June 5, 2005

Samuel: What good surprises this night brings. Hello. Well, this should be fun. Good. Welcome to June, and June is the month to travel. June is what?

Birthdays.

S: Birthdays, yes. That’s always nice. It is . . .

Solstice.

S: Solstice. Sure. Sure.

Father’s Day.

S: Father’s Day. Father’s Day, and the Solstice, and birthdays. Summer.

The returning of . . . I mean it’s much lighter.

S: The impacts of light in your year.

I think of high noon.

S: As the ceremonial wheel, the clock is high noon at the summer solstice. Yes. That works, that’s good.

In modern tradition, there’s a lot of weddings in June.

S: That’s the one I was looking for. Weddings. Why weddings in June?

I play [at] a lot of weddings, and June is a time when you can have a wedding outside, or a reception outside. Everything is in full flower. It’s just that there’s so much beauty around and fertility.

S: Aye. Aye. You’re sort of thawed out from the winter hibernation, and you are feeling a little more feisty.

Paul.

I think a lot of people graduate from school in May.

S: Good. Good.

So they’ve got to find another [ . . . ]

S: And you know that never ends. For some people that never ends. Aye.

Frank.

I think maybe traditionally in June you’ve finished in a lot of ways the traditional plantings and it’s not quite time to get into harvesting, so it may be a time in more rural areas that there was a little bit of a break in the work so that you could have the wedding, and have a come-together, and maybe some time off before you got into the harder work as the summer went on and harvest time and that.

S: Nice. Nice.

It’s a season of passages, and that’s what it’s always about, passages. Passages. And what are the passages in your life? It is graduation, in one way or another, in one form or another, particularly now—at this time of year—particularly now. Why do you think? [Pause] Well, don’t all jump at once here. Oh, because maybe of all of the weddings and birthdays and solstice and farming, and all those things already mentioned. Sure. A graduation from what was to what is to what will be.

And that’s the one for you right now, because where you are in your life as well as in this particular cycle of the year, you are looking at change. And you are looking at that change in—most likely—one of two ways. One way, of course, is . . . anybody? Maybe somebody should set an alarm clock, and let it ring in a few minutes. Hello, it’s good to see you here. Wake up! Anybody?

I’ll take a chance.

S: Good.

You’re changing out of your winter clothes into your summer clothes.

S: Very true. Very true. More than that?

The things that you planted in spring. You go through the winter, you’re kind of in hibernation. In the spring you plant, you have ideas. And then you have your six-month, your halfway point of the year, when things just really get active. That active manifestation, I mean, it just really starts to happen.

S: A very natural part of the flow in this hemisphere, at this portion, is that you have been building up to more and more light, now you’re going to use it and slow down. And that tends to be a very natural cycle not only in nature, but for your selves as well.

How many of you have repeatedly exclaimed with delight how wonderful the warmer, sunnier days are? And how it just feeds you somehow to have more light in your life. Well, just think of yourself as a broccoli plant, or a zucchini squash, or maybe it would be more accurately some of the early crops coming into harvest right now, which would be more like what?

Peas.

S: Peas.

Spinach.

S: Somebody’s got to say it. Peas.

Carrots.

S: Peas.

Give peas a chance.

S: That’s the one. Peas and what were more of them?

Radishes.

S: Radish. What is a radish?

It’s a little red globe. You can pull it out of the ground, and it’s a little round . . . kind of like horseradish.

It’s like a turnip.

They’re kind of spicy.

A little hot.

S: Tiny, spicy turnip.

Red.

Red, though.

Could be.

S: Well, good. You like it?

They’re fun.

Yes, they’re good in salads.

S: Apparently that wasn’t the only set of thoughts winging its way this way about radishes.

Lettuce, too.

Lettuce is in spring.

S: So, it is also a time of early harvest. It’s a time of graduating from what was—and in your life, what was? That’s a question. What was going on in your life over the last six months? And, if you will forgive me for being so bold, I will tell you what the last six months have been. Very obviously they have been about relationships and communication. You can count on that, can’t you? And the way that all of that interesting experiences have played out have been all about giving you opportunities to learn about your own power. So that at this point you have a pretty good sense about the right use of power, or a pretty good sense of “Run away! Run away! Hide, hide, hide.” You’ve had chaos, and you’ve had opportunities to make use of it or be used by it.

The last six months have been about discernment. What is discernment? What does that mean? Discernment. Why do I ask? Lillibeth.

Well, it’s the ability to form a perspective on situations or events or things that are going on in your life, and make decisions based upon the information that’s coming to you and that you’re able to assimilate.

S: Recognizing, making use of, assimilating information that’s coming to you. Decisions that you are making with regard to it. That works. More. Mary Claire.

For me it’s a process too of looking down the road. If I make this choice, what types of effects would it have?

S: Good.

Not only in my life but in other people’s lives. And to look at that carefully before . . . for me that discerning which path to take or which choice to make based on that.

S: What are the sorts of things that come up in your life—good—if you do not use discernment?

Many choices you didn’t anticipate because you weren’t paying attention.

S: That’s true. Too many things coming up that you did not anticipate happening because you weren’t paying attention.

Sometimes you get the opportunity to apologize.

S: Ah, yes. Sometimes not using discernment gives you a very powerful opportunity—and it is. Apologizing is an act of discernment—perhaps we’ll get to that later—and yes, it is often the result of a lack of discernment.

Claudia.

It often means messes to clean up.

S: Ah, that works. Yes. Yes. Certainly it does. What happens when you do not use discernment? No more? Nobody knows?

Well, I find that life starts . . . I start reacting to life rather than . . . what’s the other word I want.

S: Responds.

Responding, because it’s coming too fast and too hard. And so I’m being carried away in the rapids of life, rather than being able to steer my own boat.

S: Aye. And that’s where you were going as well? Good.

Discernment—in a lot of times in our language, we use it to mean that you have made good decisions and you’re responding rather than reacting.

S: Well that’s positive discernment. Yes. Yes. You have learned to use it positively. You are not reacting, you are responding. You are making choices consciously instead of without consciousness, because either way you’re making decisions, you’re making choices.

So you are, in many ways. Over the last six months you’ve been moving through a time of change, and change is a constant in your life. Aye, they say it’s death and taxes—it’s change. The only thing that will not change is that change will be in your life. Change that you accept or that you reject, and you accept it if it is familiar to you so that you’ve got a box to put it into, or you accept it because you have fear around it.

Now, hold on there, did you get that one? You accept it with fear—or maybe I should say a negative function of fear—when you are afraid of what will happen if you do not do it. With how many things in your life do you use that as the decision-maker? “Well, if I don’t do it, it will be worse than now.” Sometimes that’s not a bad way to direct your life, but most of the time that’s the chicken way out.

Fear is the doorway to learning, and you are wise to recognize it and honor it. But fear is not your mother. You don’t have to stay with it all of your life. And fear is a signal for you. You are driving down the road and on your headboard—dashboard—there is a little light on, and you look at that light and it tells you that you are running out of gas, or a door is open, or somebody has not put on their belts—yes?

Or running out of oil.

S: Or running out of oil, or some sort of engine trouble. The little light tells you pay attention here, something needs attention. And that’s what fear is in your life, or certainly the healthy look at it. Fear is an opportunity for you to take an engine check, make sure your seatbelt is on, take a look around, ensure that things are running, as they should be. And determining that you’ll check into it, rather than just ignoring it.

You are driving along [and] you ignore that light. Well, if it’s your gas light and you’ve ignored it then you’re going to run out of gas, aren’t you? And if it’s your oil light and you ignore it, you’ll burn up your engine. Well, I suppose that’s what happens when you run out of oil, isn’t it? And if a door is not fully clothed . . . closed . . . that would be an interesting thing to see, wouldn’t it? A fully clothed door. If the seat belt is not on, sometimes the damage that it’s warning you about is something that doesn’t weigh too heavily for you. And sometimes it’s something like the engine will go—you’ll run out of gas—that you really want to pay attention to. And that is also so about the fear in your life. Some of them require immediate attention. Some of them just sort of warn you a little, just push you far enough that you’re aware that something needs to be done.

What happens in your life if you act like every one of them is the “engine will burn up” oil light?

You live in a constant state of drama.

S: You live in a constant state of drama. Yes. Yes. Somebody explain constant drama.

Constant emergencies.

S: Everything’s an emergency. Yes. Yes.

Where you can just see the awful consequences coming down the road—my god!

S: Heavy cynicism, and large negativity, because everything they see coming down the road is going to be terrible, the worst.

There’s a lack of discernment between what’s important and what’s urgent. Everything that’s important is urgent.

S: Everything becomes urgent. Everything is important and therefore everything is urgent. What is all of that a signal of?

Fear.

S: Drama, yes, represents fear.

I was going to say not having enough passion in your life.

S: That’s right. A lack of passion, because so many people mistake passion for drama, drama as passion. If you don’t have passion, I can assure you you will seek drama, because it makes you feel connected in and alive, even if constantly frustrated by it, regularly exhausted through it. And why would somebody have no passion? You’re waking up. I hear where you’re going with it.

They don’t now what makes them happy.

S: Yes.

You’ve said too in the past that drama’s kind of a . . . if you don’t have a life, it reminds you that you’re still alive. It kind of gives you stimulation that you’re not getting in your life in other ways.

S: And as it relates to passion, reminding you that you’re alive.

[To Mary Claire] Your clown is here, by the way. It’s always nice to look into the back of the room and see a clown walk in. Aye this is just like that great convention of sorts—so many clowns. Speaking of your passion, very nice. She gets points for that, yes?

Fear creates drama. Drama is the excuse for having no passion. You don’t have passion when you don’t have intent or goals. If you don’t have—and here is the word where intent and goals come together—if you don’t have vision. Vision. Where there is no vision, drama lives high.

You don’t have vision—that’s right, Oma is always here to tell you—you don’t have vision because you don’t know what makes you happy. You don’t know what makes you happy because you are fearful of making decisions to bring about change in your life. So the circle comes back and bites you.

And we are talking graduating from one part of your life to another. Graduating here, at this time of natural abundance, of fertility, of hope, longer days, better feeling bodies. How many of you—and maybe you should not raise your hand on this one, just answer to yourself—how many of you have felt motivated to eat better, exercise more, do some things to take better care of yourself, because you can get out more easily, do more? Sure, all across the room people are saying, “Yes, I’m doing this,” because it’s a time of releasing the old and moving forth to a new you. But there’s a problem with that. What do you think that would be? Well, there’s probably several so you could just come up with them. But where do you think I’m going with it? What do you think the problem is?

Resistance to change.

S: Right there. Right the first time. The problem is you resist what you would do because it isn’t guaranteed. And guarantees are part of what I’m wanting to talk about.

Stuart, you went today to what?

A high school graduation and lunch with my parents and my mother’s [ . . . ].

S: Hmm, which one of those was a graduation? They both were.

[ . . . ] really going to Frankfort.

S: And a graduation is about you have gone through the school system here—yes?—and you have either gone through ten to twelve or close to fifteen years, depending on what you’re graduating from. Maybe if it’s an even later graduation, maybe it’s twenty years of schooling. You have gone through an intensely focused period of learning, growing, changing, learning growing changing, learning some more, growing and changing some more. And there comes a point in this particular case—how many of you know somebody who has graduated recently? Many of you? How old are we talking to you here?

Seventeen, eighteen.

Sixteen.

Thirty.

S: Seventeen, eighteen, thirties. Different graduations here. Well, let’s just keep them all in mind, it doesn’t matter.

Think about your graduation. You officially ended an important part of your life. And there you were, shining brightly amidst the sea of fresh and delighted and eager faces ready to move on into the next step of your life. So you went home that night, and you put yourself to sleep early because you knew that you were going to be a totally different person the next day. Well now, totally different for a very different reason.

You went off that stage with your diploma and ready, right then, to go into the next phase of your life. Right? Ooh, not quite, not quite.

I have to say that this ties in so well. I read last week a definition of graduation. It’s also called commencement. And a high school student was saying that commencement is really the word that means to begin again. It’s not an ending; it’s a new beginning. So if you look at all your graduations as commencements, it’s a new way to think about it.

S: All right. That was exactly where my point was going to go, so thank you. And you can go home, or wait while I just start making up something more to go with it.

No, you’re not exactly ready, are you? You have to probably go ask for a job, go look for it, go hope for it. Or maybe you’ve got to groom and prepare yourself for the next step. It is rare when you are in a growing process that your graduation and immediate new beginning have a whole lot to do with each other. And you would do so much better in your day-to-day life right now if you remembered that. Rather than “All right, I’ve let that go. I’m finished with that. Where is . . . ?” whatever it is you’ve been searching for. “I’ve graduated from the step. I’m ready for the next one now. Give it to me. I have gone through this time of chaos and change. I have learned so much. I have grown so much. I have mastered so many good things. So, all right, Universe, here is my lottery ticket. I should win it now, right?”

And yet that’s not the way it actually works, because the way it usually works is you graduate—and that might be finally graduate—probably for everybody it’s finally, isn’t it? You graduate, and there needs to be a short period of time in which you get your legs under you. What does that mean? What does that mean in the real world? Suzanne.

Well, you’re in a certain mode when you’re in school. You’re following directions; you’re taking classes. You’re in a certain mode.

S: What’s wrong with that?

Nothing. Nothing at all, but you need to change that in order to go to the next step. So you need a period of just kind of taking stock, relaxing, getting your balance in your life, finding where you want to go when you’re not being told what you have to do. And then it requires a different kind of energy, a different kind of organization to go to the next step.

S: Precisely. And that is where you are right now. Having graduated, seeing in front of you opportunity, possibility, maybes, hopes, dreams, and the Universe is not dumping it on your lap. It’s not saying, “Ah, you’ve graduated. Congratulations. Here it is.” And so you’re sitting here about this time of year saying, “Hello, are you listening?”

And so I want to tell you how to be heard.

Step number one: it’s not about your volume. It’s not about your repetition. It’s not about your intensity. It’s not about the language, the pictures you send with it, how many times you write it down, in how much detail. It’s not about how good you are, how bad you are not any more—so you say. It’s not about what you eat or do not eat, how much money you make or do not make. It’s not about what group you hang out with, the language you speak, the books you read. And what are the other ways that humans use to try to separate themselves from each other? What are the other things—and there are many of them—that become little justifications for doing and not doing, and being and not being, depending on what appears to be needed at that moment?

It’s not about how much education you have.

S: It’s not. It’s not about how your grades were getting that education.

It’s not about how many letters you have after your name, how many credentials you have.

S: How many letters, number, spit wads, whatever it happens to be after your name.

How old you are.

S: It’s not about how old you are.

How you practice your faith.

S: How you practice your faith. How you live. It’s not about any of those things. The only way you get heard—you’re not going to like this—is you’ve got to have a relationship with who or what you’re speaking to. Why did I say you’re not going to like that?

Because we like to do it alone.

S: That’s one reason.

And because good relationships are a lot of work, and we don’t often like to do a lot of work.

S: Thank you. Yes. That’s very true.

Or that we think that we are alone, that we have to do it by ourselves.

S: You like to do it by yourself or you feel stuck doing it by yourself, yes. It’s when you are all you have learned you can rely on, sometimes through some very difficult circumstances that have convinced you how true that is. And it’s very hard to open your heart to the idea that there is a possible relationship with a creative construct beyond your wildest imagination. It’s a whole lot easier to blow off the whole idea, isn’t it? To try to ignore it until you dig way too deep, and then you’re willing to ask for help out.

Once upon a time, there was an incredibly intelligent, absolutely brilliant, magnificently proportioned, beautifully created ant. Aye. And that was an ant with a mission. That ant was born into this world with a special imperative. The ant came here with a compact, and that compact was to help bring about transition in the ant colony.

And that little ant was born, hatched out of his egg, was nursed a bit, dropped into the work area, and just started living. Now, an ant’s life is probably pretty familiar to most of you. They eat, they work, they eat, they work, they rest. Most ants don’t sleep as you think of sleep, but a whole lot of you don’t sleep, as I would think of sleep. They have communities, and within the communities there are particular jobs that get done. And those jobs are done all for a greater purpose.

This ant was different than the rest. This ant had a big job to do, and it knew it. It knew it. This ant had a tendency to slow down the line just a little; getting a bit distracted looking at the beauty around it. “Focus on your work! Carry that crumb! Faster! Faster!” Crummy job.

This ant tended to be a loner, which isn’t very appreciated in the ant kingdom. They are all supposed to be focused on one task. What is that task? Do you know?

Serving the queen.

S: Exactly. I was going to give you the example—or the hint—that it was a lot like bees. Their job is the keep the queen alive, and that’s not so unfamiliar to you either, is it? The queen in your particular colony might be your boss. It might be your parents. It might be your children. It might be your old beliefs that are hanging on and hanging on, not particularly productive and not necessarily doing anything to help the whole community. But there you go, that’s what has always been done, and those pathways are firmly entrenched between your worker-ant self and the community where the—in this case, we’ll say—the head ant is. I love that thought. Can you picture a head . . . never mind.

But this particular ant tended to ask questions. Why do we do this? Wouldn’t it be faster if we went this way instead of that way? What if we brought this instead? What happens when . . . ? The ant was often ignored, sometimes called a troublemaker, and certainly was regularly reminded that he’s different.

Are you talking about the anti-Christ?

S: The ant was wandering over to a particularly luscious food source one day, and while waiting for it to cool enough to hold onto, it just stopped and looked around. And it saw, in a way it had never seen before—now there’s a whole lot of directions I could go here right now. One of them is to give the story on up to realizing that it’s a cow it saw. It’s a whole new life form. It’s a whole new giver of good things. It’s a great and marvelous friend, and the little ant learned to speak cow, and in fact became very attached to cowdom—cowdom?—maybe not cowdom but . . . or dung. Not that either—became very attached to helping the greater herd of cows. And fill in with all the appropriate jokes, all right. That’s one direction. Became the cow savior, the little ant that it was.

Another direction I could go with it is the ant was so aware of beauty that it never again was satisfied with its constant rut. You eat; you work, you eat, you work, you rest a bit and then you eat, you work, you eat, you work, you rest a bit and then . . . and it started figuring out how to break out of line and do something for itself.

I could talk to you about some friends it met on the way, and things it learned doing that. I think you have legends about the ant that met the grasshopper, yes? Is it right? And get a lovely moral tale about what?

Working isn’t it?

S: I have no idea. The very many important lessons a grasshopper can give you when it’s tied up with an ant.

And all of those would be very workable, but they’re not going to take me where I want to go, because the fact of it is this ant changed its life, its destiny and its world, not because of any of those directions. This is important—don’t miss this. What that ant did that was so remarkable was it chose to look beyond where it was. All of those other parts, all of those other options, all of those other stories and jokes and connections that I promise you over the next two days you will review and come up with fully, all of those happened only because the ant said, “Wow,” moved one tiny step out of line.

Now, I don’t necessarily mean it was out of line, I mean it was just a little out of step, putting it into a place that a world opened up. The ant had the potential for a great work, but that work would never come about if that ant continued to do the same safe thing over and over and over, living that rut, doing what was expected, being a good ant. Is there anything wrong with doing that? Of course not. Is there anything wrong with holding up the line and taking a look around you and saying “wow”? Well, yes, sometimes there is. Sometimes there is, and you have to decide how you’re going to stop and take that look around, and exactly how much attention you want from the process.

For instance, the ant might have chosen to stop right in the middle of the track right there. Can you see it? Little ant, ant, ant, ant—ant stops, whoops. That’s a choice. Or maybe it does it when it’s not at work, but it’s at eat time. And it just steps back from eating just the once, and looks up and around instead of down and filling [sic]. It doesn’t have to be a great life-changing clash that allows you to move from one point in your life to another. It doesn’t have to be hard, painful, lonely. It’s all about how you’re choosing to do it, and the way you choose to do it goes right back to that relationships—the one with Source—because that ant would never look beyond its blind, instinctual security needs, would never be able to see what could be if it was not already seeing beyond itself. And what I mean by that is in order for you to move out of your rut, to be ready when you graduate, to move on, to do the next thing, to be capable of the next phase in this year, in your life, in your day, you’ve got to be able—I did not say willing, I said able—you’ve got to be able to look outside of where you are without fear.

And one way that you can know if you are doing that or not is by taking a look at the drama going on in your life. If your life is filled with drama, I promise you, you are looking at your world with fear.

Graduation means you have completed the lesson, not the life. Graduation means it’s time for something new, but nature tells you that the something new isn’t a whole new ant, it’s the fulfillment of the potential of the ant, of the student, of you.

How do you know what to do? How do you know when you’re ready to go from one stage of life to another? How do you know when you are ready to graduate and prepare for that next step? How do you know when you have your eye on Source in that relationship? How do you know? I will tell you first, it’s not because everything in your life is flowing beautifully and easily. Om, darn! Don’t you just hate that part? You know for two reasons. Fulfillment—I did not say happiness—fulfillment [long pause]—I’m trying to decide that, if that one needs explanation, what direction I want to go. I’m not going to explain it. I’m going to leave it with you and move on to the next one, but remember, fulfillment, not happiness. There’s a big difference.

And the second one is adequately and properly placed boredom. I mean that. What am I saying there?

Okay, I think it means that something has become so routine that it’s a habit, it’s easy to do. It doesn’t have any zing or challenge to it.

S: And yet I was talking about fulfillment.

It’s not fulfilling, though, at least in my mind, because there’s no zing to it, there’s no something that I’m still going toward. It just I know how it’s going to go. I could tell you chapter and verse. It’s just become predictable.

S: But sometimes in your life that chapter-and-verse predictability is comforting. Sometimes in your life that sort of behavior is a break that you need out of the work-eat-rest, work-eat-rest, work-eat-rest-sleep a little, work-eat.

So when it happens, I can say, “Oh, I can switch something.”

S: Good.

I let it play out and see where it goes. Sometimes it goes into the new. “Oh this is interesting. Okay, I can go that way.” Or sometimes it just goes, “This is getting to be a little bit of a drag here.”

S: You want to be careful that you’re not spending your time figuring out how to get out of where you are. You’re not spending your time cynically—cynically, is that a word?

Yes.

S: And angrily not liking where you are, but you do recognize that it’s not what feeds you, even though it is something that has given you much. It’s important. Boredom can signal a really dark place on your journey, and you’ve got to be very careful about letting boredom be your guide. “Well, I should be out of this because I am just bored to death. I’m not being challenged.” But when it is connected in with fulfillment—“This is not something that I’m afraid of. It’s not something that I resist. This is not something that brings pain and suffering and difficulty. This is not bad that I’m in denial of or running from, it’s just something that is no longer me.”—that’s your signal.

“Well, what if I’m bored but not fulfilled either?” Hold on. Hold on, because I can assure you your attitude still needs a few more strokes before you put the “master” stamp on to say you’re ready to move on with it.

“What about if I’m fulfilled, but not bored, just ready to move on?” Hold up. Wait. And wait because the things that you’ve not finished up, those issues that are not complete, those beliefs that have not been refined, those attitudes that have not functioned in purity yet, those things will follow you into your next step. And fulfillment is a signal of completion, and boredom is not a signal of “stopped working,” it’s a signal of “got it; doing it; just not inspired by it.” And that’s when you’re ready to go, and that’s what your co-creative partner with this Universe looks for.

Question: if I’m being fulfilled by something, I don’t want to leave it. I mean that’s a good place for me to be. So can we go with a little more definition of fulfillment here?

S: How about I do this instead? When you stay at something, and you cannot leave it until you’re mad at it.

Go beyond being mad and be at peace before you move.

S: Yes, reach that place where it fills you, but the you that it’s filling is not the you continuing on from here.

June is going to offer you a lot of choices. The nature of the energy flowing through right now is an opening and an opening and an opening of a lot of plans you’ve been putting out there, a lot of windows you’ve been looking through.

Don’t go from where you are until you know where you’re going. When you know where you’re going and there are no more doors standing in your way, don’t stop.

Graduation is—yes—a new beginning, but more important than that, it’s a recognition of what has been because it leads to what will be. The crops are in the ground. You are reaping the harvest. It’s not planting, it’s fulfilling. With that in mind, when I say to you, there’s going to be a lot of doors opening, windows to look out of, I want to remind you that you limit your vision by the view you have of you. Commencement, as in commence accepting you. Commence looking at your future. Commence seeing the fulfillment of past dreams as doorways to tomorrow’s success.

Now and again, put your head up from your meal and look around you. You know, don’t you, that it was a big cattle field that I was going with there, and that lovely dinner was . . . well, never mind. That’s what it feels like sometimes, doesn’t it? Doing all this work for a lovely steaming pile of . . . all right, never mind.

July is going to represent action, action, action. And you must use June to be ready for it. Action, action, action. What is not complete is going to haunt you—sorry. What you believe about yourself on the side of the scale that says incapable, not ready, not good is going to bite you. Commence.

Glochanumora.