hApPy
fOoLs
dAy!

“You know, for years I taught Absurdiveness Training, and at the end everyone received Absurdification from the Swami. Well, I have decided to reinstitute that policy. If you’ve ever been struck by enlightening and became fooly-aware, committed a random act of comedy that contributed to someone else’s fool-realization, or otherwise added to the laugh force on the planet -- you are absurdifiable!”
-Swami Beyondananda-

And so,
the sacred Light of rebirth shines yet again,
in a seed of Truth taking root in the Heart!
Earth awakens from the long night of Winter,
to become Pollen, Blossom and the Quickening Bud.

The dew drops in the glow of Dawn,
the sustenance of tomorrow's Harvest,
the rising fertility of the rich, Green Earth,
all rejoice the ancient Sun King's return.

-Amaya-

Happy Spring Equinox!

The Spring (Vernal) Equinox, also known as Ostara, or the Astrological New Year, marks a special time when the Tropical Zodiac Sun begins to transit the first astrological sign of Aries. It is also a time when we are confidently re-emerging into the waxing solar year, the day being of equal length to the night. It is a time of sacred balance, of wholeness, integration and rebirth.

And as sPriNg brings the promise of renewal, fresh beginnings and awakening creative drives, so this is a time to plant the metaphorical seeds of our own becoming. This is a magical power-portal of the year, as it integrates the very blueprint for our entire solar year. The affirmations, visualizations and personal wishes which we bring forth at this time will have a lasting, and far-reaching influence. We can empower our dreams and visions of the future-NOW!

I encourage you to take the time to reflect and meditate on what you wish to symbolically birth, manifest and actualize. Some creative ways to do so may be:

-making a manifestation collage
-writing a poem to yourself
-writing down a comprehensive list of wishes
-making a dream pillow: combine dried lavender with whole flax seeds, and fill it with little pieces of paper in which you write down specific attributes you wish to strengthen in the coming moons

-going outside and wishing upon 10 stars
-praying
-creating your own abundance ritual
-creating a sacred space/ altar in which to place symbols of your emerging dreams, hopes and wishes
-painting your wishes all over your body with a fine brush and water-colour pastels, and then taking a ylang-ylang bath
-making a wish tree out of green pipe-cleaners and attaching paper leaves unto which you have written all of your special wishes. Use real soil to "plant" your tree into a clay pot which you have also painted yourself
-writing a letter to yourself (which you put a stamp on and mail) boldly exclaiming all of the things you are going to accomplish this year
-taking three shiny pennies and going to a nearby stream to cast your wishes into the water
-taking apart a little stitch on one of your favourite stufties. Slip a small piece of paper into it with all of your wishes written on it. Sew it back up, and hug your stuftie every night!

Play, imagine, risk, dare, acknowledge, create!
The creative possibilities for creating your own Ostara magic are only limited by your own imagination, and we all know that imagination is
I N F I N I T E !

Echoing the Echoes of Sisterhood: Moving Toward Healing and Solidarity

As children newly forming the root-systems of our individual ego identity, we carry an essential base of core-needs which we naturally seek in the sustaining love, care, protection and nourishment of our mother. Yes, father's matter too...yet our 'birther' is an undeniably profound connection which I'm deliberately wishing to emphasize here.

We all need to be supported in fundamental ways so that our growth is not prematurely interrupted or stunted. Only then can we forge a healthy interdependence and transcend the original and necessary function of the ego. A healthy and integrated ego enables us as children to have safe boundaries from the outside world. We need to self-actualize from the ground up-from the healthy establishment of a sound ego which matures and evolves with us into a more generous, altruistic, loving expression of a well-nourished, adult selfhood .

Encouragement, support, trust, safety, affection.....many of these very important life-qualities and expressions were sadly lacking in our early parent-child relationships. After all, we all-too-often model what we learn from our parents, and there have been successive generations of dysfunctional parenting styles passed down in over-sized suitcases through the (dark?) ages. Such chronic deficiencies may subsequently lead us to counter-develop supplementary habits which we then project into warped power-dynamics and negative attention-seeking behaviours. If we are chronically deficient and in deep pain about the lack of love and support in our early life, we may learn manipulative and cunning tactics as a means of 'stealing' that which we weren't freely given yet so desperately needed. To establish a thriving and fulfilled identity, we all need a certain quotient of love.

We are free-will empowered, autonomous beings fulfilling our soul's destiny and purpose in individual accordance and alignment with Source, God/ess, All-That-Is. We may or may not directly relate to our parents in this equation at all. However, the mysterious cosmic design of our souls, in so merging with the fused dna housed in the womb of our mothers, seems to activate a sacred process beyond the bio-scientific, beyond the learned vs. innate debate.

What I'm speaking of, esoterically, is how the souls of our mothers transmit subtle-energy information to our own soul via psychic imprints while we are growing in the womb. This is a fateful (some say deeply karmic) communication, one which I believe we have somehow "chosen" in order to help us actualize the very Life Path and Life Lessons our souls most need to grow by.

Now, this ineutero communication may activate many aspects of our emergent personalities. The psychic bridging which took place in the womb may be a spiritual means of triggering necessary mother-child healing processes later, or a way of highlighting ancestral patterning and firming up psychic contracts and shared agreements while teaching one-another important life lessons. We may also receive hidden messages ineutero via mum's deepest desires and secret dreams, which may unconsciously end up fusing with our own, later emerging as some actualized endeavour we invariably 'play' out. Who we become as children and as adults may, in part, be a forgotten echo of our mother's reverberations deep within us, now expressed in action.

If our mothers have an opportunity to meet such a mirrored reflection in us, there may be a profound psycho-spiritual, cellular/ subconscious (or conscious!) recognition, a lucid thread woven through and between us. Such a "remembrance" may trigger feelings such as elation, pride, compassion, and inspiration. In these emotional responses we are sent the clear message of "approval", "permission" and "support". This may be reinforced over and over again repeatedly over the course of one's lifetime in various ways.

However, if our mothers have not integrated their own healthy ego within a self-fulfilled life, (often due to an early lack of love and support from their mothers) the emotions triggered by a profound remembrance may be polarized as resentment, jealousy, hostility and fear. Such responses are a message of "disapproval", "trespassing" and "rejection", and again may play on automatic and repeat continuously. These varied and complex messages may be subtle, yet are received and internalized by us none-the-less, sculpting our psyches, tweaking our behaviours. The impact of our mother's messages upon us as women is sub-terraneanly deep and confounding.

From this hidden or overt dialogue which first originated in the womb, we shape and instill our impressions of woman-to-woman relations, and carry their phantoms and ghosts into the complex stratas of the sisterhood. We play them out in various hide-and-seek scenarios of an emotional nature, giving, taking, surrendering, fighting. Looking for approval, giving disapproval, hoping for acceptance, giving rejection.

Often the social "diva complexes", "bitch-slaps" "cat-scratches" and other unhealthy "women waging war against women" behaviours are conveying a secondary message: a fear of rejection, the need for approval, the desire for kinship and solidarity, the craving for love and support.

While it may be difficult to sincerely extend our openness and interest toward women who appear edgy and hardened, closed to any manner of shared warmth, it is worth any and all efforts to find an in-road toward soothing her. Seeing beyond her frayed edges, her defensive stances, her evil, territorial glares and judgemental stings. Instead of creating further separation and alienation by 'reacting to the reaction', it can be incredibly liberating to gently open in observance of the defensive/ offensive behaviour sometimes displayed in women. For it is AN OPPORTUNITY TO GIFT THE SISTERHOOD WITH COMPASSION.

Within that b*#!@-y sister who pouts her lip at your unsuspecting boyfriend and then struts her insecure superiority around in superficial displays of glistening cleavage, stockinged thigh, neatly plucked eyebrow, shining collagen lip, there is almost always a hurt little girl guarding a hidden need which is calling out for heartful attention. Maybe she's insecure! Maybe she lost her "mama-roots" early on in life, or never had them at all, and now she just wants to know she's worthy in the world, she wants to believe she's 'looked out for', even if it's in the lower form of 'looked at'.

As her sister, you have something special to give of your feminine essence which can help soothe her. Perhaps you can offer her the safe haven of your non-judgement, without playing into any manipulative games she may have mastered in her loneliness and pain. Perhaps you can offer something gently maternal, something comforting and compassionate.

Pop-culture media has distorted and over-exploited our feminine value-system of true worth, painfully reducing women's value to their physical sex-appeal while sending forth the garbled message that the attention we seek isn't really about meaningful intimacy and true affection, it's all about outward appearances and allure, or it's about over-emphasizing heterosexual ideals and being 'bait' for our man, or our sister's man (if the power-dynamics have become that manipulated and corrupt)

Yet, if we can reach beyond the external 'packaging' into the core need we may delightfully discover common ground as sisters. Sisters who want to trust again, sisters who want to care about each other, sisters who have each other's backs and seek each other out as comfort when we most need it.....

In the quest for peaceful meeting places beyond the cat-walk politics, one of the most effective ways I have discovered to reach for this need (after many near-fatal falls on the bitch battlefield!) is to be genuinely C-U-R-I-O-U-S about my sisters. To drop my own ego at the door of any event, party, social gathering or outing. To be self-assured with the manner in which I strive to embody true feminism: I navigate with integrity and in true SOLIDARITY WITH MY SISTERS.

When I decidedly enter into a social dynamic with absolutely nothing to prove, nothing to guard and protect, covet or steal, I leave adequate room for my mercurial curiosity to emerge with a sensual grace. And it always does!! In my curiosity, I have more energy and generosity to extend to my sisterkin. I can ask her questions about herself, offer my listening heart to her, create a safe place for and with her so she can comfortably drop her exhausted social masks and well-rehearsed antics if she so chooses. I openly offer an invitation for her to be real with with me-sister to sister.

This almost always works in taking the edge off those compulsive, competitive behaviours so often entrained in women at a frighteningly early age. If I focus on the 'togetherness' of the sisterhood, I'm more inclined to foster intimacy, trust and safety in my actions because I'm not seen as a threat to a more intimidated, insecure woman.

I also find that women can all too often over-masculinize their social status by immediately measuring their sexual rank like an alpha wolf seeks to establish it's immediate dominance. Sexual qualifiers are frequently rooted in male fantasy projections. Stiletto heels, glossy coloured lips, hairless bodies....... If I simply ground myself be somewhat sexually neutral within the more charged and defensive/ offensive of environments, without deferring to or dominating another, I find a soft harmony begins to infuse my more volitile sister-connections. I've discovered that equality is a natural bi-product of women embodying their feminine qualities together, and can be the gift we offer to one another.

Also, when we choose to honour and prioritize the emotional importance of establishing our vital bonds to other women, as opposed to exaggerating the supplementary need to be exclusively loved by the men in our lives, we further strengthen the sisterhood. I have noticed that hetero women who elevate their relationship to their man above their friendships with other women, are often the most wounded in regards to their early relationship with their bio-mothers.

It helps to adopt an inner attitude of generosity toward difficult women, or toward the difficult woman inside ourselves! Women who are "control freaks" are often women who suffered a loss of control in their early life, perhaps in the form of physical/ emotional abuse and ,having swung to it's opposite polarity, hope to restore their lost power. "Jealous" women often feel painfully "less than" while "dominant" women are often the most insecure. "Alpha" women are often afraid of being seen as not good enough, as unaccomplished or not successful enough. Their inner worth is often precariously hinged on the specific measurements of their internal critic and the approval of others .

Remember that there is almost always a story within a story. Try to offer empathy. Listen to what isn't being said. Sometimes, in the silence of the in-between, there are meaningful things spoken at volumes.

With the spirit of giving we are strategically poised to highlight the many ways we can support the healing of our early wounds, especially as it relates to our mothers. We can offer real substance to the unmet needs of our sisters too. And sometimes, it can simply come down to this:

"When in doubt, give more L-O-V-E, and remember: DON'T take it personally, it's not all about... you."