As the Cardinal Cross reaches exactitude we encounter the opportunity to step outside of everyday consciousness and concerns into a landscape altogether new, in which the four elements air (Mars in Libra), fire (Uranus in Aries), water (Jupiter in Cancer) and earth (Pluto in Capricorn) present everything we need to begin again should we choose to do so.
This cosmic event brings the notion of satori to mind: the experience of awakening as taught in Zen Buddhist tradition, which sometimes arises not as a welcoming liberation but as a force of such power that it tears apart all that is known leaving the awakened one effectively broken – but free – in its wake. Satori embodies the trauma of awakening, the breaking apart of self and soul in the moment of recognition that both are false gods designed to keep us safe in our narrow, tiny lives. If we contrast this with the goal of replacing an undesirable self with a more desirable one, inherent in many spiritual teachings, we can come to appreciate the entirely different order of experience available to us now.
The Trappist monk Thomas Merton once described love as ‘the only revolutionary force capable of producing anything new’. These words also resonate with the energy of this week, for love is a raw force of such transformational potential that we, the human race, have sought to reduce it to hearts and flowers, I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine, and conditionality which demands all manner of pay-offs before commitment is made. The cosmic forces aligned right now mock such inconsequential associations with the most powerful force in the universe and will tolerate them no more.
As we journey through this week immersed in the rays of this rare alignment, we could too easily overlook the vital importance of this time. We may continue to seek refuge in the familiar, allowing change but only so far as we’re comfortable with it: conditional change on our terms. Or we may seek an experience of transformation which comes as a treat, satisfying our need for it to look and feel a certain way, delivering us to a particular destination. But any and all preconceived notions of possibility must be open to challenge right now, ready to be blown out of the water at any moment to make space for a whole other order of experience, of which we can barely conceive until it has arrived.
This is a revolutionary time, no doubt about it. Old concepts and expectations are being shattered, no matter how sacred they may have been to us. Life is not what we thought and nor are we. The life force itself rises up to take control of our lives, no holds barred and with little regard for what we think ‘should’ be happening right now.
And at times of such revolutionary spirit, as Thomas Merton recognises, love is a vital ally, the ‘only… force capable of producing anything new’. For if we cannot soften our ego edges to allow a radically new perspective or to embrace the demons within ourselves and others, nothing really changes. All we do is recreate from the same old ingredients, believing ourselves to be formed anew.
This time will not return to us. There will be others in due course, of a different order and resonance, to help us move through the most intransigent aspects of our psyches, but this particular opportunity is a rare and valuable one. If we can open ourselves to its energy and resolve to allow change to be what is necessary and not what we ordain it to be, we may discover that awakening is more powerful than we ever conceived, than we could ever conceive. That it introduces a whole new order of being which isn’t about happiness, personal satisfaction or living the life we want. Instead awakening is revealed to us now as the very essence of the incoming Aquarian age which demands that we live in a state of radical trust, a recognition that if we can dream it, it is too small for these times and if we want it with all our heart then our heart yet needs to expand beyond it.
Whatever we believe transformation and awakening to be, the Cardinal Cross brings a new beginning which challenges all notions, reminding us that to know is to limit possibility and to believe is to impose form upon a universe that we have not even begun to understand.
Remember how we have to pay to subsidize a crap ton of genetically modified corn (yes, not just a ton, but a “crap ton”), because we have to make the supposedly green biofuel ethanol? We are told it is so much better for the environment, right?
The Obama Administration and others claim it’s truly a ‘clean oil alternative’ that will help ‘combat climate change’, after all.
Well according to a new study — a study our government spent half-a-million dollars on that was just released in a peer-reviewed journal — that is simply untrue, as AP reports:
…biofuels made with corn residue release 7 percent more greenhouse gases in the early years compared with conventional gasoline.
While biofuels are better in the long run, the study says they won’t meet a standard set in a 2007 energy law to qualify as renewable fuel.
Guess they’ll just up and change the standard to fit the agenda yet again like they usually do when they don’t like reality… (Raised permissible levels of nuclear radiation in drinking water post-Fukushima, anyone?)
Reminds me of a lot of other supposedly “green” stuff we are told — through heaping amounts of green guilt propaganda or greenwashing — we should all run out and buy right away “for the environment”…those CFL light bulbs immediately come to mind
You know the curly little bulbs that contain mercury, so if you accidentally break one, your trendy green energy-saving Earth bulb suddenly becomes a toxic, hazardous waste pile for you and the environment, which is why the EPA recommends a multi-step hazardous materials clean-up process that involves clearing all humans and pets out of the room.
One study also concluded those bulbs emit dangerous ultraviolet rays that damage human skin cells as well. Sounds fun, right?
Basically when the government says something is good for me anymore, I have to wonder if it really is or if they are just saying that because someone high up in there got paid to say that so someone else could get a big, fat kickback because people believe it.
Sure, that may sound paranoid at first read, but here’s a list of a whole lot of reasons why I say it:
(And the sad part is, the revolving door between our government and big business spins so fast, these diagrams couldn’t even keep up with it if the people who created them wanted to.)
NASA Expert Clears the Air: Chemtrails are Real, Geoengineering May Be Inevitable, Mad Science in Control of Weather Could Blackmail Earth
Droughts, famine, chemtrails and the global game of risk: geoengineering is real, and inevitable part of the future, when science tries to orchestrate nature in the name of taming climate change, while experts argue over who will make the rules in the global governance of weather modification and geoengineering.
Could a rogue billionaire tinker with the delicate balance of our Earth? Might a mad scientist even “weaponize” weather control to wield power over the planet? Who calls the shots, and who watchers the modifiers?
Everything is possible, warns Riley Duren, Chief Systems Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs. Chemtrails and geoengineering are no longer the things of conspiratorial speculation or retro science fiction – they are the scenarios shaping the world to come as science contemplates how far is too far for man to go in the name of a global environmental crisis?
EARTH DAY METEOR SHOWER: Earth is passing through a stream of debris from ancient Comet Thatcher, source of the annual Lyrid meteor shower. Prof. Peter Brown of the Universiy of Western Ontario reports that “the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR) just finished processing orbital data from last night and the Lyrids are showing up quite nicely. The meteor rate is near 15 per hour so visual observers should have had a good view early this morning and should be able to easily detect the shower tonight.”
Click to view an all-sky map of CMOR meteor radar echoes on April 22nd:
The bright pink blob pinpoints the Lyrid radiant in the constellation Lyra. Other lesser showers are active, too, but they are much weaker. If you see a meteor tonight, it is probably a Lyrid.
Usually the Lyrid meteor shower is mild (10-20 meteors per hour), but unmapped filaments of dust in the comet’s tail sometimes trigger outbursts ten times stronger. So far this year’s shower is trending toward the usual. “The shower is comparable in strength to what was seen last year – so far no surprises,” says Brown.
Forecasters expect the shower to peak on April 22nd between the hours of 10:00 UT and 21:00 UT.
Moderate extremely shallow earthquake near Pivka, Slovenia (also felt in Italy and Croatia)
Last update: April 22, 2014 at 10:43 am by By Armand Vervaeck
Update 10:39 UTC : Local media are reporting some cracks in walls of older buildings.
Update 09:58 UTC : a number of aftershocks have been registered although the strength was not strong enough to be felt by the people.
- The Pivka elementary school was evacuated.
- The Fire Brigade at Pivka has not yet received any emergency calls. Evacutaion at Pivka took place because of the perceived strong shaking at the 2th and 3th floor of the school. Other schools in the area did also evacuate.
Update 09:53 UTC : The strongest earthquake in the area since 1900 was a 1926 M5.7 earthquake with epicenter near Postojna, Slovenia
Update 09:23 UTC : Landscape near the epicenter shows us that slight damage is possible (farm fields). No reports of damage as yet.
Moderate but extremely shallow earthquake with epicenter in Slovenia.
Due to the extremely shallow character of this earthquake, slight damage like cracks in walls, fallen tiles etc cannot be excluded.
Especially the villages as shown on this map may have some slight damage if the current preliminary information is confirmed.
50 km SW of Ljubljana, Slovenia / pop: 255,115 / local time: 10:58:27.6 2014-04-22
3 km S of Pivka, Slovenia / pop: 2,051 / local time: 10:58:27.6 2014-04-22
Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : 4.3
Local Time (conversion only below land) : 2014-04-22 10:58:28
Today there is a sense of nostalgia in the air. Along with that is a kind of baseline sense of things not being quite right. This is a day to be prepared for anything. If you are going out, make sure you have enough gas in your car, money in your pocket, and time to spare. The Trickster is abroad today and it is his turn to have some fun. Just remember, you are never out of control as long as you go with what is happening around you while being aware of your connectedness to the larger whole, the Universe, the All. When you allow yourself to be part of the pan, then you are a participant and, as such, it is always going your way. There are lessons to learn and, yes, a lot of them suck, but perspective helps a lot in seeing how everything comes together.
You Won’t Believe The Method That Common Core Is Using To Teach Our Kids Subtraction
By Michael Snyder, on April 18th, 2014
The dumbing down of America is accelerating. A massive federal takeover of education known as “Common Core” is attempting to impose nationwide academic standards on public schools throughout the entire country. Thanks to the backing of billionaire Bill Gates, endless promotion by the U.S. Department of Education, and financial bribes to state governments by the Obama administration, 45 states and Washington, D.C. have already agreed to implement the full Common Core standards in their schools. Unfortunately, these “standards” are doing to public education what Obamacare is doing to our health care system – absolutely ruining it. Just look at how basic math instruction has changed. Posted below is a comparison between the “old method” of subtraction and the “new method” of subtraction being taught in many of our schools. When I first came across this on Facebook, I thought that it was a joke…
I thought that there was no possible way that this could be real. I really thought that this must have come from some sort of parody website.
But it is actually true.
Here is another example of this. The following is an incredibly bizarre Common Core math problem and the response by one very frustrated parent that has gone viral all over the Internet recently…
The frustration being experienced by that parent is quite understandable. When I first looked at that math question, I could almost feel myself getting dumber while I read it.
Is this kind of “math” really preparing our kids for the real world?
1) A requirement that students understand place value, for instance, that “100 can be thought of as a bundle of ten tens — called a ‘hundred.’”
2) That students be able to “add and subtract within 1000, using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value … and relate the strategy to a written method.” Also that they “understand that in adding or subtracting three-digit numbers, one adds or subtracts hundreds and hundreds, tens and tens, ones and ones; and sometimes it is necessary to compose or decompose tens or hundreds.”
3) That they can “explain why addition and subtraction strategies work, using place value and the properties of operations.”
4) And that they can “represent whole numbers as lengths from 0 on a number line diagram with equally spaced points corresponding to the numbers 0, 1, 2, …, and represent whole-number sums and differences within 100 on a number line diagram.”
Here is another example of some Common Core math…
What?
Are you kidding me?
Why make things so convoluted?
Are they actually trying to make our kids hate math more than they already do?
And old terms such as “add” and “subtract” are out. As you can see from the “Common Core – Parent Cheat Sheet” posted below, our kids are now learning how to “increase” and “decrease”…
And of course Common Core is not just messing with math.
If you cannot read what it says in the picture, here is a transcript of the text…
Ruby sat on the bed she shared with her husband holding a hairclip. There was something mysterious and powerful about the cheaply manufactured neon clip that she was fondling suspiciously. She didn’t recognize the hairclip. It was too big to be their daughter’s, and Ruby was sure that it wasn’t hers. She hadn’t had friends over in weeks, but here was this hairclip, little and green with a few long black hair strands caught in it. Ruby ran her fingers through her own blonde hair. She had just been vacuuming when she noticed this small, bright green object under the bed. Now their life would never be the same. She would wait here until Mike returned home.
Why is Ruby so affected by the hairclip?
How has the hairclip affected Ruby’s relationship?
From where did the hairclip most likely come?
Why in the world are 4th grade students being taught lessons about husbands cheating on their wives?
Is this appropriate?
Unfortunately, this kind of inappropriate material can be found throughout Common Core-based textbooks all over the country.
Those promoting Common Core have gone to great lengths to make it appear that teachers, parents and students are embracing these new standards, but as Alex Newman recently detailed, that is not the case at all. In fact, there has been a huge backlash against Common Core even in bastions of liberalism such as New York…
While the Big Business front group has been producing ads purporting to show that “teachers” support the standards, that lie is easily put to rest by witnessing the revolt among teachers in New York, where the Common Core roll-out has advanced faster than in other states. There, the board of the state teachers union voted unanimously against Common Core as it has been implemented so far. New York State Assemblyman Al Graf, a member of the Assembly Education Committee with a degree in education, even toldThe New American that the controversial standards represent “state-sponsored child abuse.” Even the governor in the establishment stronghold has been forced to retreat slightly on Common Core in the face of the public uprising. Opponents of the education takeover say this is just the start.
Posted below is stunning video of an Illinois Curriculum Director explaining that under Common Core, it is okay for children to say that “three times four equals eleven” as long as they can give the reasons for their answer…
What will our country look like if this insanity is allowed to continue?
At this point, only 43 percent of all Americans aged 18 to 24 can correctly point out the state of Ohio on a map of the United States.
How much dumber can we get and still survive as a nation?
The dumbing down of elementary school children has reached epidemic proportions. They can no longer make any informed decisions due to the quantity of misinformation, falsities and deliberate use of distraction, all while imposing academic standards not even fit for a primate.
One of most significant issues facing youths in this era is the deteriorating education system which does not respond to their needs. Couple that with a system that now stresses collecting useless knowledge without any understanding its value and you have a recipe for disaster for new generations.
For future generations to learn what society has become, why we have the problems we do in the world, and why adults never progress beyond many of their mistakes, it will be necessary to move out of the current educational paradigm and into a new one. This will involve a systematic deprogramming and deschooling of all children in developed nations.
Current curriculums focus on psychologically conditioning children to fail. They form educational clutter and complexities which are completely unnecessary to the developing mind. They force kids to adhere to a curricula that quashes their natural inclination to and ask questions especially pertaining to logic. Their knowledge is being constructed to have no value in the real world.
A massive federal takeover of education known as “Common Core” is attempting to impose nationwide academic standards on public schools throughout the entire country.
Thanks to the backing of billionaire Bill Gates, endless promotion by the U.S. Department of Education, and financial bribes to state governments by the Obama administration, 45 states and Washington, D.C. have already agreed to implement the full Common Core standards in their schools. Common core has nothing to do with education, but more psychological programing and obedience, while refuting any logic.
Read more at http://www.realfarmacy.com/you-wont-believe-the-way-theyre-teaching/#ejKfMlDJLAfS80kX.99
The dumbing down of elementary school children has reached epidemic proportions. They can no longer make any informed decisions due to the quantity of misinformation, falsities and deliberate use of distraction, all while imposing academic standards not even fit for a primate.
One of most significant issues facing youths in this era is the deteriorating education system which does not respond to their needs. Couple that with a system that now stresses collecting useless knowledge without any understanding its value and you have a recipe for disaster for new generations.
For future generations to learn what society has become, why we have the problems we do in the world, and why adults never progress beyond many of their mistakes, it will be necessary to move out of the current educational paradigm and into a new one. This will involve a systematic deprogramming and deschooling of all children in developed nations.
Current curriculums focus on psychologically conditioning children to fail. They form educational clutter and complexities which are completely unnecessary to the developing mind. They force kids to adhere to a curricula that quashes their natural inclination to and ask questions especially pertaining to logic. Their knowledge is being constructed to have no value in the real world.
A massive federal takeover of education known as “Common Core” is attempting to impose nationwide academic standards on public schools throughout the entire country.
Thanks to the backing of billionaire Bill Gates, endless promotion by the U.S. Department of Education, and financial bribes to state governments by the Obama administration, 45 states and Washington, D.C. have already agreed to implement the full Common Core standards in their schools. Common core has nothing to do with education, but more psychological programing and obedience, while refuting any logic.
Read more at http://www.realfarmacy.com/you-wont-believe-the-way-theyre-teaching/#ejKfMlDJLAfS80kX.99
You will be feeling yourself quite solitary today in many ways, even if you are about and about in company. Something is stirring deep within and it is calling for you to notice it. This is a thought, an idea, a way that you have incubated for a very long time, and it is now come forth. There can be some emotional moments today. You can see some people and things in a new light and realize that perhaps it was there the whole time. You can find yourself distracted easily, your attention wandering, alert to things in the periphery of your vision. There is change in the air today. You can embrace it or deny it. Nonetheless, change is all part of everything right now and moving forward in change will assist you in how you are feeling as well as showing you what it means to be in your own power.
Global Notes: This is a northern hemisphere shower.
Every year in late April Earth passes through the dusty tail of Comet Thatcher (C/1861 G1), and the encounter causes a meteor shower–the Lyrids. This year the shower peaks on Tuesday, April 22nd. Forecasters expect 10 to 20 meteors per hour, although outbursts as high as 100 meteors per hour are possible.
Lyrid meteors appear to stream from the bright star Vega in the constellation Lyra:
In fact, Lyrids have nothing to do with Vega. The true source of the shower is Comet Thatcher. Every year in April, Earth plows through Thatcher’s dusty tail. Flakes of comet dust, most no bigger than grains of sand, strike Earth’s atmosphere traveling 49 km/s (110,000 mph) and disintegrate as streaks of light.
Lyrid meteors are typically as bright as the stars in the Big Dipper, which is to say of middling brightness. But some are more intense, even brighter than Venus. These “Lyrid fireballs” cast shadows for a split second and leave behind smokey debris trails that linger for minutes.
Occasionally, the shower intensifies. Most years in April there are no more than 5 to 20 meteors per hour during the shower’s peak. But sometimes, when Earth glides through an unusually dense clump of comet debris, the rate increases. Sky watchers in 1982, for instance, counted 90 Lyrids per hour. An even more impressive outburst was documented in 1803 by a journalist in Richmond, Virginia, who wrote:
“Shooting stars. This electrical [sic] phenomenon was observed on Wednesday morning last at Richmond and its vicinity, in a manner that alarmed many, and astonished every person that beheld it. From one until three in the morning, those starry meteors seemed to fall from every point in the heavens, in such numbers as to resemble a shower of sky rockets…” [ref]
What will the Lyrids do this year? The only way to know for sure is to go outside and look.
Experienced meteor watchers suggest the following viewing strategy: Dress warmly. Bring a reclining chair, or spread a thick blanket over a flat spot of ground. Lie down and look up somewhat toward the east. Meteors can appear in any part of the sky, although their trails will tend to point back toward the radiant–i.e., toward Vega.
Vega is a brilliant blue-white star about three times wider than our Sun and 25 light years away. You might have seen Vega in Carl Sagan’s movie Contact. It was the source of alien radio transmissions to Earth.
By Michael Snyder, on April 18th, 2014
