Month: December 2017

On this day of the Winter Solstice open your heart and mind, rid yourself of dogmas and doctrines—free yourself. Let the light of common sense taste freedom, trust your heart. There are eight billion galaxies or more. Within each, there are an unknown number, probably billions, of stars. This is known creation. The earth sits in the corner of one of these galaxies—the Milky Way. It is the height of folly and arrogance to suppose that we are alone…

People have flocked to the recent Star War’s movie release and I truly wonder how many accept that we are not alone in the vast expanse of the universe as the opening phrase “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….,” is displayed?

At this time of the year, it is still hard for me to comprehend that people believe in a “virgin” birth, knowing what I know. In reality, reason flies out the window with belief and faith.

“The virgin birth of Jesus was another lie promoted by the church. This supposedly occurred at the time of the winter solstice (by the Julian calendar, December 25), which was the indigenous Roman celebration and rite of Saturnian. The Church of Rome not only wanted the people to spend money on their celebration and not on the pagan Saturnian, but also wanted to convert people to their ‘new religion.’

To this day a virgin birth, a birth not mythological or symbolic, still defies reason, logic, and the natural laws of creation. But the lie of the virgin birth of Jesus helped recruit new converts to the ‘one and only’ true religion, promoting ‘Jesus as God.’”[i]

This month, the Pentagon publicly acknowledged for the first time the existence of a recent program studying unidentified flying objects.

This is interesting timing as our first story in our memoirs is, “A Close Encounter of the Third Kind: Wet Footprints:”

It was August of 1974 when Sher, our son Jamie (five years old) and I traveled to Maine for a job interview for a position at the Waterville YMCA. We were living in Delaware while I was the Physical Education Director of the Chester, Pennsylvania YMCA. It was a great position but a brutal commute from New Castle Delaware to Chester.

We wanted a healthier and closer to nature lifestyle for ourselves and son. And Maine seemed to fit the bill. The YMCA had a beautiful wooded summer day camp situated on the edge of a large pond where we could camp for a few nights. The regular camp season was over which let us have this pristine land all to ourselves. Late in the afternoon of the second day of my interview we headed to the Y camp to set up our tent. We decided that the best spot was right next to the shore in front of the camp’s dock. Since we were invited to dinner at the Y’s Executive Director’s home, we left while it was still light but realized that we would be returning in the dark.

The dinner went very well and it seemed that I would be offered the position as Program Director. Excited by the prospect we returned to the camp. The parking lot was at the top of a slope that ended at our tent at the water’s edge. As we began walking down the trail, I realized how dark it was within the wooded evergreens. Halfway down the path to our tent, I began to feel a little uneasy. Since it was dark and we were alone in the woods, I put my feelings off to my imagination. “What,” I thought, “could be so threatening to make me feel so uneasy?”

Even though it was a beautiful starlit night, there was an undercurrent of foreboding within my consciousness. By the time we reached our tent and crawled inside, I was feeling even more unsettled. I could sense that Sher was also tense. “But isn’t this, what we have been looking forward to—experiencing camping in the woods of Maine? And with the bonus by a lake, what the locals call a pond,” these thoughts passed through my mind as I turned to speak to Sher.

In a whisper so Jamie would not hear I asked, “How are you feeling?”

“Uneasy,” she whispered back. “It’s creepy, maybe it’s the dark but it’s not the same as when we were here a few hours ago when it was light.”

“I know,” I replied. “But let’s try and get some sleep.” But sleep was only a far-off dream. Lying on my side I whispered into Sher’s ear, “I’m scared; and I feel strange—a tingly feeling and pressure on the back of my neck and around my head.”[ii]

“I’m scared too… I think we need to leave…now.” Sher replied while sitting up.

We were still dressed so our getaway was simple and fast. Jamie had not questioned why we were leaving but just exited the tent with us. It was just then that we heard a large splash.

Curious, and in all innocent, Jamie walked a few feet towards the deck and said, “Look daddy Pterodactyl feet…”

And yes, there were the remains of wet webbed footprints on the dry dock surface. “Time to go,” I said as we hurried up the trail. To see if we were being followed, I looked back towards the pond and at that moment, a bright light streaked from the surface of the pond up into the heavens. With the light now stationary in the night sky, Sher looked back and said, “What is that strange light?” And then…

“Are you sure, you want to accept this job?” I just looked at her as we swiftly continued up the path to the safety of our car.

Once at the car, Jamie turned to both of us and said, “I really like Pterodactyls but Tyrannosaur Rex is my favorite…”

Commentary

The webbed-foot prints, the splash, and the “light” shooting up from the surface of the pond, all have one thing in common—water. In December 2017, the Pentagon publicly acknowledged for the first time the existence of a recent program studying unidentified flying objects. A former Navy pilot described his UFO encounter:[iii]

For most of his 18-year career as a U.S. Navy pilot, Cmdr. David Fravor said his mother-in-law used to ask him a question: Had he seen a UFO? For 15 years, the answer was no. But one clear afternoon off the coast of California in 2004, he says, that changed.

Fravor, the commanding officer of a Navy squadron at the time, said he saw a flying object about the size of his plane that looked like a Tic Tac after a break in a routine training mission. The object moved rapidly and unlike any other thing he had ever seen in the air. He has not forgotten it since…

“It was a real object, it exists and I saw it,” he said in a phone interview…

Asked what he believes it was, 13 years later, he was unequivocal. “Something not from the Earth,” he said.

Fravor was the commanding officer of the VFA-41 Black Aces, a U.S. Navy strike fighter squadron of F/A-18 Hornet fighter planes doing an exercise some 60 to 100 miles off the coast between San Diego and Ensenada, Mexico, in advance of a deployment to the Persian Gulf for the Iraq War, he said.

An order came in for him to suspend the exercise and do some “real-world tasking,” about 60 miles west of their location, Fravor said. He said he was told by the command that there were some unidentified flying objects descending from 80,000 feet to 20,000 feet and disappearing; he said officials told him they had been tracking a couple dozen of these objects for a few weeks.

When they arrived closer to the point, they saw the object, flying around a patch of white water in the ocean below.

“A white Tic Tac, about the same size as a Hornet, 40 feet long with no wings,” Fravor described. “Just hanging close to the water.”

The object created no rotor wash — the visible air turbulence left by the blades of a helicopter — he said, and began to mirror the pilots as they pursued it, before it vanished.

“As I get closer, as my nose is starting to pull back up, it accelerates and it’s gone,” he said. “Faster than I’d ever seen anything in my life. We turn around, say let’s go see what’s in the water and there’s nothing. Just blue water.”

[i] Rev. Dr. JC Husfelt, Do You Like Jesus—Not the Church?, 25 – 26.

[ii] This was the first time I had felt this sensation on the back of my neck and head. This turned out to be my body’s response to Extraterrestrial and Otherworldly beings and energies.

[iii] Eli Rosenberg, “Former Navy pilot describes UFO encounter studied by secret Pentagon program,” December 18,  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/12/18/former-navy-pilot-describes-encounter-with-ufo-studied-by-secret-pentagon-program/?utm_term=.e671ebebf3ee

It’s a great tale told of the Three Wise Men (astrologer-priests) and their gifts; and the star they followed—conjunction of Jupiter and Venus in its evening star phase. In reality, the gifts symbolized spiritual teachings:

Frankincense and myrrh are plant resins, and both have a long history of use as incense. Incense has been used for religious purposes for more than 3,000 years The Maya of Mexico have used resins as incense for at least 2,500 years. The principal use was religious and aimed at establishing interactions with deities and ancestors.

Gold is symbolic of the eternal; the divine spark (starlight) within all things—trees, animals, and so-forth (sentient beings).

Frankincense symbolizes power, sovereignty, and was associated with the masculine energy of the heavens and of life whereas Myrrh symbolizes a feminine and nurturing essence, or energy, which is linked with the earth.

In other words, Gold symbolizes the One eternal Source of all creation, the Absolute while Frankincense and Myrrh represent the Relative: spirit – matter, life – death; beginning – end.

The Winter Solstice, the second night of Yule, is the time from our perspective when the sun seems to stand still. For approximately three days, it appears that the sun does not move. The Winter Solstice marks the time of the longest dark and the shortest light. Symbolically, it portrays, on this darkest of nights, the goddess as the “great mother” giving birth to the young-hero god—the sun god. This is the symbolic birth of the messenger of light. It is the darkest time of the year, the time of the longest night, but there is always the everlasting promise and hope of the return of light. And watching over this eternal process of the virgin birth (Virgo on the eastern horizon) is the Sun Angel—the Archangel Mikael.

This is a time of holly and mistletoe. Both symbolize fertility – the mistletoe berries are white, representing the semen of the god, and the holly berries are blood red, symbolizing the menstrual blood of the goddess.

Decorations during this seasonal celebration are excellent symbols of spiritual truths. The following are just a few:

• Candles and Lights – remembrance of the gift of fire and light and the divine spark (starlight) within.
• Mistletoe (seed of the divine) and Holly symbolizing and honoring the faëries and “hidden ones.”
• Evergreen Wreaths – Symbolize eternal life, immortality and the wheel of time, add pine cones, which symbolize the pineal gland as well male and female and the DNA of life; add mistletoe and holly with berries and you have the sacred semen of the male and the sacred blood of the female.
• Evergreen Swags – Symbolize eternal life and when put into the shape of the serpent with lights symbolizes death and rebirth, reincarnation, and wakefulness to these truths. It’s important to put a swag over the threshold of your home if possible.
• Yule Log – a phallic symbol – newborn sun can be decorated with holly, mistletoe, and evergreens to represent the intertwining of the god and goddess. The log may be cut into 12 pieces and burnt each night of Yule. Additionally, on the night of Yule, carve a symbol of your hopes for the coming year into the log. Burn the log to release its power. It can be decorated with burnable red ribbons of natural fiber and dried holly leaves.
• Julbock or “Yule Goat” was the bringer of gifts to the household. Symbolically represents the goats of Þórr and the gifting of resurrection (rebirth).
• Evergreen Christmas Tree – Symbolizes the Tree of Life/Light – needs to be alive, honored and lighted and decorated symbolizing the joy of life.

Symbolically the Tree of Life is the central axis of creation. Microcosmically, each one of us is born with this central tree (axis mundi) of light/life (spine), which shortly after becomes the tree of knowledge—of duality—good and evil. Our ever-born quest is to return to our original tree of knowledge of oneness (light/life) within us – our spine. This is an excellent time to dedicate or re-dedicate one’s life to the divine quest of awakening.

 

 

 

The chill of winter’s embrace enfolds us in an ever-darkening time of anticipation and joy. In all of us, it seems to stir up a caldron’s brew of memories—of times past and possibly of things and moments no longer. The earth waits and waits, as do we, for the promised return of the light. It is a time to feel—to be aware of the fertile dark soil of potentiality that lies within us, as well as the dark, the dark that does not serve us and the dark that needs to be released.

This cycle of light and dark repeats endlessly but each cycle is intrinsically slightly different. Time is cyclical, not linear. There is the past and the present that some indigenous cultures refer to as the non-past. But there is no future only potential ones based on the actions of the non-past influenced by the past.

This is a time of peace and joy—joy as the sun, now far away in the south, begins to travel north at the winter solstice, bringing the wintry earth a new promise of light and warmth.

On the night of the Winter Solstice (December 21/22), the sun reaches its southernmost point. Were it to remain in the south, it would mean death for living beings in the northern hemisphere. Thus we greet the returning sun as a “savior.” On the night when it begins its northward journey, the constellation Virgo, the celestial virgin, appears on the eastern horizon at midnight and is therefore, astrologically, the ascendant. This coordinates with the myth of the various light-bringing saviors of humanity, immaculately conceived and born from a virgin. Later, the sun symbolically sacrifices its life on the cross when it passes over the equinoctial point at the spring equinox, an apparent descent as seen from the southern hemisphere and an ascent in the northern sky.

Historically and spiritually, this is the month (at the time of the winter solstice) of the mythical birth of the light-bringers. These are the messengers of love and light—the hero-shamans that first brought the knowledge of the fire of the heavens, the knowledge of the light in the darkness, to all of humanity. These heroic messengers of light are born of the Virgin—the constellation Virgo. In the heavens Virgo is a Y-shaped group of stars resembling a cup that just happens to rise in the Eastern sky at this most spiritual time of the year. This is the mythic Holy Grail, the Cup of Light, the Bowl of Love that is Light—all the key to the metaphoric message of these virgin light-bringers—that the sun, the spiritual sun—the divine, is contained within all beings and all living things. This is the message that institutionalized religions do not want humanity to hear: that each one of us, like the light-bringers, is also a virginal vessel of love and light. No inborn sin here, just intrinsic love and light.

The winter solstice presents us with the opportunity to honor and to reveal (revelation—lifting the veil) this prime mystery of life. This is the time to honor these heroic messengers and to pay homage to the metaphoric moment of their “virgin birth” (based on the positioning of the constellation Virgo not on an actual physical birth—the actual birth of the prophets and messengers such as Jesus was late summer, early fall under the astrological sign of the Virgin-Virgo). In addition, it is the occasion to celebrate the return of the light foretelling the truth of eternal love and life and to honor and practice the message of the returning heroes—the light-bringers.

The return of light to a darkened world, metaphorically as well as one of reality, is reflected in the myth of the Returning Hero:

A legendary hero is usually the founder of something—the founder of a new age, the founder of a new religion, the founder of a new city, the founder of a new way of life. In order to found something new, one has to leave the old and go in quest of the seed idea, a germinal idea that will have the potentiality of bringing forth that new thing.[i]

The cultural hero, and his return, is one of the most enduring as well as important cross-cultural archetypal prophetic themes known to humankind. Its importance is due to its message of hope and renewal. The meaning stays the same; only the names of the hero change. The best known returning hero is Jesus. Similarly, the Hopi prophecies speak of their spiritual hero Pahana, the purifier or the elder white brother, while the early Hawaiians worshipped Lono as their savior and lord of peace. The returning cultural hero for the Incas was Viracocha whereas the Mesoamerican prophet or cultural hero was known as Quetzalcóatl—the morning star. And to the Maya, he was known as Kukulkán, the Mayan name for Quetzalcóatl—the Feathered Serpent. Kukulkán was known as “god of the powerful voice,” a resurrection deity and master of the four winds.

The enduring teaching and message of each returning hero was focused on achieving a balance between spirit and matter with the additional knowledge that we are all a child of God, divine as well as human. To the returning hero, separateness is the illusion; oneness is the reality—all existences interpenetrate radically non-dualistically (non-dual interpenetration – Oneness).

Symbolically, the return of the hero represents the spiritual concept of the infinite cycle of death and re-birth. But it as well represents the return of light or enlightenment to a world void of love and a humanity that has darkened once again – so true today. The religious histories of many cultures also portray the morning star, the planet Venus, in this same emblematic role of representing the returning hero.

In this time of darkness anticipating the return of light, what inner potential needs to be manifested and what dysfunctional darkness needs to be released? Better to consider these than focusing on consuming some stupid stuff that you probably don’t really need.

[i] Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, 136.