Humanity Ascends the Cross of Transformation
Welcome to the Virgo Solar Festival and the Pisces Full Moon, Tuesday August 24, 2010 edition of the Satya Center newsletter and Cosmic Weather Forecast. Warm greetings from your Editor, Curtis Lang and your co-editor, Jane Sherry.
Today there is yet another major opposition between powerful outer planets. Saturn in Libra is opposing Jupiter in Aries, so we will all feel the push-pull between expansive ideas, emotions and plans typical of Jupiter and restrictive inner behavior patterns, negative thoughtforms and emotions, and pushy people or demanding relationships, all characteristic of Saturn.
Uranus has gone retrograde, moving from Aries back into Pisces, so the full force of the Cardinal T-Square or Cardinal Cross we have experienced all summer is lessened somewhat. Uranus in Aries is a truly revolutionary planetary placement, and has been creating the feeling that complete and total personal transformation is a total must. There has been a feeling that this total transformation must occur very rapidly, because Pluto has been and is still square Jupiter.
Jupiter in Aries square Pluto in Capricorn expands our awareness of a deep need to restructure the largest institutions and social systems on the planet, and to completely transform our own value systems, goals, desires, and social relations to more closely resemble the sustainable, equitable and spiritual lifestyle, economy, and politics that are needed to help humanity solve our most pressing environmental, social and economic problems. This can be good, except that the Jupiter influence tends to exaggerate the problems we face, individually and collectively, and to create a huge load of tension around the need for needed changes.
The moon is full at 1:04 PM EDST on Tuesday August 24, 2010, at 1˚25' Pisces, conjunct Chiron and Neptune in late degrees of Aquarius. The sun can be found at 1˚25' Virgo. This Full Moon also forms a sextile to retrograde Pluto in Capricorn.
The Sabian Symbol for this Full Moon in Pisces is as follows: "A squirrel hiding from hunters." As this symbol pertains to social relations, this Full Moon sounds a warning to each of us that there are large social forces bent upon violence, which constitute a threat to our well-being.
Even those who choose not to expose themselves to much in the way of what passes for world news these days in the media are surely aware that the drums of war are sounding from one end of the planet to the other.
Israel is adamant that Iran will not open its Basher nuclear reactor, designed to produce nuclear power for peaceful purposes. Israel has bombed the Basher complex twice since 1988 as the project neared completion, and the Iranians say that it will open in "a few weeks".
According to The New York Times America is secretly planning for war with Iran. There is an American carrier group in the water near Iran, accompanied by a single Israeli ship. The announced purpose is to enforce the embargo on gasoline and other "war materials" flowing to Iran. Of course should American and Israeli military personnel begin boarding Iranian ships, that would probably be considered an act of war in Tehran.
The militarization of American society is nearly total, at this point. The country's middle class are being decimated by the Great "Recession". The true unemployment rate is probably around 20% when you include "discouraged" workers who have quit looking for a job. The offshoring of jobs over the last twenty years has left America a nation of clerks and baristas. Deflation appears to be back on the horizon. Meanwhile leaders of both parties prepare to gut Social Security, axe tens of thousands of employees of state governments, and cut back necessary social services in the name of deficit reduction. All these measures will simply add to the deflationary pressures squeezing American incomes and prospects.
America's other two wars in Iran and Afghanistan are going poorly, but the American leadership is determined to stay the course. In fact, America has now sent a few hundred troops into the northern regions of Pakistan, to fight Taliban type insurgencies. This is news because Pakistan has always refused to allow any foreign military personnel in the country at all. Meanwhile Pakistan is undergoing the most damaging floods in its history, with half the country under water and millions displaced from their homes. The government in Pakistan is increasingly dysfunctional and the military taking an increasingly prominent role in relief efforts. There is no doubt that the probability of a civil war in Pakistan is rising by the day, and there is no doubt that the United States would become deeply involved in such a tragedy.
Mexico has militarized its "war on drugs" and the only result has been tens of thousands of deaths, many of them innocents caught in the cross-fire between Mexican army forces and narco-chieftans. It is only a matter of time before this "drug war" spills over into America, so there is an urgency to build walls, militarize borders and demonize illegal immigrants.
China and the United States are taking quietly confrontational roles in South Asia, and America continues its strategy of encirclement, attempting to surround both China and Russia with elaborate, massive military bases, increasing both those Asian countries' paranoid tendencies.
All over the world governments are clamping down on dissent, increasing the reach of the surveillance society they use to manufacture consent for failed policies and wars of aggression, and slashing support for the middle class and the poor as they continue to coddle corporations and the super-rich.
The predators are the trans-national corporations, large financial institutions and super-rich who have seized control of the global economy and are plundering the planet for their own benefit without any regard for the damage they are doing to their societies, individuals around them or the human habitat.
Those of us who do not have vast armies at our disposal, fleets of drone killer aircraft, or a few hundred million dollars stashed offshore are like the squirrels being threatened by hunters in the Sabian symbol for this month's Pisces Full Moon.
People are seeking safety and they are not finding shelter from the gathering storm. Unfortunately this is leading to some very neurotic behavior, primarily paralyzing fear and overt aggression.
Lightworkers and astrologers we know who travel the world and work with many, many people have been telling us of their concerns about the current global mood over the last couple of weeks.
We are seeing people in America, and around the world, turning inward, becoming increasingly concerned with me-first survival issues, and searching for scapegoats they can attack to vent their frustration and rage.
There is no longer any organized anti-war movement in America, yet it is abundantly clear that the US can no longer afford to pursue full-spectrum military dominance of the entire world.
"What would that world be like if the U.S. just gave it all up?" asks military historian Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Empire in a recent syndicated article available on Alternet. "What would happen to us if we were no longer the 'sole superpower' or the world's self-appointed policeman?"
"In fact, we would still be a large and powerful nation-state with a host of internal and external problems. An immigration and drug crisis on our southern border, soaring health-care costs, a weakening education system, an aging population, an aging infrastructure, an unending recession -- none of these are likely to go away soon, nor are any of them likely to be tackled in a serious or successful way as long as we continue to spend our wealth on armies, weapons, wars, global garrisons, and bribes for petty dictators," Johnson suggests.
"Even without our interference, the Middle East would continue to export oil, and if China has been buying up an ever larger share of what remains underground in those lands, perhaps that should spur us into conserving more and moving more rapidly into the field of alternative energies.
"Thirty-five years from now, America's official century of being top dog (1945-2045) will have come to an end; its time may, in fact, be running out right now," Johnson contends. "We are likely to begin to look ever more like a giant version of England at the end of its imperial run, as we come face-to-face with, if not necessarily to terms with, our aging infrastructure, declining international clout, and sagging economy. It may, for all we know, still be Hollywood's century decades from now, and so we may still make waves on the cultural scene, just as Britain did in the 1960s with the Beatles and Twiggy. Tourists will undoubtedly still visit some of our natural wonders and perhaps a few of our less scruffy cities, partly because the dollar-exchange rate is likely to be in their favor."
"If, however, we were to dismantle our empire of military bases and redirect our economy toward productive, instead of destructive, industries; if we maintained our volunteer armed forces primarily to defend our own shores (and perhaps to be used at the behest of the United Nations); if we began to invest in our infrastructure, education, health care, and savings, then we might have a chance to reinvent ourselves as a productive, normal nation," says Johnson. "Unfortunately, I don't see that happening. Peering into that foggy future, I simply can't imagine the U.S. dismantling its empire voluntarily, which doesn't mean that, like all sets of imperial garrisons, our bases won't go someday.
"Instead, I foresee the U.S. drifting along, much as the Obama administration seems to be drifting along in the war in Afghanistan," Johnson forecasts. "The common talk among economists today is that high unemployment may linger for another decade. Add in low investment and depressed spending (except perhaps by the government) and I fear T.S. Eliot had it right when he wrote: 'This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.'"
And that is the best-case scenario, assuming that although arrogant and belligerent American elites and other self-righteous militaristic nation-states do not go to war over religious differences, dwindling oil reserves or control of oil and gas pipelines in Central Asia.
Resource wars are a distinct possibility. There is growing awareness that we are living in an era of dawning resource and energy scarcity, and unprecedented environmental upheaval.
We've mentioned the devastating Pakistan floods.
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not yet contained and the oil rig not yet "killed", but it is clear the results will be deadly to all creatures great and small living on the Gulf Coast or in Coastal waters for decades to come.
The East Coast of America is having the hottest summer in years while the West Coast remains stuck in a kind of cool spring limbo. Summer never really arrived here in the San Francisco Bay area.
Unprecedented fires have swept Russia, and are now consuming vegetation in the Chernobyl reactor "no-go" area, releasing radioactive contamination that has seeped from the ground into the plant life there.
Google "strange weather" and you'll see a long list of stories about panic over weather in Africa, unexplained extreme weather phenomena in Australia, and unprecedented extremely high levels of acid rain in Eastern Europe, China and the Soviet Union.
Yet despite these ominous signs of increasingly warlike behavior on the part of global elites and of increasingly disastrous environmental changes in our human habitat, there is no large-scale popular or grass-roots movement dedicated to peace and environmental sustainability anywhere in the world anymore.
Instead we see racist Know-Nothings armed to the teeth and looking for heads to break increasing their political power in America while elites in emerging nations emulate the American propensity to play the bully toward others in their neighborhoods while repressing their own people's aspirations with increasingly Draconian and violent means.
On a spiritual level, this month's Full Moon in Pisces represents a call to seclusion, and is an opportunity to seek inner spiritual guidance in whatever place is most sacred, most protected in your world.
We are being given a reprieve from the onrush of events this week in order that we may look deep within ourselves and connect to those Sources of wisdom available in the world of Spirit for instructions on how to proceed in these troubled times.
Jane and I were called to Mt. Shasta for the weekend prior to this Full Moon, and I am writing this on Thursday before the Full Moon because we will not return to work until Tuesday when I send out this newsletter.
We are seeking guidance and we will report on what we heard in our next newsletter.
We recommend that all Lightworkers use the Full Moon portal week to consciously confront the painful realities around us and to ask for help in preparing for the coming storm, just as squirrels prepare during summer for the long winter to come.
The Sabian symbol for this month's Virgo Solar Festival is as follows:
"A large white cross dominates the landscape. The wisdom and compassion that only the experience of suffering and isolation can bring."
The significance is obvious here. We are being raised upon the cross of sacrifice and suffering which will reduce our hubris, our excessive pride and self-confidence, which is the primary fuel for our egoistic personality and rational mind. We are being asked to transcend our limited points of view and allow the Higher Mind and Higher Self to align our every thought, word and deed with our Higher Purpose to the greater good of all humanity.
Lightworkers and human beings generally are being challenged by outer events in the world to open their hearts. We are surrounded by images of human suffering from around the world, of fish and birds and animals suffering in the Gulf, and of environmental devastation brought about by our addiction to the neo-feudal oil-fueled militaristic societies spawned by the Twentieth Century Industrial Revolution.
We are challenged to access our own inner wisdom that tells us to act in solidarity with those who are being oppressed by military machines around the world. We are challenged to support those minorities who are being targeted as scapegoats by reactionary elements that seek to shift blame from the system itself onto those least able to resist their aggression. We are challenged to act in defense of the human habitat and to allow ourselves to imagine the unthinkable -- that we are going to have to change everything we consider our normal lifestyle if we are to avoid global war and environmental catastrophes.
This is indeed the onset of humanity's "Dark Night of the Soul", when we realize that all the technology, social systems and philosophies our egocentric rational minds have constructed in the world are indeed becoming the instrumentation of our collective destruction.
It is time to ask in prayer and meditation for the strength to let go of the rational egoistic mind and seek our inner connection to the web of life, to our Spiritual Guides and Teachers, and to our human brothers and sisters who are hungry, bleeding, suffering and dying in the billions every day all over the planet, just so that the current way of life can continue without undue interruption to those privileged to enjoy its finest fruits and highest offices.
It is clear that the leadership in America and in other nation-states around the world has failed humanity, failed to act humanely, failed to exhibit the slightest degree of compassion, failed to open the heart and act to relieve suffering whenever and wherever possible.
It is clear that religious leaders in America and around the world have failed to open the minds and hearts of their followers to the reality of today's colossal world-spanning problems, or to actively pursue strategies of true "selfless service" without regard for proselytizing the unfortunates who receive gifts and aid.
We cannot count on religious or political or social leaders to solve our problems. We must seek shelter from the storm and find our own answers within!
Recently I had a long conversation with a very spiritual friend who is very concerned about world events.
Pointing to some pre-teen boys and girls at our table, he said, “Those children will be drafted into the military, unless something happens soon to change the course of history. This war will go on for decades. Our environment is being destroyed, our health care system is in shambles, our political leaders are rapacious dupes of the corporations who are ripping us off. It makes me mad, but when I try to tell people what's really going on, they act like I'm some kind of conspiracy nut. I work hard at my spiritual practice, but I keep getting discouraged about all this stuff. Why does the world situation seem so bleak? Why is it so hard to educate people about these problems and why do they seem to resist the truth so much? What can I do? I have the feeling I'm witnessing a cycle, a cycle that has probably repeated itself many times in the past.”
Here's my response to my friend.
I think that events in the world reflect this world's status as a midway point between spirit and matter. There are other worlds with more evolved civilizations, more spiritually evolved populations, and other worlds with less evolved and more “barbaric” or more “evil” or more “matter-entrapped” civilizations.
Earth is a magnificent place to work out an understanding of the dualities inherent in material creation for this reason alone.
At this time in Earth's history, the human population is reaching the end of a long period of evolutionary history which highlighted the advances of the individuated consciousness, the rational mind, and the scientific model of reality as applied to the material world, considered as separate from the observer and separate from the world of “energy”, ie spiritual worlds.
Thus we find ourselves trapped in a materialistic culture that worships material success and power over nature, power over other sentient beings, and for this reason is self-destructive in the extreme.
The social structure of this society is a reflection of this moment in evolutionary consciousness, highly structured, hierarchical, and driven by mental considerations of perceived self-interest on the part of small elites who govern on the principles of fear, greed and obfuscation.
However, the next evolutionary step for human beings is to re-establish conscious ancient connections with the web of life, with the extended consciousness of the human over-soul, and with the multitude of spiritual beings in higher worlds, to offer in self-sacrifice their highly developed individuated consciousness to the Higher Self, and to establish the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth.
This is the task of the next Cosmic Day, the Age of Aquarius, as we progress from the depths of the Kali Yuga, and the Piscean crucifixion on the cross of matter into the Dawn of the Aquarian moment of stellar synchronicities, which are the material manifestation of spiritual energies accessible to the human mind, and of the dawning of scientific spirituality -- all symbolized by the seven pointed star.
The Piscean moment, which combined blind faith in hierarchical quasi-tribal religious organizations with a primitive kind of scientific rationalism, can be symbolized by the image of the Pieta, the dying god cradled in the arms of the World Mother, and represents a moment of evolution in which the lesson presented was all about the limits of male deification, left-brain rationalism and hierarchical priestly, kingly, judicial, scientific and economic elites organized on the basis of self-interest.
In many ways the Piscean age was the flip side of the late Neolithic moment presenting the myth of the dying and reborn god, consort of the Great Mother, because the Neolithic moment was about the limits of the female dominant, right brain dominant, Taurean, tribal, agricultural elites dependent upon blood line and blood sacrifice.
Now the new Age of Aquarius represents the moment of the balance of male and female, the image is of the Divine Lovers in an embrace of eternal love, and their Union is the union of matter and spirit, mind and Higher Self, humanity and the web of life.
The Piscean age mental & social forms and structures and those people that inhabit them, particularly the elites and the true believers, work to use force and mind controls of various kinds to damage the emerging new world moment so that they can continue their social institutions and individual privileges. They seek to consolidate their waning power through a series of wars, through increasingly autocratic governmental structures, and through religious fundamentalism that will unite social structures in hierarchical domains fighting for dominance, resource control and ideological and religious supremacy.
There are two ways we can enter this new age as a group, as humanity.
We are currently addicted to oil and to industrialization, to power games and greedy consumption of the Earth's resources without concern for future generations, the web of life called the environment, or the web of life we know as higher worlds, the world of energy forms and signatures.
We can choose to utilize our remaining oil and the rest of our lives to the peaceful replacement of our current deluded lifestyle, consciousness and social structures, as individuals and as groups, or we can choose to squander those resources and our remaining time on earth in fear-based reactive actions which will result in a war of all against all.
Those spiritual forces that feed upon the negative emotions and deluded thought forms of unenlightened humanity may be conscious or merely parasitic in nature, but they work toward the fostering of the war of all against all, and they foster the perception that they and those deluded humans who serve Mammon and material creation at the expense of spiritual worlds are all-powerful and that we who oppose their design must struggle against them by mental and material means in a “war” of good versus evil. This is part of their plan, to suck us into squandering our energy.
My spiritual guides and my research into consciousness have convinced me that there will be a time of reckoning in our lifetimes, in the next fifteen years or so, when humanity will be offered a much more conscious version of this choice than we have now at hand.
Those among our friends and acquaintances who have yet to confront the responsibility of this conscious choice will be offered that choice in greater clarity as time advances.
It is important to have total faith in the workings of the Divine Plan for human evolution, to perform our spiritual practices more and more and with greater and greater single-minded devotion, to advance the cause of scientific spirituality that respects all paths to the Divine, and to quietly work within groups dedicated to humanity's spiritual, environmental, political and social advancement into greater light and greater love, in greater service to the Divine.
That said, it is also true that depending upon the choices humanity makes as a whole, there could be vast differences in the scale of suffering inflicted on the world population in the physical realm in the near future.
Our well-intentioned attempts to educate those around us about world conditions and the current dangerous crossroads of history we inhabit can only be a positive force, if they are carried out without taint of fear, emotional reaction, judgment or desire for revenge against those who would thwart the Divine Plan for human evolution.
My friend said, "I am beginning to suspect that I'm witnessing a cycle, a cycle that has probably repeated itself many times in the past."
Karmically, we all bear memories of past Aeons in which reactionary spiritual forces delayed and perverted the evolutionary current to the detriment of collective human evolution. This trauma created the samskaras (the subconscious imprints created by an individual's past actions) that create fear, emotional reactions, critical judgmental attitudes, cynicism, and the desire for revenge against these reactionary forces today in people like you and I who participated in these earlier cycles of human development.
Unfortunately, these negative emotions cause our friends and neighbors to tune us out when we attempt to educate them. It is part of our job to ask for help from God and Guru (our spiritual guides and teachers) to remove these particular samskaras from within us in whatever way is most expeditious so we can be more effective servants of the Divine Light by being more articulate, less aggressive, and less emotionally reactive, as we explain these emotionally charged matters to others around us, and in that way their minds can hear the information more easily.
For instance, the Piscean Age was hampered by the remnants of the Age of Aries. These remnants of tribal warrior elites instilled tribal warfare patterns into the religious, sacrificial initiatory moment embodied by the life of Jesus the Christ, which was intended to unite all tribes and nations in an Empire of Light based upon principles of non-violence, and adherence to the path of Self-realization.
Nevertheless, Jesus the Christ did inject his etheric body into the etheric body of the planetary consciousness at his Death, and this opened a spiritual doorway for all humanity. Today, if you seek him out in Nature, you will find the living Christ available to you, because of this sacrifice and this successful fusion of the Christ within the Natural world. Call to him in the mountains, in your garden, or in the woods and he will speak to you.
Those of us who are old souls are always concerned, sometimes even fearful, that the adherents of past initiations and past social structures flowering from those initiations will hamper the human over-soul's development.
Nowhere is this fear more acute among highly sensitive spiritual souls than in America. America has gone in a few short decades from a shining city on a hill to a dark and dreary society, exemplifying all that is reactionary and backward-thinking in today's world.
Once the model for political and financial democracy, social justice and fair play, America has become a land of increasingly rigid hierarchies, with remote elite politicians and corporate chieftains purveying a bifurcated global culture composed of the super-rich and the disenfranchised masses.
Once a land defined by moral values and spiritual aspirations, America has become the global purveyor of a rancid culture characterized by rampant consumerism, myopic materialism and me-first egotism.
Once a land aligned with the world's freedom-loving and peace-loving peoples, America has become the global bully-boy, intent upon maintaining its privileges, such as control of the world's oil supply, at the expense of the rest of the world.
So it's a difficult time for Americans right now, and I suspect that times will get more difficult over the next couple of decades.
Americans have set themselves up as political and economic role models, cultural leaders and imperial masters of the world, and the world is now rejecting our leadership.
Unfortunately, America's leaders are locked into a herd mentality with little or no room for new thinking.
Their interests are best served by a continuation of the status quo trends of American dominance, less democracy, mindless consumption, environmental degradation and increasingly hierarchical society.
In all these areas, America is now the country whose leaders, values, lifestyles, political system, economy, and foreign policy interests, backed by the world's largest military force, are most at odds with the legitimate aspirations of the rest of the world. American policies currently stand in opposition to the rest of the world's legitimate aspirations for environmental protection, social justice, worker's rights, abundant social safety nets, financial democracy and international co-operation in the interests of peace among equals.
This is a recipe for disaster.
However, if the citizens of the Soviet bloc could peacefully change the system in a military dictatorship, I think that Americans certainly have it within their power to do the same.
Right now a majority of Americans realize the Afghan war was a mistake, and I believe that within a few years, a majority of Americans will fervently desire to join the rest of the world in pursuing a more democratic, environmentally sound, economically just, thoughtful and spiritual way of living.
It is out of this fervent desire for change that change appears.
Keep the faith and keep your fervent desire alive.
This is the moment of worldwide labor, just prior to the birth of a planetary human consciousness. This is the moment known to mystics as The Dark Night of the Soul.
Will humanity birth a planetary consciousness based on scientific rationalism placed in the service of elite social structures and hierarchical dominance, resulting in environmental destruction and continuous warfare or a consciousness of love and spiritual science, bringing about environmental balance and peace, bringing us untold breakthroughs in every realm of earthly existence?
That is the question, that is the transition we face, that is the opportunity, and that is the clue to the nature of our role, as midwives to the embryonic new World Consciousness.