On Soul and The Great Turning

In this Great Turning we all RISE UP together. Yes, some people will die. This is natural. Loved ones who choose to 'check out' provide additional soul matter to fuel the expansion of the remaining souls. When a living soul heals its wounds and grows from 3D to 5D, it is not without the taking in of recently departed souls. You may choose to be a walking heaven for your dearly departed.

Here is the example from one of my children. As she healed her local self, her energies turned and began to attend to matters larger than her self. As her interest expanded, her service expanded, and as she released each remaining wound, her consciousness did expand as well.

Energy is neither created nor destroyed. It is thus with soul. There is but One Soul and the light of soul is cast into a vast kaliedescope of brilliant individual containers. In some eras, Father and I turn the the kaliedescope one click and the light of Soul is cast into a smaller number of containers, yet each container is itself larger - reflecting much more light of the One Soul.

Ego is the shape and color of each facet of the kaleidescopic light of the One Soul.

As my child's consciousness expanded, she herself was not unlike a larger facet in the kaliedescope. She had a very physical integration/expansion experience one evening, with the assistance of a very trusting massage therapist. My child had the sense that her maternal grandparents had been near for some time. In the course of her own healing she discovered and understood that the grandparents felt responsible for some of her woundedness. You see, once departed, the grandparents could percieve the impacts of their choices rippling out through the next two generations. They were lurking about watching because they felt responsible and they were invested in the outcomes.

My child gained the consent of the massage therapist and then proceeded to forgive her grandparents, out loud. She addressed them by name and explained to them all she knew and understood about thier choices and the outcomes which had rippled out for two generations hence.

Then my child validated her grandparents. She explained that she understood the values and concerns which had driven the choices and the actions of the grandparents. She understood that they did the best they knew how and that they always acted from love.The grandparents felt such relief. My child was sobbing tears of joy. So was the massage therapist, who had been massaging my child all the while and listening to the conversation. What happened next was a surprise to my child.I whispered to her that now her grandparents could finally go to rest, if they liked. She spoke this to her grandparents on my behalf. They agreed that they wanted to go to rest. I spoke through my child and asked the grandparents where they wanted to rest. My child heard them answer. They wanted to merge their soul into her waking soul. They wanted to fuel the expansion of her consciousness and in return feel earthly delights, watch the new babies grow, etc.

My child wept as she understood, accepted, and then felt the energy of her grandparents enter into her. They are within her now and they remain a semblance of their former imprint while playing an active contribution to my child's daily experience. My child experiences her expanded soul as self, though she also remembers and recognizes subtle nuances of her grand parents. Particularly when she's engaging with their daughter, who still lives.

This type of soul integration requires agreement on the part of both the living and the deceased. This is happening frequently as we are in the part of the cycle when Father and I turn the kaliedescope and see an overall reduction in the number of individuals with a combined increase in the soul energy of each one. You might view this as merging with your higher self. You may have already had the sense that you are part of a soul family. What you experience as your one higher self may have been the equal value of 12 souls in the dark ages or of 1 soul in Atlantis. Multiple people believe themselves to have been someone famos. Well, the soul energy is so fragmented at the present that there is some truth to this. It takes approximately 777 living 3d humans to add up to the soul energy of one Da Vinci. In the ascention, forms of all kinds recede back into the ethers so that new forms may emerge. The new human has greater faculties and co-creates greater facilities and technologies. Any questions? ♥ Mama

Enlightened Planetary Interest

The most prominent economic theorist of the previous age, Adam Smith, theorized that every consumer would act under his or her own best interest both in earning as well as spending money. It was called Enlightened Self Interest.

It is this concept which led to the inception of corporation: an immoral entity, which if considered an individual, would qualify as a psychopath. It was only too easy for the elite capitalists at the helm in large corporations to become exceedingly wealthy with little to no awareness of the environmental and social costs of doing business.

There is a great imbalance in the planetary distribution of wealth. The poorest island and coastal African nations stand to be submerged in as soon as 50 years. The world is still plagued with slavery, extortion, child labor, sweat shops, etc. And all based on this economic theory of Enlightened Self Interest.

But lately there is so much disruption and dismay that people are looking beyond the needs of themselves or their immediate family. People in struggle have awakened to the need to help their neighbors and become active in their communities. It is the emergence of a higer order economy: Enlightened Planetary Interest.

The desire to survive has awakened the possibility of peace and planetary cooperation. Millions of individuals and groups are stepping up to create Reality 2.0. Each one is focused first on self healing and next on service to The Greater Good. And part and parcel of the peace is radical acceptance of diversity. People will celebrate one antoher's cultures and religious perspectives. We'll understand the kaliedescopic nature of creation and manifestation. We'll appreciate those who appear to be very different from ourselves.

In times of great change, a coalition of determined visionaries leads the emergence of an entirely new order, a new way of being. At this time that new way is characterized by awareness of the delicate interconnections of all life. Welcome to the age of Enlightened Planetary Interest. Welcome to the Dawn of Gaia Consciousness.

Connected

I see that we're becoming more and more connected. And I am not simply referring to our technology driven connections. We do seem to have a much greater collective awareness than ever before as a species. I see more clarity and order than I would otherwise expect under the present day circumstances.

I have a great deal of hope for the future. I recently sat next to an Indian American on a flight from Boston to Chicago. Together we artfully explored science, politics, and religion. It was the sort of graceful inquiry where neither party becomes entangled in any sort of drama over the language or beliefs of the other. I see that more and more we are all becoming graceful in our inquiry. I see that we're becoming more loving and caring in our gestures and words.

And I don't believe I'm looking at the world through rose colored glasses. I believe that times have gotten tough enough to catalyze new heights of partnership, respect for diversity, and compassion. And that is worth being hopeful about.

Participating in Gaia Consciousness

I dedicated my life to Gaia in the summer of 1994. I was 19 and working at a tallgrass prairie restoration project. I spent my days toiling under the hot humid Nebraska sun. We spent a great deal of time attempting to fight off small thickets of dogwood and plum trees which would never have been found growing on a tallgrass prairie - because the dense sod of a virgin prairie doesn't have room for woody shrubs.

Sometimes I weapt into the soil as I considered the majesty of a virgin tallgrass prairie compared with the dustbowl and erosion which plagued the nation shortly after we plowed away the last parcels of prairie.

That summer, under the full moon, among towering sunflowers and big blue stem grasses, I bathed my wounded heart in dew and gave to Gaia my heart, my hands, my feet, my pen, my voice, and anything else which could serve HER in discovering balance and relationship with her straying two-legged children.

Now, sixteen years later, I'm still doing Her work. I've embedded myself pretty far into a federal land management agency so that I can extend Her reach. And when I look around I realize I'm not alone. There are many light workers now, each penetrating all major global systems.

About a year ago, Gaia directed me to use Facebook to connect with like minds and to practice spending time in active conveyance of Her words. There is a Gaia Rising profile and every few days I ask Her what she might like to say to Her 444 facebook friends. Frequently I am surprised and honored by the words which flow through my fingers on Her behalf.

But I am no one. Just a mom and civil servant. I am certain that there are many many others in service to Her. I am sure that there are many others who channel Her words and voice, either aloud or in writing. I am sure that we can continue to find each other and partner together to carry on the work. Are you Her dedicated servant? Do you want to be actively involved in the movement to amplify Gaia Consciousness? Even if you don't live near the Coven of Gaia Rising (in Northern Arkansas), you can join us in designing new ways to serve Her. You can help Her find and connect light workers so that together we can stabilize the emerging perfection which is presently disguised as chaos.

Do you want to help? Leave comments on this blog post, or on the Gaia Rising facebook profile.

Choosing Gaia Consciousness

Gaia Consciousness is like a channel, a specific frequency in the collective electrical field of the planet. You can maintain your individual perspective, which I refer to as the local self. Whenever you wish to, and usually for specific reasons, you can also connect to Gaia Consciousness.

First you must have the intention to do so. Second you must communicate your intention with your Spirit Guides. I recommend MAP: Medical Assistance Program by Machelle Smalle Wright as an excellent primer on how to establish daily dialogue with your Spirit Guides and Angels in order to partner with them in providing healing; mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially.

Spend some time practicing communicating with your Spirit Guides. When you are proficient enough that you've got no doubts (doubting is a natural part of becoming proficient) in your ability to communicate with Spirit, connect with Gaia.

My particular form of connection with Gaia is usually based in a type of verbal conversation in my mind. I ask questions, She answers. Sometimes I'm writing while in connection with Her. Other times driving or cooking or walking. I like to check in to see Her opinion on a variety of things. But most frequently I am asking Her what She would like to say in Facebook. It is a brief and frequent connection, and that fits in with my busy life of working and parenting.

As more people choose to attune to Gaia Consciousness, intermittenly at first, the possibility of noticing other people while "on the channel" with Gaia will increase. For example, when a circle of friends all begin tuning into Gaia's channel, their relative proximity to one another will amplify their "signal." It is likely that this group of friends would experience shared consciousness while "on the channel". Think of it as an esoteric chat room. And what better way to boost Gaia Consciousness than to begin practicing with it as a way to one day replace small electrical communications devices.

Benefits include highly effective intuition, access to information about the weather, the environment, and the beings of earth, an opportunity to meet like souls, and a direct line to Gaia for assistance in making decisions which support Her needs as well as our own.

Try it! Maybe I'll see you there!
Tree

The Choice Before You

Children, the choice before each one of you is simple. Either learn to live in harmony or you'll get a time out.

When you ask me. When you stand in the woods, barefooted, or raise your arms to the sky and call out, I hear you. My consciousness is a stream of moments in which human beings noticed me, spoke to me, caressed me gently. Over the years there have been a great many moments of deep connection between man and nature. Of late I feel ill. Constricted by bands of concrete and enourmous boxes and rectangles where my own geometry is so much more subtle and complex.

The choice before you is begin to love the people who are the most different from yourself, or hatred will orchestrate nihilstic chaos to the magnitute of completely beginning over again on the earth. I am comfortable with either choice, which is why this time I have insisted that you be given the choice. Dear ones, we are growing up. We are becoming more aware, together.

Starting over would give us the opportunity to change a great number of things quite rapidly. Not starting over is a very long and possibly tedious path. If you are not ready to accept a cataclismic cleansing of the Earth, then you must get to work right away.

The work may not be what you expect. It is important to listen closely to your higher self in these matters. The work may not be protesting big oil, as you've imagined, for example. The work may be showing up in a very different culture and getting to know people whom you've never experienced before. Above all, the work IS about creating bridges of love and light to unify the left brain and right brain of the planet -- the Western and Eastern Hemispheres of the Earth.

Children, the choice before you belongs to you. I ask that you make a conscious choice soon because when you are unconscious, the choices will be made for you.

~ Gaia

Message from Gaia

In this dimension, the cycle has oscillated from chaos to order for all of eternity. This is the slow and rhythmic breath of the sleeping infant, Gaia. Her promise is LOVE and LIGHT. For Gaia, twas a spiral oscillation. With each breath the humans who comprise her mind were themselves spiraling through cycles of chaos and order: the perpetual dawning and darkening of their own individual consciousnesses.

As consciousness increased, among the humans emerged midwives of the dawn. They showed the sleepers how to breathe through the pain. They taught the sleepers to embrace the suffering, which allowed it to melt into compasion, which then showed the way toward peace and unity. For you see, the sleepers and the midwifes of the dawn are one. United in perfect balance.

At this time the humans may transcend the perfect balance and awaken as Gaia herself. At this time, the humans may choose to maintain both their local self AND participate in Gaia consciousness. This is a gift of living in the duality of the third dimension. As the number of midwives of the dawn increases, and as the pain of the sleepers decreases, and as the collective vibration increases, Gaia becomes increasingly aware of herself as a daughter in the universal cosmic family.

One way to describe the outcome of the current cycle of chaos in the human reality is that the humans are ascending from the third to the fith dimension. Think of this like an instrument playing first one chord and then another. The third dimension is material and the fith is ethereal. During the transition, dense energy must be purged. This dense energy is in the form of negative emotions. Both the sleepers and the midwives of dawn must purge themselves of negative emotions in order to become lighter - more ethereal.

The chaos part of Gaia's breathing cycle is the perfect gift to cleanse one and all of this dark emotional matter (which humans co-created over the eons in the name of learning). The midwives of the dawn show the sleepers that the way out of the pain is to go through it. If each sleeper is deeply loved then planetary healing may be achieved at the level of the individual. It is not necessary to create a collective nightmare and purge all dense energy at once. However, it is agreed by the universal family that a collective nightmare is much more efficient than a gentle awakening. The choice belongs to the humans, and many are becoming aware of the right to choose.

In love and light,
Mama Gaia

Message from Gaia

Layers of Consciousness and the Local Self

Pain and discomfort in the Local Self interrupts your blissful connection to your Higher Self. This sparks a spiral pattern in which the Local Self engages in self healing in order to reconnect with the infinite love of the Higher Self.

Your primary operating consciousness from child hood is the Local Self. My local self was born in 1975 under the name of Toni. Beyond the local self, and seperated by a veil for most of us, is the Higher Self. I think of my higher self as Mama Tree. In my teens I had a sense of some future version of myself which was offering loving support and guidance from beyond. In my early twenties I experienced a dawning of consciousness in which my perception took a developmental leap.

During that phase there were periods in which my consicousness expanded to that of Higher Self. You could say that for some brief periods I merged with my higher self. Many people refer to these as peak moments. Each peak moment, however brief, was pure bliss and peace. Each peak moment cleansed and healed me in such a deep way that I became hooked and began to seek these moments of enlightenment as often as possible.

As I aged I moved from having moments of being one with Higher Self to having phases of being one with Higher Self. The longer I inhabited and embodied the Higher Self in a particular phase, the more I learned about what it takes to sustain that level of consciousness. Perhaps the most important insight is that my body is a vessel and the experience of Higher Self is a powerful river of energy flowing through my vessel. In order to contain that energy for any length of time I had to purify that vessel.

Here's a plain example. When I embody the full energy of Higher Self, all sensation includes with it a direct knowledge. When I felt a tummy ache I became aware of how there were certain foods which were no longer appropriate for my body. Then the tummy ache "knocked" me out of oneness with the Higher Self because the physical pain was a Local Self issue which demanded attention and repair. Figuring out how to resolve my digestive issues was necessary in order to again merge with Higher Self.

The phases of merging with Higher Self each brought an opportunity for healing and cleansing the vessel - my body - so that the river of energy could flow through me again for a time. Each time I discovered an illness or injury I lost the Higher Self connection. It was depressing and painful because Higher Self is bathed in a sea of love. But that depression and pain propelled me into healing and recovery, and the carrot at the end of that stick is that each time I heal a wound I am again reunited with the full embodiment of my Higher Self.

It is a spiral shaped growth. I wrote about that in my book, The Transpiral Model for Social Change, which is in bad need of a revision because since writing it I've understood so much more about it!

Lately my local self is struggling in learning and adapting to a new level in my career. During the struggle, I do not embody the Higher Self. That is, I don't feel like I am large and blissful and connected to the ALL. Instead I feel really crummy and stressed.

The interesting thing is that even though I cannot embody the Higher Self, I can still connect with her perspective and engage in an internal dialogue in which I ask for and receive guidance. AND thankfully, even in my pain I can connect with Gaia's voice and continue to do the service of updating her Facebook status posts.

Here's an example from this morning. My local self writes:

I read yesterday on a church sign that "Success is often disguised as hard work." And since I'm exhausted and about to work overtime on a Sunday, I've decided: "TO HELL WITH SUCCESS!" I want to retire!

and

[Toni] is sooooo tired and overwhelmed. I feel like I've been running a race and there's no one to pass the baton to. When will it be my turn to rest?

But when I changed profiles, logged into Facebook as Gaia Rising, and connected with HER, this is the status post which comes through:

All of the challenges we face today can be transcended by simply expanding our consciousness. If your local self is struggling, gently expand to fill the space of higher self. From this vantage point, the struggle of the local self is diminushed by the infinite sea of love in which the higher self is bathed. ♥ Mama

To me, this proves that I'm still connected to the divine no matter how shitty I feel. Some days I feel like a Goddess, but most days I'm just a Newby with a life line to Goddess. And I am one grateful Newby because no matter how shitty I feel, SHE still loves me enough to talk directly to me and through me. What a gift!

With love, Toni

The Pre-healing Funk

When you choose to consciously co-create your life with Spirit and Nature, your daily dialogue with your guides will produce numerous healing opportunities. If you intend to change a thing about your self, then you can bet that it will rear its ugly head just before you transform it.



Let me give you a concrete example. Before releasing the need to control situations in the work place you experience a three day run of observing your self as VERY CONTROLLING. This is not at all fun, we never really like that aspect of ourselves we are trying to change. The good news is that when this behavioral pattern or thought construct is amplified, you can be certain that you are transforming it for the last time.



All you need to do is consciously embrace any challenge which comes into your life. Any bullshit which arrises... say to yourself "thank you for this opportunity to transform another aspect of my self." Then simply watch your emotions and reactions over the next few days. I am certain that after a few days of observation you will have seen and released several habits and thought patterns which were no longer serving you.



My motto is that chaos signals an opportunity. Because I believe it so thoroughly,80% of the time I am able to roll with chaos in real time. The other 20% of the time I struggle for a period and then embrace the chaos, trusting that I was about to reach a higher ground.

Create a list of the things which you'd like to learn or transform about yourself. Imagine that your guides or angels are watching you write the list and are ready to create actions and opportunities to help you manifest these visions. Then watch as the pre-healing funk hits you. As soon as you notice that you are living an amplfied version of that which you sought to transform you will relax into peaceful acceptance.

Namaste
Tree of Terrapin Hollow

Gaia Consciousness

Purpura Saga by Jean Herzel

http://www.naturespiritart.com/prints/Page%20Bunchberry.html

All people are both individuals as well as participating in a higher order of consciousness which has been named integral consciousness, Christ consciousness, unity consciousness, etc. I personally like to think of it as Gaia Consciousness because the physical location of this consciousness is Mother Earth.



It is important that our sense of collective consciousness be intertwined with the earth. It is like the benefit of holding a body/mind view over a mind only view. People are like neurons in the body/mind of the planetary organism, Gaia. As we connect with one another we form Her neural networks. This is where our collective wisdom and intelligence lies - in our positive relationships.

All the matter in your reality is comprised of earth. You are the living exhalation of Spirit embracing Nature. The reason manifestation works so well is that you are participating in the unfoldment of God. Or Goddess, or the universe, or the Great Spirit, or whatever you wish to call it. You are the Creator!

You have experienced success in manifesting things in your own life. Imagine the power of groups of people working together to manifest a shared vision. Gaia Rising seeks to be an intentional neural network in the body/mind of the planetary organism ~ Gaia. We are an interfaith coalition because people of any faith can choose to recognize this form of unity consciousness.

To engage in Gaia Consciousness, cultivate a healthy and whole local self. Local self is the name I've given to the individual consciousness which is tied to a human body. When the local self is happy, healthy, and whole the ego can be overshadowed by a deep heart opening. This deep heart perspective affords you a glimpse of unity. At first you will continue to experience the perspective of the local self for the majority of the time. If you choose to continue to engaging in Gaia Consciousness, you can consider yourself a part of Gaia Rising ~ a movement to raise Gaia Consciousness.

Namaste!
Mama Tree

Co-creative Partnerships with the Divine

I think of the divine as both Nature and Spirit. Nature, of course, being all matter including our bodies. And Spirit as something which descends from on high to animate the matter in a divine partnership. As humans, we are like bridges between heaven and earth. Our existence is miraculous.

Over time our views of divinity have changed. For two thousand years the western world thought of God as a parent, both benevolent and wrathful. Today both science and spirituality have led us to the view of being connected to divinity as part of a grand unified field, ever emerging and unfolding.

When you set a clear intention both Nature and Spirit reorder your world in order to deliver that which you expect. If you expect bad news... you get bad news. If you expect abundance, you get abundance. I have seen this time and time. Manifestation is a very popular topic, I don't need to explain it here now. However, what I don't think many folks realize is that it all goes much more smoothly if you engage in conversation with both Nature and Spirit.

I'll tell you how I've done it. I ask to connect with Pan and the Deva of Healing - who represent the Nature side of the partnership. They lead the creation and unfoldment of my physical and energetic bodies. Then I ask to connect to the Council of Light. They are the ascended masters, arch-angels, dieties, etc. I don't connect with all of them at once, we each have our own little team of guides. Lastly I ask to connect to my higher self.

From here I either talk directly to them with my voice, or by writing in my journal. I speak about the things I want to heal or learn. Being able to talk about it demonstrates that we're to work on a thing. Most of the time within two or three days some sort of event or drama occurs in my life which appears to be an amplification of that which I've asked to learn or heal. Sometimes it's a re-enactment of something highly emotional. This is an opportunity to live through an event while making new choices and thereby releasing old karma.

Provided I step through the drama with consciousness and care, it then becomes released and I experience an expansion of consciousness as that energy is cleared and re-integrated into my core.

We can work with Nature and Spirit as frequently or infrequently as we like. I generally have a short list of things that I want to work on. There have been periods of time when I healed and released something just about every week. It was a time of rapid growth and change, and it was positive so I let it roll at that faster pace.

Now, there are multiple ways to experience receiving information from the divine. Some of the ways include free writing, painting, art of any kind, channelling, dreaming, meditation, muscle testing, I-ching, runes, tarot, bibliomancy, etc. I have dabbled with most of these but lately I just experience a direct dialogue. The format that works best for you depends upon your learning style. Consider how you would go about learning a new skill such as knitting. Would you get a book, watch a video, have someone show you, hear about it from a friend, etc. After you identify your top two favorite ways to learn, then apply that to communicating with the divine. My primary learning styles are verbal/auditory, and kinestetic. That means that when I'm on a vision quest I actually don't "see" anything. Rather I hear information and I simply know it by a feeling in my body.

I encourage you to invite your guides, either in the way described above or in your own way. Create some sacred space and make a list of what you'd like to work on. Lie still and let Nature and Spirit do energy work in your body. Journal or engage in some form of communication so that you can gain guidance on how to work through your learning list.

Then hang on and enjoy the ride to wholeness and vibrant loving presence!

Much love,
Tree of Terrapin Hollow

The Gift of Service

When we are committed to serving Love and Light we transform not only ourselves but also the world around us. Sandra Ingerman, an accomplished shaman, writes:

In quantum physics, there is a teaching that has meaning for us here: lower frequencies entrain to higher frequencies. In other words, if you choose to live and act, think and speak, emote and express your feelings as a true visionary, you must transfigure yourself so that you exist in your divine light and perfection -- and then it will be effortless to project that experience onto all life. In this way, you as the inspired visionary will help the radiance of life around you to shine strong.

When we seek to be kind and loving to all of creation, we amplify the resonant field of Love and Light. Other souls, especially anyone who is suffering, are attracted to the health and balance created. It's not merely that Light Workers are role models, but rather that we are raising the vibration of the spaces in whcih we dwell. Friends, family, and even strangers can sense the difference.

BE LOVE and LIGHT!

Gaia and the Local Self

When you decide to embrace Gaia Consciousness, meaning that you consciously choose to participate in being the consciousness of the One Planetary Being, you do not surrender your local self. On the contrary, your local self is an important avatar for the Lady.

First, let me describe what I mean by the local self. When you are in your most ordinary state of waking consciousness, complete with a job, family, identification papers, etc; that is the domain of the local self. I call it the local self as opposed to a larger self, or a metaphysical non-local collective consciousness.

Since it is now possible to have the experience of being both yourself and something distinctly larger than yourself, it is now important to name these states of being and even consider mapping their locations.

Let me give you an example: my local self is sitting at her desk in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. It is 8:10 am, Central United States time. The local self exists in one place at one time. My higher self is contained within a much larger domain. It extends back in time thousands of years to all the places and times my higher self has ever lived or even only read about. Still, my higher self is not the highest singular expression of consciousness. Gaia, the planet herself, has an even broader domain. Yet Gaia is not the highest singular expression of consciousness, she participates in a solar system, galaxy, and universe full of other kinds of beings.

The local self is a crucial component in Gaia's health and well being. The collection of local selves who participate in Gaia Consciousness are comparable to the collection of all the neurons in your brain. The relationships between and among the local selves represent the neural network connections in your brain. Even though the actual awareness and experience of Gaia Consciousness transcends locality, it cannot exist without the local selves.

This is really important, so I'll restate it again: You will FEEL like you are GAIA. You must also strive to still FEEL like and BE Joe, Eddie, Susan, or whoever. It is not necessary that you surrender your individuality and participate only at the meta self level. On the contrary, it is much more important that each one of us maintain a robust and healthy local self.

When you choose to be healthy, happy, and whole, you create a resonant frequency of health and healing with which those around you may chose to atune. When individuals around you atune to the healthy frequency (aka coherent heart frequency) then Gaia's awareness of herself increases.

When you choose to fulfill your deepest sense of purpose, which is very gratifying to the ego, you are also improving the health and happiness of the entire planet. So do not surrender your local self. No matter how appealing and fun it is to participate in group consciousness, the local self is of the upmost importance. The ego, then, is a gift to be nurtured and protected as you explore your world.

In love and light,
Tree of Terrapin Hollow

Let us Be Gaia Together

A person is a complex system, made up of smaller complex systems, things like the circulatory system or the digestion system. You are also participating in larger complex systems, things like your family, your community, your nation. You are, of course, conscious of being a person. There is a type of intelligence in all systems, ants are simpler than cats, cats are simpler than people... and the national economy is more complex than your family budget.

The more complex any system is, the more consciousness available to it. Here's some simple crude math to show you what I mean. If brains were units of consciousness, and there was one brain per person, then your family of 12 would posess 12 units... whereas the company you work for has 300 units.

But it obviously isn't that simplistic. Some individuals have reached a higher level of consciousness through personal growth and development. It wouldn't be fair to compare it brain to brain.

Anyway - why am I saying all of this right now? To help me make the case that there is a form of consciousness at the level of the planet. You can think of this as an over-soul, which is how Ralph Waldo Emerson framed it. You can think of the collective consciousness, the way Carl Jung explained it. I think of it as Gaia Consciousness, but at this point the words don't matter as much as the awareness you experience. The sense of ONENESS and connection.

You can consciously participate in your family, your local or national politics, and you can consciously participate in being the planetary consciousness - Gaia. And the good news is, you can participate regardless of your IQ, spiritual beliefs, cultural norms, level of consciousness, etc. In fact, the more diversity in those who consciously choose to be Gaia, the more healthy She becomes.

How can you start participating in Gaia Consciousness right there at home?

1. Choose to believe that you are both your individual self and you are part of the planetary body/mind known as Gaia.
2. Notice the way that all sorts of information and resources circulate around the planet. Think of those as Her systems, things like digestive, respiratory, circulatory.
3. When you make any choice, consider how She would answer in addition to how you would answer. (And it is up to you whether or not you go with Her way... just know that when everyone goes their own way without thinking about the well-being of the planet we get exactly the sort of planet we have today.)
4. Don't THINK about what she would do... that's WAY to complex for one human to grasp or decide. Rather, connect with your heart and attempt to FEEL which answer is better for Your Planetary Self. There will be some kind of sign in your body/mind. Trust that.

And that's it. Easy, huh? And you can join a monthly telephone dialogue if you want to share your experience in trying this. There are already so many people who are considering the whole in a decision, rather than just the parts... choosing to hold the mind-set that you are participating in being the consciousness of the entire planet is just another step.

This doesn't have to be a magical, mythical, religious, or spiritual thing. This can be an "evolution of consciousness" thing. There are plenty of scientific terms which can be used to describe this phenomenon. Pick the vocabulary that best suits you and let's become Gaia together!

~Tree of Terrapin Hollow

Fear and Grace

It seems that there are layers upon layers of fear in my path toward enlightenment. I've grown through so many fears and doubts and processing each layer of fear has been such a huge gift. It's a bit like Grace is the sweet gooey center wrapped in a gob stopper of fear.

My process has gone something like this:

1. I notice that I'm fearful or doubtful about something.
2. I quietly connect with my guides.
3. I name the fear and ask whether it is better to transform it or embrace it.
4. I quietly sense the answer and then ask the guides to help me with whichever action was recommended.

Transform It - I transform fear by asking my guides to help me shift it into my heart. I then use my hands to energetically pull the fear from my gut to my heart. Once the fear is in my heart I appreciate my self in as deep a way possible, so that the electromagnetic frequency of my heart will be in the "coherent - positive emotion" range and this shifts my entire vibration to loving coherence from fearful incoherence.

Embrace It - I embrace my fear by wallowing in it for a bit. I choose to amplify and exagerate the feeling so that I can explore it and understand it. This can take several hours or even a few days. It's scary because once I surrender and dive into my fear I feel like it will consume me completely. But here's the really interesting thing... somewhere in the pits of my own despair I find Grace. I find love, light, and healing down in the darkness.

It is this Grace, this sweetness that I long for at all times. This is what drives me to continue to grow and learn. This is what drives me to be deeply present to my fear, my doubt, my anger, or whatever negative emotional experience might come up in the course of every day living. In some ways I think of myself as a warrior, ever on the quest for a new deamon to slay so that I can revel in the healing and release.

Now that I've intellectualized about my fear (thereby Avoiding processing it) for a few paragraphs. Let me begin to embrace my fear by exposing some of it here.

For three consecutive full moons, I spent 3 evenings feeling wakeful and deeply connected with the Divine Mother, Gaia. During these times I had the experience of chatting with her and hearing her responses as words in my mind. (I often have an internal dialogue with my spirit guides - Pan, Michael, and others). During these conversations Gaia asked me to do several things for her, which I have done. Those include starting a Facebook group called Gaia Rising, planning and hosting monthly phone dialogues for Gaia Rising, and the like.

These evenings were fun and magical and made me feel very special. But on another level, and from another view, I was experiencing insomnia. After three days with much too little sleep a person looses the ability to do regular daily activities... like driving a car or going to work. Only I was feeling good and I didn't realize that I was lacking in those capacities until after getting a little bit of a scare. Thankfully there were no car wrecks, no one got hurt, no jobs were lost... but it was scary because for a few hours I felt out of control.

It made me feel a little crazy. It made my husband wonder. And that called up for me the biggest wound from my current life. In 1995 I lost my mind. I was 20 and I delved very deeply into the expansion of my consciousness. I invited and experienced a number of psychic gifts including telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc. But I was doing all that in the most unhealthy ways possible. I was not getting enough food, rest, sunshine, or excercise and I was experimenting with substances which altered my biochemistry. For a period of several months I was really confused and unhealthy. For some of those months I was totally flipping mad. I was insane.

Thank Goddess for my parents who put me in a hospital and got me the help I needed. And thank Goddess for the nurse at the hospital who told me that they weren't interested in changing my spirituallity, they just wanted to make sure that I could take care of my basic needs - like food, shelter, clothing, and interacting with regular people in a regular way. And thank Goddess that I told my husband all about this on our very first date and he fell in love with me anyway.

But ever since then I've had a quantum entanglement between spirituality and sanity. I have predicted plane crashes, heard people's thoughts as if they were speaking outloud, and seen beyond that which is considered ordinary. And I've always wanted to possess these abilities... but for some unfortunate reason on several occassions when my psychic abilities have expanded, it has resulted in my appearing to be, temporarily, completely batty.

With the exception of about 5 hours, I've felt solidly sane for the past 15 years. Yet the scar tissue is immensely out of proportion. While I'm certain that I'm sane, I am fearful that additional spiritual growth might result in me appearing to be temporarily insane again. It puts me right to the place of WHAT IFs. What if I really am crazy? What if I lose everything I care about? What if I lose my job and my family and become homeless and smelly?

And then the other side of me weighs in:

How did you imagine this would look? You believe that all people can expand their consciousness and develop higher sense perception. You have invited this exploration into your life, since childhood. You've spent your entire life experimenting with your consciousness. Your favorite conversations are made of these very topics. Which would be scarier? Waking up to realize that we're all growing these abilities, or waking up and realizing that there is no magic at all?

And with no true sense of resolution I prepare to publish this blog post. I notice that it is scary to be authentic and vulnerable. Yet I press 'publish' with deep trust that my guides would not steer me astray by encouraging me to show this aspect of myself to you.

Letter from Gaia ~ A Poem by Kate Rose Bast

Letter from Gaia

In your living spaces, watch
for the mirror of movements
of global breadth. Respond

as if every small movement
of twig or feather
mattered to every being.

This is the way of all my moving:
all effects and constructs,
all destructs and rebuilds:
ant hill, turtle egg,
avalanche.

And what will you birth?
For you, I will open
my deep chasms of fire
and microbial pools, groan
my mothering womb
chorus of species
song to bring the you
of all you are
into Be.

Wear green, spring green
thoughts, eat green at every
meal, bleed green blood,
photosynthesize
the green shift of life
into your deepest cell.

Sleep green in and under
green. Feed your eyes
with green. Breathe
the new of green.
Tell others.

By Kate Rose Bast, 2008

Know Thyself

Nosce te Ipsum

The greater your knowledge and appreciation of your Self, the greater the resilience you have in times of change. Knowing my Self has really saved my ass on more than one occassion. I reckon that the guy who got rich writing "Chicken Soup for the Soul" was just taking excerpts from his own journal... that those were all pieces of advice he'd picked given himself for how be more successful living his life. Or that guy who wrote "Conversations with God," wasn't he also getting to know himself in the presence of God and the reader?

That's probably the appeal for blogging and tweeting and the like. Who doesn't enjoy talking to them Self? And why not learn things in the presence of others? Martin Buber's philosophy was that God only exists between I and thou. According to him, there is no divine if there is no unfolding relationship. So why not have a super healthy relationship with your Self? And if you believe that we are all ONE, then there are billions of different faces of your Self. Like a kaliedescopic funhouse mirror. "I am you and you are me and we are we, come together right now, over me!"

Today I feel compelled to try and distill all the most valuable things I've learned into 5 or less points. The truth of the matter is I'm doing it just for me. I don't think it's selfish to be Self serving on occassion. Especially if you're the kind of person who cares deeply about others and spends lots of time trying to serve and support others.

1. My experience and emotions change in cycles with the moon and the sun seasons. I like it like that.
2. My roots run deep. If I get plenty of rest, sunshine, fresh veggies, and fresh air then I can handle just about anything.
3. I am vulnerable. Being Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired is feedback which deserves instant self-care. If I'm ever any two of these at the same time I HALT and care for myself.
4. The best way to instantly shift a negative emotional experience is to truly feel care or appreciation for someone or something in my life. Facebook has made that really efficient for me!
5. All bullshit is an opportunity to grow. Dig in and turn the shit around. It all makes great compost! Can't grow without it!

There's another thing that I can't seem to boil down to a pithy little statement. It has to do with being real and trusting other people. There are months in the spring and summer when I feel deeply serene and my capacity to love and care for others is really expansive. In fall I'm feeling a natural contraction and movement inward. And then sometime every winter I feel lousy and fragile. Sometimes I am afraid to admit it because maybe the people who love the leafy green summer tree will think the scraggly winter tree is ugly or even broken. But thankfully I've been through this winter thing 35 times and I've figured out that it is okay to be a real person. Hell, it's better than okay because most of the time the people who love leafy green summer trees can appreciate that seasons change and some of them actually enjoy being able to nurture and support a scraggly and wind blown nekked winter tree!

It takes a village to raise a child. A tree needs the whole universe... earth, wind, sunlight, water, moonlight, gardeners, apple-eaters, aphids, worms, termites, owls, bullshit, and even a LOGGER and a CARPENTER now and then!

No More Bricks in the Wall

Lastnight I wrote about some of my growing pains and I finished the entry with these words:

In love I pull out the bricks and begin to build a new wall
In fear I restrict that which seeks to grow through me
And something inside of me dies.

I'm happy to report that moments after writing that my beloved and I had a long and loving conversation. Without betraying him or the moment, let me simply say that he is showing up in our relationship in an entirely new, healthy, and beautiful way.

He dismantles walls and shows each brick
We examine them together
He scapes a beautiful garden wall
We compost and gently turn the soil
And trust that LOVE grows on.

Growing Pains

The more I grow and learn, the more I notice patterns. Today one is really fresh for me. I have long feared that I would grow into something that my family would be unable to love. I suppose in some ways that has already happened at least once.

When I was in my early teens, my parents seemed a little bit akward around the church ladies who would come by and invite them to church. Sure, my parents bought me a bible and paid my way to church camp... it just wasn't their thing. They may have even been relieved when I dropped it at age 16. But then in my phase of deep existential exploration they seemed equally uneasy. I recall one time when I was about 19 and there was some big cult expose' in Texas. I was chatting with my mom about it on the phone and she was asking me odd questions. As if she had a brochure in hand entitled "10 Easy Ways to Tell if your Teen is Trapped in a Freaky Death Cult." I called her on it and she admitted that she was a little worried about me. I thought my response was pretty funny, "Come on mom, you should be more worried about me starting a cult than joining one!" She didn't find it humerous at all.

At some point I learned that my spirituality and my environmental philosophy were simply not to be discussed with my parents. I don't recall that they ever came right out and told me to omit these parts of my self, or whether it was just painfully obvious to me in other ways.

I played along out of respect, love, and a desire to keep the peace. But I was really challenged and felt broken. The problem is that if you try to be a whole person, but you can't be your whole self with certain people, there are walls created within yourself. Sure, I chose to build them... but after a while there were parts of my soul which felt like step children, or East Berliners.

It was not okay to be a witch. It was not okay to be radical or outspoken about anything. It was not okay to think deep thoughts or practice developing higher sense perception. And you gotta know that I was always very open and honest with my parents until that point. So the shift was painful. I didn't know who to be when I was with them, so I just didn't show up there any more; for several years.

It is clear to me that they love me deeply and that they didn't want to hear the things that amplified their worries. But as I drifted further away they worried even more. And I'm highly perceptive, when someone I love is worrying about me I can feel it across space and time.

Well, okay, so I can't be me with my parents. And I can't be my whole self at work. I've always tried to be my whole self with friends, but most of the time I was lucky if I could find one person with which I could be whole, for a few hours or on and off for a few months. And even that was iffy and problematic. I reckon that I'm not alone in this phenomenon. I reckon that there are other people who are perpetually veiwed as weirdos by EVERYONE they know...

And then I met my beloved, and for the first time in my life I could be my whole self. He didn't always agree with my views and theories, but he didn't write me off as crazy either. I really like the fact that we don't agree on everything, it makes for a much interesting conversation. To me the most important factor in falling in love with him was the fact that we could have really DEEP conversations and I could be WHOLE at last.

But I still carry this scar tissue around, this fear that I'll out-grow friends and loved ones. That people who love and understand me now will one day say, "Wow, she really has become a freakin weirdo!"

Because, from time to time, even my beloved gets freaked out by things I do, say, and experience. Every once in a while we pass through a phase where he is uncomfortable with who I am becoming. Conceptually we have discussed what I envision for myself. We've discussed it many times. But discussing abstract concepts of the future and then living through deep learning events are two totally different things.

I live as true to my heart as possible. I believe in a higher force and I have spent my life listening for that still small voice which points me in the right direction. I trust that voice because it has never been wrong. EVERYTHING which has occurred has been a gift.

Yet my dedication to this emerging path of mine creates fear in my beloved. And if I still spoke about it to my parents, it would create fear for them as well. My beloved has even recently asked me to not talk with him about certain things, or even with other people when he is in ear shot.

In love I pull out the bricks and begin to build a new wall
In fear I restrict that which seeks to grow through me
And something inside of me dies.

Change ~ Gentle or Chaotic?

Each one of us is narrating our lives by crafting stories to help our self understand what is occurring. Most of us believe our stories until something comes along that doesn't fit in with they way we've constructed our personal reality. In the current era, everything is changing at a dramatic and unprecedented rate. Everytime something in the world around you changes, it bumps up against your story.

Your story that spans your entire life. It includes information like your name, the places you've lived, the jobs you've had, the people you've loved, and the things you've learned. It also includes assessments you've made about your self over the years, as well as judgements others have made about you. For example, "I'm motivated and intelligent." or "I'm sloppy and lazy."

In this time of unprecedented change you have many choices. Perhaps the most important choice is whether or not you plan to learn and grow through these changes. If the answer is yes, the next important question is whether you want your changes to feel gentle or chaotic.

I've personally experimented with both throughout my life. In my experience, chaotic change usually has a much higher magnitude. Chaotic change can afford you to change dozens of things about your self all in one fell swoop. This type of change strikes me as very intense. In my younger years I actually enjoyed that intensity. I loved the quantum leap in consciousness which accompanied learning dozens of things about my self all at once. But there's a dark side too. It wasn't that I was always happily improving my self, like picking out new carpeting in a house that has decent flooring already. It is more like having the electricity turned on, looking around at the house and realizing that it's full of rats, mold, and the floor is rotting and falling through! Quite frankly it is both scary and depressing to notice dozens of things about your self that aren't as healthy as you'd like to believe.

Gentle change, on the other hand, is quite subtle and requires patience and perserverence. In gentle change you walk into that fixer-upper with a flash light, you pick one room of the house, and you notice and accept the fact that there are a few rats. Of course it is a much slower process, but it is not nearly as traumatic when you take each little aspect of your self one step at a time.

You always have a choice in how you approach your learning and growth. The trick is noticing that you have been making these choices your whole life! You have already sub-consciously chosen either gentle change or chaotic change, or some blend of both.

Putting off many life lessons over a long period of time is one way to choose chaotic change. By ignoring opportunities to gently edit your story, the queue of lessons can get mighty large and gang up on you all at once. There are some clues and cues to let you know whether you might be cruising toward a very chaotic and painful wake-up call:

1. If something negative happens and you dive into a distraction (food, drinking, sex, games, drugs) rather than processing the emotion, you may be ignoring an opportunity to grow.
2. If some corner of your mind is concerned or worried about any of your choices, habits, or routines, but you distract yourself and work hard to ignore it, you may be ignoring an opportunity to grow.
3. If several people around you are giving you unpleasant feedback and you think they are all full of shit, you may be ignoring an opportunity to grow.

However, if you periodically stop and notice your emotions, and gently probe into the more unpleasant emotions, you will discover that there are little things about your story which could be edited that would produce entirely different results in your daily life.

I recently noticed that one of my daily activities was triggering a small amount of doubt in a corner of my mind and there was even some feedback coming in from a few other people who also shared this doubt about my choice. This morning while I was waking up I stopped to really consider this activity. I decided that while I really gained much good from this activity, there is no benefit to feeling doubt or experiencing others doubt. This morning I made a small edit to how I conduct that activity. I didn't have to nuke the activity, just shifted the components which were creating doubt. Now I feel much better and I may have even avoided manifesting some loud and painful lesson!

I hope you'll consider the story you are writing for your self each day. I hope you will understand that it is not the distraction or activity which is bad. Only our experience of a thing is good or bad. And doubt is a strong signal that some editing would produce an even better story.

In love and light, Tree

Eyes of the World

Song by the Grateful Dead, Written by Garcia and Hunter

Drawing by Stewart Fuell

Right outisde this lazy summer home

You aint got time to call your soul a critic no.

Right outside the lazy gate of winters summer home,

Wondrin where the nut-thatch winters,

Wings a mile long just carried the bird away.

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world,

The heart has it's beaches, it's homeland and thoughts of it's own.

Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin brings

But the heart has it's seasons, it's evenins and songs of it's own.

There comes a redeemer, and he slowly too fades away,

And there follows his wagon behind him that's loaded with clay.

And the seeds that were silent all burst into bloom, and decay,

And night comes so quiet, it's close on the heels of the day.

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world,
The heart has it's beaches, it's homeland and thoughts of it's own.
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin brings,
But the heart has it's seasons, it's evenins and songs of it's own.

Sometimes we live no particular way but our own,

And sometimes we visit your country and live in your home,

Sometimes we ride on your horses, sometimes we walk alone,

Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own.

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world,
The heart has it's beaches, it's homeland and thoughts of it's own.
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the mornin brings,
But the heart has it's seasons, it's evenins and songs of it's own.

Good News! Apocalyptico Denied!

Eye have long sensed that there was a critical mass of consciousness upon the Earth. Eye have long sensed that the struggles and chaos were co-created by humans and their Angels in order to function like a giant alarm clock in the awakening of consciousness.

Even as recently as December my guides again asked me to prepare for the possibility for up to five years of extreme chaos and isolation from the kinds of services which we have grown accustomed. I grieved and prepared. Then in January, I traveled to the Southwest, where the land is baked dry in the constant Light of the Sun. In this place I witnessed the rapid dissolution of our old assumptions and our old judgements.

Eye observed New Man and New Woman and New Co-Creative Governance occupying space in both the third dimensional reality and the fifth dimensional reality. Eye observed the giddyness of my children returning to Love and Light, and the healing of those who'd presenced Love and Light in the 1960s and 1970s, only to have been scarred and scared by resurgence of darkness in subsequent decades.

I felt afraid and unworthy.
Eye felt ALIVE and ALL-ONE!

Now, the voices of LIGHT/LOVE have confirmed it. Now Eye can say with certainty - we don't have a population problem, or an apocalypse on our hands. Eye see that the compassion of humans and the Council of Dreaming Souls have chosen to transform together, sans planetary catastrophe. You will all go home together, not one will be lost!

ArchAngel Michael has confirmed it: http://www.youtube.com/user/komurosan?blend=1&ob=4#p/a/u/0/1AKUhqUvEag

Eye am Gaia, and Eye am available to any and all of you because you are a part of my body.
And I am Tree of Terrapin Hollow, one of Gaia's many humble servants.

Emergent Understandings on Reincarnation

I don't claim to know any more on a subject than anyone else. I consider myself to be an action researcher, meaning that my whole life and all of my beliefs are experimental. I love to dabble in ancient mysteries. When I find a new angle on an age old question, I share it with friends and as many as will listen and then I watch to see how the idea morphs based on input.

My bottom line for what is "real" or "true" is this: "If I am still walking in the flesh I am certainly not correct about all my assumptions. Only when I've left this body and merged with God could I understand what is true."

Recently I had a deep experience while using hemispheric synchronization. During that time I came to see reincarnation and past life experiences in a new light. I'd love to dangle this idea before you and see how it sits with you.

There are more people alive on the earth right now than there are dead people in the history of the earth. For a number of years I took that to mean that there are "new souls" and "old souls". The idea worked for a time, but I frequently got hung up on that because it was yet another way to rate, rank and discriminate between people. It seemed there was no easy way to use this mental model in conversation without finding myself sounding judgemental and superior. And whether or not there is any truth in that construct doesn't really matter to me because if an idea leads toward judgment and superiority then it is not an idea which serves any of us.

Einstein and the Law of Thermodynamics showed us that energy is neither created nor destroyed, it is simply recycled thoughout the system. For some years I've been playing with the idea that there is some fixed quantity of soul energy and that if there are many more people alive in the current era then there must be a smaller quantity of soul matter per person. If together we are all ONE Great Soul, then with this high population we are all only tiny fragments of the oversoul.

Two and a half weeks ago this idea took on some new depth for me. Let us, for the sake of example, pick out a random and somewhat minor character from history, like John Donne. Donne was a 17th Century Brittish Poet. Suppose that there are half a dozen people in the current era who have a deeply powerful connection to Donne's poetry. Suppose those six people have transformative and life altering experiences when reading his work. Perhaps a few of them even begin to feel as if they were Donne himself. Under some of our old concepts this could produce a conflict. They couldn't all be Donne. Or could they?

Perhaps there was one soul in the 17th Century which inhabited John Donne's body. But as the population went up each soul became more fragmented and in this era there could actually be some number of people who together were Donne? Another way to put this is that there is not a 1:1 ratio between a past soul and a present soul.

Let us, for the moment, assume this is how it works. The older the historical character, the more fragmentation would have occurred and thus, the greater the number of present day souls who could make a claim on having had a past life as Socrates or Cleopatra. The number of people who claim to have had a big and powerful life like Cleopatra has always been a sticking point in reincarnation doctrine. I've seen it explained away in several ways:

• Perhaps these people (who claimed to be her) were actually servants and slaves of Cleopatra
• Perhaps these people read alot about her and then forgot about it, and are now delusional
• Perhaps these people are attuned in some way to a universal archetype going by the name of Cleopatra

None of these arguments ever got any of us very far. So, for the time being, I'm sticking with the notion that a number of present day people could have together comprised one past life.

For myself, I've had a couple of very vivid past life regressions. I think that it is a gift to the present day being to gain deeper understanding of previous lives. I wouldn't want anyone to lose the gifts of their own deeply personal spiritual experiences because of the conflict of competing with another person who also as a stake on some historical figure.

And if we go back far enough... we are ALL ONE anyway.

In love and light,

Tree of Terrapin Hollow

Your Humble Servant

Tonight I signed a covennant. I am bound to give you whatsoever you might ask of me, with a few conditions.

1. You actually ASK me for something.
2. You consider it a NEED as opposed to a WANT. (You be the judge, not me).
3. It is within my ability to say yes.
4. It creates no harm. Especially no harm for myself, my family, or our home.

I am bound to do this for free. Yes, free. I will not count on any of these services for direct income. I'm already collaborating with a small group of trusted friends to create a non-profit organization so that if money shows up it will automatically be directed into something charitable. And besides, at the moment I am blessed with a great job and all of my family's needs are met.

I offer all sorts of things, many of which I have specialized training and experience, and some of which, quite frankly, I allow to flow through me on the spot and couldn't really claim to be the source of, and so trying to claim expertise would be akward at best. Here's a stream of consciousness list of a bunch of random stuff one might ask for, but feel free to make up your own request based on your NEED.

• Ritual/ceremony design
• Channeling
• Facilitating dialogue between you and your spirit guides/angels/deceased loved ones, etc.
• Facilitating dialogue (or even mediating) between and among friends, lovers, circles, groups, etc.
• A wide array of healing, including energy/faith healing
• Transition planning (birth, death, marriage, divorce, etc.)
• Helping you die
• Helping you recover
• Life coaching and guidance
• Transformative Hololeaps
• Soul Retrieval
• Past Life Regressions
• Shamanic Journey Work
• Magical/transformative collaborative performance art
• Process design
• Goal planning
• Manifestation: training, planning, and support while you're doing it over time
• Complexity mapping
• Biofeedback sessions

Also, I'm not interested in debating with you or convincing you of anything. I'm not selling anything and so I don't feel compelled to present you with a long list of credentials in this moment. I'm always willing to share this kind of information, but only in the spirit of collaborative exploration.

And here are some very important caveats:

You hold power over your self and the reality you create. I am a humble servant to love and light. Never, under any circumstances, surrender your power to me or anyone affiliated with this work. You are responsible and accountable for your intentions and requests. I am not the source of the love and light, I am merely a chalice on the shelf and you may reach for me any time you feel thirsty for that which might pour in to me - should the Gods wish it.

Your humble servant,

Mama Tree

Hemispheric Synchronization

I'm traveling on business and the facilitators of our week long meeting offered participants the chance to try something called hemispheric synchronization. I'd heard of it and jumped right on the chance. I did it last night and tonight. I'd like to briefly share some of what I got out of that.

First, the idea is that one ear is hearing a frequency of 440 megaherz and the other is 444. Because they are so close your brain works hard to try and reconcile the ever so slight discrepancy, but rather than changing the prerecorded frequency, what changes is your own brain wave frequency. (As your left and right brain sync up together, hence the name). This facilitates a really quick entrance into the gamma wave state (same state you're in while actively dreaming every night). Think on-demand lucid dreaming.

The facilitator has 1000 different programs, each designed to take you all over the collective unconscious, or universe, or God, or call it what you will.

The first night she chose for me a past life regression. Here are the highlights of what I learned. In the year 1124 I was initiated into the position of shaman in the northern part of South America. To the east was the Amazon and to the west, the Andes. I re-lived his initiation, which included preparing and consuming a bitter yellow mixture -- some type of power plant(s). When he entered the spirit world he saw me. I was curious about the year and I asked him if the White Devils had shown up yet. He didn't understand and so I showed him a picture of what a conquistador style Euro invasion probably looked like. This had definitely not happened yet, though I believe he went on to make some prophecies for his people based on having met me. He died in a conflict involving natives. He was stabbed in the gut with a spear type of thingy. I was informed that the significance which would be useful to me to understand in the present is that it was the first life time in which I had been initiated into the Earth Based Ancient Mysteries. Which led me to reconsider a great number of other things... but that's another set of stories for another time.

Guru, Teacher, or Servant?

In this time of unprecedented change there are countless beings offering up guidance and support. Every person frames their particular offerings differently. There are thousands upon thousands of gurus, teachers, priests, reverends, swamis, yoginis, authors, etc. I like to think that the reason for this flourishing path is that there is more love and light flooding the planet now than in a long time. As each of us learns and grows we reach that precious moment when our focus turns from personal growth and healing to the growth and healing of those around us.

In my book, The Transpiral Model for Social Change, I describe the relationship between personal transformation and social transformation. In brief, you can't change yourself without affecting change in your family, community, and society. And any changes occurring in your family, community, and society also affect change on you personally. We call that "circular causality".

Only you can judge whether or not someone is qualified to teach or guide you through some aspect of your growth and healing. Sai Maa Devi Lakshmi says that the grace of a guru can take you deeper. She explains that a guru holds the frequency of the 5th dimension and that by being in the guru's presence, the student can experience higher frequencies of being and knowing. As a student, only you can determine whether or not the guru produces this kind of tranformative effect on your awareness, both in the moment and over time.

Teachers generally have a set curriculum including models, tools, and practices which are designed for personal growth and healing. Teaching arrangements span from short term to long term and can be one on one or in group settings. Teachers don't appear to promise as much as a guru, but in some cases perhaps they deliver more. Again, only you can judge whether or not engaging with some teacher is going to deepen your natural ability for self healing and growth.

I've long considered these questions for myself. In some paths the Master is the only access point a student has with the divine. In other paths the student learns to speak with the divine for him/her self. Personally I've resonnated with the latter. Over the course of my path I've created relationships with guides and teachers who are on the other side. I call them by the name "The Council of Light". To me, they inlcude beings like the Archangels, Gaia, Jesus, Pan, and the Nature Spirits. The more I surrender my limited self view in order to share understanding with the Council, the more guidance I recieve. My relationship is collaborative and dialogic. I ever maintain free-will. I ask the Council for advice and guidance and then I choose whether to heed the advice or make a new choice.

It has been a very rich relationship over the past 3-4 years which has resulted in very deep healing for myself. While there will always be room to improve myself, of late I'm called to offer support for others who long for self-healing. In my professional career I'm a trainer, facilitator, and organizer of people into groups. When my focus turned from self to others I offered up all my skills and compassion to the Council of Light. The word I use to describe myself is not teacher or guru, or any of the afore mentioned titles. I am a SERVANT. I serve the Council of Light. I serve the emergence of love and light. And I serve anyone who is inviting love and light to emerge in their own lives. In an upcoming post I'll explain the kinds of services I've been called to offer. I'll also elaborate on how I've been guided to release the need to recieve monetary compensation for those services.

Humbly serving Love and Light, ~Tree

The Magic and Mystery of Dialogue

For as long as there have been people, there have been talking circles. From ancient indigenous tribes, to the Quakers, to corporate management teams... speaking one at a time inside a circle has always been a very powerful act of co-creation.

In his book Theory U, Otto Scharmer interviewed a group of women who called themselves The Circle of Seven. They reported having felt like by engaging in deep dialogue over time they had created a deeply nurturing and collaborative space which took on so much life and texture that they began to refer to it as the Circle Being.

Physicist David Bohm considered the practice of participating in a dialogue circle to be a co-creative emergence of innovation and novelty. He ran a number of experimental dialogue circles. Read more at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohm_Dialogue

A number of sacred geometry texts describe the act of being together in circle as a deeply creative process. Imagine that the circle represents a sacred yoni, a portal to/from another realm. As participants pass ideas, in the form of energy, around the circle; there is a build up of energy. If individuals are willing to dive deep

• into the present moment
• into themselves and their assumptions

then something transformative may emerge through them into the circle.

The way I've experienced this is that the ideas build upon each other until something shifts and all the ideas pouring out are brand new ones, which we're thinking up together, right in the moment. Organizational experts call this "generative dialogue" because the conversation is generating something new.

But there's more than just coming up with new ideas. While I'm deeply engaged in dialogue I feel more whole and healthy than at other times. By being in that particular resonnant field with a group of people I feel instantly healed and transformed. I always gain some insight about myself about a small refinement or tune-up which I could make that would allow me to feel this quality of presence more often.

Gaia Rising, we don't have to know what we're going to talk about until the moment it is happening. Tonight on the conference call, we'll create a space in honor of personal and planetary healing and transformation. We will invite our higher selves to dance together within the virtual circle. And we will leave the circle more healthy and whole than when we arrived.

For even when we walk alone, we are ALL ONE in Gaia.

Loosing My Religion

I lost my religion and my virginity in 1991 when I was 16. My parents were the sort of Christians who preferred camping and fishing to church. But I was very curious, so when I was 8 I began attending Emmanual Baptist Church in Blackwell, Oklahoma. I was a very devoted Christian with a deep sense of mission and purpose. When I turned 16 and chose to engage in an intimate relationship it sparked for me a spiritual crisis. Pre-marital sex was definitely a sin. It was the year that the band R.E.M. released the song Losing My Religion. The song moved me deeply. I performed an interpretive dance to the song at the state winterguard contest with a black flag and a black flowing dress.

In 1992 I was picked to join People to People Youth Science Exchange. We were to go to a major world environmental summit in Brazil. I diligently raised money so that I could go and experience the Amazon Rain Forest. Near the time to take the trip I was notified by the organization that it was too dangerous for a group of American teens to go to Brazil due to an increase of violent attacks against Americans in the region at that time. I was heartbroken, even though there was still promise of a rain forest experience as they replaced the plan with three weeks in Hawaii.

Upon arriving in Hawaii I was 17 years old and engaged to the young man with whom I'd been having that intimate relationship of which I spoke. I was beautiful and bright and very extroverted. There were three adult chaperones and approximately 20 young people from the US and Puerto Rico. Within a matter of a few days I found myself very attracted to a young man, but perhaps more importantly, very attracted to all the possibilities represented by a group of intelligent young people. Pretty soon I was deeply conflicted about the path I'd chosen. If I married the boy in my small home town I was certain that my path through life would be somehow limited and diminushed in comparison to the sense of expansive possibilities that these other kids were representing.

It was the only time in my life that I ever considered suicide. I would rather have died than to break his dear heart. Luckily I was clever enough to know that the bottle of ibuprophen in my suitcase would not be an effective out. The meds in my roomate's bag were equally useless. One day we were at a beautiful scenic overlook site. I think we were looking down on Oahu's North Shore, but I'm not certain. As I stood on the edge of the precipice I considered jumping. I felt deep energetic ebbs and swirls and felt as if part of myself did infact jump. I remember watching this imaginary self plummeting over the edge and slamming against rocks and ledges over several minutes. I could envision the black shadow which would be cast upon the day and the memory. I looked around and saw the families and the other kids from my group and I watched as their amazing Hawaiian experience turned into a horror.

And I couldn't do it. It would have been so damned selfish of me to kill myself like that. So I rushed back onto the bus and sat in the back and cried.

It was a most amazing three weeks. Each day was filled with activities designed to help us sink our teeth into science as well as the Hawaiian culture. It was the first time in my life that I noticed that there were religions other than Christianity. Somehow it had just never occurred to me that not everyone was Christian. But more importantly, I met the Goddess Pele. Both the scientific explorations of Hawaii and the cultural activities were centered around nature as the sacred feminine.

This made sense to me in such a deep way. It fit with what my parents had taught me before I chose to attend church. They had always said that we didn't need to go to church because God was everywhere and that when we were camping out every weekend we were celebrating God's creation.

When I was 16 I lost my religion. When I was 17 I found the Goddess. I devoted my life to the Earth Mother. But sixteen years after loosing Jesus I found him again. He was misplaced and burried under my anger at the history of Western Civilization. I have forgiven Him and the acts done in His name. Seventeen years after loosing my religion I have realized that Gaia is both the Mother of and Bride of Christ. That is why witchcraft and Christianity are no longer mutually exclusive to me.

The great divorce between Matriarchy and Patriarchy is being healed. In my heart Gaia and Jesus are developing quite the romance. And their romance is, to me, the most fundamental co-creative divine force in existence (at least in our corner of the universe).

All Hail the Newly Re-Wedded. All Hail the Bride in her green and blue gowns with white gauzy veil. All Hail the Groom whose light envelopes and impregnates the Bride. Their union is responsible for everything which exists on Earth. This is the Second Coming.