Solstice Meditation Focus

Solstice Meditation Focus

Hello!

This is a special Solstice Meditation Focus suggested for Tuesday, December 21, 2004.

SOLSTICE MEDITATION FOCUS

1. Summary
2. Meditation Times
3. Update on the current Meditation Focus #121
4. Complementary material related to the Solstice Meditation Focus
5. Other recent compilations

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE IN PASSING THIS ON TO OTHERS!

1. SUMMARY

The solstice in the Northern hemisphere is the point at which the light begins to return, while in the Southern hemisphere it is the moment at which the same light begins to fade. Recognized among the ancients as an extremely powerful day of the year, and celebrated as a turning point, solstice means "standing-still-sun". As the world is faced more than ever with mounting challenges that threatens to overcome our ability to cope with the consequences of human neglect, ignorance or even malevolence, it is vital that we turn our attention within to seek the guidance that will enable us to remain focused each on our unique and essential path of service, rekindling in the process the inner knowledge that all is in divine order and proceeding optimally towards ever greater freedom to Be All That We Are.

This moment in time also stands precisely 8 years—8 revolutions around our Sun star—before December 21st 2012, a time of great cosmic significance which, according to ancient sacred knowledge, is the threshold jump point into a new era of universal peace, love and harmony on Earth. It is therefore appropriate during this imminent solstice, to both celebrate this coming global soulful experience of a collective epiphany, and reassert our inner resolve to do whatever it takes to be ready on all levels for this once-in-numerous-lifetimes opportunity for dimensional shifting, and to also encourage, through our own radiant presence, emanations of love, expressions of words, personal undertakings and contagious examples, as many other living souls as possible to take part in this crescendo of awakening now encompassing this entire sphere of existence.

Please dedicate your prayers and meditations, as guided by Spirit, this coming Tuesday December 21st, starting at 12:30 Universal Time (GMT), or at noon local time, or at any other time of the day that best suits you, and for a duration of 30 minutes or more, to commune with Nature in all its multitudinous visible and invisible manifestations, with all other awakening souls on Earth and beyond, and with all your guides and angelic protectors, expressing your unconditional Love, your eternal gratitude in Oneness, and sensing the unfathomable beauty of all Creation as the celestial body that holds and protects your physical body comes to a standstill in its seasonal cycle, before tilting again, as it has done for untold millions of years, for the Highest Good of All.

This Special Meditation Focus for the December 21 Solstice has been archived for your convenience at http://www.aei.ca/~cep/DecSolstice2004.htm

2. MEDITATION TIMES

The exact time for this December 21st Winter Solstice is at 12:42 Universal Time (GMT) which is 7:42 in New York, 13:42 in Paris.

To find your corresponding local time, please go at
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=21&month=12&year=2004&hour=12&min=42&sec=0&p1=0

Suggested beginning times for a 30 minute (or more) meditation:

i) 12:30 Universal Time (GMT)
ii) At noon local time.
iii) At any other time of your choice - such as during the sunrise or sunset.

3. UPDATE ON THE CURRENT MEDITATION FOCUS #121

Changing Our Consciousness to Prevent Climate Change http://www.aei.ca/~cep/MeditationFocus121.htm
For this Sunday and next Sunday December 26, at the usual time.

U.S., EU Reach Modest Global Warming Deal (Dec 18, 2004)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=19&u=/ap/20041218/ap_on_sc/climate_conference_8
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - In a U.N. conference's final hours, the United States and the European Union worked out a modest deal early Saturday to inch ahead in the international effort to put a cap on global warming. The Americans avoided any commitment to negotiate mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, something President Bush (news - web sites) rejected in 2001 when he renounced the Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites), which requires rollbacks in other industrial nations by 2012. On their side, the Europeans won a new forum for discussing just that — a "seminar" next May at which governments can informally raise a range of climate issues, including next steps on emissions control after 2012. "The only thing we want to discuss is future options, and we will," said a key EU negotiator, Pieter van Geel, the Dutch environment secretary. If they do, U.S. diplomats are sure to ignore them. That was one reason other Europeans saw the Buenos Aires agreement as at best a small step to keep the multilateral process moving on climate change. "It's a finger-hold, like hanging on by your nails," said Michael Zammit Cutajar of Malta, a veteran climate negotiator. The accord on the seminar was the chief outcome of a low-key, two-week annual conference on climate change, notable otherwise for its timing: on the eve of the final entry into force of the 1997 Kyoto pact next Feb. 16. In 2001, when he rejected the Kyoto Protocol to the umbrella U.N. climate treaty, Bush said its pre-2012 emissions cuts would damage the U.S. economy, and he complained that China and other poor but industrializing countries were exempt under Kyoto. Here in Buenos Aires, the United States resisted efforts to design seminars in 2005 as forums to explore ways to control emissions after 2012. (...) Although they won no U.S. commitment to talk about reductions, the Europeans viewed the deal as a start, possibly to spur talks with developing nations, such as China and India, about post-2012 steps to help the climate. Environmentalists and many delegates viewed the position of the United States, the world's biggest emitter, as irresponsible. "They're trying everything possible to discredit any dialogue that would impact on certain economic interests," Tuvalu delegate Enele Sopoaga told a reporter, alluding to the oil and coal industries. His Pacific nation of small scattered islands is already losing precious land to rising seas — one consequence scientists predict from global warming. CLIP

Maverick U.S. States Prove Popular at Climate Talks (Dec 17) http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041217/sc_nm/environment_us_dc_3
(...) U.S. businesses were among the leading early opponents of the Kyoto protocol, and Bush cited the economic impact of the agreement as a major reason for pulling out. However, multinationals such as DuPont, Alcoa and IBM have set their own greenhouse gas reduction targets, and seven states imposed mandatory limits on carbon-dioxide emissions, the worst of the heat-trapping gases. California plans to cut emissions from new cars and trucks by 30 percent by 2016. Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of the law's strongest backers. (...) Eighteen U.S. states require that some of their electricity be generated from renewable-energy sources. Furthermore, Republican governors from New York and Massachusetts are leading the creation of a regional emissions-cap system. "Our federal government could make itself irrelevant on climate change policy," said U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, a Democrat and Kyoto protocol supporter. Some see the regulatory writing on the wall. Chemical giant DuPont, which in the 1990s withdrew its support for an advocacy group that opposed fighting global warming, says it slashed its emissions worldwide by 70 percent by 2003 from 1990 levels. That far outstrips the Kyoto target of a 5 percent reduction by the year 2012. CLIP

Future climate talks set for May 2005 in Germany (Dec 18)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1503&ncid=1503&e=2&u=/afp/20041218/ts_afp/climateunenvironment_041218162924
BUENOS AIRES (AFP) - Participants at a UN climate change conference agreed to open informal international talks on future efforts to fight global warming in Bonn, Germany in May. The agreement came after two nights of marathon talks that continued through Saturday morning, a day after the official close of the conference. The question of what to do once the Kyoto Protocol on climate change expires in 2012 dominated the two-week conference convening 2,000 diplomats and, in its closing days, a clutch of environment ministers. The gathering in May sets the stage for international experts to begin tackling that problem, but it has been billed a "seminar" to underline that no decisions will be taken. Brazil and India demanded further language stating that "this seminar does not open any negotiations leading to new commitments." Emerging industrial giants are reluctant to sign on to international efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, for fear they could throw the brakes on their own economic growth. CLIP

ACTION ALERT Mr. Bush, Hear the Earth's Climate Cry (December 11, 2004)
http://www.climateark.org/action/
TAKE ACTION Virtual Vigil until the U.S. Ratifies the Kyoto Protocol and Begins to Seriously Address Climate Change.
There have been justifiable reasons to be tremendously critical of the President of the United State's environmental policy. Nonetheless, this is the leadership we are faced with, and we must have faith in the fundamental goodness of all humans. Climate Ark at http://www.climateark.org/ will now begin a vigil demanding that American leadership be waged on behalf of strong climate change policy. President Bush must be urged to grasp the reigns of climate change leadership. Much as Nixon made peace with China, and Reagan ended the cold-war, a Texas oilman may be well placed to lead in ushering in an era of clean and renewable energy. It is unconscionable that the United States obstructs international progress being made to begin addressing climate change at the global climate change talks currently being held in Buenos Aires. Our task is to ceaselessly drive home that the scientific verdict is irrefutable - climate change is for real, and has ominous ecological implications. This page will continue to be updated frequently, and will soon launch a "virtual protest" site which will allow for coordinated action. For now, please send the email from the site linked below. Please forward widely. Networked by Forests.org, Inc., gbarry@forests.org

Full coverage on Climate Change http://story.news.yahoo.com/fc?cid=34&tmpl=fc&in=World&cat=Climate_Change

4. COMPLEMENTARY MATERIAL RELATED TO THIS SOLSTICE MEDITATION FOCUS

Here is an example of a local observance/celebration of the solstice:

From "Hanne Friborg" velvaereformidling@mail.dk> Denmark:

It is my great pleasure again to invite you to a gathering in the garden at 19 hrs. on December 21st. We shall soak ourselves in the in-pouring energies, sing a few songs, Christmas carols and psalms, enjoy a nice warm drink of elderberry (to keep ourselves warm and healthy) and – not the least - light our candles in peace and love. Finally we shall meditate under the stars and then go inside to have a cosy chat and a nice warm treat. (...) My prayers and my hope by continuing this, what have become our tradition for so many years, is that we will join each other all over the planet and give a moment of beauty to pray for the light – for peace – and love on Earth. Please let me know in advance if you have something to contribute (e.g., play, sing or read a poem) and I'll include it in the small programme for the evening. And, in case you have friends who might want to join us, please do not hesitate to invite them too (mail this to them!!). - No special qualifications needed for participating. Especially for those who want to participate - in spirit - from far away: Please enrol by writing a short note in my guest book including your name and country on website http://www.velvaereformidling.dk/ and I shall be happy to light a candle, with the flame of peace, for every name on the list of distant participants. All the candles with your names will burn in the garden till they finish by themselves. Please make a check-up, “read” your own message to be sure everything you wrote is in the guestbook."

CONTENTS

1. Introduction to The Gift of Change
2. Introduction to Jump Time: Living in the Future Tense - The Show Must Go On
3. What on Earth is Going on Here? Spiritual Survival on the Road to 2012

1.

From: http://marianne.iamplify.com/books-intro.jsp

Introduction to

THE GIFT OF CHANGE

by Marianne Williamson

The times in which we live are difficult, more difficult than a lot of people seem willing to admit. There is an abiding sense of collective anxiety, understandable but not always easy to talk about.

When things aren't going well for you in your personal life, perhaps you call a friend or family member or go to a therapist or support group to process your pain. Yet when your feelings of upset are based on larger social realities, it's hard to know how to talk about them and to whom. When you're afraid because you don't know where your next paycheck is going to come from, it's easy to articulate; when you're worried about whether the human race is going to survive the next century, it feels odd to mention it at lunch.

And so, I think, there is a collective depression among us, not so much dealt with as glossed over and suppressed. Each of us, as individual actors in a larger drama, carries an imprint of a larger despair. We are coping with intense amounts of chaos and fear, both personally and together. We are all being challenged, in one form or another, to recreate our lives.

On the level of everyday conversation, we conspire with each other to pretend that things are basically okay, not because we think they are but because we have no way of talking together about these deeper layers of experience. If I tell you what happened in my personal life today, I might also mention how I am feeling about it, and both are considered relevant. But when it comes to our collective experience, public dialogue allows for little discussion of events of equally personal magnitude. "We accidentally bombed a school today, and fifty children died." How do we feel about that? Uh-oh, we don't go there. . . .

So we continue to talk mainly about other things, at a time when the news of the day is as critical as at any time in the history of the world. Not dealing with our internal depths, we emphasize external superficialities. Reports on the horrors of war appear intermittently between reports on box office receipts for the latest blockbuster movie and a Hollywood actress's vintage Valentino. I see the same behavior in myself, as I jump from writing about things that demand I dig deep to obsessively checking my e-mails for something light and fun to distract me. It's like avoidance behavior in therapy—wanting to share the gossip but not wanting to deal with the real, more painful issues. Of course we want to avoid the pain. But by doing so, we inevitably cause more of it.

That is where we are today. We are acting out our anger and fear because we are not facing the depth of our pain. And keeping the conversation shallow seems a prerequisite for keeping the pain at bay. Those who would engage in a deeper conversation are systematically barred from the mainstream: from newspapers and magazines, from TV, and especially from political power.

One night I was watching a news broadcast about the latest videotape purportedly sent by Osama bin Laden to an Arab television network. The focus of the American news story was not on bin Laden's message but rather on the technology by which Americans had verified the recording. His message was too horrifying; it was as though we were trying to emotionally distance ourselves from it by having a beautiful news reporter discuss the technology of the tape rather than its contents.

Visiting a medical office one day recently, I asked my doctor, a member of the "greatest generation," how he had been feeling lately.

"Fine," he said. "How about you?"

"I'm okay," I said. "But I feel like everybody is freaking out on the inside these days; we're just not talking about it. I think the state of the world has us more on edge than we're admitting."

"I think that's true," he sighed. "Things would get bad before, but you always had a sense they would ultimately be okay. Now I don't necessarily feel that way . . ." His voice trailed off, his sadness obvious. As unhappy as he was with the state of the world, he seemed grateful I had brought it up. The fact that we go about our lives as though the survival of the world is not at stake is not the sign of a stiff upper lip. It is the sign, rather, of a society not yet able or willing to hold a conversation about its deepest pain.

We are being challenged by world events, by the tides of history, to develop a more mature consciousness. Yet we cannot do that without facing what hurts. Life is not a piece of tragic fiction, in which at the end of the reading we all get up and go out for drinks. All of us are actors in a great unfolding drama, and until we dig deep, there will be no great performances. How each of us carries out our role will affect the end of the play.

Who we ourselves become, how we grow and change and face the challenges of our own lives, is intimately and causally connected to how the world will change over the next few years. For the world is a projection of our individual psyches, collected on a global screen; it is hurt or healed by every thought we think. To whatever extent I refuse to face the deeper issues that hold me back, to that extent the world will be held back. And to whatever extent I find the miraculous key to the transformation of my own life, to that extent I will help change the world. That is what this book is about: becoming the change that will change the world.

Yet we seem to have great resistance to looking at our lives, and our world, with emotional honesty. And I think we are avoiding more than pain. We are avoiding the sense of hopelessness we think we will feel when confronted by the enormity of the forces that obstruct us. Yet, in fact, it's when we face the darkness squarely in the eye—in ourselves and in the world—that we begin at last to see the light. And that is the alchemy of personal transformation. In the midst of the deepest, darkest night, when we feel most humbled by life, the faint shadow of our wings begins to appear. Only when we have faced the limits of what we can do, does it begin to dawn on us the limitlessness of what God can do. It is the depth of the darkness now confronting our world that will reveal to us the magic of who we truly are. We are spirit, and thus we are more than the world. When we remember that, the world itself will bow to our remembrance.

CLIP - Read the missing part at http://marianne.iamplify.com/books-intro.jsp

A New Beginning

It is an article of faith that God always has a plan. No matter what craziness humanity has fallen into, He has always delivered us ultimately to the peace that lies beyond.

Today, we can stand in the midst of the great illusions of the world and by our very presence dispel them. As we cross the bridge to a more loving orientation—as we learn the lessons of spiritual transformation and apply them in our personal lives—we will become agents of change on a tremendous scale. By learning the lessons of change, internally and externally, each of us can participate in the great collective process in which the people of the world, riding a wave of enlightened understanding, see the human race on a destructive course and turn it around in time.

To some this might feel like the period of a Great End, perhaps even at times an Armageddon, but in fact this is the time of a Great Beginning. It is time to die to who we used to be and to become instead who we are capable of being. That is the gift that awaits us now: the chance to become who we really are.

And that is the miracle: the gift of change.

2.

INTRODUCTION THE SHOW MUST GO ON

It may be that some of you have opened this book because you are haunted by a specter, the grand finale of the world as we have known it. You know yourselves to be people of the parenthesis, living at the end of one era, but not quite at the beginning of the new one. You may have labored in your various fields to make things better, and you may have tried to understand the change of which you are a part. And yet I suspect you to be frustrated, baffled even, by what must seem the most implausible, improbable series of happenings ever.

The maps no longer fit the territories. The only expected is the unexpected. Everything that was, isn't anymore, and everything that isn't, is coming to be. Ours is a era of quantum change, the most radical deconstruction and reconstruction the world has seen. More and more history is happening faster and faster˜faster than we can make sense of it. Life paths that have contained and sustained us across the millennia are vanishing as we speak, like Gaia's species that are hourly becoming extinct. We are guests at a wake for a way of being that has been ours for hundreds, even thousands of years. At the same time, we know that we are the ones who must go on. It is time for us to consider what is and what may be. Our agenda is nothing less than the future. Our challenge is to cultivate the vision and lay out the practical steps necessary to move through the opening times that follow upon closing times.

Unlike many others, you may be among those who refuse to believe that chaos leads to chaos, breakdown to catastrophe. You know that you have the power to direct the process along lines different from those that the prophets of gloom proclaim as inevitable. You know that the new millennium we have entered is the intersection between worlds, between species, between ourselves and forever. You know yourself to be its pilgrims and its parents. No old formulas or stop gap solutions will suit. For a new world to be born, we must bring a new mind to bear. Nothing less will do in Jump Time. In a Jump Time like the present, we as a species stand at a crossroads faced with radical choices, any of which promise to make tomorrow look nothing like yesterday. Personal Jump Times, moments when our life path reaches a fork and everything afterwards changes, are more familiar to us. How do we react? Do we sit at the end of the known and refuse to budge? Do we walk back up the path we have been following hoping to return to familiar territory? Or do we follow the old show business adage that, whatever happens, the show much go on?

CLIP

The show must go on. If ever there were a single edict, a primary directive for the human race, from whatever gods there are, this is it. Shakespeare and other seers into the nature of reality speak of the theater of the world, wherein the plot moves inexorably, carrying in its wake the rise and fall of souls and cities. But occasionally, the plot quickens, and the play takes strange and deviant turns. Surreal surprises enter from the wings, the orchestra in the pit offers dissonance as well as sweet airs, and the gods, both in and out of the machines, offer more than we had bargained for. Such is the present drama that Mother Earth offers to her ticket holders--every last one of us. How often in these days do we feel that our lives are like that old dream in which we are on stage in a play, dressed in a period costume, with no idea what our lines are supposed to be? Those arenas of our lives that used to hold solid expectations - professions, relationships, religions - have become capricious, the old verities lost, the anticipated outcome vanished or transformed into a mockery of itself. Our very identities seem to be shape shifting. We open our mouths expecting melody, and a crow flies out instead. Standing on the stage of your old certitudes, many of you, perhaps, have experienced such discomfiting surprises:

- The job or profession for which you trained and which you expected to follow for many years suddenly no longer exists.

- You fall love with an improbable person or idea and, in an eye blink, everything you knew or believed is gone. In the light of this tremendous circumstance, who you were yesterday bears little resemblance to who you are becoming.

- You wake up in the morning consumed by an urge to get on with it. What "it" is, you do not know, but it is barking at your heels like the hound of heaven. Something unknown is calling you, and you know you will cross continents, oceans, realities, even, to discover it.

- You are seized by the disparities of the time, the widening gap between rich and poor, private affluence and public squalor. Moreover, you can't shake the conviction that you personally must do something to redress these wrongs.

- Words leap off the pages of books. Synchronicities abound. The universe is trying to tell you something, and you can no longer ignore its message.

- Your traditional religion no longer serves you, but one from an utterly foreign culture is speaking deeply to you.

CLIP

All books involve a certain kind of conversation between the author and the reader. I am inviting you to go further and enter into an imaginal space where you will join me and the others reading this book in jumping onto the next path. I will be your guide to our present Jump Time and to the exploration of previous times of world transition which have much to teach us about how to cope creatively with what we face. For the world has known other Jump Times, but never so consciously or with so much to gain or to lose. The Earth is a hot house now. Six billion members of the human family and rising, congregated together on a spinning ball, in stress, in ferment, caught between what was and what is yet to be.

It is time to ask the great questions: How can we make a better world? What must we do to serve the larger story? These questions help us clarify and define. They prompt us to articulate goals lofty enough to lift us out of petty preoccupations and unite us in pursuit of objectives worthy of our best efforts.

The world is hungry for vision. At a time when whole systems are in transition and global forces challenge all authority, there is an insistence in the mud, contractions shiver through the earth womb, patterns of possibility strain to emerge from the rough clay of changing social structures.

It is a matter of kairos, the potent time for fortuitous happenings. In ancient Greek, kairos referred to that moment when the shuttle passes through the openings in the warp and woof threads. In the loaded time when such things happen, the new fabric can take form.

Right now is the right time to make things right. I invite you to join me on the stage of forever, where what we do may raise the curtain on the world's next act.

Originally posted near the bottom of http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/FinalFeedbacks.htm and available in its entirety at http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/JeanHouston.htm

---

"And the jumps continue, for it seems inevitable that future developments will follow this path. Everything is accelerating, the jumps coming closer together. Human knowledge is doubling every ten years. The extent of our mapping of the genetic sequences of the DNA molecule doubles every two years. Computer power is doubling every eighteen months. The Internet is doubling every year. And of course, almost daily, we read of new advances in space exploration, computer technology, medical science, and telecommunications, each jump in complexity occurring in a fraction of the time of the previous one. Reading the science pages of The New York Times, I am reminded of the words of the prophet Daniel: "Many shall run ... to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased" (Dan. 12.4). Churning as we are in this sea of so much change, jumps abound in our everyday lives as well. Our lives now regularly contain many times the amount of experience of our ancestors of earlier centuries; as a result, our personal jumps seem to be accelerating in frequency as well as amplitude. We are heirs to an extraordinary speeding up of the evolutionary process. We jump to new professions, partners, lifestyles, and religions seemingly at will. Nothing, it seems, is impossible for us. Nature, through us, seems to be entering a new epoch—not so much biological evolution but conscious evolution. We have become conscious of our capacity to direct the next phase not only of our personal lives but of the world's destiny as well."

Taken from Jump Time: Living in the Future Tense, Chapter One, ARCHIMEDES AND THE EVOLUTIONARY LEVER by Jean Houston at http://tinyurl.com/5lvw5

"Tending the gardens of our lives involves a kind of cosmic yoga; we yoke ourselves back to remembering that we are made of the same stuff as the Universe from which we continuously arise second by second. We share its body; we are woven into the fabric of its infinite ecology; the productions of our hands and minds are an aspect of its creation and live in eternity. We know ourselves, then, as resonant waves of the original seed, infinite beings who contain in our body-minds the design of creation itself, planted in the field of this particular space-time and sustained by a dynamic flow-through of cosmic energy. At your core you already know this to be so. Surely, there are times in your life when you understand yourself to be a reality surfer, delightedly riding the waves of creation, mind opened, heart expanded, the Universe coursing through you. In such states, you are embraced in co-conscious awareness, no longer knowing or caring where "I" leave off and the rest of reality begins, or whether there is any difference. This experience is one of the supreme givens of our nature because the Universe in its operational mode is coded into every one of us. The raptures of the deep self are our native equipment, granted us by our cosmic origins. The only requirement is joy and a willingness to say "yes" to the new epic that dawns, right now, in you and me and those fortunate to be alive in the great today. We are seeds coded with cosmic dreams. Bursting the pods of our containment, we are ready to enter into creative partnership with the Universe and to populate our particular corner of space-time with our unique vision and capacity."

Taken from "Spirituality in Jump Time" by Jean Houston at http://www.soulfulliving.com/jumptime.htm (where this is much more to read from her)

3.

From: http://www.lawoftime.org/about/survival.html

What on Earth is Going on Here?

Spiritual Survival on the Road to 2012

Immediately after the Bush "reelection” I wrote an in-house document entitled, “The Death of America, Four More Years of the Harrowing of Hell - The Great Opportunity for the Planet Art Network.” Was I being to harsh or rash? A few days later I received an e-mail forwarding me an article from David R. Hoffman, Legal Editor of Pravda, entitled “Eulogy for America,” with a sub headline, ”The Epitaph reads: The United States of America - Born July 4, 1776 - Died November 2, 2004.’ Well, I wasn’t alone in my estimation. Within a matter of days the full-on invasion of Fallujah was on, and now the American media is full of propaganda stories with the theme, “Iran next?” The destruction of Fallujah -”solid human waste in some areas chest-high,’” it was reported - was in the name of democracy. This just shows that on November 2, 2004, democracy came to an end just as world Marxism came to an end with the fall of the Berlin Wall, December 31, 1989.

As dangerous as it is the War on Terror may well be a distraction. The real trouble is Global Warming and the potential of the HAARP. In a well-documented article that recently appeared in the American alternative press, “Dry/ice: Global Warming Revealed,” Drunvalo Melchizidek (www.spiritofmaat.com) describes the most recent findings presented by no less an authority than Sir David King, Chief Scientist for England. “Keep quiet,” Tony Blair told Sir David in January, 2004, when the Prime Minister was presented with findings regarding the Gulf Stream. Polar melting is actually causing a slowing down and cooling off of the Gulf Stream such that by 2008, not only will rising oceans inundate areas close to sea level, but in the industrialized areas on both sides of the North Atlantic, it will trigger major climate changes signaling what could be the beginning of another Ice Age. The Pentagon has responded to the findings, though President Bush, like his counterpart, Tony Blair, chooses to ignore them. In its response to the devastating social effects of rising oceans and climate change, the Pentagon suggests that a 40 foot wall be built around the entire USA to help keep out people trying to escape the world in chaos.

The Pentagon’s attitude typifies the US denial regarding climate change. Last week the Kyoto Protocol went into effect with 55 signatory industrialized nations agreeing to cut down on green house gas emissions by 2012(!). The only country, of course, not agreeing to sign the protocol is the major culprit, the USA. “It would cost us jobs,” is Bush’s defense. But cutting down by 2012 might be too little, too late anyway, as the cooling and virtual stoppage of the Gulf Stream is already an irreversible process. The Pentagon predicts that by 2008-09, food and water shortages will be causing major havoc on the planet. Having the most money, the Pentagon argues that the US will be able to buy the food and water it needs to survive. Good, compassionate long range thinking! Add to this that the HAARP will be fully operative by 2006, and, as a weapon of war, it will be capable of altering the ionosphere over virtually any “enemy “ territory, and America, the bastion of democracy, will then have a type of world control that is truly Atlantean in nature.

We might ask: What on Earth is going on here? And that’s the whole point - we are back in Atlantis! What is going on is a repeat performance of the self-destruction of previous world systems, previous Atlantises. Remember the adage, who does not learn the lesson of history is doomed to repeat it. The lesson of history has been performed on Mars, on Maldek (Asteroid belt), and even here on Earth. Psychomythically it is called Atlantis - the world civilization which was terminated by the abuse of technology, by the subordination of human spiritual evolution to technological progress - at all costs. For the Hopi we have now finished the Fourth World. We are in the Sipapu, the tunnel between the worlds. We are awaiting to emerge into the Fifth World. But where and how? In the Aztec psychocosmology, the Fifth Sun has ended, and we are now awaiting the dawn of the Sixth Sun of Consciousness, the real meaning of 2012.

When I first heard the Hopi prophecy as given by Thomas Banyaca back in 1972 it was a very impressive moment. He and his small entourage had arrived at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, where I was teaching. Banyaca tacked up on a wall the large banner on which was depicted the pictographic form of the Hopi Prophecy. Just as he was to begin, a snowstorm that had suddenly come up caused a power failure. The prophecy had to be given in dim candle light. It was very effective. Banyaca concluded with the words, “Only a people who are spiritually strong will survive. "His words and that moment impressed me like few others. Today I know that the Earth Changes are now so great, that we cannot escape what is beginning to occur. The only real preparation is spiritual preparation, because the only real survival is spiritual survival

If the Buddha hadn’t become completely and thoroughly disillusioned with life and its suffering he would never have become fully enlightened. To survive spiritually, we must become, like the Buddha, thoroughly disillusioned with the entire global civilization, democracy materialism and everything pertaining to it. None of it can help us or save us. It is the Titanic going down in a big rush. If we can become thoroughly disillusioned and begin to disabuse ourselves of the habits of 5000 years of cultural conditioning, then we we will be able to liberate energy blocked by habitual thinking. This is the energy we need for spiritual survival. This is creative spiritual energy. But it is not easy to access this. It takes real exertion. The most serious block to making progress in this direction is lack of knowledge of our own mind, of our own true self. Most of us have little inkling of the degree to which we remain under unconscious control of egoic impulses in the form of unexamined habitual thought forms. Many of these are connected to the mode of being and survival in industrialized society. Only by freeing ourselves of these compulsive thought waves are we able to tap into the creative resources of our own mind.

To activate a spiritual technology that can overcome the devastations that are now occurring is the ultimate key to spiritual survival. The basis of this spiritual technology is the electromagnetic resonance that exists between our biopsychic thought fields and the electromagnetic field of the planet. If our minds are clear we have the potential for altering the psychoatmospheric make-up of the planet in a positive way that could easily undo the HAARP. But to do this we must be synchronized, clear of mind - and we must change our way of thinking. This is why I emphasize the Thirteen Moon/28-day calendar change as the first step in changing the way we think and putting our brain waves in synch with natural cosmic cycles. This is one sure way of freeing ourselves altogether from the sinking Titanic.

It is to the advantage of our spiritual evolution that we unify on a path of spiritual action based on a new mental timing frequency. In fact, the only way we can evolve is through taking a path of positive spiritual action. In taking such a path, we are not alone. The Planetary Hierarchy is not interested in seeing the planet go down the Atlantean tubes. But before they intervene, they are watching and waiting for us to take responsibility for our spiritual destiny. Spiritual survival on the Road to 2012 - it’s up to us.

Valum Votan, aka Jose Arguelles, is the author of Time and the Technosphere, The Law of Time in Human Affairs, The Arcturus Probe, and the Mayan Factor, Path Beyond Technology. He is President and Director of Research of the Foundation for the Law of Time, supervising the Foundation’s major project, Noosphere II, the Great Experiment of the Law of Time.

---

"The purpose of enlightenment, waking up to the Godhead within, isn’t to become better than others, nor to find a safe place to escape. It’s too late for that. We are all on the Road to 2012, and we know that a spiritually aroused humanity can change the world. If we know our authentic self and can sustain the non-egoic state of the New Mind, we can then be vessels prepared for the next Descent of the Divine. Human evolution only progresses when a small but critical mass of humanity is ready for a Divine Descent. We are not practicing spiritual discipline for any other reason than to help all of us attain a higher state of consciousness, which can only come as a supramental assist from Beyond. Then, with the right knowledge regarding the transition to the noosphere, we can actually participate in making the rainbow bridge to the New Heaven and New Earth, the Cosmic Civilization of the world beyond 2012. Yes, we can learn to be in synch with the noosphere's regulating system, and, in so doing, experience our own collective spiritual-mental evolution. This is what the Earth wants of us."

- Jose Arguelles -- Taken from http://www.lawoftime.org/content/seminar.html

5. OTHER RECENT COMPILATIONS

The Light Series #70: On the Bright Side (Dec 14) http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2004/LightSeries70.htm
CONTENTS:
1. Miracles
2. Feedback from Meria
3. Matthew's December 13 Message
4. Condition Critical but not Sirius
5. Great news in Ukraine
6. The Techno Maestro's Amazing Machine
7. 15 things to do at Walmart

Here is a brief relevant excerpt from Matthew's latest message available in its entirety at http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2004/MatthewDec13-04

"My last message was a plea from many light beings to call upon our space family for help, and it is with joy that I tell you the encouraging news that the request for their assistance was long and loud! While it would not be realistic to hope that masses of extraterrestrials will introduce themselves during the upcoming holy days, they want you to know that they are rejoicing at your mandate and are acting upon it. Those living among you won’t be identifying themselves until there is assured safety to do so, but the ones in strong positions have moved boldly forward within their spheres of influence. Some are assigned to get the economic changes underway and facilitate the transition process, and others are doing much the same in various governments. As you celebrate the blessings of this season, please count these courageous souls among them and express your gratitude for their loving assistance."

The Light Series #69: Just AMAZING! (Dec 7) http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2004/LightSeries69.htm
CONTENTS:
1. A Dream about Extraterrestrial Contact from Phil Armstrong, New Zealand
2. Alien Odyssey
3. Feedback from Cammy in Oklahoma
4. Feedback Re: Meditation Focus #121
5. Prodigy, 12, Compared to Mozart
6. Irisha and Dominique
7. The Great Awakening
8. Story of the Geese

The Days of Infamy Series #5: The Bush Cartel Imminent Full-Blown Dictatorship (Dec 16)
http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2004/DaysofInfamy5.htm
CONTENTS:
1. Your Papers Please
2. Microchips in your Passport and Drivers License
3. Boogie with the Bushes - $1m
4. Living Under Fascism
5. The Voice of the White House (planned dieoff)
6. Uncle Sam Wants Your Kids – Now!
7. U.S. Soldiers' Grilling Fields
8. Statement from the Iraqi Resistance
9. Hyping Terror For Fun, Profit - And Power
10. Stealth satellites (and secret space station) orbit overhead
11. Global Warming Fight Looks Beyond Kyoto
12. Gary Webb's apparent suicide from a gunshot to the head
13. Gary Webb & other "suicides"
14. Senator: Mystery Spy Project Dangerous (Arms race in space underway?)
15. ONIONS AND CHRISTMAS TREES

The Empire of Darkness Series #18: Monsters Inc. (Dec 9)
http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2004/EmpireDarkness18.htm
CONTENTS:
1. Insight into Red State Mindset - or Celebration of Holy War as Christmas Theme in Midwest
2. Feedback from Meria
3. 20 Shocking Facts About Voting (Elections) in the USA
4. Bush Sets Out Plan to Dismantle 30 Years of Environmental Laws
5. Lockheed and the Future of Warfare
6. War Crime
7. Petition for the Release of Classified DOJ-IG Report on FBI Cover-Up
8. Ron Paul Denounces National ID Card
9. Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Media Stories of 2003-2004
10. Israel Finds BBC Too Truthful for Comfort
11. The Voice of the White House Dec 4, 2004
12. Missile shield will trigger arms race
13. The mirage of the miracle

If this e-mail has been forwarded to you and you wish to subscribe, send a blank email to focus-group-subscribe@egroups.com (English)
or to groupe-focalisateur-subscribe@egroups.com (French)

For more information, please review the material posted by the Global Meditation Focus Group at http://www.aei.ca/~cep/focusgroup.htm

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE IN PASSING THIS ON TO OTHERS

BACK TO THE FOCUS GROUP WEBPAGE