Dear Friend and Reader:

Days away from the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Aries, all you have to do is watch television for five minutes before you recognize that the world is in the midst of a worst-case scenario. The truth is, regarding the oil volcano in the Gulf, it’s now been six weeks and it remains out of control despite one failed effort after the next to contain the gusher. Most people are significantly underestimating the global scale of this crisis. Meanwhile there are significant issues on many other fronts, from banking to war, each of them threatening a major regional or global situation. It’s making me feel nostalgic for the simpler days when all we had to worry about was nuclear war.

Pelicans on Tampa Bay near the Gulf of Mexico last weekend — safe for now. Photo by Eric Francis.

The irony, or perhaps the deeper truth, is that the aspects we’re experiencing are some of the most mind-expanding and life-affirming astrology we’ve ever lived through, and yet the world seems to be in the midst of a constant disaster. In this, we face ecological and economic consequences; and we face an immediate human toll. Anyone who is paying attention feels the pain emotionally. And it seems to be the people the most emotionally sensitive to the world’s delicate balance, who feel the plight and pain of animals and the land, who understand how bad this is. We understand this is a permanent change in the shape of the world.

There may be a silver lining to this catastrophe, which is that these events seem destined to wake up enough people to the simple truth that as a society, we have run out of ideas about how to live, and we are now experiencing the consequences of that. What we are witnessing seems destined to stir people to make a difference — not necessarily a lot, but just enough. I’m not speaking from my unshakable faith in humanity to take care of itself, but rather the way the aspects develop as the next few weeks unwind, and as the next two years unfold.

Since Uranus entered Aries, it does seem the world has gone just a little extra mad — and it was doing quite well with that project before this week. You know things are weird when there’s a mass murder in England, where most cops don’t even have guns. With Jupiter arriving, many people will not be able to handle this energy comfortably; the more dense one’s level of awareness, the more challenging it is. If you can open up, it’s easier. This of course is counterintuitive. The natural response is to crawl into a hole and try to forget about the world. Yet that’s precisely how we got into this mess.

Yet what cannot be tuned out so easily is the personal influence that these aspects are having, and they are acting on each and every one of our charts. We all know what time it is. Many are feeling a sense of urgency within our personal development, profound restlessness, that sense of wanting to wake up and looking around for others to show signs of stirring to consciousness. I have a suggestion: don’t waste your time waiting for anyone else. This is about you. As soon as you accept that it’s about you, then it can become about us.

What we’re witnessing and experiencing with the many different crises the world is facing is a paradigm running out: an entire framework of reality that can no longer contain the problems it creates, nor can it solve them. A paradigm is a way of saying a shared idea about life, but it’s an idea with incredible momentum and many people trying to hold it up.

It was business as usual at a BP station on the Gulf Coast last weekend, even as oil approached Florida. Photo by Eric Francis.

For example, it’s becoming obvious through the financial crisis, the healthcare crisis and this oil mess, that the profit motive is not the best thing to have running at the core of a civilization. Greed is not spiritual, it’s not sustainable and it’s not even useful; and we are feeling the devastating results of a culture based on this self-serving principle.

Similarly, attachment is not a sustainable basis for our relationships. It’s not a substitute for love or for trust, yet it’s the way we most often try to coexist. Our concept of our relationships does not contain the reality of our relationships, or our emotional needs, or our social needs.

The problem when an old paradigm runs out is that most people have no clue what’s happening, and don’t take a creative role in what happens next. If we know we’ve reached the end of this particular tether, we may not have any ideas for what to do next. We’re being called right now to do both: to notice, and to make adjustments to our thinking, behavior, economic patterns and relationships; and we will need to make new adjustments every day. If we’re being summoned by time and events to do anything, it is to live in a highly conscious way, aware of our relationship interactions and how we influence the world. And we are being summoned to stop being so passive about everything.

In fact, we are being called to respond together. One key attribute of the current Jupiter-Uranus conjunction is a calling of the tribes. It’s about individual awakening that leads to being drawn toward people with whom we are in affinity. Affinity means the sharing of common values, a worldview and a sense of purpose. Notice who you meet these very days. This conjunction, wherever it happens in the zodiac, is famous for meetings and the beginnings of relationships that turn out to be truly significant. For many reasons this effect may be amplified greatly now. We are at a convergence point, that is, a meeting point where we may meet our true identity and then gather with others with that knowledge.

A Look at the Planets

Let’s recap the astrology: powerful planets are lining up on this thing called the Aries Point, which is pushing self-awareness and a sense of connection. They are Jupiter and Uranus, together about 2,000 times the size of the Earth. This conjunction, exact this coming Tuesday for the one-and-only time in Aries, arrives with an ongoing jolt of wake-up energy, with the world crashing into one’s living room and with a healthy dose of everything all at once.

Chart for Tuesday’s conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus, set for New Orleans. Because of the retrograde effect, this conjunction will happen two more times this year, both of them in Pisces. Therefore, this is the one and only conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus in Aries.

Pluto in early Capricorn (an Aries Point influence, square Jupiter and Uranus) is offering the feeling that the world’s infrastructure is on the brink of collapse. Corporations, governments, banks and personal relationships (all organized under Capricorn influences) seem particularly susceptible. Somewhere lurking in our minds is the notion that the old system has to collapse before the new one can emerge. The fops running the planet had better keep that trickle of electricity flowing into my computers while that happens.

The problem is that few of us have an idea of how to do something differently; we think we don’t know how to reinvent the world; we can barely make personal changes and shudder at the thought of moving to another city. Even with something as close to home as our relationships, few have any notion of what they want or what would work. It’s time to consider these things.

Saturn is about to enter Libra again (another Aries Point influence, opposite those Aries planets), another factor calling relationships into focus. We are being summoned to consider real ideas about what works and what does not work in our relationships. The keyword is equanimity.

There, Saturn will once again square Pluto and shake up the system even more, and challenge us to get out of our old concepts. Saturn will soon oppose Uranus for the fifth and last time this cycle. Jupiter and Saturn, the two largest planets, are at opposition to one another now, which is like living two lifetimes in one. In a sense, we are simultaneously incarnated as our past self and our future self.

Mars in Virgo and Chiron in Pisces are at opposition to one another, bringing male warrior energy into full expression. Both are in feminine signs; this is more like sacred warrior energy than a commando raid, but not everyone gets that. The Virgo-Pisces focus of this aspect wants to pour the warrior vibes into healing and service.

Ceres is retrograde in early Capricorn. This is a description of 2012, because Ceres (a dwarf planet and the largest asteroid) is an astrological stand-in for the Earth herself. It’s now in the position of the winter solstice Sun — which is precisely where the 2012 story is focused — and about to retrograde close to the Galactic Center (another focal point of 2012).

And finally, the sky is developing toward The Big One: the first exact Uranus-Pluto square in June 2012 (this happens the same month as the extremely rare Venus transit of the Sun). However, the Uranus-Pluto square comes within three degrees of exactitude this very month, with both planets in the signs of the square: Aries and Capricorn. It is cooking at near full strength right now, and amplified by many other planets.

The Worldly Factor

As this astrology heats up, we seem to have new reasons to freak out showing up at the rate of one every day. There’s allegedly been an act of open war by North Korea against South Korea. There was another Monday by Israel against an international supply flotilla (originating in Turkey) bringing humanitarian aid to the Palestinian ghetto. We are reaching the edge of the old paradigm, ‘Whoever Israel kills and whatever Israel does is okay’.

On June 8, 2004, for the first time since 1882, Venus passed between us and the Sun at interior conjunction. At the time, a transit of Venus was a sight unseen by anyone alive today. Because of the rarity of the event, a Venus transit has historically been one of the most celebrated phenomena in astronomy. There is another Venus transit of the Sun in June 2012, the same month that the Uranus-Pluto square is exact. Photo by Sid Leach.

As global debt mounts, another financial crisis is lurking behind the scenes. We live in The World According to Goldman Sachs, the investment bank that’s extremely lucky betting on future disasters. As society crumbles, they believe you can make more money on failure than on success; they are the Bank of Collapse and Catastrophe International (BCCI). History is starting to sound like a Spanish surrealist novel. So many things that are so absurd happen, we expect life to be that way. We’ve grown to expect people to be hypocrites and hardly bat an eye when they are.

We are now watching America’s coastal waters be taken over by evil people who risk the world for their own personal gain, screw up in the process and leave us with the mess. Because under the old paradigm we ‘believe in capitalism’ with religious fervor, anything anyone does for profit is allegedly holy, holy, holy, even when it blows up. So far, every method BP has tried to slow or stop the oil gusher into the Gulf of Mexico has failed, as an unknown quantity of thick red crude bursts into the Gulf every second of the day and night: as much as a barrel per second. However, even by a high estimate, this represents only a few days of petroleum consumption for the United States.

PS, hurricane season began this week: at the least threat of a storm (such as a tropical depression), the drilling rigs will be evacuated, ships collecting oil from the presumed Top Hat will be called into port, and we face the potential for all that loose crude oil getting churned up onto the shore. It has already reached the Loop Current and last I heard was a few miles from the Florida coast. Some say the oil is already in the Gulf Stream.

BP is potentially facing billions in criminal and civil fines, though we’re getting a look at how the world works: for example, that BP is banning the press from videotaping its mess, and using the Coast Guard to enforce its policies. This is the kind of thing that should be on top of your worry list, or your revolution list, every bit as troubling as the oil spill itself.

Diagram of relief well provided by BP. While being touted as the ‘ultimate solution’, relief wells are not a sure bet; they are like finding a needle in the ocean three miles under the sea floor. Click for bigger image.

What’s being advertised as the ‘ultimate solution’, the relief well method (expected to be completed in August), is far riskier and less certain than we are being told. They’ve never dug one of these things so far under the sea floor. For it to work, the drillers have to intercept a dinner plate-sized borehole in the rock with another dinner plate-sized borehole in the rock, a mile below the surface and about three miles below the seabed. Then, if they hit the mark, they plug one hole from the other.

They are currently drilling two relief wells (the second one ordered by Pres. Obama), hoping to have the flow staunched by the Hurricane Katrina anniversary, but so far they can’t even slow down the flow. In other words, after six weeks, the situation remains totally out of control. We do not yet realize how serious this is, though some are starting to figure it out.

Cleanup workers are getting sick from toxic exposure. BP told CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta that, “The data shows that airborne toxins are well within safe limits.” The toxins include the mix of oil and dispersants. BP is spouting the same lies as GE, Westinghouse, Monsanto and Dow Chemical before it: we’re poisoning you but a little is okay, no matter how sick you get. Jon Stewart noted that BP had more than 700 recent safety violations at refineries in the same span of time that Exxon had just one violation. Is anyone consciously boycotting BP? Or is it business at usual at the pump?

The Issue is How We Live

As we acknowledge how serious this is, we will either have to admit how powerless we are, or take up our power and deal with the issue, or admit that we’re morally compromised. The ‘issue’ is the totality of how we live. The issue is being aware of what it means to live as we do, and consciously acknowledging what else is possible, and why we need to explore those possibilities. In support of this idea, let’s take a trip back in history.

Most vegetables travel more than 2,000 miles from where they are grown to your kitchen table. Farmer’s markets support local farms and save tons of fuel. Photo by Eric Francis.

On the eve of the shock and awe campaign — that is, the beginning of the current war against Iraq in early 2003 — I saw the band Audioslave play in Seattle. Tom Morello had a sign taped to his amplifier: “How many Iraqis per gallon?”

About six weeks earlier, I had participated in the F 15 protests against the imminent war, the worldwide day of protest on Feb. 15, 2003. It was one of the most amazing protests I had ever been to, but it lasted a single day when it needed to last till it got results. I was stunned to disbelief at the utter silence that followed, even as Bush, Cheney and Blair went ahead with their illegal war based on nothing but lies and personal greed. Both Bush and Cheney had huge investments in the invasion, through their respective companies (Carlyle Group and Halliburton). I had a sick feeling about this: both the war and the lack of response (responsibility) by the American people. It was as if we were facing one of the biggest moral crises in history and all people wanted to do was drive a bigger SUV. Everyone knew the war, really a blatant, unprovoked assault on the people of a country, was wrong, and yet after that one glorious day of standing up with the world against it, there was hardly a response except by email, Cindy Sheehan and Women in Pink.

As of today, the documented civilian death toll of the war in Iraq stands between 96, 663 and 105,408 men, women and children murdered by the United States, with the participation and endorsement of the government of Great Britain. This was allegedly to “save” the Iraqis from a hobbled dictator and to protect the world from nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. We all knew these lame excuses were lies, as was the attempt to blame Iraq for the Sept. 11 incident that was by all evidence a total fraud on the American public and the world: a false flag attack. We knew that Iraq was a war for oil and some of us knew that the war on Afghanistan involved an oil pipeline in neighboring Uzbekistan.

So as the first decade of the 21st century unfolded, Americans were confronted by repeated global-scale injustice committed by their government, including two stolen presidential elections, two wars and many other crimes (such as torture, acknowledged by George W. Bush personally on Wednesday night). Yet we fell mute as we persisted in our “way of life” — the one we were told whoever did Sept. 11 resented us for. There was no actual pushback against these sickening crimes against humanity. Americans never stood up for justice or for themselves, and no, I do not count email petitions. We never risked calling out our leaders for these moral outrages. Americans, as a society, were little children who wanted to be left alone with their toys.

The F 15 protests against the invasion of Iraq, such as this one in London, lasted for one day when they needed to last for the duration of the war. As a result, the war has persisted for seven years and Afghanistan has become the longest war in US history, exceeding even the ‘official’ nine years of the Vietnam war.

Now that blood-colored crude oil has soaked the Gulf of Mexico and its irreparable wetlands, and threatens to wash up on every beach from Louisiana to Maine, people are traveling to their shores to say goodbye to the American landscape. We have some meditating to do, which will (if we are awake, and this is the test) be short, and be followed by a vocal response to both the government and the corporations that create oil dependency and kill alternative fuel and goad us into wars funded by our stupidity and lack of moral courage. We now have an opportunity to partially redeem our suffering hearts and sold-out souls by taking this disaster as an opportunity to right many wrongs.

Along the way, we need to make countless small changes, which will keep the pressure on the greater powers for the bigger changes. For example, if we cut back our fuel consumption by 10% or 20%, we can make the oil business unprofitable in this country. If we cut back on plastic, we can do the same thing to the companies that make those sickening containers that our so-called food comes in.

My sense is that the silver lining of this disgusting oil spill, that’s threatening to kill every aquatic creature in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, could be an actual environmental awakening. Not merely saying goodbye to the shores of Pensacola and Key West and Miami as we knew them, but an actual pushback. That awakening must be built, cell by cell, of individual choices, of coordinated community choices and of continual adjustments to how we live. We need to use less plastic and less fuel every week. We literally need to question everything. We need to dump a huge bag of household trash out onto the back porch and figure out what’s in there and how it got there and what we can do about it.

We all know there is a problem and many people feel that time is running out. We are going to be living with this sensation for a long time: maybe for as long as we live. To act would be in our own best interest, and that of the world. And within that sphere of pressure, we will still need to make choices, even if they seem hopeless. This will put some responsibility back into our hands, and put us into contact with the truth that we are part of the world in which we live, and that it is part of us.

Yours & truly,

Gemini Birthday Audio: The Sky is Hot and So Are You

Dear Friend and Gemini, Gem Moon or Ascendant:

I’ve just finished the Gemini birthday audio for you, and man the sky is hot. We know that, but your chart and your life are positioned to make the most of the amazing astrology that we are experiencing now. This is a moment when it seems like everything is happening at once, though the main thing that’s happening is that you are cultivating a new level of autonomy. That is to say, your charts suggest strongly that the highest priority in your life is to be an independent person, free of your entanglements with others so that you can release your true potential.

This manifests three ways. First, I see you embarking on an overhaul of your financial plans and how you both structure and think about money. For too long you have been under the influence and indeed the power of others, and Pluto in Capricorn is helping you work out how this has been, and offering you many suggestions for how to open up to your own strength. While this plan has been in the works for a while, you’re likely to feel a lot of change all at once — and this will come with other changes in a relationship that is in a sense bound together by sex and money.

What you are really doing is dismantling the old values given to you by your parents, principally your mother, and tearing these ideas apart and opening up to a new set of ideals. You are determined to run on your own steam, and it’s about time you did.

Next, you are finally finding some focus in your career. This is not easy for a Gemini, because you have Pisces in your career house: that’s difficult to focus into a concrete plan of action, though Chiron in Pisces is pushing you to do just that. You’ll either be feeling this as a sense of crisis or a sense of empowerment — maybe, at times, as a mix of both. I describe in some detail how to work with Chiron energy to make the most of this rare event.

Finally, the time has arrived: your focus on your professional goals is translating into a passion about expressing yourself bravely, in original ways and without fear. This is about the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in your 11th solar house, Aries. This is about liberating your self expression, having a greater influence on your friends than they have on you, and being able to visualize your desires, hopes and dreams for who you want to be. Visualize, yes — and manifest, because you finally have the discipline and focus.

You will find the details are all in this extended audio — 60 minutes of astrology and 20 minutes of tarot using the Voyager deck — all for just $14.99. Here is the link for instant access.

Yours & truly,

PS, here is a free audio sample of this presentation, five minutes

Freedom’s Potential: A Remembrance

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

An English girl’s summer of love. “Be happy, be free, wear flowers, bring bells.” Photo: DailyMail.co.uk.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.

Times They Are A Changing
–Bob Dylan

Saturn and Uranus oppose each another in a clash of Titans, reminding me that I wore flowers in my hair in Golden Gate Park long before the Summer of Love, feeling the energy dance on my skin like fireflies sparking off light. That was before the drugs went bad and the ghetto-fires raged, before the snipers loaded their rifles and St. Ronnie the Reagan told us that hippies looked and smelled like Cheetah, before the establishment decided that kids were the enemy, before the churches began to howl about taking back American values. Even when it all went viral, the air was electric with purpose and determination. And while this isn’t the Summer of Love, Part Deux, perhaps it’s the cynic’s version.

Those were days when we had supreme confidence both in ourselves and in our ability to impact the world. We believed in the vote, in the Constitution and the American system of checks and balances. We had respect for science that took us to the Moon, and medicine that gave us the first heart transplant. Television was benign, and news still showed actual pictures of war deaths and protests against them. We gave a slight nod to militarism at its leanest and meanest, but considered Vietnam an egregious example of exploitive empire building. We cracked open politics to get a good look at its dark underbelly. We marched through the haze of tear gas and threats of baton-wielding cops to make our voices heard. Our American Dream was more about freedom’s potential than its actuality, even as we took advantage of the liberty that citizenship provided us. We had no idea how good we had it.

Continued at this link…

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, June 4, 2010, #818 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Are you ready for the changes that are emerging in your life? Maybe not. But probably so. I suggest you think of this as an experiment in becoming. Stretch into the new territory of Self. Remember how, just a few months ago, you were so eager to do this; what an urgent necessity it was, though that was driven by an external factor. Now the impulse is coming from within you, and there’s no denying this. The translation you’re experiencing is a little like going from fantasy to reality. We’ve all had this experience: what is hot and yummy in the imagination has a different quality when we manifest it in 3D. And as with erotic experimentation, it’s worth experimenting consciously, trying again, and giving yourself a chance to grow into the manifestation of your desires. We both know it will be worth it.

Aries Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

There are three key symbols that I associate with Taurus. One is that the horns of the bull represent the dilemma of your existence: the odd dualism that you live with, despite being so determined to be one unified person. Then those horns morph into the crescent Moon, representing the shared rulership of your sign by this body, and the many cycles of experience you go through; this, too, seems to contradict the stampeding nature ascribed to your sign. Finally there is the esoteric interpretation: that your conscious mind exists wrapped around a hot, churning core. Your personality is basically a response to your attempt to manage, or relate to, this molten lava at the center of your psyche. I suggest you stop trying to manage this, or control the uncontrollable tectonic movements that flow through your life. Instead, you are free to tap in and set some of that energy free.

Taurus Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

So much is available now, you may have no clue how to embrace the possibilities. I suggest you begin with a goal; a single goal. Of the many profound transits now affecting your solar chart, the one thing that is the most distinct is your ability to focus on an objective. This is something new, something that has never quite happened to you: a new gift. I recognize that there are many crucial items on your agenda, all of them seeming to demand energy. Yet I am speaking of something on a higher order of reality, which is your ability to work your mind in a new way, take ownership of that skill, and then seeing where this leaves you. Focus on your highest priority; your single most meaningful and heartfelt desire. I think you’ll learn something that will provide an approach to everything else on your agenda.

Gemini Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

You are so intimately related to what you achieve and your concept of accomplishment that your whole sense of identity is based on this. I know you have many humble goals, such as eating well every day, and taking care of your family and your immediate environment. Now other objectives are calling you: plans and ideas greater than you’ve ever considered. I suggest you tune into this and notice that your drive is coming from the inside — not as a lurch toward something outside yourself. In other words, your desire is to project something you are becoming into the world, rather than reaching for something you are not. This is a far more effective way to achieve your desires, because it’s based on a feeling of completion from the beginning. On the deepest level of learning, this is the skill you are now acquiring.

Finally, your self-critical nature is outdoing its use. It’s about time. Among the very few things that hold you back is the way you tend to not only judge yourself, but to obsess over those judgments, and now that quality, so unbecoming of your true nature, is rapidly giving way to something that feels new, but which is as old as the galaxy itself. The question is really about what you recognize and identify with, as a conscious choice. This is the piece that seems to be coming in the strongest: that you have a choice in who you are, how you feel about who you are, and how you express who you are. And right now you have quite an amazing option in front of you, one you may have never thought could possibly exist, and it looks a little like walking through the door to enlightenment and total awareness in one casual stride.

You may not have any idea just how innovative your commitments can be. While some Virgos will be seeking a total detonation of all standing agreements — and may well be correct in seeking that — I would propose that what the environment and your moment of growth call for is a reinvention of the whole concept of commitment. Under that idea, obligation would become passion. Need would become desire. Freedom would become the room to choose, and options to choose from. Relating to someone would be an experience reserved for your full self, not something you bring a fragment of yourself into. You would not enter any relationship with a feeling of compromise, but rather a sensation of expansion and embrace. You would choose to relate to the people who recognize your authentic being, and who say yes to your existence. It’s time you did as well.

You seem, at least, not to have your whole life be run by your petty anxieties. And those worries would usually have you worried that you might never break free of them — though now this seems ridiculous. You have no choice but to rise to the level of the challenges that are calling you; to meet the world with the energy it’s offering you, and to call yourself fully present in your relationships. As you evolve into this as a way of life, you may wonder once or twice where those cranky old fears went, though I propose you will forget them entirely soon enough. Your more authentic state of being is to project yourself fully and fearlessly into your environment and commit fully to everything that you encounter. How can you do that? By being fully devoted to yourself, and letting all good things grow from there.

I suggest you be thankful that you have such a full life. I suggest you be grateful that you have so much to do. What you also have is the opportunity to simplify your existence without giving up the feeling, or the truth, of being fully in the flow. The most mundane aspects of your world are coming under the revolutionary spotlight. Don’t worry about whether you have the energy to make these changes; trust that the changes themselves will energize your life, liberate the places you’re holding back creativity and help you pulse life force through your entire being. As this happens, you will notice that there are things in your existence that need to change; the old structure simply cannot withstand the energy that is pouring through you. There is likely to be an exchange involved: give up some of what does not work for a lot of what does. Do that once and you’ll want to do it again.

Well, it turns out that there is an artist in the Bible: a master artisan by the name of Bezalel. He instantly reminded me of Chiron because his primary task was to create a temple — the Tabernacle — and because he had many students and apprentices. Another Chirotic quality of Bezalel was that he was a master of many arts: engraving, wood carving, metal crafting and stonework. His skills and responsibilities also included the holy oils, incense and vestments. And his name means ‘under the protection of God’. So, this is a good example. He was a working artist; he had a lot on his hands, many people he was responsible for, and he was a teacher of his crafts. So, we have, at least, one example of what your current astrology looks like from our society’s oldest book.

Among many other developments in recent days, Saturn has returned to direct motion in Virgo, and is heading for Libra. There, it will make its third and final contact with the highly sensitive angle of your chart that addresses your role in the world, your level of responsibility and your reputation. They are all related, and you can be confident that that’s the best possible setup. You want your reputation to be based on your valid contributions and your identity to be based on the level of commitment you have to your own life and the world — a commitment, I might add, that’s based on a sense of beauty and justice. You are here not so much to fix the world but to embody the beauty of a world that is whole and balanced. You are not here to take on the burdens of life, but to lead yourself and others away from unnecessary ones. I assure you: you’re one of the strong and the trusted.

In the window of Blue Studio, I inscribed the adage, We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are. Our minds are the filter through which we perceive reality. Everything we see is totally, completely and entirely biased by the filter known as our mind. Right now your mind is undergoing the most thorough modernization that you’ve ever experienced. And as a result, so, too, is the world: and the truth is, it’s not just your perception that’s changing. Your environment is changing too, yet you now have the mental apparatus to perceive this evolution for what it is. There appears to be a deeply passionate influence coming in from the outside, someone you may care about deeply and in a highly specific way. Yes, you are receiving their expression of who they are — but it takes one to know one.

Aquarius birthday audio is coming soon — it will have its moment.

The choice is indeed yours, and this is what you need to keep reminding yourself: in your thoughts, and in your actions. You remind yourself by choosing, and then choosing again. Every decision you make stems from what you think you are, how you feel about yourself and what you allow yourself to believe is possible. Your ‘worth’ is beyond question. Your contribution to the world is potentially enormous, if you will grant yourself the privilege of feeling that potential and then, from day to day and hour to hour, expressing it tangibly. As you believe, so shall you achieve, though the best way to get belief onboard is to experience how influential it is. After a while you will look back with the most incredulous sense of disbelief about how you could have ever, for a moment, doubted yourself.

Pisces Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

Dear Friend and Reader:

We are certainly in an Atlantian moment.

Coming to terms with the Gulf of Mexico, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean, named for the mythical Lost Continent that sank because its people could not control their technology, is in part about recognizing the immediate effect of this runaway chemical spill.

The Gulf Stream originates in the Gulf of Mexico, travels up the East Coast and across the Atlantic, where it warms the climate of Western Europe and the British Isles.

For the rest of our lives, the magnificent Gulf Coast, which I was blessed to see just once (from the sea wall at Galveston), will be a hazardous waste dump and wildlife charnel ground. The sight of haz-mat workers and people wearing respirators is the new image of the once-thriving region of the world. It’s become so toxic that as of Wednesday the EPA has called back all of the fishing boats that were participating in the nascent cleanup because workers are starting to get sick with dizziness, chest pains, nausea — classical symptoms of an acute toxic exposure. CNN video yesterday, produced by Anderson Cooper, was eerily reminiscent of descriptions of DDT-sprayed forests by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring. The wildlife sanctuaries, they said, were dead quiet.

Barring an actual divine intervention-styled miracle [if you’re a lightworker, or if you’re in with some friendly space brothers, please get busy], it’s only a matter of time before the sludge gets into the Loop Current and then the Gulf Stream. We could be seeing this oil on the beaches of Key West, of Maine and the coasts of England and Western Europe and as far away as West Africa. Consider this description of the Gulf Stream, from Wikipedia:

“The Gulf Stream, together with its northern extension towards Europe, the North Atlantic Drift, is a powerful, warm, and swift Atlantic ocean current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico, exits through the Strait of Florida, and follows the eastern coastlines of the United States and Newfoundland before crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The process of western intensification causes the Gulf Stream to be a northward accelerating current offshore the east coast of North America. At about [40°0′N latitude] it splits in two, with the northern stream crossing to northern Europe and the southern stream recirculating off West Africa. The Gulf Stream influences the climate of the east coast of North America from Florida to Newfoundland, and the west coast of Europe.”

In other words, the Gulf of Mexico was about the worst place on the planet this could happen, as the source of one of the world’s master currents.

So, as we move into the most exciting astrology of our generation so far, the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction on the Aries Point, we do so in the midst of a confrontation with a dimension of reality that most of us have so far avoided awareness of: the consequences of industrialism. We know that the lives we lead damage the planet, though usually it happens more slowly than we’re seeing now; indeed, slowly enough to ignore. This is true for many people to whom it happens literally in their backyard. And I would dare say, we know how little we give back.

This view of Atlantic Ocean currents shows an even more complex set of possibilities as to where the oil spewing from a single well in the Gulf of Mexico can travel. Oceans are not stagnant ponds; they are dynamic systems, and what happens in any ocean can affect what happens in any other.

Yet another confrontation involves witnessing how the technology we trust so well can run out of control in a moment. The blanket assurances of safety we are given are almost always lies. This is difficult because we want to be told that it’s safe. In my long reporting career as an environmental journalist, I’ve watched people practically beg to be lied to, then gamble their lives, and those of their children, on that lie. I have watched once-honest people, confronted with a difficult truth, morph into liars, and flee into becoming participants in the coverup.

The psychology is complex. Once a student editor refused to print my articles about a toxic situation involving PCBs on his campus. He said he was afraid he would go to hell if he published my articles (he was Catholic). The next time I saw him, he was working as PR man for General Electric, specifically on the issue of the PCBs they had dumped in the Hudson River.

If we want to know why this kind of stuff happens, we need look no further than moments when we have a choice to accept truth or deception, and then contribute our power one way or the other. Often there is the equation, “If I accept this truth, what else do I have to accept?”

Though it may be difficult to see, we are all in such a moment now: every one of us who is aware of this tragedy, every one of us who cares, everyone who wishes it would go away. The spectrum of personal responsibility and individual potential responses ranges from how we allocate our energy (Americans use twice the energy of our European counterparts, for the same or lower quality of life) to the choices we make for where to spend our money. We choose when we participate with the corporate and government entities that surround us. They are quite fond of telling us how safe it all is, and how much we need them, and we choose when we believe them.

For the moment, the petrochemical industry has us convinced that we would not be able to survive without them. This is one of their favorite lies — because it works so well.

Last week on the Planet Waves daily page, we broke a story that opens an unpleasant dimension of reality. You’ve probably heard that BP is pouring tons of a chemical dispersant called Corexit into the Gulf of Mexico, in an attempt to thin out the oil spewing into Gulf waters at the rate of about a barrel per second. It’s been widely reported that there are more effective, potentially less toxic products. The chemical is made by a corporate ally of BP called Nalco Holdings, whose stock jumped on the news that BP would be buying all of its available Corexit supply.

A 2008 article in New Scientist described how the Gulf Stream keeps Europe warm: hot air rising off of the sea which can carry any volatile chemical with it.

Nalco, in turn, used to own a company called Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories (IBT Labs, for short). And who were they? Well, they were one of the moral lessons of our times. When you wake up in the morning and take a shower using antibactierial soap or brush your teeth with flouride toothpaste or apply sunscreen, you are using chemical ingredients — present in nearly every packaged product — that have been safety-tested by supposedly independent testing labs, one of which was IBT.

Through the Sixties and Seventies, IBT Labs was in the business of producing thousands of fraudulent studies ‘proving’ that the chemicals contained in every product in your home are safe to be used on your skin, and that of your children, and your dog; and safe for your liver and kidneys and hormones and immune system. Who was affected? In hearings called by Senator Ted Kennedy, one official wryly testified: “everyone who washes” (unless of course you use Dr. Bronner’s soap).

The problem was, not a single study was valid. The history is covered in two articles posted on Planet Waves, one of which originated in Amicus Journal and the other written by me in Sierra magazine. The result was one of the longest, most hideous criminal trials in United States history, resulting in several fraud convictions. Many of the chemicals certified safe by IBT Labs are still on the market, and we have no reason to believe they are safe — if they were, honest science would have worked fine. In one study, a chemical IBT certified as a non-carcinogen killed all of the mice with cancer.

So now we have Nalco itself, the sponsor of this lab, creating the chemical that’s now being dumped into the Gulf, to deal with another chemical flooding out of the Earth uncontrollably. The two are mixing and they will have what is called a synergistic effect: they make a brew of new chemicals with unknown effects. The EPA has ordered BP to use a different chemical. BP is still using Corexit. Welcome to Atlantis.

Hurricane Alex formed and moved along the axis of the Gulf Stream in 2004. Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

The personal question is: when will you stop believing that these promises of safety by the chemical industry, and the petroleum industry, are honest? Why do half of us get cancer? Think about that the next time you put a flea collar on your dog, or the next time you squirt some Purell into your hands, or the next time you microwave in plastic, or the next time you swallow an oral contraceptive or have it shoved under your daughter’s skin. Think about it before you let her get the Gardasil vaccine. Think about it when you put your cell phone up to your skull.

We can only hope that this event will be the one that wakes us up. As I suggest in Tuesday’s edition, however, our lifetimes have been nothing more than one long sequence of events that ‘should have woken us up’, and we chose to stay asleep. I won’t make a list; it would be too depressing.

So, what comes of this? Do we read the obituary for the Gulf of Mexico and turn the page? Do you trade in your SUV for something that gets better mileage? Do you look up the ingredients in the deodorant you use? I admit it, this is a tempting time to go back to sleep. And if you choose that, you will miss one of the greatest opportunities in the history of humanity: the one where you get to help correct our course, take responsibility for your life, and both claim your power and start to use it. For those concerned about sacrificing their individuality, so far as I can tell, to claim your personal creative gift is also to claim humanity’s co-creative gift. They are the same thing, based on the same quality of thought and action.

Now, as I write, I am aware of the Law of Attraction, which says: what we focus on increases. We get more of how we already feel, till we change how we feel. That’s one reason why I am focusing on empowerment through awareness, and the ability to choose, rather than any other angle. While it’s clear that nearly any way you look at the Gulf of Mexico disaster, it’s going to lower the vibration of the planet, we’re still left with the choice for how to live. We also have the option to hold down our awareness of the issue, which is pretty much a guarantee of despair, because it’s a concession to having no power.

So, where to from here?

Well, what choices do you see for yourself as we embark on the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction? Or more to the point, what do you want?

I can tell you that, from what I’ve learned doing the work I do, the people I know who struggle the most tend to have one thing in common — they don’t know what they want. Humanity, as told in the story of the planets, is in a particularly amazing moment for making that discovery. I know that in theory this must be true all the time, though this is the grand synchronicity of the moment. We are at this point among the byways of the cosmic timescape where we can awaken to ourselves through our entirely unique inner qualities described by a conjunction on the Aries Point.

And it would seem like a worthy time to awaken to a level of group consciousness that makes a significant shift in collective awareness possible. And I dare say we would benefit from both. This is the theme of our times; this is the moment when we get to be alive.

Yours & truly,

No, We Can’t?

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul is shown during an interview at his campaign headquarters after winning his party’s primary election in Bowling Green, Ky., Wednesday, May 19, 2010. (AP Photo/Ed Reinke).

“Accidents happen,” said Kentucky primary winner Rand Paul, defending British Petroleum’s ecological holocaust in the Gulf. Son of Libertarian Senator Ron Paul, Rand took the president to task for being too tough on BP and holding them accountable for their actions. Libertarian disdain of government interference in the private sector, given our troubled times, seems too radical to garner mainstream approval. Growing demand for government intervention in the Gulf makes Paul’s position on property rights — code words for business interests — another voice for corporate extremism. Yes, accidents happen. And so does criminal neglect.

While this is not a crisis Obama expected, neither is it his Katrina. Katrina was localized, and while allowing New Orleans to drown in apathy, racism and cronyism was shocking and immoral, the Gulf spill is about more than a city. It’s about a planetary ecosystem. That’s not Katrina, that’s Armageddon. This isn’t Obama’s Waterloo, but Corporate America’s. The preventable disaster was no unforeseeable accident. It was a calculated risk, a treasure hunt with no plan of action should it go badly. Even now, BP exhibits not the slightest genuine remorse for what it has unleashed. The blowout was the result of reckless endangerment.

I suspected early on that the lethargic attempts to tame this spill had everything to do with continuing to exploit the blowout rather than eliminate it. Over a month later, a frustrated Obama has reportedly snapped, “Plug the damn hole!” Perhaps such a solution is naive. Perhaps BP is in over its head. It’s glaringly apparent that BP has exhausted its best engineering ideas, created roadblocks to local solutions and become not just the source of this horror but its enabler. BP refuses to share information on the extent of the spill in order to limit its liability, even as Democrats struggle to crack Republican obstruction to raising the liability cap. Growing cries for the government to seize the operation, similar to those that demanded it take control of the big banks, may be naive as well. The government is too broken to attend to this emergency, due not only to lack of technological know-how, but also to generations of corporate control.

We take pride in our democratic principles in this nation. We jealously guard our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Rule of law defines us, and we wrangle over the concept passionately, as when Bush sidestepped law requiring FISA courts and the suspension of habeas corpus. Even as new laws were being passed in Congress, Dubya issued hundreds of signing statements that eliminated his need to follow them. It’s no surprise that most politicians are lawyers; they need to be, practiced at snarling what is seldom simple to begin with into a tangle of hidden safety nets known only to themselves. It isn’t rule of law that runs this nation but exceptions to laws, called loopholes.

Continued at this link…

The World According to BP, Monsanto, et al

Book review by Carol van Strum

Here’s to the Greeks. They know what to do when corporations pillage and loot their country. … Call a general strike. Riot. Shut down the city centers. Toss the bastards out. …The Greeks, unlike most of us, get it.
— Chris Hedges

The World According to Monsanto (Hardcover).

What would the Greeks do to a company whose jerry-built oil well fouled their beautiful Aegean Sea, vomiting oily death onto its shores and fish and birds and islands, for week after week?

What would the Greeks do to a government that enabled such catastrophe, accepting company bribes and favors, allowing the company to write the rules and fill in the government’s inspection reports, placing company officials in key government posts to emasculate its enforcement agency?

I don’t know what the Greeks would do, but I need to believe that some population somewhere on this beleaguered planet would have the balls to call a general strike, riot, shut down the city centers, and toss the bastards out — government, corporation and all their soiled bedding — after stripping them of every asset they had.

Some population, somewhere, but it won’t be here. Not in the USA, whose population is more distressed by the final episode of Lost — my god, how fitting! — than about destruction of the entire south and eastern coastlines of the continent. Not in the USA, where corporate media feign astonishment at the revolving-door policies of government regulators and BP, or the faked inspection reports, or the sex, drugs and money traded wantonly for drilling permits.

Of course the astonishment is feigned. Every step of the way, BP-government collusion has been the very model of American business-as-usual: fraud, lies, corruption, wholesale bribery, coverup, anything goes in the name of profit. This is the business-as-usual that has contaminated American rivers with government-approved pesticides and industrial poisons, that has inserted government-approved gender-bending chemicals into every cell of every person and living thing on land and sea, that spews radioactive waste from crumbling, government-approved nuclear plants.

Continued at this link…

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, May 28, 2010, #817 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Something extraordinary is happening. I’m here to remind you to notice. Uranus has entered your birth sign for the first time since it exited in 1935, very likely long before you were born. What you’re experiencing qualifies as once in a lifetime, yet I say that knowing how often humans let those opportunities fly by. You will experience many direct events connected to the sudden, revolutionary and forward-thinking energy of this planet over the next seven years. The first level of experience is self-discovery. This is an odd concept, given that you walk around with your ‘self’ all the time, though I mean it specifically in terms of awakening to your non-ordinary level of awareness, imbibing the deeper sense of who you are. Events associated with Uranus often look like one thing initially and flourish into something else. To make the most of this, commit to one thing: sincerity.

Aries Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

What exactly is the unknown? It takes many forms, including that which has dropped down the memory hole; that which is as yet undiscovered; that which we know about but persist in denying. At the moment, the question is: what do you do when memory surfaces, when you realize you’re denying something, or when you discover something you dearly want to know? How long do you maintain awareness? This is a good time to observe your psychic patterns, and also to observe how they’re changing. The stellar setup is perfect to offer you a rare glimpse of your inner world, and what indeed may feel like an unknown dimension of yourself. How long can you hold your awareness there? How does it feel to be awake, and when do you start to nod off into another dream?

Taurus Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

If we could stop the world, peel back one layer and examine the psychic dramas that play out, we would see that many of them are driven by the dynamics between individuals and groups. We live in a society that romanticizes individuality, while making nearly all of its profits and basing all of its social rules on conformity. You have reached a time in your life where everything is changing in that dimension where your sense of who you are meets the world’s expectations. For too long you have let others define you; indeed, you have at times done this at the expense of all awareness of what you really want, driven by fears you don’t understand. Uranus entering Aries is urging you to break free and stretch your limits: not just of your self-concept, but of your actual existence.

Looked at one way, your trajectory through life is reaching a critical mass point; looked at another way, you are figuring out what you want, and that very little is in your way. You cannot be deterred by how long things have taken, or by the depth of your past doubts about yourself or what you want. One source of your doubts is the cyclical nature of your being. Finally there is a kind of magnetism or polarization away from the direction of constant change and in the direction of being able to hold a few clear goals in mind. Goal is another way of saying desire. So here is what I suggest: when you know what you want, keep it in mind, and keep guiding yourself back in that direction every time you veer even a little off course. Make this a habit and you will be unstoppable.

Most of what limits us are all the things we tell ourselves are impossible. Most of what sets us free are the ways in which we ignore the notion of possibility, or remind ourselves that we can do anything we truly want. You are particularly susceptible to this principle, and in many ways it represents the core of your identity. As A Course in Miracles put it so succinctly, every decision you make stems from what you think you are. I suggest you look closely at this ‘what’, and notice how it changes based on merely considering a new possibility. At the moment, many new possibilities are calling you. Yet all of them find their home in your idea of who you are, and this is the single most meaningful thing to observe. Go deeper than your role. Feel your actual existence — it’s calling you, and you are calling it.

We are all familiar with the experience of losing oneself in a relationship. You are now in quite the opposite process: of discovering yourself in the context of a relationship. You may think this is helpful, since it’s truly painful to be lost in an association with another person. You may find it difficult, because understanding the basic truth of who you are can have a disruptive effect on the structure of your commitments. Often we put so much emphasis on ‘who we are equals who we are in our relationships’ that we have no other concept available. You now need a new concept. I would caution you that you may need to go through the experience of feeling unstable before you begin to reap the benefits, but I can assure you that those benefits are ready and willing to give themselves to you.

In astrology, the 7th house is considered the house of relationships, though I extend this to our relationship to existence. To put it mildly, that relationship is evolving rapidly, and is offering you some incredible gifts. One of those gifts is innovation; a genius factor is involved. If you are experiencing this as a disruption, look for that element. If your relationship to your environment is changing, take an active role in creating the new experience. The idea is to dance with the energy; to collaborate; to co-create, rather than merely letting things happen. If your charts ever said rise to the occasion of existence, the time is right now. If they ever said work with your environment to create exactly what you want, the time is this instant.

It’s a beautiful thing that you identify so closely with your work. You may not know the extent to which this is true, relative to so many other people, who view their daily activity as a kind of abstraction from who they are. The problem with this placement, which involves the sign Aries, is that you can, at times, lose yourself in work that is not really about who you are. You actually need very little to draw you in and give you a mostly satisfying experience. That said, the molecules of your brain are shaking at about 100 times their usual rate. I suspect you have ideas for projects, for how to work more independently of a boss, and for how to embody your dream of serving humanity in a more direct and individual way. I see that many ideas are coming to you now, and I suggest you honor each as a gift and a potential.

There aren’t any artists in the Bible. Our Judeo-Christian society is based on this collection of books, and I find that to be an incredible literary fact. We have every other career listed: carpenter, emperor, war general, cop, prostitute, priest, rabbi, loan shark, farmer, farmer’s wife, every other kind of wife, prophet, criminal, and so on and on. Heck there are even a few astrologers who make a significant appearance in the story of Jesus, and who do him justice. But to my knowledge, there is not a single artist. Now, why would that be? Is the exploration of individual creative impulse that disruptive to the patriarchy? So be it, then. I am sure this appeals to your forward-thinking nature. Just remember: when you choose to express these incredible passions that you’ve been experiencing, and when you dare to be innovative and create beauty and live like living is an art, these are revolutionary acts. Proceed with love and awareness and most of all, an open heart.

The planets are aligned in a rare configuration that suggests you’re living two lifetimes in one. You may feel that other lifetime appearing like a room with a mirror, where the lights are gradually being turned on. You may be pulled in two distinct directions. You may have noticed an entirely new set of goals has arisen, in parallel to the life objectives you hold so dear. I suggest you work directly with this. Open up that other life, those other desires, the mirror image of what you are doing now. One useful expression of this energy is that you are finding that you want a home life to match your responsibility-heavy work life. It is true that you’re getting a little reprieve from so much that has to be done; take this excellent opportunity to feather your own nest, or to entirely reinvent the concept of what you call home.

Uranus, a planet that modern astrologers associate with your birth sign, is making a rare sign change. This week, Uranus entered Aries for a brief visit, before returning for a seven-year stretch beginning in 2011. Of all the things in astrology that say ‘your world is changing fast’, this is one. We can add some powerful stuff involving Saturn and Pluto as well. What is particularly appealing about this Uranus transit is that it’s all about your mental approach to life, and closer to the core, the way your state of mind influences your whole reality. Aries is a vitally important sign to you because it represents your mind — a precious thing, to an Aquarius, and Uranus (along with Jupiter) here suggests a brilliant, excellent, passionate and moreover interesting expansion of your mental environment and thus your existence.

Aquarius birthday audio is coming soon — it will have its moment.

You have some excellent financial opportunities coming your way. I will say two things about them. One, they require careful thought, knowing a good idea when you see it, and the willingness to work to refine that idea so that it works in the real world. Two, what you are about to see is just a taste of what is possible: you are being given a window into your potential, and access to your potential. The gift will grow exponentially to the extent that you practice absolute authenticity of self. In other words, there is no faking it; there’s no modifying who you are to meet some other purpose; and no room for denial of your true goals or desires. In matters involving money and the attraction of wealth, Pisces natives tend to do very well or very poorly; the choice is yours, based on another value entirely: self-esteem. And if ever the planets said you could figure out that trick, the time is now.

Pisces Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.

Dear Planet Waves Subscriber:

We have reached that moment of the Sun’s ingress through Gemini. This astrological cycle, which began last night or this morning (depending on your time zone) presents us with some of the most adventurous astrology of our generation. Yes — designed to shake us up and therefore potentially frightening to some, yet no less amazing in its potential.

I will describe these events in detail in the lead to Tuesday’s edition — the June monthly horoscope. I am sure you recall the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction on the Aries Point, about which I have some new interpretations.

The aspect to be aware of today is that the Sun in early Gemini means that it’s now making a square to Chiron. This tells us: note the sense of injury that we may feel to our creative/expressive side and use this as a means to provoke self-awareness and healing. Sun-Chiron in a 90-degree type aspect is about how our expressive side, and the natural drive to seek glory in the world, relates to that of dad. The aspect works in parallel as a personal event and as a reference to our past environment; and it’s a cue to check in with either dad, or our feelings about dad, at this moment.

For those investigating what may have happened to dad, a worthy question, there is a book by feminist author Susan Faludi, called Stiffed. It’s a sensitive, humane study of what happened to men in our lifetimes and how this influenced us.

The Sun making a square to Chiron in Pisces invites us to tap the creative side that he may have never accessed, and to explore the ‘other side of our our nature’ that is inherent, often avoided and inevitable to discover when we reach beyond our familiar patterns of self.

I say more about this in this week’s audio, which is a bit of an astrological motivational rant. I will see you Tuesday with an adventurous monthly issue, and for today, leave you in the capable hands of my beloved colleagues Judith Gayle and Len Wallick.

Love & lovingly,

En route

Soul-Searching America

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

I hope you’re enjoying this little window of relief that early spring [Northern Hemisphere] has provided. The season is developing, bringing another wave of awareness. We’ve been around long enough to know it won’t be bestowed with a flick of the fairy godmother’s wand. It will come with voices raised at cross point, tempers flaring and revelations that will make us cringe. If we look ahead to Uranus and Jupiter moving into Aries, a Full Moon eclipse conjunct Pluto in Capricorn and a Cardinal grand cross, we can prepare ourselves for an in-depth look at our imbalance, resistance and magnificent potential. And that’s just a bit of the awakening ahead.

Native American Soul Searching.

Count it good; until we can clearly witness and accept all that’s misconfigured, we cannot attempt to remediate or restore it. Functionality and rationality are still only peeking out from behind our wobbling structures of society and self. In order to take advantage of this powerful planetary push, we must make a realistic assessment of ourselves. So let’s ‘profile’ America and trust we’ve gained enough maturity in the last 40 years that I won’t be invited to “love it or leave it,” as I was long ago.

For perhaps the first time, the majority of our nation — young AND old — is staring into the face of our own pathology: our embrace of ‘manifest destiny,’ with its inherent right to conquest, expansion and annexation for our own purpose. Some call it imperialism; I think of it as self-interest bordering on narcissism. It’s evident in our foreign affairs, our business practice and even our concept of religion. It’s the American creed. We asserted an inalienable right to grow and flourish endlessly, one generation after another. Our demand for ‘more and better’ spread like an opportunistic virus, and so long as it was met with goods and services, we didn’t question where they came from or how they were acquired. For decades we took pride in our bastions of robust capitalism — government in tandem with oil, coal, big Pharma, the military-industrial complex, the Federal Reserve and Wall Street, to name a few. In short, the ‘establishment.’

Continued at this link…

Shake-Up Day

By Len Wallick | Planet Waves Daily

Had a difficult time getting a straight answer lately? Are things harder than they should be? Are they selling you up but never closing? Are you waiting for that one piece to fall into place? Is it down to the best you can do? Welcome to Anarectica. Where we deal with what comes up while we wait for things to come through.

The last few days have seen the Sun, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune queuing up in the last degrees of their respective signs. With just those six one could recently find every angular aspect commonly discussed in this space. The conjunction, the semi-sextile, the sextile, the square, the trine, the quincunx and the opposition. All within two degrees. All at the same time. Sounds pretty. In practice, the word cluster has come to mind.

Beginning this morning, that’s all gonna change. By this time tomorrow it will have changed a lot more. Blazing the trail, as it has since before the vernal equinox is the planet Venus. By the time you read this, the lesser benefic will have made good its ingress into the Cardinal sign of Cancer. In doing so it sets off that by now familiar phenomenon for Planet Waves readers, the personal and political as one.

This has been going on since Pluto moved into Capricorn. It extends back over the last two years with Uranus approaching Aries and Saturn wishy-washing between Virgo and Libra. It will continue in the coming weeks as Jupiter joins Uranus in the first degree of Aries while Pluto and Saturn tag up at second and third. That is to say: we are in the midst of a complex aspect structure involving most of what we think of as the most powerful planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Pluto.

Continued at this link…

Dear Planet Waves Subscriber:

It’s the last Tuesday of the solar month. (The Sun enters Gemini on Thursday or Friday, depending on your time zone.) I’ve just finished the June monthly horoscopes; and per tradition and good astrological housekeeping, I will publish the first one with the Sun in Gemini, on Tuesday, May 25. I’ll be sitting out today’s edition and possibly Friday as well, catching up with myself as the Sun changes signs and a new cycle begins.

I do have one piece of information for you — today is an international day of prayer focused on the healing of water as requested by the indigenous Council of Grandmothers. Here is a PDF with the information.

We’ll be back with a short issue Friday and I’ll see you when the Sun is in Gemini.

Yours & truly,

Dear Planet Waves Subscriber:

The other day I got curious about the term ‘self-actualization’, which I hadn’t heard for years. The first time I encountered it as a kid (in the ’70s, when people seemed to talk about this stuff more than we do today) I intuitively knew what it meant. To me, it was about the process of becoming real, that is, of becoming fully human.

Mediterranean Sea, from a series called Daybreak in the Path of Annularity, in Valencia, Spain, 2005. Photo by Eric Francis.

When I looked it up, I learned the term was invented by Kurt Goldstein (1878-1965), a German neurologist and psychiatrist. Kurt was one of the first theorists in the Gestalt Therapy movement, and one of the original modern holistic thinkers. His clinical work involved studying the relationship between the mind and the brain, in brain trauma patients; Gestalt puts emphasis on the mind-body connection. Holistic theories emphasize unity and integration as expressed through our natural human tendency to grow and mature.

It was Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) who put the concept into popular language. It was at the top of his famous ‘hierarchy of needs’, that pyramid published in a 1943 paper that you had to memorize in psych class. It starts with basic biological needs beginning with touch, food, breathing and sex as the foundation of existence. It extends upward toward safety, love, belonging, self-esteem and finally, at the top, we have self-actualization. This includes creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, acceptance of facts, and morality.

I will take an editor’s liberty and update that last one to ‘ethics’, since this applies a more flexible approach to difficult questions. I will add mortality, since that’s a key element in consciousness of one’s full humanity. And I would check one other thing: these days it takes a good bit of creativity and problem solving (an advanced need, in his theory) to meet the fundamental needs at the bottom level. We can at least thank Maslow for getting the term self-actualization into our hands, and for reminding us that psychology starts with biology.

He had one other idea that I like: if you want to understand how healthy people function, study them, and not pathological cases. So that is what he did.

Water paints the rock on the Grandmother Land in Ulster County, New York, hours before the Taurus New Moon. Photo by Eric Francis.

Maslow also emphasized the innate curiosity in humans (which is true for nearly every other animal, by the way). He honored self-actualization as a drive or motivation that he believed fuelled all our other endeavors. For him, it was the prime mover — this, not survival. Maslow’s concept was about embracing human potential, and he was one of the fathers of a movement by that name.

Which brings me to the extraordinary astrology of June 2010: the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Aries. If any aspect says self-actualization, this is the one. The ‘self’ piece is Aries, the sign of ‘I am’, the key that turns the ignition of consciousness. We each have Aries in our chart somewhere, and where we have it is one zone where we tend to be driven by self-actualization: to waking up and being real.

Jupiter is a planet that is rich with potential. It’s like this cosmic bank account we have, from which we can draw down wisdom and envision wider possibilities. Where Jupiter is we seek expansion and learning; we seek to enrich our minds. And as I write, Jupiter is heading for Aries, where it will arrive on June 6. Jupiter comes back to Aries every 12 years. The energy feels like the Chinese Year of the Dragon: vibrant and daring.

Uranus is a planet that likes to precipitate potential; its job is to actualize. If spontaneity and curiosity are part of being self-actualized, then Uranus is the spark plug. It doesn’t really care what it takes or what has to happen to make something real. Uranus follows no special rules, which is why it’s involved in changing the known order of reality. That includes leaps forward in creativity, thought and imagination; with inventions; and with revolutions of various kinds. Uranus, which has an 84-year orbit, arrives in Aries on May 27, resetting its cosmic cycle.

On June 8, the two form an exact conjunction on something called the Aries Point. This is the first degree of the Western zodiac, which begins with the sign Aries. It’s the position of the Sun on the first day of [Northern Hemisphere] spring, and it’s also called the vernal point. It acts just like a focus of energy that links up what we think of as the ‘personal’ realm and the ‘collective’ realm. When we experience events that are on the Aries Point (such as this conjunction) or square or opposite the Aries Point, the world seems to go wild, and we can get drawn into the drama. Big events, which often seem negative, can involve this point — for example, the Sept. 11 incident or the Asian tsunami; or Woodstock, or the Moon landing. It is one of the most predictable things in a chart, in terms of this kind of response in physical reality. In a word, it is big.

Photo by Eric Francis.

In recent years we’ve had a lot of Aries Point activity, and we’re about to have more. Recent events include Pluto ingressing Capricorn (square the Aries Point) and Saturn in the process of changing signs to Libra (opposite the Aries Point). This has already stirred up a lot of energy: lately (however you define lately) it’s been one jarring event after the next trying to get our attention. And now the Aries Point activity shows up directly in Aries, as these two mighty factors align directly in the first degree of the zodiac. While that first degree has the ‘political as personal’ feeling, that nexus of individual and collective life, it’s also about personal awakening.

There’s a method of astrology that gives a visual symbol to each of the 360 degrees of the zodiac. These are called the Sabian symbols, and if you’re new to astrology I invite you to check out this gift. My favorite version is in an easily available book called An Astrological Madala by Dane Rudhyar. The degrees were channeled randomly by a clairvoyant working with an astrologer, such that the symbol for each degree was channeled without the clairvoyant knowing which degree she was channeling, and in random order. The first degree of the zodiac came out with the symbol: A woman just risen from the sea. A seal is embracing her.

This image evokes the birth of Venus, and the emergence of humanity from the sea of life, or the sea, literally. It implies individual awareness distinguishing itself from the unconscious, or the mind’s awareness emerging from the emotions. The implication is that the sentient environment that surrounds us (such as a seal) is waiting for us when we arrive on the planet.

Photo by Eric Francis.

More than this symbol is behind the obvious power of the Aries Point, though I think it’s a great illustration of its potential — and that potential is what the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction is helping us make real, right now. It’s doing so in the midst of a world that once again seems to be spinning off its axis. In a Mercury retrograde that spans between early April and late May (including all the prep and follow-up phases of process), we got a glimpse into how fragile the world is, and how closely connected its levels of reality are.

In those few weeks (counting only up until publication time) we experienced a volcano that disrupted air traffic across Scandinavia and Europe, which effect rippled out across the planet, rearranging lives and stranding people in remote parts of the world; an undersea oil volcano (still out of control, with no end in sight, compounded by hundreds of thousands of gallons of grease-dissolving solvent being dumped into the Gulf of Mexico), a bitterly fought election in the UK, massive flooding in Tennessee and other states, tornadoes in Oklahoma, banking fraud by Goldman Sachs exposed (which demonstrated that they helped orchestrate the recession, for profit), a debt crisis flooding across Europe with a trillion euro bailout committed to during the retrograde!, a 1,000-point dive in the stock market that nobody can figure out, and an attempted terrorist attack in New York City. After spending nearly a trillion dollars on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the new al Qaeda we’re supposed to worry about turns out to be our old friend Pakistan.

These events all have that Aries Point feeling — and we haven’t even reached the conjunction yet. Which brings me back to self-actualization. These are all wake-up calls. They are the public version: we are getting plenty of them in our personal lives as well, and I’m here to tell you there are many connections, all of which are guiding us to take a unified view of existence. And by some accounts this is starting to happen; though there are many signs of slumber, there are many other signs of awakening.

Fae and Eric. Photo by Dani.

I have a few ideas for what we can actually do, if we want to facilitate the process of self-actualization.

1. Know thyself. Part of getting to know yourself may involve admitting you don’t know yourself. I suggest you open up, allow or invite your curiosity about your true work, your authentic sexual and relational orientation, and other information about what you think you’re doing on the planet at this time. If you haven’t already figured out that this is an extraordinary and unusual time to be alive, keep getting to know thyself. This includes knowing what you want.

2. Relationship starts with self. Our relationship to our self , which is existence, is what we see animated and expressed in our relationships with others. Therefore, cultivate a deeper relationship with your self. You can discover, through this, how many different levels you exist on. Dreams are a meaningful, helpful and easy way to tap into what is sometimes called the unconscious. They always have a message for us, and usually that message presents a solution to a challenge, or a window into who we really are.

3. Relationship is the foundation of community. Part of what is holding humanity back at this time is a need to rethink our fundamental bonds with others, which are the basic patterns of existence that ripple out into the world. Most literate people know that there are a great diversity of ways to explore relationships — but we tend to limit ourselves to a very few. Exploring outside orthodox modes of relationship helps us weave community and have a more complex sense of who we are, and what we mean to others and what they mean to us. Get to know your neighbors, including the critters and the businesses that are near your home. If you love someone, give yourself permission to love them, no matter what the ‘rules’ say you should do. Learn how not to be a slave to guilt, but rather one who lives in service of love.

4. Know what you eat. A revolution is underway on the meaning of food. As we reach the end of the petroleum supply, all of our concepts of food and the production of food will need to be rearranged, and even as we’re blitzed by hamburger ads, we’re well into this process. Most of what is called food is neither nourishing nor sustainable, and it’s nearly all made from or with petroleum. The first step in the process of change is getting to know exactly what you’re eating, whatever it happens to be at the time — including knowing who produces it.

5. Know your body’s special needs, including nutritional needs. Every specimen of humanity is different, and you need to know the ways in which you’re different. This includes discerning food sensitivities, knowing the way you’re influenced by your environment, and how your physical nature influences your psychology.

6. Know your technology. We live in a haze of technology but we are largely ignorant of how it works, what we can really do with it, and its effect on our minds and bodies. For the most part we don’t understand the power we hold in our hands. Make sure that you are in the creative role; that you are creating your technology rather than letting it create you.

7. Be yourself. We humans tend to spend a lot of energy trying to convince people of what we are, which gets in the way of being who we are. Save your time, money and soul and simply be yourself, tell the truth and notice the results that you get, in the long run as well as the short.

8. Life is a camping trip. We are visitors on this planet, and though it’s our temporary home, we live at the mercy of the environment. Remember that in a sense you are always outside, always in relationship to your surroundings.

9. Choose what you want. You know what you want — and remember that the power to decide is one of our few true freedoms. To do this you will likely have to understand the nature of guilt, which sends you the opposite signal. Guilt and desire are mutually exclusive.

10. Your actions have consequences, and our actions as humanity have consequences. We have lived for a long time thinking that they do not. Karma is really as simple as being aware of your participation in the experience of cause and effect.

11. Keep your vibration high. World events, by accident or design, are having the effect of lowering the vibration of many people, even if they’re not addicted to negativity. It may be challenging to both maintain awareness of world events and keep a positive focus despite them, but welcome to the greatest challenge of our moment. As big as any problem seems, global or individual, our potential is infinitely higher, and the way we get there is by feeling good, aware and embracing of our true desire.

Yours & truly,

We Must Stop Playing Small
By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

I regret to inform you that we have now officially entered the campaign season of 2010. If you do not follow politics, even deliberately avoid them, you may shrug and say, “So what?” The ‘what’ is an increase in rhetoric, posture and promise high pitched enough to make one wince. As we’re only a week or two into the season, we have yet to notice the change in tempo. With so many dire national predicaments on so many levels, candidates sniping at each other seems small potatoes. The decibels are sure to rise.

Alexander Hamilton dueling with Aaron Burr. From a Gutenberg file of a 1902 book.

So what if Florida Governor Charlie Crist made the mistake of giving Obama a man-hug and had to bail out of the Republican Party to run for the Senate as an Independent? So what if Senator Bob Bennett in Utah lost his primary challenge because he dared cross the aisle to work toward a bipartisan health care reform bill? So what if the Governor of Arkansas had to change his position on evolution in order to stay in the race?

As we prepare ourselves for campaign shenanigans and bemoan the lack of civility in our nation, historians remind us that American politics have always looked this way. Some cite the infamous duel between Vice President Aaron Burr and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, a bit over two hundred years ago. Burr had made ‘scurrilous’ remarks about Hamilton, and the tit/tats escalated into a shootout that ended Hamilton’s life and Burr’s political career.

Can you imagine Joe Biden meeting Tim Geithner on the Boston Common today, dueling to the death over a personal slur? If I could resurrect Mr. Hamilton and bring him up to speed, perhaps he could tell me if an ‘honorable’ end is preferable to the Swiftboaters’ psychic death-by-a-thousand-cuts that ended the career of paraplegic Senator Max Cleland and blunted the considerable influence of Senator John Kerry.

Taurus 2010 Birthday Audio from Eric Francis

Dear Taurus or Taurus Rising:

Last week I completed the Taurus birthday audio presentation for 2010. This is a combination of astrology and tarot, suitable for Taurus Sun, Moon or rising. I’ve really enjoyed creating this recording — it’s got a personal feel and I had the sense of you being right in the room (that’s my Venus in Taurus doing her thing). As you know, we are in times of change and reformation, and this state of rapid movement is affecting every person on the planet.

For information about zodiac sign greeting cards, drop a note to sarah@planetwaves.net

Your Taurus reading is a careful look at your astrology through 2010. I’ve focused mostly on the spectacular outer planet transits we are experiencing — Chiron in Pisces, Uranus moving into Aries, and a good review of Pluto in Capricorn. And I’ve given a new interpretation of the recent Mars retrograde and the ways in which this is helping you clear out the past, drawing old business to a close and creating space for a new chapter in your life.

One of the most intriguing transits is the conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus in Aries, which takes place in June. My take on this is that it reveals your “hidden self” — the bold, creative person you are, whose attributes you try to access, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. Jupiter and Uranus form a rare conjunction on the Aries Point. Imagine this is like discovering a whole new dimension of yourself — one that was always there, but which was concealed by a kind of veil.

I’ve included a 20-minute tarot card reading, using the Voyager deck by James Wanless. You can order now and get instant access. This is high-quality stereo audio which you can listen to as many times as you like, for as long as you like — these files will be preserved in their original location. It’s priced to be affordable — $14.95 for about 90 minutes of material (this is an extra-long edition of birthday audio).

Because my astrology writing is focused on the houses, I recommend this audio for Taurus rising as well. (In particular for Taurus, I also recommend those with Moon placements there because the two are so closely connected.) This audio report makes an excellent companion to Taurus Confidential, the 2010 annual edition of Planet Waves, which is in written form.

Thanks for your participation, and for doing your metaphysical shopping at Planet Waves.

Yours & truly,

Weekly Horoscope for Friday, May 14, 2010, #816 – BY ERIC FRANCIS

Aries Confidential	Actually I think it’s a great idea that you offer yourself a higher, more ambitious idea of love. I don’t mean more complex, though I mean more willing to invest love in growth challenges, in aspiration to being a more authentic person and in a willingness to recognize that love and passion are gestures of freedom. In the end, all of this simmers down to how you feel about yourself, which ideally is about actively valuing who you are, embracing the truth of who you are and daring to love who you are. I am aware that most of us have more complaints than we have compliments about ourselves, and that most of what we like is either conditioned, or conditional. If you go deep — and you can — you will discover what you really, truly appreciate about yourself, which exists independently of what anyone else says or does.
Aries Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.
Taurus Confidential	There’s only so far you can drag yourself backwards before you decide it’s time to proceed in the direction you want. You’ve struggled with a tendency to attempt serving two masters: one being yourself, and the other being some past influence that is allegedly dictating who you should be and why you should be that way. Though it seems like ‘the stronger voice will win’, in truth the voice you give the most energy to will win. As long as you try to divide your loyalty, you will divide your character and feel paralyzed. I suggest you focus on listening with precision to the voice you want to hear, and making that decision on the basis of how you feel. How will you know that you’re hearing a past voice? Simple: a familiar sense of frustration. And a more loving voice? Simple: a sense of your potential opening up.
Taurus Birthday Audio by Eric Francis is available. Check this link for more information.
Gemini Confidential	It’s become easier to be honest with yourself. You’re in fact free to choose what to believe on the basis of truth rather than preference. What we want to be true is important; that could be described as a desire. A desire is different than what is so, now. Therefore, I suggest you work with the equation of manifesting the future in two parts: one is a clear admission of what is true in this moment; and the other being your burning desire for what you want, in this moment. If you can keep these two things discrete of one another, you will be less confused and more able to stick to a goal. Simply put, it’s easier to work toward a goal that you want than one that you don’t want, and this process will help you discern the differences between the two. At first they will be subtle — then they will be obvious.
Cancer Confidential	Chiron in Pisces is stretching your horizons, though for this to be meaningful you need to feel the experience rather than think about it. This is likely to be easier now that Mercury and a New Moon have eased some of the mental tension and anticipation you’ve been experiencing. The challenge you face now is to think about the future without fear. I recognize this is challenging, though at least it’s not as bad as that old Egyptian ritual where you have to walk across a playpen full of alligators; and if you’re scared, they eat you. However, the theme is the same. If you are feeling fear you will attract negativity. If you are feeling a sense of pleasure in considering what is possible, you will draw creative and loving experiences to yourself.
Leo Confidential	It’s time to make progress toward a longstanding career goal. You must abandon the idea that what you’ve experienced is a long sequence of delays or not-quite-good-enough and embrace the idea that you’ve been taking steps in a positive direction. This is true even if we define positive as learning what you don’t want, and how you don’t want to get it; or positive as having a chance to discern what is and is not true for you. You have all the information you need; now you need to break the large goal into at least three smaller goals, and take care of them one at a time. You can avoid mental frustration by acknowledging that every issue boils down to a question and every meaningful question can be addressed with meaningful information. This is not a game; it’s a game when questions don’t have answers.
Virgo Confidential	You’re starting to tap into some of the creative energy that you’ve been carving for a few weeks; or I’m here to tell you the portal is open. What I trust you’ve learned is not to judge what you’re creating while you’re doing it; stand back from the process and allow it to happen. This includes what you say, and in particular, what you say about your future plans. If nothing else, your past judgments can inform you that your criteria for ‘quality’ and ‘excellence’ are too strict, and at the very least you need to take a more compassionate view of what you’re doing. I say this not to lower the bar, but rather to offer a way that allows some of your subtler potential to come through in the form of satisfying achievement.
Libra Confidential	You can get your agreements onto a higher level. We’re accustomed to agreements being about money and obligation; you have the capacity to have your agreements be about a shared vision. Until recently, it seemed like there was something holding one particular agreement back, but now that factor has dissolved. You might ask yourself: where did it go? When we look at things differently, we see them differently, and your new perspective emphasizes common ground rather than contrast or distinction. Note, you are the one who is leading the way by both recognizing what is possible and by demonstrating your ability to see and experience life from the viewpoint of someone you care about. The interesting thing is that contrary to popular fears, you don’t have to lose yourself in the process; more accurately, you find yourself.
Scorpio Confidential	It’s taken you a long time to get to the bottom of how someone feels, and I cannot guarantee you like their opinion. The question you face is, how does this influence how you feel about yourself? This is what’s called a boundary issue, in the truest sense of the word. What feeling belongs to you and what belongs to someone else? Why is what someone else thinks, feels or believes so meaningful to you? Without knowing anything about the situation, it’s clear that there’s something about your belief in sacrifice. What do you feel you must give up in order to have what you want? Why exactly must the tradeoff be structured that particular way? I really mean this — where did you get this particularly narrow idea? Look carefully and go back a long way.
Sagittarius Confidential	You are starting to feel it: the radical change that’s coming; the leap forward. These things don’t ‘just happen’, they gather energy and that energy is gathering now. For the next few weeks I suggest you go with the sensation of movement, and get a sense of how to surf the waves: this is not something you can do in theory; it’s only possible to do by doing. For now you’re surfing on water; in a little while you’ll be surfing on fire, your favorite element. The current energy phase is like tai chi — slow and deliberate, easily seen. The next phase is more like TV king fu. So learn the moves slowly, then prepare your mind to do them more quickly. Note, the transition itself will be quite rapid; just when you’re getting bored, something’s gonna let fly.
Capricorn Confidential	The most daring risk you can take is with your mind. You must be feeling this; it’s about what you ‘allow yourself to think’. For a while you’ve been thinking about allowing yourself to think about something, and now you’re thinking about just doing it. This is alternately called a hang-up, or seduction. I suggest you go with seduction, since it’s more fun, it’s easier and it has a more productive goal: exploration of desire. I suggest you allow yourself to do this consciously. Experiment with wanting the most daring experience you can want; the riskiest emotion; the most vivid physical sensation. I have a feeling there will be a struggle here, which is the notion that ‘it might be wrong’ or a question about whether it’s actually healthy. Going deep into this feeling is part of the journey.
Aquarius Confidential	It’s time to confront this sense of what you want being dangled in front of you but somehow unavailable. Despite this being a normal condition in our world, for you it’s more complex than it seems on the surface. If the situation evokes a feeling or memory of your child self, this is veiling awareness of your adult powers. I suggest you first sort out your various adult and child responses, and figure out why you’re making the decision you’re currently making (which you can tell by what you’re actually getting) — then notice how this contrasts with what you want. I would offer some caution if you feel like you’re not confident enough to do what is right for you, or not confident enough to discern what that is; you are. I would offer caution if you think that to use your power is to abuse your power; it is not.
Aquarius birthday audio is coming soon — thanks for all the emails!
Pisces Confidential	You’ve been thinking about something for a while, and you know your own mind. It’s always possible to doubt yourself — after a point, that cannot rightly be called discernment. The thing is, this decision affects the whole mirage of your mind, and reaches far into your ‘subconscious’. Relationships are involved, and you may be nursing a sense of injury there. Indeed, the question seems to focus on whether you have faith in relationships, which is another dimension of having faith in yourself. Don’t fret over this stuff; I suggest you be yourself from moment to moment. Feel what you feel and remember that you don’t need to justify yourself or make explanations: but if you want to that is another matter. The only communication that really matters right now is what you share with yourself, so share generously.