Join in the Global Meditation June 11 to Restore the Earth
Welcome to the June 7, 2006 Festival of Humanity edition of the Satya Center newsletter. Warm greetings from your Editor, Curtis Lang.
The Moon is Full at the 21st degree of Sagittarius on June 11, 2006, 2:03 p.m. EDT, and conjunct dark Pluto and the Galactic Center. Pluto in Sagittarius supports the transformation of our culture’s most basic belief structures. When Pluto is conjunct the moon, which is the seat of our personal subconscious beliefs, and also the Galactic Center, the time is ripe for a total shift in consciousness, a transformation of personal and cultural values on the broadest possible scale.
“The greatest enemy of truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive and realistic,” explained John F. Kennedy. “Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forbears.”
We live in an age of decaying myths. We live in an age of increasing religious fundamentalism, which plagues the great traditions of the world, Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Hindu alike. This resurgence of militant fundamentalism threatens to destroy democracy in America and plunge the world into a new Dark Age of global religious warfare.
“I am convinced that the root of the spiritual problem we face today is the intense competitiveness we have injected into religion,” charges Arun Gandhi, grandson of the Great Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi. “Each of us believes our religion is the best and it is incumbent upon us to save the world by converting everyone else to our mode of worship.”
We live in a global political culture shaped by three world wars (WWI, WWII and the Cold War) when 30 million people died in support of Messianic leaders seeking to impose ideological straitjackets and Utopian economic systems, capitalist, fascist and communist, on the entire world.
In America, we live in a heedless mass consumer culture, refusing to acknowledge the new realities of global warming and peak oil. We live on the cusp of global transformation, when the entire framework of cultural assumptions underlying the Industrial Age is crumbling beneath our feet.
The dead hand of the past threatens to throttle the newly born age in its cradle.
It is time for each of us to examine our belief systems and to be prepared to discard old and outmoded ways of thinking and being in the world. We can also benefit from examining the many types of unconscious group agreements and beliefs we have incorporated into our worldview, because the time has come to analyze all these unexamined cultural preconceptions very carefully and to determine whether or not they are still serving our best and highest good and the best and highest good of the entire human tribe. If we find they are no longer valid and of service, then it is time to discard them, despite the internal anguish and conflict this may cause.
The Sabian Symbol for 21° Sagittarius is “ A child and a dog wearing borrowed eyeglasses.” This symbolizes the role that intuition has to play during times of cultural transformation. As we scrutinize our unconscious personal and collective preconceptions and mental maps of the world and find them to be less than adequate guides to present day realities, we must be willing to try on new ways of thinking, seeing, and being in the world. Although new personal and cultural viewpoints more in alignment with present day reality have not yet been fully developed, it is necessary for us to “borrow” eyeglasses from the future and attempt to align ourselves with emerging new viewpoints on our personal and collective realities.
This Full Moon was known to the Algonquin Indian tribes as The Strawberry Moon, that festive time of year for picking ripe strawberries in the field. Europeans called it the Rose Moon, and this is the month when roses appear on the East Coast of the United States as well.
June 11 is the Gemini Solar Festival called the Festival of Humanity, also known as World Invocation Day or the Festival of Goodwill. This is the third major spring festival of the Global Wisdom Tradition honoring the Ancient Wisdom Teachings of the East and West. The first two were Easter and Wesak, taking place at or near the Full Moon in April and May.
Join this global full moon meditation to align with the Forces of Reconstruction on World Invocation Day.This is the last of the three major planetary festivals which occur in the spring and are celebrated around the world by students and teachers from all spiritual traditions.
Every year, since 1952, people in all parts of the world have celebrated World Invocation Day on the day of the Gemini full moon. It is a global day of prayer and meditation when people of different spiritual paths join in a universal appeal to divinity, using the Great Invocation.
If you are unable to meditate at the exact time of the full moon, choose a time within 12 hours before or after the full moon to be part of this global meditation.
Simply sit alone, or join with other like-minded individuals and visualize the planet Earth surrounded by a grid of light. 
The Christ Consciousness Grid, actually a set of seven grids in rainbow colors that surrounds the Earth, is in the form of a pentagonal dodecahedron with icosahedral caps. The Grid is said to play a crucial part in the quickening of humanity’s evolving spiritual consciousness at this time.
”Sacred geometry is the expression of geometry related to the evolution of consciousness, mind, body, and spirit in geometric terms,” explains Ronald Holt, Director of Flower of Life Research. “True sacred geometry is not just static angular forms. It is organic and living -- it is in constant evolution (transcendence) or devolution (materialization), ascending or descending from one form to another.”
“So the grid of the planet is an actual geometric and energetic expression of the principles of creation that can serve as a bridge between our planet's physical and energetic manifestations. To get an idea of how vast the grid actually is, let's look first at our planet. On this planet, in order for the smallest particle, element or compound to congeal and materialize, it needs a blueprint and a template for its construction and purpose of existence.”
By tuning in to this matrix of light and consciousness on June 11, and by consciously focusing our intent to unite our energies with all individuals of good will around the world during a day of global meditation, humanity opens a door into the spiritual world, through which the many Ascended Masters of the Wisdom Schools both East and West can pour blessings and specific guidance appropriate to the time and place and situation of each and every person taking part in World Invocation Day.
At the Goodwill Festival the Spiritual Hierarchy, guided by the Christ, showers the Will-to-Good upon Planet Earth. The New Group of World Servers receives and distributes these energies into the world.
So, join in the worldwide meditation, asking that all individuals be given the grace and guidance they need during this coming year to fulfill their loftiest spiritual goals.Pray that all those working for peace, justice and restoration of this Garden Planet be given the will forces, the courage, the energy, the endurance and the opportunity to be of maximum service in the world.
Connect through the Christ Consciousness Grid with your fellow Lightworkers, feel their presence energy, and seek to unite with them during this festival.
Open yourself to receive the blessings being poured down by Humanity’s Wisdom Teachers, both incarnate and disincarnate, and prepare to receive messages of loving wisdom designed to help accelerate your spiritual and material progress throughout the coming seasons of summer, fall and winter.
Place a flower on your altar or near your place of meditation. Place a bowl of water on your altar or near your seat. If you have some water you gathered during the Wesak Full Moon Festival, use that water at this time as an offering to Grandmother Earth.
If possible, light a candle to represent the kindling of the spirit, the awakening of the Higher Mind and the flame of compassion lit within the open heart. You may also burn some incense or sage, to create a spiral pathway from earth to sky, sending an offering to those Beings of Light who join their energies to ours during this Full Moon Festival.
Say the Great Invocation aloud:
“From the point of light
within the mind of God
let light stream forth into our minds.
Let light descend on Earth.
From the point of love
within the heart of God
let love stream forth into our hearts.
May love increase on Earth.
From the Center
where the will of God is known,
let purpose guide our wills,
the purpose which the Masters
know and serve.
From the Center
which we call humanity
let the plan of love and light work out,
and may it seal the door where evil dwells.
Let light and love and power
restore the plan on Earth.
Let light and love and power
restore the plan on Earth.
Let light and love and power
restore the planet Earth.”
Then sit in meditation, for as long as is suitable for you.
Finally, when you are finished, thank your fellow lightworkers, the Spiritual Guides and Teachers of the Wisdom Schools of the East and West, and Grandmother Earth. Drink the water in your bowl, save for a small amount, which you may sprinkle on living plants or grasses, preferably outside your dwelling, as a final offering to the Earth, and to the devas and nature spirits who work so diligently to optimize, structure and regulate the forces vivifying the natural world.
A Message from Steve Nation
“This year a number of service groups in the Americas are supporting a 24-hour Vigil for World Invocation Day.
“Before the Vigil, individuals and groups from North, Central and South America are invited to choose a particular period or periods of time when they agree to take responsibility for holding a meditative focus and sounding the Great Invocation on the quarter hour. Choosing the 45 minute period from 10 - 10:45 am, for example, will involve use of the Great Invocation a minimum of 4 times (10.00 am; 10:15 am; 10:30 am; 10:45am).
“The peoples of the Americas (including Hawaii), live in 8 different time zones. The Vigil will operate for the 24 hours from midnight to midnight of June 11, in each time zone.
“On the rhythmic pulse of every quarter of an hour there will be groups of people from across the region sounding the Great Invocation.
“Will you join in this use of the Great Invocation throughout the Americas on Sunday June 11?
“A chart will be prepared showing those covering each time slot so that we can link with others holding the focus. The chart, which will cover all 8 time zones, will be available in English by email and will shortly be able to be downloaded as an Excel file on the web.
“For further information on this Vigil please email either: bvr@ciudad.com.ar (Spanish & Portuguese) OR info@invocacion.org (Spanish, Portuguese, English) OR WIDVigil@earthlink.net (English only)
“IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE PART OF THIS INITIATIVE please send an email in English to WIDVigil@earthlink.net OR in Spanish or Portuguese to bvr@ciudad.com.ar
“In the email state:
1. Your Name
2. Your Country
3. Your Time Zone (for example: USA - Eastern; Canada - Nova Scotia; Mexico - Mexico City)
4. Your email address
5. The times you wish to participate: (the minimum time is 15 minutes - for example 10.00 - 10.15 am; there is no maximum time; you can choose a number of different times, for example: 10.00 - 11.00am, 12.00 - 1.45pm, 5.00 - 7.00pm).
“In joy and in union with all throughout the Americas who regularly work with the invocative potencies of the Great Invocation,
Steve Nation, Intuition in Service
Top Spiritual Stories at SatyaCenter
Your editor Curtis Lang addresses the questions of all those who are dismayed by world events, religious fundamentalism, and the current ascendancy of reactionary political forces East and West in a lengthy new article “The Dark Night of the Planetary Soul”.
This article provides much insight obtained through meditation and spiritual guidance for all those seeking to understand the path of Spirit that can lead humanity through this transitional time into a New Age of Enlightenment.
“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,” Curtis explains.
“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.”
To read more about the changing of the aeons and the karmic trauma we have all inherited from the difficulties the Forces of Light encountered during the transition from the Age of Aries to the Age of Pisces, and how this affects us today, click here.
Mongolian-Native American Shaman Jade Wah’oo Grigori shares his intimate personal experiences during a recent trip to the Amazon in his new article “Shaman’s Diary: On an Ayahuasca Vision Quest”
“Once again I found myself in the Amazon Jungle, having traversed land, air and river to arrive in the midst of a paradisiacal world of flowers and birds indistinguishable in color, river water the color of a latte’ and the clothes of the Shipibo Indians embroidered and painted with the visionary patterns of the sacred vine of the Soul, Ayahuasca,” Jade recounts.
Jade describes his inner and outer voyages of discovery in this revealing article. Read all about Jade’s dramatic encounters with the indigenous Shamanic healers of the Amazon. At several points, Jade enters spiritual realms that transcend everyday consciousness, and reports back to us about what he saw and felt -- in vivid detail.
“Surrendering into the current of electric life that is released into awareness by the Great Mother Serpent, Yakumama, I was drawn into a realm of shimmering light & fractal rainbows. I awoke within my own DNA,” Jade says. At that point Jade’s personal journey of healing had just begun.
Astrologer and food critic Jonathan Pearl provides advice for all of us who want to enjoy seasonal dishes appropriate for this month’s cosmic climate in his new story “Gemini Foods”.
With the sun in the air sign of Gemini, Jonathan says it’s time to feed your head with farm fresh spring fruits, airy slow-fermented baked goods and other treats guaranteed to keep you light on your feet and full of energy for the remainder of the spring season.
If you’re feeling overweight from last winter or just generally sluggish, “The two best signs for doing a detox are Pisces and Virgo, but Gemini is a close third,” Jonathan reminds us. “If you are inclined try a mild detox near the summer solstice or with Moon in Virgo. With the abundance of sunlight we have lots of natural energy - we'd be smart to eat lighter in any case.”
Wise Woman Susun Weed offers sage advice in her article “Ease Those Bug Bites with Easy Herbs”.
Summertime means insect bites and stings. Ouch! Take a leaf from Susun S. Weed's storehouse of natural remedies: Soothe, heal, and prevent bites with safe herbal remedies that grow right where you live: north or south, east or west, city or country. The best natural remedies for insect bites are right underfoot.
Spiritual Stories From Around the Web
Enjoy these short excerpts with links to major stories about deep spiritual issuesfound across the Web. Click on the links to read the complete version of each story.
The Pranayama Institute
God Without Religion
Foreword by Arun Gandhi
The question "What is God?" has baffled humankind for eons and will continue to defy logical understanding as long as we live with the concept that there is a heaven up above, where God sits judging all of humanity and punishing those who misbehave. Eminent thinkers throughout history have tried to find a logical answer to this vexing question, with little success. On the other hand His Holiness Gautama, the Buddha, did tapasya (Sanskrit for asceticism) under a banyan tree and, like some others, found that God exists within every human heart in the form of love, compassion, understanding, and other positive attributes humankind is capable of but often chooses to suppress. It seems that instead of trying to assert strict logic or put a solid image to our concept of God, we ought to follow their example and devote greater energy to intuitively understanding the meaning of God.
Since the identity of God is so inscrutable (if not the best-kept secret in the world) and the philosophy surrounding this power so impenetrable, religious leaders of various faiths have defined God in ways that raise more questions than they answer. The easiest and most accepted explanation is to see God in the shape of those who are considered God's messengers-among Jews, Moses and the Hebrew Prophets; among Christians, Jesus; among Muslims, Muhammad; among Hindus, Krishna; and among Buddhists, Gautama.
The common thread running through the lives of God's many messengers is love, compassion, understanding, commitment, and respect for all living creatures. It might therefore be assumed that by exhibiting these qualities they were demonstrating to the rest of humanity the way our Creator expects us to live. Although I do not attribute saintly qualities to my grandfather, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, what he said about a week before his assassination on January 30, 1948, is pertinent in this regard: "They [the Indian people] will follow me in life, worship me in death, but not make my cause their cause." These prophetic words could have been said by Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Krishna, or the Buddha-beings whose life stories and lessons were enshrined into scriptures we generally read with little intention of making them a part of our lives. Bypassing divine go-betweens, Sankara Saranam's book attempts to give us a more direct and immediate perspective of God. Like Sankara, I hesitate to say its perspective is absolutely right, because as mere mortals, irrespective of our profound scholarship, experience, knowledge, training, or vision, we cannot fathom the depths of spirituality enough to presume we have the right way.
Light of Consciousness
SATSANG OF SWAMI AMAR JYOTI
Remembering the Light
WHEN THE LIGHT SHINES, YOU WILL FIND THAT IT IS NOTHING NEW.
IT WAS ALWAYS SHINING. YOU DIDN’T SEE IT SIMPLY. WHEN IT
NATURALLY AWAKENS IN YOU, YOU WILL SEE HOW TRUE IT IS.
THAT LIGHT IS IN YOU, ME, EVERYONE.
WHEN WE SAY, “LET GO AND LET GOD,” even if it’s something worth letting go, it is the nature or habit of the mind to resist. And even if we succeed in letting go of one, two, or ten things, there is resistance inside, wishing we could hold onto them. That is how we miss the joy, the sense of being free that we should get from letting go. Abandonment to God is not an austerity; it should be sweet with joy, with freedom, with love.
Therefore, how to let go? Should we determine to let go, then try to feel joy and stir up our hearts to love? These are not exercises that will help. Some things simply cannot be practiced such as peace, joy, love, and so on. So there are methods. You can tell your mind to let go through auto-reflection, saying, “This is good and the way it should be. If you let go, spiritually you’ll get higher.” But in sweet abandonment, the one thing that really strikes me most is this: in order to let go, the easy way is to link it with the aspiration to give up ego, or at least to diminish it, because ego actually holds on to things for its own survival.
In order to let go sweetly, you either already have love for the Lord, or you are letting go with love. But what if love is deficient? Everyone knows how to love another person but not many know how to love that which is not a thing, person or attachment related to them. The spiritual way is to accept that one day ego has to be given up, reluctantly or willingly. And since that is so, even though you are not able to give up the ego instantly, the method is to reduce the ego, sublimate it, humble or soften it. Make it less stubborn and proud. That humbling or softening automatically produces more love because if you are less egotistical, you will naturally love more. It is ego that prevents you from loving enough or more perfectly. If you work upon humbling the ego, the love that ensues will automatically bring you to sweet abandonment.
Can ego be diminished by practices? Yes, definitely.
. . . This spiritual method may seem ascetic but it is not. Sublimate or humble the ego, even if you cannot eliminate it, so that when the ego becomes less of a burden, less heavy, you will slowly begin to feel freedom and abandonment. You may have heard or seen or read in books or biographies that those who sing or chant God’s Name daily, for some—not all—at a certain point it becomes inspiring. And if you have seen pictures or paintings of them, at the inspiration level they get up and sing and dance in abandonment. That singing is quite different than normal singing. It is not only inspired; you get exhilarated—I don’t mean emotional—and the kundalini (1) begins to rise. At that time you don’t know anything else. You won’t care for anything else. In self- abandonment you just don’t want anything. Therefore, letting go is very easy.
Common Dreams
Published on Sunday, May 21, 2006
Don't Give Up: Keep the Movement Moving
by John Dear
One of the casualties of this culture of violence, injustice and war is the loss of our imagination. People across the country can not even imagine a world without war, poverty or nuclear weapons. But that is our job. We are like our ancestors, the Abolitionists, who came along and announced an astonishing, breathtaking new vision, a world without slavery, the equality of everyone on earth. We are their heirs, New Abolitionists, announcing a new world without war, poverty or nuclear weapons, a new world of nonviolence.
You may have heard the true story of some church activists who met in a church basement in East Berlin in the dismal days of the early 1980s around the ridiculous topic, "What Will It Be Like 1000 Years From Now When the Berlin Wall Finally Comes Down--And--What Do We Have To Do Now To Help That Great Day Happen?" They were dismissed as idealistic fools. But their meeting was exciting and energized them, so they decided to meet again, and more people showed up, and they kept meeting, and soon, people were meeting in church basements across East Germany, and within a few years, in November 1989, we watched in astonishment on TV as hundreds of thousands of people marched every day throughout East Germany and the unthinkable happened, the newly imaginable happened, the Berlin Wall came down peacefully.
Everyone thought it was a miracle, but the miracle was the grassroots movement that had been built and grew over time. My take on all this is that we have to do our thing down here, organizing and building a national, global, grassroots movement around such an impossible dream, envisioning the previously unimaginable and daring to announce it boldly, even give our lives for it. Meanwhile, God is doing Her thing up there, working to bring about some big changes that we can't quite imagine, such as, in this case, the emergence of Gorbachev and Perestroika. Gorbachev and Perestroika--and the God of peace--need us to be doing our thing down here, building that grassroots movement of nonviolence so that when that new sign of hope breaks through, there is a movement that moves to make the peaceful transformation a reality.
Recently, I attended a small luncheon in Santa Fe in honor of my friend historian Howard Zinn, and he said that every major movement for social change in the United States felt hopeless. I found this very consoling! He said, from the beginning, through the middle, and right up to the very end, they were all hopeless, hopeless, hopeless, and then, all of a sudden, there was an astonishing breakthrough. The key to making it all happen, hesaid, was that people kept their vision alive. Ordinary people continued to do small acts for peace and justice every day, and over time, those little things added up into something big. They never gave up. He said that historically, the one thing those in power fear the most is a movement that won't go away. So our jo