Gaia: Sacred Walk - Wildcard

Astrology - an offering

http://jillianne.gaia.com — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:29:35 GMT

"The ocean's surface rises and falls predictably due to changes in gravitational forces originating from the Moon and the Sun. These changes in ocean surface level are known as tides and are evidence of the influence celestial bodies have on our planet." - http://www.marinebio.org/

There have been times I have wondered how anyone could argue with the idea of our celestial bodies having an impact on our lives. How we could disconnect so greatly from being OF the Earth? And yet... we are of the Earth. We are impacted and influenced by the relationship our position has with the other planets and celestial bodies.

I love astrology. I have been actively interested in learning more about astrology since my Mama Sue was mathematically casting charts over 26 years ago. I was fascinated and began collecting bits of information without ever actually looking at my own chart. About a dozen years ago, I had a friend cast my chart. (So much easier with a computer) and began learning more and more and more. It became a passion.... And then became a tool for self-examination and ownership.

I've put at least four hours of study into every week for the past decade. Sometimes more. It has become something I do professionally and something I love teaching to others. I discovered along the way that I have a great ability to teach this obscure and textured subject in a reachable and tangible way. And... I thought I would love to offer some of what my passion is.

I have come to understand some basic truths in the thousands of charts I have looked at. We are each divine expressions.

Who we are is who we are meant to be.

We can choose to use our strengths in ways that are healthy or unhealthy.

There is a natural rhythm and cycle of life that we each best respond to.

Astrology is simply a tool. A mirror. A guide. The best answers are found within!

Next installment it begins. We can unlock the mysterious world of astrology in bite size pieces that you will understand!

Re: ONE PERSON can change the world

http://jillianne.gaia.com — Fri, 04 May 2007 03:42:59 GMT

I'm with you there. And nothing in nature supports the idea of non-movement. Change is inevitable and healthy. it is what allows life to blossom!

Re: ONE PERSON can change the world

http://goldenlotus.gaia.com — Fri, 04 May 2007 03:21:15 GMT

Jill you are good, yes it speaks of intention. I love the fire reference, i once watched this nature program that stated: there are cretain seeds in the underbrush that can only be germinated after a fire. The program also stated that many trees are able to withstand quite a bit of damage before death. It seems to be only us who is constantly trying to keep things static.

Re: ONE PERSON can change the world

http://jillianne.gaia.com — Thu, 03 May 2007 21:19:28 GMT

Golden, I am in agreement. It requires antimatter for the universe to form matter. That contraction and expansion and growth in adverse conditions seems to create an area rich for thriving.

In fact... the most fecund and beautiful, lush growth comes from ground tempered by fire.

I love this story because it is A) true and B) honest to the power of intention.

Re: ONE PERSON can change the world

http://goldenlotus.gaia.com — Thu, 03 May 2007 19:31:55 GMT

Its really striking when I hear tales like this, I think that theres something that stirs in our conciousness when we see others overcome adversity. Those who new they had a choice I can either offer something wonderful or I can fold. I believe that this is the true message of adversity daring us to do something, change it, show it, say something. Adversity is the one thing that we can always see that shows us what we dont want, healing is finally getting your hands around what you do want.

I like to take stories like this and use them in my own work. I feel it helps people to find inspiration that their current condition can and will change, all you need to do is to do it. All things are opportunities for growth when life is approached in this way. Thank you for the story.

ONE PERSON can change the world

http://jillianne.gaia.com — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 03:27:44 GMT

I used to write an annual newsletter (prior to blogging – which is an ongoing newsletter of sorts for me). I wrote this in my 2003 Newsletter. I continue to believe every single word. The only thing that has changed is the sheer hope I feel beginning to stir! This was called “There is a purpose to everything….”

Sometimes when I have a glimpse of the “bigger picture” I am humbled and awed at the threads that weave a greater tapestry.

In 1849 in Denmark, a man was born to a huge family that totaled 17 children. At the young age of 21 he immigrated to America. It was a time of hardship. He survived many years of extreme poverty in filthy, overcrowded conditions. His life and his prospects seemed mighty dim and he grew suicidal.

Slowly he pulled himself out of the pain of his surroundings. Eventually, he became a police reporter for a prominent NYC newspaper. The fortuitous invent of flash for pictures met the capable hands of this writer/photographer.

Rather than ignore what was an extremely painful time in his life, Jacob A. Riis wrote a book called “How the other half lives”. He documented both in picture and through his poignant writing, the demoralizing and inhumane conditions of the tenements in New York City at the turn of the century.

Coming home one day he discovered a calling card with the words “Came to help.” The card belonged to Theodore Roosevelt, who had read Jacob Riis’ book and was moved to act.

Roosevelt visited the decrepit tenements with his newfound friend. He was able to see the horrific conditions for himself. You need to stop a moment and understand the enormity of the challenge Riis and Roosevelt met. The tenements were truly horrors.

The worse of them had stalls set up which would sleep six per stall (the size of a queen sized bed). There was no ventilation, indoor plumbing, insulations, heat or bedding. Bottom floors received the sewage that ran off during rain.

Picture your life held to sleeping in wet muck and sewage next to strangers. As New York Assembly man, NYC Police Commissioner, Governor for NY State and finally U.S. President, Teddy Roosevelt worked to change these horrific conditions.

The willingness of Jacob Riis to rise above the adversity he had experienced and offer a voice of advocacy cheers me greatly. He had the choice to become embittered. He had the “justification” to allow the low points in his life dictate the man he would become and yet… he allowed the man he was dictate a better way of life for millions of people and their children, and the children that followed through another century.

Problems that we think are insurmountable aren’t. One simple person can change the course of the future! In case these words seem empty and overly optimistic… One man – Jacob Riss – spoke up with dignity and assurance that change needed to happen. One man – Teddy Roosevelt – heard him. The nation changed.

We live in times that beg us to change. Your voice matters. I believe there is someone to hear. All it requires of us is to sound the call and rise to the challenge.

A couple of days ago I said that we could change the world. We can! You can!

Re: LET THERE BE ART

http://jillianne.gaia.com — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:06:00 GMT

Thank you, Burt. I've been so blessed in my art. Just a wonderful way for me to pray!

Re: LET THERE BE ART

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 14:14:44 GMT

Those eyes...This is beyond good, Jill.

Re: LET THERE BE ART

http://jillianne.gaia.com — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 03:54:37 GMT

This is a Jillianne Simpson original (C) 2005 All Rights reserved.

It is a prayer for Determination:

Re: Meditation

http://jillianne.gaia.com — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 18:52:39 GMT

I work for the Omega Institute and we are producing a workshop in California at the moment. (Our campus is in New York, so they flew me out here! Whoo Hoo!)

This workshop is by Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli and is called the "Mindfulness based stress reduction clinic for professionals".

These two men are pretty amazing. They set up clinical trials at the University of Mass. Medical center and over almost three decades they've amassed enough clinical proof to the positive physical aspects of stress reduction that they are a huge reason for the change in thinking to the medical community. so.... they take doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists and they put them through the same program they do their patients and also add a tremendous amount of clinical information to the mix.

It is an amazing offering and I love watching people transform themselves.

I do not believe that Tulsa has been a place Omega has been to. There is a site in Austin called "the crossings" and they offer some workshops.

Re: Meditation

http://ELF.gaia.com — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 17:45:02 GMT

what kind of workshop? am curious if they have anything like that in Tulsa?

Meditation

http://jillianne.gaia.com — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:37:51 GMT

I'm really honored each year to be high on this mountain top and be a witness to transformations in the waiting. Last night 150 people arrived for this workshop and after many years of this, I have learned to take a good and long look at the face of each person arriving.

I will stop and take a good and lasting look next week before they go and it never fails to astonish me how there will be ten years removed from the care worn face of each person. ten years.

I think that taking the time to stop and meditate and bring the energy and the focus back to the breath is an amazing opportunity to quit living outside of yourself. I know the people that will have the greatest difficulty with the day of silence that is going to happen will be the ones with the greater ego. The people that seek all things outside of self for validation and ownership and placement in this world. They will struggle. And then surrender. And then look ten years younger after they have faced themselves.

And although I am working, it is an opportunity for me to also seek the solice of my heart's great wisdom. I am taking time to listen to some more Eckhart Tolle. I am honoring my own meditation practises. I am creating my prayer drawings. And I am honoring the beauty that is me, as I honor the beauty in the people I see around me.

so, on this Raining Monday Morning, I honor the gratitude that fills my heart. I know my worth, for I can touch the spark of the Divine that is held in me. That is held in you. I can honestly say.... "Life is Beautiful"!

Re: Do you know someone who needs a smile?

http://jillianne.gaia.com — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:54:08 GMT

Dana, this is so great! What an incredible thought! I love hearing about things like this.

Do you know someone who needs a smile?

http://alaynacole.gaia.com — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:07:21 GMT

Hello friends.

I am posting this on pods because I believe in what my friend is doing. Check her out:

You want her as your friend!!!

by Dana

Visit the SmileMailer. Here is her profile info:

About Me:

I'm dedicated to aid those suffering by offering to send a free real paper greeting card (NOT an e-greeting) to those that are going through a life trauma. Go to my website at http://www.SmileMailer.com to request a card to be sent to someone suffering! There is absolutely no charge for anything. This is my labor of love.

Now, if that is not someone who deserves friendship, who is?

Love all of you.
Dana

Re: The sin attached to homosexuality

http://alaynacole.gaia.com — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:06:41 GMT

Jack's kids and I were just ranting about that today. :)

I am so proud of them for accepting and loving people based on others' authenticity and not their sexuality.

Re: The "Other"

http://jillianne.gaia.com — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 12:29:09 GMT

Dryad,

Yea to your son! (start with the personal and important!)

You have just been so beautifully present with what you have to say. Years ago when I was doing some research about the politics AGAINST women's vote, I was struck at how completely unoriginal the rhetoric over gay marriage has been. Almost word for word, it is what the politicians and the news made coverage of. "It will destroy the fabric of the family" "It is an abomination to God and shouldn't be sanctified by our laws".

I wonder sometimes if "we" will ever learn. And then.... in the midst of ongoing racism, sexism, and predjudice over a variety of "others".... I will stumble across the shifts and changes and know that we can fulfill that dream.

I used to think that using logic would get us there. I now think we simply need to honor and remember our hearts. It is the separatism that is killing us in a variety of ways. We are all connected - all one..... and allowing that truth to simply fill us leaves us connected.

I could go on, but you have just been so eloquent!

Jill

Re: The "Other"

http://LightDancing.gaia.com — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 19:13:46 GMT

My son just pulled down an unheard of 12 out of 12 on his SAT essay. He was lucky, they happened to ask a question he was passionate about. It had to do with the philosophy of "The Other." At different times in different places human beings have reacted in different ways to "The Other." There are loose definitions and exact definitions, but it comes down in the end to those who are not like “us” in a myriad of ways. In the example given, I do fit one of the criteria. I am not a man and I am not gay, but I do have green eyes. Therefore, Jill and I are automatically “other.” Is it an ‘otherness’ that counts? Is it one that we will be able to ignore, or one that will change both of our lives? Is it one that our society has begun to get past, or one that is still huge and blocking? Is it one that will define one of us as a “sinner”? Is it one that will mean we must automatically distrust each other?

Prejudice, intolerance, bias, partiality, damage; all of these words contribute to the way we feel about and treat ‘the other,’ in degrees, stages, magnitudes. I have a poem on my Blog about Martin Luther King - about skin. I am old enough that I remember a time when it was perfectly acceptable to pass laws which said that people could be treated as second class citizens because of the color of their skin. I remember being really baffled by the explanation that “WE don’t do that, but THEY do.” WE being people from the Western part of the United States and THEY being people from the Southern part of the United States. Within their explanation of bigotry and intolerance was another built in “Other.” Frankly, the whole thing sounded like Crazy Clown Logic to me. It still does.

Even leaving God and Sin completely out of the equation, it was built into the civil laws of our country that the majority could make the minority sit in the back of a bus, or use a different drinking fountain. We all know that in one of the greatest Democratic Documents in history, “We the People” actually meant, “We the White, Males, of a Certain Class who can Read, Write and Own Property.” During WWII my father arrived on a base in the desert South West U.S. and found that in this extremely hot climate, there were six swimming pools for the use of soldiers and their families. White soldiers and their white families. The regiments were segregated in those days. This wasn’t a matter of segregated pools, there was nothing provided for the black regiments at all. It took him nearly a month of fighting bureaucracy, bigotry and utter battlement before he finally got one of those swimming pools set aside for the “Negro” soldiers and their families. Dr. Martin Luther King “Dream” of everyone swimming and playing together was a long, long way away and the idea of a desegregated swimming pool completely unheard of. As my father fought, the thing he head the most often was, “What is the MATTER with you?” Why would he do this? Everybody knew that “they” don’t get hot the way ‘we’ do and what if they do? Why did he care? Someone called his last duty station to see if he had a history of mental problems. They couldn’t even understand it.

And, of course, you can’t take God and sin out of the equation. Linking the “other” to “sin” is the quickest way to be sure the bigotry is total and internalized. God is on “our” side. God is against “them.” “They” are sinful. My Grandmother was a suffragette. (Yes, folks, it’s only been that long!) She was told again and again, with great indignation that any woman who voted was in an active state of sin. The act of voting was, in and of itself, against God. She was told this by men and by other women. The next thing you know, woman would start to believe that they were not meant to be ruled by men and Christ said so, right there in Paul’s Letters to the Ephesians. (Are you worried about the math here? As in, how Did Christ say anything so long after he died? Don’t worry about it, no one else does.) It is unbelievable to us that in my lifetime there were laws that made it so someone could not drink from the same drinking fountain because of the color of their skin. It’s almost an inconceivable as not allowing two consenting adults to marry each other because of their sexual orientation. Goodness, if we let “them” have the same rights as “we” have “they” might get it into their heads that “they” are as good as “we” are.

Because that is the bottom line. The only reason for making another person into “the other” is so that we can feel superior. All of the “sin” we put on them, the belief that “we” are smarter than “they” are, better than “they” are . . . it is all to make “me” - whoever I am - feel superior.

When I was a little girl the town library was on the corner, just a half block from my house. I was a quiet child and they no one ever asked me to leave the library, so I just stayed. I read, I wrote in my notebook. I made up fantastic games in the stacks. Next to the staircase was a quote by Abraham Lincoln, just a few words in a very big frame. I can remember wondering about it from the time that I could first read it. it said: “It is no pleasure to me to triumph over any man.” I can remember being very, very young and still thinking, “if that is the truth, you are the only person on the face of the earth, Mr. Lincoln.” At six, I knew perfectly well that people did get pleasure out of triumphing over other people. I knew I did and I knew that it was wrong. Not one of those “wrongs” that someone made up to make people stay in line, a real wrong, a deep wrong. I knew it was wrong, but I knew it was human nature. I wasn’t very much older before I knew that not only was it wrong, it was one of those things that we have to fight against in ourselves and that, all too often, the people who are defining “sin” are not fighting against this deep, wrong, they are aiding it.

Two other interesting things emerged over the years about this quote. I found out that the entire quote came directly after Lincoln’s reelection. Someone in the “white house circle” had said that he hoped now the critics of the administration felt properly rebuked by this strong expression of the popular will. Lincoln, it is said, was surprised and replied, “You have more of that feeling of personal resentment than I. Perhaps I have too little of it, but I never thought it paid. A man has not time to spend half his life in quarrels. If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him." The quote comes from his acceptance speech, where he echoed this:

"I am thankful to God for this approval of the people; but while deeply grateful for this mark of their confidence in me, if I know my heart, my gratitude is free from any taint of personal triumph. . . . It is no pleasure to me to triumph over anyone, but I give thanks to the Almighty for this evidence of the people's resolution to stand by free government and the rights of humanity."

And, as a woman in the early 1970's, I was fascinated to find that whoever made that line from Lincoln’s speech into a large, framed plaque and hung it in the Library where I grew up had misquoted Mr. Lincoln. I found six different renditions of the speech before I felt quite safe in saying, yes, it was a misquote. A fascinating misquote. For Lincoln said: “It is no pleasure to me to triumph over ANYONE. Who ever put those few words in a big frame had rendered it as “It is no pleasure to me to triumph over ANY MAN.”

What on earth difference does that make? It doesn’t, I suppose if you are any MAN. Is that getting just a little too nit-picky? What about the assumption that allowed someone in the early 1900's to change that line without a second thought? We’ve come a long way and done it fairly quickly. Do we have racial equality today? Equality between the sexes? Equality of sexual preference? How much of it have we really internalized? My mother commented the other day that she remembered a time when a black couple was never used in an advertizement. You do see that now. But only black with black, white with white. What if that couple lovingly buying a diamond ring together were both women? What if it were Jill and I, would some one shake their heads and say with repulsion “That is disgusting! One of them has green eyes and the other one doesn’t . . .”

Re: LET THERE BE ART

http://biofeedback.gaia.com — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 03:39:21 GMT

Your art inspires me. I felt a wave of calm and centeredness. Working with wood humbles me, and I honor you ... sharing of yourself and letting us see your art.

Re: LET THERE BE ART

Tue, 17 Oct 2006 01:18:21 GMT

awesome, thanks much

This stuff just comes out of me, probably from hours upon hours of esoteric literature study.

I have a few other pieces that I need to get pics of.

in the works:
3 foot cobra winding in and out of his body and standing up with a strike pose

3 foot man, and woman

I'm thinking about also carving the man a hat, lol

I have walking sticks and canes too that i've carved.

right now I am looking at this 15 foot log that I harvested, and attempting discernment on how to carve it, so that I can turn it into three seperate music instruments. wooden xylaphone is the tricky one. the other two are going to be beat boxes. basically hollowed out logs with one end sealed and a small circle in the other end.

one day I hope to have a full workshop, because I know I could crank out some awesome guitars and such :)

Re: LET THERE BE ART

http://jillianne.gaia.com — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 00:39:08 GMT

I'm an Artist, so I celebrate that willingness to create! Your pieces are striking!!!! THANK YOU!