Summer Solstice: Turning Up the Heat

Because of the tilt of the axis of the Earth in relation to the sun as we revolve around it, the northern and southern extremes of the planet get more or less sunlight during the year. So summer solstice is the point at which the northern hemisphere is pointed toward the sun and so the days are longest, and the southern hemisphere is pointed away and the days are shortest.

Spiritually, summer solstice in the northern hemisphere (which we do inhabit in Panama, though barely) has been a celebration of the abundance of life, a time for gratitude and enjoyment of life on Earth.

This year's summer solstice, however, has a more powerful significance.


Last year's summer solstice marked the beginning of a period of intense increase in the frequency of the energy reaching the Earth, which has affected us by preparing us to leave behind what no longer works for us personally or for humanity as a whole, and attuning us to higher-vibrational ways of thinking, feeling and doing.

In Panama, a new community of spiritually attuned people, both Panamanians and expats, has come together since last year's summer solstice. For me personally, this year has been one of dramatic spiritual experiences, growth and changes. I've moved from being able to get spiritual information and direction through meditation, to being able to access it pretty much anytime, anywhere. I've experienced for myself esoteric realities I would have had trouble even believing possible a year ago. And so in some ways I'm further removed from the norm, yet I'm also better positioned to help other people cross this bridge to a new reality in which the inner and outer worlds are more easily navigated as one.

You may have noticed that your own spiritual life has become more important to you, more fulfilling or more intense, in the past year. Or perhaps that your material and emotional life has become more unsettled or feels less certain than it did. This also is true of the world, and can be seen in the falling apart of the world economy, the election of more enlightened leaders, and probably other effects that I'm not aware of.

This year's summer solstice is said to be a kind of doorway into a time of much more rapid development still, with more intense energies shifting stuff around not only for us, but for the world as a whole.

If you read reports by spiritually aware astrologists, you will find that the planets have been lining up since the spring equinox in April to intensify the energies that support spiritual enlightenment, letting go of dysfunctional patterns of thought, feeling and action, and embracing new realizations of oneness, that the highest good for all is also the highest good for the individual, and a new ability to connect to vibrations of love, light, peace, harmony and truth.

As we approach the solstice, I feel called to contemplate what is the special role of the equatorial part of the Earth in this play of energies and consciousness. In Panama, we experience very little change in our daily dose of daylight throughout the year.

Perhaps this is why I have felt ever since I came here that the energy is especially intense here, and in fact have been told so by my guides-in-spirit. This means we have the potential to be Light-holders for the rest of the planet, where the greater portions of the population live. We have the potential to lead the way through this shift in energies, to attune ourselves to love and maintain that attunement as beacons for the world.

At the same time, it means that if you live elsewhere, you might try turning your attention to the equatorial regions when you meditate and just ask to receive anything that could benefit you from the energies here. And let me know, if you try this, what you experience! If you ask for assistance from your guides or Self, you will receive only what is beneficial for you individually, so it's perfectly safe.

In Panama City, we are going to hold a special solstice meditation to open ourselves to the higher frequencies of energy that correspond to higher spiritual consciousness. We will invite our guides, teachers, ascended masters, angels, higher Selves -- whomever each of us feels close to on the spiritual plane -- to assist us in receiving, accepting and carrying out our role in the play of human life at this time on the planet

This is a special opportunity for all of us, if we are aware of it, to do the same. By being aware of what's going on, and according ourselves with it for the highest good of not only ourselves but humanity, we stand to be richly blessed and get through the major changes to come as comfortably, serenely and joyfully as possible.
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Love, Light and Joy,
Susan
... Keep reading!

Easter Energy: Living the Resurrection Story

The energies of Holy Week or Semana Santa, the week leading up to Easter, are always hard on the human body and psyche. As you become more attuned to your energy field, you also become more aware of the challenges caused by millions of people feeling sadness, grief, anger and guilt as they focus together and repeatedly on the suffering of Jesus’ death.

Even if you’re not aware of your energy body, you are affected by humanity’s mass consciousness and its affect on the energy field we share. Just as you are affected by the energies of the planets, even if you don’t believe you could be. And just as your spiritual nature doesn’t depend on your spiritual beliefs.

If you do know what’s happening, it’s often a little easier to deal with the effects. (If you want to become more aware of your energy field or body, and learn how to access it, come to my retreat May 1-3 and learn how.)

This year was more difficult than usual. One friend said she just couldn’t stay awake on Good Friday. Another described her body as feeling like it was covered in heavy clay.

Recently, I read that we’ve been in a period of “solar minimum,” meaning that there have been very few sun spots since the first of the year. Sun spots cause solar winds, which disrupt the high-frequency energy of the sun before it can hit the Earth. Thus, we’ve been bombarded by much more high-frequency energy than normal, which our bodies aren’t yet used to. Our physical response is to feel tired and sluggish, though high-vibrational energy is what we’re transitioning into at this point in our evolution.

On top of that, the mass consciousness of humanity has done its annual ritual of focusing intensely for a week on the suffering of Jesus. Good Friday, the inappropriately named commemoration of the crucifixion of Jesus, is a national holiday in Panama. It seems to me that it’s observed much more rigorously than Easter Sunday, in fact. The energy of grief, sadness, guilt, anger and anguish permeated the atmosphere of the city. I could barely move.

Saturday was even worse. I felt as though I were the one waiting to be resurrected. I could hardly get off the sofa all day. I was drawn twice into meditation and then sleep, or some state in between, in which I would see dream-like images that had to do with ascension.

Once I saw myself opening a wide gate across a road, allowing violet light to pour through.

Another time, I saw two lines of people and a voice told me that one was those who have, and the other those who don’t. This reminded me of the Bible passage in which Jesus’ disciples asked why he taught in parables, and he said it was so that only those who were ready and willing to learn spiritual truth would receive it. “For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” (Matthew 13:12, NRSV)

This is not God’s judgment upon us, it’s just a description of how consciousness works. Consciousness leads to more consciousness; it expands itself, but we have to be open to it. Consciousness is available to all, but it’s never forced upon us. We have free will to reject it if we choose. But when we ask for even a little awareness and open to receive it, we can grow endlessly.

The energy of higher consciousness is what we call love. It’s a particular vibrational frequency that, when it enters our energy field through our heart chakra, creates the experience of love, as well as peace, warmth, security and kindness.

The energy of love clears our energy field by attuning us to its own frequency, allowing still more love to pour in. Love is the highest-vibrating energy in human experience, and therefore lifts human consciousness or awareness until the person can see, feel, hear, sense in every way through the energy body the spiritual world that is invisible to our physical senses.

That energy is what Jesus not only taught about, but more importantly, embodied for the rest of humanity. Two thousand years ago, most human beings couldn’t understand this energy, but they could receive and experience it. By fully embodying the frequency of Light or the Christ energy, Jesus became a kind of tuning fork for the rest of humanity. This was the esoteric or inner or mystical nature of his service to humanity. The mechanism by which he freed people from their pasts, and their mistakes or sins.

And because life energy knows no time or space, Jesus still serves as a spiritual tuning fork for much of humanity today.

I saw this at the Easter sunrise service I attended yesterday. I hadn’t been to a Christian service in quite awhile, but Easter is the time of greatest joy and consciousness in Christianity. And Jesus is a beautiful divine Being, one I love very much, so I followed my impulse to go celebrate the resurrection – the reality of eternal life that shows death to be just an earthly illusion.

The service was held in the back yard of a small, historic Afro-Antillean church that is now a museum here in Panama. It was bilingual, multicultural, and full of evangelical enthusiasm.

It didn’t matter how literally many in the congregation interpreted the story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Nor how completely they identified Jesus AS the Christ, the one-and-only embodiment of the energy connecting us to God the Creator or Source.

Just by focusing their attention and love on Jesus, they were automatically attuned to the frequency of Christ consciousness – the frequency of our divine source, the highest of all.

When they focused not on the suffering but on the love pouring through Jesus for humanity, which is the Christ itself, they also became clear vehicles for that love or Christ energy to reach the Earth.

As we approach, and in fact begin, a period of rapid advancement in human consciousness that is predicted to separate those-who-have from those-who-have-not, it’s important to understand what it means to have. I’ve questioned my spirit guides and Source quite a bit about how this transition will happen, and who is sufficiently conscious to move ahead into greater consciousness still.

Consciousness is not a matter of knowledge. It doesn’t depend on education. It isn’t limited by intellect, or what one has read or understands to be true. If it did, the Shift to higher consciousness would tend to happen mostly in the First World, and the New Earth would be a pretty boring place.

Nor does consciousness require certain spiritual practices. Meditation isn’t necessary, though it can help accelerate growth, and some form of communication with spirit, through prayer or meditation or both, is usually practiced by those who are conscious. Likewise, it doesn’t matter what intellectual beliefs accompany the conscious heart.

The ability to channel love is enough. To live in love, communicate love, send it to others through both thoughts and feelings, through intentions and prayers, is enough to make one conscious. Being conscious simply means being aware that love is the highest good for everyone, and that as we send love to others, we are creating a better world for us all to live in.

Attuning to love, whether through the energy of Jesus or any other means, opens the gate for the violet light of consciousness, the highest frequency available to the human energy spectrum. Whoever has love will receive even more, automatically, by their own willingness to love. That’s all it takes to enter the kingdom of heaven, which is the new Earth awaiting us all.

Light, Love, Joy,

Susan ... Keep reading!

Shift? What Shift? 2012 and Beyond

Much is being written about predictions of the end of the world on December 21, 2012. That's when the Mayan calendar ends, and so it's become the date most often used to mark what others refer to as "the shift."

Sounds like a bunch of flakey New Age mumbo-jumbo, doesn't it? Who is supposed to be shifting, and to what? Are we all going to just go up in flames, or get zapped by an enormous wave of electromagnetic energy sent out by a solar storm that is more than our bodies can handle?

Maybe. I'm not making any predictions, except that the shift is moving humanity from what's called the third dimension to the fourth dimension. And that's not a prediction, because we're already experiencing its effects. Those effects are predicted to peak at the end of 2012 (just as Barack Obama reaches the end of his first term in office, interestingly). At that point, we may all (if you're reading this, you're probably already on your way) just wake up in a new reality that's a whole lot easier to live in.

What's Shifting?

Everything, including human bodies and our thoughts and feelings, is made of energy. We know this now from physics. This energy vibrates. As the frequency of vibration increases, it comes closer to the very rapid vibrational rate of beings that we can’t currently see or hear, including angels, ascended masters, souls not currently in human form, and other aspects of Source. Infinite Source, the creative life-force energy itself, vibrates at infinite speed.

You can picture this vibratory motion as a series of waves, with a still point at the top and bottom of each wave, when the movement changes direction. As speed of vibration increases, the waves get closer together. At infinite speed, the still points overlap. So you have infinite speed and stillness as One. The alpha and omega, in other words.

Higher vibration, then, is closer to the vibration of Source or God or Universal Mind -- whatever you like to call it. The faster our own energy bodies vibrate, the easier it is for us to attune to this consciousness, as well as to the consciousness of other Beings such not in human form -- ascended masters, angels and spirit guides of all kinds. At higher vibrations, we can more easily hear, see and feel their presence.


Third, Fourth, Fifth -- What's the Difference?

For a long time, the bulk of humanity has been living in the third dimension, which is dominated by physical sense perception. Every now and then, a being of higher frequency would take on a human identity to help others learn how to attune within and discover their true identity as individual expressions or centers of the divine Source energy.

Jesus is probably the best known and most accomplished, but there were others. In the past century, many souls have been coming to earth who could “pierce the veil,” so to speak, reaching higher levels of perception through meditation and other forms of trance-state or altered consciousness. You may have noticed how in recent decades, a lot more people are meditating, and a lot more are writing books and teaching about how to access the wisdom and love of your own inner Being.

Also for a long time, many religious and cultural traditions have predicted an end to the Earth as we know it. Very famously, the Mayan calendar ends in 2012. The Bible predicts the end of the world, preceded by “wars and rumors of wars,” along with other catastrophes.

Often interpreted as a fearful event, or alternatively an ascension into a new heaven (usually only for those belonging to the religion making the prediction), this “end of the world” represents a mass shift in consciousness from the third to the fourth dimension.

In the fourth dimension, the inner senses are more easily accessed and used. You could say that in the fourth dimension, the “veil” is thinned, and we can more easily cross into the spiritual realm. What used to be taught in “mystery schools” and experienced only by mystics is becoming readily available to everyone. All you need to know is how to access your own inner ability to see, hear, feel, and understand.

Some of us have been living in fourth dimensional consciousness for a long time, and some have recently moved into a fifth dimensional state. This just means that more spiritual Light energy can pass through the individual’s energy field, bringing with it more awareness. The perceived division between "Big Me" or God-Self, and "Little Me" or human self, melts away. It’s easier to stop one’s thoughts and simply be, which allows the Light to shine on all situations and bring with it knowing that doesn’t have to be expressed in words.

Of course, we can still use words to express questions and gain wisdom and insight. Words are useful for conveying knowledge and understanding. They can be fun, too -- at least for some of us! But they aren’t required at higher levels of communication, which can arrive as direct understanding, or through vision, sound or feeling.

This reality is joyful, beautiful and creative. In it, we perceive both the temporary joys of physical existence and the eternal, unchanging joy of life itself that is our real home and existence. We are Life, and only when we know it can we truly enjoy it!

So no matter where you are at this moment, you are moving into an infinitely more beautiful space. The difference will be striking and bring you great joy.

What's Going Down?

This is what the Shift is all about. As with all transitions, it involves letting go of old ways of living that are no longer useful, to make room for new possibilities. Sometimes the transition feels a little rocky. We reach the low point between two waves, a moment (cosmically speaking, which to us can feel like years!) in which we feel empty, lost, abandoned.

This is an illusion, of course, because the next wave is always coming. Emptiness is just the moment before fullness. But in that moment, it feels very real. Everything feels stagnant, and nothing seems to move.

I know many people here in Panama who are at that point now. We are all supporting each other emotionally and spiritually through this transition. Panama, as the central point of the Western Hemisphere, is a vortex that draws in energy from around the globe. Therefore, any condition here is exaggerated and intensified.

We (along with others around the world) are in the vanguard of this change, and soon (we all hope!) will be on the other side. Not physically, but energetically. Our vibrational range has shifted upwards, and but everything we need and want to survive and thrive is still somewhere in the process of manifestation. Somewhere in that time between the originating desire and the coalescing of the atoms in the physical world to create what we have asked for.

No matter where you are, you are also receiving a higher-vibrating energy that is beginning to change how people feel and function. It challenges the body, and sometimes brings on flu-like symptoms of exhaustion, lethargy, headaches or other pain.

It causes the eyes to do funny things; I get circles of white light around around the lens sometimes when I blink. This effect comes and goes. Other people are starting to see the sparkling energy of the universe. That's a fourth-dimensional phenomenon, which you may or may not have noticed before.

And of course, we've all noticed the economic structures of the world shifting, cracking, starting to sag. This symptom too will come and go, but eventually anything that doesn't resonate with a higher level of consciousness will fall away and a new order will be created.

What's Coming Up?

This means that a new economy will emerge based on cooperation, creative collaboration, and the understanding that we are not indeed separate and our resources not limited, but that we are One Being in many forms, and we can use our innate inner power to bring forth the highest good for all. Because each of us can only benefit when all benefit; any harm we cause another causes us harm as well. This economy won't support win-lose situations, only win-win-win-win-win!

That's the way it's meant to be. As above so below; as in Heaven, so on Earth.

Blessings and good shifting to you all! Please let me know how it's going for you, and if you have any questions post them and I'll see what answers I receive.

Light, Love, Joy,

Susan ... Keep reading!

Dissolving the Chains of Attachment

I've been writing about the difference between love, which is the pure Source-energy expressing itself through our heart chakras, and attachment, which is the feeling of dependence on another to love us that we feel when we confuse actual love with the idea of love.

Human relationships usually contain both love and attachment. Our challenge is to recognize the difference and, when a relationship ends or must change form, to allow the love to survive but dissolve our feeling of attachment to the other person. By so doing, we can transform our emotions of grief, anger, resentment, sadness, or even despair into acceptance.

From my own experience, I know that we can use meditation and visualization to make this transformation. It helps to have an experienced guide in this process, to assist in bringing in spiritual energy that actually changes the frequency of your emotions. But you can also do this on your own, just as you can meditate on your own.

Here is one method I use.

Start by entering a meditative or deeply relaxed and focused state. How you do this is up to you; use any method that you find effective.

Now, visualize yourself and the other person facing each other. Picture your attachment connecting you to this person like cords or chains of light, binding you to one another.

If you can, express your love and gratitude to the other person for the good aspects of your relationship, the love and learning you received from it.

Then visualize a brilliant beam of white Light slicing through the cords, freeing you both. (An alternative method is to ask a spiritual figure whom you trust to cut the cords with a sword of white light. It could be an angel, your own God-Self, Mary, Jesus, Buddha, a guide – any Being of higher consciousness with whom you feel a connection.) The white light represents pure divine love, which never harms, but can transform the nature of our feelings.

Watch what happens. You may see yourself and your beloved drift apart, or some other image may come to mind.

Release the other person, knowing that he or she carries the love and gratitude received from you. This does not end your connections as souls, which is based on love. It only ends the human attachment to having a particular relationship with that person in this lifetime.

Finally, turn your attention to your own heart. Picture white light filling it, soothing any pain there and filling any holes left behind by the attachments you have just released. Feel the warmth of the light, and know that it is pure love healing your wounded heart. Bask in that light as long as you like, and when you feel ready, open your eyes and see how the world looks and feels to you now.

This is a beautiful meditation that allows love to survive, while releasing attachments that keep you bound to unhappiness.

If you want to do more work on love, attachment and relationships, I highly recommend a book by psychospiritual therapist John Welwood called Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships. He includes great exercises to help develop your ability to access love directly from within, which in turn strengthens relationships.

Love, Light and Joy,

Susan
... Keep reading!

Love and Attachment, Part 2: Attachment

As human beings, we often confuse love with attachment. Actually, human relationships include both.

In the last post, I wrote what my Source told me about how to recognize the difference between love and attachment.

Love, we were told, expands, rises above our natural desire to be loved, wants the best for all. It comes from our inner Self and flows through our heart to others. Thus we often think the other is the source of our love, but in fact it is within us all the time. And love is the same energy, whether it’s for a child or a lover. (For more details, see Love and Attachment, Part 1: Love is Love is Love.)

What, then, is attachment? Here’s the rest of the conversation:

Love if a function of our divine Self, which is ever-expanding, while attachment is a function of our human aspect.

The human mind is often afraid, because it can only predict a future based on past experiences. It can only perceive what is physically present. It knows nothing about eternity, energy, or infinite abundance.

In a finite world, there is only the beloved we know at the moment. The one just over the horizon, just beyond this moment, doesn’t yet exist.

So whenever we are faced with letting go of anyone we love, we anticipate the end of love itself.

“Oh yes,” we say, “there are other people who love me, but it’s not the same!”

No, it isn’t, because we have decided, in our human minds, that this person is the one who will carry our projection of the romantic other, who will represent for us all we think we lack, and who will enable us to have that blissful, deep experience of intimate connection.

Because in that connection with the other, we connect with our own Self.

Finally, I asked, “What can we do about all this, then?”

Dissolve the attachment. Love cannot be dissolved, but it can be released, and it can release the beloved. Or it can be transformed, from lover-love to friend-love, and can manifest a different relationship.

To be ready to let go of attachment, you first need to go through the emotional process of grieving for the relationship. You can't use meditation to short-cut emotional recovery. It doesn't work, and if you do, you will miss the lessons you could gain from the relationship. You would then attract a similar relationship into your life, to give yourself the opportunity to learn those lessons.

Give yourself a break. Learn the lesson this time, so you can move onto a different experience. The learning is the gift found within any painful relationship experience. Let yourself receive, open and appreciate the gift.

When you have grieved, been angry, cried, protested, reflected and finally feel you can accept the end or transformation of the relationship, then it's time to dissolve your attachment so you can move on.

Next time, I'll give you a method to use, either by yourself or with the help of someone experienced in spiritual healing and meditation to guide you. Until then....

Love, Light and Joy,

Susan

... Keep reading!