Nobody ever thought that this recent Full Moon’s energies would shake up perspectives, perceptions, attitudes and behaviors to the degree all have been affected this past week.  Individuals who once called one another “friend” or regarded mentor/advisor are now faced with mortal enemies full of vitriolic verbage.  I’ve read and heard many commenting at the seemingly sudden flood of negative thoughts and emotions translated into bad social behaviors, like slander, bodily injuries and even death.

Where’s the gratitude, compassion and unconditional love everyone seemed to acknowledge as the wave lifting human consciousness higher?

It seems that the elevation of cosmic energies continues to work on our world in one of two ways … Either, you are experiencing a genuine upliftment of mood that daily manifests as an unflappable upbeat outlook, with life circumstances appear to be improving … Or, you are experiencing a knee-jerk sociopathic (negative) response to everything and everyone around you, and that vibe manifests in fighting with others, either physically or through the use of harsh words, and/or the commission of bad acts calculated to hurt others.  Another way to characterize this split is the conflict of ego versus spirit.  And, although many acknowledge that to be spiritual is a “good” state of mind, many more are actually living life with the opposite, perceived-to-be-less-desirable state of being.

So how do we sort it all out?  For that answer, I turn to my favorite philosopher, Alan Watts, to wit:

 

“Everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality.  Not God in a politically kingly sense, but God in the sense of being the self, the deep-down basic whatever there is.  And you’re all that, only you’re pretending you’re not.  And, it’s perfectly okay to pretend you’re not, to be perfectly convinced, because this is the whole notion of drama.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

Ego is a social institution with no physical reality.  The ego is simply your symbol of yourself.  Just as the word “water” is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.

It must be obvious … that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.

We do not “come into” this world, we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.  As the ocean “waves”, the universe “peoples”.  Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.  This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals.  Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated “egos” inside bags of skin.

There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love.  It cannot be copied.  You cannot talk yourself into it, or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind.  Everyone has love, but it can only come out when s(he) is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love her(him)self.  This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe.  It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.

There is always something taboo, something repressed, unadmitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one’s eye, because a direct look is too unsettling.  Taboos lie within taboos, like the skin of an onion.

When a wo(man) no longer confuses her(himself) with the definition of himself that others have given her(him), s(he) is at once universal and unique.  S(He) is universal by virtue of the inseparability of her(his) organism from the cosmos.  S(He) is unique in that s(he) is just this organism and not any stereotype of role, class, or identity assumed for the convenience of social communication.

A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts.  So, s(he) loses touch with reality, and lives in a world of illusion.”

 

That pretty much sums it up for me …