Why are people so tired?

Dear Lilan.  Just curious if you have idea on why people are feeling just plain tired and rotten.  Wondered if the Moon or whatever is contributing?  Signed: Curious

Dear Curious, The Full Moon was a powerful one this month, and I heard a lot of reports of people being spaced out, tired, and irritable. But the Full Moon is only active for a few days. It sounds like what you are referring to is something more long term. Astrologically, there has been a pretty intense energy in the sky that started this summer with Saturn, Pluto, Uranus, and Jupiter making a cardinal T-Square, which some people have referred to it as a Cardinal Cross, or Crisis Cross. Many people have been talking about it as pretty stressful. It’s hard to generalize to the entire population based on planetary aspects. It is much better to compare the planetary changes to a person’s individual horoscope. But, this aspect has been creating lot of stress, anxiety, feeling unsettled, many changes, and disturbed sleep. This intense aspect  is now ending as Saturn is moving out  and Uranus and Jupiter are taking a bit of a siesta, so there should be a feeling of relief.

But this early March Uranus and Jupiter will reconnect with Pluto, and I would imagine things will gear back up and stress will increase again. So, this is a long way of saying I bet people you know are responding to uncertainty and stress. It would be good to do meditation, stress reduction techniques, and look into supplements that might help stress and sleep.

Hope this helps.
Lilan

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Buddhist Sand Mandala

Buddhist mandalaA few years back (well, maybe a decade!) I saw Buddhist Monks make a spectacular sand mandala. It was in Pittsburgh, PA, and took place during a visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It takes about 6 days to make such a mandala, and the practice of patience and focus required to make such a work of art is itself a meditation. A mandala, a circular shape with a center,  is a universal symbol of wholeness. Mandala are everywhere in nature, for example a daisy has a yellow center surrounded by white petals. Mandalas are in many religious traditions, for example the Native American Medicine Wheel, or the complex Rose windows in the Gothic Cathedrals. Labyrinths are mandalas.

I just found this video of a time lapse of Tibetan monks making a sand mandala at Emory University in Atlanta Georgia. It took them 6 days to make this elaborate shape. When they are finished they destroy the mandala as a reminder that we are all impermanent, and that we too will be destroyed one day. The thought is a bit similar to Christian Ash Wednesday: “From ashes we come and to ashes we return.” This Mandala Video takes about 2 minutes to watch the creativity it took the monks 6 days to complete. After I saw it I pondered on the intricacies of my own life, the amount of time, effort, focus, creativity, love, and work that I put into my decades of living. And that one day, as quickly as the erasing of the mandala, it will all be over. I hope that at the end of my life that I can be assured that I somehow contributed to a better world, in the same way that once the mandala is destroyed, the sand is released into the waters for healing.

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Gulf Crisis and help

oil pelicanWhen I saw this image, I wanted to turn away, close my eyes, and not look. It is just way too painful for me. I love birds. Feeding and watching and protecting birds are part of my everyday life. I am crushed. But I can’t turn away and pretend it’s not happening. Now the oil has reached four states, and might be underneath the Atlantic ocean, heading its way to the East Coast.

I want to help this pelican. I want to hold it and clean off the oil. I want it to live. But I am far away, so all I can do is pray, and hope it helps. I feel helpless, and I’m sure many other people do too. So when I got a request by the Sierra Club I felt like I was given some action that I could do. Here is what they say:

Watching the largest environmental disaster in our nation’s history unfold has been infuriating — it’s clear that there is no quick fix to clean up this mess. We need to make sure this type of disaster never happens again.

Are you fed up? Sickened by what you’re seeing in the Gulf? This is the time to join together and help break our nation free from Big Oil’s stranglehold.

The Sierra Club will be holding rallies and events, running ads, and engaging people all across the country to generate a movement to move Beyond Oil. We have never needed President Obama’s visionary leadership more than we do right now — it’s time to stop letting the oil industry call the shots, and to start embracing clean energy.

I am attaching the link so you can go to Sierra Club and take action too. We must be sure this never happens again; That we never drill for oil so deep into the ocean that we can’t fix it when it breaks. That we all become aware of how our own personal use of energy is part of this problem. It is easier to look away from the bleeding in the Gulf. But as much as it hurts, I will face this tragedy head on, heart open.

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Oceans: Need our love and help

I just went to see the movie Oceans. It is a product of Disney Nature and was released on Earth Day. It was so lovely and I was very moved. It was especially poignant since millions of gallons of oil were polluting our ocean  while I was watching. I could never forget that fact. The creatures in the ocean are amazing, with such strange eyes and mouths. Like aliens from another planet, but from our planet.

The Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers are having a healing for the waters tomorrow. Prayers will be given all over the world. I will join in the prayer of hope and healing for our waters. If you can go to a body of water, a spring or creek or pond that would be ideal. But just a glass of water on your kitchen counter can be the focus for your healing prayers to this wonderful and traumatized ocean of ours.

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Oil spill environmental disaster

Thursday, April 29, 2010. The massive oil spill off the gulf coast is an environmental disaster. Since it was an oil rig that blew, the oil is leaking from an underwater well, deep in the ocean. It has been hard to calculate how much oil continues to leak, but today it appears to be leaking at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day, not 1,000 as had been thought, and that the spill could reach the coast by Friday. And they don’t have a way to stop the leaking. This is different that the oil that leaked from a grounded ship over the coral reef in Australia this month. That was terrible due to the damage it did to the endangered (and supposedly protected) Great Barrier Reef. But the ship had a limited amount of oil. Since this is a well that is leaking, it seems as if the oil leak could go on and on until they find a way to cap the well. The oil slick is over 80 miles across. The coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida are preparing for the oil to reach the shore line by as early as Friday. The military has been asked to help, and the Coast Guard are trying to burn the oil in the sea before it comes to the shoreline. What a disaster. And it is synchronistic that it is occurring at the same time that the President Obama has supported an increase in off-shore oil production. Whew! The money made by the oil production could be off set by the loss of income by tourism to these coastal areas. The tension that exists between protecting our environment and increasing our energy sources like oil, coal, and nuclear power, seems to be very problematic. I hope they figure out a way to control this leak. But I fear for the oceans. There is a new movie out called Oceans that I plan to see. It documents the beautiful sea life we could never experience any other way. Pray for the ocean.

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Stephen Hawking and Aliens!

grey-alienStephen Hawking, arguably one of the most brilliant men alive, just came out and said that there probably were alien life forms in the universe, and we probably should not go looking for them! He said that based on how Earthlings have treated exploration (i.e. conquest) of other cultures we should be willing to consider the fact that aliens might not be very nice. He mentioned Christopher Columbus and the treatment of Native Americans as an example. There is going to be a Discovery Channel series on him called called Stephen Hawking’s Universe. Here is the link.

Now, normally I would not consider this too seriously. But, I just saw the film District 9, which was such a realistic view of alien life and our likely treatment of aliens as “others”, that I took notice. The film was great, really clever and very well done. I highly recommend it. And, I saw the Hubble 3D film too, which is such a magnificent journey into a very very very large cosmos. There just has to be other life forms than us in all those billions of stars. As Hawking says, “To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational”.

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Dream of Space

Last night I had a dream about going into outer space. It was inspired by the movie about the Hubble camera that I had just seen. The ship that was taking hundreds of us to space was like a cruise ship, very comfortable and huge. My husband and I had bought trip insurance which provided an exit strategy if the trip became dangerous (sorta like trip insurance you get when you go to a foreign country where you are guaranteed to be airlifted out ). But I realized that unless I spent every minute with my husband on the trip, that I could be alone if the ship ran into trouble and would have to deal with it by myself. I pondered that, and realized that I would be o.k. and that on some level we are all alone anyway, and that I would be fine by myself.

Interpretation: This dream is about doing something unknown and the risks that are involved in taking off to some place you’ve never been before. It feels good to have a companion on the journey, but on some level we are alone, and we need to remember that we are capable on our own. Which was all well and good until aliens took over the ship!!

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