Adele Tag

December 14, 2012 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Skyfall

This is the end. Hold your breath and count to ten … This portentous year of 2012 has been a shamanic journey of self-growth and spiritual home-coming for many on this planet. For some this has been a sky fall year where things “happened out of the blue.” Our bodies once robust and infallible began to falter. Our relationships demanded more honesty, more compassion. Our work brought us gifts of humility and gratitude, or a firm conviction that we must remove ourselves from a toxic environment. For millions on this planet, 2012 offered no choice. No time for self-reflection. No peace or contentment. As we approach the solstice many of us may feel, as Marion Woodman says, “dragged towards wholeness”.

We speak lightly, foolishly, of change and “transformation” as if it was a Gok Wan make-over. Trans-formation is a radical changing of form. A literal or metaphorical process of dying. And transformation involves the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. “Most of us can only let so much go at a time,” says Woodman.

This is the end. The mid-summer or mid-winter Solstice 2012 marks a zero point as the sun ingresses into the sign of Capricorn 11:15:25 AM in Greenwich, England and at other times in other places all over the world. Collectively we stand at the door of the sweat lodge where we must sit in the heat of global warming, the discomfort of overpopulation. Collectively we must heed the final drum beat of a way of life that will and must change irrevocably. There is a sense of “Fatedness” about the GMT chart for this solstice. Jupiter (signifying Faith, Hope, Belief, and a sense of Expansion), Saturn in Scorpio and Pluto in Capricorn (herculean systemic breakdown, a kind of cosmic colonic irrigation) form a YOD which is also called “The Finger of Fate” or “The Finger of God”. Jupiter is at the focal point of this YOD. It is the signal for inevitable change and transformation to occur in the outworn structures of our civilization.

The sun will rise on December 22^nd 2012. The sky will not fall down chicken-licken. Our computers will not crash. There will be no cataclysmic ending. Just another turn in the great wheel of the year.

The Maya apparently called this day “Creation Day’. Author of the Gaia Hypothesis, Peter Russell writes,”rather than a precise date on which major changes happen, I see 2012 as the temporal epicentre of a cultural earthquake.”

The skyscript fortells of profound and inevitable change, which will be fiercely resisted by many who cling like bloated ticks to power, gorging on greed. Pluto will be uncompromising and relentless in breaking down what is no longer necessary to our personal and collective evolution. By December 2014, Saturn will bring to the surface all that is darkly hidden in our lives personally and globally. The square between the Sun and Uranus in this chart heralds radical change, upheaval and liberation from the old ways. The Moon makes a separating square from Pluto. We are living at the end of an epoch. The dark hyperbole of the apocalyptic prophecies terrify. They cut close to the bone. We are entering an age of breakdown of hoary old structures, outmoded beliefs.

This is the end of verdant girdles of rainforest. This is the end for wildlife that follow ancient migratory routes now barred by barbed wire fences and the splattered spread of concrete cities. This is the end for the Sumatran tiger, the Vaquita porpoise, the Javan and African Rhino. This is the end for the polar bear. This is the end for the ancient amphibians. This is the beginning of the end of life as we know it. We stand on the brink as individuals. As a species. As sea levels rise, a mass extinction of as high as 90 percent of our earth’s creatures, writes Mark Lynas in Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet. Global temperatures will be hotter than they have been for the last 50 million years. Most of southern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East will be uninhabitable. Millions of men, women and children will migrate in great masses in search of food, water and lebensraum. Perhaps “this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper,” as TS Eliot wrote starkly and with chilling prophecy in The Hollow Men.

“We have passed a critical threshold”, a new report from accountancy firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers states. “Even doubling our current rate of decarbonisation would still lead to emissions consistent with 6 degrees C of warming by the end of the century.” This report urges radical transformation in the global economy. Rapid implementation of renewable energy. A halt on deforestation and industrial emissions. Now.

On December 21^st 2012, many will gather together in prayer or meditation. And for millions on this planet, the solstice of 2012 will be just another day. Unless we all choose differently. We may not individually be able to halt industrial emissions or stop the slaughter of the rhino, or the melting of the polar ice caps. Our urgent task now is to Love and to Be Loved. To walk lightly on this beautiful planet. To honour all living things. We cannot afford the luxury of negativity and scepticism. We will simply have to “pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off… and start all over again.” Living our lives more consciously. “It’s only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth – and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up that we will begin to live each day to the fullest as if it was the only one we had,” wrote Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. We all have a limited time on this earth, collectively and personally. Our Faith (Jupiter ) will be our only solace and ultimate salvation.

So at this sacred portal. This turning point in the great wheel of the year let us take a moment to be still and to listen to the bird song. Let us breathe in Hope. Let us open our hearts to give and receive Love. Let us feel the heartbeat of Mother Earth and allow our own hearts to beat in unison. We are stardust. We are of the same essence as this earth, this boundless universe. We are witnessing the death of the old, the birth of the new.

This is the end. And the beginning.

The inimitable Adele’s incomparable voice soars above the haunting lyrics of Skyfall. This is the signature song that frames the 23rd Bond movie, and a powerful anthem to herald the End Times.

February 2, 2012 In Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Don’t You Remember?

When a lover, close friend, or family member refuses to discuss their unilateral decision to break off a treasured relationship, the sting of rejection can reverberate for years, plummeting us into the abyss of depression. Our agonising why spins soundlessly like spokes on a rusty wheel.

When the One we love is not willing to speak to us – she distances emotionally, he blocks our calls or leaves our empassioned emails suspended in cyberspace – the answers we long for, the amends we pray for, hang like dust motes in the cold silence of separation that strains over the history we’ve shared. To be silenced, shut out, triggers a primal wound of rejection that may bleed for years.

We all need a story to comfort us in the cold bunker of our loss. Our narratives become a soft blue blanket to wrap our lacerations as we weave some meaning that resonates with our core values and beliefs about the world.

For some, the tale of the despicable Villain assuages the pain for a while. This is a tale full of sound and fury that keeps us tied to the railway track, the hapless Victim, powerless and immobilised. We remain in rigor mortis, clutching the self-righteous umbilical cord to the person who silenced us, trampled brutally on our trust. We may not really want the other person to understand how we are feeling, or to excavate the reasons why they behaved so patronisingly or so sadistically. The subtext may be that we want them to suffer the way we still suffer. The people who have wronged us may never realise or even care to understand how much they’ve hurt us. Nothing we can do or say can make someone love us the way we want them to. Stay when they want to go. Nothing we can say can make them understand our hurt and sincerely apologise. Their own feelings may make them unavailable for an authentic exchange, so we will never hear the words we long to hear – and if we do, will we really be willing to drop the black rose of blame? So they remain a corrosive presence in our lives – lovers, friends, relatives – blocking out the light, crushing the bud of joy, a deadly rot that blights our courage to love again.

Rebecca and Johan had a long distance relationship that had bridged three years. When she received an email from Johan saying he loved her but was not “in love with her”, was sorry for hurting her, but did not want to discuss it further, she felt as though she had been disembowelled. Rebecca pleaded and implored, and Johan stalled, blocking all her requests for an explanation. So the messages on his answering machine remained unanswered, the heart-felt emails floated like confetti in cyberspace… the silence stretched into weeks, months. “I just need to understand why he left me so suddenly. Why he broke it off by email, why he would not give our relationship a chance to grow?” she said tearfully a year later, still weighted with the burden of her loss. “My friends are losing patience with me. They say it’s time to “move on”, “let it go,” “what goes around comes around,” but I just cannot stop myself obsessing, trying to understand what went wrong, why he did what he did.” Negative emotions pickle our attachments; preserving our sense of togetherness with those we once loved so intensely, those who meant so much in our lives. Anger is the glue that keeps us stuck in the obsessive, self-harming thoughts and traumatic events of the past. Nailed to the impotent “whys”.

Neale Donald Walsch advises, “stop looking all over the place for “the answers” – whatever they are – and start looking for the questions – the inquiries which are most important in your life, and give them answers. You do not live each day to discover what it holds for you, but to create it.”

There must come a time when we ask ourselves what we gain by giving the villains of our story so much power over us. Why our energy circuits are still attached to an event which happened so long ago, allowing the vampire of the past to sink its fangs into our life blood, leaving us to float, ghostly spectres between worlds? Why is a useless question. It disempowers, keeps us in stalemate. What I am going to do about my thoughts, my feelings, my own life, has a impetus that is far-reaching and empowering. It implies choice, and control. Our challenge is to retrieve our energy and plug it into the wall socket of present time. To invest in a future where we can courageously love again.

Perhaps Johan did not have a rational explanation for breaking up the way he did. Perhaps he could not tell Rebecca what he did not know himself. Perhaps he did not allow himself to feel regret, guilt or sadness. Rebecca will never know. When she was ready to step aside from the pain, release the fantasy that Johan might one day see things the way she did; when she was willing to acknowlege that what she wanted to hear was her own truth, she vowed to take from her own experience this priceless pearl: she would never diminish or disregard another person or leave someone breathless, waiting to exhale… she would weave a new story of compassion for this soul-mate-teacher-lover who had come to bring her the gift of Truth. Says Marion Woodman, “Don’t talk about being true to yourself until you are sure to what voice you are being true.”

Adele soars as she sings Don’t You Remember