A New Sun Cycle
According to the cultural calendar, today is March 20, 2007. It is also the day for completing my sun-cycle year, and the day before the new spring equinox with equal light and dark periods. I like starting my natural world year when the Earth is stirring again. The idea of planting seeds and energizing focuses that grow is very appealing to me.
Yesterday was the beginning of a new moon cycle, the central focus being “This is so fun!” In the morning when I walked down the driveway to the mailbox to get the newspaper, there were about three inches of fresh snow sculpting the bare tree branches with fluffy white highlighting, while the snow-clad evergreens across the street looked like those on Christmas cards. From the side yard, where two large bird feeders hang from a very large maple tree on a small hill above the pond, a chorus of red-winged blackbirds were loudly singing about their joy of living. Me and my body organism quietly added our harmonies to theirs.
At this point it seems appropriate to say that even though I’ve studied various cultural astrologies, I do not use those ways of thinking with which to relate with the natural world or my personal Life. Instead, I/we focus on being directly involved with the ongoing changes, including ebbs and flows. I do use my own patterns such as have been described earlier in terms of what I think are the basic designs of the Earth system, as I Understand them. Being harmonized with the natural world in these ways is a different belief/design construction, with different ingredients, than what has been and is called nature worship, animism, or paganism.
Looking back over the four seasons of the completing sun cycle—my natural world year of "Putting It All Together" that began March 20, 2006—a significant lead-in to it was a powerful dream I experienced in the early morning hours of February 22, 2006. Within the dream, I-as-Jacquie was in the process of going to see a new house that had been simply constructed on pillars in a wetland area, using mostly natural and recycled materials. There were many of us crossing the wooden bridge to get to it. After going through the house I knew I was going to buy it.
The next morning, when Jim and I were driving to town to do some errands I described my night’s adventures, concluding with, “Do you want to buy it with me?” Since I had already detailed my dream translations, he immediately said yes.
Even when I was experiencing the dream I knew it was a highly charged one, to which I should pay especial attention. My later interpretation was that this unfurnished house amidst a natural world environment was a place where really big dreams could manifest. After Jim decided to buy it with me I saw it as a place each of us could furnish afresh with whatever designs we chose, and both locations would complement one another—our physical home and our imaginary one.
In the weeks following the beginning of my natural world year, I slowly and lovingly painted a 15" x 11" mixed media picture about the new-home dream, primarily using watercolor to depict the house and its surroundings. Then on the front and back of the picture I recorded what ingredients Jim and I were furnishing it with, adding to them as the year and events progressed. After its completion, the picture has sat on a small easel atop our long pecan dresser in the bedroom. When I span out over the past months, I feel I/we have been extensively nourished and inspired by it! And Jim says it’s been good for him, too.
During the now concluding sun-cycle year, when an event or idea emerged that didn’t seem to fit anywhere else, I noted it in a computer file in a bullet form with the date, as possible materials to use in a summary chapter. The following are arranged chronologically from those notes:
In June 2006, prior to reading Daniel Pinchbeck’s book, 2012, I experienced a very potent dream in which Jim and I were amidst a battle, where simpler armaments than those of recent times were being used, and then he and I left the fighting. After that there was a loud announcement, accompanied by trumpet-like instruments from that era, sending the message forth that J & J had left the field of battle. Not only had we left, we had gone home. The whole thing was over as far as Jim and I were concerned. It was our own version of the declaration by Chief Joseph from the Nez Perce tribe of Native Americans, who stated in 1877, “I will fight no more forever.”
In early December 2006, beginning with the “Which Reality?” chapter when the manuscript’s character was obviously changing while also getting bigger, after some reflection I went with it, often recording developments on a daily and nightly basis. I could see that this procedure was giving me and potential readers a clearer picture of one person’s expansion in a contextual sense, where there was an interplay back and forth between me and my originations, me and my body organism, me as an experiencer in many locales and positions, along with me and multidimensional aspects of divinity overall.
Near the end of 2006, when my body organism saw a catalogue with some spring/summer quality clothes on sale, it was definitely interested. What I inwardly heard was it wanted to have a few “fun” new clothes, and it was delighted when they arrived! (There were three cotton tops and a pair of linen pants, which I too thought were fun.) This was during the time when I had turned most decision-making over to my body organism. As a contrast, “my” evaluator at the time usually had been to ask myself if I needed something, and if I didn’t I passed on it.
Around New Year’s Day, 2007, I became even more aware that within the personal matrix I/we are currently energizing and what I was calling a DCIO reality, there are no successes or failures. Those are all DCBA concepts and experiences. Instead, for me, it’s a matter of playing my part and getting it as right as I can!
During the second week of January, in the afternoon while experiencing unusually mild winter days, with the advent of new seed catalogues arriving, Jim and I talked about placing an order for a mulberry tree and two more elderberry bushes. And when the new Birds & Blooms magazine arrived the day before, I/we had enthusiastically responded, seeing it as wonderful resource material for relating with other species members and some eventual watercolor painting. Spring would be emerging soon!
Adding a little more background about Jim and my lives. During the past four years in our new home in northwestern lower Michigan, Jim used large portions of his personal time outdoors during spring, summer, and fall, making compost to amend our sandy soil, planting trees, bushes, flower plants and bulbs, and then hand watering them. For my part, I had been involved in each of the selections and purchases, in some compost activities and planting, in some watering, and in overall outside maintenance. Nonetheless, Jim had done the majority of it.
Along with keeping our bird feeders filled throughout the year, all of these extensive outside activities have been joyous and satisfying for him. He has loved giving the plants water just at the time they needed it, giving the birds and squirrels food just at the right time—and he has enjoyed experiencing their repeated appreciations! Moreover, he has materialized his inner visions of coming up our driveway that is lined with fruit trees, along with seeing many more in front of the house.
On January 12, 2007, in the afternoon Jim received his professional quality “Finale” software, giving him the availability henceforth to compose, arrange, play, and print his own music. For a number of years he has been teaching himself to play the keyboard, devoting a lot of time these past months to this activity.
By mid January 2007, I was seeing my/our Life, more and more, as a story of a transformation process for me and my body organism. Giving individuality to both me and my body had worked well. “I” as a spirit-being was able to move more easily from that perspective to one of being a blended unit with my body, and then return again to being more individual—artistically going back and forth. After weeks of turning most decisions over to my body, I/we began making more decisions together.
When I/we were writing about science and religion, while studying evolution and the lives of Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud, a dream event emerged that was correlated to science in general. This is what I wrote the morning following the dream:
“My last dream before awakening this a.m. was one where I was in an environment in which there was a different science being used than the one in our DCBA reality system at present. Buildings there had been constructed in relationship with certain fundamental geometric dimensions and principles. In addition to their own structure, the buildings were in fundamental geometric relationships with nearby structures and with the energies of the Earth itself.
“I was there as an observer/experiencer. No one needed to explain anything to me because I was capable of Understanding the situation. I realized that cultural concepts are automatically built within what manifests. This includes the language of the society. In other words, there was an overall cohesiveness, as there is in all cultures. I think one of the main messages from the dream is there are many types of science, depending upon the beliefs used to construct them.”
In later January, further writings from the time period when I/we were involved with books and materials about science and religion included the following: “What if our current-day human intelligence processes are just one way to think about things, among dozens, hundreds, or thousands of ways to organize thinking processes? What if our developed human cerebral cortexes are actually manifestations of these specific mental organizations? And what if the ways we think in the Western world, in basic terms, aren’t really superior to the ways other humans and other species think? What if basically there is no superiority/inferiority or One Truth? To my mind, these 'what ifs' are really closer to fundamental realities than many current-day ways of thinking.”
After opening everything up in early February 2007, I understood the best tempo and rhythm to use for what I/we were doing. It was one in which what was “next” would appear after what needed to come before it had been appropriately experienced. Hence, inner guidance advised me to “Trust and don’t try to rush things— allow the process to unfold in its own way, and be easily harmonized with it.”
This past winter has been a season of musical magnificence for me and my body. On the days we would ride our exercise bike downstairs in the walk-out basement, I/we would first select a CD from Jim and my collection of jazz, blues, classical, big band and swing, folk, rock and roll, pop, and other miscellaneous musical categories, one that rang bells that particular day. Then most evenings for our dinner hour Jim would choose one of the classical music CDs that were arriving frequently from the two clubs he belongs to, for easy listening to go well with good conversation and delicious food. And of course there’s been Jim’s personal, almost daily musical process itself these past months.
As a sidebar, Jim and I both have musical backgrounds, his being more extensive than mine. In elementary school and junior high school I played a violin in the school orchestras. And Jim played the baritone horn in school bands, starting in elementary school and on through his first year in college. Then together, he and I have shared dozens of enchanting evenings at symphony performances.
Returning to the later summer of 1970, about a month before Jim moved to California to start a new life with me, I visited him in Michigan. During our time together we went to the place where he had been a summer band participant twice, for a week each time, in the summers between his sophomore and junior, and junior and senior high school years. (It was called Interlochen National Music Camp in those days.)
In 1970, in the later afternoon when Jim and I walked to the open band shell, a young man was alone there, playing a trumpet solo from Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Then, after what was a transcendent experience for both of us, as we walked across the campus commons Jim burst into tears, proclaiming with deeply heartfelt emotions, “I want to live a life of Love and Beauty!” Looking back over our past together, I see those emphases of his as enormous energy originations throughout our Lives up to the present, in all time frameworks and dimensions of our beings.
The soil is prepared and tomorrow—the spring equinox—March 21, 2007, I/we will start planting and experiencing another natural world sun cycle. The theme is simply “Beyond.” I had thought of “A Second Year of Putting It All Together, Where Everything Is Opened Up,” which may interweave, but “Beyond” will be its central theme. During the forthcoming seasons, when appropriate to do so, I/we will again be living amidst the four time frames of natural world time, cultural time, divine time, and “our” time; otherwise, we will not energize any “time” operating patterns.
After considerable cycling back to the past during our recent sun-cycle year and bringing those experiences freshly to the present, my new sun-cycle ceremony tomorrow will include celebrating the substantialness and Understandings I/we have achieved up to now. Looking back, my Gratitude is huge and continues to increase for the opportunities I/we have had, of being able to put together the perspectives as I/we have done. And now we will be ready for new and fresh experiences.
Thinking about the near future, Jim and I will be part of a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group again. This is a design construction where people pay an amount of money before the season begins, which gives the grower money for start-up costs such as seeds and other necessities. Then we who belong to this local group come to the farm weekly or every other week, depending upon whether we bought a full or half share, to pick up our portion of what is harvested that week. Even though there are differences in procedures among CSAs, they all seem to have an emphasis upon local, organic, and sustainable. Last year it was such a delight to open up the box and discover what was in it each time, and then concoct meals around its contents for the next two weeks!
Some warm-enough day this early spring, Jim and I will be taking our Zodiac and cameras over to a nearby river and explore its off-shoot marshland tributaries. (The Zodiac is a nine foot inflatable boat with a six horsepower engine.) We will also be taking some of the compost pile Jim made last fall from about twenty bales of alfalfa hay and use it as mulch and food around all the plants, including trees and bushes. And when our nursery order arrives, we’ll plant two more elderberry bushes and a black mulberry tree.
On May 8th, Jim and I will celebrate in cultural time the anniversary of our meeting in 1970. From the moment we met that afternoon, I think that together we began generating enough electricity and chemical reactions from a depth of divine Love that flowed between us, even before our meeting, to light up the whole desert area. To my mind, it’s been a magical journey. And now he and I and our body organisms are embarking upon a new adventure.
In the 1970s when I was turning around in my psyche in a 360° manner, I wasn’t able to find any models for female aging in our culture that appealed to me. Then I read about a 103-year-old woman in a Hunza community in the Himalayas, where the people at the time were said to be some of the healthiest on Earth. She was changing her job in the community because she wanted new challenges. I Loved my inner picture of seeing her as vital, healthy, involved, and expanding. I think that energy form has had and continues to have an influence in my life.
Last week, when I/we read our manuscript we were pleased with what we had done, and I decided to make it into two sections at the place where its character was obviously changing.
Along with building my Life and worldview afresh, as part of Jim and I freeing ourselves up even more while continuing to be aware-enough of ongoing events, we have been dropping many magazine subscriptions when their renewal forms arrived. That leaves six periodicals—Time, National Geographic, and Birds & Blooms magazines, the daily regional newspaper, and two weekly regional newspapers. For decades, Jim and I have appreciated Time and National Geographic magazines as mainstream cultural news sources, which, in our opinions have been focused on providing the most accurate information they could (although, of course, their perspectives about Reality provide the frameworks for their reports). To each of you in those organizations, past and present, Jim and I are expressing our combined Appreciation.
Jim also subscribes to one photography, one computer, and one golf magazine. And recently I subscribed to a new magazine for me—Ode—that is from an international viewpoint, originating in The Netherlands. Even though I hear snippets of BBC broadcasts on NPR, I’m looking forward to thinking about existing situations from positions that are centered around other perspectives than those we primarily use here in the United States. More than likely I’ll also continue to selectively listen to NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show, especially her two-hour Friday news roundup of national and global events, and Terry Gross’ Fresh Air … and I'll continue Friday night viewings of PBS’s Washington Week followed by the weekly magazine NOW. I’ll also check Oprah’s web site to see if there is anything of interest scheduled. Additional Gratitude is being sent to all of you and your efforts.
What I know at present is that when we complete the edit of this manuscript to my/our satisfaction over the next few months, I will have simultaneously completed major portions of my core agenda as a spirit-being in relationship with the DCBA reality. Currently, I/we are seeing the part we can play best in the unfolding drama is in “Beyond” regions. This feels like the most harmonious answer to the question about “us” being available to go wherever this process takes us, in highest good, all-things-considered terms.
Openly listening to my body organism, I’ve been hearing it repeatedly say it needs lots of time to explore, without being involved with DCBA designs. And the reason it has been continuing with some “symptoms” is because it is the one way it knows to keep my attention focused in its direction. Otherwise, it thinks I wouldn’t give it the time and space it wants and needs. Well, my reactions to what I’ve heard from it have primarily been amused agreement; I think it’s probably true that I would have continued on with too much of my spirit-being interests, and I’ve also had ample experiences this past year with its vaster wisdom.
So over the next natural world year, I will be focusing extensively on my relationship with my body organism. Additionally, I/we will be emphasizing direct relationships with other species members and involvement in the natural world, including gardening; activating the strands about Chinese painting and chi; and being appropriately attuned to all the concentric and interwoven circle events in Jim and my lives, including family members and friends.
Some of my spirit-being interests as future possibilities include delving into many books and materials about religion and spirituality, some of which were in the three baskets; reading Daniel Goleman's Social Intelligence and Marc Bekoff’s The Emotional Lives of Animals; reading the books by current-day scientists that we set aside earlier this year; and reading some of Jared Diamond’s big book Collapse, How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. More than likely I’ll also want to reread Lynne McTaggart’s The Field and Lester R. Brown’s Plan B, Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble.
Additionally, in terms of time and attention, there are the shared joint living activities that are part of Jim and my everyday lives together.
Of course all of the above are within the framework of the rich and fertilely active relationship itself that Jim and I co-form. And then along with my relationship with my body organism, there’s my relationship with God and divinity overall that also needs time and attention in order to expand and bloom. My/our intention is to weave all the strands together as beautifully and easily as possible.
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