By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

I once had a fascinating conversation with a family member who was retiring from the Navy, hanging up that spiffy white uniform with the scrambled eggs on the shoulders and entering private life. He had served as personal attaché for Governor Ronald Reagan in California and in the Pentagon when Ron was in the White House. Over dinner, we discussed his career and I tried plumbing his depths; he's a Scorpio, so I knew I couldn't count on his sharing secrets but maybe I could close in on a few with careful maneuvering. "Can you imagine," I asked, sipping my wine and lowering my voice, "a scenario in which all of the nations of the world come together to fight a common threat?" His answer was quick, measured and not nearly as militarily obfuscated as I'd anticipated. "Yes," he replied. "I can."

It was an 'ET phone home' enquiry, and my military-minded, squared-away and no-nonsense loved one had crossed into the dimensional hinterland with nary a quiver. I came away from that encounter quoting Hamlet, regarding his father's ghost: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." And clearly, I think it's past time we began to dream them. Quantum physics offers us other ways to think of things; and coming off of years when science and religion were pitted against one another as natural enemies, instead of alienating them further perhaps it would be refreshing to allow them to wed, as they eventually must. The big picture is bigger than we know.

With all the talk of national safety, personal safety, financial safety, it appears to me that what we don't know about the future is the larger of the fears driving us these days. We like to know exactly what we're facing, it comforts us; but clearly, we have no idea what tomorrow will bring. We've lost control of these events, as uncomfortable as that seems. Even more impressive, there are ghosts walking among us, energy signals that are creating our 3D landscape as just a bit more hazy, reality winking in and out, and definitely not as solid as we suppose it to be.

Some of the political pundits, for instance, seem to be talking an antiquated language that our hearts can no longer translate; the entire John McCain campaign spoke this anachronistic dialect, even the folksy Sarah Palin, who seems determined to meet us again in 2012 with stories of fisher folk and 'real Americans.' Can you imagine anything she has to say as relevant to your life today? Three years from now, we won't be able to hear her at all. Some see change as the reworking of sets of circumstance and an increasing ability to control them; as it's shaping up, that's highly improbable. Getting comfortable with acceptance of the events of the day, doing our best with the challenges and charting the blessings, seems the most productive path now. Staying in the moment has a side benefit that our old habit of past/future projection never offered, by the way; perhaps change is expanding our intuitive faculties to receive more information about what is already here and at work in our lives.

Edgar Cayce is widely known as the most documented psychic of the 20th Century. Cayce received many visions of the future and many of them have already come to pass. Photo: The Edgar Cayce Foundation.

When exploring this kind of thing, it's good to start at the beginning: family. We are in a reflective curve regarding family issues; very sensible, if we are to make progress toward a new paradigm. We talk about all that doesn't work, all that must be fixed, but we think of that as outside circumstances; the combined energetic signals of the Carpricornian Pluto and Saturn in Virgo has us focused on larger structure and its repair. We're in danger of missing the point; we are ignoring the internal landscape of our relationship both to ourselves and those close to us. Remember we can't fill old wineskins with new wine; we fix from the inside out, or we don't fix at all. Yes, family is our starting point; change is easier to handle if we resolve our earliest conflicts.

Here in the Pea Patch I don't know a family that isn't nose to nose with its underlying patterns of dysfunction; some are a little farther ahead than others, but all seem to be pained by their lowest common denominator issues. Edgar Cayce said that family is the most Karma we'll ever experience; these are soul obligations that have brought us together for mutual growth. Clearly, there will be friction; otherwise, why bother? Learning is always found in the oppositions, the contrasts, the disagreements. The good news is that when we come to some satisfactory conclusion with that, we are freed to move on; the bad news? Many of us, illogically, do not. If we come into a family to learn about and foster our own authenticity, why do so many of us still take on the coloration of the family group-think and replicate it generation after generation? And if we have that tribal response to family issues, is it any surprise that we do exactly the same within our national family?

At the moment, the national family is divided; but not as much as it has been. Our allegiance to this nation has not been reflected back to us from its governance; the 'parental factor' as some see it. The stern Daddy of the Republican model failed us significantly, but it was destined to. The GOP is anti-government, its dream to provide for the national defense and little else. Katrina was no accident; it was the inevitable result of the ideological truism embraced by conservatives. If you remember, George Bush and John McCain were filmed celebrating John's birthday with grins and flag-waving even as the levees broke in New Orleans, and the days that followed sent out a clear message: let them get their own cake. It took almost a week of this nation mouth-breathing in front of our televisions, asking one another where the government was, before anything productive occurred and that, clearly too late to be called rescue.

With no actual model for governance, Republicans fear that Obama's plan for America's future -- which they consider a renewal of LBJ's Left-wing Great Society project -- will actually work; and that leaves them nowhere to go, does it? Their obstruction is a given; and I've grown impatient with their high-pitched rhetoric that Obama will change the nation forever. Does it not occur to them that Bush had already done that? The Socialism meme spouted by the Right is based on their fear that the Democrats will become the indulgent Mommy party that takes care of everyone's needs, and do it by restraining capitalism, cutting into corporate profits, crippling the military-industrial complex and dissolving off-shore accounts. From their mouth to God's ear, then; or at least until the playing field is leveled and the great rifts in our sociopolitical fabric mended. To get back on point, the continuance of our personal, as well as national, family depends on these kinds of changes in order to survive.

Our political family is a personal selection; as is our extended family of friends and loved ones. Our birth family is not a choice, at least not a conscious one; it is configured as that nest that brought us forth, socialized us and which we must learn to appreciate and come to peace with, if we can. Too often we feel like cuckoos slyly slipped into another bird's nest; we relate not at all with our parents and siblings and wonder how we can find a common linkage. I think, you'll be surprised to learn, that's easier than ever before; but only if we've done our homework on our own authenticity, no longer needing those birth families to define us but have heart-call to include them in our emotional lives.

For those who stand in their own power, who have a sure sense of their uniqueness, there is no longer a requirement for the ancient game of attack/defend; there is simply love and an awareness that love is deserved no matter the impediments. In order to feel attacked, we must give our permission; if we are aware of ourselves, no longer in need of a defense, we can simply refuse to do so. Arguments of the sort that divide us are mental constructs; heart trumps them. For instance, you can't mindlessly attack another person, especially not one you know well, if you are touching them -- connecting to heart. The myriad complexities of a mental construct will never find an exact match; but love is not a product of the brain, and does not play by its rules. No agreement required.

As we are putting our family conflicts in order, I would urge that you do nothing you will regret. Think of it as insurance; you'll have to go back to the scene of the accident again and again, dragging unnecessary baggage and delaying your progress if you can't resolve it now. What is common to all parties is our humanness; as humankind lifts itself upward in vibration we are becoming different creatures than those that were born into a nuclear tribe. Our family members may be unwilling to lose control over their projections of who we have always been; they may insist that we remain the same. We are not all moving together -- but we are, every one of us, moving. We are called upon to allow for their growth as well, even if they stubbornly refuse us ours.

In order to cooperate with the new energies, we must find a way to appreciate and treasure those things we have in common; they give us the template for the way forward. The more we can maximize our commonality, the less we will have to argue about. Still, there are family situations that will simply never resolve; at least not in this lifetime. Resolution, then, must come within us. We must settle old grievances by forgiving and putting them in proper perspective; the more we understand our own Operating System, the easier that is.

I'm going to reveal a few things about my own personal OS here -- what my friends call my 'spooky' side -- and I expect before I'm done you'll wonder what happened to that sensible woman who writes these articles. And that's exactly why I'm sharing this; there's more things in heaven and earth, Horatio. It's time we enlarged our perception of the energy field we inhabit. Some of you have asked that I speak to the issue of invisibles; the ethereal energies, so here we go.

I process things in terms of their energy and vibration -- I have no problem with interdimensional leaps or invisible influences. I've channeled, I've been visited, my earliest memories are long, loving conversations with those that nobody could see but me. These weren't just playmates of the 'pretend' variety; in profound ways, my earliest understanding of 'father' was in allegiance to an enormous entity that was present with me every bed-time, like a comforting night light, whose name was Amun Ra. Not many four-year-olds dabble in mythical Egyptian deities; years later when I was studying ancient religion I had to laugh that the little Baptist girl was tutored nightly by the Hidden God of antiquity.

As well, I've always had faerie friends; very young, I insisted that a place be set at the table for my two true companions, Clovis and Spurty, and my family indulged. When I started school at five, I told them they couldn't come with me as others wouldn't understand and they disappeared from sight, but not from my auric field. They're always around; in psychic readings, I'm forever amused when the reader says, "Where did all these little sparkly guys come from?" I can feel them, thickly clustered around me, when I walk on summer evenings, watching the fireflies dance -- faerie-lanterns, some call them. My couple of tattoos are in celebration of them; word of warning: never, ever, ever decorate your aura with anything fanged or suffer the consequences.

So, am I a wing-nut? Airy-fairy and dippity-do? You'll have to decide for yourself; these are simply my experiences and I have legions more. I haven't even mentioned the Angels or Devas, waking visions or out-of-body experiences, sacred spaces or power vortexes. My mother put these early oddities off as my being highly imaginative; now we have categories for this kind of child, like Indigo and Crystalline. And if this conversation seems highly improbable to you, then I suggest you take a few moments to think it through. Surely the world we look out at each morning when we open our eyes is no more real than the one that fills our dreamscapes; if you do any lucid dreaming -- that is, know you're sleeping but take aware command of the dream events -- you'll know what I'm talking about. It's said that if you can banish the dragon in dream-state, you don't have to banish it here. Good to know, don't you think? Perhaps the dragon is your mother or your mate; perhaps your boss or your banker, your career or your sexuality. Perhaps we'll find that we have more control there than here during this transition period; and if you ask before you fall asleep, more access to instruction and comfort as well.

My point is this -- the tit/tat, black/white, pragmatic and waking density of 3D is not all there is and perhaps not even most of what is. Losing control over so much in these last years has us fearful that we have no control over anything that happens next; but we have allies all around us of which we remain unaware. We are creatures of Spirit, connected to the ethereal and experiencing a human framework; if this is unfamiliar territory to you, I'd suggest you get James Redfield's Celestine Prophecy from the library -- it's not a well-written book, IMHO, but it's an excellent introduction to vibration and resonance.

'The Celestine Prophecy' crystallized a new spiritual vision for millions of people around the world. The book provides a model for the emerging global renaissance already underway ... an awakening that will reshape our world in the new millennium. Photo: The Celestine Prophecy Pictures.

As we awaken into the larger picture of who we are, we begin to understand why we owe respect to one another as well as allowance, as each makes their way along their separate path; we are all connected, and of the same Source. We are both particle and wave. As well, we owe it to ourselves to listen carefully to hear the other voices, the softer murmuring of the ethereal energies that are loyal and loving to us in ways we can't imagine. And now we need to get our ducks in a row, because we are in the process of finding inclusive new families that meet our growing awareness and vibratory levels.

Back in the late 80s, and early 90s, some of the spiritual books spoke of Light Islands; actual physical spots in which those of a specific understanding would gather during this period of purge and renewal. I was attracted to Planet Waves because I instantly recognized it as a cyber-version of this kind of family, pulling us together from across the planet. It's more important than ever for us to come together, recognizing family, fine-tuning our understanding and resolve, and projecting our tolerance and love. That is the collective energy that lifts us up into evolution.

As all that is no longer dependable shakes and quakes and causes us concern, we're shedding some of that delusional, over-confident and tough outer skin that protected us from one another. We must renew our commitment to lovingness in order to transition from our old way of perceiving one another into a new, more sensitive ability to diffuse our differences. Only our commonalities matter; only our hearts are worthy interpreters for the new energy, the new language, that seeks to overlay the old. We must open ourselves to the wider dimensions of ourselves on planet Terra, come into awareness of how ancient we are, how powerful, how BIG our energy in our own lives and in influencing one another. We must stop being afraid of what we can't control and understand that what we ARE makes that increasingly inconsequential to the flow of energy that is pulling us into new territory.

It's time to phone home -- allow our heart to be the PBX board that connects its runners out, plugging in to all those people and places that are the family we came to embrace. It's time to make peace with our fragmentation and find unity within our community; stop complaining that everything's the same and realize that nothing's the same. Everything is different now; protests to the contrary are psychological devices to control fear that what we're feeling is true. The dimensions are opening, the old configurations are dying away, the families are gathering -- it's time to look carefully, listen for the softer voices, and let the adventure begin.