I spend a dedicated portion of my prayer and meditation time right now focused on understanding and creating positive outcome around our new President Donald Trump and healing/balancing the polarized energies that have been set in motion. I was led this morning, in considering our conflicted societal response to his Presidency, to the following passage from the I Ching, an ancient and powerful Chinese Oracle system, and I believe it has wisdom to offer for contemplation, so I share it with you. I believe that Good IS unfolding whether you are amongst those that would say its because of him or in spite of him.  

This translation of the I Ching is by Brian Browne Walker

Hexagon #51 Chen - The Arousing (SHOCK)

"The shock of unsettling events brings fear and trembling. Move toward a higher truth and all will be well.

The tendency of human beings is to rely on the strategies of the ego: desiring, plotting, and striving. When we exercise the ego, our spiritual development stops, and the universe must use shocking events to move us back onto the path. The appearance of the hexagram Chen indicates an immediate need for self-examination, self-correction, and a re-devotion to following the path of the Sage.

In Chinese, the hexagram translates to mean, "thunder over thunder": a continuing series of shocks occur until the obstruction in our attitude is removed. It is important not to react against to these shocks. Instead quiet and open your mind, accept that what is happening has come to teach a specific and necessary lesson, and look inside to see where you are resisting the will of the Higher Power. The sooner you return to innocence and acceptance, the sooner the shocks will subside.

Those who maintain a reverence for proper principles and an inner commitment to higher things are unperturbed by shocking events, they simply concentrate on deepening their understanding. If you find yourself feeling threatened by circumstances, withdraw into stillness and meditation. The only remedy for doubt and fear is a reconnection with Higher Truth.

Shock is an important and beneficial teacher to those who follow the path of the Sage. Make good use of this new beginning and good fortune results."

I am listening attentively everyday to people's responses to Trump's Presidency,  his policies and addresses. All responses are filled with passion. Either passionate support or passionate disdain. Both sides mostly express the other side are idiots and duped, having lost the capacity to think for themselves. It astounds me how similar are the descriptions of one side about the other, yet both thinking the "other" is dangerously deluded and brainless.  This is what has really caught my attention.

I know we are all expressions of the One Life, God, All That Is, Creation. We are all divine emanations of Source. We are also all having a human egoic experience in which we experience ourselves as separate and different and of course potentially enemies because we believe we hold such conflicting values that threaten what we individually hold dear. The "devil's" work in my opinion is truly to keep us hypnotized at the level of our perceived differences rather than lifting our vision from the level of ego to the level of Spirit, where we can see each other's divinity DESPITE the appearance of the character being played at the ego level. Do you despise the great actor who plays a demon perfectly? Couldn't  he shift and then play another role, a hero, in service to others?  In the determination to see the ultimate truth of someone, beyond the appearances even of our most threatening enemies, that allows that energy formation to heal and shift. Explore the idea I'm suggesting a little, even for a moment, and great progress can be made for the evolution of our society. 

We are living in extraordinary times! Please pray for President Trump. If you think he does not see clearly what is in the best interest of the US, pray that he does. Peace! 

Please share your thoughts.

WHAT IS IT?

Yoga-Dance is a Spiritual Mind-Body Fitness Program that has emerged from my 30-year spiritual practice and study, and my professional work as a dancer, choreographer, dance teacher and yoga instructor.

Yoga-Dance is an expression of the perfectly integrated practice for me! Sharing what I have developed, I find it resonates at a deep place for others too, who enjoy meditation, yoga, spirituality, fitness, dance and creative expression.

There are many fitness programs that assist in physical wellness, but do not address spiritual and emotional wellness. Yoga is a marvelous spiritual fitness tool, but it does not access the rich creative imagination within each soul yearning to express itself. I have found by adding the creative process to fitness and creating original movements in space, that cathartic, transformative and healing energy emerges.

Yoga-Dance first offers a specific discipline of movements, including conscious breathing, yoga, dance technique and chakra activations as a preparatory tool for improvisational dancing led by the guidance of your own Heart. The structured regimen of Yoga-Dance is for developing both the open state of mind as well as refined strength, coordination, flexibility and facility with which to engage in personal expression of the free dance of the soul.  This freedom to easily express myself creatively through a well-honed instrument is indescribably ecstatic.

VALUE OF TECHNIQUE

As a professional dancer I understand the value gained from the discipline of technique and practice. As my dance vocabulary and facility increases, I have far greater range of movement options with which to express myself, which is deeply gratifying. That is why my program offers a foundation of specific spiritually focused physical exercises to provide me with a highly tuned instrument for creative expression.

With that trained mind-body instrument the possibilities of what I can create and experience through movement and dance are infinite and miraculous. This is because dance as a medium of growth, healing and transformation is a perfect marriage of polarities; body and soul, Earth and Spirit, in which transcendence or transcen-DANCE can be experienced.

INTEGRATING POLARITIES

In this 3^rd dimension we live within a construct of duality and polarities: masculine-feminine, light-dark, Heaven-Earth, positive-negative, etc. Polarities are essential to life on Earth, but living within the balance of polarities is true harmonious living. In the separation consciousness that humans have been living in for a long time, each polarity is posed against the other rather than seen as essential aspects of the whole. For example, when the masculine polarity thinks it is better than the feminine polarity and must control Her, then both polarities are thrown out of balance.  These split polarities are extremely insidious within our psyches.

To create a whole and thriving life, all polarities must become integrated rather than held in opposition, in which one pole is perceived as “good” and the other “bad”. The human race is on the edge of the most auspicious transformation to an integrated Unity Consciousness. Yoga-Dance is a marvelous tool toward this end because by its very nature of expressing spirit through the body instrument, it integrates the Mother/Earth/body and Father/Spirit, which is a split we each must unify and heal within our own heart center.

The body is of the Earth; matter, mater, or Mother. The Mother is the creative matrix, the womb in which life develops. When life emerges from the womb, it comes forth out of the dark, like the seed germinating under the soil. When you give yourself the freedom to create and uniquely express in your body through dance, it is the celebration of the feminine polarity and the healing of a deep psychic split and deeply buried hatred of the beautiful dark creative matrix of the Divine Feminine. By connecting with Her simply through the activity of our dance expressions in the body, we tap into her limitless power available to us throughout all aspects of our lives.

Father comes from the Latin, Pater, which means pattern. The seed holds the pattern for the Oak tree, but it is the dark wet feminine soil of the Earth that the seed transforms from just the potential for life into an actual growing Oak tree. Even as the seedling sprouts and grows upward, it simultaneously grows in equal measure down under the soil as roots in the dark places of the feminine energy of the Earth. Both polarities are essential, the pattern/seed of the Father and the womb/soil of the Mother.

DANCE AS A HEALING TOOL

In yoga-dance, I take ideas, which are seeds or patterns, and express them through the movement of my body, which is an extension of Mother Earth, and becomes the womb to materialize these ideas into my physical reality. This is like the Oak tree becoming a physical form from the idea potential held within the seed. My dance becomes a powerful prayer. For example, if I desire to experience forgiveness, I take that idea and allow my heart to emotionalize the idea of forgiveness into physical movements. The physical experience of dancing these emotions, led by my creative imagination and inner wisdom, re-informs my mind of the emotional state of forgiveness. The seed idea of forgiveness that I desire to sprout in my consciousness, germinates from a potential into the reality of my experience through being physicalized through my creative movement.

There are endless ways to use this gift of Yoga-Dance for transformational purposes; like the exercise of expressing and experiencing each aspect of a given polarity, and then dancing the divine integration and balance of the two. In integration both poles are honored as essential and I can rest in balance at the center. I recognize I hold within me both aspects of a polarity, regardless of which pole I have chosen to identify with in my life. As a woman for example, I also have the masculine polarity within me and both poles are essential to my wholeness.

Another example from my experience in recent months has come through the spiritual practice of “sun-gazing”, in which I daily gaze directly at the sun in meditation during the final moments before the sun goes down. (Feel free to learn more about the specifics of this practice from my Sun-Gazing blog and on google). The practice has brought a deep understanding of the relationship of the polarities of Sun and Earth, Light and Dark and my immediate connection to these powerful interdependent forces. It has been a life-changing inner awakening in honoring these relationships within myself.  And in that “magic” hour, when day and night meet briefly, I dance this blessed union ecstatically.  I celebrate the relationship of Sun to Earth and Light to Dark, in which the gifts of daylight energy are assimilated in the night and the gifts of the dark time of growth creates greater capacity for receiving more light-energy the next day. The dance of nature is beautiful!

GOING DOWN AND IN

For years along my spiritual journey I gravitated toward the light and fled the dark. I focused on ascension in the Light, but the soul freedom I desired remained elusive. By grace, I now see an equal balance between the Light and Dark, going down into the hidden places of “wombing” –  the dark space of creation, as well as ascending up into the light. In fact, I cannot rise without going down and the dark is not “bad” as I had imagined, but rather the powerful feminine force of creation. In nature we see that the tree growing upward in the light is matched in equal measure by the roots that reach down in the dark Earth. By diving deep into my body/Mother Earth and embracing and expressing her dark mysteries, I experience my wholeness and light shines in the darkness.

Yoga-Dance is a holistic practice of spiritual physical fitness and a tool for personal inquiry into the deep mysteries within the soul through creative dance movement. Its objective is the integration of body-mind-soul-spirit and all that is fragmented or polarized within my consciousness. This integration is en-lightenment; the light going within.  What does the light (information/pattern) go within to? What is its container? It goes within to the dark womb space of the Divine Mother where creation happens. What a beautiful mysterious dance is the Yin-Yang matrix of this life. I look forward to exploring Yoga-Dance with you!

Like most Americans, I have been thinking a lot about the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman case. 

I have observed my own reaction of righteous indignation at the outcome of the trial and polarizing George Zimmerman as evil and Trayvon Martin as an innocent young man I want to protect. I felt hatred and disdain for Zimmerman, representing something entirely outside of me, that I have no part in and that I shun.

Then I caught myself because I know in my heart and mind that there is only One and that George Zimmerman is an essential part of that One known as Love. How can I possibly integrate my feelings of outrage at injustice and protection for the innocent, with my deeper knowledge that either we are all guilty or all innocent? In fact we are all innocent as our true Selves and we are all guilty in the realm of separation, duality and polarity that we have chosen to experience.

We have come to the human experience to taste every possible variation in the consciousness of separation from the darkest evil to the loftiest good. Over the course of our entire human journey of evolution from deep separation consciousness to a return to Unity Consciousness, we each will taste it all. I will play the part of evil and the part of good and every part in between. I will be a woman, a man, rich, poor, black, white, brown, red, yellow, oppressor, oppressed, victimizer, and victim.  In duality there is always the flip side attached to the side that is presenting; good-evil, up-down, light-dark, beautiful-ugly, etc.

There is a trick here. If I want to break the cycle and see no more violence and oppression, then I cannot think that it is outside of me and I am not part of it. If I do, I continue to identify myself with one side of the duality, the "good side" as I perceive it, which requires by Universal law that its opposite, the dark side, show up outside of me.

What is this Universal Law that can seem so unfair when all I want is a peaceful world for all? At the essence of Life, behind all the diverse and amazing fragmentation into an uncountable number of things, there is only One. There is no inside of me and outside of me, there is simply All That Is. All beings are other aspects of me in the big picture, choosing their set of experiences. We play various parts, putting on our Earth-body costumes, sometimes playing the protagonist, sometimes the antagonist, sometimes the clown. When the show is done we return to our dressing rooms and the murderer and the murdered have a beer and a laugh.

I have remembered that George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin made a soul contract with each other on the non-physical plane, to shake the world up, and help us become less complacent and more accountable to the Unity of all Life. I know for myself, responding to this troubling night in Florida, has caused me to go deeper in looking at where I still polarize, and think someone other than me is the evil in this world. All that does is hold evil in my world. As I pause and recognize the Truth of George Zimmerman as an aspect of All That Is, I also recognize that he is the aspect of me that's playing being trapped in a fear-based consciousness of littleness. As Zimmerman, I try to play a fantasy hero because I feel so small and so afraid and have reduced the world of diverse beautiful individuals to shadows of evil trying to do "me and mine" harm.

I believe healing comes through the acceptance and integration of my Light and Dark sides on the human plane, not the polarization of the two in which I believe I am only one side fighting against the other. Light when shined through a prism refracts into all the colors of the rainbow. It is hard to imagine looking at all the individual colors that when combined will disappear into One colorless illumination. And when refracted into separate colors, how could yellow imagine it has anything to do with blue? That is how I believe it is with our dark shadow side and our light good side within the experience of duality. When I easily own both sides as expressions of me in fragmented consciousness, I can then unify into Wholeness, which transcends all polarities. Beyond the individualized ego/body experience we are infinite Consciousness and can live in that awareness while in the body. That of course is Awakening or simply Re-member-ing; returning all the individual members to One awareness of Itself.

So the answer to the question, "Who is George Zimmerman?" He is me. He is my brother. I forgive and release him because I forgive and release myself from all the false beliefs I have held while exploring this separation age. Now is the auspicious time that we are invited to return to Unity Consciousness and this challenging event, which has galvanized our attention, is helping us get there.