Abundance thoughts

12.19.14.4.18 9 Etznab 6 Uo
I've had some major abundance issues over the past few years (except when it comes to "bad" things, which I have plenty of). Mostly about money, obviously. That's what abundance issues really means in new-age speak. I lack money.
Now, finally, Will's got a real job, starting today, with all kinds of great insurance and perks.
As soon as I heard that last week, even though technically our financial situation won't REALLY change for a few months, I started THINKING differently about money.
What happened?
I've been needing new tires for my Pathfinder. I've got part of the money set aside, but I don't have the special key to get the lug nuts off, so I haven't spent the money on tires. I picked out some at Town Fair for $109 each plus all the extras. This weekend, a friend offered me, for FREE, tires for both the Pathfinder and Will's Santa Fe. That's $900 in savings--I only have to pay to get them mounted and balanced. Even after getting both cars done, I'll have money left over from what's set aside in the "tire fund."
I found a $10 on a bench yesterday.
Two of my 3 students overpaid me this weekend for the Shamballa Healer training (a new workshop). Obviously they think it was worth what they gave me, but it was more than I ASKED them for.
One of my students bought me dinner on Friday, and another paid for lunch for the whole group on Sunday.
Now that I can AFFORD to have my broken tooth fixed, and go to the physical therapist, now I have INSURANCE to pay for all that.
So there really is something to the power of thought and creating reality.

Sunspot activity to peak in 2011-2012

12.19.14.4.14 5 Ix 2 Uo

I find this interesting because of the whole "2012 thing" (as I so artfully call it; when I do actually want to sound insightful I call it the "2012 event").
A lot of people correlate metaphysical energy/activity with sunspots and solar eruptions. (Steve Rother of Lightworker.com, for one.)
CNN.com says:
The peak of the next sunspot cycle is expected in late 2011 or mid-2012 -- potentially affecting airline flights, communications satellites and electrical transmissions.....
Half of the specialists predicted a moderately strong cycle of 140 sunspots expected to peak in October of 2011, while the rest called for a moderately weak cycle of 90 sunspots peaking in August of 2012.
Of course, there's one school of Mayan-apocalyptic thought which claims the "end date" is October 2011, lead by Carl Calleman. (Read the debunking of this false end date by John Major Jenkins here.) I'm sure CC will use this to prop up his saggy theory. (Part of his theory, about cycles, is very interesting indeed. It's the end-date that throws it all off. He can't take into account that the cycles he's located might be a little bit fuzzy when you look at thousands of years. He also ignores the Long Count's 13th Baktun start date even though his theory is supposed based on the Long Count. Sigh.)
Back to CNN.com
During an active solar period, violent eruptions occur more often on the sun, the agency said. Solar flares and vast explosions, known as coronal mass ejections, shoot highly charged matter toward Earth.
This crazy amount of solar activity can cause, among other things:

• Airlines flying over the pole face loss of communications that could force them to use a different, longer route at an added cost of as much as $100,000 per flight.


• The Global Positioning System is immensely important to commerce and can be disrupted by solar activity.


• Operating floating oil rigs in the ocean requires keeping them positioned within a few inches to prevent damaging drilling gear. "They have to know when GPS is going to be accurate."


• There is an increased radiation risk to humans in space.


• Currents can be induced in long electrical transmission lines, causing blackouts.

and

• The solar storms also can heat the Earth's upper atmosphere, causing it to expand. This increases drag on satellites, slowing them down. It also affects the position of the space debris encircling the planet, and it is essential to keep track of that debris for the safety of space flight.

All very nice indeed for those who think the year 2012 will be the end of the world.
Which I don't believe, but I'm starting to get discouraged explaining WHY.

another opportunity

Just a year ago, I received the news about my beloved Zen's thyroid condition, which led to the heart condition that killed him about 100 days later. I wrote this essay, called "Love, Loss and Tolerance" about how I felt about my black Siamese kitty.
Last Thursday, for no real reason, I skipped the ASC meeting. I was up there, one exit away, having dinner, and I decided I was going home.
When I got home, I went through my routine of calling Nutter. It looks like this: I yell "Where's my kitty?" and he comes downstairs and meows at me, gets on me, purrs, the whole thing. When Zen died last year I made a vow to Nutter that every day for the rest of his life I would spend time playing with him and petting him and make sure he purred.
He didn't purr on Thursday, although he did come down the stairs. He looked...wrong...I guess. I asked my husband if he thought Nutter looked sick. Will thought he looked tired. I did some things and eventually went upstairs to bed. By then Nutter was clearly sick. His third eyelids were showing, he was completely lethargic, uninterested in anything including his comb. He wasn't meowing at all (usually he "talks" constantly to us). He was shaking too. He left the bed and went downstairs into his basket. Will, who is usually indifferent to the cat, took the basket and put it on his desk so he could pay attention to Nutter. When he came upstairs to bed, he brought the cat (in the basket) with him. I slept upside down in the bed all night, one hand on Nutter, giving him Reiki and Shamballa & whatever other energies came through, basically waiting for him to die. He looked that bad.
In the morning, his eyelids had retracted and he begged for food. I called the vet anyway, because he was still sick, but not as bad as the night before.
The bottom line is this: Nutter's got a mass in his chest. It's probably cancer although we're obviously hoping it's not. I will know in a couple of weeks for sure. I've got a Shamballa Basic Healer class this weekend that will feature Nutter healing, and of course I've been working on him constantly.
My first instinct, of course, is to do everything for my cat, regardless of the cost. But he's almost 14 and I'm not sure he'd BENEFIT from being cut up and radiated and all that. He's near the end of his natural life. I hate to let my kitty go, though. It's a selfish thing, I know. Keep him here with me, unhappy and in pain, or let him go and find Zen on the other side, his friend he STILL searches for 9 months later?
I'm keeping to my vow of playing and petting and combing and purring, pouring antibiotics into him twice a day and hoping I won't have to decide, that it will be just a bad infection and we'll clear it up just fine.
cross-posted to my Pets blog

Wiccans get military headstones

12.19.14.4.12 0 Uo 3 Eb
This has been an ongoing battle and I'm glad it's over. Personally, I wouldn't want a pentacle on my headstone (I don't define myself as a Wiccan, merely a pagan) but I'm glad for those who do. Of course, since I'm not in the military, I should be able to get ANYTHING I want on my headstone. If I wanted a headstone. Which I don't.
Key excerpts:
The Wiccan pentacle has been added to the list of emblems allowed in national cemeteries and on government-issued headstones of fallen soldiers....The pentacle has been added to 38 symbols the VA already permits on gravestones. They include commonly recognized symbols for Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, as well as those for smaller religions such as Sufism Reoriented, Eckiankar and the Japanese faith Seicho-No-Ie.
Have you ever even HEARD of any of these? I bet there are more Wiccans than some of these obscure ones in the military.
"This settlement has forced the Bush Administration into acknowledging that there are no second class religions in America, including among our nation's veterans," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which represented the Wiccans in the lawsuit.
Wicca is a nature-based religion based on respect for the earth, nature and the cycle of the seasons. Variations of the pentacle not accepted by Wiccans have been used in horror movies as a sign of the devil.
"Variations not accepted." What a sly and funny way of saying "upside down" or "point down."

April Showers=very big pool of souls

We're having what's referred to as a "no'easter" here in Connecticut--a multi-day Biblical deluge, which has caused my pool of souls (the nearest body of water to the west) to swell dramatically and look VERY hungry.
I found a slightly blurry picture I took 2 years ago for this blog, of the spot where I usually give my offerings. It was also taken in April. The same pine tree is in the center of both pictures.

12.19.14.4.4 12 Pop 8 Kan

burner day events

12.19.14.4.0 4 Ahau 8 Pop
Today's 4 Ahau, a burner day. As soon as I logged onto Yahoo, I saw that Kurt Vonnegut had died. :(
Someone blew up the Iraqi parliament, a story so fresh there's not even a link, only a banner, on both CNN & Yahoo news. And a suicide bomber took out a bridge in Iraq this morning.

---

There are two good quotes from Kurt Vonnegut in the linked article. One is from a tombstone in Slaughterhouse-Five: "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."
The other is from an interview. "We probably could have saved ourselves, but we were too damned lazy to try very hard ... and too damn cheap," he once suggested carving into a wall on the Grand Canyon, as a message for flying-saucer creatures.
The loss of someone who thought like that indeed affects everyone. I hope wherever he is now, it's beautiful and doesn't hurt.

13 0 0 0 0

12.19.14.3.17 5 Pop 1 Caban
Today when I left the gym, I looked at my dashboard and saw that my odometer was at 130,000 miles (My vehicle's from 1994) ...or, in Long Count time...13.0.0.0.0, which of course made me think of the whole 12-21-2012 debacle, which I spend WAY too much trying to debunk on Yahoo Answers, to no avail. I swear every time I answer a question and explain that the calendar isn't ending, it's rolling over, it's an energetic change, yadda yadda, five more questions pop up asking the same stupid thing.
I actually have a picture of my Long-Count odometer--I took it with my camera phone and emailed it to myself, but it takes a long time for the emails to arrive, and who knows if I did it correctly. When it arrives, I'll add it to this post. UPDATE: 05-12-2007 (12.19.14.5.10 18 Uo 8 Oc)--I gave up on messaging the photo to my email and signed up for Pix Place at Verizon. Here it is.)

---

I will say it again, here, in plain English.
On 12-20-2012, the date in the Mayan Long Count calendar will be 12.19.19.17.19. (the next to last count is 0-17, not 0-19). The next day, every count goes up one, to 13.00.00.00.00. It is absurd to believe that the Baktun count only goes to 13 and then resets to zero. Who decided this?
In fact, on Wikipedia, someone wrote:
"It has been suggested in many New Age articles and books that this [12-21-2012] will be the end of this creation, the next pole shift or something else entirely. However, the Maya abbreviated their long counts to just the last five vigesimal places.....This is confirmed by a date from Palenque, which projects forward in time to 1.0.0.0.0.0, which will occur on October 13, 4772. This date cannot occur with the correct Calendar Round unless b'ak'tuns 14 through 19 also occur. The Classic Period Maya likely did not believe that the end of this age would occur in 2012. According to the Maya, there will be a b'ak'tun ending in 2012, a significant event being the end of the 13th 400 year period, but not the end of the world." (Emphasis mine.)
How much plainer does it have to be? The baktuns aren't resetting until 4772, over two thousand years from now. And you know what? some idiot will be saying at that time, "The Mayan calendar predicts the world will end on 10-13-2772."
Sheesh.

Happy New Year! Ephemeris is up!

12.19.14.3.13 1 Pop 10 Ben (Intention Portal)
Yesterday was 0 Pop--the Mayan New Year's Day.
The energy of 9 Eb--another intention portal--will be carried through the next year. So every day, you can set your intentions, recite affirmations, pray, conduct rituals, do spells...whatever you need to communicate with the other side of the veil. Nine is on the high side of being balanced, which is always a good thing (next year will be a 10 year, which is on the low side of being high, if that makes any sense). And of course the energy of Eb (Malinalli in Aztec) has to do with karma, journeys and the road of life.
I put the 150-year Mayan-Aztec ephemeris up last night on my regular web site. Enjoy.