Spring has sprung! The burst of raw energy is upon us and will be intensified with tomorrow's new moon in Aries. With this explosion of energy will come a spate of allergic reactions. And, I've just been reminded of how much we cause our own ill health quite unconsciously. And, I'm throwing out a few stories that might seem unrelated, but are essentially pointing in the same direction.

First of all, I have a friend, Dave Choi, who is a well known vegan chef who owns a restaurant in Chicago called Amitabul, Sanskrit for "awakening". Dave is Buddhist and was asked to cook for the Dalai Llama when he visited Chicago for the Parliament of World Religions about a decade ago. One day at his restaurant, Dave told some of us this story.

The Dalai Llama was awaiting his turn to speak as Dave brought him his meal. Dalai thanked him, but said he'd rather eat it after the speech. So, Dave sat down thinking this was a great opportunity to "small talk" with the Dalai Llama.

"So, what's the meaning of life?" Dave asked (small talk!)

The Dalai Llama thought seriously while stroking his chin. Finally, he reached into his robe, which has many pockets inside it mostly filled with toys and other childlike amusements, and pulled out...two Tootsie Pops! He motioned to Dave to take one. Dave thought "Well, I asked the question and this IS the Dalai Llama, so why not?"

The two of them sucked on the pops for about five minutes without speaking. Finally, the Dalai Llama asked Dave to stop.

"So, how is it?" he asked Dave.

Dave made a yuk face and said "Well, I don't like it. The sugar and artificial flavoring burns my mouth."

The Dalai Llama pondered Dave's response and then said "Let's do some more."

Five more minutes passed during which there was a knock on the door informing the Dalai Llama that it was his time to speak.

"Just a moment please. I'll be right there. I'm answering a very important question."

Finally, he asked Dave to stop and once again asked how it was.

"It's not so bad. I'm kind of getting used to it." said Dave.

The Dalai Llama thought for a few seconds then said "I guess that answers your question.", gets up, thanks Dave for the food and leaves.

Dave said he was puzzled by the answer for a couple of years until it hit him that the message was about attitude. It didn't matter as much WHAT you ate as your attitude toward it.

Then Dave told us that right about that time he was invited to a wedding in Wisconsin by some friends and that they didn't have vegan food at the reception. Immediately, people who were listening to the story gasped.

"You didn't eat BRATS?!"

"Of course I did!" beamed Dave. "It would have been much more toxic to arrogantly refuse. They were offered with love and I accepted them that way. It's not what I would have chosen given a wider choice, but I can do that at home."

Dave is also a man who often told patrons that he would much rather see them eating at Tasty Dog up the street if they truly prefered that food to his Korean vegan food.

He told us this story shortly after one of his frequent customers, a woman who was a nutritionist, a macrobiotic food practitioner and about 50 years old passed away from cancer.

It struck me that people misplace their power in so many ways. We focus on everything as if it's outside ourselves and we have to be vigilant and constantly protect ourselves from germs, toxins...all sorts of threats. Meanwhile, we're almost completely oblivious to how toxic and unhealthy our attitude is.

One of my strongest influences is the work of Wilhelm Reich. He observed a corelation between attitudes and allergies. Basically, those people who were uncomfortable with sudden outbursts of raw energy suffered allergy problems in spring while those who were uncomfortable with being and feeling suffered more in the fall. And, those who are the most guarded and hypersensitive suffered all year long.

After 18 years of doing bodywork, I can attest to the validity of Reich's observations. There are several "hypersensitivity based conditions" that I've observed. Fibromyalgia, allergies, environmental sensitivity, chronic fatigue and even arthritis can all very easily be lumped together. All are very fear based conditions and there is a strong contraction of energy involved. Insecurity and anger are huge factors that are present.  There is an attitude of arrogant demand that the outer environment conform to the individual. This is very childish. And, in astrology, all of this falls squarely under the sign of Cancer. And, it's no surprise to me that I almost always find prominent Cancer influences in people with these conditions. Including...myself!

What's my point? If we approach these conditions as forms of hypersensitivty they can be cleared up fairly easily. The same approach works for all of the conditions I mentioned and many more. And, the approach has the intent the Dalai Llama alluded to, changing the ATTITUDE to our inherently imperfect environment. We put all of our intention on perfecting our outer environment so that we won't react to it! Pretty controlling, eh? But, how much effort and attention do we place on changing the way we respond to the inherent imperfection of life? And, yet, our response it what we have the most control over!

If anyone wants specific explanations for how to approach any of these conditions, I'll gladly write it out. This post is long enough!

This is a link to the Pathwork lectures. The Pathwork began in 1957 and consisted of 258 channeled lectures over a span of more than 20 years. It's the clearest channeled info I've seen.

I was led to lecture #97 today and it felt so appropriate to today's full moon. I've found over the years that allowing myself to be drawn to a particular lecture when I need to hear something works best. Do be aware that there are some terms in later lectures that might not be so obvious if the lectures are viewed out of order. But, you should always follow your intuition. Just know that some definitions might be in earlier lectures.

Enjoy!

http://www.pathwork.org/lecturesObtainingUnedited.html

A collide-a-scope...swirling, crashing, undulating, thrashing...like my moods! I'd be like a mood thing...;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWxhT1rzNK0

Yesterday morning the Sun moved into Pisces and I became very suddenly angry. I was angry at the world for the condition it's in. I was especially angry at everyone who makes it so which is basically all but the VERY few. I was angry at the lack of couracge to stand up for what was right, for the universal truth. I was angry at everyone who has ever tried to tell me that truth is personal, that I was being judgemental when suggesting that we all had the same truth, but had personal DISTORTIONS of that truth.

I was angry at myself.for not living truthfully and was projecting that anger outward. I live outside Chicago. Picking up a newspaper lately has been a constant reminder of the lack of truth in our lives and especially a reminder of my own life of compromise. Blago comes from the same part of the world as my parents. So did one of his mentors, Fast Eddie Vrdolyak, who was my late uncle's lawyer and who my uncle called "the biggest crook I've ever met." And, now Roland Burris. And, Tod Stroger works blocks from where I live and serves less as Cook County Comissioner than as yet another reminder of untruth.

I use astrology. I realized more than a year ago that we were all about to face 16 years of having to face the truth about ourselves as Pluto began it's journey through Capricorn. If you want to understand Capricorn energy, just think about Martin Luther King jr, a man who stood up for his convictions and whose convictions were quite close to universal truth. We're all being asked to fess up to our own inner MLK's. We're being challenged to oust the hacks who we keep giving our power to, like Blago, AND to oust our own inner Blago!

Yes, we have a collective inner Blago. I certainly do. I compromise my own truth every day. I tell clients what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear and address. I couch what I say to stay within the parameters of their fear...and I am thus ruled by their fear.

And, we all do it to different degrees and in infinitely individual ways. For one thing, we try to be "nice", or politically correct. We're much too afraid to look at our own negativity, let alone engage other peoples' negativity. And, in this way we fail each other very miserably. We are each other's enabler. And, it eats away at us silently because we have to contract and control our energy. We are much too afraid to be in truth because we have to go through our own distortions of it before we actually can be there.

I'm a bodyworker. I'm a very financially unsuccessful bodyworker. But, I could easily change that if I gave people what they want which is basically escape or denial. My profession is rife with charletainism. We take money to keep people stuck by giving them the illusion of making progress. But, they don't really progress until they create a crisis for themselves. The crisis finally stirs their energy enough for them to want to face the fear that they're quite content to live with until the crisis. But, 99.9% of us resist change, the DEEP and thorough change we really need...including myself. Pluto is going through my 8th house, it's own house, as it moves through Capricorn. That's why I'm critically aware of the need to stop posing. It's extremely scary. It feels like life and death. I can see how it all connects to the end of the Mayan calendar and all of the earth changes (Pluto in Capricorn) that are on the horizon. I can see all of the structures within ourselves, our society and reflected in the earth itself shifting and doing so intensely and to the core. What isn't based on universal truth will collapse and what IS aligned with truth will be empowered, strengthened.

Well, Pluto represents change to the CORE, nuclear change. The planet was discovered concurrently with the discovery of nuclear energy and with the rise of Fascism. Pluto brings the darkness to light so that it can be addressed and enlightened. It is like the hero's journey through hell, through fear. And, last year Pluto just ended it's 12 year journey through expansive, religious Sagittarius. We had the dark aspects of expansion and religion brought to the surface. We went through a phase of greed and over-indulgence, through unbounded expansion. EVERYTHING expanded, faith (religion) in securities, the size and financial value of houses, the size of vehicles, of gas prices, of baseball players and their home run totals, of children (their girth) and self-righteous religious dogma.

And, now that Pluto has moved into responsible Capricorn we're only BEGINNING to pay for all of our excesses. It's part of the very deep purification process we HAVE to go through whenever there are dark aspects to anything. But, we only have to because we refuse to proactively transform that darkness. We need the crises and that's why we create them. Crises are our way of dealing with our fear induced paralysis.

Pluto going through Capricorn represents the thorough purification of authority. The spate of scandals like with Blago, with religious abuses of authority (priests abusing children or religious leaders sending people off to die) and with any other personal or social abuses of power will be rising to the surface so that we can take our power back. This is a HUGE consciousness shift. And, it's just beginning.

And, it all has to start with ourselves. We have to face our own fears and our abdication of personal authority. We will be spending the next 16 years getting intimately acquainted with our fear, with our dishonesty which starts with being dishonest with ourselves. We'll see how we compromise ourselves through fear and how that leads us into anger at those who we hand our energy to because of that personal abdication. Compromise is an interesting word, isn't it? Being in a "compromising situation" is considered not good, but "compromising" is a goal?! If we're in truth, there is no compromise, just alignment with that universal truth. We'll all be our own MLK.

Tonight's solar eclipse in Aquarius co-incides with the beginning of the Chinese New Year. It will initiate a new cycle of change that will reverberate for over 18 years. What were you all experiencing about 18 years ago, in 1990?

My life turned suddenly (Aquarius) 18 years ago. I was led to a career in bodywork, I began a conscious healing process, I became who I am today. And, I felt almost compelled to walk through all of the doors that were suddenly opening to me. I didn't really have a clue where the doors were leading me, but here I am...and NOW I know!

And, I've felt this same kind of energy building over the last few months. Globally, all we have to do is look at the election as a symbol of the change that's in the air, the Aquarian, lightning-like changes. Lightning refreshes what allows lightning to move through it. The atmosphere allows lightning to vibrate it causing thunder AND ionizing the air. It feels FRESH after a t-storm! But, resist the change, like an oak tree and BOOM! Destruction.

What changed drastically and suddenly 18 years ago for you? And, what are you experiencing personally right now?

I posted the video of a song called "Dirty Creature" by Split Enz. I did so because it's a beautiful, fun look at fear...how it limits us and how it's all our own creation. These are the lyrics. Enjoy.

Dirty Creature by Tim Finn