2018 Winter Eclipse Forecast: TOP 10 REASONS TO BE EXUBERANTLY OPTIMISTIC GOING FORWARD

“If everything seems under control, you’re probably not moving fast enough.” MARIO ANDRETTI

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Dear One,

Happy New Year! As 2018 begins, I’m continuing to monitor all astrological indicators going forward. From this, I’ve decided that the most worthwhile thing I can do is to share all the reasons why it’s important to maintain an attitude of gratitude, cosmic humor and optimism going forward. This is especially so this year, as the tone of the mass consciousness needs all the help it can get right now.

Between January 2, 2018 and mid-May, Trickster planet of Awakening, Uranus, starts inexorably moving forward through the final degrees of Aries. This means that we’ve only got four-and-a-half months to review how the last seven years have been for us in terms of personal growth and awakening to the true meaning of this incarnation for each of us. (Hint: it’s always an inside job:).)

Added to this our bi-annual Eclipse season is almost upon us, which always ratchets up the intensity as it turbo-charges us into the future by setting up the major themes we’re going to be dealing with—personally and en masse—over the next six months and beyond.

The Super Moon Lunar Eclipse on January 31st is conjunct the North Node of our dharmic destiny in magnanimous Leo. This is followed by a New Moon Eclipse in Aquarius on February 15.

I’m choosing to read that this bodes very well over the next year for righteousness and good to prevail over any dark forces that have been dimming the Light of the mass consciousness. For more on this, please review my take on the Dark Age we’re presently in from last year’s overview, which still applies in an ongoing way:

2017 COMING ATTRACTIONS: “Greatest Hits of the Kali Yuga (Darkest Age)”

My channels have emphasized to me that Divine Order-ly Chaos will continue to escalate on the planet over the coming years and that each of us, to the degree we’re able, needs to hold a tone of equanimity, faith in the Flow and, yes, gratitude for our precious incarnation and the Earth just as it is, because things could always get so much worse.

As for maintaining a tone of cosmic humor under the present trying circumstances, this may require a more evolved degree of spiritual perspective. In my experience, whenever I’ve held workshops on Astrology, Psychic Empowerment or Taoist practices, for example, I always get a good crowd. But, the one time I offered a class in cosmic humor to “Learn how the cards you hold were dealt to you by your Higher Self,” only one person signed up. Nuf said.

We can still celebrate this new Great Age we’re in with accelerating energies moving us toward a tipping point in the Light in the unified field of consciousness, even if we’re momentarily in a seemingly giant leap backwards into the shadow side of the mass consciousness spiritual cha-cha.

I hope you’ll enjoy my personal countdown of marvelous incentives for rejoicing. May they up your quota of cosmic humor:

10. “We are in the perfect circumstances for our Souls to learn whatever they designed this whole game to learn. As the process of karmic fruition speeds up, our lives get freer and freer from attachment and we create less and less karma.” RAM DASS

In other words: The less attachment we have to circumstances, people, places and things being the way we want===the less spinning our wheels, suffering and karmic bondage we create. Isn’t free will grand?

9. “Welcome and attend them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.” RUMI

If we review our personal history with 20-20 hindsight, how many of us can say that our most traumatic experiences reaped the deepest soul growth and healing over time? And, if you haven’t raised your hand yet . . . it’s a coming.

8. "Death, impermanence, things that go wrong, laughter, colour, autumn leaves, light sparkling in puddles, cars breaking down, relationships ending, falling in love—all are the play of existence, the movement and change that is reality. It is only experienced as unsatisfactory when we try to stop movement and change, or see movement and change as painful. Once we have a real understanding of the cause of our experience of samsara [endless cycle of death and rebirth] as unsatisfactory, we can engage with it in a light-hearted manner. We play with our life experience, rather than feeling like a victim of our circumstances." Ngakpa Chögyam

On the morning after events like terrorist attacks, tsunamis, the recent presidential election or any other devastating news on the planet, can we watch the sun rising as if on the very first day of creation? If so, we become ever more aware that—even when the sky “appears” to be falling—we can choose to respond with an “OH, WOW” rather than an “OH, NO.”

7. “To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle. Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. Henceforth I ask not for good fortune. I myself am good fortune. Re-examine all that you have been told... dismiss that which insults your soul.” WALT WHITMAN

The Buddha spoke at length about how rare and precious a human incarnation is . . . but we just keep forgetting. If we could only remember to begin and end each day with a “thank you,” then we just might be able to experience our own Being as the original fortune cookie and taste our innate sweetness and everyone else’s as well. Yum!

6. “From the Buddhist point of view, the Chinese officer who is committing the cruel act against the young boy is initiating a new cycle of negative karma. In the case of the child, there is a closure of a particular karma that the child is experiencing. The perpetrator of the crime is in fact an object of more compassion and mercy than the child.” DALAI LAMA

From facilitating thousands of past-life regressions, I can honestly share that some of the greatest karmic gains come from past incarnations with the most suffering, and that the lives where there was the most abuse of power incurred the most karmic poo-poo. The wheels of karma grind exceedingly slow but exceedingly fine. Everybody, including evil clowns—sooner or later—gets their karmauppance, rest assured. So, that’s just one less thing to ever be concerned about! (Unless you’ve been veery naughty:))

5. “The one who knows how to live knows how to die. The one who knows how to fall in love knows when the moment has come to fall out of it. He falls out of it gracefully, with a good-bye, with gratitude. If one really wants to live life in all its richness, one has to learn how to be consistently inconsistent. How to be able to move from one extreme to another—sometimes rooted deep in the earth and sometimes flying high in the heavens, sometimes making love and sometimes meditating. And then, slowly, your heaven and your earth come closer and closer, and you will become the horizon where they meet.” OSHO

It’s not about embracing only vertical development and loving unity consciousness OR about embracing horizontal development and being a lover of duality/polarities—it’s about embracing the full range of vertical and horizontal, unity and duality simultaneously and holding that split-screen with no preference. When we fully dive into our bodies, emotions, physical senses and all the wonders of the earth plane while remaining fully present with WHAT IS, then the space/time continuum dissolves and we are always Right Here and Right Now with infinite levels of heaven (or hell) to choose to be in. The wisdom of “no escape” becomes visceral as we realize there truly is nowhere else to go. It’s never “either/or.” In my book—it’s always “AND and BOTH.”

4. “The Warrior of Light knows that everything a person does has enduring consequences—his victories, his defeats, his enthusiasm and his despondency—all form part of his Good Fight. The glory of the world is transitory, and we should not measure our lives by it. We are all protagonists of our own lives and it is often the anonymous heroes who leave the deepest mark.” PAUL COELHO

Many of us delude ourselves into believing that we have a great mission to bring some “thing” important to the world that will outlast us and give our lives more meaning, and that this calling supersedes dealing with our personal issues. But, if we place manifesting our transpersonal dharma before healing our personal emotional, family and body karma, then we need to know we may be setting ourselves up to get whacked down to size (in a good way) in the area we’re avoiding healing. And, if we’re hard at the inner work of healing ourselves, then we need to know that healing our hearts is the greatest gift we can make to the Heart of the World.

3. “When a cat falls out of a tree, it lets go of itself, becomes completely relaxed, and lands lightly on the ground. If the cat made up its mind that it didn’t want to fall, it would become tense and rigid and would just be a bag of broken bones upon landing. In the same way, it is the philosophy of the Tao that we are all falling out of a tree, at every moment of our lives. As a matter of fact, the moment we were born we were kicked off a precipice and we are falling—and there is nothing we can do to stop it. So, instead of living in a state of constant tension and clinging to all sorts of things that are actually falling with us because the whole world is impermanent, be like a cat. Don’t resist it.” ALAN WATTS

This may be one of my favorite quotes of all time as it epitomizes the philosophy I aspire to live by on a daily basis. We get to choose whether to: fight a riptide, take other’s “stuff” projected at us personally or resist surrendering fully to the Flow of Life especially when it’s knocking us down. Or, we can hold the faith that whatever is pushing at us is a form of spiritual resistance training—to make us stronger and more flexible—AND that the Flow will always carry us in perfect time to the other shore. In the current geopolitical climate being “like a cat” is spiritual pragmatism at its highest.

2. “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” Arthur Schopenhauer

Not so long ago, the belief that the Earth revolved around the Sun could get one killed. Two years ago, I wrote that:

“We must be making some progress because, as we enter 2016, beliefs that: Healthcare for all is a good thing, gun control is necessary, global warming is real, and all forms of fundamentalism are based on ignorance and fear—are slowly gaining ground. In fact, I believe that we’ll look back at this time with 20-20 hindsight and see it as a pivotal tipping point in which the majority began to hold these truths to be self-evident.”

This year and last, everything I said about 2016 now has a big question mark next to it, at least in terms of the current political state of affairs. But, I still believe that the overall mass consciousness is at a pivotal tipping point toward the Light, and that the dark “powers that be” are a temporary reaction formation from the shadow side of the mass consciousness.

To the degree that each of us holds the faith that the Light of forward progress in the evolution of humankind will prevail===to this degree will the present darker forces fall away all the sooner.

1. “This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once: scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.” Carl Jung

On the subject of destiny versus free will, Jung also said: “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.” My take on this is: “We always have free will in how we choose to deal with our karma as it arises, and this choice determines our destiny (aka fate).” In other words, if we get pissed off enough at our circumstances—and justifiable anger is one of the most dangerous and toxic emotions—then, sooner or later, our body (or personal reality) will explode with somatizing symptoms to get our attention that our “house” is on fire.

Before the 2016 election, I wrote that:

“If we look at the mass reality as a mirror or projection of our mass shadow—we still have a long way to go. That’s why it’s best to start with ourselves. For, if we can learn how to maintain peace in our inner kingdom, then, if you believe in the power of the ripple effect—so it shall be.”

Quite a premonition! To make the best use spiritually of the present challenges we face on the planet, it would be a very good time to review:

SOUL-LEVEL CURRICULUM: The Karmic Consequences of Entitlement (and it might not be what you think)

In addition, this year, if we want to maintain our personal health and sanity, daily spiritual practices are paramount, for ourselves and for the planet. If you know this, but have been procrastinating, there couldn’t be a better time to get started.

For more: Spiritual Practices Reading List

Taoist Practices MP3s for $20.12

In closing, wishing us all a year of ever-expanding, cracked-open Hearts and Minds allowing more Light, Love, Gratitude AND Cosmic Humor in than ever before,

J O A N

“Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don't have to like it...it's just easier if you do. As long as you think that the cause of your problem is “out there”—as long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering—the situation is hopeless. It means that you are forever in the role of victim, that you’re suffering in paradise.” BYRON KATIE