and watch the tsunami roll across Sendai and realize the magnitude of the disaster unfolding is horrific. There were people in those cars, vans, buses, trains, houses, and boats. Visceral. Haunting.

It brings back memories of 911. The helpless horror of watching the towers fall with all those people in them. I sat and sobbed.

And it's real. I suspect we get numbed by the sheer amount of exposure to death as news, entertainment, or spectacle. It's usually staged or after the fact. I remember when I was in high school, graphic pictures in the newpaper or on tv was condemned as rank sensationalism and in extremely poor taste. Viet Nam news coverage with bloody gore served up at dinner with the evening news changed all of that.

When I reread passages from books like The Power of Now by Eckert Tolle, I am reminded that attachment is the root of suffering. That includes attachment to people, things and to the pain of losing them. To feel it and let it go helps transcend suffering. So very contrary to the general approach to life most of us hold in this culture and probably most societies. People who don't form attachments are considered sociopaths. Or enlightened masters. Is the difference the capacity to feel compassion?

Breathe.

I bought an older house with a large backyard graced by large trees and some cottage style flowerbeds I've put in and I'm really attached to it. If it were destroyed, could I feel the pain and just let it go? Questionable. When my home burned in 1999 and my mother died two days later of cancer, it took me several years to move past it. I suffered. We do get attached in life. Is that good or is it bad? Or neither.

What do you think? Believe?

2012 And Ghost Stories

2011-03-08T22:00:00.000-08:00

Do you remember when you were a kid and loved to scare yourself half to death with thoughts about what might be under the bed or lurking beyond the half open door to the closet? A walk down the dimly lit hall to the bathroom was a trip through the canyons of hell and monsters were waiting to eat you alive.

It seems to be a rite of passage. Things that go bump or skritch in the night and bring up half-choked screams are rather embarrassing by the light of day. But we do have our adult versions of them.

You may remember 1989 when people sold their homes and went to stand on a California hilltop in a circle, waiting for the Harmonic Convergence to carry away the world. Scallion predicted California was going to fall into the ocean by the year 2000 and even made a new USA map of rising ocean shorelines, coming right up to lap at Dallas. People hung onto to his words of crashdom. Subscribed to his newsletter, even when his dates kept shifting and explanations about how things hadn't quite lined up yet, but it was coming. . . and they should have known better.

How about when everything was supposed to quit working because of a computer glitch the second midnight clicked over to 12:01am back in 2000. People had extra water and rations for that inevitable disaster.

This is not new. Back in the years after Jesus's death, the Christians waited for the end of the world. It has many, many permutations and incarnations, this primitive fear bubble-up dread phenomenon. Ohhh, how well we manufacture fear in the mind, produce anxiety to hang onto, imaginings of the unbearable to keep us in heightened alert mode. Keeps us from being bored by the daily grind of life. And...

I think we're still just kids listening for things to go bump or skritch in the night, even by the light of day. We love the delicious adrenaline rush of imagining scenes of disaster and getting all worked up, shivery with the fright of it. Maybe it's the reptilian brain hungering for the daily challenge of battle against leopards, lions, snakes, other humanoids, and the elements, just to stay alive another hour, another day. Battle withdrawl. You can't reason with the reptilian brain 'cause it doesn't think.

Maybe it's Mom's voice telling us to be prepared, and warning of dire results if you don't stay on top of the worst the world can offer up. So you are always waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop ... or drip ... or fall on your head.

Or maybe it's just that we love ghost stories. It makes for great tv programs and sells a lot of books. But when the pumpkin hour strikes, you still have to get in bed so you can get up tomorrow and do these things all over again, like go to work, mow the lawn, pay the bills and watch another scary docu-ghostentary story about 2012, astroids, super volcanoes, perfect storms and even resurrected dinosaurs. Shiver!

Hey, it's entertaining!

Perspective in Difficult Times

2011-02-02T12:34:00.000-08:00

It is blimey cold today. 18 degrees.

Ridiculous for Texas and the long awaited Super Bowl week at the new Dallas Cowboys stadium. It's a shame, such a huge event caught in the deep freeze maw of Mother Nature, dashing hopes for a huge financial boost to the local economy. The freeways were a disaster yesterday with jackknifed 18-wheelers all over the metroplex and beyond, surrounded by cars that stopped and couldn't get traction to get moving again, or worse, slid off the road entirely. Some were there for hours.

Like most folks who don't absolutely have to go to work, I'm basically housebound what with the neighborhood roads iced up and a steep driveway I refuse to negotiate under these conditions. So I've turned to the computer to get some work done (and the truth is, I needed to do it anyway). The only problem is dealing with the planned rolling power outages we're experiencing as the local authorities have gone into an emergency plan, trying to avoid overloading the grid. Thank goodness for a laptop.

A good time to take notice of the world, how things are heating up politically in Egypt and Tunisia, while a great cyclone rips into Australia and middle America is frozen in place. People are taking back their political power and chaos is the price. Mother Nature doesn't bargain about power. There's good news and bad news. As always.

But the sun rises every morning and sets every evening, right on schedule. l can get around again after several years of agonizing pain because my friends helped me through two surgeries last year and I'm now the proud owner of two new hips that guarantee a pat down in every airport and security checkpoint I pass through! Hallelujah! I can get through them under my own power and even shake my bootie if I'm so moved.

Yes, it is frigid. And the visitors to my little bird "watering hole" have never been more diverse.

Results Already

2009-08-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

Re my last post, I said I'd let you know how it turns out: I got a call four days after this post from a friend I haven't heard from for about four years. He gave me the name and phone number of his daughter who is having twins and she wants a mural painted on the nursery wall. (I've met with her and will send her sketches and a color palette.)

The next morning I had a call from a client wanting an update on her astrology chart. Both these are paying jobs. This mental/emotional approach works!

I've done the chart and have begun planning and research for the mural. . . and am happily expecting more phone calls or emails as I continue the with-the-flow thinking and feeling.

Saundra_M

Creating My World

2009-08-15T12:41:00.000-07:00

I'm reminded again how important it is to use creative visualization and emotional investment in creating my reality. What brought this on was because in my imagination, I've been previewing the end of my world as I know it, otherwise known as worrying about my financial situation. It felt like the world was closing in on me.

As an antidote, I decided to re-read the Abraham books for a crash course correction. It's obviously not going to self-correct, so I knew I'd have to do something different. Truth is, I've worried about money since I was a child, taking on the predominant concerns in my family of origin. Old habits of thought and feeling are hard to reroute without a map of the new terrain, and that's what these books provide.

I'm using metaphysical principles to consciously change how I think and feel about money issues. It's like it says in the Bible, "As a man thinks, so is he."

I'd like to take it one level deeper and say "as a man believes, so is he." It's the beliefs that create the reality. Beliefs are simply thoughts held and run so frequently that they become ruts. As I believe myself to be financially impoverish, so I am.

And to move beyond it, I can't just think differently once in a while. I have to take it on, heart and mind: feel myself to be comfortably well off while knowing what's actually in my bank account. It's called "acting as if it were so," but the kicker is it can't be mental pretend. It has to migrate to the emotional matrix.

The next step is to be able to relax with what is, expecting and believing it is changing, without my having to take physical action to force the changes. Now that's a stretch! Long ago, I bought into the dominant belief pattern of most of the world, which says you have to set a goal, plan, work hard and MAKE things happen.

But as Abraham says, "the real work is in changing your vibration," meaning the thought patterns and emotional responses. Further, the book makes it clear that you gauge how far you've progressed by how emotionally comfortable you are. You are looking for emotional relief and ease.

I'm getting there. It's a question of inner attitude and my feeling levels. I have managed to move from chronic anxiety to calm ease, but I still need to get to happy expectation. In the process of making these adjustments, I've learned I can change my emotional responses by changing my attitude toward the offending subjects.

I'll let you know how it turns out. I've had successes in other areas using these principles, and I realized it was time to tackle this one. In the meantime, I highly recommend the Abraham-Hicks material along with the Louise Hay products if you truly want to effect changes in various areas of your life.

Saundra_M

You Can't Not Learn!

2009-07-31T07:00:00.000-07:00

Recently while emailing my daughter-in-law, I started to write "we learn from our kids" and realized it was too limited, so I extended it mentally to "and our kids’ spouses." Obviously that was too limited, as well.

Then it hit me. We learn from everyone and everything. The how doesn’t matter. It could be through a conversation, a book, a website, or a more in depth relationship. It could be through observation, a book, or a tv show. It might be from sitting and letting the knowing happen.

We might be learning positively or negatively, consciously or unconsciously, but we’re learning on a constant basis. We are self-programming computers with data input from the environment that’s writing to our internal hard drives 24/7.

Sounds cool in theory and maybe a bit overwhelming. Here’s some real life possibilities.

You may learn where one of your mental/emotional/belief boundaries is due to a conversation or a comment that violates it: and something you may not have consciously realized before.

You may take in some new tidbit of information that clicks with your needs.

You might learn a major life lesson on any given day.

Hopefully, you learn from your mistakes. (If not the first time, then sooner or later!

When I started paying attention I was amazed at the learning opportunities, large and small, that present themselves all around me. And I don’t want to lose them, at least not on a conscious level. So, before going to bed at night, I’ve found it helpful to make notes on things I’ve learned for the day. Some days are veritable feasts. Other days are a little lean. Just think about it… can you imagine a lifetime of such notes!

For fun, some things I learned today:

A friend told me the name of an inexpensive software that writes from spoken language, and where I can buy it.

If I leave the cat food sitting for an hour, my cat is likely to revisit it and actually eat what he ignored earlier.

If I catch the mats in his fur (he’s a longhair cat) when they first start forming, I can gently pull them apart with my fingers, then brush them out.

Rereading some old letters my daughter wrote while she was at music camp taught me lot about her as viewed from my more mature perspective today. It shed light on some of her inner workings and shifted my awareness of her needs.

From that I recognized that even though I think I really know someone, every person is a vast field of being that will always hold mystery for me. We are small universes colliding in space and slipping through one another with most of our inner matter untouched.

What have you learned today? I’d love to hear!

Saundra_M

Gratitude and Appreciation

2009-07-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

I've learned a lot about appreciation and gratefulness in the last ten or so years, and most especially in the last two years. And one of the most important lessons I've learned is to put it out there: tell people how much you appreciate them, how grateful you are for their acts of kindness, caring, friendship. It's good for the soul -- yours and theirs.

We all need help from time to time and the importance of friends and family in time of need can't be overstated. Which brings two things to mind for me: the old saying "You get to Heaven leaning on the arm of a friend," and that great song, "Lean On Me."

Last year I had to lean on others, which was very difficult for me. I have always prided myself on my self-sufficiency, on being capable, and I hated to ask for help. But by June, I had reached a point where I could barely get from my bedroom to the kitchen on crutches. Thank goodness they offered help and I had the good sense not to refuse.

I have serious issues with my hips and unbeknown to me, I was also stressing my body with the diet I was eating. I thought it was a healthy one and by most standards it was. But not for me. It was causing so much pain that my body was literally shutting down. At times I lay and cried because there was no relief from the relentless pain that had spread slowly over two years from my hips to encompass my legs, my back, my shoulders and even my hands. The only part of me that didn't hurt was my head. I was able to do less and less. As a last resort, I went to an allopathic doctor. He was good and truly wanted to help, but the pain killer he prescribed barely scratched the surface. A different one made me so dizzy I was afraid to try to walk. He sent me to a specialist, but it took almost six months to get in, and another two for the first procedure to ease the hip pain. In the meantime, I continued looking for alternative healing methods.

In the several months I was incapacitated, my daughter, Heather, came over and vacuumed and cleaned for me. She went to the grocery store for me. She came and got me and drove me 45 minutes to a naturopath, who, I swear, saved my life. I knew about him because of friend named Glenna, who called, shared her experiences with me, and loaned me her natural health books. Tawana, who had taken many credits at a homeopathic school, came over, spent almost a whole day with her books and remedies, helping me figure out what might work in this situation and gave me the remedies.

Shari, my next door neighbor watered my yard, carried out my garbage and recycle bins, and brought them back up to the garage for me, week after week. She also made grocery store runs for me. Susan came over all summer and fall after work, and mowed my yard. I have over a third of an acre lot, so we're not talking postage stamp! When she couldn't mow, Mira drove 45 minutes to do it. Susan had also helped me financially in numerous ways, including buying my meals when we'd go out. Satya came from Virginia and stayed two weeks, helping me while taking care of her own business concerns that had brought her here. My son Brian helped out financially from out of state, and around the house and yard when he visited.

Randall, Andy, and Mark carried five gallon jugs of water in for me, moved plants and furniture. Ina brought over a sack of special foods and a diet that helped me eliminate the worst of the pain. Paula gives me massages in return for face reading lessons and astrology readings.

It took a village to bring me back from the brink and I learned the joy and humility of allowing people to care, to help, to show their love. It changed me.

I've learned to be grateful, to say so immediately and often, and to be ready to give as much as I'm able to in return. When I do these things, it's amazing how willing others are to offer a hand, a shoulder, or even a back, time and time again. Honest thank yous and telling people how important they are to me, and how much I appreciate their help gives genuine strokes and builds a closeness you can't create any other way.

This kind of interchange from the heart expands relationships to a new depth and height. We should all learn that simple lesson and grease the wheels of mutual support and mutual appreciation. We build heart connections that last as long as consciousness exists.

And because of this experience, I'm now convinced that pure love is at the core of human nature.

Saundra_M

I Am The River

2009-07-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

I dwell in a canyon of my own making.

I am the river and I flow without end
from source to sea to sky in an unbroken round.
I spring from the soil of my own being
and collect the harvest of passing storms,
the thaw of frozen seasons,
the glacial melt of forgotten winters,
and run irresistibly to the sea.

I am the river and I flow without end,
sinking to untold depths, penetrating my bedrock of being,
slipping underground to rest unseen, then rise again,
cycling through drought and flood, all in its season.
I sculpt a path through layers of resistance
cutting an ever-deepening canyon for my shores.

I am the river and I flow without end,
shaving a delicate edge, curved to perfection
in sandstone shrines to Mother Earth
where even the brazen Sun cannot enter directly
but must send gentle emissaries to reflect his glory,
slipping through with an averted gaze.

I am the river, and I flow without end,
sometimes singing softly against willows nestled
in the curve of my reach as a child to the breast,
sometimes slithering through cattails, whispering privately
in back eddies, bawdy and brackish in fecund slime.
Sometimes passing in the silent depths of moonless nights,
void as primordial space, pregnant as winterseed,
fallow as fetal mind, before light, before life, before time.

I am the river. I dwell in a canyon of my own making.

— Saundra Moore Williams
All rights reserved

Learning from the Ancients

2009-06-29T22:00:00.000-07:00

Astrology never ceases to fascinate me. Some brilliant minds are at the forefront of the astrological community today, and the insights they offer into world events, economic trends, personal insights, and dead-on views of one's own life through astrological charts are nothing short of amazing.

Last Sunday I logged on to a wonderful webinar offered through Kepler College, and presented by Rob Hand, one of THE big names in astrology. It was about house rulers in the medieval system, using the so called traditional rulers to link houses of the chart. In the ancient system, each planet ruled two signs and thus, two houses in a chart. I know that's probably more information than you non-astrologers want, but you need it to set the stage.

Linking houses and seeing where the rulers end up in the chart is descriptive of how you operate in life and how it will work out in your life. I promptly tried it out on myself and half a dozen charts of family and friends and was amazed at the results.

By way of explanation, the houses of a natal chart represent areas of life, such as:

- career - 10th;

- how you make money - 2nd;

- communication, writing - 3rd;

- contractual partners and one-on-one relationships - 7th;

and so on. This is a gross simplification of the representational areas, but it gives you the basic idea of what it means. When two houses have the same ruler, those two areas of your life are permanently joined at the hip and how that will work out in your life is shown by where the ruler sits in the chart.

As an example, my second and third houses are linked, so that indicates (among other things) that I would make money (2nd) through communications and writing (3rd). The joint rulers (Sun and Moon, which in that system work in tandem) are, Sun in the 11th house (organizations, the collective) and Moon in the 6th (employment, daily routine). I worked for a major retailer (an organization - 11th), writing and publishing a magazine to the field (the collective). It was my employment and my daily routine(6th). Just that little bit showed me how clear this system is.

How things work out example: Both the Midheaven and the 10th house are indicative of career. My chart shows I would be self employed because the ruler of the midheaven is in the first house of self. I have been self employed for 13 years. The tenth house (career) has a common ruler with the 7th house of one-on-one relationships and contractual relationships. Part of my career (10) has been very much about both contract work and one-on-one relating (7) - reading faces as a professional under contract, and relating to the attendees of the events, one-on-one. And before that, I was doing contract work, preparing other people's books and brochures for publication. My midheaven is in the 9th house of publishing.

What's so incredible is every chart will tell things like this about every area of your life. It has been very informative as to how descriptive the method can be and how accurate.

Those brilliant minds hundreds of years ago certainly knew what they were talking about.

Saundra_M

Alchemy

2009-06-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

I just read a wonderful little book entitled The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian author whose works are international bestsellers. I'd call this one an allegory of everyone's life, the destiny every one has, but which most of us fail to recognize and embrace. James Hillman, in The Soul's Code, calls it one's Daemon. Joseph Campbell refers to it as the solar hero's Call to Adventure. Coelho calls it one's Personal Legend.

I like that.

We accept the story that we are all created equal, but when it comes to the idea of becoming a legend, most of us feel unequal. We tend to think that other people can become legends, but not me. The truth is, this legend is simply your own life story when it is truly lived from the heart, believing in your own dreams and plunging into the adventure with no holds barred. The sad fact is, most of us hide behind reasons and fears, caution and comfort rather than experience the perils and growth of the journey. We fail to realize the joy is there, too.

It's all about fairy tales and fables, which are, after all, stories to inform the inner listener, to inflame the heart to action and the awaken the soul to its own journey. The alchemy happens only when the hero completes the journey, accomplishes those impossible tasks with improbable helpers, and gains the treasure. The trick is not to be tricked into settling for a lesser reward that the true alchemical transformation.

There's a quote in the Bible roughly to the effect of, "when you find a treasure in the field, sell all you own and buy that field." A parable, of course, but about seeking the treasure of the heart, of the soul. Coelho illustrates this with grace and simplicity in a classic tale well-told and so worth the read . . . and taking to heart!

I'm reopening the book of my own legend and stepping into my own adventure. . . even this late in life. Hey, I'm still breathing, there's time.

Saundra_M

Reflections on NatGeo film

2009-06-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, a group of us convened at a friend’s house to watch a NatGeo presentation that Mark had Tivoed. I had no idea I was about to view one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen. And one of the most sobering. A few of the points you could quibble over. Most of it you can’t.

Some of you may have caught it when it aired on June 5. It’s called HOME, The Adventure, and it explores the visual richness of our planet and evidence of its current condition, the effects of human exploitation, and some ideas for correcting the damages done before it’s irreparable in the near future.

The amazing part of the visual experience is the absolutely stunning aerial photography. It affected me on a deeply aesthetic level with wash after wash of glorious patterns, only visible when you get high enough to see them: such as people hand-harvesting grain sheaves in the far east; flocks of flamingos flying across a cobalt lake below; patterns of ice on the sweeps of Siberia, alluvial flows that blossom like silt flowers. They look like masterful abstract paintings, worthy of a museum wall.

The overall impact is a broad perspective of this wondrous world we call home, its incredible beauty, its infinite variety, its intricate interconnectedness, and its utter dependence on a balance.

The theme could be summed up in a quote from the film: “The engine that drives (life) is linkage. Everything is linked to something else. Nothing stands alone.”

The message is that we ignore such a basic fact at our own peril. We are following in the footsteps of the Easter Island civilization on a global scale. To wit, we are failing to factor in the consequences of overpopulation and using up all our resources without planning/executing a method of renewal and responsible stewardship.

The statistics presented are often surprising and support the broad theme such as:

• 20 percent of the people are using 80% of the resources
• Over a billion people go hungry every day
• The air we breathe depends on trees to absorb the carbon and produce oxygen
• Half of the major forests have been cut down, much of it to produce soybeans,
half of which are used to feed cattle.
• The world’s population has tripled in the last 60 years
• All the ocean’s fishing areas are depleted
• Most of the agricultural soils have been depleted
• The water tables are dropping worldwide
• Mineral and oil extraction processes use massive amounts of water
• Coral reefs are absolutely essential to the balance of life
• One third of them have been destroyed and the rest are at risk
• Almost half the world’s population lives on the edge of a continent
• If the glacial ice continues to melt at the current rate, the sea levels will rise 4
meters 13+ feet) by 2016. (There will be a massive displacement of people)
• Climate patterns are changing, affecting food production worldwide
• As the polar ice caps melt, they release the methane gas trapped in the ice. Our
atmosphere will become unbreathable.

We have approximately ten years to correct our part of the equation. After that, it is irreversible.

My questions are: do we have time to wait for the political processes to grind to a possible decision to act? What can we do individually?

You can watch the entire film on YouTube and draw your own conclusions. I recommend it. Here's a link:NatGeo Home.

Saundra_M

Perception and Reality

2009-05-17T22:55:00.000-07:00

Why the blog title, "Near and Now?"

First of all, and perhaps most important; because it was the sixth title I thought of and the first one that wasn't already taken. Secondly, because I liked the implications of it and the word play.
It opens doors to concepts like the following.

Everything that happens to you happens in your presence and in the present. So everything is always Near and Now. All else is a filtered memory or projected conjecture, subject to interpretation and perceptive translation.

Of course that's a description of personal reality. It's a mind construct.

According to the mystics and new age gurus, it's all a mind construct. Every thing or condition that we believe exits is actually nothing more than a mind construct. We create our own reality and call it real. Together, we co-create overlapping, common mind constructs and call that The Real World. Yet, no two people ever see The Real World exactly the same.

So what's really real? Nothing? Everything? Whatever you decide for yourself? It's a question that has no definitive answer in our "real" world.

What I find terribly humorous about it is that we're all alone in this together, and even the alone/together concept is an illusion because at the base of it all, we are One, dreaming dreams of separation and time.

Be happy and well.

Saundra_M