“Midsummer is the sexiest time of year. The word itself conjures images of luscious fruit, eternal twilight, warm nights dotted with the firefly’s peridot lights and feverish days punctuated by bursts of thunder and warm rain. It is a time when romance wanders freely in the mind, and when the bounties of earth are so plentiful, they are intoxicating. Life seems to spring eternal.”

“The green of the trees begins to take on a darker, more exhausted verdancy, animals go about the business of rearing their growing young, instead of birthing them and the nights and hottest days are filled with the gnawing presence of insects. Lammas, or Lughnasadh (pronounced: loo-NAH-sah), the sabbath which celebrates the beginning of the harvest year, is a time of maturity and of age. It is also a surreal moment in the year when death and life coexist in physical manifestation.”

—Genevieve Salerno.

“Why does death catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking. We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up: instead we watch television and miss the show.”
— Annie Dillard

The new moon is a conjunction between the sun and moon, a marriage and co-mergence of the masculine solar principle and the feminine lunar principle. A conjunction corresponds to the alchemical phase of coniunctio — the end result of the alchemical procedure when the opposites are successfully united. This blending releases a third force or condition — something unique, not experienced before. This nexus between the solar and lunar function sets the vibrational tenor for the entire 28 days that follow the new moon phase.

At full moon the secret of the sun moon marriage is revealed. The July 2008 new moon took place on July 3 at 12 degrees of Cancer. The July full moon is Friday, July 18. Tonight marks the first facet of the full moon’s dissemination. What are you sensing?

A Cancer new moon shifts our attention to issues of nourishment and sustainment. How and where our soul finds solace and harbor. Generally we think of Cancerian nourishment as it relates to food and being mothered (or mothering) — a quality of emotional support that allows us to relax and feel a quality of love that is abiding. Read more

“The core of ego is a feeling of deficiency, of poverty, of emptiness, of saying: “I am no good, I am worthless, I am empty. Give me, give me, more, more, more, more.” In this state of deficiency I don’t love myself, I don’t accept myself. I reject myself. I want to run away, distract myself; maybe go to a movie, see a friend, have sex, eat, fill myself with knowledge, or pretend I am O.K. I am always wanting to fill this emptiness, always rejecting it, always afraid of it. In fact, we are all terrified by it. Most of the time people don’t know that this emptiness, this deficiency is what is driving most of their actions. It’s such a desperation, such a race to fill this bottomless pit.

But how sweet it is to say “yes” to this emptiness. How courageous it is to say: “I feel empty, I feel deficient, and I won’t attempt to fill it. I want to see the truth. I want to experience the reality of me. I refuse to manipulate. I want to wake up regardless of how painful it is.” Only the hero will take this attitude, for it is a heroic act to see your deficiency, your neediness, your emptiness, and yet not try to manipulate your life to fill it. We are so compulsive, so driven to manipulate, to avoid feeling this basic deficiency of our personal ego. But believe me, my friend, there’s no other way towards fullness. God will not pour His grace if you don’t accept your deficiency and stop manipulating. Manipulation, striving to fill this emptiness, is only the devil doing its efficient work. It is constantly working to hide its weakness.”

I’m back on Vashon after visiting the island of Kauai for a ten day Diamond Approach retreat. Having lived in Hawaii for twenty years, I feel slightly immune to the tropical wonders most folks find so beguiling. I do appreciate Hawaii’s beauty, but the rigors, schedule and excitement of ‘retreating’ leans my attention to the material we’re working with — not the beach. And holds it there.

Of the archipelago, Kauai is the oldest, the wettest and the furthest removed, the most northern. In a word its geography is eerie. Approaching the craggy coastline and tremendous, towering sea cliffs, from air, I’m always hit with a distinct sense of the otherworldly, or you could say the other-timely. Landing in Lihue I almost expect to see dinosaurs roaming around the airport’s parking lot, gnawing the tops off of palm trees.

The teaching centered around time, change and the now. This was the first time a retreat coincided with A. H. Almaas‘ (the school’s founder) latest publishing project The Unfolding Now. A book that outlines an understanding very different from Eckhart Tolle‘s teaching in The Power of Now.

Tolle’s view, based more on the shock of revelation rather than an empirical experience of a specific process, as is Almaas’, resurrects erstwhile New Thought concepts regarding the nature of the mind, an incomplete understanding that pits the ego against the desired experience of ‘living in the now’. The equation is simplistic. Ego/mind/emotions not good. Being in the now very good.

I’m not doubting Tolle’s personal experience, I’m just saying it’s extraordinary and not the norm. Given that his awakening was discontinuous — following a condition of near-suicidal hopelessness, I consider it a freak happening, akin to winning the lottery. Read more

In early June I decided to dismantle the old Astro Inquiry website and switch the structure to a ‘blog’ format, though I’m going to call it a ‘journal’. The word blog isn’t very pleasant. As terms from the electronic zeitgeist go, blog is one of the ugliest sounding, a kind of anamanapia (a word describing the sound something makes when in action) that describes more the noise of the writer’s mentation than the clack of her keyboard.

After thirty years I continue to find writing and publishing a worthwhile expression, though it’s usually arduous and involves too much solitude. Always there’s the challenge to mirror and convey accurately. This seems obvious but it’s not always easy. And most writers seem to cheat, not consciously I think.

George Orwell offered writers this advice: “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.” Which of course describes 90% of most ‘blog’ writing — figures of speech we see circulated endlessly on the Net. And if you really try to put that advice into effect, you’ll find it’s very difficult to write anything at all. It’s always easier to cull from the bargain basement of cliché, than generate something rich and dynamic.

For most writers, the byproduct of syntax doesn’t leap full blown, perfectly formed, glinting its magic. Writing is a kind of transmission. And truthful transmission involves an alignment with what is accurate and true within the author. From millions of words there are only a few, arranged just so, that will transmit ideas, sensations and images truthfully. Ultimately all writing is a form of poetry, or prose should follow the dictates of what makes poetry vital.

So this journal is a form of ‘aim taking.’ To write with some regularity — even when my mood is lax, disinterested, or lazy. Or, worse, when my inner critic is dictating perfection (or worse, profundity) making me too passive.

Lately I’ve been reading the poetry of Mary Oliver and I’ve marvelled in how the simplicity of her syntax, the stripped descriptions of her images, can be as keen as the writing of Emerson or Blake. So I’m using her as a source of inspiration when my writer’s superego becomes too limiting.

In fact here is a poem of Oliver’s that I read today, from her new book Red Bird. I’ll close this opening entry with it: