We are, all of us, living through catastrophic changes.
Although there is so much that is uncertain and terrifying, we also have the opportunity to evaluate what is truly important and listen to what our hearts are saying.
In this time of great unknown, great change, and enormous challenge, we can still make ourselves a new life with new habits and remain open to new possibilities. Now is the time to express the truth in our hearts and begin to organize our lives around bringing in what is most needed and desired. What we most need and desire. This is a good time to imagine new dreams about where you want to be and what you want to do. Our job is to actively, fearlessly, dream.
Not everything is yours to do or belongs to you. You are designed for certain things, and you came in with a specific agenda and purpose (dharma) for your life. It is this dharma that will help you identify what you are here to do and give. Even now, as we’re shifting. Even if we didn’t see this coming, and didn’t plan for it. Here’s some good news: how you live your life and fulfill your dharma is very flexible and adaptable.
No one would deny that the shift we’re in is gigantic. We are being pulled towards the Solar Plexus Mutation of 2027 when the Human Design bodygraph will be re-configured such that a new energetic platform will be established. This new platform creates a much-needed foundation for the advancement of human civilization, offering new opportunities to draw down the values, the vision, and the strategies that will support life from here on out.
2020 is deeply distinguished by the Capricorn Council of Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto, of which the Saturn-Pluto conjunction, a celestial phenomenon that happens every 35 to 38 years, but only once every 500 years in Capricorn, has come together not just once, but multiple times. Each time a conjunction repeats, the energy it brings to the material plane is grounded more deeply, brings additional nuance, and increases the success for a positive outcome.
The key to working with this transition is to recognize that aspects of what we are undergoing are part of a larger natural cycle and to surrender to that, and the part that is unnatural, that was created through ignorance and neglect, can be healed when we turn away from separation and have compassion for our great mistakes. We are in new and scary territory, but having crossed that threshold, it is imperative that we leave behind and renounce what does not serve or belong. It is not easy, but it can be done. We already have the map and the compass to show us the way.
All transitions come with an ending, and the endings we are living are supra-normal and overwhelming. During this time of disorientation and despair, a new beginning will emerge. That is inevitable. What that looks like depends on us. Let us be patient and kind to ourselves and each other. We cannot force the outcome and we do not know the outcome, but we know this: the shape of the outcome will be determined by how and what we choose.
These many endings are fraught with grief and confusion. Despite the many things we’ve had to let go of, the many deaths we’ve experienced, symbolically and literally, we can still look to this truth: with every ending there is a new beginning.
With every new beginning an opportunity follows. Hints of the new direction may not be obvious at first. They are often subtle and initially come with only an inner knowing. Nevertheless, it is important to understand what is emerging within and flow with it until we understand what is required of us.
Many of us feel powerless to do much of anything. Very few of us came in with an agenda to be a world leader where we would have a powerful platform to create change. What is important is to mind our relationship to the global community, and to work locally, from our base. We can bloom where we are planted by minding our soul contract.
Your power to be and do what is needed to be done is in your soul contract. No matter the disappointment or the terrible unexpected events that force us to throw out our routines and re-invent ourselves, we still have important cards to play. We still have access to our very own super-powers. They are the contents of our soul contract.
I want to remind all of us that our soul contract is the most sacred thing we own. It houses the blueprint of our talents and our yearnings. Our yearnings will inevitably lead us to our right experiences, places, and people. Your soul contract contains the precious seeds of who you can become.
These words are not intended to make you believe that things are not as bad as they are. These words are to remind you that you were created for very specific experiences and a purpose that has many layers, some of which are mysterious. You also have access to a great deal of creativity; there is more than one way to express what you carry in your soul.
This is where your power is! The more you allow the rich content of your contract to express, the more passion you will feel for creating your life. Your soul contract completely supports your Design. And if you work with your Design, you will be supported to create your most fulfilling life.
Your job for these times, according to your Human Design Type:
Manifesting Generators, we need you to apply your tireless reserves of energy and creativity to find the solutions that will save humanity, and to find the shortcuts that will speed up the process for finding our best outcomes; Generators, we need your devotion to life force, and we need your tireless reserves of energy and creativity to build the new safe spaces; Manifestors, we need you to show us how to stretch the boundaries of what’s possible for the human story through your courageous initiating; Projectors, we need you to hold the energy template of what needs to be created and to clear the vibration of collective fear, and Reflectors, we need you to identify those habits and practices that no longer support the advancement of humanity, and transmute them so that you can reflect what is possible when we come from a higher consciousness.
Have patience and trust your process. Let the process lead you. Be guided by your feelings, by your intuition, and by the synchronicities that magically appear to show you the way. Do not commit to projects that do not appeal to you. Embrace what feels right for you and shun what feels like an obligation. This is not the time to be obligated or to feel guilty. This is the time to take your gifts and expand them to the levels where they can meet the needs of these times. Walk without fear and take your friends, your sense of adventure and curiosity, and most especially, your love for life and all things living, with you.
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What makes it Spring Equinox? It’s the astronomical moment when the Sun crosses the celestial equator, moving from south to north. Technically speaking, the equinox occurs when the sun is directly in line with the equator. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, it marks the beginning of spring, with daylight hours continuing to lengthen until the summer solstice in June. For those south of the equator, it’s the beginning of autumn.
Spring Equinox is about new beginnings. It is about new life. It is a time to grow the dreams we planted as seeds at the Winter Solstice. It is a time to not just remember, but to recapture the magic of life and being alive. It is time to embrace the possibilities that only being alive can offer. In this space of rich opportunity, we are called to be creative, and to create. And at this time in our history, we are called to be innovative and patient. We are being asked to let go of routine and normalcy. Now we have the opportunity to permanently smash the old icons and paradigms that weren’t working anyway — those assumptions about how life should look, how it should be lived, not just individually, but collectively, as a society. As a world.
Our way of life has instructed us to be concerned with only ourselves and our loved ones. We are supposed to take personal responsibility for lives, right? But what is really going on here? Could it be the insidious and silent inoperative myth of rugged individualism? The individualism that says all you need to do to succeed is pull yourself up by your bootstraps and suck it up.
This thinking is deeply woven into the psyche of our civilization. It is seductive because it presents itself as universal truth. It insists that each individual is wholly responsible for his or her circumstances, good or bad. If misfortune befalls — if you lose your job, if you become ill, or some other life-disrupting misfortune occurs — it is up to you to bail yourself out. You probably created it in the first place, so you need to take care of it without complaining or asking for help. This is a culture that essentially says when you are facing a challenge, you’re on your own. If you don’t have reserves or resources, it’s your fault.
This is the dark psychology that informs our social norms and that weaves itself into our waking lives. There is the pervasive threat of punishment should we fail to keep our act together. Loss of resources through unemployment, illness, or other ravages are all failures of own your making.
As a result of this pandemic that has come to us all we actually have a unique opportunity to look deeper at the structure of our society and acknowledge that the foundation this country has long stood on is that those that have will keep most of it and eventually take the rest, and those that don’t have, will get less and less. We have a system that empowers those already in power, and those who do not have power (financial or political) have virtually no voice to make their needs and ideologies heard. This was supposed to be a civilization where everyone had equal access to those things that ensure everyone thrives and can become their best selves, with talents maximized and contributions to others likewise enhanced.
But we know that’s not the case. Maybe we haven’t wanted to believe it. Maybe we can still point to enough examples of those who “made it” to convince ourselves to keep subscribing to the myth that opportunity and equal access (to: education, health care, financial well-being, right career, etc.) is universal. But when millions of people and generations continue to flounder, we have to consider that our structures just might be woefully inadequate, and really don’t support equal opportunity, and do not actually meet the needs of the many. How many homeless live among us? How many have been unemployed for how long? How many have no health care? How many have no access to the education that could make a difference in their destiny?
It is time to get on with the business of re-building our civilization. But how are we going to do this?
The Astrology of Spring Equinox 2020
On March 19, 2020, the Sun entered 0 degrees Aries at 11:50 PM Eastern Daylight Time. I am using the location of Washington, D.C., as it is the capital of the United States, and as such represents this country’s collective experience. Let’s take a look at the symbolism of this hour of the day. At 11:50 PM Eastern Time, the Sun and Venus were in the second quadrant (houses 4,5, and 6). The Sun is in the second quadrant between sunset and midnight. The symbolism of this time of day is that the official work day is done, and now your time is your own to do with as you please. During this time, most people are with their families, or they’re out with their friends, or they’re playing music, reading a book, sitting around a campfire, or studying the stars. It is a time when people are doing things that they like to do, that they want to do. These are usually activities that bring them closer to their loved ones, things that make them laugh and weep, or give them a sense of wonder.
Because we are staying in place and practicing social distancing we may not be spending as much time with others. But the energy of this time is about focusing on your creativity, on doing what lifts you up, on what engages your imagination and speaks to who you are. The astrology of Spring Equinox 2020 tells us that this is the time to cultivate our gardens. What do you want to grow? What do you want your garden to look like? This is the time to plant what we wish to harvest later this year. What is that for you? What have you been wanting to make, to get your hands into? There is time now to do many of the things that have been calling to you, that you’ve had to put off because of the endless routine of commitments that consensus workaday life demands of us.
The astrology of this Equinox also says this is a good time to focus, to practice a discipline and to quietly master a craft. It is time for quiet thinking and remembering who you are. Now is a great time to process not just the current experience, but to allow other experiences that have been held back because of no time to reflect, to float up into your consciousness. There are aspects of your life that have opportunity to be resolved now, without hurry.
Reflect on your history. How did you get to where you are now? Where do you think you might want to go, now that things are different? The Equinox astrology also points to a desire to live more simply and to reconnect with self and with nature. Now we can recover the many lost pieces of ourselves by taking the time to connect all aspects of our consciousness, from the physical to the emotional to the mental to the spiritual.
Through quietly rebuilding ourselves, we begin to rebuild civilization. We have seen that we cannot rely on our elected leaders to include the needs of the collective in ways that are actually meaningful and that make a difference. It is up to us to create new systems that subscribe to a different understanding, a new myth that says who our parents are doesn’t matter; that how much money we don’t have doesn’t matter; that our ancestry and genealogy don’t matter; that the country our people come from doesn’t matter; that the language we speak doesn’t matter; that the color of our skin doesn’t matter; that our gender preferences don’t matter; that how much education we have doesn’t matter; that our age doesn’t matter; that our looks don’t matter; that our religion doesn’t matter…that what matters is that we recognize we all come under the same exact inheritance. The Law of One applies to all. Rebuilding who we are is clearly not an overnight process, but we have plenty of time to begin revisioning what we want our new civilization to look like. And we have plenty of time to experiment, to practice, and to dream of what is possible, and to turn the old myths upside down. It is time to demonstrate that an evolved civilization includes the needs and desires of the many.
The Human Design Chart for Spring Equinox 2020
This year the Human Design type for the Spring Equinox is a Generator with a 2/5 Profile and the Incarnation Cross of the Vessel of Love. What do we know about the Generator? Generators are the people who provide continual power and life-force energy to the world. These are the people with staying power. The Sacral Center in their body is the key to their power. It creates the vital life-force energy required for action, for living life, and creating.
Generators have the capacity to persevere and work hard. They have the life force energy and the psychology to hang in there and do it over until they reach mastery. True, they can get frustrated when they don’t see progress, but they have the innate ability to get back to it and hang in and not give up. They enjoy committing long-term sustained effort to the right projects. It is clear that Generator energy is what we need to keep us going and to get us through difficult times.
We are being gifted with the Generator capacity to dig in and find solutions to our current situation. Life as we knew it is turned upside down, and we know that sustained effort will be required to find our way through this. We will need to be creative and patient. And it will take time to rid ourselves of the old ways of thinking about how to do things. We will find our way through innovation, experimentation, and imagination. Like the Generator, we need to learn to trust our gut and not override our actual response to a situation. Our body has wisdom that our minds don’t. And we will be successful when we understand that we all arrive at our destination together, or we don’t arrive at all.
The 2/5 Profile. We all need to have time for quiet isolation, for that is where we experience our deepest peace. Inside relaxation and silence, we can explore, without interruption, our creativity and musings. We can re-connect to ourselves. The Profile for the Spring Equinox chart is the 2/5, the Hermit Heretic. This profile is about the need to retreat to aloneness to find one’s inner guidance, and to integrate what we have gathered. There is a need in the 2/5 profile to intentionally build in alone time, for that is where regeneration occurs. This is a time of going inward and gaining insight and coming back together to share our discoveries.
The Cross of the Vessel of Love. Each Human Design chart has an Incarnation Cross, made up of the Personality (Conscious) Earth and Sun, and the Design (Unconscious) Earth and Sun. Each of these four planets occupies a gate and a line. The unique configuration of the Conscious and Unconscious Sun and Earth placements creates a specific cross, a cross that speaks to your purpose. This Spring Equinox has the Incarnation Cross of the Vessel of Love. This Cross is about the power of love to shatter what does not support life, to heal what is broken, and to restore balance in all the places that need them. Spring Equinox 2020 is a big opportunity to remember that we are in this together. Most of us are feeling this reality very deeply. The flip side of this is that we can continue to live as though we are separate beings, taking what we need at the expense of letting others go without.
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The Solar Plexus Mutation is Upon Us
We are always inside of global cycles, and cycles within cycles, all the way to the cycles that impact each one of us personally. We are living the astrology of our times. We have had some powerful celestial events this year that include a Full Moon lunar eclipse on January 10, and on January 12, a Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn. This last conjunction in Capricorn took place about 500 years ago. Saturn and Pluto make a conjunction approximately every 34 years. Saturn has a 29.5-year cycle, and Pluto takes 248 years to make one revolution around the Sun.
The Full Moon lunar eclipse took place at 20 degrees of Capricorn, with Sun and Mercury at 20 degrees Capricorn, and Saturn and Pluto at 22 degrees of Capricorn, within minutes of exact contact. On January 12, Saturn and Pluto were exactly conjunct at 22 degrees of Capricorn, and the Sun was also at 22 degrees, with Mercury at 23 degrees. The Sun calls for new leadership and Mercury for transparent communication.
When Saturn and Pluto travel together, their influence challenges the prevailing paradigms around all structures generally, of our notion of norms and morés, of government, statehood, styles, and customs. There is always a breakdown (destruction) which is eventually followed by the creation of systems and structures that are in alignment with what is needed for civilization to thrive, as we understand it in those times.
These two planets, Pluto and Saturn, are karmic — when they show up, it is to address imbalance and injustice. Their influence is inescapable and will be felt.
• In 1517, Martin Luther writes the Ninety-Five Theses challenging Roman Catholic clergy practices: Saturn and Pluto quickly coming to a conjunction in Capricorn
• World War I: Saturn and Pluto conjunct in Cancer
• World War II: Saturn square Pluto (Taurus-Leo)
We are currently under the influence of a powerful Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn. Structures and systems are breaking down. They have not been of universal service to all people, and now we see the myth of the rugged individualist exposed for what it is: a lie. You can pull yourself by all the straps and boots you want, but if you have no job, shelter, or opportunity for same, it doesn’t matter how many pairs of bootstraps you own. The truth is, bootstraps (synonym for available resources) are also a fiction.
How does the Human Design solar plexus mutation of 2027 fit into this conversation? The Human Design chart of the mutation will have the Incarnation Cross of the Sleeping Phoenix. We will have entered a new cycle of 400 years. We are pulling out of the Cross of Planning where the concerns of humanity were very tribal and not as concerned with the needs of the collective. The new gates for this Cross are 34, 20, 55, and 59. We are redefining power with Gate 34; we are changing the way we create, organizing around making and sharing sustainable resources with Gate 59; we are doing the work of compassion with Gate 55, seeing others as part of our extended family because we understand that we are all from the same Source; and in Gate 20 we acknowledge that each person has value and a unique contribution to make.
The new energetic platform is already here. What is that platform? It is about a new shift in consciousness, a shift that will open our awareness to our connection to each other, and to this planet and all its beings. We have the possibility of creating a civilization that will support all life. We can create a society where everyone’s needs are met. As we know, meeting basic human needs is paramount to establishing justice. Meeting basic human needs is paramount to creating peace as well as joy. We must understand that it is imbalance that creates war, crime, and misery for all living beings.
Personal creativity and global problem-solving can increase by leaps and bounds if we open our hearts and recognize that we are not separate. It is the belief that we have no responsibility for each other because we are separate and different that has created untold eons of grief and cruelties that never needed to happen. The truth is that Universal Consciousness recognizes that we only exist in relation to others, and that others are part of our existence. When we actively work from this truth, we will manifest our highest potential as human beings. We have the opportunity now to do this. To actually get started. It will not be easy. We will fumble and we will struggle to find the correct solutions, but we are not doing it alone. We must not give up or pass over this opportunity. It is time to run our best race ever!
RESOURCE: This toolkit includes step by step instructions for how you can build your own mutual aid network while staying safe from the spread of COVID-19 — https://tinyurl.com/tgmb6y9
These are facts – job loss and long periods of unemployment are experienced by millions in this country, and not just once. It can happen, unbelievably, over and over. I personally have experienced layoffs multiple times, and so far there is no such thing as real recovery when I have found employment again. For many, the financial losses that accumulate in periods of unemployment have yet to be made up. After your savings are gone – if you were lucky enough to have had a salary where you could put something away – the next phase in the downward spiral is to accumulate increasing debt. How else to make ends meet? Unemployment benefits are a pittance and require that you choose between paying your rent or eating – if you want to avoid maxing out the credit cards. Realistically, this is not a choice. Even when employment is found, most have accumulated so much debt that recovery of their original situation is as likely as finding a ring lost in a lake. There are those who believe – and sometimes insist – that personal responsibility or even karma are the causative factors in job loss. This may be true in some cases, but not for the majority. Look up and observe the reality of the bigger picture. Unemployment and resulting poverty is a historical issue of such magnitude, sweeping across race, gender, education levels and more, that it eclipses personal responsibility, pointing to a much larger, vastly more powerful origin. What most conversations on self-reliance fail to include is the context in which each of us thrive, or fail to thrive. The assumption behind self-reliance is that focus and hard work is sufficient to ensure conventional success, yet it is clear that the myth of the rugged individual who need only rigorously apply himself has failed the majority of those who have, in all sincerity, done just that.
What bears witnessing here, obvious as it is, is that it is not our personal efforts alone that get us employed. Each time we present ourselves for a paying position, we engage in a dialogue with those who ultimately must advocate on our behalf if we are to get the full benefits of the effort we made in pulling ourselves up by our “bootstraps.” As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
My Personal Story
Towards the end of 2010, I was laid off for a period that turned out to be 14 months long. In that time, I applied to over 300 openings, all of which I could reasonably fulfill, at least from the job description. Out of those 300, I was offered only two interviews. The first did not result in a job offer, but the second landed me a position in a law firm where the advertised job description and the actual job duties bore no resemblance. Unfortunately, the downgrade in job duties was not to my liking or a benefit to my resume, but after 14 months of looking and severely diminished resources, I was grateful for what I had. At the end of a little over a year I was laid off, ostensibly due to the firm’s economic restructuring. This was another in a series of layoffs that began for me in the early ’80s.
In my quest to understand how things had gotten to where they are, I sought input from others about the possible causes behind my current dilemma. Well-meaning persons volunteered various insights, most of which were expressed as “Your circumstances are the result of karma that you are now paying back;” “This is happening because you have consistently run from what you agreed to do with your life,” and “It’s a wake-up call – better figure out what the Universe is telling you before it’s too late.” All of these perceptions awarded me 100% responsibility for having created my situation, but the upside of being the creator of so much discomfort is that I surely had an inimitable capacity to manifest far more joy and abundance. And have at least a little insight into what the “Universe” was allegedly calling me to do that I couldn’t do by keeping my job.
What is Karma?
I want to take some time to explore the feedback to my question, “What do you think might be going on here?” and we’ll begin by getting on the same page with an understanding of karma. According to Hinduism, karma is the reaping of what was sown previously – in the current life and/or a previous one, and perhaps even several previous ones. It’s a cosmic principle that you will not ultimately get away with stealing what rightfully belongs to another, especially those things which are needed to keep that person alive (food, clothing, shelter, funds) and which also enable their well-being (education, reputation, health) such that they are able to live the life they agreed to and have a right to live. Stealing someone’s foundation of support is akin to stealing their life force and can be akin to murder (where all choice is removed). It is a major tear in the matrix of both personal and universal balance that must be repaired by being paid back at some point. No one really has a choice about eventually returning what does not belong to them. You may get away with putting it off for several lifetimes, but the irresistible force behind the immovable demand for balance through restoration will compel you, sooner or later, to do the right thing. Whether you want to or not.
Karma is magnetic. When you are in the vicinity of someone to whom you owe restoration (or who owes you) you will feel drawn to them. Often you will feel an overwhelming attraction. The intensity is not easily dismissed. This is necessary in order to create the relationship that will provide the opportunity for resolution of past painful interactions. Note that there is also attraction with dharmic agreements (but perhaps without the burning intensity of karma), such as teaming up to perform a mutual task. Follow the yellow brick road as it were, and the purpose of the connection will eventually be revealed. In both cases there is a mysterious pull that you will want to explain as “that person is really interesting” or “that person is really attractive” or “they have something to offer that I’ve been looking for.” In any case, your karma has hooked you – or your dharma is calling.
Sometimes karma takes on the form of direct payback. What you did to another will be done to you by that same person. In this instance, the other person is forcibly taking back what belongs to them rather than waiting for you to graciously return it. This is far less pleasant than engaging a relationship that may have other mutually rewarding aspects, but lacking gracefulness as it does, it gets the job done, and you are released from that karma. This is the form of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but more advanced souls prefer to avoid such literal payback. It is far more pleasant to heal the broken connection between you by offering gifts that serve the same purpose as returning stolen goods. This also opens the opportunity to take the relationship to a higher level, one in which you mutually find ways to assist each other’s journey. The willingness to do this will depend on the severity of the original theft. It will be much harder to accept someone who previously murdered you as a friend you can trust. It can, however, be done.
Often karma works like this: instead of being drawn to a person or a situation (place of employment, organization, course of study, educational institution, and so on), you find yourself the surprised and unwilling recipient of a series of unpleasant and life-altering events. Bewildered at how and why these events have occurred to mess up your life, you may begin to search, not only for the cause behind those events, but for the meaning that might be behind them. In this scenario, you are experiencing what it is like to have crucial support taken from you, allowing you to know intimately what you did to another when you stole what they needed to live a flourishing life. This type of karma is sometimes referred to as self-karma because it is not brought about by the direct manipulation of another person but by an agreement you made with your higher self to understand the ramifications of undermining or destroying another’s life options.
Unemployment as Prima Facie Evidence of Karma
Applying the understanding of karma as above described to my current status of joblessness/ lack of cash flow, I could conceivably draw the conclusion that I am in the throes of self-karma. If it isn’t self-karma, I could be receiving direct payback from those who hired me to work there, assuming they suffered the termination of employment as a result of actions I once took against them. In either case, applying the belief that stressful circumstances are always indicators of karma at work, finding myself unemployed is the direct result of a forced restoration – where my employers took from me what at one time I took from them – much-needed livelihood. And that is one answer to the question “what is going on here, or why did I lose my job?” There are other perspectives, of course. Perhaps karma was being made against me, or perhaps personal karmas play no part at all. The immediate reason why something happens, downsizing in this instance, can point to greater complexity than can be explained away by one simple cause.
How to Know If It’s Karma
How do we determine when karma is at work? I don’t believe there is any way we can know beyond the shadow of a doubt that we have entered karmic territory, but when you feel as though you have stepped into the twilight zone – meaning that the status quo of your life peels away unbidden to reveal strange images, dimensions or new insights, or time seems to slow down and even freeze, or there’s nothing you can do to convince the other party of your good intentions, then you might be in the zone of karmic payback. Other things may also be going on that have nothing to do with karma and which are not the subject of this discussion, but suffice it to say that karma can feel like what I’ve just described. However, the proof of release from the karmic pudding ultimately comes down to this: you will know when a karmic tie has been released when the charge of the situation is gone. You no longer feel compelled to remain in relationship with someone, or at a job that was replete with unsolvable issues because after the restoration has occurred, you begin to feel calm, balanced, and neutral about the whole thing – that is, after you are done processing your human reaction. It is as if you have awakened from a long nightmare, and you know you are now in your right mind because the fever that once held you in its thrall has finally broken. At this point, it is a matter of choice whether you walk away (assuming you haven’t been irrevocably dismissed), or stay to create a new, healthier configuration which all parties agree to take to a higher level.
Signs of the Times
Sometimes it isn’t the karma of the immediate parties that is in play. It could be the signs of the times, that is, the historical context which everyone is inside of, and which is the common denominator to which everyone across the board, regardless of station, status, creed, race or gender, is subject. According to a July 28, 2013 article, Survey: 4 in 5 face near-poverty, no work (published online at TPMLIVEWIRE by Hope Yen), “Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream. Survey data…points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.” From another article: “The vast majority of people in the United States will experience poverty and economic insecurity for a significant portion of their lives.” For the statistics behind that statement, see Gary Lapon’s article, Poor Prospects in a “Middle-Class” Society, August 18, 2013, published in the online magazine Truthout.
Without too much argument, I think we can agree that national and world affairs are an inextricable superimposition into the course of our lives, mixing their enormous bandwidth into the much smaller frequencies of our own. We barely need to raise our heads to see that fracking, the broken nuclear reactors of Fukushima, the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, ethnic genocide, human sex trafficking, and many, many more life-ravening actions have a reach and impact far broader and deeper than any personal karma could hope to claim. These acts are karma against the entire planet, generated intentionally on an incomprehensively large scale by the abusive politics of power.
The Global Karmic Pandemic of 2020
In 2020, the entire planet soon found itself at the mercy of a pandemic brought about by a new virus, the Sars-Cov-2. I believe this virus was cultivated through the horrific imbalances resulting from the cruel and unconscionable ways human beings treat animals and the environment. The extreme physical cruelty that caged animals in wet markets and factory farms endure affects their immune system. Forced to live in filth, and lacking health and freedom, they become easy hosts to bacteria, parasites, and viruses which quickly overwhelm their bodies. These malefic entities easily pass to humans (and then the animals get blamed and subjected to inhumane wholesale slaughter.) When you consider that these beings have emotions, live in constant terror and endure horrific pain, it is clear that the damage done is multi-dimensional with far-reaching effects, and is nothing short of sacrilegious.
There is a tremendous disconnect and regard for life generally, and for living beings specifically, including tremendous ignorance about the impact to our planet of continuing to act as though individual actions do not reverberate across the entire matrix of life. I believe this novel coronavirus is a manifestation of the “butterfly effect.” The butterfly effect is the idea that small things can have non-linear impacts on a complex system. Of course, we now have a monstrous impact from a powerful yet microscopic virus that likely began with an assumption that it is OK to do as you please, regardless of the consequences. And this assumption has been repeated innumerable times through the innumerable actions of millions of people around the world.
The effect of this virus, whether one wants to call it karmic or not, is nevertheless karmic in its impact. When I first wrote this article in 2013, the numbers of people suffering from unemployment were far, far fewer. Yet each one of those people suffered no differently from those whose multiple sufferings are directly related to unemployment. At the time the numbers were not enough to influence change in federal and state policies. Now the numbers are striking — off the charts — and yet Congress must argue and delay taking obvious action to do what needs to be done. It is imperative that they do their job and take care their people, or add yet another straw to the unraveling of the structures that support the lives and well-being of human beings. Not doing what you have been tasked to do with the explicit power to do so, especially at the level that can make or break civilization, creates karma.
Karmic Impact, Delays, and Detours
It is not sustainable to be repeatedly knocked down in the name of paying back karma. It doesn’t make sense to continually remove a person’s livelihood from them such that they are unable to carry out their life task and agreements. In other words, it may not be karma that is at work. When we painstakingly created the agenda for the current incarnation we agreed to address our karma – working through past unbalanced painful situations with others, the working out of our own self-karmas — as well as our dharma –through the continuing expansion of our souls. We do this by surrendering to experience, including specific life tasks, agreements, facilitating and mentoring others, relationships, upgrading old skills and learning new ones, and stepping up into a larger (or smaller) game, to name a few. To do both karma and dharma we bring through the themes of a half dozen or so past lives that are consonant with the themes of our current life. The goal is to more fully realize who we are.
But things don’t always work out as planned. Sometimes we have to fill in the gaps, creating and re-creating from scratch. We can get delayed, detoured, or taken out. Sometimes there’s a deliberate abdication by those who agreed to help us. And, life isn’t set in stone. The best-laid plans of the wisest souls are still subject to the slings and arrows of unpredictable fortune – accidents and other people’s choices.
When your efforts to make yourself at home are repeatedly obstructed, it could be because you are presenting yourself for membership in a tribe whose tasks and agreements are not in alignment with yours. They will not recognize who you are or what you have to offer. This is true even if you can function competently in their environment. The phenomenon that occurs in these instances is the lack of familiarity at the soul level and the lack of agreements. It makes one a foreigner. And although foreigners can be seen as attractive because they are different, those same differences can be seen as threatening, and even repulsive. If you find yourself in a workplace where you experience constant abrasion, and the tribe is busy creating “evidence” to support their low opinion of you, it is time to leave. It is not likely you will be able to convince anyone of your value. You may consider that what is at work here is a form of self-karma in which who you are is ironically mirrored back to you by reflecting who you are not.
Finding yourself in situations like this doesn’t always mean that you are working against your own agreements. It might mean that, or it might mean that your community of agreements is not available, and your creativity and willing participation in wherever you find yourself is needed to keep the seams of your life from unraveling. Sometimes it is necessary to make things up as we go. The upside is we develop mastery in flying by the seat of our pants, using our own initiative and wits to keep body and soul together.
The Larger Context
All of us live inside a context that has been written and is being written by, capitalism gone wrong. Those of us who know better make no bones about this – human beings have created a political and economic civilization that is built on the belief of power-over, competition, and “survival of the fittest.” This paradigm is pervasive, and even if one does see right through it, we as individuals are still left to deal with its fallout. Without a cultural belief that embraces the right of everyone to the tree of life, which includes making available the financial resources and opportunities to allow the individual to bring forth his or her best contribution, each one of us is on his/her own. Some of us have family and friends who can from time to time help bridge the gaps, but many do not. Even so, without a larger societal support structure that recognizes the grave reality of unemployment and resulting poverty, the suffering of millions will continue. These comments are also meant to include the handicapped, the aging, the lesser skilled, and those who suffer from debilitating physical or mental issues. Their entry into the “game” is even more severely circumscribed.
The reality is that for most of us, our voice is limited, and our contributions undervalued. Still, we cannot give up or surrender. We must believe in our right to be here, and the right and necessity of carrying out our unique agreements. We must also believe that there is universal truth in this: without our full participation, the evolution of life and of the Tao Itself will be impeded. These times call for collective courage and digging deeper to manifest it. They call for us to be conscious of the ways in which we personally contribute to injustice and inequality, the places where our words and deeds are thoughtless or cruel. Individually, we must do all we can to consciously live righteous lives. In so doing, we can stem the fallout of individual and collective karma.
These times also call for the creation of community that takes its directives from an ideology that fearlessly declares: We are all one; it is unthinkable to leave anyone behind.
