Building my altar to existence, designing the playhouse of my environment, and just bringing more presence and awareness into my life with every breath.
*Welcome*
Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! Happy Hanukkah 🕎, Happy Solstice! Happy Kwanza! Happy Festivus! It’s that sacred time of the year when we all share our love for traditions or forge new ones. Some of us are in the Southern Hemisphere and some in the Northern Hemisphere and our weather patterns are all different!
I’ve often mused at the juxtaposition of the Christmas stories in the desert with camel and baby Jesus in the manger. Mary and Joseph with thick views of the Middle Eastern camel 🐪, exotic nights, and the dark spread of sky canopy unveiling the stars. This strongly contrasts with the snowy scenes of Santa lore, flying reindeer against a cloudy dark backdrop of loaded, dense clouds, clad thickly suspended sky. Fireplaces ablaze everywhere.
Here in S. California near the desert we’ve been enjoying very chilly weather for weeks! We had snow just a week or so ago up in the nearby mountains! Now it’s warming up just in time for Christmas Day. Feliz Navidad! I have a long-time friend who has moved to Mexico and sharing all her new sights. Another friend who also moved there recently. Friends in the Midwest and Northeast are facing all different blizzard-like temperatures/conditions. Friends in New Zealand and Australia are enjoying the warm weather and luscious flowers: pansies, violas, hellebore and calendula! My apologies for I know I left many people out. Variety is more than the spice of life-it is the example of life!
We live in a global village.
If you find yourself in delicate repose sleeping more regularly and eating more mightily, you are simply responding to the sensibility of the winter season! If you are in bloom in the Southern hemisphere: same!
I remember the elegant crystal winter mornings I awoke to on the East coast contrasting so sparklingly with the austerity of the night winter wind against the bone of the trees: oh, the drama, the beauty. There was the sound of the crackling ice melting so quickly from the morning sun, and the concern for tree limbs falling. There was brisk, fresh hope and steaming breath!
Now I am cozy here in S. California in a whole new way. I get to enjoy the surprise of weather and the uniqueness of cuisine. This year homemade hot tamales found their ways into our bellies. Santa paid a visit at preschool and we enriched our lives with our annual visit to the internal cottages where we saw the Princess of the Philippines.
With a string of planets like garland in Capricorn: Sun, Moon, Mercury, and Venus, and Pluto, I am eagerly awaiting the planets all to rise on the horizon of my ascendant! For now they are sleepy 12th house dwellers, hiding magic for me in unexpected places.
In March of 2023, Pluto will *finally* shift into Aquarius and sweep in and out of Aquarius until settling there in September 2024 for its long ride until 2043-44. For this next stretch of transit, there’s plenty to be anticipating! I remember way back when I was a younger astrologer and watching Pluto move into Capricorn, anticipating it beforehand and watching its magic unfold. It was a lot like I expected it to be, but maybe even more dramatic than I expected at the time. Financially it was quite a mess for those structures which popped or crashed (insert your favorite destruction metaphor) then came back and washed up again (housing and stock market). So here we are, on the brink of the next epoch. I truly believe it will be beyond belief! I truly believe it matters what we focus on and bring out the best available rather than predicting the calamity that too many do. It’s a waste of time to predict calamity in my opinion.
For now, enjoy your festivities and enjoy this major transition for the first quarter of 2023 is sure to be part of it. Aquarius likes us to ask “What sets you free?”
If you would like to have an astrological consultation with me, feel free to reach out, I’m happy to help you make the best of your energies in the New Year! We are all in this together, in our global village and there so many different perspectives! If you do seek out someone to help you, make sure they care about you.
Be well, be healthy, and find your joy in every moment…!
♥️
Off to brunch and the tide pools! The New Moon has revealed a low tide!
I don’t know how many of us have been even unconsciously/consciously planning for the Mercury retrograde set to start moving backwards on December 22 to January 18, 2023. I know for me, I’ve had to slow way down–take my time getting through being sick, and nurse myself into health. But also I’ve needed to feel into some more challenging emotions and allow them to move though me gently. It’s a Capricornian retrograde during the Capricornian season. I’ve got Capricorn in my 11th and 12th houses, and it’s never been my favorite sign. Career path and career recognition as well as earning enough income to live has always been a challenge for me. I think it’s because of this, I never felt like I self-actualized. I’ve never been fired from a job. I always excelled at all the jobs I did. However, I was always left longing for something more. I was looking for my purpose. There was a period of time when I was working in IT for a very well known company, and I thought that all I wanted to do was work up the line and gain experience through this career. The job benefits were great. I was always winning awards and making a decent income while working special shift hours. Then my boss was demoted due to his on-going health problems. It was then that I decided I need to do something radically different. I needed to work for an organization that cared about their employees. Even more than that, I wanted to go into business for myself, and sell something I actually cared about. So I started learning massage in 2008. However, it wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I actually started my own business.
Are you someone who is successful at business? If so, what do you think made the difference in your success?
Do you struggle with business?
Are you in a family of entrepreneurs?
Have any of you realized that business and growing business can be a an act of service?
I’m in the process of recovering from a fever and a cough. This is the first fever I’ve had since the beginning of the pandemic, even though I got Covid at least once! Then I had lost my sense of smell, but got it back quickly after. However I believe Covid triggered depression at that time. Fortunately, I got out of it with help and support of medication, which I now no longer take. Getting on it was pretty bad. Getting off was easy. Getting on there were awful side-effects that worsened my depression and had me calling relatives in the middle of the night. That eventually passed. This is why I think many people who might benefit from antidepressants don’t use them. But I stayed the course. I eventually improved to the point of not needing anything, and it was only then, when getting off the antidepressant, I learned that they were the cause of terrible night sweats—nice to be free of those now. Well, until this fever. But with this fever came those awful chills. I’m grateful for my body’s ability to heal. I share this because it’s okay to go through processes and it’s not taboo in my world to get help from both alternative medicine and Western medicine. Of course the Western medicine is often not so good for the long term-though each case is different. Each person is absolutely unique.
I’ve been writing a lot about time, and I plan to go back and pick up my theme I started from my last blog post. But for some reason, this picture came up in my phone’s feed from when I was in a temple in India, and finished my first puja at 21. I had a Brahman bless the crown of my head. Age 21 I was at the pinnacle of my world. I couldn’t even imagine that I made it to my dream of world travel. I found that embracing these sacred temples that I traveled throughout the world deepened my spirituality, and it was on this trip that it became like a sojourn for me in my soul. Was I connecting with former lifetimes? It was most likely the case. Eventually I became a doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese medicine. All my journeys seem to have taken a decent amount of time. I have lived deeply, and sometimes it’s hard to believe how I got to here, and from where I came. I sincerely love helping people. I love being an inspiration and a beacon of hope. Recently I had a person confide in me that. Here you can read it:
If any of you need anything, a pep talk, or shoulder to lean on for a moment. I’m here. Just send me a message in the contact form.
My last article was about time and the current theories in theoretical physics about the nature of the universe. Time is not well understood on the cosmological scale. We do know that we experience time subjectively. In my next explorations, I hope to write about how time is related to aspects of psychology and how different aspects of the brain process time. This might be a tipping off point for me to do more investigation into consciousness and oscillating microtubules. This is an interesting topic for me, so I hope to have some time to do it.
May your day be filled with curiosity and wonder–we live in a marvelous world.
Here our sunny Southern California is giving us a wind and rain storm. It might even bring up to 4in! That’s a lot for a place that might only see about 12in per year. I’m looking forward to the rain, but not the damage. It will be nice to be cozy in the house! That’s perfect for the current astrological moon (and for a natal Cancer Moon).
First, this blog post is partly inspired by Tiramit at Dhamma Footsteps’s blog post, “Without beginning and without end”. In Tiramit’s post he writes about the now-moment, the present moment–and how its really all there is. Concepts of Past, Present and Future are descriptors and constructs. He writes of personal synchronicities with naming one of his blog categories, “now-moment,” as it aligns with some of some of Meister Eckhart’s 14th century thinking and writing. He quotes David Loy in Insight Journal to express the points that time could be a construct.
“We are not in time because we are time. Our nature is temporal which means we are not things; we are bundles of physical and mental processes. And when we become nondual with those processes, the past is not something that falls away, and the future is not something that’s coming. Then we live “in” what is sometimes called the eternal present. Etymologically the word “eternity” means without beginning and without end. What is without beginning and without end? It’s always now.” [David Loy, qtd. in Dhamma Footsteps]
It is here where I depart and examine instead the concept of time in terms of General Relativity, Quantum Physics, Loop Quantum Gravity, and String Theory.
For Einstein, the father of General Relativity: “the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion” (Einstein, 1955, Letter). This is not inconsistent with the idea of mathematical intuitionism.
Introduced by the 20th-century, by the L.E.J. Brouwer, a Dutch mathematician, Mathematical Intuitionism is a school of thought that posits that the main objects of mathematical discourse are mental constructions governed by self-evident laws. However, as a physicist, I doubt that Einstein was a mathematical intuitionist. He was busy using mathematics to describe and understand physics and develop General Relativity.
For Einstein, Time is relative to the frame of reference. The rate at which time passes is based on your speed and acceleration at any moment. With Einstein’s General Relativity, the faster you travel, the slower time appears to pass. I tend to think of aging as ‘time’ defined as a succession of events. The “amount” of time that’s gone by, therefore, would not be measured by a clock, but by the number of events that happened in a time frame. With social media, and information exchange happening faster than we can imagine, I think of how we experience this dual process of aging and increased technology use delivering event information faster, as all leading to a very fast pace of life. We are also ‘producing’ more during these times.
Look at how when we are young children, we have biological clocks that are going absurdly fast compared to adult standards. A child’s brain is 80% grown in size by age 3 and by age 5, 90% in size. This biological clock is going so quickly that the child’s perception of time is likely to be extremely slow in comparison to the adults’. It was also Einstein who said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” From here, we can extrapolate that even in the pace of our own lives, the greater world is moving at an even faster pace, for we are only witnessing and participating in tiny “snap shots” of the whole events that could exist, as we imagine really are existing without our witnessing or participating in them.
Quantum Physics
Wait, put on the breaks! I’m feeling like I’m in a black hole. This is where General Relativity (GR) doesn’t work very well. What Quantum Physics (QP) does is introduce uncertainty. In complete irony for the uncertainty appreciation that Quantum Physics releases is that “time in quantum mechanics is rigid, not bendy and intertwined with the dimensions of space as in relativity” (Wolchover, 2020). Apparently, quantum physics isn’t resolutely deterministic or indeterministic. There is still so much that is unknown about the overall definition of time. This is one of the challenges of merging the theory of GR with the QP.
Loop Quantum Gravity
(MirageC/Getty Images) as seen in ScienceAlert.com
Holy smokes, in Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG), apparently time does not exist at all! According to Sam Baron who writes for ScienceAlert.com, “while physics might eliminate time, it seems to leave causation intact: the sense in which one thing can bring about another.” Now doesn’t that make us scratch our heads? The best that I can understand LQG is that space-time is woven together as network with hubs. In this type of theory, gravity might exist as quanta or packets. Apparently these loops are connected by nods forming spin networks which create spin foam.
This is the best video I found on the above topics, but I didn’t get any closer to understanding time! It really lays out all of these theories about understanding the nature of everything. The main issue is why are there two separate laws and rules for the very large and the very small. Therefore, it is clear that general relativity is not the explanation of everything! Quantum theories arose because classical physics didn’t explain the nature of physics fully, under all circumstances. The smallest unit of time is the Planck time. It is the time it takes light to traverse one Planck length, the smallest duration of time that has physical meaning.
String Theory
LQG does not try to form a unified theory of everything as does String Theory (ST). ST requires that space-time have 10 spacial dimensions for it to exist as it has been hypothesized. However, so far there is no evidence for these extra dimensions. Here is a short, non-comprehensive list of things that we need to have evidence for in order for ST to be true/accurate and not just theoretically attractive:
2). That time did not have a beginning and will not have an end (existence before the big-bang)
3). Super-symmetry (a partner particle for each standard particle)
(mini black holes have not been created in labs)
4). There are questions about whether or not String Theory can even be put to the experimental test.
Does it matter that Time does or does not exist?
For as long as there is a practical application for space-time, such as planning a family outing or vacation, agreeing with a friend on where to meet for tea or coffee, and deciding when to hold a wedding, I think that time will always be needed. What theoretical physics says about time with regard to the nature of reality, well, that’s still undecided by the physicists–for the most part. Also, we still don’t have a theory of everything that would make us feel confident for how time fits in neatly with all the things. How our understanding of time affects god/goddess and beingness? I’m not so sure. In moments of meditation, I don’t need time, because I already put that ‘time aside’ for either another investigation or an open process to experience energy without any constructs but potentially being in my body. Time is not needed then.
I like that I can have a ‘take it or leave it’ idea about time–use it when it’s necessary, and ditch it when it gets in the way of connecting within my imagination and potentially other dimensions. I feel like science backs my approach to time with our lack of understanding as species towards the nature of the universe. The theories exist, unsupported, but I am delighted that we still have so much to discover! I wonder if I would get so tired at night if it weren’t for the biological processes related to events taking place throughout the day, the use of ATP by my cells, the melatonin response to the calendar of the sky’s lights, and the biological clock-work of my cells measuring my movements, and lulling me into the end of my day. Or maybe my body wisens to the non-existence of time, and rests in it–in dream space, freed from it for a while.
I hope you enjoyed this exploration! Please leave a comment in the box below and let me know that you were here. Let me know if you read the whole thing, or only parts. Let me know if you visited any of the links below, or the video above. I know that i am enriched due to my exercise and exploration through time and physics, taking a small foray into a big, endless subject (finite or infinite, who knows?!).
Until next time we shall meet here… I wish you a wonderful day full of wonder 🙂 I might tackle microtubules for another time.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how powerful we can be when we overcome our own thinking that distracts us from our purpose. We have the force and power to harmonize our thoughts with total support and appreciation for our life force.
Keeping the mind poised on the hopeful possibilities that exist can be an exercise. As with any exercise, this requires a bit of devotion and a bit of faith. You have to believe you are building the muscle and you can measure and test this, too! Some of the faith part is based on the practiced realization that it does get easier, and if you don’t have the past experience to draw from, you might benefit from a measure of faith that you can improve at this with practice. So it does get easier. But that, too, can become a pitfall. We can get lazy as is natural for us humans.
The inertia and momentum gained from the work is nice to coast along. However, I do find that, like with any other practice, what is required is the on-going effort and not to sink into the easier moments when we coast along. If we sink into them we once again get distracted from the fact that our efforts are what make us happy.
We want life to be easy. Yet it is not. That right there is our most immediate problem, if we allow one to be there. This is human nature and one where we have an awareness of pain as a function of our consciousness. However as many researchers have found, “Pain can be described in neurological terms but cognitive awareness, interpretation, behavioral dispositions, as well as cultural and educational factors have a decisive influence on pain perception (Bueno-Gómez, 2017). All of these aspects of our pain are movable and can change with sincere work and devotion.
Like with devotion, what is required is a certain level of belief. Belief in order for it to become a practice, and then with practical experience, it becomes a conviction: that we can overcome our doubting and tragic minds that distract us from our purpose, and cause us suffering. We can learn from the process and become truly compassionate.
This full moon has us in a weird way. Just take a look at the chart above. You’ve got Mars and the Moon forming a conjunction that is less than an orb apart. This is a *very* close conjunction. Mars the planet of fire is heating up the moon in all sorts of ways. Those ways could be Gemini–neighbors, short distance-travel, language, siblings, local community, tools, and mobility or even transportation issues. Mars is in Retrograde–so the planet is in its “inverted position.” This is has zero ‘objective’ meaning in astronomy, but in astrology it has subjective meaning (I argue here that subjective meaning can be shared). The meaning historically is that the planets energies could be blocked externally–with retrograde planets. This could be that the energies and challenges are mostly inward and emotional; there’s extra aggressiveness internally, or sense of urgency that cannot be quelled easily. So, practice your deep breathing!
Look over at Jupiter and Neptune. They are both in an approx 7 degree orb of conjunction (for these transpersonal planets –those that are further away from our personal planets, in astrology), this conjunction has significance–mixing those energies together. A couple of days ago I posted about the sea. These planets have the same ancient (Jupiter) and modern ruler (Neptune) in Pisces. The energies have to do with the flighty depths of the sea–dealing with themes of escape or surrender, emergence into the ineffable and indistinguishable–dissolved, if you will. Jupiter and Neptune planetary themes can also deal with miracles, changes in fortune, and spiritual emergence. The goal is to locate and prevent addiction to illusions and lost causes. However, these planets are in a T-square with the Mars/Moon combination in Gemini and the Sun in Sagittarius.
Mercury is the ruler of Gemini. (which is important because this is a FULL MOON in GEMINI) Mercury is at 1degree 51 min of Capricorn, READ as Capricorn 2. The Sabian Symbol is “Three Stained Glass Windows, One Damaged by Bombardment.” Here is an interesting break down of that on a YouTube channel.
If you have been reading my blog in the last week *and* paying attention. Reflect back to my post red hair. There is the stained-glass. I didn’t plan this, plan on posting these old paintings of mine during this time when the themes are completely in-tune with the astrology. However, here it is. The stained-glass is evident in my work of art. Listen to this link above for the Sabian Symbol’s elucidation. I hope you find all this as interesting as I do. Consciousness–“awarding significance to items of beauty… we find our belonging.” That quote taken from the youtube video about the Sabian Symbol.
I’ve often struggled to find my belonging–to share my true self [and be seen!]. I look back at my old paintings now, and I see tremendous beauty, and I hope that takes me into the inspiration of producing more of them. I “gave up” too may times in my life. I will not give up any more. You will see me again and again. I will not go away. 🙂
This Full Moon connects directly back (by trine) to my natal Mars and Pluto conjunction. I think that this moon is the message for me to keep delving deeply into my own themes and not look for other people to make the connections that I need to make. I am making them. I’m building my voice in order to share them (Gemini).
Questions to think about:
When can we be with art when war is at hand?
How can be protect the art, our energy, and our resources and our values in a way where we can join with community and feel a sense of belonging? What I find beautiful you may not find beautiful. At this point I need to make whatever art comes and is begging to be released…
These are things to think about. I wish you a safe full moon in Gemini. If you are interested in working with me in terms of astrological consultation, I’d be happy to do so. I have been offering my services for years. Please click the link on the contact section of my blog. I am happy to help you.
This is a post about how dogs help us through hard times. It is about understanding that true love comes from a place of freedom, not attachment. And that life remains, simple easy and good, especially when you let go.
I am reposting a blog post from a long time friend on WordPress. Abby is a wonderful writer, and she shares this really poignant piece about her connection with a special dog, named Pirate, who passes away. It includes live footage from when he was alive. There’s so much more in the post, which she weaves together beautifully, sharing about her collection of recent years; and her courage in getting through it is evident. In her own words, “true love comes from a place of freedom, not attachment.”
One of the musical pieces Abby includes in her article is music from Aurora. I’ve been a long time fan of Aurora, but I had not heard this song or the version of it before, that she included. Read the article because its good, and also to find the beautiful song that Aurora sings feat Pomme, that I am writing about. Aurora is a true artist. You can feel it from her singing, her movements, and the way she carries herself. I’ve attached an interview with her below, where she talks about the true meaning of success. She’s sweet and I think a lot of us can relate to her; when asked if she listens to her own music, she says “No, I don’t like to hear my own voice.” She also says that music is her best friend. When asked what she would say to her 12 year old self that wrote the song, “Runaway,” she said “[I]f you share your music with other people, one day that music might even become other peoples’ best friends, too.” Lately I’ve been sharing my favorite music with my best friends offline; so I included this part in this post today to share with you. Aurora is sweet, and I hope you can appreciate her music. The interviewer came to the conclusion about Aurora: “I think you are one of those people who can appreciate the small stuff.”
Aurora says that she feels the most successful when she’s spent her time right. Listen for the rest, to feel her energy.
This sweet little place was getting to be an annual tradition to visit, until it disappeared. I rather like to think it got up on its chicken legs and “baba-yaga’d” itself out to a new place up in the hills, on the cliffs, or up in the canopy above in the sky, or wedged itself deep, back within a thick forest–which is where it probably were it belongs. It was like a little magical oasis out here in the semi-arid desert.
I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to share a picture of myself on this blog.
This was a moment with the love of my life, my husband. He’s a special guy who is going to be publishing his book soon, and I will be honored to showcase it here, first, on my blog at Fiestaestrellas.com
As we count down to the new year, it’s easy to get lost in the busyness of the season. I’m doing it; we all are. For some of us it could be too quiet, and we can get lost in that, too.
But I want to say that each day, I am taking a moment here with you, and with myself. I want to wish you a very creative time! May you be inspired today, and every day!
Fiesta Estrellas 
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