As the World Twists, and as it Turnsby Eric Francis
THE PLANET AND ITS PEOPLE are now spinning into the singularity point of the Libra solar eclipse. The exact event takes place in the States just before midnight the evening of Oct. 13. Yet we are now fully under its thrall, being drawn rapidly into the vortex like the little ball going down the funnel in the late Carl Sagan's ancient program Cosmos, which he used to demonstrate the effects of a black hole. The ball, drawn down the singularity point, swirls in tighter and tighter spirals and is finally propelled by gravity and its own momentum through the vortex. In much the same fashion, events approaching 2012 will feel ever-more compact and condensed (to those capable of noticing or rather noting the change). Both time and the cause/effect phenomenon compress around an eclipse as well. It's possible to feel like one has lived a week in a morning. Then, in review, an actual week has disappeared feeling as if it were a day. Back when I was living in spiritual boot camp in New Jersey in 1987 studying A Course in Miracles, we used to call this 'celestial speedup'. The phenomenon as actually experienced needs to be mapped out more carefully. There is no one single effect; it's like time is leapfrogging all over the place. Many people are noticing it, and it's happening more often. Few people say anything. It is full-on weirdo country. And we tend to forget till the next time it happens. In actual fact, there is a part of consciousness that can take over the passage of time and our perception of the passage of time, which are about the same thing. They are the same thing because what we call time and its passage is an illusion of the mind; it is literally a construction of thought. Miracles, when they occur, make careful use of the time-control phenomenon, reversing apparent inevitabilities, condensing events, erasing the effects of history and, at times, bridging vast gaps of space. As both the Course and Einstein have explained in different words, "space and time are one illusion." In the world of perception, eclipses can and often do concentrate these effects. And they can be put to work. Imagine that the small, fast circling of the little ball as it goes down the funnel is really about intention setting. The faster it spins in tighter spirals going into the eclipse, the more potent the thought forms it creates. Further, imagine that this little ball of thought can be projected as energy anywhere out the other end, just as we will be projected outward with Wednesday's New Moon -- the other end, of course, being the rest of time on the other side of the eclipse. That is one way to imagine the energy of the eclipse. It is kind of like a time checkpoint, or a threshold where the world is lifted to a different plane of reality. Eclipses, as you may know, are alignments that occur on or near the lunar nodes. The lunar nodes seem, based on much personal observation and studying what others have observed, to be among the major vortices we have available. They are time funnels which we are now getting drawn into, and projecting ourselves and our intentions out through. The lunar nodes can gather together vast numbers of people, bridge seemingly unrelated events, connect us with the distant past, and set up the full-on sense of mission that we can experience on Earth and that indeed rivets us to the Earth plane, whether consciously or not. This particular solar eclipse is a south node event. It is karmic rather than dharmic. Karma is the collection of benefits and consequences of past action; dharma is the active expression of right action and purpose in the present time, becoming the future. Karma is an effect. Dharma is the corresponding or associated cause. Yet oddly, it seems that the effect precedes the cause, which creates quite a lot of confusion and leads us to believe we cannot ever solve our problems. This eclipse involves resolving the past and releasing ourselves from the past, and is also a kind of direct confrontation with history. The Oct. 28 eclipse of the Moon, stationed on the other side of the nodes, occurs close to the north node in Taurus and is on the dharmic side of the equation -- calling on us to "act as if to hold the world together" -- my favorite definition of dharma. As for the Oct. 13 solar eclipse, it is an astonishing synchronicity that as this alignment makes its final approach, we will have delivered into our homes the third and final presidential debate between George W. Bush and John F. Kerry. Anyone who thinks this is mere politics is kidding themselves. In the neighborhood of make-believe we call 21st century reality, this is the closest thing we will come any time soon to an actual discussion of the fate of the Earth amongst those who have some influence as to the outcome. Presently, the issue of who wins and who loses this election stands apart from immediate relevance. What is at stake is a question of evolution, and an actual experience of evolution: in particular, evolution of thought and perception. Many people are now feeling that their conscience, their opinion, their perception, all matter, and that they can get together with others to make a difference. In a world where most people feel nothing at all has the least consequence, this is a welcome thought form. It even seems, at times, that perceiving reality is enough to reinforce its presence and hold on the Earth plane, as we appear to be choosing between two entirely alternate and diverging sets of potentials. On the levels of the political game where mundane power is brokered, bought, sold and stolen, we can be sure that high-level discussions are being had and decisions are being made that have nothing to do with the vote tally. There are currently a group of desperate people in the White House protected only by the facts that a) about half the country is having a mass-hallucination of bringing on Armageddon and the tribulation period, b) the mass media, another form of mass hallucination, can only reveal so much of the truth without totally and irrevocably losing face, and c) the big bosses have not yet pulled the plug. They may, if the natives get too restless. Speaking of losing face, did you see the Cheney-Edwards debate the other night? I now live in a place with a big TV set and 100 cable channels, including the weird Brit version of CNN, Bloomberg in French, and a bit of BBC. I am impressed more than anything by how terribly boring TV is, at those times when it's not desperately sad. Seeing this, I don't get why anyone thinks it's a good thing. Anyone who looks at the bloody images of war and suffering and thinks the answer is to feed the violence against children truly needs to have a long talk with their guru. Between these incessant reports of war, we are treated to long, tedious analyses of the financial markets with lots of spiky graphs, discussion of home heating oil prices, and urgent commentators trying to nail the bottom line. Then there's this hypnotic ad for India tourism being shown between every segment. I would much rather play my favorite Bjork songs (alternately, 'Hyper-Ballad' and 'It's Oh So Quiet') over and over again, really loud. Anyway, the debate seemed worth staying up for, and it was truly worth it all for the one moment where Edwards said the words "Halliburton" and "$7 billion" and Cheney responded with one of the longest, most uncontrollable shit-eating grins in the history of the human race. Ron Kurtz, are you reading? You need to show this video in your Hakomi therapy training class. Edwards, playing Hakomi therapist, drops the probe: "Halliburton-$7 billion" and Cheney, therapy client, takes it in and has an immediate response: he smiles, sways, fumbles mentally and then says: "Well, Gwen [addressing the moderator], I think the record speaks for itself. These are two individuals who have been for the war when the headlines were good and against it when their poll ratings were bad." What a comeback. Cheney proved he is human when his unconscious seized control of his body and the big joke got let out, was splayed on the video screen, and hung suspended in midair for everyone to see and examine for an excruciating five seconds. Then he said something totally irrelevant (which is why Hakomi therapy teaches its practitioners basically to ignore what people say, and just watch their face and body for the real cues). More people should be doing this. It's as if we're in the midst of a huge psychology experiment to see how many lies the American public will believe; and how many the boys can get away with; and they just may get away with it. If we studied their faces as they spoke this would not happen so easily. Big Fun Moment #2 arrived when Uncle Dickie urged the American populous to faithfully flock to Factcheck.com and learn for their very own selves how the Kerry-Edwards people were working with skewed information. (He meant to send them to Factcheck.org, a non-profit site hosted at the University of Pennsylvania, but oops, he misspoke.) Factcheck.com turned out to be a for-profit domain owned by some guys down in the Cayman Islands (hardly the seat of philanthropy). Seeing an opportunity for some fun and a meaningful political statement, they put up a redirect, automatically pointing the ensuing flood of visitors arriving at their homepage onto the site of none other than George Soros. Ah, the joys of interconnectivity. Soros is the billionaire activist who has been financing some excellent awareness-raising projects and who has made no secret of his disdain for Team Bush and what it's doing. Thus, thanks to K.F.Cheney himself, a peak of 100 hits per second were being funneled into Soros country. Meanwhile, my inbox is getting more interesting by the day. This morning I was sent a link to votergasm.com, a site set up by various Ivy League-type graduates and some from University of Wisconsin at Madison (original home and spawning ground of The Onion). There, readers can pledge to have hot, steamy sex during election night (which event was endorsed by Rush Limbaugh, then in a stunning flip-flop, unendorsed). Those making The Pledge can also promise to withhold sex from nonvoters, though under certain conditions those who make The Pledge and vote may receive oral sex from those who don't pop the chad on Election Day. (Not that I need another excuse not to vote.) Speaking of sex and politics, Steve Bergstein, our neighborhood civil rights attorney and partner in a boutique constitutional law firm in New York, forwarded this item from The (Manchester UK) Guardian last week. Read carefully, it is true. It is not one of my satires. Honest. He is the conservative bastion of the US supreme court, a favourite of President Bush, and a hunting partner of the vice-president. He has argued vociferously against abortion rights, and in favour of anti-sodomy laws.On a less entertaining but equally impressive note, I also read an excellent nationally-published article sent out by Jude to the Political Waves list (a non-profit educational list owned by Planet Waves) about Elizabeth Edwards bashing the administration on its horrid mishandling of national security issues, while simultaneously claiming to be the great national security heroes of all times. She pointed out that the Canadian border, where the would-be Y2K terrorist attacks (including blowing up LA Airport) were foiled when a terrorist panicked coming into the U.S., had gotten no additional funding from the many billions spent in the War on Terror. She's one of the few prominent people to mention the fact that military families are having their benefits cut, and was brave enough to state that many of them are surviving on welfare. And she brought up how the Bush administration has abandoned Sept. 11 survivors after promising to take care of them forever. So much for compassionate conservatism. The word is out, and it has its pants on. Let's see how far it goes, and what this eclipse adds to the discussion. It is, given the current circumstances, always possible that Team Halliburton will, facing the probable loss of the election, find a way to eliminate the election. That would be interesting, but it would be far more interesting to see how people respond, or if they even put down the remote control. ++ Planet Waves Home | What's New | Horoscopes | Subscriber Login | About Subscribing |
