Tim Glenn and I were having a back and forth, and I mentioned: “Yeah, it’s like Merc Rx all the time these days. ” to which he replied: “Anyway — as to your comment: Some articles become more pertinent as time goes by, and are sometimes worthy of reposting — such as:” [this post below … it’s not a New Moon or Merc Rx right now, but yes, his post seems even more relevant today, so here you go!]
Here’s a timely one from my friend, Astrologer Timothy Glenn. I could provide a very long, twisty, turn-y, ouch-y, shaking my head and laughing intro about just how right he is, but if you’re living on planet Earth right now, you can probably provide your own synchronous intro. Happy New Moon, Happy Mercury Retrograde, and Happy Earth Retrograde!
Earth Retrograde
As we move into the Mercury retrograde of May 2015, people can now have something to “blame” for their wild and sundry symptoms of transmutation syndrome. For more than a week, a surprising number of folks have been saying things like, “It’s because of the retrograde.” Somewhere along the line, someone heard that we had entered the shadow (or foreshadow) of the Mercury retrograde, so this could now be designated as the cause of all the incidents happening outside the box of their suddenly antiquated interpretations of life.
Coming soon! My eighth book, The Difference Between Pain and Suffering. Overcome your pain and suffering the natural way. Let medical intuitive healer Catherine Carrigan show you how. Discover drug-free secrets from yoga, Reiki, energy healing and alternative medicine with photographs and exercises that really work. If you’ve been wondering why you haven’t been seeing new […]
Source: https://catherinecarrigan.com/coming-soon-my-8th-book-the-difference-between-pain-and-suffering/
Just a very quick note today between sessions. I’ll start with an email reply I made to someone today:
This must be the time of many deaths. I think every session this week has been about people processing someone’s death or needing to deal with their own mortality. That is not to minimize your own losses, for which I’m sorry. It’s just bordering bizarre how many clients have had death as their session topic this week.
Life is good here, but I’m also having a kind of death of a version of myself in that we have so much wildlife here — very cool, but also such an abundance of it — that gardening will be extremely different for me. There’s not much point in planting most of the things I had planned to put in, as even with fences, there are tunnels, there are climbers, flyers, it’s kind of a free for all. I wanted a more manageable garden, so this transition is forcing that upon me. I can either fight all the critters full time and still lose or plan accordingly and not even build things up too big to begin with. Choose plants they notoriously don’t eat.
Time to focus more on other things like writing and meeting compatible local people of which there was a complete dearth in Goshen! Everything is a trade-off. Given what others are processing, I’m grateful it’s just the death of a garden plan in my head.
…
A little more info for the blog:
Truly, I’ve heard from multiple people who’ve attended funerals this week, or who booked a session for a dying animal friend or one who recently passed, people whose parents are in hospice care, someone reinventing life after the death of a spouse, people who think they’re dying because they’re going through such intense detoxification, people who’ve done huge cleanses, either of their body or of their possessions, and multiple people I know saying “I don’t want to be here anymore,” followed by, “Don’t worry, I’m exaggerating, I wouldn’t really kill myself, but it’s just so intense!”
The times, they are a’changing! Best to roll with it, as the intensity decreases when you approach things with non-attachment and a wee, tiny sense of humor. What are these changes telling you has run its course? What freedom can you claim now that you’re less grounded in the old? If you feel stuck, try decluttering. If you feel boxed in, get creative.
I ran into two neighbors today — a next door woman named Amy who works from home and used to live in South Bend and …. the groundhog, who never misses a chance to crawl through the shed if rain washes away the fox pee. He was mighty fidgety, though, even with windless and motion-free pinwheels. One open and close of the window and he was outta here.
The encounter began to confirm what I already suspected: I’m not really going to get rid of these groundhogs. They’re everywhere around here, and I’d rather have them use a single known fence and shed dodge than burrow all over the place trying to get back in. I’d rather have them eat the prolific backyard clover than discover my front yard garden. I’d rather make peace than total war. Our neighbor also told me we have tons of wildlife, even things I’ve not yet seen, like possums (they eat 2,000 ticks per day … I invited them, and she saw a “huge one” in our front yard yesterday). We’ve also got raccoons, deer, and even wild turkeys. She looked at my front yard garden and stifled a laugh. I told her it was better than sure destruction out back.
The thing is, I love nature. I don’t want groundhog burrows all over our yard, but I’m OK with one or two sightings a week through a long standing path. I planted that food forest in Goshen because I couldn’t stand the complete lack of nature and beauty. Here, I have nature and beauty galore. There are also many edibles that wildlife find less enticing or even repellent:
many herbs, especially lavender, mint, hyssop, chives, thyme, and garlic
lots of my favorite flowers, including foxglove, dianthus, irises, alliums, columbines, and snapdragons
perennial vegetables like rhubarb, horseradish and Egyptian walking onions, plus annuals like fennel, peppers, and beets
fruiting shrubs like aronia berry and spiny gooseberry
After reading about groundhogs climbing peach trees, decimating serviceberry bushes and stealing entire apple crops, I’m just not going to bother with those. I found a long list of groundhog resistant plants even beyond these particular favorites, which you can find here. Most groundhog resistant plants are also rabbit and deer resistant, too. I’ve got strategies to stinking them out with fragrant herbs intermixed with my more vulnerable plants. I’m excited, because it’s actually a lot of easy care plants.
All of which is to say, change is here. For me and for a lot of others. David and I chose this location for the massive upgrade, and we feel it — especially me since he’s still spending his weekdays in Goshen for the next month or so. When we make a change, some things fall away. Sometimes things we dearly loved, but if we’ve set our sights and intentions, prayers and Reiki on the highest, most empowered good, then it’s much easier to release what’s leaving anyway.
I’ll leave you with a comment bump up from Timothy Glenn:
“Laura: You’re right about shifting gears while driving. To get from any gear into any other gear, you have to go through a phase called neutral. As for pivoting, another fun ditty from Abraham-Hicks is seeing life as a river — and everything thing you want is downstream. Even if you’ve been doing the typical human thing of paddling as hard as you can upstream, you can simply put down the silly paddle — and river by its very nature will turn your boat around. You will pivot easily and gracefully.”
This story happened in 2014, but I just came across it today. It’s short and definitely sweet. I know of so many outcomes like this, but I cannot usually share them due to confidentiality. For anyone who gets discouraged about humanity, please know that random acts of kindness change people’s lives.
Reaching out and making a difference in children’s lives can make a lasting shift. Offering help at the right time — not from a place of sacrifice, but from a place of inspiration — keeps us in flow and generates huge ripples. We don’t always know the follow-up stories of what a kind word, gesture or donation does, but if it feels right to be generous or to give someone a leg up, please know and trust that you are making a real difference.
You can’t legislate compassion, but you can foster it by recognizing those key moments when your presence and response aligns with Grace. When you become the answered prayer someone doesn’t even know they’re praying. We are all connected to the Touch of the Divine, and it flows with presence, attention, and stepping out of our own way.
As above, so below. As within, so without. It’s worlds within worlds within worlds; matrices within matrices within matrices. For now, let’s focus on a matter of current concern: The Matrix otherwise known as 3D Planet Earth.
What’s the Point?
The primary function of The Matrix is to trap Souls and keep them trapped, all the while extracting their natural creative Life Energy. It took an immense expenditure of time and effort to entice Divine Beings into this Matrix, and especially to seduce them into surrendering their creatorship, their power and the essence of their infinite selves.
This makes it worthwhile to make sure they stay trapped in the illusions of The Matrix. Hiring and training new help can loom as cost prohibitive.
Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged
If someone came along and made a statement like that, Matrix agents would probably nail him to a tree as soon as possible. Judgment provides one of the most useful keys for keeping Souls trapped.
If you judge any part of The Matrix, it’s got you. And it gives you eight zillion things to judge. The act of judging ties you to whatever you hold in judgment, and on 3D Planet Earth you are presented with a seemingly infinite smorgasbord of nasty, ugly, evil things to judge – all of them right there in that Sneaky Matrix!
What You Resist, Persists
Carl Gustav Jung might not have been nailed to a tree, but the preceding statement could have qualified for such treatment a couple thousand years earlier.
Witting and unwitting agents of The Matrix habitually step on your toes and get in your face. The overall system incessantly seeks to limit your freedom and undermine your dreams. It can be oh, so tempting to fight city hall.
This is not to be construed as a recommendation for turning yourself into a doormat or victim. There is a not-so-fine line between standing your ground, and attacking duped agents of The Matrix, pesky and annoying as they may be. In the latter case, you would need to have first taken the bait. And The Matrix is oh, so good at proffering the bait. Bait not, lest ye be baited.
If you fight it, you feed it. In other words, it’s got you. The Matrix is just so damned clever!
Grrrr….
If you’re angry at any part of The Matrix, it’s got you. And it’s deviously designed to totally piss you off. Pretty tricky, that Matrix!
Any time you fall into one of these traps within The Trap, you make that part of The Matrix Real for yourself. Your thoughts and emotions entangle themselves in what you don’t want, and thereby it cements itself as your Reality. Good luck with that.
Some people feel hopelessly overwhelmed by this diabolically clever Trap. They wonder what any of us could possibly do in the face of such odds. Perhaps like our old friend the Buddha, we could achieve the Divine Screw It! Detachment, anyone?
The New Sacred Mantra
A few years ago, the Proterrians presented what they called our new sacred mantra: “So what?”
Note: This is not to be confused with “Who cares?” If you ask about who cares, the universe might bring you people who actually do care about Matrix issues and their accompanying toxic dramas. You probably don’t want to hang out with those folks we might call Matrix Units.
The Matrix will offer plenty of opportunities for you to effectively utilize the new sacred mantra.
“They’re spraying chemtrails everywhere!” So what?
“GMO’s and other junk are poisoning everyone!” So what?
“The system is insanely corrupt!” So what?
“The mainstream media is lying, deceiving and propagandizing all the time!” So what?
Tricking The Matrix
The trick is to be in The Matrix but not of it. A couple thousand years ago, presenting such a concept would have contributed to getting you nailed to a tree (at least in certain cultures) but now it’s perfectly safe.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi emerged as a slightly more modern figure than Carl Gustav Jung, and thus avoided crucifixion for teaching Transcendental Meditation. The Maharishi emphasized that the idea was not to escape this alleged reality, nor to think in terms of breaking out of anything. Such an approach would only make this world Real for you.
The key to transcending The Matrix can be found in achieving genuine neutrality. If we simply render The Matrix irrelevant, we will be able to see through its illusive nature and explore the literal Infinity beyond.
The Matrix and its agents may object, but will only provide us with tests that will show us portions of our Shadows that yet remain to be integrated.
Where are those pockets of darkness deep within us, wherein we have given our power away to external forces? If we move into transcendence, The Matrix will obligingly show us.
Shifting into Neutral
Many millions of us are now transcending the old fear-based world, and are ascending into a love-based Reality.
The Matrix might want to deceive us into thinking of its fear as negative, and universal love as positive. But the divine, unconditional, infinite Love is a purely neutral force. As the essence of the Infinite Field in its wholeness, it isn’t dividing itself into good and evil, right and wrong, light and dark, true and false, nor any other illusory dichotomy.
It just is.
To more gracefully shift into Neutral, you might consider The Blue Room, The Heart Breath, and Proterrian’s All-Purpose 3-Step Formula – all of which can be found on Laura Bruno’s Blog.
We are all the Infinite Field, because there is nothing else to be. Even The Matrix is part of the Field and will awaken to its own Reality somewhere, sometime, somehow. It’s simply that many of us have chosen to experience our awakening here and now, by shifting into the neutrality of Infinite Love.
As I await a Sears delivery, I thought I’d take this otherwise unusable block of time to answer FAQ’s about the new garden and our move in general. Sorry, I still cannot reveal the exact city — that will come in time — but based on the number of sync winks and perfect heads up’s and interventions, Divine Timing is obviously in effect!
On Saturday, we were running errands and needed some information from our friend Ingrid, who loves orchids. Just as I made contact with her via text, guess what we passed in the store? A random display of orchids. I had set aside yesterday to begin filling raised beds for all my transported container plants. Knowing we had a groundhog issue with a hidey hole near our shed, I had originally put all the plants up front, but they need such strategic placement due to all the mature trees. It’s very difficult — but not impossible — to eek out 6-8 hours of full sun. Our backyard, by contrast, gets full sun almost the entire day.
I hadn’t seen our resident “whistlepig” aka woodchuck for over a week and was reconsidering my front yard garden and backyard orchard. Guess who made an appearance an hour before I began filling beds? Yep. His hidey hole now has a brand new, low hanging wind chime for startle effect …
…along with a new application of fox pee (humanely harvested from an animal rehab facility). it was a still day, so the pinwheels weren’t whirling, but hopefully, the wind chimes will startle him as much as they do me.
LOL, if I were a groundhog, I would not frequent this yard! I’ve about jumped out of my skin on several occasions with my own pretty deterrents. I need to change my phone’s timer from the wind chime setting, because when it went off and kept chiming louder to remind me to empty the old refrigerator, I leapt to the yard with pounding heart, thinking a whole army of groundhogs was passing under and around all the chimes.
I haven’t seen him again, and to be fair, I’ve had zero damage to any plants. Given a number of other “just in time” synchronicities and Divine Interventions, I took his uncanny appearance just at that moment as confirmation to trust my nudge to make a front yard garden. It’s a great way to meet neighbors, looks pretty, and it leaves the sunny, fenced in backyard for a mini-orchard protected from hungry deer. I’m not sure how the front yard garden will survive the deer, but they don’t come around here often, so I’ll cross that bridge if and when it comes to me. I have lots of mint, hyssop, yarrow and fragrant flowers, since I read that deer don’t browse when their noses get overloaded with smells. We shall see …
I had made sigils (modified to my own design and helpers) before we ever found our house or even knew which city to explore. Among those sigils, I listed “David and Laura live in a compatible city with compatible neighbors” and “I have a right sized garden.” By “right sized,” I meant more manageable, so that I could focus on writing, eating out and socializing more than on full scale urban permaculture. In Goshen, a 1/3 acre yard-en and food forest managed totally by me made sense, but in our new, much more compatible location, I want time to explore our surroundings, as well as time to write more books.
I’ve manifested the space for creativity, but by “right sized garden” I did not (consciously) mean “no garden.” The rest of the sigils have come true in wonderful ways, or they’re continuing to unfold with surprising but joyful details. I have to trust that everything will work itself out. I’ve noticed groundhogs in other areas, but so far so good here.
We do have my trademark resident wasps already, situated very close to the front yard gardens. I don’t know why, but I have had excellent symbiosis with wasps as pollinators, organic predators for destructive bugs, and as vigilant guardians of my crops. I blogged about this dynamic in the post, “Slumlord Beekeeper,” discussing my Mason bee house, resident yellow jackets and predator wasps, as well as how wasps mysteriously kept our Madison neighbor from trampling my garden, while allowing me free, unstung passage wherever I needed to go. When this well intentioned but plant trampling neighbor marveled at how I could garden amidst the wasps, I just smiled and said, “Well, it’s my garden, isn’t it?” I’ve found that when pleas and suggestions don’t work, wasps tend to do the trick.
In any case, the day the movers brought the last truckload of our stuff here, one of them noted wasps building a nest in one of our front lights. David just smiled and said, “That was quick!” When the mover raised an inquiring eyebrow, David added, “They were invited.”
I also saw a hawk the other day after asking for day patrol, and a turkey vulture followed up to confirm a successful hunt. Now the red squirrels or (please say it ain’t so) baby groundhogs seem to avoid our front yard or scurry past as fast as possible. A few people have texted me with synchronous owl hoot reports immediately after I’ve put out telepathic calls for dusk and dawn owl patrol, so we’ll see how that works.
I prefer to live and let live, but I do get rather protective of my plants and my space. In Goshen, the hawk patrol did wonders to keep those nasty black squirrels on good behavior. If I told particularly naughty ones, “That’s it, I’m calling the hawk,” they would hightail it out of there for the rest of the day. I’ve telegraphed The Rules to potential thieves: eat clover instead of my garden, don’t give us ticks, don’t dig up any foundations on our property, and we can get along well. If you insist on devouring to the ground or destroying, I’m calling the hawk. And the owl. And the wasps. You’ve been warned. Be nice.
Several people have expressed excitement to see photos of the new garden. Please keep in mind that we only just moved in, so this year is a complete experiment to see what works where, including the possibility that “a right sized garden” for me consists only of daffodils, garlic and onions, along with a butterfly haven that happens to repel nibbling critters. I have no idea what this land will produce, but I do enjoy the cardinals, HUGE dragonflies, wasps and birdsong all day long.
We also love the park-like views from every window. Trees galore, and many of my favorites! Birch, magnolia, purple maple, blue spruce, dogwood, and weeping cherries: it’s like someone downloaded the list of “Laura’s favorite non-edible trees” and led us to a property that features all of them. If that’s “all” we have long term, then we’ll survive. Our city is loaded with food forests and hydroponics stores, so if all else fails, we can still have yummy community food options and indoor greens.
That said, David and I spent yesterday rehabbing the existing trees, since the previous owners had done nothing to maintain them. In another perfect timing experience, the arborist we consulted last Tuesday told us this season is the last moment we could have pruned these trees to a size that would allow us to keep them. Any larger and more mature, and they would have damaged the house or succumbed to disease or stress. Our place doesn’t look or feel like a rescue mission, but in many ways it is. We synchronously met the previous owner before these sellers on the day we bought this house, and she expressed relief and glee that gardeners were moving in. She had watched in sadness as all her decades of plantings got neglected by people with little time, understanding, resources, or interest in maintaining the beauty.
I’ll share some photos from this afternoon. We so love this weeping birch tree and hope to rehabilitate it back to full health. Yesterday, David spent hours trimming back dead branches, while I mulched the base and added Smart Pots on the Southeast side for sunshine and garden plants, but also for water runoff to help the tree.
Below you can see yesterday’s freshly filled Big Bag Beds, new wind chimes, pinwheels, and the remaining container plants awaiting a delivery of more soil. You can also see the freshly pruned weeping cherries as we look from our house to the street, as well as a purple maple on the right, the weeping birch on the left, and one of many blue spruces right by the street street.
Below you can see a 4:44 photo of the same beds. On the bench you’ll find a cherry tree branch saved for another magic wand like last year’s Asian pear offered, along with my “Live” root beer kombucha. Yes, this is a real time shot while I was out and about tending plants and watching shadows.
Contrast the light at this time in this photo above with the still bright sun in the backyard below, the intended spot of a future mini-orchard. Emphasis on mini. I do have some containers of herbs and native butterfly plants staged for planting in the existing bed of irises and clematis once I get more soil.
The mailbox area boasts abundant daisies in what the previous-owner to the last owners said was a red-white-and -blue 4th of July planting. One red lily looks too sad for photos, and the blue whatever seems to have died from neglect. Have I mentioned how happy this yard is to have a resident gardener again?! This bed bloomed earlier with yellow irises and yellow roses that I just deadheaded. It’s full sun all day, so maybe it will get a Smart Pot or two at some point. I decided to use Smart Pots and Big Bag Beds so that I won’t disturb the roots of existing trees. It also gives me a relatively low cost, low commitment way to experiment in the event that “right sized” means “no edible” garden.
On the possible agenda include an aronia berry bush (superfood ignored by most wildlife), flowering (edible and “deer proof”) quince, red currants (fruit in shade!), three columnar apple trees in containers, and possibly several blueberry bushes (which did fabulously in Big Bag Beds in Goshen). On the very, very maybe list of the extremely well behaved groundhog version of reality, I might also get some dwarf pear or plum trees. We. Shall. See.
For now, I enjoy looking at the weeping cherries and dogwood from my office window, with peeks of taller trees across the street. I can feel the fiction gears starting to turn now that I live in a spot more closely matching my necessary surroundings for writing fiction, and after planting wide varieties of daffodils, fritillaria, alliums and hyacinths this coming fall, it will be time to return to work on the healing Lyme disease book I began last winter.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little introduction to the new yard. This property has not yet revealed its name to us, but I’ll let you know when it does. Meanwhile, I wish you a Happy Inter-dependence Day. We’re all connected, much more than we know, even when we aim for more self-reliance and independence. When I received my PDC (permaculture design certificate), I was reminded that “the problem is the solution.” Even groundhogs, existing trees, a septic drain field, and a shady front yard. I’ll leave you with the Permaculture Design Principles, good things for us to remember on any day, especially this holiday weekend in the US:
This is a valuable and timely (even though auto-posted) article on establishing deep connections with trees. It’s timely for David and me since we spent most of yesterday attempting to save the weeping birch we love so much outside our new home. Berkano is the Rune of the Birch, and we’ve both had a special connection with birch trees throughout our entire relationship. This poor one had many dead branches that needed pruning, and she got some Smart Pot gardens and mulch to protect new roots from baking in the sun like those under the previously exposed black landscape cloth. She also got weeded, watered and welcomed into our lives.
Our weeping cherries and purple maple trees also got some love and pruning to save them from untimely removal or disease. Dana’s post is mostly about trees in the wild, but please don’t forget the trees in your everyday midst. They appreciate extra love, honor and care, as well. Just like in our own lives, preventative care of trees offers the chance for longer, healthier and more fulfilling lives.
Imagine walking into a forest where you are greeted by many old tree friends, each members of different families that form a community. You know their common names, their less common names, and the secret names that have taught you. You know their medicine, how they can be used, even some of their stories and songs. They rustle their leaves in joy as you continue to walk. The movement of their branches is music in your ears, the sound of the leaves a song, playing in your mind. Their medicine and magic is open before you. And yet, you realize how much more you have to learn, to know, and realize that this process –the process of reconnecting to the medicine and magic of the trees–will take more than one lifetime to complete. This is the power of establishing deep connections with the trees.
” to which he replied: “Anyway — as to your comment: Some articles become more pertinent as time goes by, and are sometimes worthy of reposting — such as:” [this post below … it’s not a New Moon or Merc Rx right now, but yes, his post seems even more relevant today, so here you go!]
