By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

THE CONVERSATION that's the most important to the day is the one you're having with yourself. If you're not taking notes, you're missing the primary source of information that's driving your experience on Planet Terra.

This week, I’m visiting Tucson, a place I called home for nearly five years in the early '90s. It was one of the most personally productive and painful periods of my life. I have often winced just thinking about it. Looking back, I can see that it was the place I'd selected to recreate myself, and it had Alice in Wonderland overtones.

No prim English garden, this -- here the silent sentinels, the ancient and stately saguaros, hold court, and the desert terrain is as alien as the surface of the moon. Here, in this strangely elegant land, I tumbled down a rabbit hole, became both smaller and larger, met a dormouse and the Tweedle brothers, danced with a walrus and, eventually, faced the Red Queen. I learned how to surrender to the moment, here; how to let life unwind around me as I entered the flow of it. I learned how to let go and let life happen. I recommend such a journey for us all.

That said, all changes are traumatic to humans who love their comfort zones and so it was with me -- change pops us right into the grip of anxiety, a highly instructive state if you will allow it to teach. I'd lived in most of the Western states by the time I discovered Arizona, and had learned to accommodate and appreciate the climate differences, the local wisdom and traditions, but the Sonoran desert challenged me on all levels. The heat appears to bake you, not from the outside but from within; the native flora and fauna is designed for both beauty and pain, prickers and stickers in place should you try to examine too closely [warning: cholla needles jump AT you,] and the creepy-crawlies have the capacity to not only make you uncomfortable with a bite or sting, but kill you. Since so much of my comfort zone became defensive, I developed a love/hate relationship with this spot on the map.

Yet, visiting for the first time in ten years, I'm remembering what I loved more than what made me crazy. I trained extensively at the Spiritualist chapel here, and entered a kind of dimensional doorway that allowed me to position a foot in both worlds more comfortably than ever before. I learned to hear the inner conversation first, impose a finer filter on my thoughts and feelings and identify the patterns that drove me. I facilitated class after class of A Course in Miracles, and that in itself is an invitation to discomfort and discovery. I looked up into the night sky and saw startling and remarkable things that challenged the senses; Dennis Kucinich and I could have a fine chat about that. I learned to allow the energy of a person or place to drop over me like a blanket, creating an instant and accurate impression of what I was likely to meet. I stood in energy vortexes that painted the sky with light. And I discovered that while the energy in Sedona is like plugging into a 220 outlet, the vibration in Tucson is like a quiet hum, a caress, a benediction. It is a fine thing to find it still so.

Our intense New Moon in Scorpio today is not a random one for me, which is just more proof of the synchronicity of spiritual life. This moon conjuncts my Venus on the mid heaven. I'm beginning a new cycle standing on the ashes of my past -- rebirth, squared. I'm being asked for reconsideration of all that's gone before, with intent on forgiveness, release. What better place for such a transit than the spot where I journeyed to let loose my every notion of myself; to slip into the rabbit hole and come out with my skirt above my head, my curls limp and Mary Janes scuffed but my understanding, my consciousness, forever changed. This emotional transit asks us all for renewal, no matter how well we think we've already erased the old grievances and sorrows, lest we bring the unexamined dregs of the old into the fresh clean expanse of tomorrow -- and Neptune's square to Luna will offer us opportunity to open our attic doors where the illusions and mythologies play, as do the truly ethereal beings. We can let the bats fly out...and the faeries.

So here we are, the world much with us, chaos amping itself up toward a fever pitch -- we don't know what's going to happen with Pakistan, with Burma, with Iraq or Iran. We face fuel at $100 a barrel for no credible reason, a market wobbling with a deflating dollar, elections that have turned the map Bluer but our representatives unable, or perhaps unwilling, to stop the Decider from deciding in his own best interests, not ours. Politics defines our lives in ways we don't think about until they've been turned against, and now our nation is shaking, our lives are coming apart and our comfort zones are shifting, a bit more each day. I think it's clear that there are rabbit holes in our individual futures, required journeys, excursions into consciousness that will, perhaps, flatten our curls and put our brains in a twist. Trust me, you may find that you have a love/hate relationship with all this while its happening.

Still, now's the time; it can't be put off much longer. It's all here for us, all those things that make no sense, that seem outside of ourselves, that pull us toward the big changes that will redefine us. And the conversation that is going to count, years from now...and, yes, today...is the one that is going on in your own mind; the one that you're having with your Higher Angel. That's the one that contains your own personal blueprint, your own dreams and desires, your road map through any rabbit hole and back again. You know everything you need to know -- every talent, instinct and interest has produced you as completely able to navigate your circumstance, no matter how disorienting it appears.

And that's the conversation I'm having with myself, today -- what I'm hearing, and what I'm repeating -- what I'm sharing, because all those Higher Angels of ours are standing together, urging us on. Don't be afraid of rabbit holes, you'll come out the other side -- don't fear wandering the deserts or mountains or seas of experience, of consciousness. Just keep listening to yourself -- and let the adventure begin!


CREDITS: Associate Editor: Priya Kale. Webmaster: Anatoly Ryzhenko. Proofreader and Fact Checker: Sara Churchville. Horoscope Editor: Jessica Keet. Associate Photo Editor: Sharon Bellenger. Business Manager: Chelsea Bottinelli. Published by Planet Waves, Inc., a Washington State corporation, all rights reserved.