zero point Tag

February 21, 2014 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

In Your Dreams

In the psycho-energetic model of the universe, our thoughts create our own reality. Yet still, many of us live between two mind-sets.

One, our “ego-self” asks, “if our thoughts create our own reality then why do we not heal ourselves in a millisecond? Why do we experience a crisis of meaning in our lives and wonder whose life is this anyway? And if we can summons our soul mate by Cosmic Order what happens when our ‘dream lover’ turns into a real person? Did Cinders really live happily ever after with her Prince Charming?”

The other mind-set, our Wise Man or Woman within leaps joyously into the magical realm of the non-ordinary world with infinite possibilities. We co-create miracles.

The Law of Attraction claims that “like attracts like”. So what you focus on – “positive” or “negative” will bring you “positive” or “negative” results. Denounced as pseudoscience by many, the concept that we, as mere mortals, create our own reality has taken root and flourished since it was first planted in the early 1900s. A plethora of books followed the movie The Secret (2006) and the book (2007) with its numerous add-ons: Money and the Law of Attraction: Learning to Attract Health, Wealth & Happiness. A recent offering from Pam Grout on the same theme is E-Squared (a Fifty Shades of Grey for spiritual dudes, i.e. holy without the fuck.) Its popular appeal has hoisted sales and it is billed as a number one New York Times best seller. Ms Grout echoes the current create your own reality belief: “What shows up in our lives is a direct reflection of our inner thoughts and emotions”, she writes. The hairy underbelly of this, of course, can be taken too literally: “if you end up paralysed in a motor accident, find you have TB or cancer in that dark shadow in your lung, you created this reality.” And for some, this assumption may unleash the Hound of the Baskervilles baying guilt, fear and judgement.

E-Squared also fits the current model of things that can be measured, proven by “experiment” in linear time. So like the new app on our Smartphone that measures and quantifies our sexual performance (number of thrusts per minute, noise level, etc.) we measure and record Miracles. A masculine model of a perfect world. According to Ms Grout, you can demand an unquestionable sign that a field of energy exists. You can also impose a deadline for your demand. And within just 48 hours you will receive a gorgeous handmade leather purse, a free ski trip to Lake Tahoe, or meet your dream lover. “According to physicists there’s a zero point field… where every possibility exists. For example, there’s the possibility you could be a ballerina, another that you could be a U.S. senator. Still another possibility is being a bag lady in Haight-Ashbury,” writes Ms Grout in her street-talk’n breezy style. And yet …what are the chances that the child of a heroin addict mother living in the slums of Detroit will be a U.S senator? Or a midget can be a top basketball player? Can you be a ballerina if you have cerebral palsy?

Are we naïve or arrogant? Perhaps blissfully oblivious to the deep unconscious currents that will inevitably wash to shore those disowned parts of ourselves? Yet there are many who believe that if we can will it into being, visualise it, wave our magic wands, our prince will fall on his knees and ask us to marry him, our teenager will stop taking drugs. Perhaps our neighbour’s son won’t come home from school to find his father hanging from the rafter.

Many people on this earth still feel as powerless as our ancestors once did when they faced natural disasters, illness, or invasion. The “you can create your own reality” mind-set certainly has empowered, granted hope, released magical energy that has been suppressed by centuries of patriarchal (Saturnian) religious and state decree.

Perhaps the Miracle is within the so often harsh “reality” – it is up to us individually to sort the gold from the dross. Are we ready to move from the Magician Archetype into the Archetype of the Alchemist? And if we are Alchemists in the laboratory of our own lives, are we aware that all transformation demands a dying and a death? That alchemy is a painstakingly slow and putrid process.

Collectively, we are going through seismic change reminiscent of the 1930s and 1960s and this may manifest in events that shatter the foundations of our personal lives. We will witness world events that crack and break open hoary old structures, new technology that transports us into the twilight realm of sci fi.

We cannot construct a new model of thought without homage to the old. The ancients believed that only the gods could Create. That it was Fate that toppled empires. Tossed small ships upon jagged rocks. Snapped off the promise of a life, without any mercy. If you believe that with self-reflection and intention, we can all at some level, edit or remake the movies that play across the screens of our minds; that we can temper the flame of our desire; receive new experiences without anxious expectation or urgent grasping, then perhaps we can coax a change in our perception of the experience of chronic ill health, loneliness, death, betrayal and loss.

For eons, spiritual traditions have taught that it is acceptance, surrender to All That Is that brings us the peace and happiness that is truly powerful. For eons, shamans and mystics have crossed over the threshold into non-ordinary states of being. They have walked in miracle and wonder. Poets, musicians and artists still visit that holy place of mystery. So do little children. Our world would be drab and prosaic place without magic and miracles and hope…

So, to engage with this new paradigm consciously is to question ourselves honesty. Do we really believe that we create our own reality? Do we believe in Miracles? Do we embrace the non-ordinary realm with a child-like innocence, a wide eyed expectation of a Miracle? Perhaps we must work consciously with both the Magician Archetype and the Alchemist to co-create a reality that embraces the bitter sweetness of this life. For me it is not either/or – but both the dream and the co-creation of a reality that brings peace and wonder and joy-filled acceptance of those things we cannot change. I do believe in Miracles. How about you?

From the album In Your Dreams Stevie Nicks

Images by John Singer Sargent and Tyra Nur Athirah

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.