In the words of Pema Chodron “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”

If you are reading this, chances are that like me, there were many times over the past four years that you wished Donald Trump would just go away. Today, November 7th, with the election of new President of the US, I hope that we have learned what we needed to learn from him. Truly, he is the greatest mirror for the collective program of greed, separation, violence, and abhorrent misuse of power that we could have possibly asked for.

July 16th, Greta Thunberg and three of her fellow climate activists launched an open letter (https://climateemergencyeu.org/) demanding EU leaders take measurable, immediate action to genuinely tackle the climate crisis.

The letter’s demands include that the climate emergency is treated like an emergency, and with that comes the immediate halting of all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, and an end to fossil fuel subsidies. The letter also demands that EU member states make ecocide (extensive damage to Earth's ecological systems) an international crime, and that climate policies be put in place that reduce racial, economic, and gender inequality.

Almost every morning I walk through some nearby trails in a beautiful forest. The trails are extensive, and I readily get “lost” - although “lost” isn’t quite the right word! I follow the guidance of Spirit, who tells me what way to go, through what feels like an instinctual pulse in my gut. The feeling says “Go this way”.

A couple of weeks ago, I came to a usual crossroads where four ways meet, and was about to go my preferred route which takes me deeper into the forest where more unknown choices emerge, when the voice was clear “No, go that way”.

On June 16th, 1944, 76 years ago today, 14-year old George Stinney was executed by the electric chair following a 2-hour trial that found him, an African American boy, guilty of murdering two young white girls in South Carolina. His court-assigned lawyer offered no defence, and the all-white jury pronounced him guilty after 10 minutes of deliberation. In 2014 a judicial review overturned his conviction when a court ruled that he had not received a fair trial.

This is a horrific and heartbreaking story, but it is just one of hundreds, no…thousands, of stories of the incredible injustice that people of colour have lived (and died) through in so-called “modern” history.

It’s April 22, 2020, the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.

Following an oil spill off the coast of California in 1969, which released 3 million gallons of oil into a sensitive coastline area killing thousands of seabirds and marine mammals, a group of activists and concerned citizens initiated that first Earth Day – a day which is now recognized by most nations across the globe.

With the COVID-19 outbreak has come the closure of our meeting spaces and the introduction of strong social distancing measures, and the past few weeks have seen us move into a life that includes a lot less physical interaction with each other. As physical beings, the gifts of our senses are the primary ones through which most of us experience the world, and much of our days are filled with connecting to other people through our touch and our gaze, our close conversation, and our shared physical reality.

The space left by the loss of our daily physical interactions is leading us into interesting new territory, as what I am noticing in myself, and am predicting for other people in the coming days and weeks, is an increase in the use of our extra-sensory abilities.

Most of us are aware of the physical structures on which our lives are built. The homes we live in, the landscapes that surround us, the bodies that we inhabit. We usually also notice the substance that we create with our minds, and how what we think and imagine can often feel more real than what surrounds us in the material plane. The substance of the creations of our bodies and minds, the forms that surround us both literally and in our imaginations, make up the stage on which we play out our lives. Each day we perform an entire play, and in each moment, every line that we utter and prop that we grab – all these things that we “do” – seem to matter. If to no one else then at least to ourselves.

But once the play is over…what then? Yes, that day may have included much productivity. Boxes ticked, jobs completed. House cleaned, homework done, bills paid, holiday planned. Structure added or organized within the physical form of our lives. A good day’s work.

For many people, the new year is an opportunity to reflect on where they have been, where they are at, and where they want to go. New year’s resolutions are thrown about, and some of them land and take root, and some of them don’t, and maybe we make them again the next year, or maybe we don’t.

Like most people, I certainly participate in this activity, as reflection is a very important part of properly digesting the experiences of life and making the most of the learning gained. The learning is a big part of what helps us progress along our path.

I spend a lot of time talking about the importance of feeling your feelings. I have been actively practicing holding space for myself to feel my feelings for at least 15 years now, and there are days where the task is still very daunting, even for me.

There are days when I have so much inside, so close to the surface, that I feel acutely agitated, restless, …downright miserable…and all I want to do is distract myself. Like just this very morning, actually. I awoke today, feeling so heavy. This feeling had grown over the last few days, but I had been too busy, and also too sick, to turn my attention to it. I can now see that those suppressed emotional feelings (and some pretty intense full-moon energy) were what had caused my upset tummy and headache, but I couldn’t move much past my acute awareness of the misery of those physical feelings. I knew that I would get to the root of them, I just needed a little space, and Saturday morning is always the perfect time for a feeling-the-feelings date with myself!

When did we start teaching our men to externalize their feminine? To put the responsibility for transforming their emotions outside of themselves, onto the women in their lives?

We are each equal parts masculine and feminine. Penis or vagina, neither or both, you are half masculine and half feminine. These ultimate archetypal energies play out through us in essential ways, every day.

The feminine is the energy of creative inspiration and flow. She is the nurturer and nourisher, the one who sees the big picture, and understands just what is needed to keep things moving. She is energy in motion (E-MOTION).  She is the part of us from which physical manifestation can arise as it is her through which the birth of an idea flows in the first place. Without her, and her understanding of the necessary gestational period for any seed, no ideas – indeed no creation at all – would ever be birthed in to the world.