Where do you park your oxen?Home. Where is it? What does it mean? These are questions that are reverberating through the space of our times. Last night an old friend stopped by. He was without a place to stay, roaming from job-to-job at this point. Another friend is considering abandoning his apartment for life in his car, parked at night near the sanctified confines of local churches. A recent client has been using her mother's home as a chrysalis, getting ready to re-hatch her life back into the world. LeBron James left his home and bolted for a new one, raising all kinds of questions about loyalty and commitment in the process (more about LeBron later).
I pondered these questions about home as residents around the gulf are reporting all kinds of sickness, all occurring around their homes. The oil is gushing, unabated now, as
BP removed part of the well head today, hastening it's unimpeded flow into the home waters of the south. People down there might be forced to leave their homes.
The concept of home rose to the surface of my consciousness as I watched a blues band bang out standards in the center of my town, my home, a place that I have called home since last year, as I left on my Hejira, just up the road. It came on the heels of three days in a psych ward, where I witnessed the sad state of human wreckage that called that and other places like it "home." It took a journey into the orphic depths for me to find the lost parts of my soul, the mad and disenfranchised strands of self, shunned by me as a coping mechanism to get by in this world. They were all there, in male in female form. I gathered them unto me and led them out, back into the light. I brought them home. A year later, almost to the day, my father died, in his home, thus completing my turn around the Sun.
With the Sun in Cancer, New Moon in Cancer, Solar Eclipse, the idea and ideal of "home" is moving to the front and center for many people. It is illuminating what's important to us and how we can use the home, any home, whether it's rooted in rebar or attached to ones back, to be the fertile ground for cracking through to new life and sustaining the momentum of growth.
The Sabian symbol for the Solar Eclipse tomorrow is
THE UNFOLDMENT OF MULTILEVEL POTENTIALITIES ISSUING FROM AN ORIGINAL GERM. On a day when the Sun is eclipsed, we do not view our shadows and all is brought forth into the clarity of day to witness. Here we see on the New Moon, the symbol of germination, of breaking through and beginning a heliotropic journey towards the light. In essence, grow where you are planted and if there is not enough light and sustenance, cast yourself to the winds of change land somewhere that you can.
Through my readings with people, I have gleaned that we are in the act of finishing up business and getting with the art of living. The time for processing is over. You've been here a thousand times already. You know enough. Let the unfoldment of multi-level potential germinate.
When we deal with the concept of breakthrough, we often frame it in dramatic terms, like finding the right work, or the right partner, or manifesting something we have desired and worked towards, but it's often the case that breakthrough can be as simple and humble as the first fissure in the hard membrane of the seed wall. That tiny fracture cannot be underestimated as a monumental event in the life of the organism that emerges. It's as critical as the first fall of fruit and the next generation of seed. Without it, there is no life. Our lives are comprised of any number of these moments and the beauty is, is that you have a choice in these moments as they emerge.
It's how you respond.
Do you give your power away for approval or need?
You will let another snuff out your light for acceptance?
Will you react in the middle of a fire fight between out-of-control egos?
Will you consistently choose wholeness and integration over diffusion and defracation?
Can you respond from a place of third option, a creative alternative to polarity and duality?
It's these things that manifest in everyday acts that allow us to chip away at the hard husk of separation and risk the reward of journeying towards the light. Breakthrough is just one thought and one breath away. It's always there.
Tomorrow, there are groups of people meditating on The Gulf, plugging into the power of the eclipse, to see if they can energetically stem the flow. The eclipse will be full over the powerful landscape of Rapa Nui. The time to synchronize will be 1:15PM, Sunday, Mexico City time. Perhaps the idea of home is also transcendent, meeting others in hyper-dimensional spaces? Why not? It's worth a try. I'm reminded of the powerful eclipse scene from "Apocalypto, "where the tide turns beneath the black sun and liberation from the yoke of the sick, high-priests begins. The eclipsed Sun breaks the madness as prophecy becomes reality.
Okay, I can't end this post about home without dealing one more time with LeBron and the bizarre spectacle we've all been held captive by over the past two weeks, with the culmination of his
"process". It's uncanny how both James and Tiger Woods, both born on the same day have suffered such enormous falls from their respective starry perches. Woods of course literally broke down before our very eyes, wrecking his car and public image just outside of his "home" on Thanksgiving night. Even though he has returned to the ranks of the pro tour, he will never win another major. He's not playing like Tiger Woods used to. Hmmmmm. Wonder why?
Now LeBron has taken part in this enormous distraction and chosen to play in South Beach, you know, it's got to be nice and safe down there if LeBron is going to suit up for The Heat. But something remarkable has happened in the wake of LeBron's utterly selfish display. He's snapped the sports spell across America. It hasn't fully manifested itself quite yet, but trust me, it's happening. One of my favorite sports writers, Bill Simmons, widely known as "The Sports Guy" wrote a
potent piece on LeBron's falling star turn and he brings up the sore subject that sports as an institution might be coming to a grinding halt, that what LeBron did displayed the lack of values we attribute to sport, while illuminating the areas of our lives that we have neglected in lieu of such grand distractions and almost a centuries worth of spectacle. Simmons looked hard at the world that gives him meaning and a six-figure-income and I'm not sure that he likes what he's seeing now. It's like that moment in "They Live" where Roddy Piper puts on those sun glasses and the world is revealed as it is, not as we are told it is. It's a dark awakening and that's what LeBron James is doing right now. Pluto moving towards his Capricornian Sun is showing us how we have given our power away to the voyeuristic world of professional sports.
I watched LeBron, Bosh and Dwyane sitting together in their Heat unis, in front of thousands of people under questionable skies, all cheering their
heroic arrival. To me, they looked naked, even though clothed. I felt a wave of shame come over me. Their tank top and shorts, their team logo, their graffiti splatter of tats, it all failed to hide the fact that this addiction with celebrity and sport had come to a crashing demise. The bottom out moment, maybe not in Miami (they'll have their own issues later), but for the rest of US. I watched LeBron guarantee seven championships and the only emotion I could muster was embarrassment.
Dan Gilbert the owner of The Cavs ripped LeBron a new asshole for leaving his home. Ironically, Dan Gilbert is also a Capricorn, like James and like the city of Cleveland itself, but Gilbert does not have a lot of moral ground to stand on. He made his fortune with his company, Quicken Home Loans and he did it on the back of the housing bubble, where lenders just held their noses and looked the other way. We all know how well that one has worked out around the subject of homes. Gilbert was quick to toss out karma when dealing with LeBron, but perhaps The King was dishing out a little of his own, foreclosing on his relationship with Gilbert and The Cavaliers. What goes around, comes around.
So what's the answer and where is home? Maybe it's in values that sustain and give life, so that the chrysalis can crack and we can take root and grow into the magnificent form of our own, unique and intentional design. A beautiful soul is gently showing me, that it's how you protect those values and gifts with the sanctity of God that matters. The rest is just maya. The spell is broken.
