By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

THE SPIRITUAL community has it that life as we know it has changed in the last month; I write this just on the other side of the second Full Moon in Scorpio, ending the Beltane and Wesak period of 2008. During Beltane the world was refreshed, her feminine energies were opened and her creativity inspired; during Wesak, the Buddhic and Christed energies flooded the plane, pulling us up into higher thought and quickening our inner Divinity. Dreams, discoveries, surprises and shocks were daily fare.

We've been tired and lethargic, achy and subdued at one moment; enthused and expressive, emotional and determined at others: sometimes all within one day. We've welcomed in a higher vibration, one that came with earthquakes and volcanoes, high moments of spiritual awareness and low ones of worldly disaster. We're fully engaged in a shuffling off of old energies and a solidifying of desire for change and progress. We're on our way.

The astrology is potent, with Saturn gone into hard working, service-oriented Virgo; Mars has moved out of Cancer and into confident, self-possessed Leo, allowing us a breather from insecurity and fears regarding safety. Neptune in Aquarius is squared to Venus in Taurus, bringing up issues of comfort: our own and the world's, and asking us to examine our values.

With both Neptune and Mercury due to retrograde on May 27, the focus will likely shift to our heads where we can review what we think we know and discover more of what we don't. News will be more untrustworthy than usual, but we can be assured that much is bubbling beneath the surface of reports, especially in terms of international affairs and the Middle East. Yes, George Bush, our delusional president, is still in charge: at least for a while yet.

And speaking of delusion, that's the best way to determine our progress in the last years and days -- looking at where we were versus where we are now. The mind is a trap, capturing and holding whatever it wishes to imprison; the smaller the prism it looks through, the steeper the walls of absolutes it embraces. For a long while now, we've been locked into the Bush Doctrine, pre-emptive strikes on not only foreign soil but on our Constitution and civil rights; that has colored even our own personal worlds with a preoccupation on terror. A malignant concept, that; one that has contracted our hearts in fear and created us as our own worst enemy. When you think about politics, think of how thoroughly indoctrinated in the national agenda we become, even if we try to ignore it.

Some of us rejected that vision of violence and fear, putting ourselves into the mix as spoilers, determined to awaken our neighbors and put things right; yet for long years, we were reduced to wringing our hands and raising our voices, frustrated and ineffective. We couldn't get an inch ahead, until suddenly, improbably; the boulder we were pushing lurched forward with us running after it. There should have been thunder from the heavens, but there wasn't: just the shock that something was happening, at long last. Oh, the glee! The mills of the Gods grind slowly, but they do grind: and aren't we grateful!

There has been an enormous change in energy over the last few months; a national shift in cooperation with all things Bushy, dark and distorted. Just a few mentions of progress should give you the flavor of it. Bush's continued push toward striking Iran has been thwarted again and again, and this weekend one of his own Senators, Chuck Hagel, mentioned impeachment should he bomb without Congressional approval.

The media has been cowed by the White House for years, parroting every talking point given them, but this week a national newspaper told the Bushies to back off, that the editorial process was the function of a free press. Bush has had to compromise his radical appointments, as Congress held up legislation until he backed down. The Polar Bear has finally been named an endangered species, gay marriage is back in California without a fire-storm of national commentary and when our president requested (The New York Times used the word pleading) that the Saudis produce more oil to soothe his anxious public (and buoy his plummeting popularity,) he was told to go pound salt.

English Daisy. Photo by Danielle Voirin.

Change happens, not so much when we fight against something, giving it power and focus, but when we release the energy bound to it and replace it with another vision. Buckminster Fuller put it this way: "In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete." Our old model is, indeed, problematic; and day by day we discover how dangerously obsolete.

Bush will be gone soon and someone else will be sitting in the Oval Office. The conversation about who that person will be is part of the traction that moved us ahead in these last months. One of the things I find most interesting about this nation's race for presidential candidate is the signature energies of those running. It's no surprise that the race has become generational, dividing the country into passionately engaged camps. Each of the three: McCain, Clinton and Obama, were born under a different sign in Pluto; and each offers a different direction into the future.

John McCain was born under the influence of Pluto in Cancer, patriotism, self-protection and matters of security foremost in his thought process. Militarism comes easily to Mr. McCain, who offers us the 'can-do' of generals and admirals; of wars past; and, we might recall, with a sense of unease, lost. McCain is the oldest presidential candidate, at 72: and so are his brand of politics.

Mrs. Clinton has Pluto in Leo, the Boomer position, and her can-do promises are typical of the highest level of that receding energy, very self-assured and, some say, self-centered. Her gender brings her women who are still fighting the good fight for women's rights, and her appeal to Boomers, like herself, has split out a constituency that is not ready to move into something new, still optimistic that what has worked before will serve again.

Mr. Obama is the first candidate of Pluto in Virgo; his can-do is pragmatic, humble and in service to the whole. This is undiscovered territory for many who are unsure about his qualifications. The young folks have no hesitancy, though, nor do the urban poor or the educated. The method of governance he proposes, and the civility he espouses, are exactly what they've been waiting for, longing for. Matters of race may be of concern, but not to the extent to which they've been reported, seized on to distract and divide. And despite the recent PR push to define him as elitist, Obama has the common touch, the sensibilities of a neighborhood organizer. His supporters are disciplined, committed and already changing politics as we know them.

And Lord knows, they need changing. They are an affront to continuing life on the planet. Life is a banquet, as they say -- yet few of us are seated at the table. Do you need an example? In Haiti, where poverty and starvation is enormous, the people have taken to feeding their children mud cookies to stave off hunger pangs, creating a new industry selling, you guessed it: dirt. Hunger, poverty and war has produced a world that is on the move, steps ahead of exploding bombs and starvation. That is not our vision; and it can no longer stand.

Our period of disenchantment has informed us on a global level, as well as a national and personal one. We face a future with no easy answers at hand. But we can begin to reform our desires within a larger spectrum of caring; not just for ourselves, but for one another as well. Global warming has given us the platform we need to ignore our differences and join hands; it is not a nation at stake, or a territory. It's a planet in peril, and all who ride her. It's all of us, together.

We are at that crossroads in time when each personal decision and action must come from our hearts, our intuitive self. If we are not teachable, able to flow with the challenges and flex with the possibilities, we will continue to struggle and cause ourselves pain. These last years have given us all the reflection we need to embrace the coming changes, opening our hearts and minds to take in the possibilities. Life is circular, bringing us back again to space we've trod before, exposing us to old patterns and habits, unresolved fears; but not as the same people who went before. We bring new understanding with us, enhanced perceptions and mature assessments. The last seven years have shown us all we need to know. We are perfectly placed to make informed decisions that have potential to lift us, and our neighbor as ourselves. This is our moment to grasp the first threads of a future that blesses us all.

Gandhi understood the holographic nature of being in the moment; here is his reflection on riding the stream of spirit, of being teachable: "At the time of writing I never think of what I have said before. My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me at the given moment. The result has been that I have grown from truth to truth."

The truth is that what we see around us is a mis-creation: it was produced by immaturity, greed and ruthlessness; it carries a karmic price tag and we're paying it now, but we're also reaping the reward of experience. Like Pavlov's dogs, we've salivated at the dinner bell for generations -- but now we stop short of the bowl, aware that what we're preparing to feed on is toxic, poisonous to our bodies and our souls. Awareness has changed the game; it's changed who we are, which will allow us to shift the future.

Every time I think of the billions spent in Bush's war, I think of the children of Haiti eating clay. Every time I summon a picture of those sent to fight in Mr. Bush's war, I think of their families, living on food stamps and daily fear that their loved ones won't return, and of who they'll be if they do. Every time I think of our energy crisis, I think of generations of smug, failed leadership, taking the easy (and profitable) way out, and bringing us to this moment of emergency.

And each time I think of the paradigm shift, I think of YOU ... each of you, busy with your becoming; adding your piece of the puzzle, slaying your personal dragons and lifting above them, and keeping the vision of an equitable world, eager to enter the 21st century as collaborators, not competitors. Each of us is enlarging our capacity to love, discovering new definitions of that, displaying creative confusion and divine discontent in search of it. Each of us represent a portion of the heart of this planet, each of us is critical to the wellbeing of All That Is.

Despite everything you see around you, the shift is happening as it's destined to: in a messy, disquieting and chaotic act of creation. Our dissatisfaction is leading us into a new vision to replace the old one: that's how change happens. What we are becoming is up to us, but clearly, that is the process at hand. Create your vision with love, with tenderness for self and others, and move ahead with confidence. Trust whatever twists and turns you take to lead you in the right direction. When you enter a pocket of pain, breathe into it, realizing that we have to release the old in order to move forward into the new. There is shift in the air, and we are moving up, together. We're becoming that new thing we seek.