"The Rose Is Opening"

I awoke in the night last night thinking of my logo. The idea of a heart vibrating over the Earth came to me seven years ago as I contemplated the image I wanted for my cd cover.

Last night I awoke realizing the heart is descending as the earth is ascending.  The Earth is being reunited with the Divine Feminine, a heart of great compassion and love.  I lay in bed filled with joy, something to which I'm unaccustomed. The only other time I had felt joy like this in the night was on Oct. 28th last year. Jerry was gone and I awoke sensing someone or someones in the room.  I overflowed with joy.  Then I realized the Mayan calendar had concluded. It had turned.  Last night was a similar joy. 

I then thought of a spider I saw recently in a vision. I was lying in bed when suddenly everything in my field of vision turned fuchsia.  Then a little black spider crawled onto the scene.  I immediately thought of Grandmother Spider, the feminine weaver of webs, the bringer of light and to some the creator of words. The spider began to crawl vertically toward the top of what I was seeing.  The top became the star-filled Universe.  As the spider climbed into the Universe it's black body disappeared into the stars.  Last night I fell asleep thinking, "The spider part of this."

Sometime later, I again awoke. This time I was thinking, "The rose is opening.  The Divine Rose of compassion and love is opening in this time, opening in the heavens and in our hearts."

My site is called Imagine the Shift. Typically I would record the above in my journal and not share it for some time, if ever.  This morning I practice a new shift, a shift of sharing what I see rather than keeping it hidden in the pages of a journal. I share this in hopes that you will be filled with joy and inspiration as I was as I lay in bed last night feeling what it's like to know the Earth is being reunited with the stars as the rose of the Divine Feminine is opening.  I share this so we may join Spider and co-create a weaving that wraps this Earth in wonder and joins her with the stars for this Time's highest good.

Imagine the Shift!

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 13 March 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

No. 1 Seeds

I grew up in a basketball town, Linden, Tennessee home to six state championships, three won by "Little Linden" in the 50's when schools weren't grouped according to size and three more since in Class A. 

This week the Perry County boys play again in the state tournament while Vanderbilt's men and women my neighborhood teams and Belmont my alma mater will both play in the NCAA tournament.  I suspect I'll be found in an area bar come Thursday and Friday (thanks "Sam's" for making the shift to non-smoking) where I'll cheer on Vandy and Belmont and keep up with Perry county on-line.

Basketball's "March Madness" stirs another March madness surging about this time in me as I'm reminded of my other #1 seeds - tomatoes, green beans, squash (yellow and zucchini) and zinnias.  

Tomatoes are tops with me because of their versatility.  They're like the player that can shoot the jumper and the three, drive in for a lay up while rebounding and guarding defensively.  Tomatoes aren't just for sandwiches. I love making my own tomato salsa and sauce. There's something so satisfying about having jars of sauce and salsa on the shelf through the winter and spring born of a process in which I've participated beyond purchasing them from the grocery shelf. One of my favorite meals is homegrown tomatoes especially Cherokee Purples, goat cheese and basil with a bit of oil.  Green beans with chopped garlic and almonds are a summer staple and squash, ever since I was a kid I've loved yellow squash slightly cooked, not mushy. Mmmm. Oh and can't forget about zucchini bread.  I don't know who came up with making this sweet dense bread out of this long slender squash but I like it. One loaf from last summer still awaits in the freezer. 

After last summer, zinnias made it as one of my top four seeds. They may not feed my body but they feed my soul.  Last summers seeds produced zinnias for two months.  I kept clipping them for bouquets and they just kept delivering blossoms of orange, pink, yellow and red.

Sports, especially basketball this time of year, stirs great passion. Having grown up in Linden and still being a fan, I totally get the excitement and enthusiasm.  I just wish we as a human team could rally around Earth and Nature rather than argue about global warming, climate change and the pros and cons of the EPA.  I wish we could cheer on Mother Earth and deeply appreciate her with the same level of enthusiasm that will be stirred for basketball teams during March Madness.

I suspect part of why we're not enthusiastic Earth fans is it's easy to take Earth and Nature for granted. Whereas Vanderbilt hadn't won an SEC championship in 61 years until Sunday, the grass grows, trees leaf out, birds sing and seeds sprout year round.  It's easy to take for granted the miracle of life on Earth. 

After basketball season is a memory and hopefully a sweet one for Perry County, Vandy and Belmont, I hope we're greater fans of Mother Earth and appreciating her #1 Seeds more this year than ever.  

Imagine the Shift! 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 12 March 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

The Return of IntuitionThanks to Appliances, Cars, Investing and Computers

Not long ago while hurriedly walking through a big box store of the home supply and hardware type, I was caught by surprise as a woman's voice said, "In this intuitive system...."

I stopped. Was I in a self help store instead? I looked right to see a woman on a tv screen informing passers-by of a nearby washer and dryer's capacity to intuitively determine what one's clothes need.

'Excuse me' I thought, 'Machines now have intuition when most folks don't even know what that means?'

Then I second guessed myself.  Maybe most folks know about and use intuition and I'm the one behind.  It's only in the past few years that I've really begun to pay attention to my intuitive self.  And paying attention doesn't mean I actually follow what I hear.

I hurriedly moved on but this stayed with me. First I was struck by the language. I didn't know whether to be happy or dismayed. At least the general public is being exposed to the phrase 'intuitive system' as I suspect many folks walk through life unfamiliar with their bodies own personal intuitive system be it a gut feeling or inner voice.  Maybe I should be pleased an appliance can be intuitive.
 Then a random sci-fi thought zipped through my mind - What if machines become intuitive and ultimately save the day? This particular machine had the built-in capacity to 'listen' to my clothing.  What if machines continue to develop this capacity to listen and use intuition while humans don't?

I made the above notes then tucked this little musing away but the greater mystery in my life made sure my intuition wasn’t going away.  Within a couple of weeks, I noticed a billboard for the Nissan Rogue on a Nashville interstate. The Rogue has intuitive all wheel drive.  The same week I got something in the mail from a retirement program with intuitive investing and then just last week I learned my new computer protection program has an intuitive component.

The emergence of the word intuition is especially interesting given the fact that so many women have through history suffered greatly for their intuition at the hands of the patriarchy.  Women here and abroad were labeled witches and burned at the stake, stoned and drowned because they were intuitive.  If we fast forward a few hundred years, it’s not been that long ago that women were called ‘crazy’ and medicated (and still are at times) for intuition expressed or repressed.

Much of my life I’ve not been a role model for following my intuition.  I was recently  telling someone about being told in a random moment to “Learn French.”  There wasn’t another person in the room who said “Learn French” and it wasn’t my own voice, but as sure as I’m sitting here I heard someone inside me yet not inside me say the words, “Learn French.”  I made a note of this but didn’t learn French.  Months later an intuitive friend said to me, “Dawn, I’m being told to tell you to learn French.”  She didn’t know why other than that’s what she was being told to tell me.  Then months after that a neighbor one morning came running from her house as I walked past and called out, “Hey I’ve been meaning to ask you have you ever thought of learning French?”

I may be slow (ie.scared) but this did it.  My neighbor and I enrolled in a five day course and I for a beginner with no foreign language other than Southern under my belt did well. 

I thought that was it. I fulfilled the request made of me until the day months later a brochure arrived in the mail, a brochure promoting a trip to France.  It didn’t take three brochures to arrive in the mail although I did sign up at the last minute. The good news is  I went. 

My intuitive experiences aren’t always this bold and big.  Most times my intuition arrives subtly and quietly, with little nudgings and sensings that I need to look into something or do something. I don’t know the significance until I do whatever it is I’m sensing I need to do and many times even afterwards I don’t know in the moment why I did what I did.  I do know I'm following bread crumbs or collecting pieces to a larger life puzzle.

Wednesday night was the perfect example. I had known all day I needed to go outside and sit under the moon because it might be raining come Thursday's full moon (and I hadn't checked the weather).  I got on-line instead and spent over an hour reading, sorting and deleting emails.  Ten o'clock neared and I was going to bed when I felt the nudge to go outside. 

Instead of overriding the nudge, I put on a jacket, grabbed a towel and lay down on Mother Earth in the middle of my postage stamp sized city yard. As soon as I lay down I felt the vibes of Earth and Moon energy buzzing in my body.  Even now writing of this memory calls up the sight of the moon in the Southern sky and the feeling I had.  I lay there so very grateful I listened and followed rather than ignoring or resisting.

Fear and its kin habit and ignoring try to keep me from following my intuition.  My brain wants to know if I learn French what’s next. 

Intuition and the mystery say, “Trust.”

And that is the challenge.  My safety-seeking brain and nervous system like to know what’s next and next and next. If I know what’s next, ten next steps out and know I’m not going to be burned, drowned or hung for doing what’s next then I’ll do what I’m told to do. 

Yet this isn’t how Mystery, Spirit and the Divine work at least in my life. And ironically no one kills me but I kill me, who I came here and am called to be if I don’t listen and follow.

As I reflect on the four marketing references to intuition I’ve heard and seen, it’s interesting that although many women have disconnected from their intuitive selves because of the patriarchy’s control the word intuition is returning through systems (manufacturing, automotive, investing and banking) that have traditionally been male dominated.

I find it perfect these four references in the mainstream all speak metaphorically to some aspect of embodying and embracing the journey.  The washer and dryer were referred to as an intuitive system similar to my body’s intuitive system.  The vehicle conjures the image of the path traveled or life's road.  The investing company represents my money earned by how I spend my energy. Will I invest energy in listening on an intuitive level? And my computer’s security system represents how much more really secure I am in terms of freedom from fear when I'm listening intuitively.

When paying attention and listening to my body’s intuitive system and investing my energy on what I sense I’m to do I experience the road traveled with a inner security that can't be taken from me.  

How does intuition arrive in your day?  Do you pay attention and listen or are you more like I've been, uneasy and wanting to know the next ten steps? 

Imagine the Shift of discovering and following your intuitive self!

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 9 March 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

C-love - Four Little Creative Cloves from My Soul's Soil

Just as garlic cloves multiply in the soil, after writing the first and what I thought was the final Musing on garlic I found little cloves growing in my soul's creative soil. 

*  I look at the word clove and c-love (see love).  If I can c-love in the darkest of people, acts and times then my heart of compassion and my mind of understanding will grow and multiply like the cloves of garlic in my yard outside.

To C-love is the key to returning to relationship with rather than having power over.

*  Who decided to call it a 'head' of garlic? Why not a heart?  Yet I'm not surprised.  In a way this is perfect as over the centuries, the head's gotten way out of proportion to the heart in our world. Valuing reason and thinking over the emotional and intuitive experience has gotten us to this place of such deep divides. I want a heart of garlic with a mind, a thoughtful, open mind, of garlic on the side. 

*  Then as I'm thumbing through my new, old book "The Secret Language of Symbols" recently bought for two dollars at Sparta's Riverbank Books, I come upon one sentence about the symbolism of garlic.  

"Garlic is a symbol of the higher world, partly because of its link with lightning 

(traditionally said to smell like garlic)."

I've never smelled lightning although now I'm curious, but I find this idea perfect.  I've often thought the 'lower' world, the world of Nature and Mother Earth's soil, rocks, water, plants, trees and the animals is really the higher world.    

*  And last but not least here's for now "Clove 4" - Divine Love is like a clove of garlic in Time's dark soil, stretching, expanding and morphing into multiple cloves. This is the end of Time's long night.  Love has been waiting.  Love is ready to be harvested, gently pulled from the shadows and the dark.  Divine Love is ready to be brought into the Light from the dark, yet magic Earthen Universe.

C-love. 

Imagine the Shift! 

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 8 March 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

Garlic Inspired Epiphanies on the Masculine and Me

(The back story:  Jay at Cookeville’s “Burgess Fall’s Nursery” introduced me to growing garlic in the fall of 2009. For those unfamiliar with garlic's magic, garlic is self-sowing meaning one clove left in the earth after 8-9 months becomes a cluster of cloves or a head of garlic. My first bed wasn’t as successful as I hoped yet this past winter I found green garlic shoots from that first attempt emerging several inches high in a pile of crunchy brown fall leaves.  This inspired me to buy more garlic from Jay and try, try again.  Here’s the "harvest" thus far from this year’s bed.)

The heads from which the planted cloves came.

Just about every morning, I start or conclude my run by surveying the 3 by 3 foot garlic bed in the front yard.  For over two months, I’ve watched this small plot of Mother Earth where I planted several cloves as night arrived on December's Winter Solstice.  (I had read that garlic thrived when planted on the year’s longest night.)

That evening the neighbors, whose driveway is nearest the garlic, were outside too.  I happily explained my project and promised them the gift of summer garlic. 

Recently I counted twenty five shoots of green and thought of those neighbors.  My first thoughts were 'If I give one row away and we eat one row, the third and final row can be saved and re-sown. Hmm, that means I personally will only get 6-8 cloves of my home grown garlic to last a season.'

Then instead of imagining happily braiding heads to keep and give away I found my dormant or undeveloped mathematician crunching numbers.  The scene inside my head went something like this:

“If each head has minimally six cloves then I need to save 4 of these 25 heads to ensure I’ve the same number for next year.  If I’m going to share, maybe I need to double my yield.  Then I need 8 for 48.  Unless I sow my entire yard in garlic, then I need ten times that amount if not more.  Maybe I should save a few extra this summer in case some heads don’t yield six cloves or in case they’ve fungus.  Does garlic get fungus?  What if the new bug down the street likes garlic greens?”

These thoughts all came quickly and quietly so much so that I stopped and literally asked, ‘Who is this residing in my head?  Who is this me not wanting to share garlic's magic, but instead is strategizing how to increase next year’s yield while insuring myself against unforeseen problems and potential pestilence?  And what are these feelings swimming subtly beneath my awareness?’

Suddenly I intuitively knew these feelings of exuberance, pressure, scarcity, fear and hope were feelings of the masculine especially of farmers long ago.

Stirring in me were aspects of the loving masculine desiring to feed and sustain family, first on the farm then in the greater community.  I realized how with that desire came pressure and vulnerability born of the fear of failing to feed everyone.  For our agrarian ancestors generations ago, failing to grow enough for whatever reason could result not only in hunger but in the death of a loved one.  I realized the temporary yet overzealous, driven fantasy to plant my entire yard in garlic was an attempt to control this primal fear. 

It had never occurred to me in my modern life how frightened and vulnerable farm folk and especially men must have felt in early days when drought occurred, insects arrived and blight or fungus appeared.  Making their predicament even more challenging was the fact that our pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps kin weren’t encouraged to own personal vulnerability.  This may partially explain why so many of our ancestors in rare photos look back at us with such grim, expressionless stares. 

I judge the patriarchy or much of mankind for its disconnect from Mother Earth, yet standing in my yard, I understood how industrialization’s tools to make farm life easier and ensure production appealed to the vulnerable farmer and easily took root.  I was shown how I too disconnect and that residing in my shadow is the same capacity for lack of awareness that's contributed to the paradigm of mankind having dominion over Earth' soil and nature.  I sensed how with advent of modern machinery and corporations chemicals one could feel god-like and be consumed with growing more and more while simultaneously disconnecting from Mother Earth and forgetting Nature’s role in the process of gardening. 

Most telling to me was how seeing the fruits of inspiration that started in my heart activated fear and sent me to my head.  Visually seeing what I created changed things.  Fear prompted me to worry as to whether I had enough.  Fear began calculating, trading the joy in growing things for needing and wanting to produce more.  Just as quickly I someone who’s appreciative of Nature forgot the rain, sun and soil.  My digging 25 small holes was a minor role compared to the elements continued presence.   

I’ve now a sense of the ease with which we’ve gotten to this place where we’ve forgotten our relationship with and reliance upon the earth.  And I’ve a greater compassion and understanding for the masculine in men and women, the masculine’s capacity for action born of desire and love and the accompanying feelings of vulnerability and fear.

This small bed of garlic regardless of its yield has already provided a harvest, a harvest of insight nourishing me internally so I better understand myself and the masculine in my past and present kin.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 8 March 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

The Arrival of Mystery and Beauty - Inspired by Venus, Walmart and Owls

The six-pointed star I photographed coming through the blinds on the anniversary of my father's death has stayed with me.  For some reason, maybe because the moment was so beautiful, I associated the star with Venus, the planet of beauty and love.

I had just read in the "Farmer's Almanac" (which is not just for farmers) that 2012 is Venus best year in our lifetime. Venus now high and bright in the evening sky will be so through early May then reappear as the bright morning star July through October. In addition, Venus transits the sun in early June and won't do so again until 2117 (105 years from now).  It’s exquisitely perfect the planet associated with love and the feminine would be having such a grand year here in 2012 as we experience the possibility of moving to a paradigm that's balanced in relation to the masculine and feminine rather than suppressing the feminine in both sexes as has happened for centuries.

I excitedly did a quick on-line search regarding the six-pointed star and found two million references.  I learned Venus is actually associated with eight points but more disturbing and sadly on the first search page alone multiple links demonized the six-pointed star and referenced Venus as connected to Satan.

I began to wonder how it was that the church fathers centuries ago denounced as evil and bad the planets, astrology and so many things related to nature and mystery, things more associated with the feminine than masculine?  How is it those long ago seeing the divine in nature allowed for this co-opting of beauty?  And why do so many even today live in fear and attempt to stir fear as evidenced by what I found on-line?

What was and is so threatening about mystery, the stars and the feminine?

Days after seeing the six-pointed star, I noticed a billboard for Walmart.  At first I was taken (and not positively so) by the advertisement proclaiming the juicy roast chicken for only $4.99 coming soon to a store opening nearby.  It occurred to me that inexpensive food is better than no food (I think).  Still I wondered how many customers would buy the roast chicken if they saw how the chicken had been hormonally fattened without seeing the light of day and kept in a cage with floor space hardly the size of a piece of note book paper.

Then I saw the symbol.  There on the billboard was the six pointed star now associated with Walmart.  When did this happen?  None of the on-line search sites I glanced at referred to Walmart as Satanic.  Once home I read on-line of the new symbol (which is 3-4 years old now). It’s referred to as a flower or sun and is Walmart’s attempt to be perceived as more environmentally conscious.

Whereas many of our European ancestors were lured (my unconfirmed hunch) or moved from experiencing the Divine in Nature to seeking the Divine in cathedrals, today corporations use symbols whether conscious of it or not to lure the public into stores where the material is worshiped.  Shoppers offer up their money (and potentially sell their souls) in exchange for material goods.

By Dixie Rose, White County

The old church hymn "In the Sweet By and By" would now be more appropriately titled "In the Sweet Buy and Buy.”

My ‘sweet buys’ are often art-related. Over the last few months, I’ve begun to notice owls in art.  Loving owls and artists, I've purchased a couple of owl pieces by area artists.

Yet not long ago, I found myself personally lured by a marketing brochure to a chain store, a store whose doors I had not entered in over a year.  I walked into that store and found decorative paintings and kitchen wares with geometric designs I’ve seen in visions as well as owls everywhere.  There were owl paintings and pillows, salt and pepper shakers, lotion and lip gloss dispensers.

I walked around the store holding an unusual feeling combo.  Through time owls have been feared and revered depending on the culture.  To some, they’re associated with wisdom and to others they foreshadow imminent death.  One part of me wanted to excitedly proclaim "America is discovering the beauty and mystery of owls."  While another part of me wondered if owls were being used as part of the ever-cycling seasonal marketing that sells to us for its survival not ours.  Are owls just replacing last year’s peace and love symbols before next season’s bunnies and flowers?   Will owls eventually show up in Goodwill and the trash heap?

My hope was replaced with outrage as I went on an internal tirade.  How dare the corporate world encourage the public to fill their homes with nature-related prints and trinkets and fill their bodies with sixteen ounce steaks and hormonally fattened chickens when that same corporate world complains about the EPA and how taking care of the environment costs jobs.  I was further inflamed by a newspaper story encouraging readers to give their living space a ‘punch’ by decorating with animal skins this coming year. I’m not a violent person, yet I wanted to give someone a punch.

Fortunately my tirade brought me to a new place.  I remembered the Farmer's Almanac and Venus in 2012.  I found myself wondering if the energies of Venus, the planet of beauty and love, are here to assist us as to what's unfolding in our lives.

I easily label corporate America the bad guy co-opting nature, beauty and humankind.  Yet imagine the beauty if we, the masses of common folk, co-opted corporate America's symbols as well as material goods to awaken us to the beauty of this time and to the disconnects in society and our personal lives.

I imagine Venus helping us make the shift so products in stores wake us up to what’s in store in 2012 and beyond.  How might the owls I’ve purchased help me listen deeply to mystery’s presence in my life?  How might we profit if the bird images on furnishings prompted us to actually see and hear birds?  How might we benefit if flowers and leaves decoratively on the inside prompted us to explore the dirt, seeds and trees of our earthly home?  How beautiful if the nature-related pieces, whether made on assembly lines or by local artisan’s hands, awakened in us the memory of a time in which nature and animals were honored and revered as divine. 

With Venus help, I imagine the images used in interior design waking us to our interior’s design, a design built for embracing Mystery, and a brave, powerful loving awareness that realizes more fully our relationship with Earth, the Heavens and with one another.

This is the Shift I embrace.

-Dawn, The Good News Muse, 1 March 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com

See a Flower, See the World

If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment."
-Georgia O'Keeffe

I noticed the above quote on the back of a book purchased in Santa Fe in the Nineties. I saw it and thought,

'If you take the world in your hand and really look at it, it's your flower for the moment.'

The world when held and considered through time is like a flower, an amazing work of beauty, grace and resilience, born and reborn over seasons and cycles of light and dark, hot and cold, shifting days and nights filled with moments breathing joy and sorrow, peace and strife. 

A flower globe/tree in Lyon, France (June 2009).

-Dawn, The Good News Muse 28 Feb. 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.comdawn@imaginetheshift.com