Perhaps it’s only psychological, but there’s something inexplicably special about the New Year. Like the tabula rasa of Western philosopher John Locke, there’s a sense of fresh encoding. Experiences await imprinting on our souls. Whiter than the unspoiled snow atop the river’s ice flows, the months of 2015 extend their prestigious white carpet. Walking the white expanse is, of course, an inadequate metaphor for the process of ascension, which I can only discuss meaningfully with the help of the Guides. Ascension is so much more than religious enthrallment.
Western iconography regularly depicts men and women of different ages, their faces beaming, arms extended upward toward heaven. Their attitude of bliss and surrender makes us imagine an orchestral crescendo accompanying their celestial “beam up.” That is one version of the process, but consider another kind of vision: Ascension is as natural as breathing. It is the movement into the next dimension of our journey.
We arrange our consciousness around a linear model of growth. We maintain journals and log our life’s events as presumably consecutive. What if we took the small step of wrapping our consciousness around a model that was more spherical? In other words, instead of seeing ourselves as following the bread crumbs sequentially along the trail, what if we were to see the heart as a center from which circles move concentrically outward toward infinite space? Each sphere would “contain” the previous one yet encompass even more awareness and understanding. Mine is a facile metaphor, but it serves as a heuristic approach to help us grasp what language seems inept to convey.
Avatars and ascended masters fortunately harbor great compassion for us. They have come again — as they have countless times — to guide us toward what is so plain and simple. They remind us that love is the primal creative force, that light is our source of knowledge and understanding, and that we are not yet, as Aunt Nan used to put it, “the brightest shiny little stars on the horizon.”
Mandan Turtle Priest Cedric Red Feather keeps me ever mindful of the Michael Teachings (Michael is a mid-causal entity recorded in books by Chelsea Yarbro), which are so helpful in understanding our human situation. Younger souls are out trying to change the world; mature and old souls focus inwardly upon changing themselves. We need only perform our parts in the cosmic drama gratefully, and with loving intent, and we will experience the evolution and growth of the soul.
Like lazy vacationers, however, we often linger too long in the warm, aquamarine waters, distracted by gentle breezes, swaying palms and sweet beverages. We form attachments and become acquisitive. We tend to invite false longings into the palace of our hearts instead of the light that will bring us more than we could ever dream possible.
Beyond my fourth floor balcony, a mysterious rolling mist streams over the semi-frozen Minnesota River. Cold rippling waters, diverted by blue-white sheets of ice, move determinedly from the west. The frosted sky surrounding it divides into striated layers. A white cloud rift forms a creamy center, beneath which stretches a pale turquoise strip of morning sky and above which beams a deep cornflower blue expanse. The trees are bare and sepia-toned but seem to glow now with a rosy lustre from the angle of the mid-morning sun. All these sacred parts of creation play their parts unselfconsciously as I observe their beautiful procession.
I resolve to expand my vision. I must work more earnestly at transmuting afflictive emotions that rise and fade and threaten to derail my approach toward highest enlightenment. My mind and its crazy ideas, my ego and its narcissistic enthronement, must be dimmed with the rheostat of wisdom until I become filled with pure light and thus, “en-light-ened.”
Ascension is the gradual, studied flow of the river, a movement outward into luminous spheres of awareness, a pink and white lotus blossoming out of our bodies. Breathe deeply. Meditate often. Transmute all negatives into positives. Radiate love. Live, as Cedric admonishes, in a universe without judgment. Match the frequency of the next sphere — the way a delicate bird’s song complements the bandwidth of soft orange and pink light as the sun imperceptibly rises yet again.
