LOL, I started writing this in June. Here it is, the beginning of a new year and I am only now getting around to publishing it.  Part of the joy of a small life is allowing deadlines to evaporate!

The past 3 years has brought enormous change to our world. For me, the biggest change was the loss of a large community gathered and maintained over many years. 2020 was a year of grieving the end of certain tribes, certain social structures, and many relationships.  As I look at the five element cycles I work with, 2020 would have been my Metal year, or year of Grief.  Grief is about letting go of what is no longer needed. Grief is the act of loss, the transformation of having to not having, or the acknowledgement of a way of life that will never come back. Grieving is the miraculous act of opening space for something new. So I spent 2020 intensely grieving my old life. I grieved the loss of the world I knew and grew up in. The world I found myself in was far different, much more angry and violent, much more controlled and controlling. I grieved for the loss of kindness.  But what I most deeply grieved and continue to have waves of grief about, is my loss of ambition, or a passion. My entire life has been fueled by passion for something. To find myself adrift with no clear path forward continues to occasionally unbalance my  equanimity. 

2021 was a year of trying to understand what my world was going to look like moving forward.  This would be a year of Water, or Fear.  Fear brings the message, “I do not have enough information to feel safe.”  What was in store for me, and for the world at large?  What would my life look like going forward? If I was no longer working, how would I spend my time? What was my passion going to be? I spent a lot of 2021 researching. Research comes from the Water side of our personality - to gather information for understanding so that we may feel safe take action. Water is the great revealer. Nothing is hidden from Water, it will always wash away the false structures until truth is revealed. In the process of researching, I discovered many ways that my old world view was simply wrong, or based on cultural assumptions that were erroneous. Things that my culture had lied about, or misunderstood, or kept hidden about the past were now being revealed. It continues to be a fascinating time of learning, and I am constantly adjusting my world view. 

So then we came to 2022, the year of Wood or Anger. Balanced anger is right action. It is the ability to commit to a direction and boldly strike out. Maybe we don’t have quite enough information, but enough that our courage can say, “I know enough and whatever comes up that I don’t know, I can handle.” Balanced anger sees life through the lens of co-creation. That means that no matter what happens TO ME, I have to take responsibility  for attracting and/or participating in that event. So how did my year of action look?  In what direction was my energy drawn?

After two years of near isolation, it was easy for me to look close to home. And what I felt drawn to do was experiment with Nature. For years I have been reading books exploring ancient technologies that worked with natural energies. In my Water year of 2021, I pulled many of these books back out of my library and re-read them. Hidden Nature by Alick Bartholomew  is some of the collected works of Viktor Schauberger.  Schauberger learned many of the secrets of clean energy from observing Nature in the forests of the Alps.  (Interestingly, Schauberger invented a flying saucer that was based on implosion, or vortex energy, and guess what?  Right about then, WW2 was happening and he was brought to the Nazi party and told to show them how to build machines using this energy. Is it a coincidence that the sighting of UFO’s dramatically increased in the 40’s?  And continue to this day?) 

Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm by Stephen Harrod Buhner takes us on a dive into the intelligence and consciousness of every single thing on earth - rocks, rivers, plants - everything.  Mary Reynolds, an Irish award-winning garden designer, had a revelation that gardens were killing ecosystems. She wrote a book called  We Are The Ark, and asks us to give a portion of our property back to Nature. That portion includes weeds, deadfalls, and all the things gardeners normally remove from their gardens. 

Phillip S Callahan wrote many books.  One question that drove his research was “Why is it that crops which are grown on healthy soils never attract diseases and insects?” Turns out paramagnetism is essential for healthy soil. His most fascinating research, for me, was how he found an ancient technology that mimicked the antennae of insects. The stupas of Asia and many of the ancient buildings incorporated these designs. What kind of free energy might they have been using? This is the kind of information he writes that fascinates me endlessly: “Observe how the first Fibonacci Numbers: 1-1-2-3-4-5-8 form a Tibetan-styled Stupa or sacred Temple, when depicted as circular disks instead of straight bars or lines.” 

Rudolph Steiner, father of Waldorf schools,  foresaw the future when chemical farming would deplete the land. He put together some lectures on biodynamic farming , which can be best explained and understood through Joel Salatin’s blog, The Lunatic Farmer. Biodynamic farming in a nutshell is the restoration of biodiversity within the farming context. Joel Salatin says, “I am a soil farmer” because everything a biodynamic system does feeds the soil first.  All subsequent rewards come from healthy soil.

These are a few examples of the materials I was devouring while in isolation. So it was no surprise that my Wood year was spent focusing on my gardens and my relationship to the Earth. I wanted to experiment with round towers and see what happened to the plants surrounding it. I wanted to set aside an Ark for Nature to reclaim and watch what took place. I wanted to restore as many native plants as I could to create an oasis for pollinators.  All of these things are works in progress.  I just ordered nearly $200 of native plants to put in my Ark.  I invited 3 of my neighbors to build a community garden in my yard this year, and look forward to co-creating something that nourishes both body and soul.

2023 is going to be my Fire year. Fire is my elemental sign, so there’s an excitement to have this cycle coincide with my own nature. Fire is about returning the sacred to things.  It’s about building community, sharing, opening the heart, and making things fun. I haven’t felt much fun these past 3 years, so to feel the wave coming is almost as good as having a dream to work towards. I am learning to be at peace with no ambition. I am learning to watch the discomfort arise from not “doing anything”. I am learning that my identity is not what I do, but something else - something I am only now beginning to understand.  Since my last newsletter, I have started 7 others, including this one. Not finishing or publishing any of them caused great anxiety, and I had to continually process all my feelings around that. I am grateful that I found the energy to finish this one.  My “doing” part hopes that I will finish the rest of them. My “being” part doesn’t care if I do or not.  Yin and Yang daily get their workout, moving back and forth until something engages them both.

I have been writing for years about the transformation we are going through on Mother Earth. I admit I did not expect it to look quite like this, and when I ask myself what I DID expect, I laugh because I didn’t have a clue!!  I do however believe in the inherent kindness and connection of the human race and while I am no longer part of large communities built over years of time, the small groups left are taking me in a direction entirely unknown.

I wish for all of you that the coming year is also a year of joy. I wish for your relationships to deepen, nurture and support you in all the ways you need. I hope the higher frequency energies bombarding our planet bring healing and a new way of being in the world. I wish for all of us that this most exquisite moment in our racial evolution takes us to a global way of life that is magical, mysterious and fun. 

I will speaking at Lake Harriet Spiritual Community on January 16 at 10:30am.  The topic is “From Vision to Reality”. I’m curious to see what comes in for me to talk about, in light of my clear lack of plans!

Blessings!

Cat