The Quickening

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

I began to notice 11:11 on my clock — in my car, at the bank, anywhere that time intruded into my daily affairs — sometime in the early 90s. It wasn’t until later in the decade that the spiritual community addressed this as a “wake up call,” a reminder from the cosmos that we could no longer sleep through our existence. If you’re one of those who couldn’t avoid the 11:11 reminders, then yesterday was your day: the day when that energetic doorway opened into the final staging area for our 2012 shift.

If you only thought of it as Armistice Day, a day to remember peace after a bitter and tragic war, or as a day to honor our veterans’ service to country, then there’s a bit more here for you to discover. The 11th House context of a fledgling Aquarian Age beckons and asks you to bring all your friends.

I’m writing this in advance of November 11th, which is proof that I didn’t expect winged chariots driven by angels to appear in the sky — or the Borg either, for that matter — because why bother writing what won’t be read. No, I suspect this gateway will be as others have been: uplifting, encouraging, enlightening, IF that’s what we’re bringing with us to the table, the opposite if we allow our fears to block our senses and spin our imagination. I’ve planned a Goddess Gathering on the 11th, with family and extended family that includes a diverse group of women who speak a common spiritual language. We will do what connected women do on such occasions. We’ll share food and drink, concerns and laughter, admire and nurture one another, our inner child and our actual children. We’ll wear bindis and throw cards; perhaps get a bit tipsy and even dance in the rain, given the weather report. Most of all, on a day long anticipated, we will bask in each other’s unconditional love. If you do not have such women in your life, I encourage you to go looking for them: they’re out there, somewhere, expecting you.

As to what an 11:11 juncture might bring us politically, I think we have all the clues in front of us to sort through, bringing us to an easily discerned truth. We’re being asked to activate what we know, what we feel, what we want. My understanding is that when we are sure and confident in that consciousness, the cosmos will be eager to help us, magnifying back to us — as it is designed to do — that which we offer up as our personal and political truth.

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It was Nancy Reagan, in all her polished, practiced glory, who told us to “Just say no.” Well, here’s the good news — I think we’re getting the hang of it!

In a breath-holding moment of national Rorschach and welcome evidence of awakening, residents of Mississippi voted not to allow a zygote the full rights and privileges of a person. At this point, then, corporations have more personhood than does a newly fertilized human egg, although Florida seems ready to test this radical pro-life nonsense themselves. This is the anti-choice, anti-woman legislation fundies have been dreaming of for decades, and now it appears that “Satan’s minions” have stepped up to snatch victory from the righteous yet again — or not, depending on who you consider “the righteous” to be.

Further, in the eleventh month of the eleventh year of this new century, there appeared to be nothing the American people thought righteous about what the corporate party brought to the table on election Tuesday. As E.J. Dionne tells us in his article, The Right Wing’s 2011 Shellacking, “This week’s elections around the country were brought to you by the word ‘overreach…'”

Overreach, indeed! From that first moment of radical election glut in 2010 there has been a thick-headed insistence that the American people prefer plutocracy to democracy. For a year and more, forward movement has been obstructed, detained, and derailed by a party that has insisted that they are acting in the public good despite their obvious corporatocracy. Thankfully, it appears that we are finally re-examining the psychological truism that if you tell a lie often enough, it will eventually become believable. We’ve begun to trust what our own eyes tell us about the conservative political wing, which is that it has not taken the public good to its bosom, nor does it have any such intent in the future. We’ve seen too many thrown under the bus in order to buoy the wealthy, too much pandering to the lowest common denominator. We’ve seen the face of the Grand Old Party and it ain’t so grand. And just as disheartening, we’ve witnessed the liberal party twisting and twirling at the end of their corporate leash, unable to rise above a system that dampens better instincts in order to reward baser ones. And given all that, it’s something of a miracle — don’t you think? — that we’re finally able to identify and say no to what is brutal and nihilistic, hollow and manipulative.

In Maine, voters said no to a recently passed law requiring citizens to pre-enroll in order to vote. The law was championed by Republicans to protect against that old conservative bugaboo, voter fraud (of which two cases were recorded in Maine during the last 38 years.) After a grassroots group gathered enough signatures to have the law placed on the November 8 ballot, it was overturned with votes to spare.

In the first recall election against a state legislator in Arizona, Senator Russell Pearce was voted out of office last Tuesday. Pearce, known as the architect of the immigration law that took AZ into the national spotlight, was championed by Governor Jan Brewer and enjoyed a 3-to-1 fundraising advantage over his opponent. Flying in the face of Obama’s legal team, Arizona’s immigration law will eventually end up in the Supremes’ lap, and while we can’t count on THEM saying no, the ‘Zonies had THEIR say on November 8. Although the senator was replaced by a less radical Republican, Mr. Pearce will no longer be beating the drum for harsher immigration law.

And like a shot heard ’round the world, a landslide vote in Ohio struck down a law that restricted the collective bargaining rights of public employees. Clearly a union win, we can consider this a populist raspberry blown at those who would continue to attack worker rights. It was also a black eye for John Kasich, one of the new Pub governors who insist the 2010 election gave them a “mandate” to take states’ rights back into darker ages. This win for the unions turned up the heat on another such governor, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who is being slowly roasted over his own bonfire of the vanities. Political organizers, successful in Ohio, are now headed to Wisconsin to assist with Walker’s recall.

There’s no denying that election day 2011 had a new tone to it. Jon Stewart did his usual brilliant send-up on the losses and wins, but I think he missed the nuance, because this isn’t a “same day, different shit” drill, even if it feels like the same political see-saw to which we’ve become accustomed. There are signs of peaceful insurrection, determined and (mostly) gentle refusal to continue to play antiquated financial and political games, everywhere we look. There are signs of paradigm shift.

Over $50 million bucks left big institutions like Citi and Bank of America this week, as we withdrew our money and deposited it in small local banks and credit unions. We’ve finally acknowledged that corporations aren’t people. Eggs aren’t either, fertilized or not. Public workers should not be penalized because they have better than minimum wage jobs. Bankers should not be let off the hook for their failures, especially when they’re playing fast and loose with money not their own. And in a time of national emergency, those who play politics with people’s lives can simply no longer be tolerated, much as scissors must be withheld from running children. Period.

Even our timid and tentative leadership attempts to ride this extraordinary energy, to plug in to the power surge. Democratic Senators Schumer, Udal, Durban, Merkley and Whitehouse have proposed legislation to amend the Constitution, repealing the worst aspects of the Citizen’s United case. Here’s the link to a petition you can sign, backing this legislation and helping to move it into national awareness. A Constitutional amendment will take more than a simple majority to pass.

After decades of smoke and mirrors, lies and falsehoods, we have finally come to understand that the political is personal. We are willing to name this deficiency now, to stand in defiance of it because of what has become personal revelation to many of us. We have lost jobs, incomes, dwellings, relationships, dreams for our future. We are still slipping in the mire of our deconstructed democracy, our hijacked republic, but we can sense firmer ground beneath our feet. If we stand in our own power now, the ground will come up to meet us.

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As the 11:11 Doorway opened to welcome those who would walk through, the energy quickened our awareness. It will be harder and harder for dark energies to hide themselves now, easier and easier for us to find new comfort zones in activities we know to be authentic and empowering. Blatantly stealing prose from Len, I will remind you that most of us have yet to offer ourselves fiercely in the service of something larger than self. Standing in the 11:11 energy — like waiting in the wings of the stage we will soon enter — will give us that last bit of time to get our personal self squared away, discover the internal stability we must bring to the coming task.

Unless we know that we are in the flow of All There Is, we still fear that an unknowable future will mortally wound us, erase us, use us up. These are the collective fears of an era fading away, one that will be replaced by a new understanding of our essential nature and ability. When it becomes apparent that we are stronger and more powerful than even the most bewildering blast of fear fomented our way, then we’ll find courage to take on the larger challenges presented to our generation — energy, environment, religious and cultural healing — and deal with them just in the nick of time.

Some years back, Eric sent an internal e-mail asking staff what we thought 2012 would be about, what it would look and feel like. What I know about the future is that it never looks like you think it will, so I wrote out a list of happy thoughts and imaginings instead of projections. Perhaps 2012 will present the fertile soil where we can plant such seeds. But at the time, all I could be sure of, from deep within, was the surety that somewhere between now and then, the Hundredth Monkey would have gotten the enlightenment memo and, lightning-quick, the decency, empathy and compassion of the unified human heart would take ascendancy in group-mind. We would no longer invest ourselves in dark shadows of fear and war, pain and sorrow, and as we began to collectively experience ourselves as loving creatures, nothing could remain as it had been. We would discover ourselves truly free for the first time in millennia.

Yesterday we completed an initial phase of initiation and began another. A quickening was triggered, a turning of the cosmic clock, an amping of the higher energies. We are vastly more empowered today than we have been. Our tomorrow can only reveal more awareness and determination. And today? Seems to me that everything is on schedule today, no matter what the news has to say. We’re right where we need to be.

Note: if you are interested in the numerology of the 11:11 event, I’d recommend our dear friend Christine DeLorey’s webpage, to be found here.